The London Hospital
Many great institutions have been born over a drink. Lloyds Bank and Lloyds of London both owe their names to the Lloyds Coffee House where their founding fathers met to discuss business.
And the world’s first football association, the English FA, was started on October 26, 1863, when members of the main clubs and schools met at the Freemasons’ Tavern, in Great Queen Street, Holborn, to thrash out a structure.
But there can’t be many hospitals that have been founded over a pint. But that’s how the London Hospital began, when seven men met at the Feathers Tavern in Cheapside one night in 1740.
The guiding light was a 22-year-old surgeon John Harrison, a new member of the Barber-Surgeons’ Company – this was in the days when your hairdresser practised rudimentary medicine too.
The seven leased a house in Moorfields, the first of a series of short-lived homes. In 1741 the London Infirmary, as it was known, moved to Prescott Street near the Minories.
The infirmary seems a curious hospital to modern eyes. No deaths were recorded and the only discharges were for misdemeanours. From 1755, released patients were classed as cured or relieved, and had to return to their parish churches to give thanks to God. Any who failed to do so were blacklisted and never treated again.
Professional bug destroyers would continuously delouse the wards – there was no running water, while excrement and removed body parts were carried out at night by the orderlies and dumped in the street.
Filthy streets
Hygiene was a huge problem in the filthy streets east of the City – and the Minories was a hotbed of brothels and gin palaces. But in 1753 the governors had raised sufficient cash to build a grand new hospital, among the green fields of Whitechapel.
The London Hospital was the finest in the capital, boasting running water and flush toilets. And it attracted the finest surgeons.
Until now, the hospital had refused to take students but, under Sir William Blizard, the pre-eminent medical man of his age and founder-president of the Royal College of Surgeons, the first London teaching hospital was set up. Until now the profession had been taught in private schools.
The new school opened in 1785, boasting a chemical laboratory, the now-famous museum and a dissecting room.
Throughout the 19th century the hospital became the most famed in England.
In 1854, a new medical school was set up, and in 1876, Queen Victoria opened a new wing. The hospital now had 790 beds – it was the biggest in the country.
The dominant figure of the early 20th century was Sydney Holland. He became Chairman in 1896 and, until his death in 1931, raised huge sums of money for the hospital. By the time he died, the Boulton Mainwaring building of 1857 had been completely rebuilt.
War damage
The London suffered major bomb damage in World War II but, beneath the rebuilding, and the 1990 addition of a helicopter pad, Mainwaring’s Georgian building remains, at the heart of a group of hospitals which since the 1960s has also encompassed St Clement’s Bow and Mile End Hospitals.
And it was in 1990 that the London changed its name. The infirmary which had once housed 30 beds in a rented house, leased by a barber turned surgeon, became the Royal London Hospital and the Queen marked 250 years of history with a royal visit.