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 HOSPITAL HISTORIES Warneford Hospital The Warneford was not founded by Samuel Warneford. The impetus in its foundation came from the Governors of the Radcliffe Infirmary and it opened as the Radcliffe Asylum in 1826, paid for by public subscription. It was named the Warneford in 1843 in honour of its greatest benefactor Samuel Wilson Warneford (1763-1855), who gave property and cash to the value of over £70,000 to the Radcliffe Asylum during his lifetime. The modern equivalent could be as much as £10 million. The hospital was a paying hospital for the middle classes, the clergy and professionals who were frequently neither rich enough for private care or poor enough to apply to the parish for relief. In due course a fund for poor patients was established as well. There was different accommodation inside the building for the superior class, 2nd class and 3rd class patients, and this was continued outdoors, where each class had its own walled 'airing court' for exercise; some of the walls of these are still intact. Men and women were strictly segregated, with a male side of the hospital and a female side, and this continued until the late 1950s.
The Radcliffe Asylum in about 1833 Although run as one Trust today, the Warneford and Littlemore hospitals were separate bodies for over 100 years. The Littlemore was run by the County authorities as a result of their obligation in law to provide an institution for the poor, and in theory there was no overlap with the Warneford. However there was tension, which erupted in a public dispute in 1856. William Ley, the Superintendent of the Littlemore, had tried to become a member of the Warneford's Management Committee, but he was rejected by the Chairman, Vaughan Thomas, who felt that Ley had quite enough scope at Littlemore. Ley published an attack on the Warneford, alleging 'misuse of funds'. A spirited defence was published by Vaughan Thomas, then 82 years old. The Warneford Committee of Management purchased surrounding land at every opportunity and eventually there were about 150 acres. Indeed in 1926 the Annual Report records the building of a pavilion for shelter as patients could not get back to the hospital if it started to rain when they were at 'the far end of the grounds'. The Warneford site has now returned to more or less its original boundaries but some of the extent of the estate can be seen in the Churchill Hospital, built entirely on land originally purchased by the Warneford. The extensive grounds were not only regarded as pleasure and exercise grounds for the patients but they also provided flowers for the hospital rooms and fruit and vegetables for the table. At first pigs were kept for pork and bacon and eventually this developed into a full scale farm. By the late 1930s there were cereal crops and an accredited herd of cows as well as poultry and pigs. There were no trained nurses in the early nineteenth century, the care of the patients being concerned more with guarding than treatment. Some idea of the early nurses, attendants and domestic staff at the Asylum can be gained from the fact that the resident apothecary was so intimidated by two of them in 1828 that he refused to stay in the building overnight. By the 1920s the nurses were taking qualifications, but it was not until 1925 that a trained (and female) nurse took over the male side of the hospital as Matron, uniting the control of the 2 sides for the first time. Bleeding and cupping to the head and neck were applied for mania, as the raising of blood to the surface was supposed to relieve problems in the brain. Drugs included purgatives, emetics, opiates, arsenic, creosote and wine. Bathing was a common remedial treatment, with records of warm baths, footbaths and tepid showers. Wrist locks, restraint chairs and hobbles were purchased in the early years, but mechanical restraint was rare by the end of the nineteenth century. Care for the patients was always stressed at the Warneford, the earliest instructions to the nurses and keepers advocating kindness, consideration and gentleness. Striking patients was always forbidden. In the nineteenth century the patients rose at 5 a.m. in the summer and spent the day with books, magazines, croquet, battledore and shuttlecock, the piano or cards. There were outings in hired carriages and visits to Oxford under supervision. Some patients helped with domestic duties, the women in the sewing room or laundry and the men in the garden. They went to bed at 7.30 in the summer and 6.30 in the winter and the doors were locked at 10 p.m. By the 1920s and 1930s the entertainments were still much the same, although the wireless had been added and film shows were introduced. In 1929 efforts were being made to find alternatives to the garden for occupations for the men. Leather work, painting, basket making, embroidery and mat making were started, the beginnings of Occupational Therapy in the hospital and a small source of income.
Dining Room 1914 After World War II the Committee had to decide whether or not to join the National Health Service. They realized that if they remained independent they would have to increase their charges so much that those for whose benefit the hospital had been founded, the middle and professional classes, would not have been able to afford it. After 122 years as a fiercely independent body the hospital passed into public hands. It had its own Hospital Management until 1968, when it was united with the Littlemore under the same management. Both hospitals have been part of the Oxfordshire Mental Healthcare NHS Trust since 1994. |
