Old Monkland, Lanarkshire

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Old Monkland, situated to the east of Glasgow, erected a parish poorhouse at the south of what is now School Road. The site location and layout are shown on the 1912 map below.

Old Monkland site, 1912

The 1914 map shows a large and complex collection of buildings. What appears to be an entrance block at the east facing onto Hospital Street no longer exists. To its rear, the main block bears the date of 1874.

Old Monkland main block from the south-east, 2001.
© Peter Higginbotham.

Old Monkland main block detail, 2001.
© Peter Higginbotham.

Old Monkland rear of main block from the south-west, 2001.
© Peter Higginbotham.

At the centre rear of the main block would probably have been the dining-hall and kitchen leading to a range of workshop and utility buildings. Further west was an isolated single-storey block, possibly a school building.

Old Monkland school(?) block from the south-west, 2001.
© Peter Higginbotham.

Two further connected single-storey ranges stood at the west of the site.

Old Monkland west block from the south-east, 2001.
© Peter Higginbotham.

A fever hospital was erected on an adjoining site to the south-east of the poorhouse.

In 1865, the management of the poorhouse was severely criticised by the Board of Supervision following the death of a five year old boy called Thomas Cumnock. It transpired that Cumnock and four other sick children were locked alone overnight in a probationary ward without a nurse within call. Cumnock became seriously ill in the night and died lying between his two bedfellows aged eight and ten. His condition, acute inflammation of the pleura, had gone undetected both by the pauper nurse who cared for him, and by the poorhouse medical officer who had diagnosed only a case of itch.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the poorhouse operated as the Old Monkland Home Poor Law Institution. A report in 1946 described its location as 'a depressing site in Coatbridge' with a 69-bed hospital and an asylum for 'milder types of lunatic'. Inside 'the main block of this institution is old and done, with dark corridors and crowded dormitories, and the impression is one of general neglect. The dining room is very gloomy.' The report recommended that the premises be abandoned.

The former poorhouse site has now become Coathill Hospital.

Staff

1881 Census

Inmates

1881 Census

Records

Glasgow City Archives, The Mitchell Library, 210 North Street, Glasgow G3 7DN, Scotland. Holdings include: Plans of Old Monklands Poorhouse (1892-1908) and Coathill Hospital, Coatbridge (1900-59).

Bibliography

Government and Social Conditions in Scotland 1845-1919 by Ian Levitt (1988, Scottish History Society)