Site and Planning
In the 1860s, the colony of Victoria was rife with diseases such as diphtheria, typhoid, small pox and scarlet fever. At the time, Melbourne had two general hospitals, Melbourne and Alfred and three specialist hospitals, Lying-In, Children's and Eye and Ear. These five hospitals were unable to cope with the annual bouts of infectious diseases which recurred frequently. The Colonial Government began discussing the idea of constructing a hospital to treat patients with infectious diseases. Two sites were considered, one at Yarra Bend and another further along Heidelberg Road. Yarra Bend was the preferred location however the local residents protested and the proposal was dropped.
Plans for an infectious diseases hospital were again considered in 1874 however no significant moves were made until 1897, the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Queen Victoria had made it know that any funds raised to celebrate her Jubilee should be used to help the sick. By November 1897, £16 000 was raised by municipal levies. The government granted 15 acres (61,000 m2) of land at Yarra Bend, due north of the Yarra Bend Asylum. Tenders were listed in 1900 for the hospital's first buildings and construction was completed in 1901. Unfortunately all of the funds had been consumed by building the hospital and further money had to be sourced to furnish the buildings and employ staff.
Read more about this topic: Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital
Famous quotes containing the words site and/or planning:
“It is not menstrual blood per se which disturbs the imagination—unstanchable as that red flood may be—but rather the albumen in the blood, the uterine shreds, placental jellyfish of the female sea. This is the chthonian matrix from which we rose. We have an evolutionary revulsion from slime, our site of biologic origins. Every month, it is woman’s fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“Play for young children is not recreation activity,... It is not leisure-time activity nor escape activity.... Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem-solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of-ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)