Old Doctors House, Roguery Road

Historystar:

Welcome to Ireland Reaching Out!

Our parish liaison for that area of Co. Antrim is on holidays currently and likely won't be back for three weeks. Not sure if he will be able to assist you but I will hold this message for his return.

Roger McDonnell

Historystar,

You mention the 1940s & 1950s and enquire about medical facilities round Moneyglass then. 1948 was the big year of change in health service history in Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Up till 1948 most doctors were self-employed and their patients had to pay for any treatment. Likewise for hospital treatment, though there were exceptions eg workhouse infirmaries and some hospitals run by charitable organisations did provide free treatment.

In 1948 the state run National Health Service (NHS) was established.  The basic moral premise was that illness is not an elective issue, and that no-one should be denied health treatment because they couldn’t afford it, or because their illness and treatment fell outside the terms of any insurance scheme. Clinical need was to be the main factor in deciding whether they would get treatment, and more or less all treatment was provided free. There are a few exceptions for things like cosmetic surgery, some repeat IVF treatment and for folk who not legally settled in the country, but that was the basic philosophy in 1948 and remains largely unchanged today. What that meant for local doctors in 1948 was that most were taken on by the NHS as state employees. Nothing to stop them remaining self-employed private doctors, but obviously in rural areas like Moneyglass they wouldn’t have many patients if the NHS was providing most people free treatment. Private doctors still exist but they tend to be at the top end of the market, for specialist work and for overseas patients seeking treatment not available in their own country. Most private patients today tend to be wealthy folk or big corporations who provide a deluxe health service for their employees.

When I grew up in the 1950s, most doctors worked from their own private homes. They tended to have a couple of extra rooms which were the waiting and consulting rooms. There was usually a receptionist/nurse, who, if the doctor was male and married, was often his wife. I’d guess that was the sort of arrangement on Roguery Road. Sometimes there would be a couple of doctors in a practice, working together from the same premises, sometimes not.

The problems of one or two doctors working from home tends to be cost-effectiveness (expensive equipment, receptionists nurses etc), plus resource issues such as inadequate parking, lack of toilets for the patients, and so from the 1960s onwards the tendency was to build purpose built surgeries which typically anything from 3 to 8 doctors might share, and which could have dedicated treatment rooms, secure places to store drugs as well as car parking, toilets and other essentials. Many of the busier ones also have a pharmacist and drugs dispensing section to provide drugs on the spot, avoiding a visit to the local chemist’s shop. So there’s no doctor working in Roguery Rd now but there is a purpose built surgery a mile down the road in Toome (and another in Randalstown).

I live near Roguery Rd but unfortunately I do not know who the doctor(s) were in the 1940s and 1950s. They would likely be listed in the street directories for the 1940s and 1950s. (Copies held in PRONI in Belfast, in paper format). Or if you were to call in the pub in Moneyglass you might find an older person there who might remember the doctors’ names from that period. Maybe someone in Toome surgery might remember?

If you lived around Moneyglass and needed a hospital, prior to 1948 there were private hospitals or the option of going to the workhouse infirmary (which was free). Ballymena Workhouse had the infirmary for the Moneyglass area. In 1948 the workhouse proper had been closed down but the infirmary part was still functioning and was absorbed into the fledgling NHS. It too was free. The workhouse infirmary is still open today and is now the Waveney Hospital in Ballymena.  Part of the original buildings still stand and there’s a plaque at the entrance explaining it’s history.

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