Since 1975, the Royal Free Hospital has been located in Hampstead.
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. It is said that one evening, Marsden found a young girl in the churchyard of St. Andrew’s Church, Holborn, suffering from hypothermia, and sought help for her from one of the nearby hospitals. However, none would take the girl in, and she died in agony in Marsden’s arms.
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.
A royal charter was granted by Queen Victoria in 1837 after a cholera epidemic in which the hospital had extended care to many victims. As demand for in-patient facilities increased, it was constituted as the Royal Free Hospital, and moved to Gray’s Inn Road in the 1840s. Another building in Liverpool Road, Islington, was used as an isolation hospital. Marsden also founded the Free Cancer Hospital in Westminster in 1851, renamed The Royal Marsden Hospital in 1954.
In 1975 the Royal Free facilities at Islington and Holborn were combined and moved to the current 12-storey cruciform tower block, built on the site of the former Hampstead Hospital.
The hospital houses part of the UCL Medical School and its associated medical research facilities. The London School of Medicine for Women, since August 1998 a part of the UCL Medical School, was the first to train female doctors in the United Kingdom; the Royal Free Hospital was the first teaching hospital in London to admit women for training.
Significant advances in the fields of liver medicine (hepatology) and transplantation; renal disease and dialysis; haematology and haemophilia have been made at the Royal Free, and the trust now treats all patients needing dialysis in north and central London. The professorial department of liver medicine is recognised as one of the leading research units of its type in the world.
