When the hospital opened the Governors produced a set of ‘Rules and orders for the well running of the Infirmary’.  You can find a copy of the one 1778 here, it makes interesting reading.

From page 10 you will see the rules for the admission and discharge of patients, which starts by saying that patients will be admitted and discharged on Mondays between 11am and noon.

Rule 52 says ‘that no horse of cart bringing a patient to the hospital return home until it is know whether the Patient can be admitted or not’.

It continues with the rules for all the staff including the Matron and nurses.

Rule 103 says ‘that the nurses clean their respective wards by seven in morning, from the First of March to the First of October, and by eight in the morning, from the First of October to the First of March’.

From page 19 the rules for patients are listed:

Rule 112 ‘that they do not swear, curse, behave rudely, or indecently, on pain of being discharged, after the first admonition, for irregularity’.

Rule 113 ‘that no patient presume to play at Cards, or Dice, or any other Game, or to smoak anywhere within doors’.