St Thomas' Hospital
St Thomas' Hospital | |
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King's College London GKT School of Medical Education | |
Services | |
Emergency department | Yes |
Beds | 840[1] |
Speciality | Dermatology, cardiothoracic surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, children's services (Evelina London Children's Hospital), critical care, clinical pharmacology, cancer services, dentistry, urology, sexual health |
Public transit access | Westminster Waterloo Lambeth North |
History | |
Opened | circa 1100 |
Links | |
Website | guysandstthomas |
Lists | Hospitals in England |
St Thomas' Hospital is a large
Originally located in Southwark, but based in Lambeth since 1871, the hospital has provided healthcare freely or under charitable auspices since the 12th century. It is one of London's most famous hospitals, associated with people such as Sir Astley Cooper, William Cheselden, Florence Nightingale, Alicia Lloyd Still, Linda Richards, Edmund Montgomery, Agnes Elizabeth Jones and Sir Harold Ridley. It is a prominent London landmark – largely due to its location on the opposite bank of the River Thames to the Houses of Parliament.
St Thomas' Hospital is accessible from
History
The Hospital at The Borough, Southwark
The hospital was described as ancient in 1215
Originally the hospital was run by a mixed order of Augustinian
The hospital was also where one of the first printed English Bibles was produced in 1537, and this is commemorated by a plaque on the surviving wing in Borough High Street. The plaque inaccurately refers to "the first printed Bible in English" rather than "one of the first".[6]
There were some twenty-four priors, masters, wardens or rectors who served between the foundation of the hospital and the
Dr. Eleazar Hodson was the first St Thomas' physician about whom the medical historian
Saint Thomas's Hospital Act 1862 | |
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Act of Parliament | |
Dates | |
Royal assent | 7 August 1862 |
Text of statute as originally enacted |
Some parts of the old St Thomas' Hospital survive on the north side of St Thomas Street, Southwark including the old
The Victorian hospital in Lambeth
The present-day St Thomas' Hospital is located at a site historically known as
This was one of the first new hospitals to adopt the "pavilion principle" – popularised by Florence Nightingale in her Notes on Nursing – by having six separate ward buildings at right angles to the river frontage set 125 feet apart and linked by low corridors. The intention was primarily to improve ventilation and to separate and segregate patients with infectious diseases.[15]
An urban legend suggests that by convention, deaths in the Palace of Westminster are recorded as occurring in St Thomas' Hospital, because it is technically a royal palace, and as such people who die there would be entitled to a state funeral.[16] This is not true, since state funerals for any person other than a sovereign require an order from the reigning monarch as well as a parliamentary vote to authorise the funding.[17]
A similar myth suggests that the place of death is changed because a death in a royal palace would require an inquest from the Coroner of the Queen's Household and a hearing before a jury of members of the Royal Household. Although the position of Coroner of the Queen's Household was abolished by the Coroners and Justice Act 2009,[18] in the past the Coroner was responsible for inquests where the victim was "lying within the limits of the Queen's palaces",[19] which would have included the Palace of Westminster. However, there is no proof that deaths at Westminster were ever reported as happening at St Thomas' Hospital to avoid involving the Coroner. When Sir Alfred Billson died in the House of Commons in 1907, his death was recorded as occurring in the House and not at St Thomas' Hospital.[16]
The hospital was requisitioned by the War Office in 1914 to create the 5th London General Hospital, a facility for the Royal Army Medical Corps to treat military casualties.[20]
Post-war rebuilding
The northern part of the hospital site was severely damaged during the
As construction of the thirteen storey block (now North Wing) was completed by
In November 1949, in an operating theatre in St Thomas' Hospital, Harold Ridley achieved the world's first implantation of an intraocular lens (IOL), treating a cataract in a 49-year-old female patient. In later life Ridley himself underwent successful bilateral intraocular lens implantation at St Thomas's. What was most pleasing to him was that he had the operation done in the same hospital where he had performed the first operation in 1949.[24] Ridley was subsequently made a Knight Bachelor "for pioneering services to cataracts surgery".[25]
With the closure of the
Following the merger of Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals into one trust, accident and emergency services were consolidated at St Thomas' Hospital in 1993.[27] Former prime minister Harold Wilson died at the hospital on 24 May 1995, as a result of cancer and Alzheimer's disease.[28] In the late 1980s Dr Chris Aps introduced changes at St Thomas' Hospital which allowed cardiothoracic surgical patients to recover away from the intensive care unit in an overnight intensive recovery unit: this has become a template for similar units across the United Kingdom.[29] In October 2005 children's departments moved to new facilities designed by Michael Hopkins at Evelina London Children's Hospital to the south-east of St Thomas' Hospital.[30]
Response to COVID-19
As the situation in Wuhan deteriorated, at the end of January 2020, four hospital trusts in the UK, including St Thomas' and The Royal Free were put on standby to receive suspected patients.[31]
After testing positive to COVID-19 on 27 March, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was admitted to St Thomas' on 5 April and as his condition deteriorated, he was moved to intensive care later that day.[32][33] He was moved out of intensive care on 9 April and discharged 3 days later.[34]
Facilities
The current main pedestrian entrance is in Westminster Bridge Road, although there is a separate vehicle and A&E entrance in Lambeth Palace Road; there is also a riverside pedestrian entrance, and the Lane Fox Unit (chronic respiratory problems) has its own riverside entrance, mainly for the use of patients on the Lane Fox Ward. The pedestrian entrance to the campus leads to a glazed link between the Lambeth Wing and the North Wing. Guy's and St Thomas' Charity commissioned sculptor Rick Kirby to produce a sculpture "Cross the Divide", and this was unveiled in 2000 outside the Main Entrance.[35] To the north of the North Wing (closer to Westminster Bridge Road) there is a garden area above car parking with Naum Gabo's fountain sculpture Revolving Torsion at its centre.[36]
Tommy's is a UK-based charity that funds research into pregnancy problems and provides information to parents. The charity believes that it is unacceptable that one in four women in the UK will lose a baby during pregnancy and birth. It started when two obstetricians working in the maternity unit at the hospital were inspired to start fundraising for more research into pregnancy problems. It funds three research centres in the UK, including St Thomas' in London, Saint Mary's Hospital, Manchester, and the recently established Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.[37]
Name
The use of the plural genitive s' in place of the singular genitive s's is fairly recent. The hospital newsletter in 2004 claimed that plural s' is grammatically correct, as "there are two men called St Thomas linked to the hospital's history: Thomas Becket and Thomas the Apostle".[38] A hospital belonging to two men, both called Thomas, would be Thomases', so the name change in the late 20th century is considered by some to be a simple mistake.[39]
Within the South Wing of the hospital there are a number of late Victorian brass plaques headed "St Thomas's Hospital" i.e. using singular genitive. However, the medical school used the singular genitive s's; the explanation given for this was that as the medical school of the hospital it was called "St Thomas's Hospital Medical School" (although following this logic it should perhaps have been called "St Thomas's Hospital's Medical School").[40]
Medical training at St Thomas' Hospital
St Thomas's Hospital Medical School was established in 1550. Following the establishment of Guy's Hospital as a separate institution, this continued as a single medical school, commonly known as The Borough Hospitals, with teaching across St Thomas' and Guy's Hospitals. Following a dispute over the successor to the Surgeon Astley Cooper, Guy's established its own separate medical school in 1825 .[41]
The medical school subsequently remerged in 1982 with that at Guy's to form the
Following discussion held between 1990 and 1992 with King's College London and the King's College London Act 1997, the UMDS merged in 1998 with King's College School of Medicine and Dentistry to form as The Guy's, Kings & Thomas' Schools of Medicine (GKT School of Medicine), of Dentistry and of Biomedical Sciences.[41] This was renamed as King's College London School of Medicine and Dentistry at Guy's, King's and St Thomas' Hospitals in 2005.[43]
Nurse training at St.Thomas' Hospital
The Nightingale Training School and Home for Nurses opened at St Thomas' Hospital on 9 July 1860 under Matron Sarah Elizabeth Wardroper,[44] endowed from the publicly donated Fund raised after the Crimean War to honour Florence Nightingale.[45] Alicia LLoyd Still (matron of the hospital and superintendent of the training school from 1913 to 1937) created the first post of sister tutor, setting a model internationally.[46] The school merged with other training schools in the 1990's, then became the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care, part of King's College London.[47]
Arms
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In popular culture
- In the 1975 crime film Brannigan, interior shots in an office set with a Thames river view constructed on an upper floor in the north-east corner of the (built but not yet commissioned) North Wing stood in for "Scotland Yard" in scenes between John Wayne (Chicago police detective Brannigan) and Richard Attenborough (Metropolitan Police Commander Swann).[50]
- Graham Swift's 1996 novel Last Orders features several scenes from the hospital where one of the main characters, Jack Dodds, dies from cancer.[51]
- The main building was used as the exterior shot of the fictional Royal Hope Hospital featured in the Doctor Who episode "Smith and Jones".[52]
- The hospital also featured in the 2002 film 28 Days Later in which the hospital was abandoned due to the nationwide outbreak of a deadly virus which causes its victims to go insane.[53]
- Popular novelist Lucilla Andrews trained as a nurse at St Thomas' during the Second World War, and her experiences there are recounted in her autobiography No Time for Romance as well as being the basis for a series of wartime romances set in a fictional hospital inspired by St Thomas'.[54]
- The Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset" was inspired in part by songwriter Ray Davies' view over the Thames from St. Thomas while he was a patient there following a tracheotomy at age 13.[55]
Gallery
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Revolving Torsion kinetic sculpture/fountain by Naum Gabo
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Statue of Mary Seacole at St Thomas' Hospital, by Martin Jennings
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Plaque indicating name included singular genitive s's in the past
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Main pedestrian entrance from Westminster Bridge Road
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St Thomas' Hospital information sign
See also
- Healthcare in London
- List of hospitals in England
- King's Health Partners
- Francis Crick Institute
- Florence Nightingale Museum
- Lambeth Palace Road, to the rear of the hospital
- Sarah Elizabeth Wardroper Matron 1854 to 1887 and Superintendent of the Nightingale School of Nursing 1860-1887
- Lucy M. Hall(1843–1907), physician, writer; first woman ever received at its bedside clinics
References
Citations
- ^ "Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust: Our quality story". Retrieved 16 May 2014.
- ^ a b c d e f "The Foundation of St Thomas's" (PDF). p. 1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 December 2011. Retrieved 3 November 2015.
- ^ a b c "A Chronology of State Medicine, Public Health, Welfare and Related Services in Britain 1066–1999" (PDF). p. 11. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 3 November 2015.
- ^ "Our history". King's College London.
- ^ "St Thomas's Hospital – A Concise History". gkt gazette. Guy's, King's & St. Thomas's Hospitals Medical & Dental Schools. 1 February 2002. Archived from the original on 25 October 2006.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ "St. Thomas' Hospital and first printed bible in English grey plaque in London". Blue Plaques. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
- ^ "Victoria County History, Surrey, vol.2, Hospital of St Thomas Southwark". pp. 119–124.
- ^ "On some old physicians of St. Thomas's Hospital by J. F. Payne". Saint Thomas's Hospitals Reports. New Series. Vol. XXVI. 1898. pp. 1–23.
- ^ Historic England. "Statue of Robert Clayton at North Entrance to Ward Block of North Wing at St Thomas' Hospital, Non Civil Parish (1319925)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
- ^ "'Guy's Hospital', in Survey of London: Volume 22, Bankside (The Parishes of St. Saviour and Christchurch Southwark), ed. Howard Roberts and Walter H Godfrey". London: British History Online. 1950. pp. 36–42. Retrieved 18 April 2018.
- ^ "Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret Web Site". Retrieved 13 August 2014.
- ^ "The Building of the London Bridge to Charing Cross Railway". Exploring Southwark. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
- ^ "St Thomas Hospital". National Archives. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
- ^ a b c "'St Thomas' Hospital', in Survey of London: Volume 23, Lambeth: South Bank and Vauxhall, ed. Howard Roberts and Walter H Godfrey". London: British History Online. 1951. pp. 79–80. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
- ISBN 0-216-89974-5.
- ^ a b Garrick, Alder (2017), "Deaths in Parliament: A Legend Re-Examined", Lobster Magazine, archived from the original on 31 October 2023, retrieved 11 December 2023
- ^ Bowers, Paul (31 July 2013). "State and Ceremonial Funerals" (PDF). parliament.uk. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 December 2023. Retrieved 11 December 2023.
- ^ "Coroners and Justice Act 2009". legislation.gov.uk. Retrieved 11 December 2023.
- ^ "Coroners Act 1887" (PDF). legislation.gov.uk. Retrieved 11 December 2023.
- ^ "Fifth London General Hospital". Lost Hospitals of London. Retrieved 21 July 2019.
- ^ "Architecture". The Spectator. 3 October 1992. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
- ^ Ritchie, p. 147
- ^ Good Stuff. "Block 9 of St Thomas's Hospital Medical School – Lambeth – Greater London – England – British Listed Buildings". britishlistedbuildings.co.uk. Retrieved 13 September 2015.
- PMID 11520745.
- ISBN 1-55642-786-7.
- ^ "Dreadnought Medical Service". Seafarers Hospital Society. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
- ^ "The Guy's and St Thomas' Story" (PDF). Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
- ^ "Harold Wilson". Info Britain. Archived from the original on 21 August 2012.
- ^ "Postoperative critical care: overnight intensive recovery". British Journal of Anaesthesia. 1 September 2002. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
- ^ "Evelina London Children's Hospital". Structurae. Retrieved 18 April 2018.
- ^ "Don't go to A&E if you fear you have coronavirus, top doctor warns". Evening Standard. 23 January 2020. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
- ^ "UK PM Boris Johnson taken to intensive care". BBC News. 6 April 2020. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
- ^ Rawlinson, Kevin (6 April 2020). "Coronavirus: Boris Johnson taken into intensive care – live updates". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 April 2020.
- ^ "Boris Johnson discharged from hospital". BBC News. 12 April 2020. Retrieved 12 April 2020.
- ^ "Cross the Divide, Lambeth Palace Road". Public Monuments and Scriptures Association. Archived from the original on 20 April 2018. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
- ^ Historic England. "Revolving Torsion (1430741)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
- ^ "What does Tommy's do?". tommys.org. Retrieved 4 January 2013.
- ^ "GSST People Magazine February 2004" (PDF). Archived from the original on 26 September 2007. Retrieved 12 February 2014.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ Wordsworth, Dot (19 June 2008). "Mind your language". The Spectator. Retrieved 2 September 2017.
- PMID 14910157.
- ^ a b c "St Thomas's Hospital Medical School Records". Archives in London and the M25 area.
- ^ "St John's Hospital for Diseases of the Skin". British Listed Buildings. Retrieved 17 December 2022.
- ^ "King's College London School of Medicine and Dentistry at Guy's, King's and St Thomas' Hospitals". Retrieved 19 April 2018.
- ^ Seymour, L.R (1956). A General History of Nursing (4TH ed.). Faber & Faber LTD. pp. P92-100.
- ^ "The Nightingale Fund". The Florence Nightingale Museum. 5 March 2020. Retrieved 3 October 2022.
- ^ Editorial (13 January 1938). "Dame Alicia Lloyd Still: Forty years of hospital service". The Times. p. 9.
- PMID 5195090.
- ^ "Heraldry of the World". www.heraldry-wiki.com. Retrieved 18 February 2024.
- ISBN 978-1528309837. Retrieved 20 February 2024.
- ^ "Brannigan". Movie Locations. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
- ^ Lyall, Sarah (30 October 1996). "Graham Swift's 'Last Orders' Receives the Booker Prize". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 May 2017.
- ^ "Smith and Jones". Doctor Who. Season 3. Episode 1. 31 March 2007.
- ^ "28 Days Later". Movie Locations. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
- ^ "Lucilla Andrews books". Lucilla Andrews. Wyndham Media Ltd. Retrieved 9 January 2022.
- ^ "Ray Davies - How a lonely Londoner created one of the great Sixties". The Independent. 23 October 2011.
Sources
- ISBN 978-1-905363-22-3.
- Ritchie, Berry (1997). The Good Builder: The John Laing Story. James & James.
External links
- Guy's & St Thomas' Foundation Trust Archived 12 November 2008 at the Wayback Machine
- Old Operating Theatre Museum
- History of St. Thomas' annexe in Godalming Surrey
- Excerpts from Sir Harold Ridley's biography by David J Apple with some history of the modern hospital
- Dreadnought Unit information provided by the Seamen's Hospital Society's funded Seafarers' Benefits Advice Line
- History of the Dreadnought Seamen's hospital
- Survey of London entry (1951)