Local Government Board approved a plan for an infectious diseases hospital (known first as the Poor Law Institution, and later until 1929, the Coventry Poor Law Hospital) at the workhouse. By 1888 there was an infirmary with seven wards, but due to its inadequacy in several areas, the foundation stone of a new infirmary was laid in 1889. The workhouse infirmary combined the functions of a general, infectious diseases, and mental hospital. A serious scarlet fever outbreak in 1874 instigated the opening of a fever hospital in Coventry known as the City Isolation Hospital. The first stop-gap hospital was replaced by a larger one in 1885, where scarlet fever and diphtheria were the principal diseases dealt with after a separate smallpox hospital was erected at Pinley Hill Farm in 1897. Hospital expansion was steady for a while and generally related to demand, but the First World War provided further impetus and rapid industrial growth between the two World Wars was an important factor in further general growth. Following the Local Government Act 1929, the public health committee of the corporation took control of the workhouse hospital, then renamed the Gulson Road Municipal Hospital. The hospital was open to all the sick inhabitants of Coventry, but priority was still given to the sick poor. The old workhouse was absorbed into the hospital in 1937. Paybody Hospital opened in 1929 as a convalescent home for crippled children when Thomas Paybody donated £2,000, together with a large house in Allesley, to the Coventry Crippled Children's Guild. About the same time, negotiations began for the sale of the old fever hospital in 1927–9, and the newly built Whitley Isolation Hospital opened in 1934. During the bombing of 1940–41, Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital was virtually destroyed, and although Gulson and Whitley hospitals also sustained damage, Gulson became the main casualty hospital while most other services were dispersed to other hospitals in the region. In 1948, under the National Health Service Act 1946, Coventry Hospital Management Committee took over the control of 23 institutions and annexes, 10 of which lay within the boundaries of the city. At the same time, the long-established Provident Dispensary was dissolved. In 1951 Allesley House was closed, and Allesley Hall initially became an annexe of Paybody Hospital before closing in 1959. In 1962 the relatively few orthopaedic cases at Paybody Hospital were moved to Whitley Hospital to be replaced a year