St Thomas' Hospital in 1900

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Arthur H. Beavan continued his survey of London's hospitals at the turn of the twentieth century in Imperial London, published in 1901, with this look at St Thomas' Hospital:

St Thomas' Hospital, undisturbed for three hundred and fifty years on the east side of High Street, Southwark, near London Bridge, became in 1862, after the purchase of its site by the South Eastern Railway Company, a homeless wanderer on the face of mighty London.

After securing temporary shelter in the large music-hall of the Surrey Zoological Gardens, it was suggested that a new hospital should be erected in the country, but this was negatived, and finally the buildings, so prominent on the south bank of the Thames at Westminster, were put up, the late Queen Victoria laying the foundation-stone on May 13, 1868, and opening it on its completion, June 21, 1871.

St Thomas's is one of the three ancient medical hospices of Royal foundation, and King Edward VI, ten days before his death, delivered it over by charter to the Lord Mayor and citizens, for the poor, sick, infirm, and wayfaring people of London and Southwark in perpetuity.

It covered about four acres of ground, and consisted of three courts and colonnades.

It had twenty wards, the usual hall, court-room, etc., and chapel, also a church, once attached to the monastery, which bore the name of the doubting apostle.

The present hospital buildings were designed by the architect Currie, on the principle of complete isolation of one set of wards from the other, and consist of seven four-storied detached blocks, one hundred and twenty-five feet apart, connected by arcades, the central block containing the hall and chapel.

From the Middlesex side the effect of this chain of linked structure is not unpleasing, as the pillared recesses and corner towers give variety to the otherwise monotonous and lengthy frontage.

So far, the isolation theory seems to have worked well, the number of in-patients treated annually mounting up to close upon 10,000, and the outpatients to not far short of 100,000, in the year 1900.

This was one of the first hospitals to adopt the system of "paying-patients," by which any one could privately benefit by the best of medical treatment and nursing in what was called the Home, at a minimum charge of nine shillings per diem.

Attached to St. Thomas's was the admirable Nightingale Nursing School.

Next: London's Hospitals and Clinics in 1900: The London Hospital