Hillcrest Hospital

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Hillcrest Hospital was the name of a building that started life in 1839 as the Leicester Union Workhouse. If you were destitute, the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act meant that the only way to get help was to move into a workhouse. Leicester's workhouse was built in 1839 on a site currently occupied by Moat School, near the train station on London Road. By 1851 it housed over 1,000 people and was one of the largest in England.

The Poor Law wasn't fully abolished until 1948, and the building's name was changed to Hillcrest Hospital in the 1960s. While conditions in the workhouse were often no worse than living in dire poverty, the stigma of being associated with the workhouse remained strong throughout the inter-war period.

Dorothy Evans describes working at Hillcrest before WW2, while Hilda Riley became a nurse at Hillcrest at the outbreak of WW2.

Further reading

The Story of Leicester - https://www.storyofleicester.info/a-working-town/leicester-union-workhouse/

Leicester's Workhouses - https://www.workhouses.org.uk/Leicester/