Faces from the 1950s: Mildmay’s doctors and nurses in the sunshine
On a bright summer’s day in the early 1950s, a group of Mildmay doctors and nurses stepped outside, squinted into the sun and posed for a few photographs. More than seventy years later, those photographs have come back to us.
One of our supporters kindly lent them to us, and best of all, she wrote down the names of almost everyone in them.
1950s
Mildmay in the early 1950s
At the time, Mildmay Mission Hospital stood on Austin Street in Bethnal Green, in the purpose-built hospital that had opened there in 1892. Like every other hospital in the country, it had joined the new NHS in 1948, only a few years earlier, and it served the people of the East End.
Some thirty years after these pictures were taken, the NHS closed Mildmay as uneconomical. It reopened in 1985 as an independent charity, and in 1987 became an AIDS hospice, the beginning of the specialist care Mildmay is known for today.
The Austin Street building has since been demolished, and today’s hospital was opened by Prince Harry within its footprint in 2015.
Much of Mildmay’s own record of its past was lost when the hospital closed in 1982. That is why photographs like these matter so much: each one fills a gap.
Miss March. Middle: Miss Roberts, Miss Patterson, Miss Morris and Miss Wright. Bottom: Mr Wilson, Vi Violet and Miss Wright Sister Muriel and nurses Dr Bolt, Dr Cox and nurses Dr Cox, Dr Bolt and Dr Anderson Dr Cox, Miss Matthew and Dr Bolt
The nurses’ starched caps and aprons, the doctors’ long white coats and the formal “Miss” and “Sister” are a reminder of how different hospital life was then. The smiles look much the same.
Do you recognise anyone?
If you know any of the people in these photographs or worked at Mildmay yourself we would love to hear from you. And if you have photographs, letters or memories of Mildmay tucked away at home, please get in touch. We’re rebuilding our archive piece by piece, and every contribution helps.
Our thanks to the supporter, Mrs M, who shared these pictures with us.
Explore more of Mildmay’s story in our history section.
