NRS-16119 | Board Attendance Books [Newcastle Benevolent Hospital (1889- 1939) / Newcastle Western Suburbs Maternity Hospital (1939- )]

The Attendance Books for the Committee of the Newcastle and Northumberland Benevolent Society and the Board of Directors of the Newcastle Western Suburbs Maternity Hospital (formerly the Newcastle Benevolent Hospital) survive for the years 1923-1951 and 1960-1986. The Hospital was directly administered by the Society until 1934. In that year it was made a Second Schedule hospital under the Public Hospitals Act, 1929 (Government Gazette no. 202 of 9th November, 1934, p.4025), and was thereafter required to have its own Board of Directors in accordance with Part V of the Act. The Attendance Books record that the new Board met for the first time on the 7th of March, 1935. It appears that the Board succeeded to the major responsibilities of the Committee. All members of the Board were, however, ex officio members of the Committee (actually constituting a majority on the Committee), an arrangement which continued until the dissolution of the Society in 1955 (although there is no record of the Committee having actually met after 1943), and the surviving Attendance Book from this period covers both the Board and the Committee. Later volumes also cover attendance at the meetings of various subordinate Committees, vis. Finance Committee, House Committee, Executive Committee, Works Committee and Drug Committee, through various permutations of name and amalgamations. The earliest surviving volume is a large exercise book of multiple sewn gatherings; all others are single-gathering booklets, folded and stapled.