Maternity Hospitals

Sense of Place North-East

Lying-in Hospital

A view of the exterior of the Lying-In Hospital, New Bridge Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, taken in 1965. The photograph has been taken from the other side of New Bridge Street, looking across to the front entrance of the Lying-In Hospital. A bus is parked in front of the building, in the foreground, to the right. A man and a woman are standing near to the bus stop, and another couple are standing at the entrance gates of the hospital.

This 1965 photograph shows the Lying-in Hospital in New Bridge Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, designed by John Dobson. The building is now used by the Newcastle Building Society.

Various small private hospitals were set up in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In spite of these new buildings the majority of people were still treated at home. Thomas Giordiani Wright, a doctor who worked in Newcastle in the 1820s, rarely mentions the existing hospitals in his diary. The Lying-in Hospital was built in Rosemary Lane in 1760 as an 'asylum for pregnant married women'. Another charity helped women lying-in in their own homes. In 1825, the Lying-in Hospital moved to a new building in New Bridge Street designed by John Dobson. There was room for 12 patients who were admitted on a Wednesday with a letter of recommendation, a marriage certificate and a husband.

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