The Wayside Hospital was established at 564 King Street in Charleston, South Carolina, on 16 July 1862. An earlier hospital of the same name had been opened in November, 1861, at the South Carolina Railroad Depot for the purpose of providing aid and comfort to sick and wounded soldiers while in transit. This two-room facility soon proved too small and was relocated to one of the buildings of the nearby South Carolina Military College (the Citadel) in January 1862. That location, too, was not entirely satisfactory, and in June, 1862, the Confederate government negotiated a six-month lease on one of the buildings of an inactive steam planing mill on King Street (opposite Cannon Street) owned by George S. Hacker (1809−1886). The building was quickly prepared for use as a receiving and transfer hospital and began admitting patients on 18 July 1862.
The hospital’s first commander was Dr. Thomas Campbell Girardeau, a 32-year old physician from St. Bartholomew’s Parish, Colleton District, South Carolina. Dr. Girardeau had first enlisted as a private in Co. A (South Carolina Rangers), 6th (later 17th) Battalion SC Cavalry, on 1 January 1862, and spent most of the next several months detailed as an acting surgeon while awaiting an appointment as assistant surgeon in the Confederate States Army, which he received on 14 June 1862. On 1 July 1862, he was ordered to report to Surgeon Robert Alexander Kinloch (1826–1891), Medical Director for the Department of South Carolina and Georgia, and five days later he was assigned to the newly-established Wayside Hospital on King Street. Dr. Girardeau remained in charge until 25 August 1862, when he was relieved from duty at the hospital and ordered to report to the 24th SC Infantry on James Island. His replacement was Dr. Robert Lebby, Sr. (1805–1887), a Charleston resident and physician who had served for many years in the Federal medical service and was also a city alderman before the war. Dr. Lebby was at that time serving as an acting, or contract Army surgeon, and was in charge of the Mazyck Street Hospital in Charleston. He was appointed a surgeon in the Confederate States Army on 15 December 1862, and remained in command of the Wayside (1st Louisiana) Hospital for the rest of the war.
As a receiving and transfer hospital, the Wayside Hospital functioned as both a general hospital and a clearinghouse for soldiers being sent to hospitals in the interior. Cases that could not be treated at field and regimental hospitals were sent first to the Wayside Hospital, and those soldiers well enough to travel were dispatched by railroad from the Wayside Hospital to general hospitals at Summerville, Columbia, and other cities in the interior of South Carolina and Georgia. The more serious cases were admitted to the Wayside Hospital’s own wards for treatment until they were strong enough to travel, or could be returned to duty with their units. Consequently, the hospital was organized into two distinct, yet overlapping departments, the general hospital and the transfer department, and separate records and registers were maintained for each.
In its physical layout, the hospital consisted of a surgical ward, a sick ward, and a convalescent ward. There was also an office (which apparently also served as the transfer department), as well as kitchen, laundry, and privy facilities. Initially, the hospital had a capacity of 70 patients, which was later expanded to 90. In addition to the surgeon-in-charge, the staff consisted of 15–20 men and women, including an assistant surgeon, a hospital steward, ward masters, matrons, nurses, laundresses, and attendants. The transfer department also employed a traveling nurse who accompanied the sick and wounded while in transit via railroad to interior hospitals. This position was usually filled by a detailed soldier who was physically unfit for field duty.
Reflecting the defensive nature of Confederate operations in and around Charleston, most of the admissions to the Wayside Hospital were for disease, rather than the result of combat. Wounds accounted for only five percent (5%) of the total cases, while the most frequent complaint was malaria and its associated fevers, which comprised fully one-third of the cases treated. Other common ailments were diarrhea, dysentery (the two were essentially synonymous), rheumatism, typhoid fever, measles, venereal disease, pneumonia, catarrh, bronchitis, jaundice, and yellow fever. Lesser afflictions ranged from abscesses and ague to whitlow and whooping cough. The care provided at the Wayside Hospital was typical of that given in most military hospitals of the period, when diseases were thought to result from derangements, or imbalances, in bodily fluids and tissues, and treatments consisted largely of administering various compounds and preparations to restore proper balance through purging, stimulating, sedating, or altering of functions. There was a heavy reliance on the use of mercury, opium, ipecac, castor oil, and even turpentine in many of these treatments, and one must wonder if the cure was not often worse than the disease. However, of the 6,254 patients admitted to the hospital through 18 February 1865, only 183 (2.9%) are known to have died, which compares quite favorably with the reported mortality rates of other Confederate hospitals. For example, the Flewellen Hospital in the Army of Tennessee received 2,041 patients between 8 September 1863 and 1 March 1865, of whom 128 (6.3%) died, and the death rate for all hospitals in the Department of Virginia from September, 1862, through July, 1864, was 12.8%. Although the incidence of combat wounds and related deaths was presumably greater in these latter theaters (e.g., 28.5% of the Flewellen Hospital’s admissions were for gunshot wounds), it seems clear that the Wayside Hospital provided above-average care in an age when the role of microbes in causing disease was yet unknown, and the development of antibiotics lay some 80 years in the future.
Most of the patients admitted to the Wayside Hospital were enlisted men, but the names of several high-ranking officers also appear in the patient register. Brigadier General Nathan George Evans was admitted on 13 May 1864, suffering from contusions received when thrown from a buggy while riding through Charleston. He was given a 60-day furlough on the following day, and Dr. Lebby was detailed to accompany him to his home in Edgefield District, South Carolina. Colonel George A. Gordon, 63d GA Infantry, was admitted with intermittent fever on 24 December 1864, and returned to duty on 2 February 1865. Colonel Andrew J. Hutchins, 19th GA Infantry, was received with an undisclosed complaint on 11 August 1863, and sent to Summerville on 15 August. Colonel Aaron Edwards, 47th GA Infantry, was admitted with chronic dysentery on 14 July 1864, and sent to Guyton, Georgia, the following day. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Josiah Jeffords, 5th SC Cavalry, was received from Virginia with gunshot wounds in the thigh on 22 August 1864, and was granted a 30-day furlough on the same day (his home was in Charleston). Lieutenant Colonel John G. Pressley, 25th (Eutaw) SC Infantry, was received from the Roper Hospital with a gunshot wound on 2 September 1864, and given a 60-day furlough on 5 September. Lieutenant Colonel J. Welsman Brown, 2d SC Artillery, was admitted with asthma on 1 December 1863, and returned to duty on 10 December. The lowest ranking patient admitted (at least on the social scale of the period) was one Butler, a slave belonging to Colonel James D. Blanding of the 9th SC Infantry. Butler was received on 3 October 1863, when found lying sick in the street near the hospital, and was transferred to the Negro Hospital at the corner of Rutledge and Spring Streets on the same day.
The original lease on the Wayside Hospital building was for six months, and as it neared expiration in January 1863, renewal negotiations were begun with George S. Hacker. To the dismay of Dr. Lebby, Hacker indicated his intention to resume operation of his planing mill in the other buildings on the site. Fearing that the resulting noise and commotion would be detrimental to the patients’ well-being, the Confederate authorities quickly decided to lease the entire mill complex, and incorporated the additional buildings into the hospital facility.
On 19 December 1863, the Wayside Hospital’s role as a transfer facility was expanded to include the distribution of soldiers to the other general hospitals in Charleston, as well as to hospitals in the interior. Dr. Lebby quickly instituted a procedure requiring the city hospitals to submit daily reports to him indicating the number of beds available for use. Also, on 31 December 1863, the hospital’s name was officially changed to the 1st Louisiana Receiving, Distribution & Transfer Hospital, in compliance with an earlier Act of the Confederate States Congress requiring that Army hospitals be named after states, and that soldiers should be sent to hospitals named for their home states whenever practical.
By the end of 1863, the hospital’s facilities were showing signs of wear and tear, and extensive repairs and renovations were begun in December. The wards were whitewashed, and a new storeroom was built. Dining and bathing facilities were expanded, and much-needed improvements were made to the privy. In February 1864, Dr. Lebby arranged for the installation of gas lights in the hospital buildings using the lines and fixtures from the defunct 1st North Carolina Hospital. In justification of the expense, he cited the anticipated savings on candles and the benefits of “a better and much cleaner light.” However, the results may have fallen short of Dr. Lebby’s expectations, for due to the unavailability of coke, the Charleston Gas Light Company had resorted to burning pine wood to produce illuminating gas, and the feeble light given off by street lamps using this fuel was described by one contemporary observer as “distinctly visible to the naked eye.”
In mid-1864, the growing weight of Union siege operations against Charleston made the city less suitable as a site for hospitals, and Confederate medical authorities began sending greater numbers of patients to the interior. These efforts were further accelerated by an outbreak of epidemic yellow fever in September.
By December, only three hospitals, including the 1st Louisiana, were still operating, and only those patients too sick to travel remained in them. On 15 February 1865, the 1st Louisiana Hospital was reclassified as a field hospital in anticipation of the evacuation of Charleston, and Dr. Lebby was ordered to send all but the most sick and infirm patients to interior hospitals. When the city was surrendered three days later, only 32 patients remained in the hospital (19 of whom subsequently died). Dr. Lebby elected to stay behind with his patients, and was given permission by U.S. authorities to continue operating the hospital. It was finally closed on 27 April 1865, and Dr. Lebby and several members of his staff were allowed to cross over to the Confederate lines on 1 May 1865.
Dr. Lebby returned to Charleston in late May, 1865, and soon resumed his medical practice at 49 Beaufain Street. He was a well-respected physician and public figure until his death on 18 February 1887, and is buried in Magnolia Cemetery with his wife, the former Elizabeth Esther Rivers, who preceded him in death on 17 February 1882. George S. Hacker reopened the planing mill with his son, and produced doors, window sashes, blinds, and other lumber products there until his death on 26 April 1886. He, too, is buried in Magnolia Cemetery, next to his wife, Anna Maria, who died in 1876. The site on King Street opposite Cannon Street (since renumbered 544) is now occupied by a bank building, dating from 1927, and its associated drive-up banking facility. Except for an unmarked lane that appears on maps as Hacker’s Alley, and which once connected the mill yard with the street, no evidence remains of Hacker’s mill or the Wayside Hospital, and nothing is left to suggest that the site was once the scene of so much suffering and dedicated service by Confederate soldiers and medical personnel.