The Old Isolation Hospital

A smaller and less obtrusive hospital existed in Bourne for about thirty years and although now closed, the buildings still stand and have been converted for use as private homes.

It was originally known as the Fever Hospital, later the Old Isolation Hospital, set up in the late 19th century during an outbreak of smallpox. Early in 1885, the number of cases was increasing daily but medical facilities to treat them were totally inadequate and so the Bourne Rural Sanitary Authority purchased a row of four empty cottages in Manor Lane for use as a hospital.

They were owned by John Dawson who offered them for sale at £260 and the conversion work was carried out by a local builder, Mr Thomas Hinson, at a cost of £60, providing basic accommodation for fever and smallpox cases with ten beds in two wards intended for patients living in parishes within the Bourne Union who needed to be isolated because they were suffering from an infectious disease.

In addition, because of the current smallpox outbreak, a makeshift hospital had been opened by the Midland and Great Northern Railway Company at Castle Bytham. This was little more than a primitive building, situated to the south of the railway line and cemetery, that became known locally as the Small Pox Hut and is recorded on maps of the period as the Fever Hospital, being used for the navvies helping build a rail link who had contracted the disease. But there was no room for further patients and all that could be done locally was to isolate and disinfect the cases.

The new fever hospital was never a perfect solution, especially as the outbreak had spread to the Bourne Union, or workhouse, and on February 25th, the medical officer wrote to the Board of Guardians saying: "I have repeatedly pointed out its defects, to wit: water supply, none; drainage, inefficient; ventilation, imperfect; arrangements for lighting, cooking and bathing, inefficient; no apparatus for disinfection of clothes; no store room; no ambulance; no water closet; no mortuary. In my opinion, a temporary hospital should immediately be constructed. Otherwise, if infectious diseases are promiscuously congregated together, the death rate will be considerably increased."

The premises however continued in use although by 1913, the hospital's inadequacies had been acknowledged by Bourne Urban District Council which had taken over control from the Rural Sanitary Authority on its inauguration in 1899, and was only used in cases of special emergency. The council was also remedying the situation by building a new hospital in South Road which was opened in the summer of 1915.

The old hospital was formally closed and the property sold but survives today as two cottages in private ownership.

See also

The smallpox outbreak of 1893     Bourne Hospital