The word ambulance comes from the Latin ambulare meaning to go and is used today to denote a vehicle designed to take the disabled in battle or civil life to hospital or in which they are treated in default of hospital wards. It was invented by Baron Jean Dominique Larrey (1766-1842), a French surgeon, and introduced in the late 18th century with the fervent support of Napoleon who used the "flying ambulance service" during his campaigns from 1797. 

Improvements were made and a corps of stretcher bearers organised to operate with the ambulances. The British did not begin to use the idea until after the Crimean War of 1854-56 and other powers subsequently adopted the system. Under the Geneva Convention of 1864, this method of first aid was given neutral protection.

The ambulance wagon, as it was known, used during the First World War of 1914-18, was a canvas covered vehicle marked with the Geneva cross and constructed to hold four stretchers and six men seated. It was light and adaptable for quick transport and became the forerunner of the ambulances we know today.

A civil ambulance association was first organised in England in 1878 by the Knights of St John and this society also provided training in first aid in order that assistance might be at hand for those who sustained injuries in civil life. The success of the enterprise led to the formation of ambulance corps in all parts of the country with policemen, railwaymen and factory employees holding certificates of the association and since then, the evolution of ambulance work has been rapid and notably successful.

The ambulance service in Bourne began eighty years ago at the Butterfield Hospital which had opened in 1910. It those early days it was run by the St John Ambulance Brigade after the Bourne division had been set up following a public meeting called in 1931 by general practitioner Dr John Galletly and John Reade, manager of Lloyds Bank, to recruit support for first aid classes and to man a recently acquired ambulance that had been consigned to the town for use in emergencies.

The response was so good that 40 names were handed in and the new organisation was formed. By March of that year, 30 members had passed their preliminary examinations in first aid procedures and Edgar Judge, the North Street chemist, was appointed ambulance officer.

Once qualified through the examination procedure, the men were assigned to ambulance duties when required but these did not always run smoothly. The first patient to be conveyed in the Bourne ambulance was Mr F North of Mill Drove who was placed on a stretcher which was then loaded into the back and the ambulance set off for the Butterfield Hospital, a short journey to the end of North Street, but as it was crossing the gutter, the vehicle bounced and the back doors swung open.

The stretcher started to slide out of the back but one of the attendants managed to stop it before it deposited its patient in the street. Mr North recovered from the indisposition which needed the ambulance journey to hospital and never held a grudge for the mishap. In 1936, when the brigade marked its fifth anniversary, he gladly accepted an invitation to the celebration dinner and even responded to the toast to "The Visitors".

There were other embarrassing incidents and on one occasion, when the ambulance was called out to collect a man having a fit, the attendants found that a crowd of bystanders were already rendering assistance and everyone present insisted on lending a hand when he was lifted into the vehicle, some even climbing inside to put him on the stretcher. The attendant closed the doors and the ambulance sped off to hospital, taking with it half a dozen of the enthusiastic helpers.

After those early days, the scope of the brigade was widened and its members became more proficient and when the ambulance service was eventually taken over by Kesteven County Council, they continued to carry out voluntary work as well as report for duty as attendants when needed. The ambulance service was taken over by Lincolnshire County Council during the reorganisation of local government in 1974 and by this time an ambulance station had been established at the corner of Queen's Road and Harrington Street which remained the location until November 1979 when the brick and asbestos building was extensively damaged by a serious fire in which a young mechanic lost his life.

The station was subsequently moved to the grounds of Bourne Hospital alongside the A15 in South Road where a purpose built four bay building was erected in 1980 and run by the Lincolnshire Ambulance Service (NHS Trust). The hospital closed in 1998 and the site sold for housing development in the summer of 2003 when the hospital complex was demolished to make way for new houses although the ambulance station remained tucked away in one corner, run by the East Midlands Ambulance Service (NHS Trust) following the regionalisation of ambulance trusts in England in June 2006, an amalgamation of several other services and covering a population of 4.8 million people in six counties.

The service currently employs over 3,200 staff at more than 70 locations, including two control rooms at Nottingham and Lincoln, with the largest group being accident and emergency personnel whose crews respond to over 670,000 emergency calls every year (2011 figures) although there has been concern in many areas that people in the county may be seriously disadvantaged by the timescale record for ambulance turnouts which were the lowest in the country.

In the autumn of 2012, this vast undertaking was the subject of reorganisation proposals that involved the closure of the Bourne ambulance station to be replaced by local standby points at Morton in the north and Market Deeping in the south where ambulances will park at the roadside and wait between calls, a system that has been widely condemned and is now the subject of a public consultation with a final decision being made early in 2013.

REVISED NOVEMBER 2012

See also

The ambulance station fire of 1979     George Ernest Robinson

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