Port Arthur - Hospital

Built above the prisoners' barracks on Settlement Hill in 1841-42, the Hospital was the third constructed at Port Arthur. The hospital included wards, a kitchen, baking room, laundry and morgue and was staffed by a doctor and a number of untrained convict orderlies. Port Arthur’s convicts laboured in heavy industries such as timber-getting, an inherently dangerous job that meant accident victims were common inmates at the hospital. Some of the inmates pretended to be sick by sucking on a piece of copper which gave their tongues a dark colour. The doctor in residence eventually realised what was going on. The hospital building was sold to the Catholic Church in the 1890s, and damaged by bushfires in 1895 and 1897. It is now a charismatic ruin sitting on the hill overlooking the settlement.