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CHAPTER 8
THE GENERAL COLONIAL HOSPITAL
The General Colonial Hospital was an imposing collection of
bui ldings fronting on Liverpool Street between Argyle and Campbell
Streets and bounded at the rear by a sandstone cliff overhanging the
Rivulet .
Estlished mainly for the reception of Government servants
and prisoners , it was composed of three separate buildings ;
the male hospital, a handsome cut-stone bui lding , two storeys high,
surrounded by an ornamental shrubbery .
in front was
It contained eight large, wellventilated
wards which held twenty beds each , a good operating room and
some smaller wards .
At the back were two covered balconies running the
who le length of the building , from which fine views of the harbour , the
town and the countryside could be seen .
Behind this bui lding, which had
been erected only a few years , was the original two-storied hospital ,
established about 1825, which catered for about eighty female patients.
Also, there was an infirmary, a large one-storied building , where
invalided females were cared for .
When Hall commenced duty , there were
sixty inmates , many over seventy years of age, with room for more .
Besides the three main buildings , there were other outbuildings ,
comprising the Resident Medical Officer's, the Matron 's and the
Superintendent 's quarters; the ordnance and drug stores , offices ,
dispensary, dead house, kitchen, laundry and the like .
The Hospital
received patients of all classes , free peop le paying fees to the
Government of 5/- per day, assigned servants 1/- per day , and paupers
1/- paid by the colony. The medical staff consisted of two military
and two civil practitioners , of whom the Resident Medical Officer was
one, who cared for about three hundred patients . 1
1
H.B. Stoney, A Year in Tasmania (Hobart Town , 1854) , p. 159 .
information was taken from a memorandum supplied by E.S. Hall .
This