A period of great distress and epidemic, due to poverty among other things in those days, showed the advantages of such a hospital.

[1] The hospital was administered by a board of fifteen prominent Dublin gentlemen, presided over by the Duke of Leinster.

[2] The hospital was first open only to poor patients who were unable to pay for medical attendance or proper treatment in their own homes.

[2] At the time of the Irish Famine in the late 1840s, fever epidemics carried off victims by the hundred.

[3] The architect James Rawson Carroll added of outermost blocks to the hospital circa 1900.