Hackney Hospital
Hackney Hospital started life in 1750 as an infirmary within the workhouse on Homerton High Street, where sick paupers could be treated separately from the other inmates. A matron and nurse were appointed, and within a year a larger room was required when their charge was extended to the insane as well as the sick. The matron was then given the authority to order any of the healthy inmates to help her with the treatment of the patients.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries social conditions in Hackney were amongst the poorest in London. It was clear that much needed to be done to improve and maintain the services provided by the workhouse and infirmary, and the Guardians of the Poor expanded and enhanced the buildings wherever possible, particularly in response to the cholera epidemic of the 1830s. This meant that the infirmary was not mentioned as having particularly bad conditions in the Lancet’s survey of workhouses in 1866. Things were by no means perfect, but by the 1860s the infirmary was entirely separate from the main workhouse building. This allowed the infirmary to expand to 606 beds with a nursing staff of 45.
The fact that the Hospital grew out of a workhouse infirmary meant that there was some stigma attached to it, even when it was no longer connected to the workhouse. The general public often had a negative opinion about workhouses and believed admission to them to be the ultimate degradation. Conditions were meant to be off-putting and inmates were made to wear rough uniforms, eat unappetising food and perform hard, monotonous tasks such as stone breaking. You can see from the admission register entries shown here that many of the patients came from impoverished backgrounds, and therefore had less choice about where they could receive medical treatment than more wealthy members of the population.
By the 1930s the workhouse system was in decline and the Hackney Institution, as the infirmary had become known, was taken over by the London County Council. It took another four years before all the healthy inmates were moved out, and by 1938 all the old and new accommodation was administered under one matron. Improvements were made, such as the building of a nurses’ home, and the updating of wards and kitchens. In 1948, the Hospital became part of the National Health Service and the local Hackney Group of hospitals. In 1987 a new hospital was opened in the area, the Homerton, and general services transferred there. Eventually, only psychiatric and geriatric services remained, but in 1995 these were also transferred to the Homerton and the Hackney Hospital closed.
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Images from the Hackney Hospital
The front hall of Hackney Hospital.
