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expression of its own importance as one of the strongest and wealthiest of territorial authorities and to show its independence from Christchurch leading strings. When provincial government ended and new arrangements had to be made for the financing of Christchurch hospital, the council agreed to pay its quota ‘until it was in a position to support similar local institutions in the county’.⁷⁴ There was indeed no financial obstacle to its building almost immediately and it decided to do so within a year, at the beginning of 1879. The new hospital, erected in part of the domain reserve, of brick with white stone facings, was probably for some years among the largest and most expensive buildings in the town and certainly of better appearance than any other.

The hospital was little more than a philanthropic institution. Patients paid fees if they were in a position to do so—a pound a week in a public ward and two pounds in a private ward. But receipts from patients met hardly one-tenth of the expenses. Nor did people go to hospital if they could arrange for treatment at home. Some twenty patients were usually in hospital at a time. The total number for the year began to rise during the 1890s and reached two hundred at the end of the century. For this reason the staff increased to nine, including four nurses.

Government inspectors commented on the skilful nursing and care by the second matron, Mrs MacKay, and the ‘unremitting attention by Dr Trevor the surgeon’. They were less than complimentary about the buildings. However, in 1898, a six-bed convalescent ward was added by public subscription as a memorial to Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. Unsympathetic ratepayers commented that the place was getting so comfortable patients would want to remain there.

One decided improvement was to sanitary conditions. In 1900 the cesspit drainage from the building was condemned. The first proposal made to the committee was for a kind of private sewage farm. This being defeated, the Borough Council agreed that kitchen sullage might be piped into sidechannels as from houses. (The gutters in that part of the town were well supplied from a race which ran alongside Alford Forest Road). But a public outcry forced the council to rescind their permission. As a result, and on the recommendation of Andrews supported by Trevor, a septic tank, a novelty of three or fours years’ standing, was installed in 1903. It was probably among the first in New Zealand.

The hospital served both town and country. In 1882 the County