With the ever growing Cape of Good Hope the need of
hospitals got ever greater. The first
Somerset Hospital got to small and got replaced in 1864, by the Somerset
Hospital we know today. Situated in the Green Point area of Cape Town, Somerset
is one of the oldest hospitals in South Africa and one of the first with a
“West” wing for white patients and a “North” wing for non-whites.
Part of Green Point, just west of the city and
close to where Somerset Road is today was a bleak area characterized by the
graveyards of the Dutch Reformed Church and the informal graveyards of slaves,
paupers, criminals and smallpox victims.
In England the Florence Nightingale School for Training
Nurses, send some of these nurses to the Cape Colony, some were appointed to
the Somerset Hospital. One of them was Sister Helen Bowden. During her 5 years
as Matron she oversaw the training of an efficient body of nurses to replace
the men who had previously acted as male nurses. A contemporary was Sister
Henrietta Stockdale, who also worked in Kimberley.
They say the hospital is haunted by many ghost, Sister
Henrietta Stockdale or could it be Sister Bowden still helping the nurses on
their routes; an Indian man walking in a ward and the songs of Schubert sung by
a man long gone; on the stairs of the nursing home, a little girl combing her
hair, maybe one of the nurse’s children still waiting for her Mommy?
#somersethospital; #hauntedcapetown; #hauntedhistoryRSA; #ghost; #paranormal; #supernatural; #haunted; #ghoststories, #hauntedhistory, #hauntedhospitals,
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