Charing Cross Hospital & Medical School - William IV Street, London, UK - UK Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

The plaque, on the wall of what is now a police station, reads:
"The foundation stone of this building was laid by His Grace the Duke of Sussex on 15 September 1831.

Three years later it was opened as the Charing Cross Hospital and Medical School where for one hundred and thirty nine years patients were treated and staff trained in the renowned institution.

In 1973 the hospital and medical school moved to new premises on the site of the former Fulham Hospital in west London".

"It is the 1800s, and pretty much right in the thick of the Industrial Revolution. Many of society's poorest were flocking to the cities in order to obtain employment in the new factories, but without adequate shelter. What accommodation there was was less than sanitary and so it was the poorest who were falling foul of the infectious diseases of the day. Such observations didn't escape the newly established medical profession, or more specifically, Dr Benjamin Golding.

A graduate of the much older, St Thomas' Hospital, he wanted to set up an institution which would not only fulfil the teaching and training requirements of the doctors of the day, but also combine it with a more scientific basis of treatment, and make it available to the poor and the whole community. At a time where doctors operated privately, this was seen as a revolutionary move; how was the hospital to survive fiscally, and still operate in such good faith?

Regardless of this, Golding went along with his ideals, and set up the West London Infirmary on Villiers Street, London, in 1818. A small institution, it had room for just 12 beds, and could only provide clinical teaching1 to its students. Come 1827, the name of the hospital had changed to what we know it as today, Charing Cross Hospital, bearing a little more relation to its locale.

Golding's idea had now become really successful, attracting the attention of the Royal Family, especially Queen Victoria's mother, the Duchess of Kent. As a result of this, they became benefactors to the Hospital, raising enough money to build a new building. In 1834, the new building on Agar Street was opened, providing 60 new beds and accommodation for 22 medical students, allowing the hospital to carry out pre-clinical training. From that time, a student at the school would complete their whole course at Charing Cross.

With its success as an institute of medical training, and now cementing itself as one of London's main hospitals, it again needed more space and buildings. In 1881, a separate medical school campus was built in Chandos Place, with new lecture theatres and in 1894, more space for labs.

Come 1911, the reputation of the hospital and its teaching had grown so much that pre-clinical training had to be temporarily transferred to King's College.

While staying stubbornly put in the Charing Cross locale throughout the First World War, with the advent of the Blitz, its Central London location put the hospital, its staff and patients at high risk. With that knowledge, the staff, students, equipment and patients were moved out to the relative safety of Chaulden House, Boxmoor, Hertfordshire. In 1947, the hospital moved back to Charing Cross.

Yet the hospital continued to grow, not only in student number, but also in patient number and staff number. The advent of antibiotic technology meant that the focus of medicine was no longer on infectious disease, but longer-term conditions such as cancer and heart disease, meaning more in-patients to care for. With no more space to extend to, 150 years after it was founded on the Villiers Road site, the Charing Cross Hospital moved to a set of new buildings on Fulham Palace Road - its current location in Hammersmith2.

With more and more students applying for the medical school, a new purpose-built medical school building was built. The Reynolds Building was opened in 1976.

By this time, it had established itself as one of the best medical schools in London, and had now received an international reputation for excellence in medical training and practice."

Source h2g2 website.