| Description | The Royal Hospital Donnybrook collection is a large collection of administrative, financial, patient, staff and property records ranging in date from 1771 until 2001. There is also a smaller selection of records related to the hospital’s history, ephemera and some objects including the hospital’s seal matrix. Unfortunately, records do not exist from its foundation in 1743; the earliest record is a minute book of the board of governors dating from 1771.
The collection contains a substantive set of administrative records spanning over 220 years of the hospital’s existence between 1771 and 1993. These records include:
- a complete run of board of governors’ minute books from 1771 until 1972;
- a complete run of managing committee’ minute books 1897 until 1986;
- annual reports from 1858 until 1887 (with the exception of years 1861 and 1862);
- a complete run of visiting committee’ minute books from 1876 until 1983;
- the minutes of various sub committees including an income and expenditure committee, building committee, patient welfare and a ‘Friends of the hospital’ committee.
The administrative section also includes a large run of rough minute books which cover both meetings of the board of governors and the managing committee from 1853 until 1936. These books are also accompanied by detailed agenda books beginning in 1872 and continuing until 1975. These records, together with the formal minutes of the board of governors, the managing committee and others in existence in the collection, are a rich resource in terms of understanding the day-to-day work of the hospital and moreover, how it survived and flourished over such extended periods of time.
This section also includes various legal records documenting the evolution of the hospital’s governance structures such as its governing charters, bye-laws and regulations. It includes the original supplemental charter granted to the hospital by Queen Victoria in 1886 together with its wax seal. A comprehensive range of reports from visiting governors, medical officers, the housekeeper, and the lady superintendent are also extant. The section is complemented by a myriad of administrative correspondence from and to a range of parties relating to the running of the hospital. It includes letter books from the hospital registrar from 1883 until 1943 (with a gap of five years from 1932 until 1937).
The finance section contains a large amount of typical financial records such as a run of minute books of the finance committee from 1881 until 1997, as well as accounting records spanning a period from 1799 until 1974. This section also contains a large amount of records documenting subscriptions and bequests made to the hospital in the form of register books of subscribers and testators. In addition to these books, this section contains a large amount of individual testator files recording bequests made to the hospital. The section also contains a run of order books of hospital supplies, as well as records relating to pay and employment, fundraising and the hospital’s stock investments.
Surviving patient records include candidate (people seeking admission to the hospital) and admission registers from 1797 until 1986. The admission registers differ in format and coherency, however between the oldest surviving register of patients admitted between 1797 and 1928, and a second register, a record of patients admitted exists until 1964. Additional notebooks record patients admitted until 1986. In addition to these records, an eclectic mix of records have survived reflecting both how patients were cared for in the hospital in the form of diet and clothing order books, as well as how discipline was upheld, most evident in a ‘defaulters book’ which records patient ‘misbehaviour’ and the consequences agreed by the board.
Of note in this section is a large collection of hospital application forms from individuals seeking admission to the hospital dating from the mid 1800s.
Records contained in the staff section of the collection are less coherent in terms of providing a concise set of employment records for any one period in the hospital’s history. A mix of records across different time periods have survived, including job application forms, appointment, and resignation letters from the late nineteenth to late twentieth centuries. There is also a small amount of nursing employment and enrolment registers from 1958 until 1986.
The smallest portion of records in the collection, the hospital history and culture section, contains newspaper clippings, ephemera including hospital newsletters, hospital notices, and a small number of photographs. Notable is a collection of nearly 100 years of newspaper clippings stored in four scrapbooks, some of which include reports on key milestones in the hospital’s history and photographs. The latter, together with a disparate mix of surviving files relating to historical events at the hospital, enrich the collection and provide an insight in to the hospital’s perception in wider society.
The final section contains a large collection of property records relating to the hospital campus itself and the many properties and/or property rights the hospital inherited from bequests or via purchase. Records include deeds of assignment, lease agreements, property valuations, building specifications, estimates and maps. Records relating to properties bequeathed to the hospital contain many historical deeds of assignment, the earliest dating from 1768. These property transactions are complemented by a large amount of legal correspondence from the hospital’s legal representatives. |
| History | The Royal Hospital Donnybrook was established in 1743. Its origins are located in a charitable initiative of a musical society - called the Dublin Charitable Musical Society of Crow Street - who dedicated their funds to the establishment of the hospital in 1743. In this collection, records do not exist to provide a concise narrative of this event and the consequent founding of the hospital. However, contemporary sources, referred to in a history of the hospital published in 1993, suggest Richard Colley Wellesley, the first Baron Mornington and former auditor and registrar of the Royal Hospital (Kilmainham), was most closely associated with the founding of the Royal Hospital Donnybrook. From the outset, the hospital was known as the ‘Hospital for Incurables’ and operated according to three distinct guiding principles: it was only open to people who were poor; who were suffering from an incurable disease; and, that a non-sectarian ethos be upheld.
The hospital first opened in Fleet Street in 1744 followed by a move to Townsend Street in 1754, at this time known as Lazer’s Hill. In 1792, the hospital relocated to Donnybrook as part of a mutual agreement to exchange sites with the Buckingham Lock Hospital (renamed the Westmoreland Lock Hospital).
The hospital’s mission is formalised upon receipt of its Royal Charter in 1800 from King George III. The founding charter states the purpose of the hospital is to feed, lodge, clothe and supply with medical and surgical assistance without fee or reward poor persons in and near the city of Dublin afflicted with disorders declared by qualified medical authority to be incurable. With no shortage of poverty and concurrent disease in eighteenth century Dublin, consumption, cancer and paralysis represent the main categories of disease cared for at this time and continuing throughout the 1800s.
In 1886, a supplemental charter granted by Queen Victoria was met with great hopes by the governors to extend the usefulness and scope of the charity. Together with new bye-laws, the supplemental charter introduced an out-patients scheme whereby patients who had been in the hospital for a minimum of three years and are well enough to live in the community may do so and receive a stipend of £10 per annum. The hospital’s bye-laws further specified their rules in relation to religious influence in the hospital stating that an equal number persons of the Protestant and Roman Catholic religions may be admitted to the hospital. This access was on condition that they did not attempt to communicate on the ‘subject of religion with patients or inmates professing a religion different to their own’. In 1887, the hospital was granted a royal licence to change its name to the ‘Royal Hospital for Incurables’.
In terms of funds, the hospital relied heavily on subscriptions, donations, bequests and public assistance via parliamentary grants and corporation presentments. This approach satisfied its growth and construction in to the late 1800s. Significant construction took place in 1887 with the building of a new wing, named the Victoria Jubilee Wing and an additional wing was built in 1894. In the early 1900s, there was a move to build a pavilion wing for people with tuberculosis to be named the King Edward VII Memorial Consumptive Pavilion. This was met with considerable resistance particularly from local residents and various bodies, including the Royal College of Physicians, and was ultimately shelved in 1912. However, the hospital continued to expand and in 1915, two new pavilions were built.
The hospital continued to flourish in the twentieth century, assisted by a coherent management structure set out in its bye-laws which accompanied the 1886 supplemental charter. The hospital was governed by a board of governors, 40 of whom constituted the managing committee. The managing committee was assisted by a registrar responsible for the day-to-day administration of the hospital and a number of committees including a visiting committee and finance committee. Processes to elect officers (such as the matron, registrar) and the admission of patients were also clearly defined in the charter. Accompanying rules to the charter defined the role and duties of officers such as visiting medical officers, the resident medical officer, the lady superintendent, the housekeeper and nurses.
The next significant amendment to the hospital’s founding charter was the introduction of the Charter Amendment Act in 1953 which enabled the hospital to charge fees for the maintenance of patients for the first time. These fees were accepted in the context of the Public Assistance Act 1939 and the admission of patients paid for by the local authority. This followed the hospital’s decision in 1950 to also apply for funds from the Hospitals Commission (which coordinated the distribution of funds from the sweepstakes) despite earlier resistance from hospital management.
As the hospital continued to evolve, at its request, the term ‘Incurables’ was legally removed from its title by an order of the Oireachtas in 1974 formalising its name, to The Royal Hospital Donnybrook. In 1991, a Charter Amendment Order 1990, was also approved which made new provisions for the appointment of governors and brought up to date certain other clauses that were outmoded.
This collection includes records of building expansion projects in the 1980s including the opening of a day hospital and rehabilitation wards in 1988. The hospital developed its rehabilitation services and continued to care for a number of long-stay patients in to the twenty-first century. In 2024, it continues to offer rehabilitation services and residential care as well as other clinical services. |