The old workhouse of St. Giles, Bloomsbury, had been taken over by the War Office for hospital purposes, and it was there that the Director General decided to station the Women’s Hospital Corps.

The group of buildings rises, grey and sombre-looking, at the upper end of Endell Street, on ground which was granted by Queen Matilda for a lepers’ hospital. It abuts on Shorts Gardens, where the leper colony lingered long after Henry VIII. had absorbed the original foundation. Some months before the war, the Guardians had evacuated these premises for grander and more commodious quarters elsewhere, and during 1914 the buildings had been occupied by Belgian refugees. In the spring of 1915 an army of workmen took possession, and the work of renovating and adapting them for a hospital was already advancing. A narrow entrance, partially hidden by Christ’s Church, led into a square, formed by three large hospital blocks, the church and a long administrative building. A glass-covered passage ran down the centre of the square and across to either block. It was fenced in with high iron railings, and the free space on either side was divided by more railings into little pens. The little pens had padlocked gates and were labelled: ‘Old Males,’ ‘Young Males,’ ‘Old Females,’ ‘Young Females;’ and it was in these cages that the inmates of the workhouse had sought fresh air and recreation. There was a little gate office next to the mortuary, where a set of pigeon holes, constructed out of slate slabs, was designed to receive coffins, and where the gas meter took up most of the room. Behind the main buildings were the children’s home—modern and well built—and the Guardians’ offices, opening on to Broad Street. Part of the administrative block bore the date 1727, and St. Giles was said to have been the workhouse described by Dickens in Oliver Twist. A long room, with a fireplace at either end, still exists in the oldest part, where Oliver is supposed to have been interviewed by the Guardians; and the cellars or basements under this section of the building are of the most ancient and grimy description. The hospital blocks were five stories high, with good air space and large wards. There were windows on both sides of these wards, and more sunshine and fresh air were available than was expected in that locality. The warehouses next door were in the hands of the A.S.C.M.T., and all round lay the teeming, crowded streets of Soho and Drury Lane.

Extensive structural alterations were necessary. Lifts capable of carrying stretchers were put in; the sanitation was renewed, and electric light and modern cooking apparatus were installed. The building was cleaned and painted throughout, but there was an extraordinary amount of old furniture and disused apparatus which the Guardians had left behind, and the presence of piles of lumber was embarrassing. The fittings of padded rooms and curious pieces of furniture, designed to restrain the insane, came out of the lunacy block; antique baths and obsolete drain-pipes were cast out by the builders, and in their place ward kitchens and bathrooms were arranged on every floor; and operating theatres, X-ray room, laboratories, dispensaries and store-rooms were completed.

Acting upon instructions from the Director General, Dr. Garrett Anderson and Dr. Flora Murray, since their return, had been engaged in finding staff and in drawing up a scheme for the future establishment. Their final destination was not decided until early in March, when they were summoned to the War Office to discuss the suitability of Endell Street. On the way to keep their appointment, they stepped inside the gate and surveyed with a rapid glance the lie of the buildings and the piles of rubbish and dirt massed among the iron railings in the square. They saw enough to enable them to say that it would do, before the gate-keeper turned them out as being unauthorised persons upon government premises.

The feeling of the Army Medical Department towards women doctors could be gauged by the atmosphere in the various offices with which business had to be done. In one there was disapproval; in another curiosity and amusement; in a third obstinate hostility, which was not dissipated by an unassuming manner. But in the Director General’s own office a most cordial desire to assist was met with, and nothing was left undone to that end. He himself put the doctors in touch with a young major in the department, instructing him to give them every possible assistance and telling them to go to him in any difficulty. Further, he sent them to see the Deputy Director of Medical Services for the London District, and so launched them on the War Office tide.

The young major—who shortly became a colonel—was obviously nervous of being seen in such company, and in the manner of a sheepish schoolboy secluded them in his own little den. There the limit of his knowledge was soon reached, but he was able to indicate the rooms of several colonels who ought to be seen. Fearful of making a public appearance in the corridors again, he telephoned through to these gentlemen, and with relief despatched the ladies, under the guidance of an N.C.O. A few days later, when he was approached with regard to some small difficulty, he said that he knew nothing about hospitals and that it was no good coming to him—a plain truth which was already becoming apparent both where he and other officers were concerned.

By the light of experience gained in the years which followed, the doctors realised how much these War Office officials could and should have done to help them in those early days, and how they did as little as possible. Thus they created on the minds of these women an impression, which may or may not have been correct, of incompetence and want of intelligence. Advice and assistance were withheld, lest the officer who gave it might in some way become responsible for the women’s affairs; and in addition, their path was often obstructed. It was not understood at the time that obstruction was due to hostility: it was taken for stupidity, or the way in which things were done at the War Office; and after two or three fruitless visits to the branch offices of the Army Medical Department no further time was wasted on these gentlemen. Other sources of information or other ways of getting things through were discovered.

The Director General had arranged for the senior medical officers and the quartermaster to take a course of instruction in administration under the Officer-in-Charge of the Queen Alexandra Military Hospital, Millbank; and this officer and his staff showed them much kindness and gave them, with many hints as to procedure, a valuable insight into the working of a well-directed military hospital.

In due course an appointment was made with the officer then in charge of the alterations at Endell Street, in order that he might take the doctors round the premises and give them information which would enable them to complete their scheme of establishment.

Two officers, a quartermaster, an N.C.O. and six privates—R.A.M.C.—were living in the buildings and were engaged in making preparations; but owing to the state of the works and the mess in the place, they were—so the colonel said—‘marking time.’ The colonel was what the soldiers call ‘a real R.A.M.C. colonel.’ The idea of women doctors in a military hospital was very distasteful to him. The proposal filled him with disgust and apprehension, and he was firmly convinced it was not feasible.

‘Good God! Women!’ he ejaculated. ‘God bless my soul, Women!’

He writhed on his chair and, perspiring heavily, spoke for an hour (with frequent ejaculations about ‘Women!’) in an endeavour to prove that the idea was ridiculous and impossible in any hospital, but especially so in that particular one. Being reminded that the matter had been settled and that the doctors desired to go over the buildings, he questioned the sanity of the War Office, and finding himself unable to stay any longer in the vicinity of such ‘indelicate females,’ he firmly declared that he was going out, and he marched off, exclaiming:

‘Oh, good God! what difficulties you will have.’

The second officer followed him silently. The quartermaster-sergeant, who had been present all the time, pretended that he did not know his way round the building, so Dr. Garrett Anderson and Dr. Flora Murray set out alone on a tour of inspection. From what they saw they concluded that, if the hospital were to open in May, ‘marking time’ must cease, and they therefore wrote to the Director General, requesting that they might be put in charge at once. By return of post came their instructions, and on the 22nd of March 1915 the Military Hospital, Endell Street, was handed over to them by the chastened and protesting colonel. There remained, to superintend the structural alterations, a captain in the R.E. and the contractor’s clerk of works, Mr. Cook. The latter was a civilian and a real patriot. He was destined to become a great ally and, incidentally, a staunch feminist. The rapid progress made in the work was due to his energy and devotion.

The premises were encumbered by the presence of much worn-out and obsolete furniture—the discarded property of the Guardians. A certain portion of it could be made use of, and this was picked out and cleaned for the wards or the quarters of the staff; but a great deal of it was useless, and urgent requests were made for its immediate removal. It included several hundred old flock mattresses; and these, by direction of the above-mentioned colonel, had been stored in the laundry. This was a fine, large room, and it was filled up to the door with dirty and somewhat damp bedding. The danger of heating was obvious, and in addition the laundry itself was the only available place for a linen store. The colonel and the R.E. captain had decided that the hospital would not require this room, and the cleaning of it had been cut out of the estimates. As an alternative they suggested that linen, bedding and clothing for six hundred men should be kept in a little basement store. After much opposition and delay, it was sanctioned that the laundry should be used, and renewed efforts were made to induce the Guardians to remove their material. More than one visit was made to the Clerk of the Guardians before the name of the official who was really responsible was elicited. It slipped out quite inadvertently in conversation one morning. The Clerk had no sooner said it than he regretted it, for he was promptly required to telephone and see if this gentleman was available.

It was Saturday morning and though he was in his office, he was leaving early to catch a train. As the doctors hastily left the room, they heard the Clerk, in accents of dismay, saying down the telephone, ‘They have started!’ Arrived at the other office, it was clear that the hall-porter and secretaries were anxious to prevent an interview with their chief; but the doctors, instead of sitting down in the waiting-room with a closed door, as they were invited to do, followed closely on the heels of the distressed porter and were so close behind him that they could not be refused entrance to the office and the presence of the Chairman. He had his hat on, his bag in his hand, and in another second he would have been gone.

‘I have a train to catch,’ he cried.

‘We won’t keep you a moment: just give orders to have all that furniture and bedding removed.’

‘I will attend to it on Monday, certainly.’

‘Monday is too late. A telephone message now, please.’

He hesitated, looked at them standing between him and the door, laughed and capitulated.

‘All right, ring them up,’ he said to his secretary, and fled to catch his train. But the women remained to hear the order sent through.

By the end of the month Dr. Garrett Anderson and Dr. Flora Murray had moved into the quarters at Endell Street, which they continued to occupy until April 1919. And the work of preparation was progressing rapidly. Under Mr. Cook’s influence, the workmen gave up their Easter holiday, and every one pressed forward eagerly. Indents were drawn up and sent in for the furniture and medical stores required, and gradually the supplies were delivered. Several years later, Major B—— told Dr. Flora Murray with what interest the first indents from Endell Street had been scanned at the Horse Guards, and how surprising it had been to find that they were right.

The furniture arrived before the lifts were ready and in quantities which the small R.A.M.C. contingent could not deal with. Fatigue parties, therefore, from the various regiments stationed in London were obtained, and the furniture and equipment were distributed through the buildings.

At this stage, a very kind old gentleman—not in uniform—came into the square and inquired how we were getting on. He said that he was the Officer in Charge of Barracks, and that the indents for furniture, linen, etc., went through his office. In conversation he stated that he was in his eightieth year, and he showed a friendly interest in the plans for the hospital. He had two daughters who were both suffragists.

‘One,’ he said, ‘belongs to a most respectable society,’ then dropping his voice, ‘but the other—she goes with Mrs. Pankhurst’s lot.’

Perhaps his hearers, who had also gone with ‘Mrs. Pankhurst’s lot’ in the suffrage days, did not look as shocked as he expected; for he added kindly:

‘I daresay you may not have heard of Mrs. Pankhurst.’

One morning, as he watched a fatigue party fall in in the square, he asked:

‘Now, do you get any work out of these fellows?’

‘Yes,’ answered Dr. Garrett Anderson, ‘there is a woman placed at the bottom of the stairs to send them up, and another at the top to send them down again, and they get quite a lot done.’

‘Poor fellows, poor fellows,’ said the major. ‘Very energetic ladies! Oh! we are not accustomed to that in the Army.’

The Corps required to be largely supplemented to enable it to cope with the work before it, but fortunately it was able to fall back upon a number of its original members, and these formed the nucleus of the new staff. Dr. Woodcock became the physician to the hospital. Dr. Gertrude Gazdar and Dr. Rosalie Jobson, who had worked in France, accepted posts as assistant surgeons. Dr. Amy Sheppard, O.B.E., was appointed ophthalmic surgeon; Dr. Helen Chambers, C.B.E., pathologist; Dr. Eva Handley-Read, dental surgeon; and Dr. E. M. Magill, O.B.E., radiologist (in 1916); while Dr. Winifred Buckley, O.B.E., who served from the opening of the hospital to its closure, and three other doctors, completed the surgical staff. Dr. Louisa Garrett Anderson, C.B.E., was the Chief Surgeon, and the administrative work, with title of ‘Doctor-in-Charge,’ fell to Dr. Flora Murray, C.B.E.

Miss Hale, R.R.C., who was then matron of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital and a member of the Territorial Force Nursing Service, was working at the 1st London General Hospital at the time. Dr. Flora Murray represented to Sir Alfred Keogh that she was the right person to take up the work of matron, and by his wish, and with the cordial consent of Dame Sidney Browne, D.B.E., R.R.C., Matron-in-Chief, Territorial Force Nursing Service, she was seconded for service under the War Office. She held the office of matron with success from April 1915 till October 1919. Some of the Sisters from the French hospitals, Miss Breen, Miss Pearson, Mrs. Lawrence, R.R.C., Miss Clemow, R.R.C., and Miss Belton, continued as members of the Corps. The schedule of establishment sanctioned only thirty-six trained nurses for the entire hospital. Words cannot measure or describe the value of their service to the sick and wounded. Some of them, including Sister May, Sister Beales and Sister Moore remained from the opening date until its closure. They worked at high pressure, often under difficulties, and with untrained subordinates, while surgeons and patients learnt to rely more and more upon their constant care and devotion.

Quartermaster Campbell expanded her staff to meet requirements, and the former orderlies, Miss M. E. Hodgson and Miss Isabel Lowe, were called up early to help in organising. A hundred picked young women joined up as orderlies, some for nursing and some for administrative work; while the clerical section was organised by Miss Jarvis, who had also served with the Corps in France, and by Miss Esther Hatten. The R.A.M.C. detachment numbered one N.C.O. and twenty men, fourteen of whom were later replaced by women. Thus a staff of approximately one hundred and eighty persons was ready when the hospital opened in May.