Discover if your military ancestor recovered from a war wound at Macclesfield infirmary during the First World War.
Discover if your military ancestor recovered from a war wound at Macclesfield infirmary during the First World War.
Every record provides a transcript of the original hospital records that are held at the Cheshire Archives and can be found under reference LGM 4/1.
Many of the records include only the first initials of the soldier's name, but the service number will open a range of records for you to uncover your ancestor.
Each transcript will include a combination of the following facts:
The collection contains over 1,800 hospital records from the First World War of individuals who stayed at Macclesfield Hospital (originally Poor Union Workhouse Hospital and later Infirmary. Soldiers first arrived at the hospital on 24 October 1914. When the first 20 soldiers arrived, they were greeted by a large crowd at the train station before they were transported to the hospital. A ‘whip round’ was organised to provide little comforts to the men with notepaper, stamps, newspapers, tobacco, and cigarettes. One of the first things to receive attention was shaving the men to cut away six weeks’ growth of beard. The men had suffered from bullet wounds to the head and arms. The men told stories of war and those were reprinted in the local Macclesfield Courier and Herald.
Sergeant J Hogan was awarded the Victoria Cross for recapturing a trench from the Germans on 29 October 1914. He was told of his award while he was at Macclesfield Infirmary recovering from shrapnel wounds. Before the war, he was a postman at Oldham and his colleagues sent him a congratulations telegraph to the hospital. He was interviewed while in the hospital and said: ‘’I've done nothing to deserve the Victoria Cross. Perhaps I am favoured in the act having been recognised.’ He described how he and Lieutenant Leach were able to recapture the trench, ‘Lieutenant Leach and I at the head of ten men crawled a distance of a hundred yards amid an inferno of bullets, and, getting to the trenches, had a hand-to-hand fight with the occupants, of whom we killed eight, wounded two, and made sixteen prisoners. Looking back on the incident in cold blood I have since often marvelled at how it all happened and how it was that neither Lieutenant Leach nor myself was injured.’ This incredible story about a hospital inmate was uncovered in Findmypast’s newspapers. It was printed in the Manchester Courier, on 24 December 1914.