Medical dates:

Medical character:

The North-West London Hospital opened in 1878 in three houses in Camden Town.  It had been established by the Misses Learmonth to aid sick and injured poor working-class women of the district, which included Hampstead, Gospel Oak, Highgate and Kilburn.  Unusually - for the times - it had a designated children's ward.

In 1884 a new wing was added but, by 1890, the Hospital had serious financial problems.  In 1895 Baroness de Hirsch donated £500 and, in 1896, £1,000.

Financial difficulties continued, however, and at the suggestion of the King's Fund, it merged with the newly built Hampstead General Hospital in Haverstock Hill, also in financial straits.  The two were then retitled the Hampstead General and North-West London Hospital.  In-patients were treated at the Haverstock Hill site and out-patients at Kentish Town Road.

In 1912 a new Out-Patients building was erected at Bayham Street, on the site of a house where Charles Dickens had lived in as a boy in the 1820s.

During 1933 there were 86,792 attendances, of which 26,148 were new patients (18,187 of these were casualties).

The Out-Patients Department closed when the Hampstead General Hospital closed in 1975.


Present status (May 2014)

The building in Bayham Street still exists and is now in use by the Camden Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services.