London Month of the Dead - London's Lost Hospitals

LONDON'S LOST HOSPITALS From Medieval Hospitals to Floating Fever Ships At Guy's Hospital Chapel with Ross MacFarlane on Thursday 14th May 2026 at 7 pm Over London's history, more than 500 hospitals have sought to aid the city's population. Those lost, from ornate high-Victorian structures to obscure and specialist institiutions, often retain a shadowy presence in familiar neighbourhoods. While out on the water of the downriver Thames, various hulking vessels were moored to provide floating care for quarantined citizens for whom there was no room on land. As part of the city's annual Medi-culture festival, join Ross McFarlane on a journey across a London streetscape of abandoned and converted Victorian hospital sites, peculiar medical buildings reassigned to new uses, gaps where ghostly invalids linger and downriver to search for these markers and lost limbs of the body of medical London past. Many have left physical traces, some have regenerated into new forms of care giving, all have stories to tell. London's lost hospitals are initimately intertwined with the history of our city and our changing approaches to health and disease. Our venue will be the wonderful gothic chapel at Guys Hospital which is celebrating the 300 year anniversary of its founding. Tickets £12.50 including a Gothic Punch and 20% donation to the King's Chaplaincy Trust to support medical students. Please click here to purchase. Ross McFarlane Ross MacFarlane is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of History at Queen Mary University of London and a Council member of both the Folklore Society and the British Society for the History of Science. A professionally qualified archivist with over 20 years’ experience, he has researched, lectured and written widely on topics including Victorian “spectacular science,” early recorded sound and the collecting of amulets and charms in Edwardian London. He is a regular lead book reviewer for Fortean Times, and has published in New Scientist, The Lancet and Notes and Records of the Royal Society, as well as contributing to books including A Practical Course in Magnetism (2017) and Women in the History of Science: A Handbook (2023). In collaboration with Team London Bridge and Mediculture Festival

LONDON'S LOST HOSPITALS
From Medieval Hospitals to Floating Fever Ships
At Guy's Hospital Chapel with Ross MacFarlane
on Thursday 14th May 2026 at 7 pm

Over London's history, more than 500 hospitals have sought to aid the city's population. Those lost, from ornate high-Victorian structures to obscure and specialist institiutions, often retain a shadowy presence in familiar neighbourhoods. While out on the water of the downriver Thames, various hulking vessels were moored to provide floating care for quarantined citizens for whom there was no room on land.

As part of the city's annual Medi-culture festival, join Ross McFarlane on a journey across a London streetscape of abandoned and converted Victorian hospital sites, peculiar medical buildings reassigned to new uses, gaps where ghostly invalids linger and downriver to search for these markers and lost limbs of the body of medical London past.

Many have left physical traces, some have regenerated into new forms of care giving, all have stories to tell. London's lost hospitals are initimately intertwined with the history of our city and our changing approaches to health and disease.

Our venue will be the wonderful gothic chapel at Guys Hospital which is celebrating the 300 year anniversary of its founding.

Tickets £12.50 including a Gothic Punch and 20% donation to the King's Chaplaincy Trust to support medical students. Please click here to purchase.

Ross McFarlane
Ross MacFarlane is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of History at Queen Mary University of London and a Council member of both the Folklore Society and the British Society for the History of Science. A professionally qualified archivist with over 20 years’ experience, he has researched, lectured and written widely on topics including Victorian “spectacular science,” early recorded sound and the collecting of amulets and charms in Edwardian London.

He is a regular lead book reviewer for Fortean Times, and has published in New Scientist, The Lancet and Notes and Records of the Royal Society, as well as contributing to books including A Practical Course in Magnetism (2017) and Women in the History of Science: A Handbook (2023).

In collaboration with Team London Bridge and Mediculture Festival