S14 E08: South London as a Centre of Medical Innovation

So to get us started, one place, one person, Southwark Cathedral we're going to talk about a lot, founded in 606 as a convent, what is now London Bridge, became a prairie in 1106, a parish church in 1540, and a cathedral in 1905.

And as we'll see in a few moments, Southwark Cathedral was the starting place for St Thomas's, which spun out from Network Hospice.

Another not very well known story, but in some ways maybe the most influential son of South London at all.

John Harwood, son of a publican in Borough High Street, educated locally at school, went to Cambridge University and then emigrated to Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1637.

He died the following year and bequeathed his library of 400 books to a higher learning college that was next door, so to speak, in Newtown.

And Newtown then changed its name to Cambridge and the Higher Education College became Harvard College, and then in 1780 became Harvard University.

And there's a plaque actually along Borough High Street marking where John's father's pub was.

And by some accounts that's probably the most influential of all.

So I'm going to talk about Florence Nightingale, about Thomas Guy, about all sorts of people.

But that's a little-known but truly astonishing story, I think.

So, 1173, the Priory of St Mary Ovary, Ovary means across the river, was renamed St Thomas' after the newly canonised Thomas the Becket, and it built out across there.

I'll show you a map in a minute of how that works.

1690, the hospital started to educate students for the first time, and by 1726, Thomas Guy opened a new hospital opposite, and I'll go through the story of how all that happened.

So I think you can see this on the...

Here's the pointer at Southwark Cathedral.

This is mid-19th century.

Here's the new London Bridge, which was new 1850 or so.

Here's St Thomas' Hospital, opposite side of Borough High Street.

and here's the newish Guy's Hospital, the other side of St Thomas' Street.

And not many taxi drivers know why Guy's Hospital is on St Thomas' Street, and the reason is that St Thomas' Hospital used to be there, but it moved as we'll see in a minute.

And then Guy's began to expand down across further down that side here.

Here's Great Mayors Point Road.

So this is a lithograph of the original Guy's Hospital from 1730 or so.

And below is how it looked in about 1998 when King's and UMDS merged, as we'll talk about.

And one of the transformations we made is to change that space into what's now a nice piazza outside the Science Gallery.