By 1896 the “Annex” for imbecile and violent patients was begun in the spring and completed in the autumn. The summer of 1897 saw its opening and the erection of an infirmary. On September 11th, the asylum was visited by the psychological section of the British Medical Association that gathered in Montreal on the occasion of the first meeting of the society outside the British Isles.
In 1898 the pathological laboratory, donated by Mr. G.B. Burland, was installed under the direction of Dr. Andrew McPhail. The “East” house in contradistinction to the Annex or “West” house was completed and opened. This summer the asylum was visited by the Medico-Psychological Association, the oldest of American Medical societies then holding its fifty-eighth annual meeting in Montreal.
In 1907 the Hadley farm of sixty acres adjoining the hospital was purchased and donated at the cost of $42,000 by a Canadian gentleman, Dr. James Douglas, of New York. In the same year the addition of a power house and other lighting and water supply improvements cost the establishment about one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.
In 1909 a new annex, known as the North West House, was opened on September 16th. The capacity of the buildings in 1910 was for a population of 680. The institution at the end of its twenty-first year had 366 cases, of which nearly forty per cent have been discharged as cured. The asylum which has acted for the Protestants of the Province has certainly a good record to show.
THE CIVIC HOSPITALS
After the great epidemic of smallpox in 1885, when the sick were isolated or treated in temporary buildings, erected on the old exhibition grounds, the City Council on January 13, 1886, named a commission to choose a site for the erection of a civic smallpox hospital. In consequence of which, on May 25, 1886, the city bought the Robert property situated in the Hochelaga Ward, north of Moreau Street. This hospital was demolished and reconstructed in 1912. It is administered by the hygiene department of the City Hall for smallpox cases.
The steps leading to their erection follow:
Until 1904 there had been only the Civic Hospital on Moreau Street for contagious diseases—a totally inadequate provision in a large city. In 1901, on January 23d, the city council received an offer by Sister Filiatrault, superior general of the Grey Nuns, offering to contribute $50,000 for a contagious disease hospital for Catholics on the condition that the city should contribute a like amount with an annual subvertion of $10,000. A week later the Montreal General Hospital and the Royal Victoria Hospital made a similar offer for the general population.
This being accepted, the Catholic hospital, St. Paul’s, at 656 Maisonneuve Street, was in operation by 1904 under the direction of the Notre Dame Hospital, but the Alexandra Hospital, owing to several hitches, was not opened till July 9, 1906, its incorporation being granted in 1903 to James Crathern, Richard B. Angus and Charles F. Smith.
The hospital is erected at the foot of Charron Street and the river bounds it on the south and east.