OUR beloved National Health Service is going through difficult times. Its chief executive, Sir David Nicholson, has announced he will be resigning following sustained criticism for his handling of the Stafford Hospital scandal.
Accident and Emergency departments across the country are struggling to cope with demand. And here in York, Patrick Crowley, the chief executive of York Hospital, warned recently that the health service locally was in crisis, because of a combination of growing demand, public funding cuts, and the debt left by NHS North Yorkshire and York.
It is all rather depressing – until you remember that, despite everything, we’re all living longer because the quality of health care we routinely receive keeps on getting better.
Anyway, to get away from all the depressing headlines, in Yesterday Once More this week we take a nostalgic look back at healthcare in York in times past.
We’re sure some of the photographs on these pages today will some trigger fond (or even not-so-fond) memories.
To start with, we have a couple of photographs of Deighton Grove Hospital. One showing an ambulance delivering a patient, and one nurses making a bed.
Both photographs were taken in 1947, the year the hospital opened – which was, incidentally, the year before the NHS itself was formally launched by Aneurin Bevan.
According to The National Archives, Deighton Grove House at Crockey Hill was bought by York County Hospital to use as an annexe for post-operative recovery and semi-convalescent patients. It became a psychiatric hospital in 1971, serving as an annexe of Naburn Hospital, and closed in 1976.
Next, we visit the old York County Hospital.
This was founded in a rented house in Monkgate in 1740, before moving to a new, larger building fronting on to Monkgate five years later.
In 1851, it was demolished and a new hospital built on the same site at a cost of £11,000. Like Deighton Grove, this hospital also closed in 1976, when the current York Hospital opened in Wigginton Road.
We have three photographs from the hospital’s heyday.
One shows a visit by the Queen Mother (in the days when she was the Duchess of York) in 1925.
From 1933, we have a photograph of the women’s gynaecology ward, its wooden floors gleaming. And from the 1950s there is a photograph of the men’s ward with the patients propped up on pillows in their flannel pyjamas, the nurses in crisp uniforms.
And finally, we have four images from York’s old maternity hospitals.
One is a ward photograph from Acomb maternity hospital taken in 1923. There is also a picture taken at a garden party at Acomb Hall in 1944, when it was the York Maternity Hospital, a wonderful photo of mums and babies at Fulford Maternity Hospital in 1981, and finally – and rather sadly– staff photographed outside the Fulford hospital when it closed in 1983.
Nurses making a bed at Deighton Grove Hospital, 1947
New mothers at Fulford Maternity Hospital in 1981
Staff outside Fulford Maternity Hospital when closure was announced in 1983
• All the photographs in Yesterday Once More today come from The Press’s own online electronic archive. You can see all these photographs, and many more – and even buy your own copies – by visiting thepress.co.uk/pics
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here