ABSTRACT

In March 1868, the Lancet continued its support for the Seamen’s Hospital Society (SHS) and a detailed report which referred to the continued under-utilisation of the fine buildings which had already appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, was published in The Times. The possibility that the SHS would take over the Infirmary were endorsed in an anonymous article in the Lancet for December 1867; it reminded its readership that ‘the clearance of Greenwich Hospital originated with, and was mainly carried out by the Liberal Government’, and had been initiated by the Duke of Somerset. The decision to transfer clinical facilities from Hospital-ship to a land-based establishment was one of the most important events in the history of the Society. In March 1865, Hugh Childers FRS had initiated a Parliamentary discussion on the future of Greenwich Hospital; details of his plans were outlined the following month in an introduction of a Bill to provide ‘better government of Greenwich Hospital’.