Hospitals & sanatoriums

Still from Out of the Shadows

Out of the Shadows c.1945

A film produced by the NSW Department of Health for the purpose of recruiting nurses for NSW Mental Health hospitals

Hand-coloured image of branch of tree with leaves, lemon and flowers.

Convicts and scorbutus at the General ‘Rum’ Hospital

Convicts who were lucky enough to survive the transportation voyage, often arrived at Sydney Cove suffering infectious disease or other illness, and were admitted directly to the colony’s General 'Rum' Hospital

Landscape crop of surgeon bleeding a patient into a bowl.

How the ‘Sidney Slaughter House’ got its name

During archaeological excavations at the Rum Hospital south wing (now The Mint) on Sydney’s Macquarie Street in 1980-81, a few small traces of the site’s dark and often painful past were discovered

Elevation of the General Hospital, Sydney, 1811

What was the ‘Rum’ Hospital?

Between 1816 and 1848, the General Hospital on Sydney’s Macquarie Street, provided medical care for the colony’s convict workforce