Research Catalog

Title

Mount Royal Hospital : a social history / Jean Uhl.

Author

Uhl, Jean.

Publication

Parkville [Vic.] : Mount Royal Hospital, 1981.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Mount Royal Hospital.

Description

xv, 245 p. : ill., ports.; 24 cm.

Summary

Mount Royal Hospital was founded in 1853 as the Immigrants Aid Society's Home for the destitute. It inherited its first buildings vacated by the 40th Regiment at the Royal Princes Bridge Barracks just south of the River Yarra. Gradually it extended its wooden buildings which straggled down both sides of St Kilda Road, sites now occupied by the Police Hospital, the National Gallery, Government House and the Domain. The Home was financed by public subscriptions and inadequate frants-in-aid. Its struggles and determination to provide welfare services for the poverty-stricken are related by the author with candour. It was the era of Christain charity. The Immigrants Aid Society became the 'foremost charitable Institution' in Melbourne in the 1800s. The book describes how the Society managed to run a Home for houseless and destitue people, a School with children, a Night Refuge, a Cander Hospital, a Soup Kitchen as well as provide outdoor and indoor employment for th many 'souls' who came to its doors. Seven changes of title over the years is an indication of the changes in attitudes and in society in general in relation to institutional care. Children for many years were part of its special concern especially where education was concerned, due largely to the thinking of the Education Department that children of the destitue did not need educating. The story of the major part which Mount Royal has played in the development of social welfare and institutional care over the past 127 years makes fascinating and instructive reading. Today, Mount Roayl, is the foremost Geriatric Hospital in Australia. Conncections with the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the University of Melbourne were made in 1975 when the first Chair of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine was established in Australia at Mount Royal. The book should interest doctors, nurses, teachers, historians, and sociologists as well as the general reader interested in Melbourne's past and present. (Inside cover).

Subject

• Mount Royal Hospital > History
• Hospitals > Melbourne (Vic.) > History
• Hospitals > history
• Geriatrics > history

Genre/Form

History.

Note

• Includes index.
• Maps on lining papers.

Bibliography (note)

• Bibliography: p. 232-234.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

ISBN

0959611401

OCLC

13001623

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library