Before Marlow had it's current Cottage Hospital in Glade Road, it had one at Cambridge House, Cambridge Road. This post is about how this first hospital came about.
The former Cottage Hospital, Cambridge Road. Now a house again.
What we had before the first Cottage Hospital.
In the years before the hospital arrived in Cambridge Road, if you required admission to a hospital, it was to the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading you would be sent. This was clearly a significant journey for someone in Marlow to make when seriously unwell. The authorities in Marlow bought a certain number of "tickets of admission" to the Berks hospital each year. These would be issued to the sick if it was considered they would benefit from a stay there. In 1877 £21 worth of tickets were bought, paid for partly by donations made at a collection after the Harvest Thanksgiving service in the parish church, and at the end of service the Sunday after. The idea of Marlow gaining its own hospital was raised at regular intervals. In 1877 it was said an unnamed gentleman was willing to start a subscription fund with a 100 guinea donation if Great Marlow would combine with Henley, Bisham, Little Marlow, Fingest and Turville to support a hospital between them. Nothing came of this, possibly because Maidenhead had just began fund raising for their Cottage Hospital in earnest, with the foundation stone laid in April 1879. Some of those in the above places supported that instead.
In 1888, the medical provision in Marlow improved significantly thanks to a group of determined ladies. A number of subscribers to the St Johns Ambulance association decided to set up a "Sick Aid Depot" here. They quickly bought this into existence, using a small room in Mrs Lunnon's home in Chapel Street. It opened May 1888. Mrs Lunnon also acted as caretaker. This was a significant help to a vast number of poor families who could not afford professional nursing care or equipment. The depot lent items such as crutches or nursing supplies to those who had suffered accident or illness. There was once a sort of precursor to this which loaned "child bed linens" to expectant mothers a generation before, but to qualify for that you had to be married and respectable, and able to apply personally to one of those who subscribed to the child bed fund. Unmarried mothers, and non church goers were turned away. The Sick Aid Depot was less strict and looked instead at how to extend their services rather than restrict them. They also offered bed linen, so sheets could be washed in homes without spare sets.
Enter Nurse Cassidy
In 1888 the Sick Aid depot distributed a circular declaring that the want of a "parish nurse" for the depot was keenly felt. "The urgent want of such a nurse has been bought home to us very emphatically within the last few months by the many cases of serious sickness in our town".
A nursing fund was started, and within 6 months, Nurse Mary Ann Cassidy (sometimes given as Cassaidy) arrived in Marlow. She began work in January 1889. This energetic and dedicated lady is largely forgotten now but it was her who would later be the first Matron at the Cambridge Road Cottage Hospital. Nurse Cassidy lodged with Mrs Lunnon, and made home visits to the ill. She dressed wounds, changed bandages and provided practical help and advice amongst other things. Cassidy was officially on long term loan from the Reading Hospital, the Sick Aid Depot paying a sum for the privilege, on top of the wage paid directly to the Nurse. She took over running the depot too. Although the contract Cassidy worked under did not require night work, she stayed up with the sick on countless occasions, which must have been a priceless comfort to the worried families. This started the pattern of Cassidy constantly going above and beyond in her work.
The ladies aren't satisfied
The Sick Aid Depot and Nursing fund was amalgamated. At the very first AGM, held 9 months after the Depot had started, it was decided to be even more ambitious. What Marlow needed was a Cottage Hospital, and a committee of ladies was formed to get the process started. The Sick Aid Depot and Nursing fund committee was amalgamated with this goal in mind. The speed they organised this third extension to their health care provision is extraordinary. The meeting that set a resolution to have a Cottage Hospital was in June 1889, at the end of July the committee's were amalgamated and on the 1st August 1889 the new Cottage Hospital opened in a house secured by Colonel Wethered. This was initially rented, with the aim of buying the building when funds allowed. Nurse Cassidy moved in several months before the official hospital opening to save on the cost of renting separate accommodation for her. Cambridge House had been built as a pub, and had spent a few years as a boys school under the Misses Curtis but was used as a house for some time prior to it's conversion to a hospital. The work of lending equipment and home visits continued too. In the first 9 months the cottage hospital helped 5 accident victims and 20 others.
Much of the physical work in getting the house clean and ready was done by Nurse Cassidy herself. She paid for, out of her own wages, various items to make the wards "bear a cheerful aspect." These included bed tables and pictures. The subscribers declared that she deserved the highest praise for working day and night to make the hospital a success.
When Edward Riley complained that there were too many women on the committee for building the second cottage hospital many years later, it's not hard to see why the complaint was dismissed! (Membership of the general organising committee of the hospital was restricted to men, of who there were 9. Six from Marlow and one each from Bisham, Medmenham and Little Marlow.)
Cassidy left Marlow in 1890, when she was succeeded in her role at the Cottage Hospital by another Marlow hero, Mary Anne Cole also supplied by the Reading Hospital. A post about Mary Anne Cole is already on the blog here I believe Nurse Cassaidy might have been suffering from ill health as she had spent some time absent from duty in 1889, her position covered by Miss Ford of Loudwater.
More posts on life at the Cottage Hospital or the medical history of Marlow are available:
The first Cottage Hospital and Provident Nursing Club here
More about the Cottage Hospital and the move to Glade Rd site here
Biography of hospital doctor Dr John Dunbar Dickson here
Matron Mary Ann Cole here
Apothecaries and patent medicine sellers here
List of medical related posts here
The Romantic troubles of Dr Culhane here
Death by fire here
Marlow's early district nurses here
©Marlow Ancestors .
Written and researched by Kathryn Day.
