Those Places Thursday – 51 Lisburn Road, Belfast, Ireland

Death Record for Ellen Doran, 19 March, 1907. Source: http://www.nidirect.gov.uk/index.htm

I received the death record for my great-great-grandmother, Ellen Little Doran from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, after ordering it from NIDirect. The address given for her place of death was 51 Lisburn Road, Belfast, Ireland. A little bell went off in my head about having seen that address on other family records. When I did a search I understood why – it was the site of the Belfast Union Workhouse and Infirmary, now part of City Hospital, Belfast, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, UK. You can click here to read more about the history of the hospital from PRONI.

Ellen Little Doran died of bronchitis at the age of 63, but most likely she was closer to 67 based on other records. She had been cared for by her daughter-in-law, Lizzie Doran, at 72 McDonnell Street, in the Falls area of West Belfast. My great-grandparents, Bernard and Mary Hall Doran, named their first daughter Ellen, in 1884, in honor of her grandmother.

The Belfast Workhouse Infirmary was built in the early part of the 19th Century to provide sick beds for the poor, destitute, and working-class residents of the rapidly growing city. It opened in 1841. The City Hospital of Belfast, built on the grounds of the previous hospital, still uses the same address. Here is a photograph showing what the hospital looks like now, from Wikipedia.