Now when David sent over some photographs of soldiers recovering in a war time hospital In Rusholme I was not quite prepared for where I would end up.
There are twenty pictures in all and they appear to date from around 1916.
The quality is poor, which might suggest they were taken by a nurse or one of the patients using a simple camera.
But that doesn’t diminish the impact of these photographs, which show a group of soldiers and their nurses in carefree poses.
And the fact that they were not taken by a professional, makes them more powerful as a record of the impact of the war on those who took part.
The notes that accompany the images refer to Birchfield Military Hospital in Rusholme, but as yet I can not find out much about it, other than that the building was demolished in the 1950s as part of the development of the Hollings College affectionately known as the“Toast rack”.
But I know that just prior to the war it was owned by a Samuel Lawrence Mandleberg who was the managing director of an India Rubber Works which produced waterproof garments from a mill on Mill Street in Pendleton.
Mr. Mandleberg, was born in 1863 in Manchester from a family who settled here from the Polish part of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.
And while he owned the house which became the hospital he doesn’t appear to have lived there, residing instead in Salford.
In 1911, the house was occupied by four staff, which may have made it easier to offer up to the military when the war began.
Many people handed over large houses to both the military and the Red Cross, which became hospitals.
A trawl of the directories may provide date for that transfer, and for when it came in Mr. Mandleberg’s possession.
It was a large house with sixteen rooms, located at 235 Wilmslow Road, beside Old Hall Lane and and was set in its own ample grounds, with secluded walks beisde rows of trees, and open land behind the estate.
Added to all this, for those who liked gardening there were a series of green houses.
And for those who didn't, this stretch of Wilmslow Road, led by degree to Didsbury in the south and Chorlton in the west with ample opportunity to wander along the banks of the Mersey
Just what happened to the house at the end of the war is yet to be discovered, but it would appear Mr. Mandleberg, never lived there. By the 1920s he was in London where he died in 1934, leaving £188,710.
All of which just leaves us with the wartime pictures. I doubt we will ever find out the identities of any of those in the photographs although the names of four nursing staff are recorded in the scrap book, which I guess belonged to one of those nurses.
Location; Rusholme
Pictures; patients and staff of the Birchfield Military Hospital in Rusholme, circa 1916 from the collection of David Harrop, and Birchfield in 1894, from the OS for South Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/
The quality is poor, which might suggest they were taken by a nurse or one of the patients using a simple camera.
But that doesn’t diminish the impact of these photographs, which show a group of soldiers and their nurses in carefree poses.
And the fact that they were not taken by a professional, makes them more powerful as a record of the impact of the war on those who took part.
But I know that just prior to the war it was owned by a Samuel Lawrence Mandleberg who was the managing director of an India Rubber Works which produced waterproof garments from a mill on Mill Street in Pendleton.
Mr. Mandleberg, was born in 1863 in Manchester from a family who settled here from the Polish part of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.
And while he owned the house which became the hospital he doesn’t appear to have lived there, residing instead in Salford.
In 1911, the house was occupied by four staff, which may have made it easier to offer up to the military when the war began.
A trawl of the directories may provide date for that transfer, and for when it came in Mr. Mandleberg’s possession.
It was a large house with sixteen rooms, located at 235 Wilmslow Road, beside Old Hall Lane and and was set in its own ample grounds, with secluded walks beisde rows of trees, and open land behind the estate.
And for those who didn't, this stretch of Wilmslow Road, led by degree to Didsbury in the south and Chorlton in the west with ample opportunity to wander along the banks of the Mersey
Just what happened to the house at the end of the war is yet to be discovered, but it would appear Mr. Mandleberg, never lived there. By the 1920s he was in London where he died in 1934, leaving £188,710.
Location; Rusholme
Pictures; patients and staff of the Birchfield Military Hospital in Rusholme, circa 1916 from the collection of David Harrop, and Birchfield in 1894, from the OS for South Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/
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