Medical dates:

Medical character:

The Sisters Hospital for Infectious Diseases opened on 20th July 1893 to the west of the Folly Mead Estate, adjacent to the southern aspect of the St Albans workhouse.  It had been financed by Sir John Blundell Maple (1845-1903) at a cost of £5,000.  His two daughters, Winifred and Dorothy, had died of scarlet fever in successive years and the Hospital was named after them.

Sir John and his wife presented the fully equipped and furnished hospital to the City of St Albans.  The City Council provided the administration and all patients received free treatment.

The Hospital consisted of an administration block, a ward block with 14 beds and an outbuilding block.  All were connected together by covered walkways.  There was also a self-contained caretaker's house.  In one corner of the site was a raised platform, intended to be used for a tent hospital, should the need arise.

The administration block contained a consulting room and a drug room, the kitchen and its storerooms, a Nurses' Sitting Room and bedrooms for the nursing and domestic staff.

On the ground floor of the ward block were four wards - two with 3 beds each and two with 2 beds each - and three nurses' rooms.  These were all approached from one corridor, which had windows that could be opened in the summer.  On the upper floor over the central portion of the block were two further wards and a nurses' room.  The layout of the block precluded the treatment of more than one infectious disease at a time.

In the outbuildings block were an ambulance shed, a disinfection house, a wash-house and laundry, a coalhouse and a mortuary.

However, the Hospital lacked a moveable bath and a steam disinfector, making use only of a hot air chamber for disinfecting patients' clothes.

The site also had no proper drainage system.  The closets were all on the dry earth system and liquid slops were carried to a cesspool, whence they soaked into the ground - an unfortunate arrangement for any hospital, let alone one for infectious diseases.

By the end of its opening some 69 cases of scarlet fever had been treated at the Hospital, of which only one died.  A permanent Matron was appointed in December 1893.

In April 1896 two partitions with doors were erected within the corridor in order to divide the ward block into three separate parts, so that other infectious disease patients could be admitted, if necessary.  During that year, some 146 patients (mostly children) were treated for scarlet fever.

In 1900 the Hospital dealt with 20 cases of scarlet fever and 2 of diphtheria.  In 1901 84 patients with scarlet fever were treated.

In 1903 the Hospital was enlarged, with the erection of a proper discharge room and the addition of two bathrooms for the patients.  Heating was installed in the corridor.

In 1904 an adjacent piece of land on the Folly Mead Estate was purchased with a view to future expansion.  The Medical Officer of Health had long urged for the building of a Diphtheria Block and an Enteric Fever Block.

In 1909 the Hospital Committee submitted plans for the much-needed Diphtheria Block.  As the Hospital could only admit scarlet fever cases, other arrangements had to be made for the isolation of patients with diphtheria.  In 1909 two houses in Harpenden had to be rented as a temporary measure for that purpose.

However, it was not until January 1911 that a tender of £1,749 for the erection of the Block was accepted.  Work began and was completed the same year.

By 1913 the Hospital had acquired a Thresh Steam Disinfector, in which infected bedding, clothes and other articles collected from patients' homes could be disinfected.  The patients' premises were also fumigated and washed down with soap and water.

By 1920 the Hospital had again been extended.  The Scarlet Fever Block had 30 beds.  It also contained two wards of 3 beds each for  cerebrospinal fever (meningitis) cases.  The Diphtheria Block had 12 beds.

In 1921 102 cases of scarlet fever were treated, and 84 of diphtheria.

By 1924 a new entrance had been made to the Hospital from Folly Avenue, although the previous track off Union Lane along the east side of the workhouse still remained.

In 1925 the Scarlet Fever Block contained 24 beds for scarlet fever patients and two wards of 4 beds each for those with cerebrospinal fever.

During the 1930s a Washington Lyon Steam Disinfector was purchased.  More land was acquired and work began to enlarge the Hospital.  A new entrance was made and, by 1938, when it changed its mailing address from Union Lane to Folly Avenue, it had 45 beds. 

More ward blocks were added to the site, after which the bed capacity had doubled in size by the time of the outbreak of WW2 in 1939.

On joining the NHS in 1948 the Hospital was absorbed by the adjacent St Albans City Hospital, coming under the control of the Mid-Herts Group Hospital Management Committee.  It was then renamed the St Albans City Hospital (Sisters Unit).

In 1949, during a large nationwide outbreak of poliomyelitis, 17 suspected cases of the disease were reported in the St Albans area.  Three patients died, but the others made good recoveries following treatment at the Hospital.

In 1951 the Hospital had 94 beds - 31 for general cases, 32 for fever and 31 for tuberculosis.

Like many other infectious disease hospitals, with the advance of antibiotics, it became superfluous.  It closed in 1953.

Present status (September 2008)

The Hospital buildings are now Harriet Heights and The Sisters Lodge in Goldsmith Way, a new road.

 

 

Various views of The Sisters Lodge beside Harriet Heights.