Object Category: Archive

 

Object Type: Photograph

 

Object Name: Photograph of first Sheffield motor ambulance

 

Service Category: Ambulance

 

Accession: SHENE.2024.47

 

Visual Description: Black and white photograph of a motor ambulance (reg: W999) with driver posed alongside three medical staff.

 

Abstract: Image shows the first motorised ambulance in Sheffield. The driver, Mr George Fox, had previously worked as driver of the horse-drawn Lodge Moor Fever Ambulance, and was the first driver to be transferred to motor ambulances in the city. Mr Fox is shown (age 20-21) at the wheel of the vehicle, an Argyll, at Lodge Moor Hospital, Sheffield (an isolation hospital built in response to the city’s smallpox epidemic of 1887-1888). Next to the ambulance stand two nurses and Dr Muir Head.

 

Service context: Early Ambulance Services

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The first modern ambulance services were established from the 1880s onward in response to infectious diseases spreading through highly populated cities and towns. ‘Fever Ambulances’ as they were known, focused on removing contagious patients from the community and into isolation hospitals. The Metropolitan Asylums Board of London is regarded as the pioneer of modern ambulance services through their own fever and river ambulances. Services were then organised locally- and unevenly- across the country, and only gradually expanded their remit to serve non-contagious patients and the injured. Treatment of the injured was pioneered by the charitable St. John Ambulance Association which encouraged the established police and fire brigades to train in first aid; many began to run their own municipal ambulance services. The years before 1914 saw the introduction of motorised ambulance vehicles in some areas, a trend that would accelerate as a result of World War One (1914-1918).

 

Object date: c. 1906-1907

 

Museum Collection: Core Collection

 

Object Collection: George Fox Collection

 

Source Category: Donation

 

Location: In Store

 

Associated objects: SHENE.2024.47.1