Leeds house of recovery.

IN THE years 1801 and 1802 an alarming epidemic fever spread in Leeds and the neighbourhood. The contagion extended so rapidly and proved so fatal that some hundreds were affected at the same time.' Two doctors (one was Mr. Rusby) and several nurses fell victims to the disease. There was clearly need for a fever hospital in the town and Dr. Thorp* stated in 1831 that the matter had first been proposed by him in a letter to William Cookson Esq., then Mayor of Leeds. Dr. Thorp wrote that on 30 December 1801 in company with Mr. Rusby he visited '100 persons ill in fever after attending divine service, and before taking tea.'2 Be that as it may, meetings had been held on 7 and 14 December 1801 at the Rotation Office, with Mr. Cookson in the Chair, to consider the best means of establishing a House of Recovery.3 The General Infirmary at Leeds did not admit patients with infectious diseases and the need for a special hospital for such persons was obvious. The treatment of patients with fever in separate wards or hospitals was an innovation. Special 'fever wards' were opened in the Chester Infirmary in 17834 or 1784.5 Two physicians at the Manchester Infirmary, Thomas Percival (1740-1804) and John Ferriar (1761-1815), had a number of fever wards ('houses of recovery' as they were euphemistically called) erected on ground belonging to the Infirmary in 1796.6 In 1802 the London Fever Hospital was founded.7 In the Leeds Intelligencer of 14 December 1801, which reported one of the meetings mentioned above, there is also a leading article advocating the establishment of a House of Recovery in Leeds in which it is mentioned that in Manchester, as the result of an institution of this kind, the number of fever-patients was reduced during the first year from 2,880 to 1,759 and there was a decrease of 400 burials during the same period (but we do not know whether there had been a decrease in other places without such an institution). At the meeting reported on 14 December 1801 it was noted that a house had been found in Ebenezer Street (off Harewood Street, Ludgate Hill, Vicar Lane) as a temporary situation for the proposed House of Recovery but that a more convenient place was being sought. It was agreed that subscriptions should be solicited and a committee of management was appointed consisting of the Mayor (Mr. Cookson), William Thompson, John Goodman, John Broadhead, Mr. Calverley, Joseph Wood, Charles Brown and 'the Gentlemen of the Faculty'. No further meeting appears to have taken place until early November 18028 when the subscribers present were informed that 'it appears that the sum already subscribed was far short of the estimated expense of building'. However, in the Leeds Intelligencer of 6 December 1802 we learn that the subscriptions received were now over 965