The collection comprises only a report of the Hospital's maternity department for 1960.
Note: the Medical Collection does not include any official records of this hospital. This includes any records relating to patient admissions, treatments and discharge. The records of the Infirmary are held by Tameside Archives.
Ashton-under-Lyne Infirmary was established in 1860, as a result of the response by a local mill-owner, Samuel Oldham, to a tragic boiler explosion. It was primarily an accident hospital, and was run on a voluntary basis but with some private patients. A thirty-two bed children's hospital, Kershaw Children's Hospital, was opened in 1892. The hospital buildings were extended several times from 1908 onwards and by the early twentieth century the Hospital was known as Ashton-under-Lyne District Infirmary and Children's Hospital. The Hospital joined the NHS in 1948 and was called the Ashton Infirmary. Probably in the 1950s, the Hospital merged with the Lake Hospital, Ashton-under-Lyne. The Lake Hospital was the old Darnton Street Workhouse, opened in 1851. It had opened as Lake Hospital in 1905 and later became a maternity hospital. When the two hospitals merged, they became the Infirmary Section and Lake Section respectively of Ashton-under-Lyne General Hospital. The Infirmary Section was an acute hospital and approved for the treatment of non-pulmonary tuberculosis and venereal disease. The Lake Section was a geriatric and maternity department. In 1957 the two hospitals, along with Fountain Street Isolation Hospital (founded on the same site in 1888) amalgamated to form Tameside General Hospital.
