South London Hospital For Women and Children - Interwar Years and The Second World War

Interwar Years and The Second World War

After the First World War, the hospital expanded, with new departments being added for dermatology (1922) and urology (1924). Radium treatment for cancer was performed between 1924 and the opening of the specialist Marie Curie Hospital in Hampstead in 1929. The hospital buildings were enlarged when the imposing Wrennaissance Baroque style frontage building (designed by leading 20th-century architect Sir Edwin Cooper - architect of the Port of London HQ opposite the Tower of London and another grand hospital building in Greenwich which is of a very similar style) was opened in 1929. Only 3/4 of this building was completed leaving the southern end-pavilion missing creating an unsightly gap for the remainder of the 20th Century. Further extensions were completed in the 1950s. By the 1930s, however, the need for wholly female-staffed hospitals to provide positions for women had reduced greatly, as equality of career opportunities for women in mainstream, mixed-staffed hospitals started to emerge, and the future of such hospitals began to be called into question. Although several women-only hospitals began to admit men during the 1930s, the South London Hospital's fundraising was sufficiently effective to allow it retain its original staffing policy. The terms of its founding donation were so strict that Chadburn claimed an Act of Parliament had been required for male soldiers to be treated during the Second World War (cited by Elston).