Overcrowding in the wards, surgery without anaesthesia, and the danger of catching a deadly infection: this was the experience of a sick person in hospital in the 1830s [...].
Yet in the course of the Victorian period hospitals changed and standards improved, so that by 1900, hospitals offered some hope of a cure and were places to which seriously ill patients expected to go. The building of more hospitals, improvements in their design and progress in the science of medicine all contributed to this development. (Mitton 5)
Hospitals and Asylums in London
- Bethlem Royal Hospital (Bedlam), later the Imperial War Museum
- Clarence Wing of St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, by William Emerson
- East London Hospital for Children in Shadwell
- Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital Building
- The General Lying-in Hospital, York Road, SE1
- Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children
- The Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest at Brompton
- Hospital for the Sick Poor, Ladbroke Grove, London W11
- The Prince of Wales laying the foundation-stone of the new wing of the London Hospital
- The (former) Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich
- Royal Waterloo Hospital for Children and Women
- St Thomas' Hospital, by Henry Currey
- University College Hospital, by Alfred Waterhouse
- University College Hospital (history)
Regional Hospitals, Asylums and Convalescent Homes
- The Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, Sandhurst (current address Crowthorne), Berkshire
- Cardiff Royal Infirmary, by Edwin Seward
- The City Lunatic Asylum, near Dartford
- Holloway Sanatorium, now in Surrey
- Leeds General Infirmary, by George Gilbert Scott
- The Lying-In Hospital, Newcastle, by John Dobson
- The Metropolitan Convalescent Hospital, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey
- The Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading, Berkshire
- Shaftesbury Square Hospital, Belfast, Northern Ireland
- Sir Titus Salt's Hospital, Saltaire, by Lockwood & Mawson
Related Material
- The Barry Family: A Victorian Architectural Dynasty and Great Ormond Street
- Medicine and Public Health (sitemap)
Bibliography
Cherry, Steven. Medical Services and the Hospitals in Britain, 1860-1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Mitton, Lavinia. The Victorian Hospital. 2nd ed. Botley, Oxford: Shire, 2008.
Peterson, M. Jeanne. The Medical Profession in Mid-Victorian London. Berkley & London: University of California Press, 1978.
Smith, Francis B. The People's Health: 1830-1910. London: Croom Helm, 1979.
Last modified 24 May 2026