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Wrington ARCHIVE Dr Edward Horatio Walker Swete, MD |
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Wrington ARCHIVE Dr Edward Horatio Walker Swete, MD |
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| The website was delighted to receive from Hilary Everitt, who lives in Canada, an offer of information and photographs of some of her ancestors who lived in Wrington, in particular Dr 'Horace' Swete, the founder of the Cottage Hospital Movement, and Medical Officer to Wrington Hospital [see article by Dr Norman Tricks]. Apart from the references to her family, there are other references to Wrington to interest the historian. Coincidentally, this all comes just a year after Elizabeth Ashley, also living in Canada, inquired for information about her ancestor, Dr Charles Young, which had also revealed some significant connections with Wrington's history, especially the origin of the Reading Room, and the Cottage Hospital. Dr Young was the second of two doctors in the 1860s listed by Dr Tricks, the other being Horace Swete ! |
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| Dr Swete, known as Horace, was born in Westbury, Gloucester in 1825 and was a surgeon at Wrington, Somerset and founder of the Cottage Hospital movement. He was the 3rd son of Rev Dr John Swete and Bridget Rogers. In 1857 he married Sarah Anne Bayley daughter of Rev. William Henry Ricketts Bayley MA of Jamaica, Barbados and Somerset, he was also Vicar of Nailsea in 1886, they were married in Lugwardine, Hereford, England. They were the parents of nine children including Edward Lyall Swete, well-known Shakespearian actor and Dr. Minnie Bridget Anne Swete Knight MD wife of Rev. Henry Joseph Corbett Knight, Bishop of Gibraltar in 1911-1920. |
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| Horace and "Aunt Hettie" Henrietta Lucia Swete, (b1861) his cousin, both did a lot of research into the family history and exchanged notes and information. Horace and some of his family signed Henrietta's autograph book which is in the possession of Leonie Kluveson in Australia. The family lived, among other places, at Lower Wyke Lodge, Worcester, England, and at Langford House, Seaton, Devonshire where he died in 1912. The following editorial from The Builder 1868 Vol XXVI p145 . 29th February 1868 gives us an idea of how important the Cottage Hospital was. Cottage Hospitals The first attempt to establish a cottage hospital was made at Cranley in 1859, and we lost no time in bringing it under the favorable notice of our readers. Since then many others have been established, and in seven years, or in 1866, there were 16 in full work, and no less than 67 in course of establishment. Nevertheless a great many more are needed throughout the country. It has been calculated, on satisfactory data, that to supply the proper amount of hospital accommodation in rural districts, setting aside London and the six principal cities - one bed to every thousand inhabitants is the requisite proportion. Taking Mr. Swete's statistics as the basis of the calculation; it appears that there are no less than 9 millions of people in Great Britain unprovided with hospital accommodation. To meet this state of things 9,000 more beds are required; and allowing six beds on an average, to each hospital, there is scope and necessity for 1,500 cottage hospitals, scattered throughout the country, to meet the demand. The advantages of cottage hospitals in villages, and even in towns, are many. Besides those which affect the patients themselves of which we will hereafter speak, there are other benefits which ought not to be lost sight of. Country surgeons and physicians are often obliged to send off their poorer patients to some county hospitals where they and their cases are lost sight of either partially or entirely, and valuable experience is thus lost to country surgeons and physicians which they might bring to bear upon any class. It is thus decidedly for the interest of the well to do classes in villages and small towns to support any movement for the establishment of a cottage hospital where it may be requisite in their own immediate district. The bringing of patients near the local surgeons and physicians where cottage hospitals are conveniently situated is an important point too. As regards the patients themselves the advantages are various. It cannot but be promotive of cure in many cases where patients are not saddened by isolation from every relative of friend in a town or county hospital, even were their position favorable otherwise to their restoration to health; but of this there is good reason to doubt. We find it stated by some authorities that the proportion of deaths in cottage hospitals is no greater than in the London hospitals, where the most eminent and experienced surgeons of the day are engaged. This itself is much to say, but we are not inclined to accept as anything like all that can be said in favor of cottage hospitals. Even were no larger proportion of cures effected in them than in London hospitals, a most important question to the poor man remains to be investigated, namely, how long time on average it will take to cure any given case in a London hospital by comparison with the time requisite for just such a case in a cottage hospital. Of course, much depends on the stamina, and on other conditions; but something like reliable statistics, we think, might be ascertained on so material and important a point to a poor head of a family. The assertion that as many deaths in proportion occur in cottage hospitals with some half-dozen patients in each, as in the London hospitals - for that is what the ostensible recommendation, to which we have alluded, of cottage hospitals by comparison with the London hospitals comes to, - we are by no means inclined to rest satisfied with in the face of the following declaration - not as to cases in cottage hospitals certainly, but as to those in cottage and other homes, to which the nearest thing is a cottage hospital. The cases referred to are not such as are casually treated in cottage hospitals, neither nor indeed in London hospitals with certain exceptions - they are cases of child-birth in cottages and other homes on the one hand, and in town maternity hospitals on the other. The differences in mortality in these respectively is enormous, and we cannot think that as between cottage hospitals and town or county hospitals in other cases such a difference can be all at once reduced to nil. Sir. James Y. Simpson, one of the highest authorities in the kingdom on such a subject as that on which he writes, says, in a letter to The Times - on Hospital Reform :- "In my address to the Public Health Section of the Social Science Congress at Belfast, I stated, as the result of Dr. Leon Le Fort's semi-official investigations, that out of 934,781 parturient women delivered at their own poor and often very wretched homes, 4,405 died, or 1 in every 212; while out of 888,512 delivered in maternity hospitals, where every kind of professional care and comfort was bestowed upon them, 30,394 died or 1 in every 29. These statistics apply to hospital practice as compared with dispensary or home practice among the same class of women in the leading cities and medical schools of Europe. To the general law of excessive mortality of hospital as compared with home practice, London is no exception. I find from the statistics published by Dr.Barnes that out of 4,000 women confined in the 4 chief maternity hospitals of London 142 or 1 in every 28, whilst out of 18,383 confined at their own homes as dispensary or out-patients in connection with the hospitals of St. Thomas and Guy, 53 died or in every 346. That something similar must occur in any extensive enough statistical comparison of the general mortality in London hospitals on the one hand, and cottage hospitals on the other, we have no doubt. Considering the good they do, cottage hospitals are most economical and easily supported establishments. In an account of them by Dr. Andrew Wynter in Good Words, for May 1866, he gives the following statement of the receipts and expenditure at the Cranley Cottage Hospital during four years 1859 to 1863 for 100 patients. Receipts Donations and Subscriptions 542-05-05 From Patients 131-04-06 Expenditure For Patients, salaries, wine, beer 411-05-05 Insurance, & printing 34-17-06 Repairs and improvements 73-11-04 Furniture 92-11-06 If we divide the total expenditure by 4, we find that the annual cost, including furniture and repairs, was but little more than £150 per annum; and, indeed, that the cost of the patients but little exceeded £100 for the treatment of 25 patients or £5 at the total cost of each case. This cost is not all paid by subscription or donation; on the contrary, the hospitals are made as far as possible self supporting, after they are once established, by weekly payments from the patients or their friends, who, under careful supervision, are also allowed to provide food etc. In this case the sum contributed on the part of patients themselves was £131, an example of independence to our London artisans and others of the poorer classes. Memorial cottage hospitals are not a bad idea if the limits be not extended, and the purposes be confined simply to the cure of such cases as those at present undertaken in cottage hospitals. When the erection of a cottage hospital is contemplated, the best plan is to place the matter in the hands of a respectable local architect, with instructions to conform as nearly as possible to the character of the neighboring cottages, striving, however, for as much air and light as possible. The rooms required, according to Dr. Waring in - Cottage Hospitals by E.J.Waring M.D. 1867. "upstairs 1 men's ward for 3 beds - 7 a kitchen |
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