AMATEUR historian Barbara Fuller has turned author to tell the story of a Devizes workhouse which became a hospital.

Mrs Fuller's book Devizes Union From Workhouse to Hospital started when she was asked to write a history of St James Hospital when it was celebrating its 150th anniversary in 1986. This led to the production of a 20 page booklet called Changed Times.

She already had an interest in workhouses and the Poor Laws as she had researched her own family history and found that two of her family had died in a Suffolk Workhouse.

Mrs Fuller of Estcourt Crescent, Devizes, who has lived in the town since 1953 worked in St James Hospital in 1965 and was also involved with the building and management of St James Surgery which now occupies part of the site.

She said: "The present book is a much enlarged study of the original booklet and describes the background history of the Poor Laws and is illustrated with entries from the Guardians’ Minute Books, Census records Medical Officer’s report and newspapers articles and includes details of staff, children, vagrants, health matters, diet and the general conditions that paupers had to cope with and the problems experienced by both staff and inmates.

"The second part of the book follows with changes after the National Health Act in 1948 when the name was officially changed to St James

Hospital. Although it is generally described as a geriatric Hospital people described as mentally deficient were also inmates as were children who in the early workhouse days were held in the Workhouse but later went to foster parents as the 1910 – 1927 Boarding-out Minutes

show."

She said that details of hospital life were brought to life by first hand memories of hospital staff. She said: "Some of the reminiscences of various members would have been lost if it were not for the Changed Times booklet."

The book finishes with an index after a chapter on the Bertie Bushnell whose death was reported in the Gazette in 1980 under the headline In memory of the legendary Bertie Bushall.

Mrs Fuller said: "There is an index of names and hopefully the contents of this book will be of both help and interest to local people, family historians and those particularly interested in the history of Devizes."

She will be at a book signing for her work at Devizes Books, Sidmouth Street, Devizes during the morning of December 3.

The book is available priced at £8.95 from Devizes Books and Hobnob Press.