Royal Free Hospital

Former site on Gray's Inn Road, subsequently the Eastman Dental Hospital

The Royal Free Hospital was founded in 1828 by the surgeon William Marsden to provide, as its name indicates, free care to those of little means.[1] It is said that one evening, Marsden found a young girl lying on the steps of St. Andrew Church, Holborn, dying from disease and hunger and sought help for her from one of the nearby hospitals. However, none would take the girl in and she died two days later. After this experience Marsden set up a small dispensary at 16 Greville Street, Holborn, called the London General Institution for the Gratuitous Care of Malignant Diseases.[1] A royal charter was granted by Queen Victoria in 1837 after a cholera epidemic in which the hospital had extended care to many victims,[1] following which it became the Royal Free Hospital.[2]

As demand for in-patient facilities increased, it was constituted as the Royal Free Hospital, and moved to the former barracks of the Light Horse Volunteers in Gray's Inn Road in August 1842.[1][3] The north wing of the former barracks, which was rebuilt and renamed the Sussex Wing after Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, a benefactor of the hospital, re-opened in 1856 and the south wing, which was rebuilt and renamed the Victoria Wing after Queen Victoria, re-opened in 1879.[1] Meanwhile, the western elevation on Gray's Inn Road, which was rebuilt and renamed the Alexandra Building after the Princess of Wales, was re-opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales in July 1895.[1] Some additional land was purchased and used to develop the Helena Building, named after Princess Helena: the building was completed in 1915 and served as the Royal Free Military Hospital for officers during the latter stages of the First World War before becoming the maternity wing after the war.[1] The Eastman Dental Clinic opened in a building adjacent to the main hospital in 1929.[1] The Victoria Wing was badly damaged by a V-1 flying bomb in July 1944 during the Second World War.[1]

In 1955 an apparent outbreak of an infectious illness, involving fever and subsequent persisting fatigue along with other symptoms, affected 292 members of staff and forced the hospital's closure between 25 July and 5 October. There was subsequently some debate as to whether the episode was of an infectious cause, or just an example of mass hysteria.[4] The outbreak turned out to be a notable case in the UK of myalgic encephalomyelitis and resulted in the coining of that disease name.[5]

The Royal Free viewed from Parliament Hill, London.

By the late 1960s the site on Gray's Inn Road had become too cramped, and a modern 12-storey cruciform tower block was built on the site of the former Hampstead Fever Hospital in Pond Street in Hampstead in 1974; it was opened by the Queen in 1978.[1] Meanwhile, the Eastman Dental Hospital took over the whole of the Gray's Inn Road site.[1] The Royal Free was the first hospital in the UK to appoint a consultant in HIV medicine, in 1989. Professor Margaret Johnson, a specialist in thoracic medicine, built the Royal Free Centre for HIV Medicine, which is at the forefront of treatment of HIV-AIDS. The out-patients' centre was opened in 1992 by the actor Sir Ian McKellen and is named after the actor Ian Charleson.[6]

In February 1998, the Royal Free held a press conference to coincide with the publication in The Lancet of a paper by Andrew Wakefield who claimed to have found a possible link between the MMR vaccine and autism. This started a controversy which led to a crisis in public confidence over MMR and a fall in uptake of the vaccine. Wakefield left the medical school in October 2001 and was later struck off the UK medical register by the General Medical Council[7] following an investigation by The Sunday Times newspaper into the MMR issue.[8][9]

For a long time, the Royal Free was the only London hospital allowing women to study medicine, forming an association with the London School of Medicine for Women, under which women from the school completed their clinical studies at the hospital, from 1877. Under the Deanship of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, one of the school's founders, it became part of the University of London and in 1896 became known as the London Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine for Women. In 1998 it merged with the University College Hospital's medical school to form the Royal Free and University College Medical School, renamed the UCL Medical School in 2008.[2][10]