The old workhouse of St. Giles, Bloomsbury, had been taken over by the War Office for hospital purposes, and it was there that the Director General decided to station the Women’s Hospital Corps.
The group of buildings rises, grey and sombre-looking, at the upper end of Endell Street, on ground which was granted by Queen Matilda for a lepers’ hospital. It abuts on Shorts Gardens, where the leper colony lingered long after Henry VIII. had absorbed the original foundation. Some months before the war, the Guardians had evacuated these premises for grander and more commodious quarters elsewhere, and during 1914 the buildings had been occupied by Belgian refugees. In the spring of 1915 an army of workmen took possession, and the work of renovating and adapting them for a hospital was already advancing. A narrow entrance, partially hidden by Christ’s Church, led into a square, formed by three large hospital blocks, the church and a long administrative building. A glass-covered passage ran down the centre of the square and across to either block. It was fenced in with high iron railings, and the free space on either side was divided by more railings into little pens. The little pens had padlocked gates and were labelled: ‘Old Males,’ ‘Young Males,’ ‘Old Females,’ ‘Young Females;’ and it was in these cages that the inmates of the workhouse had sought fresh air and recreation. There was a little gate office next to the mortuary, where a set of pigeon holes, constructed out of slate slabs, was designed to receive coffins, and where the gas meter took up most of the room. Behind the main buildings were the children’s home—modern and well built—and the Guardians’ offices, opening on to Broad Street. Part of the administrative block bore the date 1727, and St. Giles was said to have been the workhouse described by Dickens in Oliver Twist. A long room, with a fireplace at either end, still exists in the oldest part, where Oliver is supposed to have been interviewed by the Guardians; and the cellars or basements under this section of the building are of the most ancient and grimy description. The hospital blocks were five stories high, with good air space and large wards. There were windows on both sides of these wards, and more sunshine and fresh air were available than was expected in that locality. The warehouses next door were in the hands of the A.S.C.M.T., and all round lay the teeming, crowded streets of Soho and Drury Lane.
Extensive structural alterations were necessary. Lifts capable of carrying stretchers were put in; the sanitation was renewed, and electric light and modern cooking apparatus were installed. The building was cleaned and painted throughout, but there was an extraordinary amount of old furniture and disused apparatus which the Guardians had left behind, and the presence of piles of lumber was embarrassing. The fittings of padded rooms and curious pieces of furniture, designed to restrain the insane, came out of the lunacy block; antique baths and obsolete drain-pipes were cast out by the builders, and in their place ward kitchens and bathrooms were arranged on every floor; and operating theatres, X-ray room, laboratories, dispensaries and store-rooms were completed.
Acting upon instructions from the Director General, Dr. Garrett Anderson and Dr. Flora Murray, since their return, had been engaged in finding staff and in drawing up a scheme for the future establishment. Their final destination was not decided until early in March, when they were summoned to the War Office to discuss the suitability of Endell Street. On the way to keep their appointment, they stepped inside the gate and surveyed with a rapid glance the lie of the buildings and the piles of rubbish and dirt massed among the iron railings in the square. They saw enough to enable them to say that it would do, before the gate-keeper turned them out as being unauthorised persons upon government premises.
The feeling of the Army Medical Department towards women doctors could be gauged by the atmosphere in the various offices with which business had to be done. In one there was disapproval; in another curiosity and amusement; in a third obstinate hostility, which was not dissipated by an unassuming manner. But in the Director General’s own office a most cordial desire to assist was met with, and nothing was left undone to that end. He himself put the doctors in touch with a young major in the department, instructing him to give them every possible assistance and telling them to go to him in any difficulty. Further, he sent them to see the Deputy Director of Medical Services for the London District, and so launched them on the War Office tide.
The young major—who shortly became a colonel—was obviously nervous of being seen in such company, and in the manner of a sheepish schoolboy secluded them in his own little den. There the limit of his knowledge was soon reached, but he was able to indicate the rooms of several colonels who ought to be seen. Fearful of making a public appearance in the corridors again, he telephoned through to these gentlemen, and with relief despatched the ladies, under the guidance of an N.C.O. A few days later, when he was approached with regard to some small difficulty, he said that he knew nothing about hospitals and that it was no good coming to him—a plain truth which was already becoming apparent both where he and other officers were concerned.
By the light of experience gained in the years which followed, the doctors realised how much these War Office officials could and should have done to help them in those early days, and how they did as little as possible. Thus they created on the minds of these women an impression, which may or may not have been correct, of incompetence and want of intelligence. Advice and assistance were withheld, lest the officer who gave it might in some way become responsible for the women’s affairs; and in addition, their path was often obstructed. It was not understood at the time that obstruction was due to hostility: it was taken for stupidity, or the way in which things were done at the War Office; and after two or three fruitless visits to the branch offices of the Army Medical Department no further time was wasted on these gentlemen. Other sources of information or other ways of getting things through were discovered.
The Director General had arranged for the senior medical officers and the quartermaster to take a course of instruction in administration under the Officer-in-Charge of the Queen Alexandra Military Hospital, Millbank; and this officer and his staff showed them much kindness and gave them, with many hints as to procedure, a valuable insight into the working of a well-directed military hospital.
In due course an appointment was made with the officer then in charge of the alterations at Endell Street, in order that he might take the doctors round the premises and give them information which would enable them to complete their scheme of establishment.
