Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham - Origins of The Hospital and The Medical School

Origins of The Hospital and The Medical School

A variety of charitable hospitals opened in Birmingham between 1817, when the Orthopaedic Hospital opened, and 1881, when the Skin Hospital served its first patients. One of these, Queens Hospital, established in 1840 by a young local surgeon William Sands Cox, was predominantly for clinical instruction for the medical students of Birmingham. In 1884 these institutions, including Cox’s medical school, united as part of the University of Birmingham, on its new campus in Edgbaston. In 1922, Alderman W. A. Cadbury opposed the extension of the General Hospital in the city centre, and a new hospital in Edgbaston was proposed. Five years later an Executive Board for the building of this hospital, at an estimated cost of £1,000,000, was formed. Around five-sixths of the money was to be dedicated to the hospital and one sixth to the University for the construction of the Medical School and in 1929 plans were drawn up for a 600-bed centre that would encourage clinical teaching of medicine, surgery, therapeutics, midwifery, diseases of women, ophthalmology, ENT, orthopaedics, dermatology, venereal disease and radiology. Britain was then in a period of financial crisis and there was controversy over the expense so in April 1930 an appeal to build the Queen Elizabeth Hospital was launched and by the following year donations exceeded £600,000 enabling construction to start in 1933. The building ultimately cost £1,029,057, which was £129,406 less than the money raised by donations.