St Olave's Hospital

St Olave's Hospital was a general hospital serving the Rotherhithe area of London until its closure in 1985.

St Olave's Hospital
Lewisham and North Southwark District Health Authority
Gatehouse at St Olave's Hospital
St Olave's Hospital is located in London Borough of Southwark
St Olave's Hospital
Location within Southwark
Geography
LocationRotherhithe, London, England, United Kingdom
Coordinates51°29′48″N 0°3′15″W
Organisation
TypeGeneral
Services
Beds687
History
Opened1875
Closed1985
Links
ListsHospitals in England

History
A blue plaque erected in 2003 marks the actor Michael Caine's birthplace at St Olave's Hospital.

In 1865 the Rotherhithe Workhouse was denounced in The Lancet in its demands for poor law medical reform. There was only one paid nurse, with four pauper assistants.[1] Nurse Matilda Beeton described filth and neglect "where many sick patients were dirty, their bodies crawling with vermin".[2] The Infirmary of St Olave's Union was established by Order of the Local Government Board in 1875.[3][4]

After being known as the Bermondsey and Rotherhithe Hospital in the 1920s,[5] the facility was renamed St Olave's Hospital in 1930 and transferred from the Bermondsey Board of Guardians to the London County Council.[6] It had 687 beds at that time.[6] In 1948, with the formation of the National Health Service, St Olave's came under the management of the Bermondsey and Southwark Hospital Management Committee.[6] It finally closed in 1985.[6] The site has since been redeveloped as a residential street known as Ann Moss Way.[6]

The actor Michael Caine was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite Jr. on 14 March 1933 at St Olave's Hospital, and there is a blue plaque to that effect on the former gate house at the entrance to the hospital site.[7][8][9][10]

References
  1. "Rotherhithe St Mary". The Workhouse. Retrieved 19 March 2017.
  2. Ayers, Gwendoline (1971). England’s First State Hospitals. London: Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine. Retrieved 19 March 2017.
  3. Peter Higginbotham. "The Workhouse in St Olave Union (Parish of Bermondsey from 1904), Surrey, London". Workhouses.org.uk. Retrieved 11 July 2018.
  4. "St Olave's Hospital". National Archives. Retrieved 19 March 2017.
  5. "St Olave's Hospital, London". The National Archives. Retrieved 11 July 2018.
  6. "St Olave's Hospital". Lost Hospitals of London. Retrieved 24 August 2015.
  7. Michael Caine, What's It All About (Ballantine Books, 1994)
  8. "Michael Caine Biography". Encyclopaedia Britannica.
  9. Rotherhithe did not become part of the London Borough of Southwark until its creation in 1965. In 1933, it was part of the Metropolitan Borough of Bermondsey in the County of London (abolished 1965)
  10. Michael Caine, My Autobiography: The Elephant to Hollywood (Hodder & Stoughton, 2011), p. 16.
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