'Dedicated to Health': the history of the Angliss Hospital

The Angliss Hospital is an important regional health service on the eastern periphery of Melbourne. It had its origins as a Bush Nursing Hospital and was built in less than a year due to the efforts of the community on the eve of the Second World War. The project had languished during the dark days of the Great Depression of the 1930s but was revived by Gilbert Lawrence Chandler, Shire Councillor, Parliamentarian and agriculturalist, in 1937. The major benefactor was Sir William Angliss, the wealthy meat exporter, after whom the hospital is named. The Nicholas family of Aspro pharmaceutical fame who were living at their property at Burnham Beeches in the Dandenongs at that time also contributed to the establishment of the surgical wing of the Hospital.

This research project tells the story from the 1930s to the present day, of how the hospital was severed from the Victorian Bush Nursing Association in I 945 in the knowledge that it was unable to be wholly supported by public funds in the urban expansion of post -World War 2. Subsequent State Government planning priorities to the east of Melbourne, were centred on the Box Hill Hospital causing a delay of ten years in the development of the modem hospital at Upper Femtree Gully.

While the Angliss Hospital's origins, as a consequence of philanthropic and community desires, are the primary concern of this story, it also embraces contemporary philosophical issues in the definition and role of the hospital in the community.