The National Temperance Hospital was a hospital in Hampstead Road, London, between Mornington Crescent and

Warren Street Warren Street is a street in the London Borough of Camden that runs from Cleveland Street in the west to Tottenham Court Road in the east. Warren Street tube station is located at the eastern end of the street. History The street is crossed b ...

History

The hospital opened as the London Temperance Hospital on 6 October 1873 by initiative of the

National Temperance League The Anti-Saloon League (now known as the ''American Council on Addiction and Alcohol Problems'') is an organization of the temperance movement that lobbied for prohibition in the United States in the early 20th century. Founded in 1893 in Ober ...

, and was managed by a board of 12 teetotallers. Under its rules, the use of alcohol to treat patients was discouraged, but not outlawed: doctors could prescribe alcohol when they thought necessary for exceptional cases. In 1931, Chicago magnate

Samuel Insull Samuel Insull (November 11, 1859 – July 16, 1938) was a British-born American business magnate. He was an innovator and investor based in Chicago who greatly contributed to create an integrated electrical infrastructure in the United States ...

donated $160,000 to build a new extension, the "Insull Memorial wing" which was designed in the

Art Deco style Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

by architect William Binnie. It was renamed the National Temperance Hospital in 1932 and acquired the premises of the St Pancras Female Orphanage and Charity School, located on an adjacent site, in 1945. It was incorporated into the National Health Service in 1948 under the management of the North West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board. After the hospital was closed in 1990, its exterior featured in an episode of Mr. Bean, broadcast in October 1995, in which Bean tailgates an ambulance and stops behind it before entering the hospital. It was briefly considered, but rejected, as a potential site for the National Institute for Medical Research between 2006 and 2007. The building was used by

Camden Collective Camden Collective is a regeneration project located in the London Borough of Camden. History The project has been run by Camden Town Unlimited, the business improvement district for Camden Town since 2009. Camden Collective carries out projects ...

, a regeneration initiative, from 2015 to 2017. In 2017 demolition began as part of the work necessary to clear the area for the proposed High Speed 2 railway line. Time capsules were discovered during the demolition in October 2017.

References

External links

In the 1937 edition of Burke's Landed Gentry, requesting for donations to the hospitalGoogle Street View of the oldest part of the building, in Cardington Street

HS2: Proposal to get National Temperance Hospital into use
{{Authority control Defunct hospitals in London Demolished buildings and structures in London Temperance organizations Buildings and structures demolished in 2018