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St Thomas' Hospital is a large NHS hospital in Lambeth, London. 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.
History
The hospital was described as ancient in 1215 and was named after Thomas Becket — which suggests it may have been founded after 1173 when Becket was canonised. However, it is possible it was only renamed in 1173 and that it was founded when St Mary Overie Priory was refounded in 1100 in Southwark.
Originally it was run by a mixed order of Augustinian monks and nuns, dedicated to Thomas Becket. It provided shelter and treatment for the poor, sick, and homeless. In the fifteenth century, Richard Whittington endowed a laying-in ward for unmarried mothers. The monastery was dissolved in the Reformation, but reopened in 1551 and rededicated to Thomas the Apostle. It was reopened by Edward VI and has remained open ever since.
At the end of the 17th century, the hospital and church were largely rebuilt by Sir Robert Clayton, president of the hospital and a former Lord Mayor of London. He employed Thomas Cartwright as architect.
Sir Thomas Guy, a governor of St Thomas', founded Guy's Hospital in 1721 as a place to treat 'incurables' discharged from St Thomas'.
The hospital was home for many years to St. Thomas' Hospital Medical School. This medical school subsequently merged with that at Guy's Hospital to form the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St. Thomas' Hospitals. In turn this merged in 1998 with King's College School of Medicine and Dentistry to form as The Guy's Kings & Thomas' School of Medicine (GKT School of Medicine). This was renamed in 2005 as King's College London School of Medicine and Dentistry at Guy's, King's and St Thomas' Hospitals.
The Nightingale Training School and Home for Nurses opened at St Thomas' Hospital on July 9 1860.(It is now called the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery and is part of King's College London.)
St Thomas' Hospital is one of London's most famous hospitals - associated with names such as Astley Cooper and William Cheselden and Florence Nightingale, and appearing in the 2002 movie 28 Days Later.
There are only a few surviving pieces of the old Hospital in St Thomas Street in Southwark — including the Old Operating Theatre, which is now a Museum.
The modern hospital
The modern St Thomas' Hospital is located in the London Borough of Lambeth across the river from the Palace of Westminster on a plot of land which was reclaimed from the river during construction of the Albert Embankment in the late 1860s. While the new site was being prepared, the hospital was temporalily housed at Royal Surrey Gardens in Kennington.
With the closure of the Dreadnought Seamen's Hospital based at the Greenwich Hospital in 1986, services for seamen and their families was provided by the 'Dreadnought Unit' at St Thomas' Hospital. It allows eligible Merchant seafarers access to priority medical treatment, except cardiac surgery, and is funded by central government with money separate from other NHS trust funds. It originally consisted of two 28-bed wards, but nowadays Dreadnought patients are treated according to clinical need and so are placed in the ward most suitable for their medical condition.
The St John's Institute of Dermatology department at the hospital has specialist skin pharmacy, specialist operating theatres and the UK’s largest dermatology inpatient ward.
Children's hospital departments are provided by Evelina Children's Hospital.
Trivia
- St Thomas' is the nearest hospital to the Palace of Westminster. Any commoner who dies at the Palace of Westminster is recorded as having died there.
See also
- Florence Nightingale Museum
- Lambeth Palace Road, to the rear of the hospital
Footnotes
External links
- Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust
- Guy's and St Thomas' Knowledge and Information Centre
- Guy's & St Thomas' Charitable Foundation
- Old Operating Theatre Museum
- Dreadnought Unit information provided by the Seamen's Hospital Society's funded Seafarers' Benefits Advice Line
- The Dreadnought Seamen's hospital history by PortCities
- King's College London
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