Chelsea Hospital for Women

Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital main building.
Geography
Location	Du Cane Road London W12 0HS
Organisation
Care system	NHS
Hospital type	Specialist
Affiliated university	Imperial College London
Services
Emergency department	No
Speciality	Maternity, women's and children's services
History
Founded	1739
Links
Website	http://www.imperial.nhs.uk/qcch/index.htm Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Queen Charlotte's

Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital is one of the oldest maternity hospitals in Europe, dating from 1739, and until 1999 occupied a site at 339-351 Goldhawk Road, Hammersmith, London W6 0XG. It is now located between East Acton and White City, where it shares a site with the Hammersmith Hospital.

There is some confusion over the precise date of foundation. The hospital strictly dates its foundation to 1739 when Sir Richard Manningham founded a hospital of lying-in beds in a 17-room house in Jermyn Street. This was called the General Lying in Hospital, and was the first of its kind in Britain. Some sources date the foundation to 1752, the year in which the hospital relocated from Jermyn Street to St Marylebone, and first became a teaching institution. Still other sources quote 1782 as the foundation, as this is the year in which (on 10 January) a licence was granted to the hospital charity by the Justices of the County of Middlesex (at that time a legal requirement for a maternity hospital).

The hospital appears to have arisen out of the 1739 foundation, but with varying degrees of recognition, developing over time. The inter-relation of these different dates, and the complex supporting evidence for each of them, is fully discussed and documented in the first chapter of "The History of Queen Charlotte's Lying-in Hospital", a large volume published in 1885, and written by Thomas Ryan who was then Secretary to the hospital trustees.

In 1809 Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III, became its patron, having been persuaded by her son to become involved. A Royal Charter was incorporated in 1885 and when this was amended in 1924 the present name came into use. The hospital subsequently merged with the Chelsea Hospital for Women and is now based at the Hammersmith Hospital site in West London to which it was relocated in 1998. The hospital was originally a voluntary hospital. At different times over the years the hospital has been located in Bayswater, on Marylebone Road and at Ravenscourt Park. The Chelsea Hospital also moved site and used to be based in Chelsea, in the building now occupied by the Chelsea Wing at the Brompton Hospital.