Originally published in Discovery: Friends of the Royal British Columbia Museum Quarterly Review, 19(3), 4-5. By Grant Keddie. Summer 1991. Introduction In the early 1850s, temporary locations – usually private homes – served as Victoria’s first public hospitals. People who were declared insane were put with prisoners in the Public Jail. In 1853, Governor James Douglas was ordered to construct what became Vancouver Island’s first real hospital, the Esquimalt Naval Hospital. It was established for wounded British veterans of the Crimean War. The Crimean soldiers never came, but the hospital eventually was used in Esquimalt as a naval hospital. In 1858, Reverend Edward Cridge argued that “We ought immediately to unite and found a hospital, and an asylum and having … Continue reading “Victoria’s Early Hospital Properties”