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The Merchant Seamen's Orphan Asylum became Wanstead Hospital but cloased in 1986.
© Medical Education Centre at Whipps Cross University Hospital NHS Trust
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Your Story: The Forest Group of Hospitals |
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To celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee residents of Woodford Green proposed to build a hospital, believing this 'would be most in accord with her Majesty's wishes'. They also noted the many trap accidents 'which occurred to excursionists who stream through the village on holiday'. Thus, the Jubilee Hospital opened in 1899. The 12 beds, later increased to 47, were served by general practitioners. It was closed by the Health Authority in 1985, being considered too small a unit.
Thorpe Coombe Maternity Hospital opened in 1934, incorporating a mansion in which had lived Octavius Wigram. He had been on duty with the Westminster Light Horse charged with denying Queen Caroline entry to the coronation of her husband, George IV. The hospital, of some 70 beds, was in the forefront of many developments in midwifery but the lack of other specialists on the site caused problems and this led to closure in 1973.
The Merchant Seamens' Orphan Asylum was built in Wanstead in 1862. Concern over the number of bad bricks in the building was a factor in the Asylum moving away in 1919, nuns - The Convent of the Good Shepherd - taking over. In their turn they sold, in 1937, the buildings now becoming Wanstead Hospital. It was proposed that a big new general hospital would be developed on the site. Indeed the letter of appointment of a surgeon in 1948 stated that this 'would be one of the first tasks in Essex'. It never happened. The main hospital of 188 beds closed in 1986, maternity having been withdrawn in 1975.
Problems of treatment of infectious disease led to the building of the Walthamstow Isolation Hospital in 1901. A special unit, based on the principle of a pavilion in the Pasteur Hospital, Paris, featured in the public health text books of the time. With the passage of years it developed as a general hospital of some 100 beds. Out-patient facilities still exist but in-patient beds have been closed.
A Walthamstow worthy, concerned over the sick child a gypsy had brought to his door, opened a Cottage for Sick Children in a private house in 1880, moving it in that year to a larger house and thereafter further expanding. Given Royal patronage, it was renamed The Connaught Hospital in 1928, the bed complement having risen to 100. A dinner in 1938, chaired by the Duke of Kent, raised £17,000. The Hospital Survey of 1945 proposed the building of a large new Connaught Hospital, but it never happened. The Old Walthamstow Town Hall was incorporated into the Hospital and bed numbers rose to 128. It was closed as part of an economy drive in 1977.
Words: Dr Eric Dormer MD, FRCP
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