Sir James Mackenzie: the Burnley years.

TiH Industrial Revolution transformed Burnley from a country town with a population of some 5,000 whose main occupations were sheep farming and the hand loom weaving of woollen cloth to one of almost 100,000 by the beginning of the present century. Factories, warehouses, foundries, workshops and coal mines had attracted the new labour force and the rapid influx was attended with appalling housing conditions and grossly inadequate sanitary arrangements. The increase of paupers and casuals had rendered the existing workhouse accommodation inadequate and necessitated new premises in 1870 to house 500 inmates with wards for 300 vagrants; a new infirmary was attached and this is now the Burnley General Hospital. As Mackenzie was one of the leading figures pressing for the erection of a new hospital to serve the town, the story of the building of Victoria Hospital is relevant. Burnley possessed no permanent hospital until the erection of the Victoria, the relief of patients being supplied by a Dispensary founded in 1850 through the work of Archdeacon Master. The Dispensary was situated in a house in Prospect Terrace and was in operation until it closed for lack of funds in 1854. At infrequent intervals and chiefly through the agitation of various ministers of religion, meetings were called in support of the erection of a hospital but it was not until 1882 and through the suggestion of Dr. Brown that a committee, consisting of the Rev. R. H. Giles, Dr. Mackenzie and Messrs. Grant, Grey, Hoghton and Ward, succeeded in enlisting the financial interest of many wealthy men in the town and district. Both Dr. Briggs and Dr. Brown were very active in these preliminary negotiations and by May 1884 nearly £13,000 had been raised. Building started that year on three acres in the Burnley Lane District and the Victoria Hospital was erected on the 'circular ward principle, the latest and most approved system'. It was opened in 1886 by H.R.H. Prince Albert Victor 'amidst a burst of enthusiasm and loyalty never equalled in Burnley' as one report puts it. Not only was subscription to the building fund something of a 'status symbol' for the rich mill owners of the town, but over £4,000 was raised by mill and workshop collections. Mackenzie became a consultant physician to the hospital and also occasionally acted in a surgical capacity. Mackenzie arrived into the grim industrial atmosphere of Burnley in 1879 when he was about 26 years old, taking up residence at 68 Bank Parade, the home of the senior partner, Dr. W. Briggs. His school days had been undistinguished. Subsequent employment in a pharmacist's establishment had aroused in him the desire to practise medicine. His choice of practice proved doubly fortunate for him; the diagnostic skill of Briggs-who was a graduate of University College Hospital and a gold medallistprovided an inspiration to him and it was the lack of satisfactory information in the existing medical literature which set him on the course of accumulating data in order to arrive at the natural history of symptoms and the evaluation of hitherto wrongly