Royal Waterloo Hospital for Children and Women
Encyclopedia
The Royal Waterloo Hospital for Children and Women was a hospital located on the corner of Waterloo Bridge Road and Stamford Street near Waterloo Station
Waterloo station
Waterloo station, also known as London Waterloo, is a central London railway terminus and London Underground complex. The station is owned and operated by Network Rail and is close to the South Bank of the River Thames, and in Travelcard Zone 1....

 in London, England.

History

The hospital was founded in 1816 as the Universal Dispensary for Children, this was changed in 1852 to the Royal Infirmary for Children and Women. The hospital underwent its final name change to the Royal Waterloo Hospital for Children and Women in 1875.

In a 1856 review of the hospital system in London, the British Journal of Homeopathy noted the serious shortage of hospital beds for children in London:
Again, London possesses but one hospital (Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street), where sick children are received, containing the insignificant number of 30 beds. Paris has a large hospital (Enfants Malades), containing 600 beds for sick children. The Royal Infirmary for Children, Waterloo Bridge Road, is said to be capable, with a few alterations, of containing 80 beds; but we have no reason to suppose that it does yet contain any; and as its funds are stated to be very limited, there seems small hopes of its taking in sick children for the present.


By the year of the hospital's rebuilding in 1903 the concerns over bed space remained: an article in the British Medical Journal raised the concern that the Waterloo site left little room for extension.

Joining the NHS and closure

The hospital joined the National Health Service
National Health Service (England)
The National Health Service or NHS is the publicly funded healthcare system in England. It is both the largest and oldest single-payer healthcare system in the world. It is able to function in the way that it does because it is primarily funded through the general taxation system, similar to how...

 in 1948 as part of the nearby St Thomas' Hospital
St Thomas' Hospital
St Thomas' Hospital is a large NHS hospital in London, England. It is administratively a part of Guy's & St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. It has provided health care freely or under charitable auspices since the 12th century and was originally located in Southwark.St Thomas' Hospital is accessible...

 group of hospitals (now Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
Guy's Hospital
Guy's Hospital is a large NHS hospital in the borough of Southwark in south east London, England. It is administratively a part of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. It is a large teaching hospital and is home to the King's College London School of Medicine...

). The Royal Waterloo Hospital closed on the 27 July 1976.

Hospital buildings and locations

In its first incarnation the hospital was located at St Andrew's Hill, in the now demolished Doctor's Commons in the City of London
City of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...

. Between 1903-04 premises were built at a cost of £45000 to house an outpatients' department and inpatient accommodation of 90 beds at the corner of Waterloo Bridge Road and Stamford Street near Waterloo Station
Waterloo station
Waterloo station, also known as London Waterloo, is a central London railway terminus and London Underground complex. The station is owned and operated by Network Rail and is close to the South Bank of the River Thames, and in Travelcard Zone 1....

. This building was awarded Grade II listed status by English Heritage in 1980. The hospital remained at this location until its closure in 1976.

Notable staff

  • Sir Samuel Wilks
    Samuel Wilks
    Sir Samuel Wilks, 1st Baronet , was a British physician and biographer.-Early life:Samuel Wilks was born on 2 June 1824 in Camberwell, London, the second son of Joseph Barber Wilks, a cashier at the East India House...

  • Charles Hilton Fagge
    Charles Hilton Fagge
    -Life:Fagge was the son of Charles Fagge, a medical practitioner, and nephew of John Hilton. He was born in Hythe, Kent on 30 June 1838. Fagge entered Guy's Hospital medical school in October 1856, and in 1859, at the first M.B. examination at the university of London, gained three scholarships and...

  • Dr Braxton Hicks
    John Braxton Hicks
    John Braxton Hicks was a 19th century English doctor who specialised in obstetrics.He was born to Edward Hicks in Rye, Sussex. He was educated privately and in 1841 entered Guy's Hospital Medical School. He obtained his MB at the University of London in 1845 and an MD in 1851...

    , who described Braxton Hicks contractions
  • John Cooper Forster
    John Cooper Forster
    John Cooper Forster was a British surgeon.-Biography:Forster was born in 1823 in Lambeth, London, where his father and grandfather before him had been local medical practitioners. He entered Guy's Hospital in 1841, was appointed demonstrator of anatomy in 1850, assistant-surgeon, 1855, and...

  • William Shearman
    William Shearman
    William Shearman , or Sherman, was a British physician and medical writer, born at Harwich. He graduated an M.D. from Edinburgh on September 12, 1807 , and was admitted as a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, London, on April 11, 1808...

  • Walter Cooper Dendy
    Walter Cooper Dendy
    -Early life:Dendy, born in 1794 at or near Horsham in Sussex, after an apprenticeship in that locality came to London about 1811, and entered himself as a student at Guy's and St. Thomas's hospitals.-Career:...

  • William Sargant
    William Sargant
    William Walters Sargant was a controversial British psychiatrist who is remembered for the evangelical zeal with which he promoted treatments such as psychosurgery, deep sleep treatment, electroconvulsive therapy and insulin shock therapy.Sargant studied medicine at St John's College, Cambridge,...

    , the controversial psychiatrist.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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