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At the outbreak of war, the Preliminary Training School for nurses was moved from King Square to the site in Northwood where the Zachary Merton ��ѿ��ý had been established two years earlier. Many of the wards at Bart’s were shut, including those in the East Wing and Casualty (later Lucas) Block. Most of the nursing staff and patients were evacuated from central London. In the first two weeks of September 1939, 308 Bart’s nurses were moved to Hill End Hospital at St Albans. A further 52 went to Cell Barnes Hospital in the same locality and only 133 remained at Smithfield.

Throughout the war the nursing staff had to nurse far more beds than was usual in peacetime. In 1938, St Bartholomew’s Hospital had 763 beds, but in 1940 there were more than 1100 at Hill End alone, with over sixty beds in each ward. The total number of beds divided between the three sites was more than 1600, although the nursing staff was no larger than in the immediate pre-war years.

A few wards on the Smithfield site remained open throughout the war, primarily to receive air-raid casualties and other emergency cases. As a precaution against bombing raids, only the lower floors of the Medical and Surgical Blocks were in use, and patients were moved out to Hill End as soon as practicable.

The first raid to affect St Bartholomew’s Hospital took place on 11 September 1940, when a high-explosive bomb fell on the eastern side in Little Britain, penetrating a concrete wall into the basement of the Nurses’ ��ѿ��ý and causing considerable damage to the building and to the water and gas mains. On 9 March 1941, a high-explosive bomb went through the old operation theatre, but fortunately did not explode. On 10 May 1941, high-explosive bombs went through one of the main wings which was housing students who, fortunately, had gone to their posts elsewhere in the Hospital, the Clerk’s House and the passage to the boiler house. A very big bomb also dropped just outside the Hospital in Giltspur Street, and by concussion blew out all the windows and a portion of the roof of the Pathology Block.

In September 1939, most of the pre-clinical part of the Medical College had been evacuated to Queens’ College, Cambridge. The clinical students were given a three month period at the outbreak of the war during which they were not expected to continue their studies. During this period they were distributed in eleven different hospitals within Sector 3, for which St Bartholomew’s was the key Hospital, and they helped to provide protection measures at the hospitals to which they were attached. Some teaching was undertaken at this time, and in January 1940 all the clinical students were brought within the compass of three hospitals: St Bartholomew’s, Friern and Hill End.

The first serious damage to Medical College premises due to enemy action occurred on the night of 23-24 September 1940, when high explosive bombs fell on Bart’s, destroying the old Biological Laboratory, the Anatomical Theatre, the Medical Theatre, the Lecture Attendant’s Room and the Photographic Department. On 29 October, incendiary bombs destroyed the roof of College Hall in Charterhouse Square, and in December further bombing destroyed the three upper floors of 6 Giltspur Street, which at one time housed the pre-clinical school and had subsequently been let for commercial purposes. Further damage occurred when the Inorganic Chemistry Block was burnt out, and on 12 January 1941, high explosive bombs wrecked the Physics Block, doing great damage to the squash courts, the gymnasium and the Fives courts. Much minor damage in other buildings was also experienced.

Sources:

Ball, Sir Girling, ‘St Bartholomew’s Hospital in the “Blitz”’, reprinted from The Medical Press and Circular, Vol. CCIX, No. 5421, 31 March 1943

Medvei, VC and Thornton, JL (eds), The Royal Hospital of St Bartholomew 1123-1973, 1974

Yeo, G, Nursing at Bart’s: a history of nursing service and nurse education at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, 1995

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