Report - Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham - August 2015

GRONK · Aug 21, 2015

August 2015

Visited with @Lavino and @woopashoopaa, A very short notice trip to Birmingham however it did not disappoint the hospital is pretty large and we managed most of it before we (or rather @Lavino) was spotted

. And so came the interesting convocation with Burnsville's finest. The hospital did not disappoint with the highlight probably being the Morgue. WE were really surprised by the size of the place the corridors just kept going on and on, but as we were getting ready to leave it all came to an end and we took a ride in the special car.

A stolen bit of history from Wikipedia.

In 1911, King’s Norton – no longer a rural area – left Worcestershire and became part of the City of Birmingham. The Birmingham Union was formed from the unions of King’s Norton, Aston and Birmingham. The King’s Norton Workhouse Infirmary was renamed Selly Oak Hospital. Over the next two decades facilities improved with the addition of an operating theatre, plastering of internal walls, and the introduction of physiotherapy, pathological and X-ray services. By 1929 there were seven full-time members of the medical staff, and the medical residence was built at this time.

Attitudes to the poor changed gradually and measures to relieve poverty, such as old age pensions and National Insurance, were introduced before the First World War By 1930, the administrative structure of the Poor Law was finally dismantled. Selly Oak Hospital and the Workhouse, renamed Selly Oak House, came under the administration of Birmingham City Council. Selly Oak House was administered separately and used for the care of the elderly chronic sick. Selly Oak Hospital continued to grow, new operating theatres were added in 1931, and the biochemistry and pathology laboratories opened in 1934. Nurses had been trained at Selly Oak since 1897, but it was not until 1942 that the School of Nursing was opened.

In 1948, when the National Health Service was introduced, Selly Oak Hospital and Selly Oak House were amalgamated. Since then many changes to the site have resulted in the institution we see today.