Eccles Masonic Hall

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Thanks to all at the hall.

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Another

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A bit of history about the lodge.

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Eccles Journal, April 11th 1919



Hospital demobilizing is proceeding rapidly. Gone from the streets of the smaller towns are the familiar blue of the wounded Tommies, and gone too are the V.A.D’s and nursing sisters as such. Elm Bank Hospital was closed at the end of last month, and the accounts of this Eccles effort of the British Red Cross Society have been published. They furnish but one example of thousands of the brighter side of the picture of war, but more facts and figures leave much untold.

A full record of what has been accomplished at this hospital can never be printed. It is impossible to exhaust the information available and the unrecorded work was the greater and more beneficent. Figures can be given of the number of patients nursed, of the money raised to finance the hospitals, and of the wonderfully skilled cures, but it is impossible to record all the voluntary service that has been given at the hospital. Altogether 1,077 soldiers have passed through the hospital, which enjoys the happy record of having no death under its roof during the four and half years it was open.

The institution was opened on the 10th November 1914 with 14 beds. When war broke out there was no local branch of the Red Cross Society in the borough, but the deficiency was soon remedied. It was at first believed to be a question of money. Elm Bank, then unoccupied, was generously placed at the disposal of the society by the owners, and Dr J. Orr’s energy and the generosity of the borough and district have made finance one of the least of the difficulties of the branch. At the town’s meeting called by the then Mayor of Eccles, a remark by a Clifton lady was characteristic of the spirit which has ever since prevailed. The ways and means of raising the money was being argued at greater length than the lady appreciated. The men wounded in the great retirement from Mons were pouring into the country. “There are men to be nursed” she remarked, “and if Eccles can’t raise the money the Clifton colliers will and their wives and sisters will nurse them.” Clifton has fully justified the lady’s remark, and the contributions from the colliery township have always figured conspicuously in the balance sheets. And the spirit which animated the remark has been behind all the work of the hospital. The need of wounded soldiers has been the one and only consideration. When the toll of war demanded more and more nursing accommodation, the hospital was extended, and when the full capacity of the house had been utilised, tents were improvised. From 14 the number of beds grew to 80 and in the week before Elm Bank closed down on March 31st [1919] there were 36 men in residence. It is not the purpose of this article to set down in figures the record of Elm Bank, but rather to give a pen picture of an ideal transformed into an accomplishment. The balance sheets may be read and analysed, and the careful reader will be impressed most deeply with the comparatively small expenditure on service.

Voluntary aid has in fact been the greatest asset of the institution. It has compromised medical attendance, nursing, hospital management, and the drudgery of the kitchen and sick wards. Fortunately in having the Assistant County Director of the East Lancashire Division of the British Red Cross Society as its medical superintendent, their fine example of voluntary war service has been followed by all who found themselves able to render service in any capacity. It is true that there have been changes. The hon. medical staff was ultimately reduced owing to the calls for doctors to go into the Army, and through the urgent needs of the civilian population to the superintendent; the nursing staff was periodically depleted to go to the help of the armies in the field. Meanwhile, the superintendent had been instructing classes in first aid and there was a steady flow of willing helpers for the sick wards, the kitchen, the laundry, and the multifarious duties of an institution housing up to 80 wounded men. “Who is the kitchen maid?” a morning visitor once asked the cook. She was informed that the lady on duty that morning was Mrs -------, wife of the Vicar of -------. One instance of continued service is worth recording as illustrative of the loyalty shown by the workers. A man and wife for over two years cleaned the cutlery and boots and shoes.
The patients at the hospital were always enthusiastic in their praise of the cooks and the cooking, and the ladies deserved all the thanks they got. It was the practise of the Commandant to arrange the domestic duties by rota and this assured the distribution of duties equitably. A lady who would commence her term of service in the kitchen worked her way through the rota to the sick wards, and having done so recommenced at the bottom of the domestic ladder. All this service was voluntary. A matron, a gardener, and the professional day and night nurses were the only persons who received payment for their services.

The hospital had many friends outside the institution from whom valuable help was derived. Furniture, bedding, food, tobacco, books, games, etc., were supplied, and two ladies at various times collected eggs and bought eggs with money collected. Only two appeals were necessary for funds, and both were discontinued with the necessity met and without the generosity of the public being exhausted. The hospital managed on a capitation grant of 2s per patient until October, 1917, when it was increased to 2s 6d. But although the appeals have not been continuous, monetary or the equivalent monetary help has. In the early days of the hospital the children of the Godfrey Ermen Memorial School contributed five shillings weekly to keep up the supply of sugar, local tradesmen made weekly gifts of provisions, etc, and some of these were continued after the Red Cross solved the problem of provisioning. But when it was no longer possible for the children to obtain sugar they endowed a bed. A number of local firms took a similar course; Irlam and Cadishead residents were the first to respond to this form of organized financial help, and their example was followed by several other local firms, and by the Clifton colliers and friends, and by three local Voluntary Aid Detachments.

As may be imagined the Elm Bank Hospital obtained widespread reputation for its generous and sympathetic treatment. The inmates have comprised Canadian, English, Irish, and Scottish and Welsh soldiers, and to their credit it should be recorded that no single complaint of misbehaviour has been made to the hospital authorities by residents in the neighbourhood. Letters of appreciation from the boys are amongst the most treasured possessions of the medical superintendent, commandant, and matron. For a considerable time past facilities have been given to local soldiers under treatment in hospitals far from home to transfer to Elm Bank. This has been no simple matter for the hospital authorities, but no effort has been spared, as the writer has personally experienced, to obtain the transfer of local lads sick and wounded and far from home and friends, to the institution in Half Edge Lane, and to those men as well as to the band of willing workers, Elm Bank Hospital will retain a pleasant memory long after much else connected with this war has faded away.