Port Adelaide plea from 1854 for its own general government hospital never succeeds; only given casualty hospital
The former Port Adelaide casualty hospital building in Nile Street.
Port Adelaide never succeeded into its fight from 1854 to get its own general hospital. That year, a public meeting at White Horse Cellars Hotel pushed for hospital in Port Adelaide that had grown into a settlement of 500 and 600 in nearby Alberton.
Many hundreds of workers had often dangerous jobs in the factories, mills and smelters around the docks and 300 ships entered the port that year. The many industrial injuries, and local trade unions’ vigorous support, drove the movement for a Port Adelaide hospital. Until of the Port Adelaide-Adelaide rail line in 1856, it was a long painful trip for anyone with a serious injury to reach the overcrowded and inadequate Adelaide Hospital opened in 1841.
Port Adelaide was a conspicuously unhealthy town, built on mangrove swamp and prone to flooding. Its first mains water supply from Thorndon Park Reservoir along Port Road wasn’t installed until 1866 – and 1917 before central Port Adelaide had a water-borne sewerage system. Many Port Adelaide areas still relied on “night carts” in the 1940s.
After Port Adelaide was incorporated in 1855, plans for a single-ward hospital were finalised in 1859 but the South Australian government withdrew support. The argument that Port Adelaide’s sick and injured were well served by Adelaide Hospital (“less than one hour away”), expanded in 1856, was contentious for decades.
Port Adelaide’s population had passed 4000 when more pressure in 1861 finally gave it a hospital: a single-room cottage behind the new police barracks and the grand new government building at the St Vincent Street-Commercial Road corner. Dr Handayside Duncan, assistant colonial surgeon and health officer, was appointed Port Adelaide’s first medical officer at a salary of £50 and a house in St Vincent Street.
The new Port Adelaide Casualty Hospital could only to treat trauma cases; illness or infection cases were sent to Adelaide by train. Since the hospital had only one room, no female patients were admitted. A bigger casualty hospital was gained in 1884 when it had 88 “indoor patients” (admitted at least one night) and about 50 who could sit on the benches outside while waiting for the doctor. Of those 138 patients, the doctors treated 16 broken legs, seven broken arms and 15 concussions. Fifteen amputations were performed (with no dedicated surgical theatre) and six deaths reported.
In 1920, Port Adelaide Council offered the government land near Commercial and Grand Junction roads (later the site of Port Adelaide Girls’ High School) for a hospital. The increasing public clamour for a general hospital for Port Adelaide didn’t lose momentum even when Thomas Playford's government declared in 1944 that the Western District Hospital (soon renamed The Queen Elizabeth Hospital) would be built at Woodville.
The casuality hospital, now-Port Adelaide Community Hospital ,in 1943 became become the home of a “special clinic” – opened to treat STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) for men only in all seaports under the Brussels Agreement of 1924.
By 1981 the Port Adelaide Special Clinic had been absorbed into the new Port Adelaide community health service that moved to Church Street in 1986. The old casualty hospital was taken over by Anglicare. and served as “sobering-up unit”.