beds. Towards the end of that period, however, the building was made the home of three insane persons, and subsequently it was divided between the physically sick and the insane—the former, of course, ultimately preponderating.
The first hospital, built in 1851, was located on the site on which the City Chambers stand, on the south-western corner of the Octagon. For several years all requirements were comfortably met by small extensions; but when the gold diggings broke out in 1861, and immigrants poured into Dunedin, the demand for much larger accommodation very soon became urgent. Towards the end of 1862 extensive additions were made, and while these were in course of completion a portion of the Immigration Barracks in Princes street south was used as a temporary hospital, under the charge of Mr Wm. Dryburgh, who is still in the service. Like all institutions that have grown from small to large compass, the buildings that formed the hospital at the Octagon were disjoined and irregular. In 1866 they consisted of a one-storied wooden building, containing 25 beds; another, containing 16 beds; one three-storied wooden building, with 72 beds; two two-storied buildings, with 32 beds each; a stone building, with 11 beds; a maternity ward of timber, with 12 beds; besides operating room, mortuary, entrance lodge, and superintendent's residence—all separate. All these buildings now do duty in various places, most of them at the Industrial School at Look-out Point. The mortuary, however, still serves its purpose at the present hospital, and the stone building, now converted into a shed, remains on the ground behind the City Chambers.
In 1865 the question of the disposal of the Industrial Exhibition Building in King street, which had served the purpose for which it was erected, and was then standing idle, engaged the attention of the Provincial Council, and on the 6th of May of that year the Council, on the motion of Mr. (now the Hon.) W. H. Reynolds, decided that the building should "be appropriated for the purpose of an Hospital, the annexes to be purchased from the Royal Commissioners, if obtainable at a reasonable rate, and that measures be taken to put the building into a proper condition for an Hospital." The absolutely necessary alterations having been made, the Hospital was
