In Hades Bloom thinks that a young medical student
named Dixon who treated him at the Mater hospital has moved to "the
lying-in hospital," and in Lestrygonians Josie
Breen tells him that Mina Purefoy is in her third
day of labor at the lying-in hospital "in Holles street." The
establishment is not named until Oxen of the Sun,
whose action takes place "in the commons' hall of the National
Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles street." In Ithaca,
when Bloom and Stephen discuss places to meet in the future,
this phrase is repeated verbatim. In addition to the NMH there
were two other major Dublin hospitals dedicated to obstetrics
and gynecology, a fact which elicits patriotic comment in Oxen
of the Sun.
The NMH was, and is, one of three
large maternity hospitals in Dublin. Oxen mentions
that it has "seventy beds" for laboring women, and that
300 babies are delivered each year: "in twelve moons thrice
an hundred." The second number, averaging to not even
one child per day, seems low. Today, so many babies are
delivered at the hospital (over 9,000 per year) that a move to
larger premises is being explored. The hospital lies just
north of the Merrion Square park, a location that is
highlighted in Oxen as a rainstorm moves in: "In
Ely place, Baggot street, Duke's lawn, thence through
Merrion green up to Holles street a swash of water
flowing that was before bonedry." The sentence describes a
storm track moving from southwest to northeast.
The NMH forms a major reference point in the 16 June 1904
action of Ulysses, chiefly because Mrs. Purefoy is
giving birth there. But did Molly Bloom likewise give birth at
this hospital? Both Gifford (79) and Igoe (290) assume that
she did, and it seems possible that Joyce did as well. But
Milly was born in June 1889 and Rudy in December 1893, while
the NMH was founded in March 1894. The stone plaque over the
hospital's entrance supports this dating, as do numerous
documentary sources. Among them is a Charter Amendment Act
passed in 1936, which begins, "WHEREAS the National Maternity
Hospital situate in Holles Street in the City of Dublin was
founded in the year 1894 for the relief of poor lying-in women
and for the treatment of diseases peculiar to women . . ." But
there is some contrary evidence. The hospital has been led by
18 Masters since its founding
(Professor Shane Higgins began his service as the 18th Master
earlier this year), and the list stretches back to a William
Roe who served from 1885 to 1893. I have not yet been able to
resolve this contradiction.
ยง The
NMH, which today is the largest obstretrics hospital in
Ireland, was a relative latecomer, the third such facility to
be established in Dublin. The Rotunda Hospital, on the north
side of the city, was founded in 1745 and incorporated by
royal charter in 1756. It moved to its present location on
Rutland (Parnell) Square in 1757 and still operates today.
Gifford notes that, according to Thom's directory, in
1904 it was "the largest chartered Clinical School of
Midwifery and Gynaecology in the United Kingdom" (409). The
Coombe Lying-in Hospital was founded in 1826 and received a
royal charter in 1867. Originally located in the Liberties
on Heytesbury Street, it moved to nearby Cork Street in 1967,
and likewise is still in business. Together these three
hospitals deliver an impressive 27,000 babies each year, or
about 25 babies per hospital per day. (In 2014, according to
the Central Statistics Office of Ireland, the numbers were NMH
9,231, Rotunda 8,913, and Coombe 8,768.)
Ireland's long history of committing resources to the care of
women in labor, including ones who cannot afford expensive
medical care, amply justifies the view, expressed in the tortured language at the
outset of Oxen of the Sun, that "by no exterior
splendour is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously
asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have
progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferent
continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when
fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of
omnipollent nature's incorrupted benefaction." (Whew!) The
next paragraph of Oxen, commenting on Irish doctors
of the distant past, observes that "a plan was by them
adopted" to remove "maternity" as far as could
be managed "from all accident possibility," providing
whatever was needed "not solely for the copiously opulent"
but also for women who are not "sufficiently moneyed."
