ABSTRACT
The area also provided a home for a group of alternative practitioners that the medical establishment wanted outlawed in the 1850s, homeopaths. Influenced by the fever wards and ‘Houses of Recovery’ already established in provincial towns, the ‘Fever Hospital Movement’ founded the London Fever Hospital in 1801, about 100 m south of on Gray’s Inn Road. By the middle of the 19th century, this area was already densely populated, deprived and rather unsalubrious, being known as ‘Shadyville’. The only health care for the sick poor was the Royal Free Hospital which had opened in 1842. In 1828 William Marsden, a surgeon, organised a meeting in Gray’s Inn Coffee House where he laid out his plans to establish a hospital that would offer free care to anybody. In 1948 the dental department separated from the Royal Free Hospital to become an independent hospital. Eye disease was a common reason for establishing specialist hospitals and dispensaries in the 19th century.
