LOCAL historian, Beverly Souter, is working on a new book about the history of Westbury’s two former voluntary hospitals – and she is appealing to the community to share their memories with her.
Beverly’s book about the Westbury Cottage Hospital and the Prideaux Voluntary Hospital will explore how the two hospitals were supported by fundraising in the community and how they both changed health services in the town.
Beverly told White Horse News, “In May this year I graduated with a MA history degree from the Open University. This was a degree focused solely on local history. My passion for local history grew alongside my love of genealogy and research.
“My intention is to use the framework of my 16,000 word dissertation ‘Support for Hospitals in Westbury, 1897-1948: Mutualism or Voluntarism?’ to write a local history book about the two voluntary hospitals in Westbury, before the advent of the National Health Service.
“It covers the foundation and subsequent funding of these hospitals purely from fundraising and benevolence – for example, there is a case study about the weekly contributions workers from the Charles Case & Sons Tanning and Leather Manufacturers made in 1931, as a kind of health insurance, to the Westbury Cottage Hospital.
“It will be a difficult and long process adapting an academic piece of work into a local history book which the public will want to read, but I have two years’ research which I need to share with those interested – especially as now we have no hospitals in Westbury at all!
“The book will answer the question as to why Dr Mary Prideaux founded the Prideaux Voluntary Hospital in 1928, when Westbury already had an established Cottage Hospital just around the corner!
“Also it discusses how the Prideaux Voluntary Hospital brought maternity services to Westbury for the first time in compliance with state legislation, and how the district nursing service grew out of the Westbury Cottage Hospital.
“It also briefly covers the hospitals during WW2 and their contributions to the war effort.
“But the book will mainly focus on all the fundraising schemes and initiatives both hospitals put into place each year to raise enough money to keep both hospitals running, as after 1918, participation from the local elite, lessened. For example, land and 15,000 bricks for the cottage hospital built in 1897, was given by William Henry Laverton, but when the new hospital was built at Hospital Road in 1931, the land was bought from monies raised by the public.”
Beverly also wants to hear from anyone in the community who has an interesting story to tell about either hospital, or anyone connected to two stories that were reported in the Wiltshire Times in the 1940s.
Beverly said, “A story printed in the Wiltshire Times on 17th April 1948 tells of the saving of a baby’s life, 36 hours after birth, by Dr Mary Prideaux by blood transfusion, in March 1948. The baby was the daughter of a Mr and Mrs R E Deverell, who lived at the time at 82 Leigh Road, Westbury. Perhaps the baby of Mr and Mrs Deverell is still in Westbury?
“Another story printed in the Wiltshire Times in July 1940, mentions a little boy, David Colcomb, who presented a bouquet of sweet peas to Lt. Col. W H Burney’s wife, at the opening of the annual garden party and fete, held in the grounds of White Cottage (Dr Prid-eaux’s home and surgery). Again, could this ‘little boy’ still be in Westbury?”
To contact Beverly, email: bjsouter@hotmail .co.uk; or visit the Westbury Heritage Centre on a Friday afternoon, where she often volunteers.
Top: Garden party in the front garden of the Prideaux Voluntary Hospital circa 1930s – Dr Mary Colegrave Prideaux is seated right of Miss Seaton, hospital superintendent.
Above: Westbury Cottage Hospital, built in 1897 by public subscription, in Bourne’s Barton, which is now Westbourne Road.
