Leith WW! Rolls of Honour

INTRODUCTION:

Leith WW1 Memorial – Leith Hospital Children’s Wing.

During WW1 from a population of 84,000 in Leith 14,200 enlisted for duty.
Two Thousand, Two Hundred and Five of these were to make the eternal sacrifice for their country and town.
Leith Hospital had been used during the war, progressively for the treatment of the war wounded from all sections of the military. Members of the public in need of treatment either had to have this administered at home or at other hospitals less fully occupied by the war wounded.
The staffing of the hospital had also been depleted by the war effort, Surgeons,, Doctors, Nurses and porters alike being used in other ‘more important’ roles.
The finances of the hospital, as with other ‘voluntary’ hospitals was mainly achieved by public subscription, donation or from benefactors acknowledging the work of the hospitals in their local community.
This was further impede by the then Chancellor Lloyd–George, who in 1911 proposed that the means of funding all medical treatments would be by the institution of the National Insurance Act. This act decreed that insurance against sickness and unemployment was to be paid for by contributions from the state, the employer, and employee. This of course meant a large area of voluntary contributions to hospitals and other like charities, were now re-routed to the National Insurance Scheme. The workers, probably most in need of the hospital service could no longer afford to contribute to both and benefactors saw less need to reward a state organisation.
The expected fall in contributions and donations came about to the extent that in 1913 the Treasurer to the Hospital ascribed the fall off in such funds to ’The malign influence of this terrible insurance tax bogy’ The prolonged Dockers’ strike in the port also had a bearing on the donations, but the main factor was the insurance act.
People collecting for the hospital often recalled that on many occasions the response to requests for donations was ‘You had better apply to the Chancellor of the Exchequer’.
Shortly after the end of hostilities thought was being given by the town of a suitable war memorial to those who had died.
At the same time the hospital board, still in financial difficulties formed a committee to further its own interests and in 1919 a committee was formed to consider the way the hospital would develop in the post war years.
Together with all the other facilities the Hospital Board were anxious to install, there was a strong public desire for a children’s ward, and monies were to be raised for that in it’s own right independent of all the other requirements seen to be necessary.
An inspirational, if not audacious scheme thought of by provost Lindsay, who was to become the last Leith Provost on the unwanted amalgamation with Edinburgh, and a member of the hospital Board of Management, that the children’s ward should become the Leith WW1 memorial.
The Board accepted this plan and within a relatively short period of time the people of Leith stood firmly behind it. Funds from the community came in steadily and large sun=ms were donated by businesses and others to a point where early in 1920 plans for the alterations and additions to the hospital were being considered.
It was not until 1922 that detailed plans were produced by a Mr George Simpson and a consultant architect, Colonel McIntosh, appointed.
The eventual cost was to be around £40,000, but such was the generosity of the donations that sufficient funds remained for a endowment to be created for the future needs of what by this time a ‘wing’ rather than a ward.
The construction of and changes to other parts of the hospital to accommodate the ‘wing’ started in 1923 and consisting of: Surgical and medical wards, together with smaller wards for, observation, eye patients and eye, ear and throat patients, with 31 beds or cots ws opened in 1927.
Sir John Gilmour, Secretary of State for Scotland, on the front page of the opening programme emphasised the dual nature of the building as a War Memorial and a Children’s Wing of the hospital itself.
Later that year, Provost Lindsay, by now President of the Board of Management and representing the war memorial committee, formally handed over to the managers a copy of a resolution adopted by the committee including, the children’s wing and equipment thereof, additions to the nurses home and an Endowment of £31, 600 being the balance of the funds raised towards the establishment of such a wing.
The war memorial fund in addition to the building of this tangible memorial included a ‘Roll of Honour’ on which the names etc; of all known members of the Leith township and community were entered. This Roll of Honour was also entrusted to the managers of Leith Hospital.