The Royal Women’s Hospital specialises in areas such as antenatal care, maternal and neonatal infection control, gynaecological disease diagnosis and treatment, family planning, newborn intensive care and infertility management.
Its beginnings were as a ‘charity’ hospital, serving the needs of women unable to afford private medical care. Known as the Lying-in Hospital, it opened in 1856, the second hospital in Melbourne (the first being Melbourne Hospital). It was first located in a leased terrace house in Albert Street, Eastern Hill (East Melbourne), close to where the Victorian Parliament now stands.
The hospital’s establishment was led by a committee of women, led by Mrs Frances Perry, the wife of the then Anglican bishop of Melbourne, and two doctors, Dr Richard Tracy and Dr John Maund.
In 1884, its title was simplified to the Women’s Hospital and the ‘Royal’ title was conferred on the hospital by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on 6 September 1954.
After moves to and in Carlton in the nineteenth century, the hospital moved to its present site in Parkville in 2008.
For further information about the history of the hospital see:
https://www.thewomens.org.au/about/our-history/history-overview/