Description

Admin History:

The De La Pole Hospital has its origins in two private asylums. The asylum at Summergangs Hall was founded in 1798, and the Sculcoates Refuge was established in Boteler Street (now Gibson Street) in 1814. The proprietors of Sculcoates Refuge took over the running of Summergangs Hall in 1825, and built a new single asylum in Myton to replace the existing buildings cost of £4,000 in 1838. The new asylum was called the Hull and East Riding Refuge, and accommodated 115 patients.

The Lunacy Act of 1845 made it obligatory for boroughs to provide asylums for their pauper insane, and gave them the choice of managing them themselves, or of leaving that responsibility with the borough magistrates. Hull Borough Council, for reasons of economy, decided to take the latter course. They were, however, compelled to provide any finance that was necessary to comply with the Act. A Committee of Justices was duly appointed in 1846 and on the 3rd February 1849 they purchased the Hull and East Riding Refuge at a cost of £11,000. It closed on the 2nd July 1849 and opened immediately as Hull Borough Lunatic Asylum. The asylum was administered by the Hull Justices until 1883. They had the power to appoint and remove officers, arrange contracts and the power to alter or amend any rules for the government of the asylum. Out of their number, a Visiting Committee was chosen, which met frequently to inspect the condition of the asylum and the treatment of patients. Although several attempts were made in the 1860s to improve the asylum the Justices were all too aware that the building they had purchased was poor and would eventually have to be replaced. Twice yearly reports of the Commissioners in Lunacy, who derived their power from the 1845 Act, often confirmed the Justice's opinion. One such report spoke of "the structural difficulties of this inconvenient and unsuitable building".

Eventually, in 1879, a proposal by the Justices to purchase the De La Pole estate, Willerby, for £12,770 was accepted by both the Commissioners in Lunacy and the Corporation. However, the Corporation, fearing that the Justices would involve them in a very expensive project, took advantage of a Bill then before Parliament to insert a clause whereby the managerial powers of the Justices with respect to the Hull Borough Lunatic Asylum were transferred to them. The resulting Act (The Hull Extension and Improvement Act, 1882) gave the Corporation of Hull power to undertake the duties of the Visiting Justices at any time within 6 months after the 1st September 1883. Notice to this effect was given by the Town Clerk, to Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Home Department on 12th September 1883. A month later and Asylum Committee was appointed.

Established as the Hull Borough Asylum, the new building was designed by Messrs Smith and Brodrick to accommodate 350 patients. The asylum was formally transferred from the Justices to the Town Council on Saturday 8th December 1883. The number of residents began at a little over 200 in 1884 and steadily rose to 800 in 1930. Consequently more land was acquired throughout the intervening period and additional building work never really ceased. The asylum regime and the type and range of patients taken were typical of other pauper asylums. There was a flourishing farm, and the aim was that patients would work if possible. The Mental Treatment Act of 1930 allowed voluntary and temporary patients to be accommodated. Also, during the inter-war years, occupational therapy and new mental illness treatments were introduced. The asylum became entirely self-supporting.

On 19th June 1924, at a meeting of the Asylum Committee, the decision was taken to rename the hospital the Hull City Mental Hospital. At the same meeting it was decided that, from 9th November 1924, the name of the committee should be changed to the Mental Hospital Committee. The last name change occurred in January 1940 when it became De La Pole Hospital but the term 'Mental Hospital' still had to be retained in all statutory documents. On the 3rd July 1948 the Mental Hospital Committee wound up its business and from then on De La Pole Hospital was financed by Central Government (NHS).

The management of the hospital, under the NHS, was first delegated to Hull Group 'B' Hospital Management Committee (HMC), which appointed a sub-committee for each of the hospitals for which it was responsible. All decisions of the sub-committee for De La Pole Hospital had to be agreed by the parent body. The HMC was, in turn, responsible to the Leeds Regional Hospital Board (RHB) situated in Harrogate. The members of the HMC were unpaid. Most admissions were voluntary (termed 'informal') after the 1959 Mental Health Act and only a fraction were detained under the legalities of the Act. This altered the pattern of patient numbers, and there were fewer resident patients from the late 1960s onwards. Long stay elderly patients became a large proportion of the resident hospital population.

With the reorganisation of the NHS in 1974 the HMC was disbanded. The management of the hospital was immediately thrust into the hands of the hospital's four senior officers: the Physician Superintendent, the Head of Nursing Services, the Hospital Secretary, and the Hospital Engineer, aided by committees designed to convey the views of the whole staff. The provision of money was now in the hands of the Humberside Area Health Authority (HAHA) which comprised Hull, Beverley, Scunthorpe and Grimsby Districts. Improvements at De La Pole after this date were slow and largely cosmetic.

In 1982 Hull Health Authority (HHA) emerged and was overseen by the Yorkshire Regional Health Authority. It was under HHA that a new mental illness strategy evolved, its primary aim being to expand alternative community services. In partnership with Humberside Social Services, HHA announced, in February 1991, a staged scheme of closure for De La Pole Hospital. In 1992 Humberside College of Health purchased part of the De La Pole site to accommodate 700 students of nursing. The hospital eventually closed for good in July 1997. A private crematorium has subsequently been built which utilises the former asylum chapel. Responsibility for psychiatric illness in Hull now rests with Hull and East Riding Health Authority.

Description:

Registers of patients, 1818-1956; case books, 1849-c1920; visitors' minutes, 1845-1918; death certificates, 1924-28; residents; statistics, 1883-1931; medical journals, 1849-97; farm accounts, 1939-51; notices of deaths, 1919-31; annual reports, 1891/2, 1899/1903