LATEST NEWS Francine Payne (Hills) will be leading the Dartford Local History walk on Saturday 21st September 2019 at 10.30 a.m from Darenth Country Park, the location of the Darenth Hospitals we heard about at our April meeting. Meet at the car park signposted Darenth Country Park off the roundabout at Gore Road Dartford. No need to book. This is not a Swanley History Group event and we have no further information about it.
April 2019 Group Meeting
The fate of impoverished children in Victorian London, suffering from a range of mental conditions, was usually internment in a workhouse. Pioneer for the improvement of medical standards, Florence Nightingale, recognised that these children needed help. A piece of land near Dartford was acquired and a school for imbecile children, initially to age 15, was opened in 1879 by The Metropolitan Asylum Board with Fletcher Beach as the first Medical Superintendent. Thus began the history of The Darenth Hospitals as told by Francine Payne (Hills) at our April meeting.
Although classed as imbeciles, many children had conditions such as Autism and Epilepsy and several were deaf and dumb. Arriving by horse and cart, most did not know their name and were given a new one, a problem for family historians tracing connections. They received a basic education – telling the time, handling money, knowing their colours and general life skills. There was nutritious food supplied by Gore Farm, walks, games and other activities in the countryside setting.
Later an adult Training Colony was opened. The ethos was that the trainees should become less of a burden on society. ‘Trainable’ patients were taught to read and write and there were workshops where males could learn trades such as baking, binding, building crafts, farming, mattress making, printing, shoe making, toy making and females could learn domestic and laundry work and rug making. They earned a salary which was managed by staff.
Sufferers from several smallpox epidemics were accommodated on the site – in 1881 and 1884 in canvas tents and in huts in 1888-9. Known as The Southern Hospital, several two storey ward buildings, isolation wards, dormitories and two recreation halls were later built treating patients with diseases such as diphtheria and scarlet fever. On what is now Darenth Park are the two cemeteries, the older one contains the bodies of over 9000 smallpox victims, buried ten deep and German POW’S. The only headstone belongs to Annie Eager, a nursing attendant who died aged 45 in 1894.
During World War 1 the Southern became a military hospital for soldiers wounded at The Somme, a German Prisoner of War camp and a hospital run by the US Military Authority for their wounded. Many of the German POW’s stayed on after the war, working as auxiliaries and cooks. An Emergency Medical Service Hospital was established during World War 2, the largest in the country, treating 45,000 causalities from The Blitz, and children from London in need of respite.
From the 1940’s there were many changes. Under The National Health Service a nurse training centre was set up and Dr. Henderson invented ‘The Iron Lung’. Large institutions started to close. The huts, known as Mabledon Hospital, accommodated displaced Poles and later became the psychiatric unit which moved to Stone House Hospital in the 1980’s. Patients in the General Hospital transferred to Joyce Green in 1959. The buildings were demolished in 1967.
Christina Tyler, Programme Organiser
www.dartfordhospitalhistories.org.uk - Francine Payne's website gives more information and links to purchase copies of her book
April 2019 Group Meeting
The fate of impoverished children in Victorian London, suffering from a range of mental conditions, was usually internment in a workhouse. Pioneer for the improvement of medical standards, Florence Nightingale, recognised that these children needed help. A piece of land near Dartford was acquired and a school for imbecile children, initially to age 15, was opened in 1879 by The Metropolitan Asylum Board with Fletcher Beach as the first Medical Superintendent. Thus began the history of The Darenth Hospitals as told by Francine Payne (Hills) at our April meeting.
Although classed as imbeciles, many children had conditions such as Autism and Epilepsy and several were deaf and dumb. Arriving by horse and cart, most did not know their name and were given a new one, a problem for family historians tracing connections. They received a basic education – telling the time, handling money, knowing their colours and general life skills. There was nutritious food supplied by Gore Farm, walks, games and other activities in the countryside setting.
Later an adult Training Colony was opened. The ethos was that the trainees should become less of a burden on society. ‘Trainable’ patients were taught to read and write and there were workshops where males could learn trades such as baking, binding, building crafts, farming, mattress making, printing, shoe making, toy making and females could learn domestic and laundry work and rug making. They earned a salary which was managed by staff.
Sufferers from several smallpox epidemics were accommodated on the site – in 1881 and 1884 in canvas tents and in huts in 1888-9. Known as The Southern Hospital, several two storey ward buildings, isolation wards, dormitories and two recreation halls were later built treating patients with diseases such as diphtheria and scarlet fever. On what is now Darenth Park are the two cemeteries, the older one contains the bodies of over 9000 smallpox victims, buried ten deep and German POW’S. The only headstone belongs to Annie Eager, a nursing attendant who died aged 45 in 1894.
During World War 1 the Southern became a military hospital for soldiers wounded at The Somme, a German Prisoner of War camp and a hospital run by the US Military Authority for their wounded. Many of the German POW’s stayed on after the war, working as auxiliaries and cooks. An Emergency Medical Service Hospital was established during World War 2, the largest in the country, treating 45,000 causalities from The Blitz, and children from London in need of respite.
From the 1940’s there were many changes. Under The National Health Service a nurse training centre was set up and Dr. Henderson invented ‘The Iron Lung’. Large institutions started to close. The huts, known as Mabledon Hospital, accommodated displaced Poles and later became the psychiatric unit which moved to Stone House Hospital in the 1980’s. Patients in the General Hospital transferred to Joyce Green in 1959. The buildings were demolished in 1967.
Christina Tyler, Programme Organiser
www.dartfordhospitalhistories.org.uk - Francine Payne's website gives more information and links to purchase copies of her book