Braintree Joint Hospital Board

A/H 1

Braintree Joint Hospital Board

1896-1948

The Braintree Joint Hospital District was established by the Braintree Joint Hospital Order, 1896, a provisional order of the Local Government Board, acting in pursuit of the Public Health Act, 1875 (38 & 39 Vic. c. 55), section 279. The order was confirmed by the Local Government Board's Provisional Orders Confirmation (No. 14) Act, 1896 (59 & 60 Vic. c. 108 (Local)). There is no copy of the order among the Joint Hospital Board's records, but it appears as a schedule to the Act, which is available in the ERO Library.

The constituent authorities were the Braintree Rural District Council and the Braintree Urban District Council (from 1934 the Braintree and Bocking Urban District Council). These two authorities provided members of the Board, and shared its expenses, in the proportions three to two respectively. It had been proposed in 1895 to include also the Witham Urban District (C/MSa 1, pp. 12-13). The Board's minutes show that these proposals were revived in 1897 and 1911. However, in 1912 the Witham Urban District Council made terms with the Maldon Joint Hospital Board instead (C/MSa 2, p. 66).

The purpose of the Board was to provide hospitals for the treatment of infectious diseases. In 1897 the Board acquired a site in the Cressing Road, Braintree, at about National Grid TL 770232, for a hospital 'similar to the Chelmsford one' (A/H 1/1/1, p. 13). The architect was F. Whitmore [perhaps Frank Whitmore of Chelmsford, appointed County Architect 1900] and the Braintree Infectious Diseases Hospital opened on 12 February 1900 with a single ward, able to accommodate about eight cases [capacity from the annual report of the County Medical Officer of Health for 1900, published June 1901]. The hospital was extended in 1908 and 1916, although at least the first of these extensions was a temporary structure. For the general layout of the site at this time see Ordnance Survey 1:2500 Essex new series sheet 35.5, revised 1919 and published 1922. There are no plans among the records of the Board. Later alterations and extensions included in 1927 a convalescent ward, designed by D.G. Armstrong of Braintree, and in 1942 another ward in the form of a 'Maycrete' hut.

Staffing difficulties led the Board to close the Braintree hospital in December 1945, patients being treated instead at the Colchester Borough Infectious Diseases Hospital, Mile End. In 1948 the hospital site was sold to the Braintree and Bocking Urban District Council for development. The date of demolition is not known. No pictorial records of the hospital have been traced, and it is not mentioned in Adam Garwood and Shane Gould, 'Essex Hospitals 1800-1948. A study of their history design and architecture' (Essex County Council 1999).

In 1901 the Board decided to make separate provision for smallpox cases, doing so initially in 1902-1903 by means of tents erected on a temporary site and by sending cases to the hospitals of neighbouring authorities. In 1903 the Board agreed to buy a site for a permanent smallpox hospital at Black Notley. At first this site too was occupied by temporary structures; work on the permanent hospital (a wooden building bought second-hand from the authorities at Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk) was completed in 1905. It provided 18 beds [construction and capacity from the annual report of the County Medical Officer of Health for 1904, published 1905]. The smallpox hospital was destroyed by fire in July 1910 and rebuilt in brick, the new building being completed in 1911. This structure may perhaps be identified with the later White Cottage -'building 1' in Hester Cooper-Reade, 'Report on the recording of Black Notley Hospital, Witham, Essex' (Essex County Council 1998). If so it slightly predates the date range of 1912-1919 proposed in the report (p. 39).

The new smallpox hospital seems never to have received a smallpox case. In 1913 the Board first agreed with Essex County Council to use it under contract for the treatment of male tuberculosis patients, and then agreed to sell it to the County Council. The site continued to operate as a hospital until 1998.

After the sale the Board appointed representatives to, and paid a share of the expenses of, the North West Essex United Districts for Smallpox, led by Halstead Rural District Council. The United Districts provided a smallpox hospital at Sible Hedingham, although until 1930 this too was leased to the County Council for tuberculosis patients. When Braintree saw an outbreak of smallpox in 1933 the patients were actually treated at the Colchester Borough Infectious Diseases Hospital (A/H 1/1/5, pp. 9, 13). The hospital at Colchester was extended in 1936 to provide smallpox accommodation for the whole county, and the site at Sible Hedingham was sold in the same year. [For smallpox in general see John R. Smith, The Speckled Monster. Smallpox in England, 1670-1970, with particular reference to Essex (Essex Record Office 1987). For the hospital at Colchester see the Victoria County History of Essex, volume 9 (1994), pp. 287-288.]

Among its first acts the Board appointed a Medical Officer, the first appointee being already the Medical Officer of Health of the Braintree RDC. The hospital at Braintree was staffed at first only by a resident caretaker and his wife, supplemented as necessary by temporary nurses. In 1905 the Board appointed a permanent matron with a nurse assistant, but temporary nurses continued to be used when needed. A wardmaid was added to the staff from 1915, a second nurse from 1927, and a third nurse from 1943. The smallpox hospital at Black Notley was under a caretaker until its conversion into a tuberculosis hospital in 1913, when a matron and assistant matron were appointed. The Board appointed a Surveyor in 1907, but the office lapsed after his death in 1925.

While medical care was provided free of charge, patients normally paid a proportion of the cost of their maintenance in hospital. The Public Health Act, 1875, section 132, laid the liability for such costs on all patients who were not paupers. In 1901 the Board adopted a scale of charges, graduated according to the patient's occupation. A charge was also made for the disinfection of clothing, bedding etc. However, charges were often reduced or waived, and the two constituent authorities paid the balance owing for patients from their respective areas. The Public Health Act 1936, section 184, generally required the collection of such charges, but in the case of infectious disease merely allowed them. The Board abandoned charges to parents in respect of their children in 1937, and charges to all patients normally resident within the Board's area in 1945.

The work of the Board required co-operation from its constituent authorities and others. The Braintree RDC's Sanitary Inspector regularly attended the Board's meetings in the early 1900s and acted in effect as its surveyor, although not formally appointed as such until 1907. Similarly, in the Board's early years Relieving Officers - employed by the Braintree Poor Law Union - were used to investigate cases of hardship and to collect maintenance charges. In emergencies the Board accepted patients from the areas of other authorities, or sent its own patients to them.

The Board's relationship with the Essex County Council was complex. The Isolation Hospitals Act, 1893 (56 & 57 Vic. c. 68), had given county councils reserve powers to provide infectious disease hospitals, failing action by the local authority. Essex County Council did not in fact provide such hospitals, but used the Act to promote their establishment by the urban and rural districts (for examples see C/MSa 1 or the published annual reports of the County Medical Officer of Health). Following the Isolation Hospitals Act, 1901 (1 Edw. 7 c. 9), the County Council also made grants to the hospitals provided by other authorities, based on the number of beds provided and subject to an annual inspection. The Braintree Joint Hospital Board received an annual grant from the financial year 1902/03 onwards (A/H 1/1/1, pp. 193-194, A/H 1/1/2, pp. 95-96, and C/MSa 1). In 1913 the County Council also paid for the Board's treatment of tuberculosis patients at Black Notley, before acquiring the hospital outright.

In 1931 the County Council, acting under the Local Government Act 1929 (19 Geo. 5 c. 17), section 63, prepared a draft scheme for the provision of isolation hospitals, which included the re-constitution of the Board to cover the whole of north-west Essex (A/H 1/1/4, p. 528). The final scheme was approved by the Minister of Health in 1935, and is printed in the annual report of the County Medical Officer of Health for 1934. However, the scheme allowed the authorities concerned, alternatively, to make joint arrangements under section 131 of the 1875 Act. This in fact seems to have been their preference. Discussions continued after the earlier legislation was repealed and consolidated by the Public Health Act, 1936 (26 Geo. 5 & 1 Edw. 8 c. 49). The Board's minutes make many (mainly brief) references to these schemes through the late 1930s, but there are no references after 1939, suggesting that the Second World War effectively froze the issue. No copies of the schemes survive among the records of the Board.

Under the terms of the National Health Service Act, 1946 (9 & 10 Geo. 6 c. 81), the Board ceased to exist on 4 July 1948, its remaining assets being divided between the constituent authorities.

<span class="wrapper"><p>For the background to the establishment of the Board and its early operations see Black Notley Hospital. A Century of Service (Black Notley Parish Council 1998), pp. 2-7.</p> <p>For an account of a stay in the Braintree hospital by a patient from Coggeshall in 1935, recollected in old age, see T/P 492/1 or T/Z 25/2815 (two similar essays by the same person). The use of the hospital for cases from Coggeshall and from Wethersfield in 1905-1906 is mentioned briefly in Dr. W.W.E. Fletcher's Report upon the sanitary circumstances and administration of the village of Coggeshall, in the Braintree Rural District, and alleged prevalence therein of infectious disease (Reports of Medical Inspectors of the Local Government Board No. 244, London 1906). The official criticized by Fletcher for combining the work of Inspector of Nuisances and Surveyor to the Rural District Council also acted as surveyor to the Joint Hospital Board.</p> <p>Although the Braintree hospital was built - according to the Board's minutes - by Silas Parmenter, the work is not recorded in D/F 88/1. For isolation hospitals in general see Tenth Annual Report of the Local Government Board 1880-81. Supplement containing report and papers submitted by the Board's Medical Officer on the Use and Influence of Hospitals for Infectious Diseases (Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London 1882 (C. 3290)) and Fortieth Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1910-11. Supplement in continuation of the Report of the Medical Officer of the Board for 1910-11, containing a Report on Isolation Hospitals by H. Franklin Parsons (His Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1912, Cd. 6342). Neither report refers specifically to the hospital at Braintree. All the published works referred to are available in the ERO Library.</p></span>

English

14 volumes

The Essex Record Office operates the same rules for access as would have applied if the records had been Public Records. All the records are available for public use, with the exception of the admission registers A/H 1/4/1, 2. As these contain medical details of individuals they are closed for 100

The records did not pass into the custody of the National Health Service, and consequently are not Public Records within the meaning of the Public Records Act 1956.