Nelson Hospital

The development of health services

Nelson’s first hospital was a lean-to attached to the barracks built on Piki Mai/ Church Hill in the 1840s. Various private cottage hospitals provided rudimentary medical services in the 19^th Century. The first permanent hospital was situated in a two-storey house on the corner of Examiner and Rutherford Streets.¹  This hospital could accommodate 11-12 patients but was so borer-ridden that it was eventually deliberately burnt down.²

The foundation stone ceremony for a new hospital took place on April 1867, when two bottles of dominion coins, copies of the latest editions of the Examiner, Colonist and Nelson Mail and a parchment scroll were buried at the site - a seven acre block of land belonging to the Government on Waimea Road, where the current hospital is located. The building opened in July 1869. Built at a cost of £2500, it was designed by architect Mr Blackett as a two-story wooden building with two large wards accommodating 45 patients (one for men, one for women), an overflow ward, two isolation rooms, an operating room and various other rooms and facilities for staff and patients.³  The hospital also had several shelters for TB patients - they were open to the air with no heating, but many patients did well with this sun and fresh air treatment.⁴

The management of the hospital was changed from private medical practitioners of the city managing  medical care and supervision, to a surgeon who was stationed in the hospital devoting himself to the care of the patients in the hospital itself. The out-patients and inmates of the Taranaki Buildings, Gaol, Lunatic and Police were also under his care. The hospital committee consisting of Messrs. Rough, Greenfield, Burn, Barnicoat and Renwick appointed Dr Boor as resident surgeon, Dr Squires as consulting physician and Dr Farrelle as consulting surgeon.

The first matron of the hospital was Miss Susan Dalton, a capable looking English woman, weighing 18 stone who was said to do the work of 15 nurses.⁵

The Nelson Hospital Board took over the management of the hospital from the committee in November 1885.  In 1886, a report was tabled in the House of Representatives by Dr Grabham, Inspector General of Hospitals and Asylums.  He visited Nelson Hospital on 8 December 1885 and said it presented an appearance of homeliness and comfort without some of the luxuries found in other better endowed colonial hospitals: “which is often due to private gifts and individual efforts rather than to expenditure of public money.” 

Dr Grabham suggested some improvements: “The present arrangements for giving a hot bath are both primitive and inconvenient, the bathroom being at some distance from the wards, and the furnace in a detached building…I beg to suggest that one of the modern contrivances for heating by means of gas be adopted.”⁶

Dr Grabham’s report praised the hospital’s resident medical officer, Dr Boor.  In 1885, the outgoing hospital committee recorded their appreciation of Dr Boor’s long service and gave testimony to ’the skill, kindness and courtesy invariably shown by that gentleman.”⁷

The 19^th century nurse was a maid of all work, on duty for long hours and poorly paid.  In 1897, Nelson Hospital became a training school for nurses. The 1904 Nurses and Midwives Registration Act introduced three years of training for general nurses and two years training for maternity nurses.⁸ In 1914-16, the first dedicated Nurses' Home, later known as Dalton House, designed by A.R. Griffin, was built.⁹

Until 1925, all births were attended in private hospitals or at people’s homes. If there were complications, a doctor would be called. It was not uncommon for a doctor ‘to be faced with a breech presentation, with an inexperienced nurse in attendance with instruments boiling in a pot over an open fire and some illumination provided by one or two candles.”¹⁰

A new hospital, opened in 1925, featured an innovation - a maternity ward. Designed by Arthur Griffin, it also had a new modern theatre, anaesthetic room, x-ray plant and a physiotherapy department in the basement. By the 1930s, the resident medical staff consisted of a medical superintendent and a house surgeon. The superintendent operated four to five mornings each week and was assisted by a local GP - usually the doctor who had visited the patient at his or her home.¹¹

The Inangahua and Murchison earthquakes both caused severe structural damage to the hospital buildings. Following the 1926 earthquake, the hospital was steel reinforced at a cost of £7400.¹²

The current Nelson Hospital buildings all date from post World War II. The new George Manson block was opened by Governor General, Lord Cobham in October 1960.  The £1,359,000 building project included new wards, operating theatres, administrative offices, x-ray and physiotherapy departments and a boiler house. A new nurses’ home cost £477,000.¹³

Nurses and patients alike would have been pleased with a change in daily routine in 1961, which saw patients awakened later than previously. The day swung into action at 7am with breakfast from 7.30am. “Not only has this change pleased the patients who benefited directly from the hours of rest, but also the nursing staff who have been unanimous that it was indeed a change for the better.”¹⁴ 

2015 (updated 2024)

Story by: Joy Stephens