St Vincent's Hospital on Victoria Street, Darlinghurst, is one of those places most Sydneysiders have been through at some stage, whether through the emergency doors at two in the morning or visiting someone on the wards. It started out much smaller. In 1857 five Irish Sisters of Charity opened a hospital for the poor in an old Potts Point mansion called Tarmons, and in 1870 they moved it up the hill to Darlinghurst. Behind them, raising the money and holding the land in trust, was John Hubert Plunkett, the colony's Attorney-General. In 1890 the same Sisters opened the Sacred Heart Hospice next door, which they say was the first hospice in Australia. In the 1980s St Vincent's was the front line of Sydney's AIDS crisis and the home of Victor Chang's heart transplant unit.
The Sisters of Charity Arrive – 1838
The story begins in Dublin. The Sisters of Charity were founded there in 1815 by Mother Mary Aikenhead to work among the poor, and in 1834 she opened St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin, where, in the hospital's own words, the poor could receive for love the same care the rich received for money.
Bishop John Bede Polding asked Aikenhead to send Sisters to New South Wales, mainly to help the convict women of the colony. Five volunteers came out on the Francis Spaight and landed in Sydney on 31 December 1838. They were Mother Mary John Cahill, who led the group, Sister Mary John Baptist De Lacy, Sister Mary Xavier Williams (still a novice), Sister Mary Lawrence Cater and Sister Mary Francis de Sales O'Brien. They were the first religious sisters to set foot in Australia.
Their early work was at the Female Factory at Parramatta, with the Catholic orphan school, in the Darlinghurst Gaol with prisoners and their families, and among the sick during the 1853 influenza outbreak. For all that, it took nearly twenty years before they had a hospital of their own.
Sister Mary John Baptist De Lacy
The driving force behind the hospital was Sister De Lacy. She was born Alicia De Lacy in Limerick on 1 July 1799 and joined the Sisters expressly to go on the Australian mission, making her profession on 25 September 1837. Before leaving Ireland she trained as a nurse at Aikenhead's new hospital in Dublin. St Vincent's College describes her as having the respect of many leading Catholic laymen, John Hubert Plunkett among them, and says she "took the courageous step of initiating St Vincent's Hospital Sydney, the first hospital run by religious women in Australia."
Tarmons, Potts Point – 1856 to 1870
Tarmons was a sandstone mansion on a five-acre block in Potts Point, built for Sir Maurice O'Connell, who bought the land in 1838 and named the house after his family's home in County Kerry. After O'Connell died in 1848 it went to Sir Charles Nicholson, who turned the ballroom into a library. When Nicholson decided to go home to England in 1855 he put it on the market for £10,000.
The Sisters needed a convent and wanted a hospital for the poor. The Dictionary of Sydney says leading citizens, Protestant, Catholic and Jewish, came together to raise the money, and Nicholson himself gave £1,000. St Vincent's College gives the purchase date as 8 February 1856. The Sisters moved in during March 1856, named the place St Vincent's Convent after St Vincent de Paul, and made Nicholson's library into their chapel.
Archbishop Polding blessed the convent and hospital in July 1857, and it opened a month later. The Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney says the hospital started with 22 beds, and that three of the founding Sisters were trained nurses who had trained in France. According to the 1866 Sydney Mail, as quoted by the History Girls blog, at first there was only a single ward for women. Sister De Lacy got a group of well-off ladies to give a bedstead, bed and bedding each to get it going.
From the start it was free and open to everyone, whatever their religion, just as Aikenhead's Dublin hospital was. That was unusual in a town as split between Catholic and Protestant as Sydney was then.
The Bible Row and De Lacy's Departure – 1859
That open-door policy soon caused trouble. Wikipedia, drawing on the Sydney papers of 1859, says a priest, Father Kenyon, took away the Protestant Bibles that had been provided for Protestant clergy visiting their patients. There was an outcry, and the Bibles were put back after an appeal to Archbishop Polding. Sister De Lacy was then removed as head of the hospital. The reasons given were partly the Bibles and partly a water pump she had put in without the order's direct approval, though many suspected her strained relations with Polding had more to do with it. The Australian Dictionary of Biography's entry on Polding says it was reported in May 1859 that she was going home because the vicar-general, Henry Gregory, had tried to discipline her in such a way that she resigned. She sailed for Ireland on the Star of Peace in 1859, to the distress of many lay Catholics, and spent her last twenty years in Dublin, dying on 12 December 1878.
Who Was John Plunkett?
The John Plunkett tied to St Vincent's is John Hubert Plunkett (1802–1869), the lawyer and politician I wrote about in John Plunkett – An Australian Hero. He was born in County Roscommon in June 1802, arrived in Sydney in June 1832 as Solicitor-General, and was Attorney-General from 1836. He was the first Catholic to hold high civil office in the colony. He's best known for the Church Act of 1836 and for prosecuting the Myall Creek murderers in 1838. He was also a founding member of the University of Sydney's Senate and later its vice-chancellor.
His link to the hospital is very direct. The sources say:
- The Australian Dictionary of Biography says he "took the leading role in establishing St Vincent's Hospital, Potts Point, under the management of the Irish Sisters of Charity" and had been a generous benefactor to the Sisters since they arrived.
- Australian Catholic University says he organised the public appeal for the Sisters' first hospital, then helped them get the narrow strip of land along Victoria Street, Darlinghurst, where the hospital moved in 1870.
- The Saint Vincent's Hospital Act 1912 records that the Darlinghurst land was granted on 17 January 1855 to Alicia de Lacy, John Hubert Plunkett and Sir Charles Nicholson, "upon trust for the erection of an hospital and residence for the Sisters of Charity."
- The Sisters of Charity's own archives say the lay Catholic community, "under the guidance of John Hubert Plunkett", raised the money to buy Tarmons.
- As the hospital's treasurer, the ADB says, he kept insisting that it stay non-denominational, and he backed Sister De Lacy in the 1859 row, criticising the archbishop's control of the hospital's affairs.
Today his name is on the Plunkett Centre for Ethics, set up in 1992 by St Vincent's Hospital and Australian Catholic University, on the Darlinghurst campus. I couldn't find any source for a Plunkett ward or building at the hospital itself. Plunkett died in East Melbourne on 9 May 1869, the year before the new hospital opened, and was buried in the old Devonshire Street cemetery.
There's no confusion with Saint Oliver Plunkett, the Irish archbishop martyred in 1681. He has nothing to do with the hospital.
Victoria Street, Darlinghurst – 1870
Tarmons was soon too small. With the Crown land grant and public fundraising behind them, the Sisters built a purpose-designed hospital on Victoria Street, and it opened in 1870. Wikipedia says it had 150 beds and was designed by the architect Oswald Lewis. After the First World War it was remodelled and enlarged, and it's known today as the De Lacy Building, after Sister De Lacy.
Back at Tarmons, the Sisters had opened a day school in 1858, and it grew into St Vincent's College. The old mansion stayed as their convent until most of it was pulled down for a new convent. The foundation stone for that was laid in 1939, but the war held up building until 1966. You can read more in my earlier post on Tarmons.
The Sacred Heart Hospice – 1890
The link between St Vincent's and the Sacred Heart is simple: the same Sisters of Charity started both, on the same corner of Darlinghurst. In 1890 they opened the Sacred Heart Hospice for the Dying in a small cottage next to St Vincent's. The Sisters and the hospital describe it as the first hospice in Australia, and the Dictionary of Sydney lists it as part of St Vincent's Hospital.
The hospice got a new building in 1988. In 1998, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, it opened a whole floor for AIDS patients at the end of life, which freed up beds on the hospital's AIDS ward. In 2013 the hospice joined with the rehabilitation service to become today's Sacred Heart Health Service. It provides palliative care and rehabilitation, and it's one of the three public hospitals that St Vincent's runs, along with St Vincent's Sydney and St Vincent's Melbourne. When the University of Notre Dame opened its Darlinghurst medical and nursing school in 2008, it was built on the site of the Sacred Heart Church and the old hospice building.
The hospital's former archivist, Anne Cooke, wrote the hospice's history, Open Wide the Doors: Sacred Heart Hospice 1890–2013, published in 2023. I haven't seen it myself, but it's on sale at the hospital.
Into the Twentieth Century
The Sisters of Charity's own timeline lists a long run of firsts and new departments at St Vincent's Sydney:
- 1908, a casualty department
- 1909, St Vincent's Private Hospital
- 1920, the first orthopaedic department in Australia
- 1923, approved by the University of Sydney Senate as a teaching hospital and clinical school (it moved to the University of New South Wales in 1968)
- 1937, an almoners' (social work) department
- 1945, physiotherapy and experimental medicine departments
- 1949, neurosurgery
- 1952, a cardiovascular unit
- 1967, a coronary care unit
Plenty of well-known Australians died at St Vincent's, including the cricketer Victor Trumper, Dame Nellie Melba and Prime Minister Joseph Lyons.
Heart Transplants and Victor Chang
Australia's first heart transplant was done at St Vincent's on 23 October 1968 by a team led by Harry Windsor. The patient, 57-year-old Richard Pye, lived for 45 days.
Victor Chang trained at St Vincent's and came back in 1972 as a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon. Anti-rejection drugs made transplants far more practical after 1980, and Chang raised money for a proper heart transplant program. In April 1984 his team gave 14-year-old Fiona Coote a new heart, making her Australia's youngest heart transplant patient at the time. Between 1984 and 1990 his unit did more than 197 heart transplants and 14 heart–lung transplants, and about 90 per cent of patients lived beyond the first year.
Chang was shot dead in Mosman on 4 July 1991 in a failed extortion attempt. His ashes lie under a memorial plaque in Green Park, right opposite the hospital. The Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute was launched in 1994, and the Lowy Packer Building at St Vincent's, named for him, opened in 2008. In 2014 St Vincent's did the world's first heart transplant from a donor whose heart had stopped (donation after circulatory death).
The AIDS Years and Ward 17 South
Being on the doorstep of Oxford Street and Kings Cross put St Vincent's right in the path of the AIDS epidemic. Australia's first AIDS patient was diagnosed and treated there, and Wikipedia credits Dr Ron Penny and Dr David Cooper with the diagnosis. In 1984 Ward 17 South became Australia's first dedicated HIV/AIDS ward. From the early to mid-1990s, Health Equity Matters says, its 36 beds were constantly full, and the hospital says it treated more than half of Australia's HIV-positive people. St Vincent's started Australia's first needle exchange in 1986, which was controversial at the time.
It was the Sisters, along with a group of determined doctors and nurses, who took on the care of these patients when many others wouldn't. In the 1980s and 1990s the ward staff had an unofficial float in the Mardi Gras parade, though they weren't allowed to put the St Vincent's name on it. Better drugs meant fewer people needed a hospital bed, and the ward closed in 2007, just before World AIDS Day. Many people protested the closure.
In 1983 St Vincent's also set up Australia's first specialised emergency department, under Dr Gordian Fulde, who ran it until 2016. Viewers will know it from the television series Kings Cross ER.
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St Vincent's Today
In 1996 St Vincent's joined the Sisters of Charity Health Service, and in 2009 the Sisters handed stewardship of St Vincent's Health Australia to Mary Aikenhead Ministries. The Darlinghurst campus now takes in St Vincent's Hospital, St Vincent's Private, the Sacred Heart Health Service, the Garvan Institute and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute. It's still funded as part of the New South Wales public health system.
Timeline
- 1815 – Mary Aikenhead founds the Sisters of Charity in Dublin.
- 1834 – She opens St Vincent's Hospital, Dublin.
- 31 December 1838 – Five Sisters arrive in Sydney on the Francis Spaight.
- 17 January 1855 – Darlinghurst land granted in trust to Alicia de Lacy, John Hubert Plunkett and Sir Charles Nicholson.
- 8 February 1856 – Tarmons, Potts Point, bought from Nicholson. The Sisters move in that March.
- July–August 1857 – Polding blesses the convent and hospital, which opens a month later.
- 1858 – The Sisters open a day school at Tarmons, the start of St Vincent's College.
- 1859 – The Bible row. Sister De Lacy leaves for Ireland.
- 9 May 1869 – John Hubert Plunkett dies in East Melbourne.
- 1870 – The hospital moves to the new building on Victoria Street, Darlinghurst.
- 1890 – Sacred Heart Hospice for the Dying opens next door.
- 1908 – Casualty department established.
- 1909 – St Vincent's Private Hospital opens.
- 1920 – First orthopaedic department in Australia.
- 1923 – Becomes a University of Sydney teaching hospital.
- 23 October 1968 – Australia's first heart transplant, by Harry Windsor's team.
- 1983 – Australia's first specialised emergency department.
- 1984 – Victor Chang's team operates on Fiona Coote. Ward 17 South opens as Australia's first dedicated HIV/AIDS ward.
- 1986 – Australia's first needle exchange program.
- 1988 – New Sacred Heart Hospice building.
- 4 July 1991 – Victor Chang murdered.
- 1992 – The Plunkett Centre for Ethics is set up.
- 1998 – Sacred Heart Hospice opens a dedicated AIDS floor.
- 2007 – Ward 17 South closes.
- 2008 – Victor Chang Lowy Packer Building opens. Notre Dame opens on the Sacred Heart site.
- 2009 – Stewardship passes to Mary Aikenhead Ministries.
- 2013 – Sacred Heart Hospice becomes part of the Sacred Heart Health Service.
- 2014 – World's first heart transplant after circulatory death.
Where the Sources Disagree
- When the Sisters arrived. The hospital and the Sisters' records give 31 December 1838. The Australian Dictionary of Biography's Plunkett entry says 1839, probably counting from when they started work.
- A hospital in 1847? Wikipedia's article on Sister De Lacy says she opened a hospital in Woolloomooloo in 1847. The hospital, the Dictionary of Sydney and the Sisters' own records all put the first hospital at Tarmons in 1857, and the hospital says it was 20 years after the Sisters arrived before they could open one. I've gone with 1857.
- Potts Point or Woolloomooloo? Some sources, including an old St Vincent's Health annual report, describe Tarmons as being in Woolloomooloo. Today the site is counted as Potts Point.
- When De Lacy left. The ADB's Plunkett entry dates Plunkett's criticism of the archbishop to 1858. The Polding entry and the newspapers of the day put the resignation and departure in May–June 1859.
- Plunkett's appointment. Australian Catholic University says he was appointed Solicitor-General in 1830. The ADB says he arrived in Sydney in June 1832, and an ANU thesis gives his appointment as October 1831.
- The Sacred Heart Hospice opening. Nearly every source says 1890. The Mary Aikenhead Ministries timeline also lists "Sacred Heart Hospice, Darlinghurst opens" under 1912, which may be a new building. I couldn't confirm what that entry refers to.
- Fiona Coote's operation. Wikipedia's hospital article says 7 April 1984, but its Victor Chang article says 8 April 1984.
- The first AIDS diagnosis. Wikipedia says October 1982. Health Equity Matters says Associate Professor Ron Penny diagnosed Australia's first AIDS case in October 1983, and that the patient was admitted to the immunology ward in the Cahill Building, which it calls "Ward 7 South". The hospital marked 40 years of Ward 17 South in 2024.
My Earlier Posts
- Tarmons – Rockwall Crescent / Macleay Street – Potts Point – NSW
- John Plunkett – An Australian Hero
- Darlinghurst Gaol & Darlinghurst Court – Forbes Street & Taylor Square – Darlinghurst – NSW
- Devonshire Street Cemetery – The Burial Ground Under Central Station
- West Street – Darlinghurst
- Sydney Hospital – Macquarie Street – August 2021
- Crown Street Women's Hospital – Darlinghurst – Surry Hills
Sources
- St Vincent's Hospital Sydney, "Facility heritage", svhs.org.au
- St Vincent's Hospital Sydney, "Sacred Heart Health Service", svhs.org.au
- St Vincent's Hospital Sydney, "Sacred Heart History: Open Wide the Doors", 4 October 2023, svhs.org.au
- St Vincent's Hospital Sydney, "St Vincent's celebrates at Mardi Gras 2024", 13 March 2024, svhs.org.au
- Samantha Frappell, "Tarmons", Dictionary of Sydney, 2012, dictionaryofsydney.org
- Dictionary of Sydney, "St Vincent's Hospital" and "Sacred Heart Hospice", St Vincent's, Sacred Heart
- T. L. Suttor, "Plunkett, John Hubert (1802–1869)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 2, 1967, adb.anu.edu.au
- Bede Nairn, "Polding, John Bede (1794–1877)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 2, 1967, adb.anu.edu.au
- Australian Catholic University, "About John Hubert Plunkett" and "About the Centre", acu.edu.au
- Saint Vincent's Hospital Act 1912 (NSW), Schedule 1, AustLII
- Sisters of Charity Congregational Archives, "Sydney's first Catholic schools", Pioneer Sites, 2013, pioneersites.wordpress.com
- St Vincent's College, "History" and "De Lacy House", History, De Lacy House
- Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, "St Vincent's Hospital", sydneycatholic.org
- Mary Aikenhead Ministries, "Our Heritage", maryaikenheadministries.com.au
- Australian Catholic Historical Society, "Australian Catholic Charities", australiancatholichistoricalsociety.com.au
- St Vincent's Health Australia, Annual Report 2010–11, svph.org.au
- The History Girls, "Sister Mary John Baptist de Lacy: The Irish Sister and the English Bishop", February 2019 (quoting the Sydney Mail, 1866), the-history-girls.blogspot.com
- Health Equity Matters, "Life during wartime: nursing on the frontline at Ward 17 South", healthequitymatters.org.au
- Wikipedia, "St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney", en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Mary Baptist De Lacy", en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Sisters of Charity of Australia", en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Victor Chang", en.wikipedia.org
- Images: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each picture.