The Very Charitable Pig Faced Lady of Dublin

She visited the poor of Dublin accompanied by a retinue of servants, yet the heavily veiled figure never left her carriage but directed the distribution of alms from its shadowy interior. Bare footed children and ragged youths loitered, just close enough for her to hear their derisive snorts and grunts.

For Grizel Steevens was rumoured to have the snout of a pig. Nay, not just rumoured - many swore to have seen it, others to have witnessed her feeding gluttonously from a silver trough. It was said that, when pregnant with Grizel, her mother had refused help to a beggar woman and her hungry children, ordering her to be off with her ‘litter of pigs’. The angry beggar flung curses upon the unborn child. In truth, Grizel Steevens wore a veil, when outdoors, because of eye trouble. At home, she often sat by the window, unveiled, in a vain attempt to dispel the ugly rumours.

Her twin brother, Richard, Professor of Physics at Trinity College, died in 1710, leaving his estate to his beloved sister and thereafter to be used to build a hospital for the curable, sick poor. Grizel decided to fulfil his wishes within her own lifetime, enlisting men of power and wealth to her cause. The project grew beyond anything her brother had imagined. On July, 23rd, 1733, Dr. Steeven’s Hospital, Dublin’s first modern hospital building opened, on the banks of the Liffey, away from the old city teeming with people and disease. Grizel Steevens was then 78 years old.

Having produced the required certificate of poverty, patients were admitted onto long wards, heated by coal fires in winter. They were fed on a diet of bread, milk, beef stirabout, wine and whiskey. Many labourers working on the Liffey walls or loading and unloading cargo on the river were treated. The accounts of 1825 show £40 was spent on leeches, £8 on wooden legs and £5 on coffins. Two wards were reserved for the treatment of venereal diseases and in 1806 a room was added for persons drowned in the Liffey. A rudimentary bellows was used as an aid to recovery.

The hospital’s doctors and surgeons were, generally, unpaid, only receiving an allowance for coach travel. Resident staff were given allowances for coals, candles and beer. The most westerly city bridge being then Bloody Bridge (now Rory O’More Bridge), Dr. Steeven’s Hospital was given the rights to a ferry service across the Liffey, which began in 1734, £25 having been expended on a slipway, steps and a boathouse and over £2 on entertaining the Lord Mayor. The ferry operated until the opening of the King’s Bridge in 1829. Dr. Steeven’s Hospital closed in 1987 and is now an administrative facility. 

A plaque on the door records the date of 1720, when work began on the hospital’s inner quadrangle, and the names of Richard and Grizel Steevens.

by Annette Black, Wicklow
Published on 31st August 2013