Princes Park Hospital was set up in a small house in Menzies Street in 1869 where just 6-8 people were received. It was founded by the social reformer Josephine Butler as a 'House of Rest' for women suffering from incurable chronic diseases. As the home grew, Josephine Butler handed it over to a committee of ladies and it moved to larger premises in Park Hill Road, known as the 'Home of Rest'. ( see more on Josephine Butler - http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2020/11/a-liverpool-exemplar-josephine-butler.html ).
This property soon become too small and, following the formation of a gentleman's committee to bring the charity more prominently before the public and after a meeting in the Town Hall, in 1875 the hospital, now known as the Home for Incurables, moved to the building on Upper Parliament Street, purchased for the sum of £5,000, where it remained for the rest of its existence. The Home was now run by a General Committee and was intended to be a home for 'respectable' women with incurable, chronic illnesses. Admissions of cancer sufferers were limited as were geriatric cases. Although many patients who entered the home spent the remainder of their lives there, others improved and were discharged, so there was some degree of patient turnover.
After 1885 the Home was known as the Liverpool Home for Incurables, a name it kept until its absorption into the National Health Service. From 1948 under the South Liverpool Hospital Management Committee it was renamed the Home for Invalid Women. In 1969 the home's name was again changed, to Princes Park Hospital. Although it aimed to care for younger chronically sick women, increasingly its intake was of geriatric patients and after 1975 the hospital admitted male as well as female patients.
During July 1981 Liverpool was devastated by large scale civil disturbances and the 102 bed Geriatric Hospital on the 6th of July was touching capacity with 96 poorly ill geriatric patients when it found itself in no man’s land between lines of rioters and Police with its neighbouring building, the Racquets Club, heavily engulfed in flames. Smoke was entering the hospital and a 999 call was received at Ambulance Control from the hospital staff, screaming for help. Contact was made with the riot organisers who at this stage occupied the area where the hospital was situated. This led to the organisers going inside the hospital and arrangements were made to transfer all the patients to Newsham General Hospital, Anfield some 2.5 miles away. It became an unconventional evacuation in which the gentle care and dignity that is normally awarded to poorly ill geriatric patients was balanced against the logistical rescue requirement to get 96 patients way from ever increasing danger, rapidly. The ambulance incident team negotiated with the rioters and a brief ceasefire around the hospital of 1 hour was agreed to move all 96 patients. This was completed in 25 minutes and as soon as the last patient was being driven away the rioting immediately restarted. The hospital closed in 1986.
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2025/04/liverpool-hospitals-walton-hospital.html
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