NRS-16122 | Visitors Book [Newcastle Benevolent Hospital (1889- 1939) / Newcastle Western Suburbs Maternity Hospital (1939- )]

Full description

This is a single volume, whose dated, chronologically ordered entries record the names and observations of visitors to the Benevolent Hospital (as the Newcastle Western Suburbs Hospital was then called) from 1890 to 1938. From about 1900 the overwhelming majority of entries refer to visits made by ordained clergy and other ministers of religion in order to conduct services or otherwise minister to the patients in the Hospital, and recording these visits may have come to be regarded as the book's main purpose. The front fly-leaf bears the inscription "Newcastle Benevolent Society," and a note at the foot of the last page of entries for 1932 records the death, on the 29th of December of that year, of the Hon. J.L. Fegan, for many years the Supervisor of the Benevolent Society.