General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

On about Leigh, in the mid 1980s I was living and working in Atherton, and of course the people of Atherton, like Leigh and Tyldesley hated Wigan and Wigan infirmary, anything to do with Wigan, and at that time Leigh Infirmary was still more or less a stand alone hospital, with its own casualty department, the main thing I noticed was that at weekends, Wigan and Leigh infirmary's took it in turns to carry out emergency operations at the weekends.

But at that time there was the Firs Maternity Home in Plank Lane in Leigh, which was still operating, and it was basically the same as Billinge Hospital, it was the maternity hospital for Leigh and the surrounding areas, but it had a very bad reputation, and women were refusing to go there to give birth, they demanded to go to Billinge Hospital, and Billinge Hospital was quite a long way from Leigh, Atherton and Tyldesley, but Billinge was where they wanted to go.