Words from the Wards
Our brand-new home at Edinburgh Futures Institute is an ecosystem of learning, research and inspirational ideas about the future. But it has an even longer history as the place that birthed and healed the city when it was familiar to one and all as the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
To celebrate the rich history of this recycled hospital, we’re stitching together a collection of your stories of healing, prescribing, treating, and repairing. On this page you can read stories submitted so far and you can send us your own story at the link below. We’ll feature select authors and stories at a series of events during August, so keep checking back for more wonderful memories of this iconic Edinburgh building.
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Explore Words from the Wards
Celebrating the city’s incredible history through your stories, Words from the Wards brings together memories, shared histories, thoughts, feelings and reactions to an iconic building and the incredible people who visited its wards and wings.
Maureen Williams: The Royal!
13th September 2024Uniform Year 1 – Blue denim – red cape Year 2 – White collar – red cape Year 3 – White cuffs – red cape Year 4 – Pelican!! Red belt for acting Sister. Nurses home in Ardubald Place. 1964 I started as a pre-trained orthopaedic nurse s...
Anon: 1967, 1970, 1969/70
13th September 2024Born in Edinburgh but not in the Infirmary, I was in the building three times in my life. 1967 Age 14, I had my appendix removed. I spent a week in what I assume was Women’s Surgical. The day room (these little spaces built between the...
Elspeth Neilson: 50th Reunion
13th September 2024When we met 10 years ago, that was to be the last. No more reunions, stop at the 40th – enough of the past! But Ellis had other plans, – a 50th Reunion she thought, a rare event. And so here we are, a wonderful response to all the invite...
JL Williams: Hospital Fugue
13th September 2024Please click the link below to read JL Williams’ piece. Hospital Fugue – JLW – Fri 23 Aug...
Hannah Lavery
13th September 2024Nana, writing you into the history of this place. 1. They ask me to conjure a tale from these walls. A memorial of sorts. A cairn. Built to stand in reimagined space. Standing here, like a mystic divining for a presence. For a trace of y...
Michael Pedersen: Janis
13th September 2024Coulson: HFFD, 1-3, 4 hourly, McCulloch: SVD, prim, meaning prima gravida, first birth. In her breast pocket, starched sharp, or tucked into her butterfly cap, the wee pen rests; snug as a cat on coals, so not snug at all....
Sara Sheridan: Echoes
13th September 2024The baby is crying. Wee mite. I’m sorry. Your results are not good. Very bad. Most worrying. We can help tough. I’m sorry. The results are inconclusive, Mr Duffin. Mrs Morrison. Lady McDonald. Mr Stevens. Miss Penn. And what...
Kirstin Innes: A Tale of Two Hospitals
13th September 2024I was born here, I tell my children, whenever we are back in Edinburgh, visiting their granny and passing by on the top deck of the number 27 bus. That building, there. That one. The big fancy one that looks like a castle, looks like a w...
Paul McKenna: Happy days
10th September 2024I spent many happy days working here in Medical Records Department with some wonderful colleagues in the 80’s and 90’s....
Kate J: Early 80s
10th September 2024Before an emergency appendix op, I remember a lovely nurse pushing a wheel chair from one department to another as no available porters. She kept apologising as the wheel chair had a life of its own and was attracted to walls and door ja...
Anne Roberston: Trained 83-86
10th September 2024Worked here only for 2-3 months around 1985. All the RIE nurses wore black shoes but as I was not doing my training here I wore white shoes. The matron on my surgical ward was definitely the ‘old matron battle ax’. She would shout from a...
Anon: Medical Ward
10th September 2024First time I bed bathed a man, I fainted- I had never seen a naked man before!! Ward 14. Heaven for staff. Surgeon M’R dressed to carve the turkey in the middle of the ward, dressed as Santa’s elf!! Terrorised as student nurses on charge...
Anon: 27/8/61
10th September 2024I was born here. To tell the truth I have no memory of it whatsoever. At least no memory of my memory. My mother did though and they were not that good and that is as much as I’ll say here. (After all giving birth isn’t always easy). She...
Linda: Memories
10th September 2024I grew up in George Square. My parents worked for Edinburgh University and it is fascinating to see the echoes of the old hospital coming through after its revamp! At about 15, as a member of St Johns Red Cross, I volunteered to help on ...
Anon: Level 2 Ward General Surgery
10th September 202415:10pm Wheeled into operating theatre for ‘minor’ surgery in rectal area. The date and time have stuck in my mind because it was the exact time and date my son was born in 1989. The anaesthesia began to take effect… On being wheeled out...
Julia Carrigan: 3rd August 1993
10th September 2024Coming to visit my brother and mum in The Simpson Maternity Hospital. The large long corridors with big doors and windows. Entering the enormous ward with beds around the room. A large table for all the patients to eat around. Make frien...
June Watson: Edinburgh, 1955
10th September 2024I was 7 years old, when I had to come to the Eye Pavillion for surgery to correct a squint in my left eye. I had come from a small farming town (Biggar) to the Eye Pavillion, and was in the children’s ward for 4 days, then the women’s wa...
Anon: Memories
10th September 2024Holding the hand of someone while they take their last breath – humbling and peaceful. Freezing in the medical wards on a night shift but not daring to put your cardigan on in case the night nursing officer caught you – re:...
Anon: A Day in a Nightingale Ward
10th September 2024Busy Ward Wakened early Tea and bread and butter Washing, bed making, Breakfast – always porridge, extra boiled egg Doctors visiting, so many, all day long Lunch at last, 3 courses served by sister A little nap after lunch, asked for pai...
Siobhan Cooze: June and November 1990
10th September 2024Beautiful building. But my memories of the Royal Infirmary is coming up from London and failing my MRCD twice. I went onto become an East End of London GP and medical educator so all was well in the end – and it was a lovely...
Anon: September 2000
10th September 2024Visiting my mum and new baby brother in hospital, I remember mum sitting in bed and my brother lying in a cot. I remember thinking how sleepy and quiet he seemed (and how it changed)....
Jennifer Lim: Remembering 1983
10th September 2024I worked in these wards in 1983. I am thrilled to see the building used in such a wonderful way as I visit the Book Festival with my grandchildren 41 years later. I remember many moments. One was taking a history and doing an examination...
Anon: This is the place
10th September 2024This is the place Where my father came into the world And my grandfather left it. Where I worked next door after they developed it And often looked up at the empty windows, of this empty building at 5am before my shift. But I did not...
Sophie Parker: 1989 – 1993
10th September 2024I trained as a nurse on the BSc Nursing Studies course at Edinburgh University. My mum gave me my ‘nurses watch’ and her old silver buckle from when she trained in Kent in the 1960s. I remember having the beautiful red cape that crossed ...
Anon: 37 years!
10th September 202417th August 1987 Dropped at the ‘Flo Home’ as it was known (Florence Nightingale Nurses Home) to start my 3 year RGN training at the South Lothian College of Nursing and Midwifery. Happy and fun times both on and off the wards! I continu...
Elspeth Neilson: May ’72 Reunion
10th September 20248th May 1972 – 8th May 2012 Here we all are, remembering the past. Back to May ’72 – thought we were going to have a blast! Denim blue dresses, white aprons, red capes, hats fixed steady. Pelicans in the making, lives to save, was the ...
Susan M. J. Malloch Martin: A Wee Girl’s Memories from 1952 and other tales.
27th August 2024When I was 6 I was taken in to the old hospital to have my tonsils out. Daddy was a GP in Armadale and Mummy was a Pelican. Her bridesmaid was a matron at the hospital, so she came to see me after they took my tonsils and adenoids out (I...
Kevin Mclaughlin: Memories of The Royal Infirmary Edinburgh 1987-1991
21st August 2024I was a student nurse from August 1987 to 1990, most of my student years I lived in the Florence Nightingale Nurses Home, an enormous Art Deco building constructed in 1939 opposite The Simpson Memorial Maternity Pavillion, (also Art Deco...
Gavin Francis: Science & Kindness
21st August 2024There was a zen master who observed “When a bird flies in the sky, beasts do not even dream of finding or following its trace. . . . But a bird can see traces of hundreds and thousands of birds having passed in flocks.’ He said Bud...
N.Murray: ‘Blues’
18th June 2024With a background in both science and art – including a brief but formative spell worked in the Cardiothoracic Unit at the Royal Infirmary in the late eighties – I created this photo-lithograph of hospital ‘blues’ in the early 2000s ...
N. Murray: Lub Dub
18th June 2024There were lots of things I didn’t know about the human heart in 1987. I knew it sat more centrally in the chest than I might have guessed. I knew it didn’t look anything like the cherry red valentine’s symbol you might find tattoo...
K Kane: The Ward
18th June 2024Brisk walking, black shoes sturdily tapping, echoing into the silent surroundings. Although the day has broken, it is a quiet corridor. Passing Father Senes on the stairs, a gentle smile. A restless burr thrums the air. Sunlight shining ...
Anne D: Basement Creepers
18th June 2024I started as a student radiographer in the Royal in1969. Our classroom and locker room was in the basement of the medical corridor. It was incredibly hot, windowless and airless with the heating pipes crossing the low ceiling. Whoever wa...
Kate McArdle (Newlands): Memory Snippets
18th June 2024My first day on a ward in 1970 as a nurse was with Brenda as we pushed each other nervously through the doors of Ward 28 into the smells of disinfectant and our shock at nurses eating chocolates at 8am! There I helped looked after an old...
Leslie Hills: Mr Lister’s Casebook
11th June 2024Joseph Lister was the man who brought anti-sepsis to Edinburgh Infirmary Although both Ignaz Semmelweis and Louis Pasteur had made the connection between filthy surgeons and death, Lister was the surgeon who worked out how to use the kno...
Helen Harradine: Madder and White
6th June 2024Easterly wind sharp on my skin, bright sunlight, buttery scents of spring mingling with city fumes, and the loud roar of traffic racing beside me. The pavements are filling up with rush hour pedestrians, but I am way faster than them, an...
Lucy E: Alexander Cowan – the story behind the Ward
6th June 2024EFI offered a sneaky peak of the building to University employers at the end of May, prior to its official opening. So some of my colleagues and I trundled across George Square and up Middle Meadow Walk for a snoop. In we went, up the st...
Christopher Creegan: One Building, Two Lives
6th June 2024Trigger warning: The text below includes reference to self-harm and suicide. Autumn 2002. I woke to the sound of hushed conversations behind closed curtains. It took a moment to work out where I was and how I had got there. I was on a ho...
Fiona Campbell: Twin Howard recounts his in-utero rollercoaster day at Simpsons
30th May 2024So, here we are at Simpsons: Dad, Mum and me. It’s actually Mum + me as I’m only two months along with another seven months to go until I grace the world with my arrival. So far it’s been fine: it’s nice to be cosy and safe in he...
Pamela Proffitt: From Where It All Began To New Beginnings
28th May 2024The old Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh at Lauriston Place is where it all began for my parents, Elizabeth Cousin and James Proffitt, Betty and Jim. They met there in October 1950 when my father came to work at the Department of Clinical Bi...
Patricia Von Holstein-Rathlou: ON THE FLOOR
28th May 2024ON THE FLOOR APRIL 29, 1888 I heard a glass crash on the floor, the highly polished oak floor. That...
Barbara Munro: Christmas 1967
28th May 2024Hush! It is five in the morning 57 years ago. The long darkened corridors of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh are silent. Yet, at one end on the third floor, nurses are quietly gathering, as the hard, old iron radiators click and clack t...
Evelyn Karlsberg: Daddy Staplehead
28th May 2024Whatever you do, don’t look at the flannel I can’t catch you if you faint My husband looked up at me And my big belly And complied. I knew he would keel over At the sight of his own blood. A bad cut on his head from the corner of the...
Dave Pickering: ONLY WHEN I LAUGH
28th May 2024I certainly wasn’t afraid, and I don’t remember feeling nervous at all. I felt embarrassed. I was going in to the Royal for what was, by all accounts, a very routine operation, but the procedure … well, I did feel slightly embarras...
Marianne L. Berghuis: Royal to Quartermile
28th May 2024‘I was a stranger and ye took me in. Patet Omnibus. I was Sick and ye visited me.’ Royal to Quartermile His kidneys were failing and ye took him in, He was dying on dialysis and ye gave him life. This place where my father lay ill Tr...
Marianne L. Berghuis: Meet me at the ‘Royal’.
28th May 2024‘Lauriston Place, you can’t miss it. It’s an old Victorian sandstone building.’ I explained. ‘Okay, I’ll come to Edinburgh instead.’ Lucas offered. He didn’t think twice when I’d called him at three am saying I wouldn...
Dave Pickering: CRUMBS OF COMFORT
28th May 2024When my father-in-law was admitted to the Royal, we all knew he wouldn’t be coming home again. We’d been told as much, but we didn’t speak about it. Not to each other. And certainly not to him. He was old, frail and tired. Jimmy st...
Shona Littlejohn: Back to the Future
28th May 2024I’m told I was blue lighted to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary – the place where I’d been born a decade and a half earlier. I don’t remember either arrival. Obviously I have no memories of the first experience other than being grateful now, th...
Karin Telders: “I am talking to the patient”
28th May 2024Every time I pass what used to be the Royal Infirmary I look with nostalgia at the turrets of the building. Freshly arrived from Holland to come to live in Edinburgh I had an accident and was rushed to the Royal Infirmary. I was concusse...
Firas Ibrahim: Jimmy The New
23rd May 2024I feel bad for my little brother Jimmy, well I say little even though he is 79 years old and 6 ft tall. Yes, a whole foot taller than me. Anyway, I digress, the reason I feel bad is that Jimmy shares his birthday with a very sad event. I...
Maureen Baker: THE ROYAL INFIRMARY ENTRANCE
21st May 2024Tom worked in the Royal Infirmary as a porter in the 1950’s. Every day he walked up the steps to the entrance of the hospital and looked up at the coat of arms and the gold lettering above the front door. He was fascinated by the detai...
Maureen Baker: THE BALCONY AND TURRETS OF THE ROYAL INFIRMARY
21st May 2024It was Angela’s daily routine. She walked, sometimes ran if she was late for her work but she always stopped at the coffee kiosk on the corner of Quarter Mile to buy her daily coffee. As she waited to be served her eyes would wander up...
Maureen Baker: CAROL’S STORY
21st May 2024As a young local eighteen year old in 1959 I was filled with excitement at the thought of starting my nurse’ s training at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Student nurses in 1959 were all female and had to live in the nearby Red Home with ba...
Daphne Loads: Two Slugs, an Ice-lolly and a Dreadful Secret
21st May 2024Every week I climbed the dark stairs to my group meeting in the Royal Infirmary. We were social work students on medical placements throughout the city, 1980s versions of the white-coated almoners who used to distribute alms among the de...
JW: Mrs RIE
21st May 2024In January 1973, my journey as a nurse began at the Preliminary Training School(PTS) in The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh(RIE) Assigned to the nurses home in Chalmers Street, our rooms & room mates were arranged based on the proximity of ...
Gordon Lawrie: A Nightmare on Lauriston Place
21st May 2024I’ve been very fortunate. Only once in my seventy-plus years have I ever spent a night in hospital. It was a horrible, and entirely unnecessary, experience. Picture the scene: it’s early afternoon on the first day of 1973, and I emer...
Lynn Reid: A Vocation
17th May 2024I commenced my Registered Nurse Training with South Lothian College of Nursing and Midwifery on the 3rd of March 1979. Most of my placements and college sessions were at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. Little did I know that I would nu...
Professor Jonathan M Gibson: A novel use for the RIE suggestions box. No insects were harmed by this event.
17th May 2024As a resident houseman at the old RIE in 1977 (wards 17/18 ,cardiothoracic surgery) I remember visiting the Doctors’ Mess for meals, which were provided for the resident medical staff. As my rota was 1 in 2, this was essential, for us no...
Helen Graham: Our Brief Acquaintance
14th May 2024I must confess, little one, I was unaware of you until after you exploded and nearly took me with you to Kingdom Come. Not that we didn’t want a third child – we did. We’d even begun letting nature take its course with you in mind....
Denis Smith: From New Recruit to Longest Serving Staff Member (1963-2004)
14th May 2024Walking down past A&E one morning in 1963 I had little idea that the rest of my working life would be associated with the Royal Infirmary. As a probationary Physicist I started out without any medical training or even an O-Level in Biolo...
David M. A. Francis: What the Billiard Table Knew
10th May 2024Life as a House Officer on a surgical ward at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh in the 1970s was arduous. My fellow Houseman and I worked 131/2 days a fortnight and were on call in the hospital for 8 of those nights. As surgeons-in-embryo...
Bernard Harkins: Endings and Beginnings
7th May 2024I couldn’t remember the last time I had been here, In fact, it felt like I had forgotten your looming presence, clock tower and all, But how could that be? When for 3 years my bus to secondary school had passed here every day, And I ha...
Jeff Kemp: Ghostwalk
26th April 2024Ward 12, worked here for years. south corridor, I’ve walked miles along it. Hundreds of night shifts. Habituated, I mean, got used to it I mean, probably cost the marriage but why speak of that. Ward 12 room 9. Mr Marner, I was young t...
Jeff Kemp: Bladder
26th April 2024A decade spent living there but it’s not surprising that I never learned that particular word. Translation is reckoned to be the changing of one language into another. Which is a truth which hides a larger question. “What does এম...
Joanna Craig: My Story
23rd April 2024I worked in Cardiology from 1969 until February 1973. My office was in the basement. Lots of cockroaches around, so bad our office was fumigated over a weekend. There was a camera club in the hospital and I often modelled for them. There...
Professor Stephen J Wigmore: Under the knife – William Henley a patient of Joseph Lister in 1873
23rd April 2024There is a time when one is waiting for something unpleasant where one has to give up control. Henley was approaching that moment. He was offered some lunch but could not stomach it. Slightly earlier than advertised, four men approached ...
Carol Brogan: The First Lesson
23rd April 2024In any other surroundings it would have been an unremarkable relic, a piece of furniture rendered invisible by age in a busy room: black leather with a worn sheen, creased and wrinkled, its heavy frame and bulbous wooden limbs layered wi...
SH: It All Turned Out Ok
23rd April 2024I had never been to visit a friend who had just given birth…why would I have? We were only just 16. A high-ceilinged room and a clean gown, she was ruddy from the long night of labour. Her infectious smile, ready to chatter about every...
Carl John Barber: Covid Nurse
17th April 2024Where would I be with out you your nightingales cry softening my own upon a bitter livid darkening day. In your white sheets I sail this choking sea where from my eyes rise up and you are there tired breathless yourself on those busy war...
Patricia Mitchell: First and Last Breaths
17th April 2024Like many Edinburgh residents, I took my first breath in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, in the Simpson Memorial Maternity Pavillion in March 1970. This building overlooked the Meadows, and I used to pass it regularly during my childhood. Eve...
Rab Bennetts, Co-Founder Bennetts Associates: Past memories: Future visions – changing the identity of an Edinburgh institution
16th April 2024The old Royal Infirmary now has an extremely significant place in my life and career, as I led the architectural team for its conversion into the University’s Futures Institute. It has been a thrilling experience. My first memories, th...
R T Wright: Old RIE
16th April 2024For 3 years in the 70’s I was in charge of the Royal Bank Branch inside the Infirmary. It was situated on the Main Surgical Corridor. It was a small space one larger room and a small interview room. There were 10 of us male and female wi...
Karen Michael: Just a memory.
16th April 2024Back in September 1978 I was pregnant with my first baby and attended all the antenatal clinics where you were taught how to bathe feed dress your baby ,and many friends were made . I was admitted with high blood pressure and had to get ...
Ali MacDougall: Its a gas
16th April 2024The hospital at night held infinitely more appeal for me. Most of the great institution’s staff were at home, sleeping off the toils of the day. The usually bright busy corridors with their gleaming black and white linoleum and lists o...
Kathleen MacDonald: Reunion: May 1980 PTS
16th April 202412 of May 1980, we started our course Do you remember that day as a scared student nurse? Young and naïve, thrilled to leave home Anxious, excited and a wee bit alone But soon we made friendships That have lasted for ever We’ve steere...
A.J.Hogg: A Male Nurse Starts – 50 years ago.
16th April 2024Ward 20 in the old Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, was a ward dealing with spinal and brain injuries. Nurse Rene Meredith (future wife) and myself ended up on this ward together, but we were I suppose about the same grades then, unlike som...
Iain Robertson: RIE MY FAMILIES HOSPITAL
16th April 2024My family was married to the rie everyone worked there the beautiful checkered floors the winding staircase, Dad did 40 years in instrument sterilisation, nan and grandad cook and porter, uncle microbiology lab, sisters nurse and medical...
Louisa Russell: My memories of the Skin Department Edinburgh Royal Infirmary
16th April 2024I was born on the 12th October 1946 in Simpsons Memorial Maternity Pavillion. I attended the ERI Skin Department many times from infancy to my adult years. I had and still have Eczema. I remember with gratitude the kindness, help and car...
Stephen Barnaby: LAST OF THE (NOT SO) FUNNY-SHAPED HEADS AT THE SIMPSON
16th April 2024And don’t believe what you see on the telly Said the taxi driver As we sped to The Simpson All these beautiful perfect wee new-born babies They’re horrible looking things when they first come out All blue and purple And they’ve got funny...
Ellen Watters: The ghosts in the walls
16th April 2024My first job as a newly qualified Enrolled nurse in 1980 aged 20, was in female orthopaedics on night shift – 8 shifts on and 6 off. Ward 2, a Florence Nightingale ward – as most were then – where you turned the kitchen light on at...
Evelyn Karlsberg: An Incident (at the Old Royal Infirmary)
9th April 2024Whatever you do, don’t look at the flannel I can’t catch you if you faint My husband looked up at me And my big belly And complied I knew he would keel over At the sight of his own blood. A bad cut on his head from ...
Jeff Kemp: Edinburgh Evening News (04/07/1904)
9th April 2024A fire in the hospital was contained but decimated microscopic specimens and caused havoc amongst cadavers, no laughing matter, a thousand quid’s worth of damage and traffic stilled, horses bridled, a crowd thrilled, some muttering...
Olivia Begbie: ERI
9th April 20241) Treading in their God’s footsteps They crush through the doors, White coats swinging Eager faces shining Adoring eyes gleaming. Hanging on his every word Like limpets on craggy rocks, Clinging in devotion Afraid of...
Jeff Kemp: Ghostwalk
9th April 2024Ward 12, worked here for years. south corridor, I’ve walked miles along it. Hundreds of night shifts. Habituated, I mean got used to it I mean, probably cost the marriage but why speak of that. Ward 12 room 9. Mr Marner, I was ...
Jane Murray: Royal Infirmary
9th April 2024Words and laughter, tears and hysterics chocs and Mint Imperials, and a banana. Neighbours range from citrus to butter Purples of various shades We smile and nod and generally give silent support. There is a look of a shared...
Dave Pickering: THE GIANT CHEF
9th April 2024Pad, pad, pad This corridor gets longer every time At least I’m getting my steps up I wonder when they’ll change those pictures They’re good – well, some of them But a change is as good as a rest? Pad, pad, pad S...
Nadini Sen: The Whale’s Stomach
9th April 2024I wonder how to name the hospital. It is inside a huge whale’s tummy in the North Sea. The mattresses were torn and old, gagged the gateway of the tummy. They all wore the red striped shirts and pyjamas, black boots and loose soc...