Forgotten for more than 50 years, Dunedin's former infectious diseases hospital is finally getting some attention. Kim Dungey pays a visit.
It began routinely enough and culminated in a forgotten Dunedin building being ranked one of New Zealand's most significant.
The former "fever hospital" near Logan Park was recently listed as a category 1 historic place.
But the story lurking within its modest walls was previously unknown even to those working at the Historic Places Trust.
The file landed there last year when the University of Otago sought permission to sell the century-old building it had been using for student accommodation.
As the trust's Susan Irvine undertook a heritage assessment - one of the usual checks involved with the disposal of Crown land - she pieced together a colourful tale of public campaigns and changing attitudes to child welfare.
Better living conditions and medicines, especially antibiotics, eventually helped eliminate diseases such as scarlet fever as a major cause of childhood death and illness.
But in Victorian New Zealand, infectious diseases, particularly childhood ones such as diphtheria and scarlet fever, were rife.
Between 1860 and 1916, passengers from 43 vessels were isolated on Quarantine Island in Otago Harbour and in the 1870s the Dunedin City Council opened a fever hospital in the town belt. However, the standard of care resulted in the local authority being taken to court and the hospital closing after only a year.
In 1903, the Government placed responsibility for infectious diseases cases with local hospital boards and pressure mounted on the Otago board to provide a suitable facility.
Periodic epidemics, often affecting children, added intensity to the campaign, Irvine says.
Before then, children were viewed as incomplete human beings with a fragile hold on life, in whom it was wasteful to devote too much care and attention. However, in the last decades of the 19th century a new nationalism meant children were seen as the source of future survival and progress.
The children's ward, which opened at Dunedin Hospital in 1899, was one result of this more enlightened view of children and the revolution in child health that was spreading throughout the Western world. The first Karitane Hospital - forerunner of the Plunket Society - was established in 1907 and the infectious diseases hospital opened in September the following year.
Although the latter was not specifically for children, the image of the "poor child who was suffering and had nowhere to go" was a useful one to employ.
Scarlet fever occurred mostly in children aged 4 to 8 and in the late 19th century overtook diphtheria as the leading cause of childhood death from infectious diseases.
In 1902, it resulted in 32 deaths in Dunedin, compared with nine each in Auckland and Wellington.
Patients were kept in hospital for six weeks and only allowed to speak to visitors through a window for fear the contagious bacterial infection would spread.
Newspaper editorials spoke about the need for urgent action, the Otago Witness using emotive language to describe four sick children found bedded together in a Dunedin cottage: "The colour had been drained from the wan little faces and lay in one hectic spot on each pale cheek. Flaxen hair lay tossed on the makeshift for a pillow, and wasted hands lay listless on the coverlet."
A suitably isolated spot for a fever hospital had been identified at Pelichet Bay on the shores of Lake Logan (now Logan Park). But the Defence Department refused to surrender the land, which it used as a rifle range, and local authorities successfully argued that they should not have to contribute financially.
Finally, in 1906, the Defence Minister sanctioned a portion of the bay to be leased to the Health Department and plans were prepared by Patrick Young Wales, a partner with his father in New Zealand's oldest architectural practice, Mason and Wales.
Wales' drawings were based on the pavilion plan, an international trend in hospital design championed by the likes of Florence Nightingale. Separate wards or "pavilions" provided a greater degree of segregation than before to impede the spread of disease, and more attention was given to ventilation, drainage, a clean water supply and an outside area for patients' recreation.
The wooden and plaster building comprised a central block, with rectangular wings on either side that were linked at the rear to small pavilions. Fresh air wafted in through tall windows and iron vents in the bedrooms.
An outbuilding served as disinfectant room and morgue.
Bed numbers grew from eight to 20, with other infectious cases such as measles and diphtheria also being accommodated.
But the hospital was under threat as early as 1915, when local doctors complained about conditions.
In 1924 the district medical officer of health, Dr A. R. Falconer, described it as a glorified rabbit hutch and the "Cinderella" of the Otago Hospital Board's institutions: "Even the poor from the London slums get far better accommodation in fever hospitals throughout London than do the Dunedin children ..."
New Zealand Truth also waded into the debate, claiming the hospital's "antiquity of design and depressing environments" were a disgrace.
The facility did close in 1924 when the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition was being held at neighbouring Logan Park and the hospital was considered an unsuitable neighbour.
But it reopened in 1926 and soldiered on while the board delayed spending money on either updating the facilities or building new ones at Wakari Hospital.
It was not until 1952 that it closed its doors to patients and 1959 that it was bought by the university. Once used as flats for final-year medical students, it now lies empty.
The property is under contract to Ngai Tahu, which has a right of first refusal on surplus Crown land in the region. Spokeswoman Helen Keegan expected it would take a "month or so" for the sale to be settled and did not want to comment on its plans.
Ironically, the fact the building was unloved and unmodified is what makes it so interesting.
The property is significant not only because it is one of only two remaining purpose-built infectious diseases hospitals in New Zealand, but because it is in almost original condition, Irvine says.
"This is rare indeed and provides a tantalising glimpse into early 19th-century fever hospital conditions."
• SCARLET FEVER
Scarlet fever is caused by the Group A streptococcus bacteria and typically spread by coughing and sneezing. Symptoms include a fever, sore throat, "strawberry" tongue and sandpapery rash. An abnormally high production of antibodies can result in rheumatic fever. Once a major cause of death, it is now effectively treated with antibiotics. However, pockets of drug-resistant scarlet fever have sprung up over the past few decades. In June this year, one such strain emerged in Hong Kong, killing the first children there in a decade.
• HISTORIC PLACES
The "historic place" listing does not legally protect the property but the Historic Places Trust has asked the Dunedin City Council to place it on its district plan schedule of heritage buildings. Owners of such properties need to go through a resource consent process if they want to demolish them or make major modifications. However, no further properties are being added until a review of the schedule and the district plan have been completed.
