File RCHS/1/6 - Thorpe Coombe Hospital, Carisbrooke District, Middlesex Hospital and Hackney Hospital Trainee Nurse Register

Thorpe Coombe Hospital is a psychiatric unit and former maternity hospital in Walthamstow, north-east London, and part of North East London NHS Mental Health Trust. The hospital was opened as a maternity hospital in 1934, making use of part of a mansion which had been owned by Octavius Wigram. It ceased maternity facilities in 1973 and was subsequently used as a nurses' home, then a treatment centre for Alzheimer's disease patients, and latterly an out-patients and inpatient service psychiatric hospital.

The Middlesex Hospital was a teaching hospital located in the Fitzrovia area of London. First opened in 1745 on Windmill Street, it was moved in 1757 to Mortimer Street where it remained until it was finally closed in 2005. Its staff and services were transferred to various sites within the University College London Hospitals NHS Trust. The Middlesex Hospital Medical School, with a history dating back to 1746, merged with the medical school of University College London in 1987.

Hackney Hospital started life in 1750 as an infirmary within the workhouse on Homerton High Street. By the 1860s the infirmary was entirely separate from the main workhouse building. This allowed the infirmary to expand to 606 beds with a nursing staff of 45. By the 1930s the Hackney Institution, as the infirmary had become known, was taken over by the London County Council. In 1948, the Hospital became part of the National Health Service and the local Hackney Group of hospitals. In 1987 a new hospital was opened in the area, the Homerton, and general services transferred there. Eventually, only psychiatric and geriatric services remained, but in 1995 these were also transferred to the Homerton and the Hackney Hospital closed.