but it has received many additions since then, having been enlarged in
1792, 1830, 1842, 1857 (in which year a new wing was erected, nominally
out of the proceeds of a fête at Aston, which brought in £2,527 6s.
2d.), 1865, and during the last few years especially. The last additions
to the edifice consist of a separate "home" for the staff of nurses,
utilising their former rooms for the admittance of more patients; also
two large wards, for cases of personal injury from fire, as well as a
mortuary, with dissecting and jury rooms, &c., the total cost of these
improvements being nearly £20,000. For a long period, this institution
has ranked as one of the first and noblest charities in the provinces,
its doors being opened for the reception of cases from all parts of the
surrounding counties, as well as our own more immediate district. The
long list of names of surgeons and physicians, who have bestowed the
benefits of their learning and skill upon the unfortunate sufferers,
brought within its walls, includes many of the highest eminence in the
profession, locally and otherwise, foremost among whom must be placed
that of Dr. Ash, the first physician to the institution, and to whom
much of the honour of its establishment belongs. The connection of the
General Hospital with the Triennial Musical Festivals, which, for a
hundred years, have been held for its benefit, has, doubtless, gone far
towards the support of the Charity, very nearly £112,000 having been
received from that source altogether, and the periodical collections on
Hospital Sundays and Saturdays, have still further aided thereto, but it
is to the contributions of the public at large that the governors of the
institution are principally indebted for their ways and means. For the
first twenty-five years, the number of in-patients were largely in
excess of the out-door patients, there being, during that period, 16,588
of the former under treatment, to 13,009 of the latter. Down to 1861,
rather more than half-a-million cases of accident, illness, &c., had
been attended to, and to show the yearly increasing demand made upon the