Longest-staying patient

I noted the report on James Morris, thought to be Britain’s longest-staying patient, when he died last May after 54 years at West Moffat Hospital [ FT366:25]. In fact I know of a case where the patient’s stay was certainly more than 60 years, and possibly more than 70 years.

I was employed as Liverpool Health Authority’s Information & Research Officer at the time of the Toxteth Riots in July 1981. Famously, Princes Park Hospital was caught up in the riots and had to be evacuated. It was a long-stay geriatric hospital with just under 100 beds. In the circumstances, all of the 90+ elderly patients (I think that they were all female) were urgently relocated to any available hospital bed in the area; we even had the bizarre situation where two geriatric patients ended up occupying beds in Alder Hey Children’s Hospital!

As I was responsible for the Health Authority’s official statistics, I tracked and reported on what had happened to these patients. Technically, all the patients were treated as having been “discharged from Princes Park Hospital”, even though they had been transferred to other hospitals in the same Health Authority; it was how hospital activity was recorded in those days. One of the statistics that I had to calculate was the “Average Length of Stay” which involved adding up all the individual lengths of stay of patients discharged in the year and then dividing by the number of patients discharged. Unsurprisingly, long-stay geriatric patients have longer lengths of stay than most other categories of patient, but I recall that the figure calculated for Princes Park Hospital in the wake of the evacuation was abnormally high. I found that there was a female patient who had been there for around 70 years, give or take. (As this event happened 37 years ago, I cannot guarantee accurately remembering the specific minute details, but I am certain of the main facts). I think that she was about 88, but of course all geriatric patients were at least 65 on admission.

I asked the Head Nurse about the patient. It transpired that she had been admitted in her late teens around the time of WWI. Between 1885 and 1948 the hospital served as the Liverpool Home for Incurables, and then as the Home for Invalid Women until 1969, when it became the geriatric hospital. The Head Nurse didn’t know the reason for the patient’s original admission, but we can infer that she was admitted for some “incurable” condition, and then remained whilst the use of the facilities evolved. Over the years, I have often thought that this would be a case suitable for investigation/ research, but I suspect that all of the relevant records are long gone. Rob Gandy By email