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Casualty 1909 is the latest 6-part series for the highly successful Casualty 1900s strand on BBC ONE. It follows on from Casualty 1907 and Casualty 1906 which achieved large audiences and acclaim including the Royal Television Society (NW) Nomination for Best Drama Serial. For more information on the 1909 series, please click here.
The series follows the success of Casualty 1906 and Casualty 1907 which were screened in 2006 and 2007. The Royal London Hospital archives inspired the costume drama which follows the lives, loves and losses of staff and patients at The London Hospital at Whitechapel in those years.
The Casualty 1900s character's play real people, brought to life from ward notes, case notes, autopsy records and diaries in that year, although the patients’ names have been changed. Actress Cherie Lunghi returns in the lead role as Matron Eva Luckes, an imposing figure devoted to her job and the patients, expecting nurses to follow her example. Sarah Smart plays Emergency Room Nurse Ada Russell and Nicholas Farrell is Sydney Holland, the Hospital Chairman.
Bryn Higgins, producer of Stone City Films, who made the programmes for the BBC, developed the concept when he came across the diaries of his grandfather, a surgeon at the Royal London Hospital. After the first programme he pressed for further funds to do a series.
Cherie Lunghi in the lead role as Matron Eva Luckes
”Once again The Royal London proved it has the biggest and best preserved medical archives in the world for the early 1900s which is a very interesting time. Not only were the medical case notes beautifully detailed but there were anecdotal and candid bits of information in the ward notes about the nurses and patients which would have been omitted from the official hospital record.“
Jonathan Evans, archivist at The Royal London Hospital, worked with the production company to research the storylines over the two years and is pleased with the series.
“The Hospital was then, as it is now, regarded as one of the best and most modern in the world, serving an area with a high immigrant population. There were always pioneering doctors who were using the latest medical technology of 1907, for example, the application of ultra violet light to cure tuberculosis lesions on the skin, or applying X-rays as radiotherapy.”
“The TV drama also shows that poverty in the East London population was rife in the 1900s: many patients were malnourished and suffered from respiratory diseases.
“We have come a long way since then in terms of public health and medicine in tackling poverty and ill-health.” |
St Bartholomew's Museum
Casualty 1900s