History of our hospitals

Long before the NHS was created in 1948, there were two types of hospitals in west London:
• Voluntary hospitals
• Workhouse hospitals 

Voluntary hospitals were independent charities established for the benefit of the ‘deserving poor’, who, according to Victorian values, were respectable working-class people who had fallen on hard times because of sickness. 

People who were destitute had no alternative but to seek admission into a workhouse. Because many of these people had been reduced to poverty through either sickness or old age, the workhouses opened hospital wards and even purpose-built infirmaries to treat them.

Charing Cross Hospital
Charing Cross was originally a voluntary hospital called the West London Infirmary. It was also an undergraduate teaching hospital. It was founded with only 12 beds by Dr Benjamin Golding in 1818 near the Strand in Charing Cross, in buildings now occupied by Charing Cross police station. In 1827, it changed its name to Charing Cross Hospital and later set up a medical school. It moved to its present location on Fulham Palace Road in west London in 1973.

Hammersmith Hospital
Hammersmith was a workhouse infirmary built by the Hammersmith Poor Law Guardians in 1912. Its buildings were used during the first world war for military orthopaedics, before it became a general acute hospital in 1926. Along with all workhouse hospitals in London, Hammersmith Hospital came under the control of London County Council in 1929, and in 1935 it was chosen as the new home for the British Postgraduate Medical School.

Queen Charlotte's & Chelsea Hospital
Queen Charlotte's was originally a voluntary hospital. Its name came from its patron, the wife of George III. Dating back to 1752, Queen Charlotte’s is one of the oldest maternity hospitals in the country and at different times has been located in Bayswater, on Marylebone Road and at Ravenscourt Park. Chelsea Hospital also moved site and used to be based in Chelsea, in the building now occupied by the Chelsea Wing at the Brompton Hospital. In 1998 Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea moved adjacent to Hammersmith Hospital.

St Mary's Hospital
St Mary’s was a voluntary hospital and has been based at the same site in Paddington for over 100 years. Founded in 1845, St Mary’s was the last of the London undergraduate teaching hospitals and originally opened with 50 beds in what is now the Cambridge wing.

Western Eye Hospital
Western Eye started out life as a Georgian shooting box before it became a voluntary hospital. Since 1856, it has been based at a number of different sites before finally moving to Marylebone Road next to the Samaritan Hospital for Women.