The North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary
The North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary, on the Mount Estate, Stoke-on-Trent, became the site of the First Plastic Surgery Unit north of London, in 1934.
Its site on the Mount estate in Hartshill, Stoke was the second in the town to bear the same name. The foundation stone was laid by HRH Albert Edward, Prince of Wales in 25th June 1866. It was built, on the advice of Florence Nightingale on the Pavillion principle, hitherto only seen in military facilities, being opened in December 1869.
Eric Young was a St. Bartholewmew’s Hospital London-trained General Surgeon, became a resident surgical officer at the North Staffordshire infirmary, in Stoke on Trent in in 1905. Shortly thereafter he accepted a role on the board. He was a man with a large number of connections, one of them being Sir Alfred Webb-Johnson, also from Stoke. The two were friends and Young almost certainly leant upon Webb-Johnson to gain services and raise cash for the hospital. He also had the vision and ambition to create several specialist units at the Infirmary, run by the most eminent clinicans of the day.
One of these was a new department of plastic surgery. Young recognised that this specialty, born of war, would be ideally suited to managing injuries generated by the coal, steel and pottery industries centred around Stoke at the time. He wanted this to be run by his friend Sir Harold Gillies, with whom he had been at Saint Bartholomews. They had been close friends for some time, Gillies often being a guest at the Young’s home in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire.
On 3rd January 1934 the medical board formally wrote to Sir Harold asking him to accept the position as Honorary Consulting Plastic Surgeon to the North Staffordshire Infirmary (NSRI). They hoped that he could spare a portion of his time to undertake some of his highly specialised work at the hospital. The board felt that this would materially add to the prestige of the hospital. Probably already briefed by Young, Sir Harold accepted. Indeed in 1935, King George V permitted the “Royal” title to be added to the Infirmary’s name.
At around the same time, Young suggested to a young Guy’s hospital trained house surgeon at Stoke, John Grocott, that he might like to train in a new discipline. Grocott had been born and brought up in Stoke, and readily took up Young’s suggestion. So it was that from 1934, when Harold began visiting the Infirmary on one weekend per month, Grocott would meet Gillies at Stoke station before assisting him in his role at the hospital. The young Grocott always arrange a full clinic of patients for Gillies to see and then operate upon. Gillies thus began to train Grocott. Thus the plastic unit at the North Staffordshire Royal infirmary became the first such north of London. It pre-dated the units in much bigger centres, such as Manchester by at least two years.
After some short number of months Gillies began bringing along his then protégé and partner in practice, Archibald McIndoe. McIndoe was also appointed honorary Plastic Surgeon to the infirmary in 1935 becoming Grocott’s second trainer. This arrangement continued until May 1939, just before the Second World War, when the two older surgeons were diverted to making preparations for the conflict. Grocott was left in sole charge of the Stoke unit.
It is probable therefore that after the “Big Four”, John Grocott became the fifth full time plastic surgeon in Britain. He and his unit became a valuable resource during World War 2. Two new wards and the nurses home were destroyed by four bombs dropped on 29th June 1940. The plastic unit received a saline bath for the treatment of burns in 1942. Between D-Day in June 1944 and the following February, 2,846 servicemen were brought to Stoke for treatment by Grocott.
Grocott had a wide clinical remit which spanned the full range of plastic, maxillofacial and reconstructive procedures undertaken at the time. He continued as a sole practitioner at NSRI until the end of his career, with outreach input into several surrounding hospitals, including the Park in Macclesfield and Harlow Wood Orthopaedic unit. He retired from Stoke in 1975. He was succeeded by B.V.M Corps, who, despite efforts to the contrary, continued as a sole practitioner for some years.
The NSRI closed in 2012 and has now been all but demolished barring the front portico. Stoke department of plastic surgery now works from the Royal Stoke University Hospital on its Newcastle Road site.
Click here for more history of the NSRI