DONCASTER AND MEXBOROUGH JOINT HOSPITAL BOARD RECORDS

Comprising: minutes 1900-1945; ledgers 1901-1943; inventories 1932-1948; specifications and tender 1938; financial statements 1901-1936; other records 1900-1948

The Joint Hospital Board was established, under the provisions of section 279 of the Public Health Act, 1875, by the Local Government Board's Provisional Orders Confirmation (No. 11) Act, 1900 (see 5/1). Its function was to provide isolation hospital services to the area of the Doncaster Rural District and the Mexborough Urban District. As civil parishes in the area of the Rural District were raised to the status of Urban Districts, (Thurnscoe, Bentley with Arksey, Adwick le Street and finally Conisbrough, see section 5) they were formally made constituent authorities to retain their areas within that originally served by the joint hospital board.

The board provided two hospitals, a general isolation hospital and a smallpox hospital. A provisional joint committee, for which no records are extant, was in existence before the board held its first meeting on 26 September 1900. It was presumably this provisional committee that had provided a temporary isolation hospital from November 1899, located at Drakehead lane, which can be seen on the Ordnance Survey sheet in the edition of 1903. This functioned until a new hospital was opened in Common Lane (later Common Road), Conisbrough in March 1904.

The records of Conisbrough Hospital are to be found at Doncaster Archives reference HR/9, but no records survive earlier in date than 1940. However, a report book catalogued below (see 2/1) contains information about the hospital service from 1904 to 1920, and a brief review of the work in the temporary premises from 1899 to 1904. The authority was superseded by the arrangements made under the National Health Service Act, 1948. The papers of the clerk relating to the transfer of the service (see 5/ 13 to 5/16) contain summarised information not readily available elsewhere in the archive. Conisbrough Hospital was closed in the early 1990s.

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