The hospital was founded at Bell Street by Eustace Smith and T.C. Kirby as the North West London Free Dispensary for Sick Children in 1862.[1] It moved to Paddington Green in 1883 and was completely rebuilt and then reopened by the Duchess of Teck in 1895.[1] A new out-patients department opened in 1911.[1]
In November 1885, the hospital became the first London hospital to appoint a woman to a medical job in an open competition with men when Frances Helen Prideaux became house surgeon.[3] Prideaux contracted diphtheria soon after her appointment and helped her colleagues in their attempts to treat her but died one month after she had started her role.[4]
In 1923, Donald Winnicott obtained a paediatric post at the hospital and was to remain there for the next 40 years. He became a celebrated psychoanalyst and child analyst, member of the Object relations school, writer and broadcaster on the BBC.[5]
Margaret Leigh (pen name Jane Gordon) worked as a nurse in the hospital in the 1930s and 1940s and her memoir Married to Charles (1950) contains much information about the operation of the hospital in that time, especially during The Blitz.[6]
^Gordon, Jane (1950), Married to Charles, London, Heinemann
^"Emeritus Professor John Allen Davis". The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. 28 February 2017. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
^"George Alexander Sutherland". Lives of the Fellows, Royal College of Physicians, Munk's Roll. Retrieved 1 January 2020.
^"John Peter Mills (Sir) Tizard". Munks Roll – Lives of the Fellows. IX. Royal College of Physicians: Royal College of Physicians: 518. 21 August 2013. Archived from the original on 1 January 2018. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
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