The Colonial Hospital
Pipitea Street, Wellington 1847

It seems to have taken the young settlement of Wellington some time to establish what one would expect to be a social staple - a public hospital. Whilst the new settlers were not without medical treatment (the New Zealand Company had sent out Dr John Dorset as its Chief Surgeon aboard the trailblazing Tory and Dr John Fitzgerald followed 4 months later aboard Oriental) a purpose built building was some years away.

While it was fully the intention of the New Zealand Company to provide medical facilities for the settlers, this aim was not to be realised for some seven years. Plans prepared in London in 1839 and based, in part, on incorrect assumptions of the size of the Hutt River had to be discarded when it was decided to establish the town at Thorndon on the other side of the harbour. In the interim, medical aid continued to be provided by the New Zealand Company, and certainly by June of 1840 a house at Petone was known as the "Company's Infirmary".

It was to be the administrative genius of Sir George Grey that gave impetus to the establishment of hospitals in Auckland, Wellington, Wanganui and New Plymouth. His vision, soon to be established in fact, was that these facilities be made available to European and Maori alike and that both races be treated in the same Wards and with equal privileges. This can be seen by the mix of names in the admissions book of the day.

Sections 593 and 594 on the corner of Hobson and Pipitea Streets were gifted by local Maori in 1846 for the erection of the Colonial Hospital. Work on the building commenced in 1846 and the Colonial & Native Hospital opened on September 15th 1847. Dr John Fitzgerald was appointed Superintendent and Colonial Surgeon and Mr and Mrs Jacobs were the hospital attendants.

The first patient to be admitted to the hospital on the day of its opening was a young woman by the name of Rachael Macintyere Branks. Rachael and John Branks had arrived from Lanarkshire, Scotland on October 30th 1839 aboard the Bengal Merchant, one of the first four ships to arrive at Wellington. Rachael, who lived with John and their children William, Catherine and John on the Old Porirua Road had been injured after the branch of a tree had fallen on her. She was admitted with a "compound fracture of the right leg and simple fracture of the left". The fractures were doing well and Rachael was making good progress when she contracted tetanus and died on September 30th, 15 days after her admission.

The building itself was a small two storeyed affair. The ground floor consisted of "a good Surgery", a Ward for 4 patients (6 in an emergency), two Storerooms and a Water Closet. Halfway up the stairs was the Steam Bath Room where new patients had "the skin well cleansed with soap and water". The upper level housed a large Ward for 8 patients (10 in an emergency), another small Ward for 2 patients, a Storeroom, a Water Cistern and a Water Closet. Before the earthquake of 1848, it had been intended to construct a further wing on each side of this original building and that this section revert to administrative offices and nurse's quarters. Following the earthquake in which the hospital sustained quite severe damage it was repaired, but all thoughts of extensions were discarded. Brick buildings, for obvious reasons, had gone out of favour.

The original Colonial Hospital was to last a further six years before it's place was taken by a new and larger wooden single story building. In the Australian and New Zealand Gazette of June 14th 1851 was printed the following: "A colonial hospital is to be erected on the site of the former one at Thorndon."

A Return of the number of internal patients treated in the Colonial Hospital
from 15th September 1847, to the 24th January 1848.

Hospital return for period 31st December 1847 to 30th June 1848