Poplar Hospital

The Poplar Accident Hospital was opened in 1855 with 20 beds and soon became known as “the Docker’s Hospital”..  It had been the efforts of a group of businessmen, connected with the shipping industry, that had led to its foundation.  They had decided that a hospital, near the docks, was needed.  Dockworkers injured in the docks, at the time, would have been taken to the London Hospital.  This they argued was too far to take an injured dockworker and lives had been lost.  Outside the East India Dock Gates was a former Custom House, which had started life as the East India Dock Tavern.  This empty building, the businessmen decide, would be their hospital and were given a lease by the East India Dock Company, the owners.  

With work in the docks in a slump the 1870s, fewer causalities needed treatment at Poplar Accident Hospital.  It was decided to admit medical cases and not just accident ones.  From 1874 the Hospital under went several stages of expansion: both along East India Dock Road and down Brunswick Road.  Later, balconies were added to the wards facing East India Dock Road.  On passing, patients could clearly be seen propped up in bed or sitting in chairs watching the activities in the East India Dock or the world going by along the East India Dock Road.  In 1937, there was a name change.  Confusion about the Hospital’s role led to the belief that it was not a general hospital but only treated accident patients.  To stop this confusion “Accident” was dropped from its name, becoming just the Poplar Hospital. 

During the First World War, wounded soldiers were treated at the Hospital.  But in the Second World War, Poplar Hospital was in the front line, particularly as it was near the Docks.  In May 1941, a stick of HE bombs hit the Hospital partly damaging the main building.  A number of people were killed and led to its closure for a short period.  

With the depopulation of the East End after the Second World War and the decline of the Docks in the late 1960s, Poplar Hospital was threatened with closure.  Despite a vigour campaign by local people “to save our Hospital”, Poplar Hospital closed in 1975 and demolished in 1982.  The site became a Council Estate. A chimney stack and part of the mortuary walls were retained as a “kind” of memorial to the Poplar Hospital.