Lady Superintendent | Private Hospital Grant Road

A private hospital opened in 1893 at 24 Grant Road. The hospital was run by Lady Superintendent, Mrs Hesk, formerly Staff-Nurse at London Hospital. She was assisted by Miss Godfray (also a Staff Nurse at London hospital) and Miss Squire (late of Wellington Hospital and formerly Head Nurse of Napier Hospital).

The price to stay at the hospital was 4 Guineas a week. Patients had to make their own arrangements for medical or surgical attendance and the hospital supplied the appropriate facilities to support this. The fee excluded surgical dressings, drugs, stimulants and personal laundry. Presumably these were available, but additional charges applied. The nurses were also available to attend patients in their own homes.

Miss Emma Wildman travelled out from England to join the hospital in June 1894. She worked as a nursing sister for nine years at Leeds Infirmary and was also a trained masseur. Mrs Hesk and Miss Wildman were sisters. Both were born in Colne, Lancashire – Emma in 1855 and Anne in 1857.

Anne married Dr Thomas Hesk in 1885 and was widowed a year later. She commenced nursing training at the London Hospital in 1888. After two years as a probationer, she was appointed Staff Nurse in the Queen Victoria Ward for children.

Evelyn (Eva) Florence Godfray started training at the London Hospital six months after Anne and they became friends. They both resigned after one year working as staff nurses and decided to follow Eva’s brother to New Zealand where he had set up a medical practice in Waipawa, Hawke’s Bay. They arrived at Napier on the S.S. Fifeshire in January 1892. The hospital opened in Grant Road the following year. It is not known how the hospital was financed or if the three women joined together to start it.

In late 1894, one patient at the hospital was Henry Elder who was a widow. In January 1895, Anne married Henry at St Paul’s Church. It was described as a quiet wedding. They lived at Henry’s home in Waikanae and had a family of three sons. Anne died in 1946.

After Anne left to get married, Eva became Lady Superintendent at the hospital until she was appointed Matron of the Waipukurau Hospital in 1897, then Danniverke in 1906 and Gisborne in 1909. She also nursed during the Boer War. Eva died in Auckland in 1958. There are no further advertisements for the Private Hospital after 1895 and so presumably Eva’s departure meant the closing of the establishment in 1897.

Ada Squire left the Grant Road hospital to became Lady Superintendent of Auckland Hospital in 1895. From 1898 onwards, she worked as a private nurse in Honolulu and died there in 1950.

Emma practised as a masseuse from rooms she let in Phoenix Chambers on Lambton Quay. She advertised that her massage training had been undertaken by Dr Fletcher-Little in London and that she studied Medical Electricity with Dr A. de Watteville. Emma died in 1914 at her home in Tinakori Road from heart failure following an acute attack of bronchitis. She was buried with her sister Anne in Waikanae. At her death, the newspaper wrote:

‘She was a lady in every sense of the word, incapable of a mean thought or action, quite unconventional, a friend, and sympathiser to all without distinction of class or creed: especially was the friend of young people, giving them wise advice in the brightest and most tactful and unobtrusive way’.

References:

Ancestry website document (shared by roseyw77)
Census UK (Ancestry)
Nursing Registers (Ancestry)
Paperspast