thINGS THAT MATTER
On the morning of May 25, Prime Minister Stuart gave his concession speech at a deserted Democratic Labour Party Headquarters. Almost exactly 24 hours later, the old Barbados General Hospital went up in flames, and the building was gutted, with parts collapsing. The dreams and visions of Errol Barrow and the early Dems collapsed in a sorry mess with the unprecedented election massacre. And the dreams and visions and the monument to health care that was the old General Hospital fell – like a tragic symbol of the demolition of the Democratic Labour Party. And it symbolises so many aspects of the dereliction and decay of the last few years.
For more than a hundred years the old General Hospital on Jemmott’s Lane provided free health care for the people of Barbados who could not afford to pay. It’s a story that’s little known, but many of the bare bones were related by that passionate chronicler of Barbadian history, Edward Stoute, pharmacist and member of Council of the Barbados National Trust. Edward was one of those “salt of the earth” Barbadians, who loved every rock and every tree of Barbados, and he wrote a Sunday column for years called Glimpse of Old Barbados. His column of May 3, 1970 describes how the General Hospital came to be.
After emancipation the responsibility for the health of the newly freed population was no longer accepted by the plantation owners, and for the great majority of people there was no succour except from the village bush tea vendor and the over-crowded alms houses. By 1836 fund-raising began in order to provide a hospital, and an “Art Exhibition” was held which raised quite a bit of money. At a town hall meeting Bishop Coleridge was appointed chairman of a governing body, with a board of trustees and it was agreed that fund-raising and a sum of one thousand pounds from the government would provide a completely free hospital service to the general public.
In 1839 the property of Colonel Gabriel Jemmott known as Carlisle House, with its curtilage, was purchased for conversion into a General Hospital. However, some years were to elapse before the hospital was ready to be opened. This took place on July 1, 1844. By 1845 there were financial problems and a government grant of $3 000 was approved. From 1857 the government gave an annual grant. The hospital was thus an outstanding example of partnership between humanitarian philanthropists in civil society and the government. Last Saturday morning’s fire was a sad end to this fine vision and symbol of good will.
The hospital was enlarged in several stages – in 1853, in 1910 and 1914, but for many years was proving inadequate for the needs of our people. A Royal Commission reporting in 1948 finally recommended a new hospital. The provenance and dates of the handsome two-story house close to Bay Street, which served as the Casualty Department for many years but is now open to vagrants, vandals and arsonists, and of the building on the other side of the main building, which served as the Ministry of Health Planning Unit, would require further research. Nonetheless, it is fairly well-established that the property was originally, in the 17th century, owned by James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, and while it does not appear that he ever came to Barbados his son did live here.
It is clear from a map of 1785 (compliments of Peter Stevens, President of the Barbados National Trust) that the central portion of the building, with a front façade some seventy feet long, was a residence of considerable size. Establishing its date and the date of the handsome pillared portico will require detailed assessment, but it is clearly one of the most important buildings in our UNESCO World Heritage site. The added wings were designed to provide accommodation for many more patients, in the form of the Nightingale Ward design, inspired by the famous, heroic English nursing leader of the Crimea war, Florence Nightingale. The derelict Tercentenary Ward, celebrating our first parliament, provided more comfortable accommodation for fee paying patients (at one pound a day), opposite the Five Shilling Ward, also now derelict, and which became the Barbados Drug Service offices.
These architecturally and historically important buildings on the Jemmott’s Lane site, within the UNESCO boundaries, have been treated most shabbily, in spite of our World Heritage inscription and in spite of their obvious value. The highly economical restoration of the Nightingale Nursing Home by the university to become the Errol Walrond Clinical Skills Complex illustrates how effective restoration and adaptive re-use of these solidly built old coral stone buildings can be. However, government has left them to be occupied by vagrants, to be vandalised and as expected as sure as the night follows the day, to be gutted by fire. A number of them burnt a few weeks ago, and yet this gem – the main Carlisle House building, was left open for the vagrants. Was it deliberately burnt?
It is a sad reflection on our society that this hugely important and attractive building, built like a fortress, should come to this. But given the sinful, almost criminal neglect and dereliction of our first Prime Minister’s official residence, Culloden Farm, monument to National Hero the Right Excellent Errol Barrow, perhaps it should be no surprise. Carlisle House, a.k.a. the old General Hospital, joins the Derelict Dozen Treasures of Bridgetown to bring the number to a Baker’s Dozen. Our approach to the potentially game-changing UNESCO branding has been pure window dressing, with no serious effort to recognise its value, to restore, preserve and put to our own domestic or profitable tourism use.
For some six years we have tried to persuade government to put our derelict treasures out to tender, for developers to create new uses. There was a rumour of a plan for the old Eye Hospital to become a boutique hotel. The Old Hospital site is ideally located to be linked to that Window to the Sea and developed as a multi-use tourist, hostelry and commercial complex, retaining the essential character of the historic buildings, while designing attractively landscaped facilities around them. The Tercentenary Ward has long been requested by the university to provide student hostel accommodation. Other adaptive re-uses are possible. Hopefully with the New Dawn all of these opportunities and many more will be developed and Historic Bridgetown will once again be one of the ten important cities of the world.
(Professor Fraser is Past Dean of Medical Sciences, UWI and Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Clinical Website: profhenryfraser.com)