From factory row to the Grosvenor Road.

Belfast in 1780 was a town of 13,000 people but it was already expanding rapidly. There was a small middle class often inter-related and certainly knowing each other well and a large working class. Many of the latter had come in from rural areas in search of work and had very poor living conditions indeed. The better off could afford nursing at home when ill but the sick poor could hope for little care until the Poor House was opened in 1774. It could only look after the destitute who became sick but the general population still needed both outpatient attention and inpatient nursing. As a result some of Belfast's philanthropists in 1792 met and decided to open a dispensary and on 27 April 1797 a house was taken as a hospital, in Factory Row (the present Berry Street).