Sefton led the world in the field of medicine during World War One.

Moss Side Hospital in Maghull was one of the first institutions in the world to recognise ‘Shell Shock’ as a medical condition, not a weakness of character. Moss Side Military Hospital at Maghull became a focus for experimentation in the developing field of psychological medicine and physiotherapy and was hailed as the first school of ‘clinical psychopathology’ in Britain.

The Moss Side State Institution was constructed in villa style blocks in 1911-12, as a colony for epileptics.

In 1913 the buildings were commandeered by the Board of Control, the government bodyresponsible for regulating public asylums.

The buildings were intended to be used to house patients from the overcrowded hospitals at Broadmoor and Rampton. In December 1914 the War Office acquired the hospital and opened up the wards to servicemen with “acute mental disorder requiring

asylum care and supervision.”

The hospital was not originally planned as a centre for the treatment of ‘shell shock’ but as a military asylum. With 300 beds and easy links via train to Liverpool, it had the capacity to house patients and was accessible for visitors. It also had the seclusion needed to avoid the stigma associated with public asylums.

In 1915 Dr R G Rows was appointed temporary Medical Superintendent, on a salary of £450 per year.

The hospital was filled with ‘psychiatric battle casualties’ and additional doctors were urgently required. Moss Side Hospital recruited doctors and scientists who had no formalconnection with mental illness, but in a time of national need, they came together to investigate the causes of shell shock.

Shell-shock reached almost epidemic proportions in 1915, with symptoms such as uncontrollable shaking,terrifying nightmares and severe convulsions, challenging Army medical expertise and capacity. What appeared to be a complex disorder raised questions about its cause and

how to treat it.

At the time, most shell shock victims were treated harshly and with little sympathy as their symptoms were notunderstood and seen as a sign of weakness. In 1917 the hospital was expanded to accommodate a further 200 patients.

In total the hospital treated 3,638 patients between 1914 and 1919. At the end of the war in 1919, the hospital became The Ministry of Pensions Hospital for Soldiers, Military Red Cross Hospital, Moss Side.

It converted to a special hospital in 1933. In the early 1970s the hospital merged with the more modern Park Lane hospital to form the Ashworth High-security Psychiatric Hospital. Later some of the WW2 buildings were commandeered to form Kennet Prison.

Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) Hospitals, Southport.

The first VAD hospital was opened at The Grange, Roe Lane, (now Grange Road), Churchtown, on 6th March

Additional funds to pay for the building work were needed. Local dignitaries were again asked to dig deep by sponsoring beds at £10 each.

The Mayor held a fete, where each attendee was asked to bring a blanket and where various other fund raising events were held. The Woodlands opened on 15th September 1915. The first 80 patients arrived, via Aintree Hospital, on 1st October.

Doctors at both hospitals gave their time freely until 1917, when a grant was received from the War Office which enabled them to be paid.The Vulcan Factory, a local car building plant based in Crossens, supplied ambulances for the hospitals and a number of employees helped as stretcher bearers.

In 1917 the Vulcan Ambulance Corp was formed. Between March 1915 and Christmas 1918, 6,887 patients, mainly from the French battlefields, were admitted to St John’s (The Grange and Woodlands) Hospital. In the winter of 1915-16, 240 cases of typhoid and dysentery were admitted fromGallipoli in the Dardanelles.

Hospital final report

Patients admitted: 6,887

Operations performed: 581

X-Ray examinations: 1,009

Articles laundered: 1,641,128

Prescriptions made up: 35,735

Cotton wool used: 12,690 lbs

Convoys received: 60

Total expenditure: £103,330 10s 1d

Public contribution: £35,505 14s 9d

1915. The building was lent toVoluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) board by former Mayor of Southport, Major Fleetwood Hesketh. It was fondly known by the staff as ‘The Little Hospital’ as it had just 30 beds. The hospital building and all the equipment, including beds, blankets and food were purchased with monies donated by the tradesmen and dignitaries of Southport.

The Voluntary Aid Detachment, a voluntary organisation providing nursing services, was founded in 1909 with the help of the Red Cross and the Order of St John.

By the summer of 1914 there were over 2,500 Voluntary Aid Detachments in Britain. Each individual hospital was called a detachment, or simply a VAD. Of the 74,000 volunteers working in the VADs in 1914, two-thirds were women and girls. Most volunteers were of the middle and upper classes and unaccustomed to hardship andtraditional hospital discipline.

The first patients arrived on March 22nd 1915 by trains from the south coast ports via Aintree Hospital.

They were then transferred byambulance and cars to Southport. The wounded were bathed, had their soiled clothing removed and were taken to the ward. Here they were given coffee, bread and butter.

The men who arrived directly from France had their clothing and kit removed and this was sent to municipal disinfectors. Casualties increased as the war went on.

By May 1915, Aintree hospital was full and The Grange had 27 men in the hospital and a further 18 boarded out in local houses to help them recover.

Casualties continued to pour in, the hospital put beds in every corner and an annex was set up in a house across the road to accommodate the injured servicemen.

As the demands on the hospital increased the Mayor of Southport, the VAD Brigade Committee and the Medical Officer from the War Office sought to find a way to accommodate and treat more wounded in the town. One of the sites that was considered was The Palace Hotel, which was

situated off Weld Road, now Palace Road, Southport.

A rent of £3,000 a year was agreed and it seemed that a solution had been found.

The hotel would be able to hold 500 patients and the professional nursing staff were to receive a pay rise from 2d (2 old pence) a day to 3d per day. Eventually this scheme failed, because the Palace needed a considerable amount of money spent on it, to bring it up to a standard that could treat and feed over 500 people. Plus there was the problem of ‘the bar’.

The VAD Committee didn’t think it was appropriate to have a bar in a hospital, but the owner of the hotel wanted to keep his license and when agreement could not be reached he withdrew his offer to house the hospital.

As Southport had committed to providing a larger hospital, and considerable funds had been raised from local donations, alternative premises had to be found. It was agreed that the little hospital (The Grange) was to be expanded to accommodate 300 patients and an additional site, The Woodlands, in Manchester Road, Southport was acquired.

The combined capacity of over 500 beds, plus the several additional subsidiary sites which tendedconvalescing patients, made theSt John’s Hospital the largest VAD hospital in Britain.

Nurse Russell and Staff

A cartoon drawn by a hospital patient