Q &A

Where was Battersea Union Infirmary?

Q My 4x great grandparents, Eliza and Samuel Styles, died in the Battersea Union Infirmary, Eliza in 1879 and Samuel in 1882. However, in neither case is the address of the infirmary shown on the death certificate. Can you tell me anything about it?

Cheryl Styles

A The couple died in the Wandsworth & Clapham Union Infirmary, which was located at the north side of St John’s Hill, Battersea, where Haydon Way now runs. The site had originally been used as the union’s workhouse, which was opened in 1840.

In 1865, the medical journal The Lancet began publishing detailed reports of its inspections of the medical facilities in London workhouses, many of which were found to be abysmal. As a result, Parliament passed the 1867 Metropolitan Poor Act, which introduced major reforms to the medical care provided to London’s poor, both inside and outside the workhouse.

The Act introduced major reforms to the medical care provided to London’s poor

In the years that followed, many of the capital’s Poor Law authorities erected new infirmary buildings and were encouraged to place these on sites separate from their workhouses. In 1870, Wandsworth & Clapham took the first step in this direction with the erection of a large new infirmary at the rear of the St John’s Hill Workhouse on what had been its gardens. After the union opened a new workhouse on Garratt Lane in 1886, the whole of the St John’s Hill site became its separate infirmary.

From the 1870s, workhouse infirmaries increasingly opened their doors to local people who weren’t workhouse inmates but who were too poor to pay for a private doctor. So finding an ancestor who died in a workhouse infirmary doesn’t