The day they shut the ‘Prov’

by Neil Sayer, Archdiocesan Archivist

free hospital became apparent. In 1882 the house in George Street rented by the Sisters was opened to provide free charitable nursing to the poor. At first it offered facilities to women and children only, but in 1883 a ward for men and boys was opened. In July 1884 Hardshaw Hall was acquired from the Walmsley-Cotham family and the hospital was transferred there, near the recently built Town Hall. On 15 September 1884 Cardinal Manning visited and named the hospital: he had been an early supporter of Mother Magdalen when he was a Parish Priest in the Diocese of Westminster.

The Providence Hospital in St Helens was a rare independent survivor of the creation of the welfare state, but its days were always numbered after the National Health Service was formed, 75 years ago in 1948.

Documents in the archdiocesan archives show that it dates back to 1882. Father Cardwell, one of the Jesuit priests at Holy Cross Church, had invited a recently formed order of religious sisters to establish themselves in the town. The Poor Servants of the Mother of God had been founded by Mother Magdalen (Frances Margaret Taylor, 1832-1900), whose work as a nurse in the Crimean War had brought her respect for Irish Catholic soldiers, a concern for the poor, and a desire to improve the quality of nursing in England.

St Helens was a typical industrial town, whose population had expanded too rapidly for its amenities to keep pace. In Victorian times it was dominated by the coal and glass industries. Though they, with brewing, brickmaking and the chemical industry, brought wealth and employment, they also ushered in poverty, pollution, disease and industrial accidents. Local government had reached St Helens when the Corporation was created in 1868. A Cottage Hospital, the predecessor of St Helens Hospital, opened in 1873. Horse-drawn trams began operating in the streets of St Helens in 1881. Only in 1885 did the town send its first MP to London.

Father Richard Cardwell, as Rector in charge at Holy Cross, had become aware of the work of the Poor Servants in the slums of London, and he recommended their services in a letter to Bishop O’Reilly: ‘I am so convinced of the immense good they would effect; the town is not large, there is little or no bigotry, and the effect of their work would be soon made apparent.’ Mother Magdalen and her Sisters came to the town initially to help improve the lives of poor women. Very soon the need for a

For the next 64 years Providence Hospital took in all who were in need of medical care and attention regardless of their creed or ability to pay. A Nurses’ Home opened in 1924 and this was later expanded to include teaching facilities. Until 1948 it was entirely a voluntary hospital depending for its upkeep on private donations, grants from the Mother House of the Poor Servants, and income from the laundry work undertaken. When the Ministry of Health proposed to transfer the hospital to the National Health Service, the management committee was provoked into an angry response to what it characterised as ‘an act of confiscation’ by the state. Whilst noting the ‘enthusiastic support’ of the hospital from the public of St Helens, without regard to religion, the committee suggested that it was the unremunerated devotion of the members of a Catholic religious order that gave the institution its particular ethos: ‘those who experience the care and attention provided by the Sisters are left with a profound impression of the unique character of the hospital’. The unique character was permitted to survive the creation of the NHS, as negotiations with government led to the granting of a contractual arrangement whereby the ‘Prov’ could continue its work as an independent hospital with assistance from the NHS. Essentially, the building and staffing remained the responsibility of the Sisters, and the maintenance of its patients was supported by the NHS.

Its importance for accident and emergency treatment may be judged by the local firms still contributing to its upkeep in the 1970s – Greenall Whitley, Rockware Glass, United Glass, Pilkingtons, Phythians, and the nearby Corporation Transport Department. The local churches had regular collections too, and there’s a long list of pubs and clubs that had bar collections for the ‘Prov’. Sadly, local voluntary contributions alone were not sufficient to keep the hospital going. Facilities were wound down during the 1970s: the children’s ward closed in 1976 and by 1979 there was no longer any nurse training there. Archbishop Worlock brought Cardinal Hume on a visit on 27 October 1979, when there were 22 nuns and 16 consultant staff members, but the writing was already on the wall. NHS financial support was withdrawn in 1981 and despite a ‘Save the Prov’ campaign that united St Helens in protest and support, signing petitions and holding events to raise cash, the funding shortfall of over half a million pounds a year could not be met. The Providence Hospital closed on 30 June 1982, a few weeks short of its centenary.