Rahul Sharma (Editor)

Sunnyside Hospital

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Emergency department
  
No

Founded
  
1863

Closed
  
1999

Sunnyside Hospital httpsuploadwikimediaorgwikipediacommonsthu

Location
  
Christchurch, Canterbury Region, New Zealand

Similar
  
Tokanui Psychiatric Hospital, Lake Alice Hospital, Sunnyside Royal Hospital, Kingseat Hospital, Kaiser Sunnyside Medical

Sunnyside hospital hillside angus scotland


Sunnyside Hospital (1863-1999) was the first mental asylum to be built in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was initially known as Sunnyside Lunatic Asylum, and its first patients were 17 people who had previously been kept in the Lyttelton gaol. In 2007, Hilmorton Hospital is just one of the mental health services that are based on the old Sunnyside Hospital grounds.

Contents

Architecture

Sunnyside was primarily designed by the New Zealand Victorian Gothic architect, Benjamin Mountfort, with an administration building designed by John Campbell.

Staff

Edward William Seagar was the first superintendent of Sunnyside Hospital.

In 1995, four years before the hospital's closure, nurses walked off the job because of dangerous working conditions.

Notable patients

  • Rita Angus (1950) Artist
  • Janet Frame Writer. Frame described some of her experiences in Sunnyside Hospital in her autobiography An Angel at my Table, and her novel Faces in the Water.
  • [Mrs R. said it would] be a good idea for me to admit myself as a voluntary boarder to Sunnyside Mental Hospital where there was a new electric treatment, which, in her opinion, would help me. . . . I woke toothless and was admitted to Sunnyside Hospital and I was given the new electric treatment, and suddenly my life was thrown out of focus. I could not remember. I was terrified.

  • Mabel Howard ( - 23 June 1972) Union worker, politician, and New Zealand's first woman cabinet minister.
  • Richard Pearse (June 1951 - July 1953) Inventor and aviator. Pearce flight tested aircraft in New Zealand from 1902, and is reputed to have successfully flown on about 31 March 1903.
  • References

    Sunnyside Hospital Wikipedia