Brunswick Place, Eye Hospital

HER Number

7890

District

Newcastle

Site Name

Brunswick Place, Eye Hospital

Place

Newcastle

Map Sheet

NZ26SW

Class

Health and Welfare

Site Type: Broad

Hospital

Site Type: Specific

Eye Hospital

General Period

POST MEDIEVAL

Specific Period

Hanoverian 1714 to 1837

Form of Evidence

Documentary Evidence

Description

In 1822 Doctor Fife opened a hospital for diseases of the eye in Brunswick Place. 7000 patients were treated in the first nine years. This was the same Doctor Fife who, in 1829, lectured on anatomy using the body of a "most disgusting and abandoned female", who had been sentenced to death at the Assizes and taken by cart to the gallows on the Town Moor sitting on her own coffin. 20,000 people came to watch the execution, after which her body was exhibited for six hours in the Surgeon's Hall.

Easting

424800

Northing

564500

Grid Reference

NZ424800564500

Sources

P. Winter, D Milne, J Brown, A Rushworth, 1989, Northern Heritage - Newcastle upon Tyne, p 116; Geoffrey Fisher & Rev. Terry Hurst, North East Methodist History Society, 2009, Brunswick Place 1821-1992, Newcastle upon Tyne, page 12