A brief history of Whipps Cross Hospital

by Alan Simpson

With no loan forthcoming from the Local Government Board, the Guardians changed tack and decided to convert Forest House into an auxiliary workhouse for some 300 aged and infirm men, the main workhouse having become overcrowded.

Essex County Chronicle, 11 March 1892 :

The West Ham Board of Guardians propose to build at Forest House a separate workhouse school, at a cost not exceeding £45,000, and it has been resolved to apply to the Local Government Board, with a view of getting a loan, spread over 50 years. In a discussion at the last meeting of the Guardians, Mr. FODEN said it cost them 15s 1d. a head a week to maintain and educate the children in their schools, or more than would keep a whole family in the country. The CHAIRMAN questioned the accuracy of Mr. Foden’s figures, and said he did not think the cost was so high. We should imagine Mr. FODEN was somewhat over stating the charge. Fifteen shillings a week for the maintenance and education of a workhouse child would rank, we should hope, as quite a fancy price.

Essex County Chronicle, 27 October 1893 :

The daily average of men in the stone-yard at the West Ham Union-house last week was 181, as compared with a daily average of 81 in the previous week. This large increase is very significant. With the view of providing work for the unemployed, the West Ham Guardians have determined to hire their own labour for the alterations and repairs at Forest House, and for the painting and repairing of the whole of the Union-house premises. The men employed are to be drawn entirely from parishes within the union, the current rate of wages is to be paid, and the working hours are to be eight a day.

The altered and repaired Forest House subsequently began its new role in 1894.

Although workhouses had infirmary wards, they were not generally prepared to deal with those paupers who were admitted because they were ill. The preamble to the 1867 Metropolitan Poor Act stated:

The evils complained of have mainly arisen from the workhouse management, which must to a great extent be of a deterrent character, having been applied to the sick, who are not proper objects for such a system.

As a consequence, infirmaries were developed that were physically separate from workhouses and with the control of patients by doctors and nurses rather than managers, then in the form of the workhouse master. So, in order to relieve the pressure on the small infirmary at its Holloway Down workhouse, the Board of Guardians sought planning approval to build a new large infirmary on the Forest House estate.

Leyton & Leytonstone

Historical Society