In the early 1900s, community leaders, business leaders and workers in Melbourne’s industrial west resolved to build an acute care hospital for their community. And in 1953 they succeeded, when Footscray Hospital opened.
Here are the tales of the trail-blazing surgeons and their colleagues who served at the hospital from its earliest years. Their maverick, independent spirit reflected the ethos of the people’s movement that bought the land for the hospital and fought for decades to get it built.