St PETER'S HOSPITAL (PART 2) - BLITZ VICTIM!

The Millers collected two cards of the 'Hospital' in 1906. This is the second one in black and white published by Frederick Hartmann (1902-1909), 45 Farringdon Street, London, England. Hartmann had his cards printed in Saxony and it is said that he was the first to issue a 'divided back card'. This one is numbered 2508.

The 'Hospital' had two nick names: the Sugar House and the Mint Workhouse. It was never a hospital in the sense that we use that word today.

It was a workhouse run by the Corporation.

But what was "the Corporation"?

"The Corporation of the Poor" was an innovative body set up by the City of Bristol to take on the job of managing poor relief in the city. The city created the Bristol Poor Act in 1696. The driving force behind the Act was the Bristol merchant John Cary.

The Act gave the Corporation the right to operate a joint poor relief system across the whole city, including the setting-up of workhouses and the appointment of paid officers. Over the next century, around thirty other cities followed Bristol's example, including Exeter in 1697, and Colchester, Crediton, Hereford, Kingston-upon-Hull, London, Shaftesbury, and Tiverton, all in 1698.

A first institution was set up for one hundred pauper girls in 1698 known as "the New Workhouse". In August 1699 the Corporation moved one hundred boys into the Sugar House complex. The premises had been used briefly as a Mint building by the City and so it then got another nickname the "Mint Workhouse". Some irony there I suppose!

"They were occupied in "spinning Cotten Wool, and weaving Fustians" for which they were able to generate the creditable income of £6 per week. The boys were also taught to read and (unlike the girls) to write. Next, elderly inmates were admitted. They were clothed and given "such Employments as were fit for their Ages and Strengths. Finally, young children were taken in and put in the care of nurses.

Despite Cary's rosy picture of the workhouse scheme, it was not without its critics. In 1711, an anonymous pamphlet claimed that the workhouse was "crowded with idle, Lazy and Lewd People". The economics of the scheme were also questioned with the cost of running the workhouse amounting to almost half of the annual poor rate (then £2,376 16s. 5d) for the benefit of 170 inmates. The Mint Workhouse later became St Peter's Hospital and from 1901 served as the Board of Guardians' offices."
http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Bristol/

"People from all over the world visited this historic building to see the ornate carvings, the Old Court Room being a particular showpiece with its gold leaf ceiling in square and quatrefoil compartments and the deep cornice with armorial shields supported by griffins."
https://www.flickr.com/photos/brizzlebornandbred/3398653273/

Then on 24 November 1940 it was destroyed by wartime bombing in a raid of the Bristol Blitz! "It was widely regarded as Bristol's greatest architectural loss of the war."