A Century of Service - Eoin O'Brien

CHAPTER ONE
The Voluntary Hospital Movement and the Dublin School
T
he voluntary hospital movement in Dublin has a proud history dating
from 1718 until the closing years of the twentieth century. Almost invariably
these hospitals, which were supported by voluntary subscription from the public
and to which doctors gave of their expertise without fee or reward, were protected
by royal charters. The governing charters were carefully composed instruments that
ensured the survival of the hospitals over centuries and even when contemporaneous
events decreed that the institutes had outlived their usefulness, the charters conferred
protection of assets so as to ensure that for those imaginative enough to revert to
the dictates of their founding fathers, an existence beyond simply providing the
hospital services for which they had been established, was not only possible but
indeed might offer a greater altruistic fulfilment. The closure of the City of Dublin
Skin and Cancer Hospital is an example of how the voluntary ethos may be
perpetuated in a new era.
Health Care in Dublin before the Voluntary Hospitals
Ailred le Palmer founded the first hospital in Dublin in 1188. Known as The Hospital
of St. John the Baptist it was situated in St. Thomas Street ‘without the west, or new
gate of the City, for Sick’. The Augustinian Friars took over the management of the
hospital, probably on the death of Ailred le Palmer. This hospital provided care for
over one hundred in-patients and for many years was the only hospital in the city.
Henry de Loundres, Archbishop of Dublin, founded a hospital, known as the Steyne
Hospital in 1220, and in 1344 a Lazar House ‘for the relief of poor and impotent
Lazars’ was founded near St. Stephen’s Green on the site later occupied by
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