13/08/2026
If you haven't already, go back a couple of posts and catch up on the history of Dunedin's first hospital. Here's part two, as promised.
The hospital in the Octagon, where the Town Hall stands now, was completed in October 1851. Clark and Garvie levelled the site, laid freestone foundations and erected the hospital. The interior was brick lined and whitewashed with tongue and grooved ceilings and a shingle roof.
The instructions were to build two wards, each 40ft long by 12 feet by 10 feet with a steam bath room with all the necessary apparatus - about 12 feet by 10 feet, with a sweating room adjoining about 10 feet square. A surgery about 16 feet by 12 feet. A kitchen 20 feet by 16 feet, two small apartments for the hospital attendants; each about 12 feet square. 2 store rooms; 2 water closets; 1 pump etc. The hospital was asked to be built of wood, brick nogged with stone foundations, weatherboarded on the outside and brick flat. And of a neat and ornamental design. I can't find a single photo so we'll have to assume that this was the case. No morgue was included, bodies were still taken to hotels. It wasn't until 1879 after the fire that took down the Ross Building in The Octagon where the Regent is now that Dunedin saw the need for a morgue and it was a small room in the previous Courthouse to the current one. As you can anticipate, it was disgusting. The next was built in the Southern Cemetery. I'm not sure where the urban legend of an Octagon morgue came from but they certainly weren't shelling out the big bucks for a beautiful, underground, stone room when the hospital itself was so basic!
The hospital was equipped with 12 iron bed-steads, 12 sackings to be filled with straw for mattresses, 12 cords, 12 palliases (thin fabric mattresses), 12 bolster cases (stuffed rolls for around a bed), 24 blankets, 12 rugs and 24 sheets. If 24 blankets and 24 sheets for 12 beds sounds like a recipe for a disaster, you'd be right. Hygienically but also politically.
Robert Williams, an Oxford educated Welshman (he had studied under Lister, the pioneer of antiseptic surgery) was appointed Colonial Surgeon by Governor Grey alongside his private practice. He was to attend Government employees, Māori and prisoners as well as hospital cases and was given 120 pounds a year which is worth about $50,000 now.
His first case was Andrew Doig. He was a prison inmate who became mentally unstable and was placed in isolation in the hospital on 24 July 1852. The next two patients used the hospital like a hotel since they lived rurally and had private treatment at their own cost and then in October - a "lunatic" was admitted at cost to the Crown. The hospital was rarely used for the first 15 months. Māori were admitted for free but Europeans only if they had a certificate from the Bench Of Magistrates - a body of local citizens appointed by the crown in case the hospital gave free healthcare to someone who could afford to pay. In 1853, the hospital advertised for a male and female attendant at 30 pounds a year, free board and rations of 9lb flour, 12lb bread, 7lb meat 1.5lb sugar, .25lb tea a week.
1853 also saw New Zealand move to a different system of leadership. Provinces were given more autonomy and were required to set up their own system of government secondary to the Central Government. That meant Otago now had the autonomy it had always wanted but had to pay for its own hospital it had never wanted and still refused to pay for until 1856.
Robert Williams was continued on in his role but now as Provincial Surgeon even though his anti government attitude rubbed the new Provincial Government up the wrong way but he took it a step too far by not agreeing to keep those opinions to himself now he was a member so he was let go.
Edward Hulme, who had also applied for the job of Provincial Surgeon was up next and the story of the hospital from here on is as much a story about Dr Hulme.
Hulme was trusted with the day to day running of the hospital by the P.G. and had autonomy over most things. The hospital hadn't grown or changed much over the decade but Hulme, who had been highly educated in mental illnesses for the time, was concerned at the harmful effects of combining sane and insane patients but also at the lack of space for mentally ill prisoners who had to stay in prison so he campaigned for a separate asylum. He was in luck because by 1861, the gold rush hit and he was inundated with 43 cases from 1861 to 63 so his lunatic asylum was granted by the Provincial Government. A temporary asylum was set up in what is now the Otago Boys Highschool playing field, became less temporary and more a permanent hodgepodge of prison-like buildings and by 1884, a newer, larger asylum had opened in Seacliff.
Between when the Provincial Government finally took over the cost of the hospital and 1863, new buildings had been added and a large, three story building for male patients. The descriptions of the buildings sound Dickenson, very much living up to the Work and Poor Houses it was derived from. Toilets flowed into a literal cesspool, buildings had outside stairs, wind blew through the roof and walls and it was largely patronised by men, men who were working class and brought a liveliness to the place, if you will. They were often hired as attendants once discharged so where the middle class complained of the run down, disgusting manner in which the rooms were kept, the working class inhabitants weren't aware they could have anything better.
1865 is when Dunedin had New Zealand's first international world's fair or exhibition. In King Street (now Great King Street, roughly where today's hospital is) was a large two-storey stone Italianate building with clock tower and a series of annexes all designed by Mason and Clayton, with a central courtyard derived from Fowler's design of Covent Garden market. By 1867, the hospital in The Octagon had moved in and although major changes were made, they were disappointing to Hulme who constantly championed for a better, cleaner and more friendly space - as most modern doctors will know well. And this new hospital still had a cesspit.
Hulme never stopped working tirelessly for the hospital and it was probably what ended up killing him - he died suddenly in 1877 amid stressful administration changes.
I could write forever about the hospital and other institutions but you may as well read it all for yourself in "A History Of The Otago Hospital Board - And It's Predecessors" by John Angus, 1984.
Further reading:
https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1h37/hulme-edward/print
Hulme's residence and private practice:
https://www.heritage.org.nz/list-details/4711/Listing
