A tribute to the work of the Bath War Hospital

Perhaps the best tribute to all those involved in the establishment of the Bath War Hospital was published in the Bath Chronicle in 1928, just as the Pensions Hospital was about to close and the site was about to enter its third incarnation as the Royal United Hospital. It reads: –

‘A more personal and intimate effort on the part of citizens was centred in the War Hospital. There the enthusiasm, business methods, the skill and the good heart of the civilian, medical and lay, worked in partnership with the military to produce a notable result that had the advantages of both and the defects of neither. The effort was appreciated by those to whom it was designed to minister – that we know during its years of beneficent activity – and it also gained the highest praise from the Army Council authorities whom it helped so materially. Those who watched the work of the committees and detachments, and the workers, men and women of all ranks and classes, know, too, that here was being written a record of devoted service, selfless, sacrificing effort, not, perhaps, on the scroll of fame, because so much of it was performed out of general sight, but nevertheless imperishable, written in letters of gold’.