At The Bethnal Green Weightlifting Club
Dominic Patmore, Powerlifter
In Turin St, there is a single-storey brick building so unassuming that even the locals do not know what it is, yet this is home to the celebrated Bethnal Green Weightlifting Club. The esteemed members believe their association dates from 1926, but a poster for the New Bethnal Green Weightlifting & Physical Culture Club on the wall inside the gym, dated 1931, suggests that its origin may be earlier.
Even the most senior member, Ron Whitton of Columbia Rd, is a relative newcomer who joined in 1946. He greeted Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I when we paid a visit at the weekend, fresh from his twice-weekly swim in the Serpentine and preparing for his twice-weekly weightlifting session to follow. A sprightly octogenarian, Ron is a shining exemplar of the health benefits of body-building and weightlifting. “I’ve always been a keep fit guy,” he vouched, indicating the photos of his former glories upon the wall,“there’s not many guys of eighty-three still training.”
“In 1946, it was just an old shed in the playground with one or two bars and a set of dumbbells, where a couple of guys who’d come out of the forces started weight-training,” Ron recalled fondly, casting his eyes around the hallowed space, “Around 1948, Jack Brenda, Secretary of the Club, opened up this place but it was like something out of the Hammer House of Horrors then, it had been closed for years and there was no equipment, but we got it going and we’ve been here ever since.”
On Saturday morning, we encountered a mutually respectful crew of all sizes of male and female weightlifters absorbed in their training session, punctuated with intense cathartic moments when a major lift was ventured and one among them heaved and strained, channelling the support of their comrades egging them on, before throwing the weight down with a clang onto the mat. Although there were those who had the obvious advantage of size, most compelling in their lifts were those skinny individuals of diminutive stature who appeared to summon resources of strength from the ether in lifting weights that looked far beyond their apparent capacity.
“I started because I liked the idea of being strong,” powerlifter Laura Porter admitted to me, “but now I’m obsessed – it’s the satisfaction when you get a new personal best. I’m not super-duper strong yet, but I’m not bad and I like the feeling of being powerful.”
“It’s a good thing for women to do because it’s good for your bone strength, counteracting any tendency to brittle bones,” she revealed with a blush, “I’m approaching forty so I think about these things, but I hope to be weightlifting and competing in my sixties and beyond.”
A relaxed family atmosphere prevails at Bethnal Green Weightlifting Club, uniting enthusiasts of all ages and walks of life. “There was a time when every London borough had places like these but now there only two left in the entire capital,” Martin Bass, Club Secretary informed me, readily indicated pals that joined with him over forty years ago – and demonstrating the modest camaraderie among all those who seek transcendence of their physical and spiritual limits, here in confines of the gym, as a counterpoint to the external challenges of life’s journey beyond its walls.
Ron Whitton, still weighlifting at eighty-three
Ron is second from right at the Bethnal Green Physique Contest of 1952 – London’s first body-building contest. “all the other have passed away”
Laura Porter, Powerlifter
Laura – “I like the feeling of being powerful”
Martin Bass, Club Secretary and Member for forty-five years
At the Women’s Powerlifting Contest
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
Bethnal Green Weightlifting Club, 229 Bethnal Green Rd, E2 6AB – entrance in Turin St
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The Language Of Tailors
Complementing yesterday’s portrait of Chris Georgiou, Bespoke Tailor, today I offer this selection of the language of tailors.
Chris Georgiou
BABY – The stuffed pad of cloth that the tailor works his cloth on.
BALLOON, TO HAVE A – To have no money coming in at the end of the week.
BANGER – A piece of wood with a handle used to draw steam out of the material during ironing.
BOARD – Tailor’s work bench.
BUNCE – A perk of the trade. Mungo is one type of tailor’s bunce.
CODGER – A tailor who does up old suits.
CRIB – Larger scraps of cloth, saved from a length of cloth alloted for a job. The crib can be used to make a skirt or a pair of trousers. Another example of a tailor’s bunce.
DEAD – A job is dead when it’s been paid for already. So there is no more money coming in from it and it is as well to get it off your hands quickly.
DOCTOR – An alteration tailor – a separate trade in most houses.
DOLLY – A roll of material, wetted, and used as a sponge to dampen the cloth.
DRAG, IN THE– Late with a job of work.
DRUMMERS – Trouser makers. A term of contempt used by jacket makers to describe trouser makers because there is said to be less skill in making a pair of trousers. Trouser makers are also given the more contemptuous name of FOUR SEAMS & A RUB OF SOAP.
DUCK SHOVING – An East End expression, meaning making the stitches too big. The West End equivalent is SKIPPING IT.
GOOSE IRON – Hand iron, which used to be heated upon a gas flame.
INCH STICK – Wooden ruler.
KICKING – Looking for another job. If dissatisfied, a tailor might go out looking for another job during the lunch break.
A KILL – A job that is no good at all and cannot be resold. eg If burnt with an iron.
KIPPER – Female tailor’s assistant, called kippers because they always worked in pairs. This was for their own safety – a kind of chaperone system – so that one could protect the other if the tailor made advances.
MANGLE – Sewing machine. Old machine that worked on a treadle looked like mangles.
MUNGO – Cloth cuttings. These belong to the tailor and he can make a few pennies by selling them to a rag merchant.
ON THE COD – Gone for a drink.
ON THE LOG – Piecework. As in most trades, tailors are paid according to the amount of work they turn out. The work is logged up against the tailor’s name in the book.
A PORK – A job that customer rejects but which can be sold to someone else.
PT, RUBBING IN A – Fitting in a private job eg making yourself a pair of trousers during the lunch break. This practice os allowed in most work rooms provided th tailors are discreet about it, and do it in their own time.
SCHMUTTER, BIT OF OLD – Jewish expression for a piece of poor cloth.
SHEARS – Tailor’s scissors.
SKIFFLE – A fast job that a customer wants in a hurry.
SMALL SEAMS – A warning expression to a fellow tailor that the person you are talking about is coming into the room.
SOFT SEW – A cloth that is easy to work with eg tweed.
TWEED MERCHANT – A tailor who does the easy work. A term of contempt for a poor workman, because tweed being soft and rough is easier to work with than other cloths.
UMSIES – A name to describe someone who is in the room whom you are talking about but you do not want them to know it. Even if they hear, there is an element of doubt who you are referring to.
Photograph copyright © Colin O’Brien
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Chris Georgiou, Bespoke Tailor
“I’ve worked seven days a week for forty-five years – each morning I come in about half eight and stay until seven o’clock,” tailor Chris Georgiou assured me, “If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t do it.”
Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien & I were standing in his tiny tailoring shop situated in one of the last quiet stretches of the Kings Cross Rd. “You don’t want to retire,” Chris advised us, thinking out loud and wielding his enormous shears enthusiastically, “The bank manager round the corner retired and he’s had three heart attacks in three years and he now he takes thirty-five pills a day. He came to see me. ‘Chris, never retire!’ he said. A friend of mine, a tailor who worked from home, he retired but after a couple of years he came to see me, ‘Chris,’ he said, ‘Can I come and help you for a couple of days each week? I don’t want any money, I just need a reason to walk down the road.'”
Chris shook his head at the foolishness of the world as he resumed cutting the cloth and thus Colin & I were assured of the unlikelihood of Chris ever retiring. And why should when he has so many devoted long-term customers who appreciate his work? As we discovered, when a distinguished-looking gentleman came in clutching an armful of striped shirts that matched the one he was wearing and readily admitted he was a customer of fourteen years standing. Thus it was only a brief interview that Chris was able to grant us but, like all his work, it was perfectly tailored.
“I started out to be tailor at twelve years old, to learn this job you have to start early and you need a lot of patience to hold a needle. My mother was a very good dressmaker and she made shirts, that’s where I got it from. In Cyprus, when you finish school at twelve years old, you must choose a trade. I always liked to dress smart, so I said, ‘I’m going to be a tailor.’ I came from a poor family and I couldn’t have gone to college.
So learnt from a tailor in our village of Zodia. First, I learnt to make trousers and then I learnt to make a jacket, and then it was time to change. After that, I went to another place and said, ‘I know how to make jackets.’ I told lies and I got the job, and I started to learn the art of tailoring. Then I came here in 1968, under contract to a maker of leather wear in Farringdon Rd but, after a year, I told my boss I was going off to do tailoring. And I went to several tailors to see how they do it in England and I bought this shop from one of them in 1969, just a year after I arrived. At first, I used to get jobs from other tailors doing alterations and then I acquired my own customers. 95% of them are barristers and I have never advertised, all my customers have come through recommendations.
When I make a suit, it’s not for the customer, it’s for the people who see the suit. That’s my secret. They wear their suits in chambers and the others ask them where they get their suits. My customers come from the City. It pleases me when you do something good, satisfy your customer and they leave happy. You can’t get rich by tailoring but you can make a good living. I’ve made a lot of suits for famous people whom I’m not at liberty to mention but I can tell you I made a dinner suit for Roger Daltrey, when he got an award for charity work from George Bush, and I made a suit for Lord Mayhew. He brought two security guards who stood outside the shop. I made suits for both his sons and he asked them where they got their suits. He used to go to Savile Row but now he comes here.
I don’t go out for lunch, I eat food prepared by my wife that I bring with each day from East Finchley. She doesn’t see too much of me, that must be why my marriage has lasted forty years.”
“When I make a suit, it’s not for the customer, it’s for the people who see the suit”
“To learn this job you have to start early and you need a lot of patience to hold a needle”
“It pleases me when you do something good, satisfy your customer and they leave happy”
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
Chris Georgiou, 120 Kings Cross Rd, Wc1X 9DS
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The Alteration Tailors Of The East End
William West’s Tavern Anecdotes
It is my pleasure to publish this selection of the Origins of Signs by William West (1770-1854) from his Tavern Anecdotes of 1825 to be found in the Bishopsgate Library. “The absurdities which Tavern Signs present are often curious enough, but may in general be traced to that inveterate propensity which the vulgar of all countries have to make havoc with everything in the shape of a proper name,” West wrote contemptuously in his introduction.
THE MOON RAKERS
A house, by this sign. stands near Suffolk St, Southwark, and is well known to the inhabitants of that district. The natives of most counties are honoured by some ludicrous appellation by their neighbours and moon raker has long been synonymous with a Wiltshireman.
A party of Wiltshire smugglers having deposited their casks of contraband spirits in a pond, were in the act of raking them out on a moonlit night, when some excisemen cam near. Upon the latter demanding what they were about, one of the smugglers, with affected naivety, replied, “Whoy, don’t you zee that cheese there?” The idea that these pretended simpletons had actually mistaken the reflection of the moon for a cheese so diverted the excisemen that they laughed heartily and went away, and by this manoeuvre, they say, the smugglers’ kegs remained in safety.
BULL & MOUTH
This sign exhibits an instance of the corruption and perversion of language. Everybody knows that a bull has a mouth, but everyone does not know that is such a place as Boulogne, where there is a harbour, which necessarily must have an entrance, commonly called a mouth.
Originally the town was known as Boulogne Mouth, in allusion to the town and harbour of Boulogne, but the gne being generally pronounced by the Londoners on, it gradually became an and it only required the small addition of d to make and of it. The first part being before this made a bull of it, was ultimately converted to Bull & Mouth – the unmeaning title which it now bears. Situated in St Martin Le Grand, this is a house of much business, from whence several of the mails and various other coaches, to all parts of the kingdom, do take their departure.
HOLE IN THE WALL
There are various houses known by this name. That in Chancery Lane, nearly opposite to the gate leading in to Lincoln’s Inn Old Sq, is kept by Jack Randall, who has obtained the title of Nonpareil, having fought above a dozen pitched battles and proving the victor in every encounter. He weighs about ten stone six pounds and his height is about five feet six inches, but now he has retired from the ring, having nettled some blunt. There is also a noted ‘Hole in the Wall’ in Fleet St where compositors have long held their orgies.
THE DEVIL TAVERN
The Devil Tavern in Fleet St near Temple Bar was well known to the facetious Ben Jonson and the celebrated Lord Rochester also takes note of this notorious scene of revelry.
THE JOLLY SAILOR
This sign, like that of the Mariner’s Compass, Ship, Boat and Barge etc has been adopted in seaport towns, evidently in compliment to the seafaring man, as others have adopted the names of some favourite or fortunate admiral, commodore, captain etc.
ROBIN HOOD
Everyone is familiar with the history of Robin Hood. About half a century ago, there existed a debating society in London called ‘The Robin Hood Society’ which gave its name to house in Windmill St where it met.
FORTUNE OF WAR
This title is of considerable antiquity and probably originated with some veteran warrior, who had obtained prize money sufficient to enable him to retire and become publican. In Giltspur St, there is a house retaining that name, it is at the corner of Cock Lane, of Ghost notoriety.
THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
A sign, so named, is observable on the road to Greenwich. It is a representation of the globe with a man walking on the lower part, alluding to the state of inebriation, in which a person is sometimes said to suppose himself walking on the crown of his head.
THE LONDON ‘PRENTICE
A house so styled is situated in Old St near to Shoreditch church. This may have an allusion to the rising of the city apprentices or perhaps, more probably, taken from Hogarth’s representation of the Industrious & Idle Apprentices.
THE HORNS
There are many taverns so named but the most noted are the Horns Tavern in the vicinity of St Paul’s and the Horns at Kennington. Most of the public houses in Highgate have a large pair of horns fixed on the end of a long staff, by which it has been an ancient custom for persons to swear that they will never eat brown bread when they can get white and never kiss a maid when they can kiss the mistress, after which thy must kiss the horns and pay one shilling, to be spent in the house.
THE TANNER OF JOPPA
In Long Lane, Southwark, there is a house so named, probably having its origin in the times when Scripture names were adopted for men and things. In Acts CX V. 32, we read that the Apostle Peter dwelt for some time at the house of Simon, a tanner.
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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At The Stables Under The Westway
Whenever I have made the trip to Oxford, I have always been surprised to glance down as the bus ascends onto the monstrous concrete Westway, suspended high above the city, and see a stable far below where horses are being exercised. It is a curious anachronism to discover this peaceful spectacle in the midst of the urban chaos and heartening to be reminded of the persistence of these old ways, before you race off up the A40. So when the West London Stables invited me to pay them a visit, Contributing Photographer Patricia Niven & I ventured over to learn more.
When the Westway was built in 1968, it isolated an intermediary space between Notting Hill and Shepherds Bush where scrapyards, travellers’ encampments and stables occupied land that nobody else used. Over the years, this has become an unlikely time capsule in which elements that defined the place historically have survived in spite of the more recent developments which encircle them today.
Sarah Tuvey took over running of the stables as a community riding school in 1994. She explained to me that they were originally built as a concessionary gesture for travellers, totters and costermongers from Portobello, at the time the Westway was constructed over land they had used for keeping their horses – but by the early nineties there were only three or four horses left, after their owners had retired or switched to motorised transport.
Yet Sarah also revealed this place was once the site of a racecourse known as the Kensington Hippodrome, built in 1837 by John Whyte. These former ancient grasslands were used traditionally for the working horses that served the city – pulling cabs, dray carts and milk floats – and it was this culture of horsemanship which gave rise the celebrated White City Horse Shows. Prior to the development of the west side of Notting Hill, the decline of the Racecourse led to its use by travellers, and the creation of potteries and piggeries, and a reputation for vagabondage and criminality which lingers to this day. Significantly, it was the West London Stables that supplied the old nag to the BBC for ‘Steptoe & Son.’
You feel you walk off the map when you leave the made-up road and enter the shadow land beneath the gargantuan interchange, where unseen traffic booms overhead like distant thunder. It is a dirty realm of excitement and of possibility, lacking the same degree of social control which prevails in the clean streets. Graffiti abounds and water drips in the dramatic shade cast by the monolithic structures above, and there is a theatricality in the presence of horses in the arena, parading as if within a circus ring beneath a big top.
Beyond, you discover the small enclave of stables which Sarah has run for the past twenty years, offering riding to community groups from the surrounding areas and single-handedly keeping the age-old culture of horsemanship alive in this corner of London. She is evangelical about the social benefits of the stables, especially for children who have grown up in the city and may not have seen horses before. Yet the recent decline in income as an indirect consequence of cuts means that the stable is forced to choose between feeding horses or paying the rent, and now Sarah has been told her lease will not be renewed in February next year.
When I heard Sarah’s news, the pathos of the circumstance became apparent to me, standing there in the stables with the motorway roaring overhead. If we can justify the vast shopping complexes and the titanic motorways suspended in the air, why cannot this small but well-used stables be allowed to exist for the benefit of its immediate urban community? You might like to visit the West London Stables for yourself to experience horse-riding in this unique location while it is still possible and – in the meantime – you can sign the petition to help them survive here.
Sarah Tuvey
Paula Sheenan, Trustee
Carley Small, Rider
Tamara Heirons, Trainer
Photographs copyright © Patricia Niven
West London Stables, 20 Stable Way, London, W10 6QX
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Mr Pussy’s Chair
Mid-afternoon in Spitalfields, Mr Pussy snoozes
Is that an old fur hat on that chair in the corner? You would be forgiven for making such a simple mistake, but in fact it is my cat, Mr Pussy, slumbering the hours away in the armchair that is his ultimate home, the place where I first laid him down as a tiny kitten and the place where he has spent more hours of his life than anywhere else – even if it has now moved over two hundred miles from one end of the country to the other. It is Mr Pussy’s chair.
My mother bought this chair in 1963. She had been married five years and had a three year old child, and she was still struggling to furnish our house. She was patient, doing without and waiting until the opportunity arose to acquire suitable things. She had very little money to spend but she wanted furniture that would last, and the passage of time has proved she chose wisely. I think she bought this chair in a sale and, although I do not know if it can truly be memory on my part, I see her searching among the cut-price furniture in the shop and filling with delight to discover this handsome Queen Anne style wingchair that was within her budget.
It was a deep green velvet then and one of my earliest memories is of standing upon the seat, safe between the wings of the chair, and reaching up vainly attempting to grasp the top. I yearned for the day when I would be tall enough to reach it, for then I should grown up beyond my feeble toddler years. The chair seemed huge to me and I could climb beneath it comfortably, much to my father’s frustration when he was sitting in it on Saturday afternoons and attempting to take note of the football results from the television, in order to complete his pools form and discover if he had become wealthy.
He never became wealthy yet he never gave up hope of winning either, sitting in this chair and filling in the football scores every Saturday, for year after year, until he died. Just a few weeks after his funeral, I bought a small black kitten for my mother as a means to ameliorate her grief and the tiny creature slept curled up in the corner of the armchair, seeking security in its wide embrace. It was his earliest nest. By now the green velvet had faded to a golden brown and the cushion has disintegrated, so that if a stranger were to visit and sit down quickly upon it they would fall right through the seat. Yet this did not matter too much to us, because we kept the chair exclusively for the use of the cat who did not weigh very much.
Eventually, to rejuvenate the chair, we had a new seat cushion made and a loose fabric cover of William Morris’ Willow Leaves pattern, which is still serviceable more than ten years later. Once my mother began to lose her faculties in her final years, I often sat her in it that she might benefit from its protection, when her balance failed her, and not fall off onto the floor as she did from chairs without wings. After she died, it became the cat’s sole preserve and it still delights me to see him there in the chair, evoking earlier days. It is almost the last piece of furniture I have from my childhood home and, although I do not choose to sit in it much myself, I keep it because I can still see my father sitting there doing his football pools or my mother perched to read the Sunday supplement.
One day, I mean to have the armchair reupholstered in its original deep green velvet but until then, by his presence, Mr Pussy keeps the chair and the memories that it carries alive. I realise that Mr Pussy is keeping the chair warm for me and I am grateful to him for this service that he offers so readily.
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The Cats of Spitalfields (Part One)
John Entick’s Spitlefields, 1766
John Entick, engraving by Guillaume Philippe Benoist, 1763
John Entick (c.1703 – 1773) had a reputation as an opportunistic hack writer who assumed the title of MA and the role of a cleric, by having a stern portrait engraved wearing a clerical wig, to promote a phoney scholarly impression. Yet his multi-volume ‘History & Survey of London’- from which I publish extracts below – based upon an earlier work by William Maitland, proves surprisingly revealing about Spitalfields.
Produced a few decades after the construction of Christ Church, Entick describes the new parish of Spitalfields with many of the elements in place that we know today and even the long-gone Artillery ground may still be recognised by street names such as Gun St, Fort St and Artillery Lane.
“Spitlefields was originally a hamlet belonging to the parish of St Dunstan, Stepney, but now it is a parish – made so by an Act of Parliament in 1723. In which year, the foundation of the church was laid and in 1729 it was finished, and dedicated to our Saviour, by the name Christ Church Spitlefields. This is one of fifty new churches, built of stone, with a very high steeple in which is a very fine ring of bells. It is a rectory endowed with one hundred and twenty-five pounds to be paid by the church wardens and the produce of three hundred pounds worth of land laid out.
The vestry consists of those who have served or signed for overseers of the poor, and officers are two church wardens, twelve auditors of accounts, four overseers, one sidesman, one constable, one headborough, one surveyor of the highways, four scavengers, two surveyors of the streets and one ale conner. The parish enjoys the privilege of a market, which is of great reputation for all sorts of provisions. And there are no less than four French churches and a French Hospital in Grey Eagle St, and Quaker’s Meeting in Quaker’s St.
At the east side of Bishopsgate St, we come to Spittal Sq, and the site of the ancient priory and hospital of St Mary Spittal, founded in the year 1197 by Sir Walter Brune and Rossina his wife, for canons regular, and dedicated to the honour of Jesus Christ and his mother the blessed Virgin Mary. It was a foundation of very great extent, for in the composition made by the prior of this house with the rector of St Botolph’s, concerning tythes, it appears to have begun at Berward’s Lane, towards the south and to run as far as the parish of St Leonard, Shoreditch, to the north. And, in breadth, from the king’s street in the west, to the Bishop of London’s field called Lollorsworth, now Spitlefield, on the east.
At its dissolution in the reign of Henry VIII, it was valued at four hundred and eighty pounds per annum and there were found in it one hundred and eighty beds standing for the relief of the poor, being a hospital of great relief. The site of this hospital is now covered with some of the best houses in this quarter of the metropolis and inhabited by manufacturers and merchants of great trade and worth, especially in the silk trade. But for many years there remained uncovered part of the churchyard and the pulpit cross in it. And on the south side there was a handsome house for the lord mayor, aldermen, sheriffs and people of distinction to sit and hear sermons preached upon the resurrection on Easter Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (and perhaps on other occasions) by a bishop, a dean and a doctor of divinity, which custom was kept up until the year 1642, but in the grand rebellion the pulpit was broken down and the custom discontinued.
To the south, facing the street leading from Moorfields, stands Devonshire Sq and the street that leads to it, stood upon the ground once called Fisher’s Folly, but better known by the name Devonshire House where the earl of Devonshire used to reside. The square and Devonshire St are well built and inhabited, but it is scarce possible to describe the mean and ruinous state and condition of the houses and inhabitants of the streets, alleys and courts on all sides of them. Nevertheless, here we find a Baptist meeting house and a Quaker’s meeting house, just without the east passage.
About three hundred yards north east from this square lies a spacious enclosure, called the Artillery ground, let by the prior of St Mary Spittal to the gunners of the Tower, for thrice ninety-nine years for the use and practice of great and small artillery. And they came hither every Thursday to practice their large artillery, which moved His Majesty King Henry VIII to grant them a charter and the same was confirmed in 1584, and was established for the increasing of good gunners for the Royal Navy and forts. In both those characters, this ground being nominated and ordered to be set apart for those uses, the Artillery Ground became subject to the Tower. The streets built thereupon compose one of the Tower hamlets and the inhabitants summoned on juries belonging the courts held on Tower Hill.
In the year 1585, the state and nation being threatened with an invasion from Spain, some brave and active citizens voluntarily exercised themselves, and trained up others in the use of arms, so that within two years there were almost three hundred merchants and other persons of distinction qualified to teach the common soldiers the management of their guns, pikes and halberts. They met every Thursday, each person by turn bearing office from the corporal to the captain, and some of those gentlemen were distinguished by the title of knights of the Artillery garden.
To the south east, we proceed into the Whitchapel Rd and on the south side, at the stones end, stands the parish church dedicated to St Mary, founded about the year 1329 as a chapel of ease to Stepney. Here is also a prison for debtors, called Whitechapel Prison. On the same side, but more to the eastward, is cut a new road to Cannon St, Ratcliff Highway, and between that and the Mile End Turnpike, facing Whitechapel Prison is the London Hospital formerly called the London Infirmary which began in the year 1740, in Prescot St, Goodman’s Fields. This building, raised and supported by public subscriptions and contributions, is plain, elegant and commodious, fitted with up to one hundred and sixty beds for patients which are constantly full, besides an unlimited number of outpatients, and all accidents whether recommended or not, are received at any hour of the day and night.”
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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