Hammersmith Hospital

Hammersmith Hospital
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
Hammersmith Hospital in 2013
Geography
Location	Acton, London, England, United Kingdom
Organisation
Care system	Public NHS
Hospital type	Teaching
Affiliated university	Imperial College London
Services
Emergency department	No Accident & Emergency
Beds	349
History
Founded	1912
Links
Website	http://www.imperial.nhs.uk/hammersmith
Lists	Hospitals in England

Hammersmith Hospital, formerly the Military Orthopaedic Hospital, and later the Special Surgical Hospital, is a major teaching hospital in west London. It is part of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and is associated with the Imperial College Faculty of Medicine. Confusingly the hospital is not in Hammersmith but is located north of White City adjacent to Wormwood Scrubs and East Acton.

Its origins begin in 1902, when the Hammersmith Poor Law Guardians decided to erect a new workhouse and infirmary on a 14-acre (5.7 ha) site at the north side of Du Cane Road somewhat to the north of Shepherd's Bush. The land, adjacent to Wormwood Scrubs Prison, was purchased for £14,500 from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. A temporary corrugated iron building was erected on the site in 1902 to provide care for victims of a smallpox epidemic that had taken place in the winter of 1901-2. The buildings were designed by the firm of Giles, Gough and Trollope. The infirmary occupied the front part of the site with a central administrative building flanked by pavilion ward blocks linked by a single storey corridor running east-west. A laundry, boiler-house and workshops lay at the centre of the site.

In 1916, the patients and inmates were moved to other establishments and the site was taken over by the War Office for use as the Military Orthopaedic Hospital, to care for wounded soldiers, largely thanks to the efforts of the noted surgeon Robert Jones. In 1916 the Joint War Committee awarded the hospital the sum of £1,000 to begin its work, soon followed in 1918 by a further grant of £10,000. The hospital was also supported by donations from the public. Part of the rehabilitation process involved putting the recovering patients to work in local shops, a policy which does not appear to have been entirely popular among the soldiers themselves.