History

The Royal Hobart Hospital (RHH) is one of the oldest hospitals in Australia, founded in the early months of British settlement in 1804. Maps and sketches by surveyor G.P. Harris circa 1804 and 1805 indicate that hospital accommodation was provided on the northern side of the Hobart Rivulet on the current hospital site. Patients were treated in tents, wooden huts or a series of rented premises before the first purpose-built hospital – the “new general hospital’ – opened in 1820. It was Lachlan Macquarie, Governor of New South Wales, who ordered the construction of this first hospital building during his visit to Van Diemen’s Land in 1811 - the same governor who in 1810 set aside land for the building of Sydney’s first permanent hospital in Macquarie Street (later known as “The Rum Hospital”). The original two-storey 1820 building contained six wards and could comfortably accommodate 56 patients, although there are accounts of 70-plus patients being squeezed.

The growth of the colony brought a continuous demand for more beds and new buildings. In 1843 a new hospital opened nearby on Liverpool Street. Noted for its “handsome style of construction”, this sandstone building endured through a lot of other redevelopment over the following century to be eventually demolished in the late 1930s as the new acute building, today known as “C” block, opened.

As the colony expanded, the hospital continued to grow on the site which we now know as the city block bounded by Liverpool, Collins, Argyle and Campbell Street. Each passing decade saw old buildings replaced by more modern structures. Like most other hospitals, redevelopment work has always gone on, and many millions of dollars have gone into the modern facilities available today.

In 1937 the title of “Royal” was conferred on the hospital, together with a coat of arms incorporating heraldry representing a teaching hospital located in the City and Port of Hobart. The Latin motto underneath the arms is translated as To Care With Compassion.

The post war decades were characterised by further physical development and the hospital obtaining postgraduate recognition in many specialities and reaching the status of an undergraduate teaching hospital. Between 1995 and 1999 a series of significant projects were undertaken to upgrade and redevelop nearly 80% of the campus to support its status as a tertiary and teaching centre. Also in 1999, the Hobart Private Hospital was co-located on to the RHH site, occupying the Queen Alexandra Wing. Recent developments have included a new $15.4m Emergency Department opened in March 2007 and the “infill” building completed in late 2007 containing the State’s first combined neonatal and paediatric intensive care unit, an expanded pain management clinic, two new operating theatres and recovery rooms and additional support areas.