St Joseph’s Hospital Auburn: A brief history

06 Jul 2023

The story of St Joseph’s Hospital and services to the people of western Sydney began with the Sisters of Charity, who in 1838 head to Parramatta Female Factory to minister to female convicts. The Sisters purchased a residence on where they remained until the closure of the Female Factory in 1848.

It is in this residence that St Joseph’s Hospital began its history in 1886, as a 20 bed unit specialising exclusively in the treatment of pulmonary conditions, claiming to be the only hospital in Australia devoted to the treatment of consumption.

In 1889 the hospital built a new wing, increasing the bed base to 50, but by 1892 and owing to growing community need, the Sister’s found themselves turning patients away due to lack of beds.

As a result, the Sisters engineered the sale of the Parramatta site to the Sisters of Mercy for £1,700, in favour of a new property in Auburn, knowns as Duncraggan Hall - a very large estate with 13 acres of land.

When the Parramatta site closed, patients at St Joseph’s were transferred to St Vincent’s until the new Auburn site was ready, and St Joseph’s Sanatorium and Hospice at Auburn was officially opened on September 7, 1892 by the then Governor of NSW, in what was reportedly a grand affair.

But the Sister’s needed to start from scratch, and instead of the 50 beds that made up St Joseph’s Parramatta, they had just 10 at Auburn. Still, St Joseph’s quickly affirmed itself as a loved place to the locals, who provided support by sending meat, fruit and the odd sherry. At the time it was home to the only Catholic Chapel in the area, and locals were invited for Mass. Every Sunday afternoon a concert would take place in front of the hospital, either by the Police band or the Salvation Army and the Sisters and their services were held in very high esteem by the community.

As the population grew, it wasn’t long before the Sisters were unable to keep up with demand, and now functioning as a general hospital, various fundraising activities commenced to facilitate the build of a new wing to accommodate at least 25 more patient beds - but the new hospital building wouldn’t open until 1903, a decade following. When it did, the locals came to refer to it as ‘Hospital Two’.

By 1924 bed capacity had increased to 76, and in that same year the hospital reported more than 7,000 attendances, including casualty, inpatients and outpatients. The first X-Ray plant was acquired in 1926, to save patients from having to travel to Darlinghurst. The new X-Ray department saw 2,000 patients in the first 12 months and serviced other district hospitals as well as GPs. By 1937 a new three storey building had been erected, housing new laundry, pathology and night nurses’ quarters. Business was booming.

Documented accounts from staff in the 1930’s and 40’s, describe “Joeys” as a happy, homely and friendly place. Now at 100 beds, it was an increasingly busy hospital, but reports document Joeys as being a place where there “is always a friendly face to speak with visitors and get them a cup of tea. It was known as “the people’s hospital”.

By the mid 1940’s St Joseph’s was classed as a public hospital and eligible for government subsidy and in 1947, St Joseph’s had planned to extend the hospital to accommodate 200 beds, however State funding instead favoured a new hospital site in Fairfield.

Despite St Joseph’s continual growth in activity over the next few decades, the site would remain largely unchanged. Though some money was found to purchase property in the surrounding area to be used as nurses’ residences - it was felt that “St Joseph’s, in remaining a smaller hospital, has been able to retain its special personalised family character”.

St Joseph’s hopes for a new, larger hospital remained in the years to come, but further attempts in 1960 were dashed with the Commissioning of Auburn District Hospital, which the State deduced would reduce demand on St Joseph’s services. Consequently, an extension at St Joseph’s would not be required.

But this estimation was misguided, and from 1963 to 1972, hospital demand had increased by 40%, and it became evident that if government support as not forthcoming, St Joseph’s would not be able to continue.

Years of negotiations ensued, and finally in 1975 the Government granted St Joseph’s approximately $1.1 million, with expectations that their own fundraising efforts would contribute the remaining $500,000 needed to complete their plans for ‘Hospital Three’, which commenced that same year.

Officially opened in 1977, the new building of three floors added a medical unit, surgical unit and X-ray room, bringing the total number of beds now to 110, allowing the previously cramped conditions to be alleviated.

Nursing education and training had long been a hallmark of St Joseph’s, and in the 1970’s the Nursing Registration Board had approved conjoint nursing education programs between St Joseph’s and Auburn District Hospital with teachers and doctors from both.

The health commission soon increased St Joseph’s nursing students to 112 with three intakes a year, in order to prepare and train registered nurses for staffing the new, Westmead Hospital when it was due to open.

With advances in medical science, and acquisition of equipment and technology becoming a feature of the 1980’s, Sr Maria Cunningham expressed to her nurses in a graduation speech, sentiments that are still relevant today -
“You are confronted by the wonders of a continual technical explosion and the stress and tension that follow in its wake. Today we have a new unidentified illness that results from this, the illness of dehumanisation… I place before you the challenge of accepting advances in technology without loss of compassion, and with respect for human dignity”.

It was also in the 1980’s that St Joseph’s sought to respond to the needs of the growing migrant population in the area, and began revising their menu items to include multicultural dishes, establishing an ‘Ethnic Access Committee’ who aimed to break down barriers of language and culture, educating staff against bias. And they began engaging interpreters, who it was noted, were more than translation services, but to also used to ‘promote understanding and build bridges’.

In the coming years, the booming population of Western Sydney created greater community need for public health, and public funding was increasing in Auburn, Westmead and Blacktown Hospitals. The changing needs of the community compelled the Sisters to negotiate agreement with Western Sydney Health in 1991, the outcome of which saw St Joseph’s transitioning to become a smaller, sub-acute facility to focus on specialties not being met in the larger hospitals.

In 1992 the new, sub-acute, specialised St Joseph’s opened. The focus would be on rehabilitation, geriatric health, palliative care and psychogeriatric care – one of only a few public hospitals in Australia to specialise in all four categories of sub-acute care.

Concurrently, St Joseph’s Village opened as an aged care service, in the originally purchased Duncraggan Hall, once used as nurses’ accommodation.

Initially opened to care for the ageing Sisters of Charity in their retirement, St Joseph’s Village would restructure and grow in to the Aged Care facility we know it to be today, comprising 27 independent living units, 88 low care beds, with ageing in place, of which 18 provide dementia specific care and 35 community care packages.

Operationally St Joseph’s formed part of the Western Sydney Health District up until 2011, at which time it was proposed that St Joseph’s would instead be governed by St Vincent’s, under a newly formed St Vincent’s Health Network, a unique network of hospitals including St Vincent’s Hospital, Sacred Heart Hospital and St Joseph’s Hospital.

In July 2013 St Joseph’s proudly opened the onsite Huntington’s Disease Service comprising a 4-bed unit for patients requiring assessment and behaviour management and a 14-bed residential service. This was a model of specialised care unequalled in Australia and managed by both St Joseph’s public hospital and St Vincent’s aged care services.

For the past 137 years, St Joseph’s Hospital and the Sisters of Charity have been a mainstay to the people of Western Sydney, a place where people could receive specialised care, support and compassion. But despite all efforts - after years of weathering a challenging funding environment, a global pandemic, and a deteriorating physical infrastructure, St Joseph’s Hospital Auburn will close its doors in 2023.

What was one of the first hospitals opened by the Sisters of Charity in Australia, the incredible St Joseph’s legacy will long continue across St Vincent’s Health Australia, as it continues to seek to make the greatest impact by reinventing health care delivery and serving where there is the most need.

By all accounts, it’s not just the expertise, but the people, be they Sisters, patients, visitors, staff or volunteers, who have made St Joseph’s an extraordinary place for well over a century.

Reference
This Little Gem: St Joseph's Hospital Auburn 1886-1986
Author: Edna M. Skewes RSC
Copyright St Joseph's Hospital, Auburn, 1986