Old Photograph Royal Infirmary Edinburgh Scotland

Old photograph of the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh was established in 1729 and is the oldest voluntary hospital in Scotland. The new buildings of 1879 were claimed to be the largest voluntary hospital in the United Kingdom, and later on, the Empire. The infirmary had received a Royal Charter from George II in 1736 which gave it its name of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and commissioned William Adam to design a new hospital on a site close by to the original building, on what later became Infirmary Street. In 1741 the hospital moved the short distance to the not yet completed building which eventually, on its completion in 1745, had 228 beds. By the 1830s the hospital had become short of space and, in 1832, the former Royal High School in nearby High School Yards, built by Alexander Laing in 1777, was converted to a surgical hospital with a new operating theatre built to the east. This was soon found to be inadequate and a new surgical hospital, designed by David Bryce, was built fronting Drummond Street, opening in 1853. In 1879, at the instruction of the then Lord Provost, Thomas Jamieson Boyd, the infirmary moved to a new location, then in the fresher air of the edge of the city.



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