HASLAR HOSPITAL
The first and largest naval hospital was built at Haslar near Gosport between 1745 and 1761. Haslar Farm, over the creek from Gosport, was bought in 1745 as the best available site for the hospital. While the relative isolation of the location – there was no Haslar Bridge at the time – might have seemed a drawback, the majority of Haslar’s patients arrived by rowing boat from the Naval ships in the harbour or at Spithead. Another advantage for the Admiralty of this lonely spot was the deterrent it might provide for deserters from a Navy that relied heavily on ‘pressed men’.
A specification for the design of the new building laid down that: “[we] would have the hospital to be a strong, durable, plain building consisting of three storeys; the same to form a large quadrangle with a spacious piazza within, the cut fronts to be decent but not expensive”. Priorities were light, air and cleanliness, and to that end, no buildings were to be placed within the quadrangle. The original plan for the quadrangle building featured a fourth side that was never built – and the speculation is that cuts in funding were a problem for the Navy of the 1700s as was the case in later centuries. Three sides of the quadrangle, were bounded by double ranges of wards; the open fourth side was closed by railings at a later date to deter would-be deserters.
Even the builders had to be protected from the press gangs by order of the Admiralty –one hapless workman had to be fetched back from his new position on a man o’ war as he still had the hospital cellar keys in his pocket.
Medical staff were poorly paid, so doctors supplemented their income by spending increasing amounts of time in private practice in places such as the wealthy Meon Valley. The scant pay only attracted those nurses who were unemployable elsewhere, and theft, drunkenness and general debauchery were widespread. The patients themselves, while intent on recovery, had only one long-term goal – to be fit enough to escape the hospital and the attentions of the dreaded press gangs. There are those who assert that this situation gave rise to the expression “up the creek”, meaning in a good deal of trouble; if you were taken “up the Creek” to Haslar, then you were likely to be in poor shape.
Patients were transferred from the jetty to the hospital by carts, also known as ‘cradles on wheels’, and in time, rails were laid to speed the transfers.
It was not until 1795 that the first bridge was built over Haslar Creek between the hospital and Gosport town – it had taken some 30 years of pleading before the decision was taken in 1791 to approve the plans for the bridge. In the meantime people had been carried from Gosport to Haslar and back again by means of an industrious and lucrative ferry-boat business. With the arrival of the bridge a disgruntled ferryman, losing out on his previous income, decided to build a pub at the Gosport end of the new crossing, which apparently earned him a fortune over again. This led to an ongoing battle of wills between publican and hospital governor, who made increasingly desperate efforts to reduce drunkenness among staff and patients.