hospital history:
Special Needs
Baldovan Institute

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The charitable Baldovan Institute, which opened in Dundee in 1852 was set up by Sir John and Lady Jane Ogilvy. This was Scotland's first ever residential hospital for learning disabled children, and followed on a similar venture which opened in Bath in 1846. At first the Institute cared for orphan children as well, but later it concentrated on looking after the learning disabled.

Baldovan Institute,
about 1900

In the 1920s financial problems were solved by a consortium of local county authorities who took over the hospital. Dundee Corporation did not join the consortium. One upshot of this was that learning disabled children from Dundee in the 1920s and 1930s were not eligible to go to Baldovan and had to be cared for at Liff, other facilities or boarded out.
In 1948 Baldovan became part of the NHS and local learning disabled children could now attend. Under the NHS the Hospital looked after adults as well as children.

It was renamed Strathmartine Hospital in 1959.