Eastern Hospital
The Eastern Hospital was founded in 1870, in response to an outbreak of ‘relapsing’ fever, where the patient became ill, appeared to recover, but then relapsed after a week. When the Hospital opened it had 200 beds divided into wards for typhus, scarlet fever, enteric fever and other special cases. The site at Homerton had been designated as a site for both fever and smallpox hospitals, and the work on the latter continued until February 1871, when it opened with 384 beds. Soon, both hospitals were filled to capacity, showing the seriousness of these epidemics of contagious illnesses at that time.
Eventually, the smallpox hospital was merged with the Eastern as the demand for its beds lessened. This was due to the success of the vaccination programme against the disease, which had first begun in 1721 and became compulsory in 1853. In the early twentieth century, scarlet fever and diphtheria were the main diseases treated at the Eastern. Patients were kept isolated until a definitive diagnosis was made, after which they were put on the relevant ward. Most patients were children, indicating how difficult it was to reach adulthood. In 1900, for every 1000 children born, only 770 would make it to adulthood, and in industrialised areas, such as some districts of London, the infant death rate was 20%.
London in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was not always a safe place to live. The threat of many diseases was almost constant, made worse by epidemics, where they became rife and wiped out large numbers of people. There had been a huge cholera epidemic in the 1830s, and a smallpox epidemic just as the Eastern opened in 1871/2. Typhoid and typhus were both common, although as they had similar symptoms there was perhaps some inaccuracy about the figures. Typhoid was spread mainly by contaminated water, whereas typhus was passed on by lice. Both thrived in the crowded, unhygienic conditions usually associated with the poorer members of the population. However, the wealthy were not immune, and Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, died of typhoid in 1861. Scarlet fever was widespread at the beginning and end of the nineteenth century, when it became the main cause of childhood death, with those aged between 2 and 10 being particularly susceptible.
Like many hospitals, the Eastern owned a large amount of property in the areas surrounding it. This property was an important source of income for the Hospital. Here you can see an example of the kind of lease document that the Hospital used at the time, in relation to a building in one of the streets nearby.
The issue of staffing was a recurring theme for hospitals in the nineteenth century. It was sometimes difficult to get trained or reliable nurses. The Eastern Hospital kept records of staff attendance and conduct, which not only included personal information about members of staff, but also notes on their performance. The kind of comments shown below would be sure to have kept the staff on their toes!
When the National Health Service was established in 1948, the Eastern came under the control of the Ministry of Health and was one of the four hospitals administered as the Hackney Group, the others being Hackney, the German and the Mothers' hospitals. During the post-war years the Eastern played an important part in defeating two of the most feared diseases of that time - tuberculosis and poliomyelitis. In 1974, the Eastern became part of the newly-created City and Hackney Health District.
The Eastern Hospital was closed in 1982 and shortly afterwards most of the old buildings on the site were demolished. The new Homerton Hospital was built where the Eastern formerly stood.
To read the text in the images below, click on the relevant PDF document
Images from the Eastern Hospital
Pathological illustration from the 19th century showing the symptoms of typhoid fever.
