The Manchester and Salford Lock Hospital, 1818–1917

Abstract

A GROWTH in the numbers and range of specialist hospitals was a distinctive feature of the expanding provision of medical care facilities during the nineteenth century. Concentrating upon diseases and complaints which were frequently excluded from the general hospitals or where the demand for medical treatment was not satisfactorily supplied by existing hospitals, specialist hospitals dealing with infectious diseases, lying-in cases, diseases of the eye, nose, throat and chest were opened. Amongst these specialist medical charities a number of hospitals for the treatment of venereal disease were established. Of the separate venereal disease or "lock" hospitals' which had been founded in the eighteenth century, only the London Lock Hospital (1746) and the Westmoreland Lock Hospital (1792) continued to operate during the nineteenth century. The unprecendented growth in urban areas in the nineteenth century, however, increased the demand for treatment facilities for venereal disease and resulted in the opening of lock hospitals in

The historical role and education of nurses for the care and management of sexually transmitted infections in the United Kingdom: 1 Role

“…At first the hospital committee experienced difficulty in finding a trustworthy woman and in 1827 the matron had to be dismissed after it was discovered that "women of notoriously bad character had been found drinking in the kitchen" and the matron had been "seen in a house of ill fame, singing in the company with very dissolute characters." 11 Also before Nightingale, evidence of a nurse administering treatment for venereal diseases was cited in 1848 when a nurse was dismissed for overenthusiastic use of mercurial ointment (to treat syphilis), causing damage to the life of a patient. 3 In central London, records of nurses being employed at St Peters Hospital for Stone (1860-1960) date from 1864, followed by the employment of a matron in 1876.…”