BILL McALLISTER: Maternity care in Inverness has been a story of progress over years
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More than 2000 babies a year are born in Raigmore Hospital, with an excellent local midwifery network, a stark contrast to past times, with 95 per cent of all births being at home just over a century ago.
Unregulated midwives gave support in the 17th and 18th centuries, often with knowledge of herbal remedies. In 19th century rural Highlands the midwife often lived with mother and baby for several days.
The Royal Northern Infirmary may have been a medical marvel for Inverness, but it did not see maternity as one of its core provisions, tackling only the “difficult” cases. Impoverished mothers to be, and those unmarried, had little option but to go to Hilton Poorhouse.
The area’s first dedicated maternity facility was the Families Maternity Hospital at Fort George. Opened prior to 1914, it had only three beds.
The Hon Ida Merry was a public-spirited woman. The granddaughter of Baron Macdonald of Sleat, in 1899 she married Archibald Merry, who had inherited Belladrum Estate. In 1919 she opened the Ida Merry Maternity Home at 101 Church Street, free to expectant mothers, and busied herself raising funds for it.
In 1930 it was agreed to look for bigger premises and next year the house “Craigmonie” in Annfield Road was acquired following the death of prominent local solicitor William MacKay who had built it in 1880.
The Church Street venue was sold to the YMCA for the Flora Macdonald Centre and what is today’s Craigmonie Hotel became the Ida Merry Maternity Home and Bowmont Centre for the Wives of Working Men.
Mrs Merry’s good contacts were underlined by the opening ceremony, 91 years ago next week, being performed by Lady Dawkins, Queen Mary’s lady in waiting.
Fetes at Belladrum were among the fundraising ventures to keep the home functioning.
Inverness did have maternity homes for those who could pay, including Viewhill, former home of engineer James Mitchell, and St Margarets.
Rossal, built in Island Bank Road in 1873 as a family residence for a doctor, was altered to open as a maternity home for paying customers before the First World War. More recently it has been transformed into apartments.
Meanwhile, Inverness Town Council was unsuccessfully pressing the Royal Northern Infirmary to admit maternity patients as a matter of course.
Eventually, responding to mounting concern about childbirth deaths and lack of adequate maternity provision, the council opened the Victorian mansion Rosedene, 2 Drummond Crescent, which had been the Northern Counties Children’s Home, as the burgh’s first public maternity hospital in March 1940.
Rosedene, built in 1880, represented a major step forward with its 16 bedrooms, and the role of privately-owned maternity homes diminished, with Ida Merry, Rossal – later a care home – and others closing before the advent of the NHS in 1948 ensured free care for all.
Raigmore, the emergency wartime hospital which was beginning to blossom as a general services facility, converted its isolation unit to a maternity ward in 1947, leading to the closure of Rosedene in 1951.
A handsome Grade B listed building, Rosedene later became a women’s refuge, children’s home, a care home and beauty parlour and is now being adapted into a 10-unit aparthotel.
In 1948 Hilton Poorhouse was renamed Muirfield Institution and Hospital, dealing with chronic sick people, “certified mental patients” and pregnant women!
Raigmore opened a state of the art maternity unit in January 1988, on ground vacated when the last wooden huts were cleared.
Mums-to-be received, and still do, treatment that could hardly have been dreamed of a century ago.
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Column sponsored by Ness Castle Lodges.
