This is the second of a series of posts on Victorian London, detailing finds from researching The Tommy Jones mysteries, my series historical mystery novels.

Let me confess that I love visiting small museums in London. Yes, the Victoria and Albert and the Natural History Museum are wonderful. But the old City of London Police Museum, the Postal Museum, and the Dennis Severs’ House hold more attraction for me.

The idea for the second book in the Tommy Jones mystery series, Murder at Old St. Thomas’s, came from a visit to a small museum: The Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garrett. It is in Southwark, next to the office skyscraper known as The Shard.

The Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret

The doorway to the church tower is small, and leads directly up a narrow spiral stone staircase with a rope railing. It is not for the faint of heart! Many visitors ask how the sick or wounded could be brought into the hospital in this precarious manner, but this was not the original entrance. It was in a courtyard behind the hospital, suitable for bringing patients in by cart as well as on foot.

At the top of the stairs you come out into the Herb Garret, to a series of displays detailing not only the history of St. Thomas’s Hospital, but also medicine in general during the 19th century. It has been improved over the last couple of years, and is definitely both atmospheric and informative.

There are also exhibits of tools used in Victorian surgery.

The building is fascinating. It closed in 1862, when the railroad necessitated the destruction of much of the hospital. The only portion of St. Thomas’s Hospital left was the church tower, and everything else was boarded up. In 1956, after looking at old plans of the hospital, researcher Raymond Russell discovered, behind a wall, the operating theatre that had been used as part of St. Thomas’s medical school. It was recovered and the museum opened in 1962.

A few years ago, I sat in the operating theatre, and in my imagination I could hear the screams of the patients on the table, smell the sweat of the students watching surgeries performed before anesthesia, and see the performance of a brilliant surgeon operating as quickly as he could. And I thought, “this looks like a good place for a murder.”

And so it was. In my book, a renowned surgeon is killed, his body propped up in the seats, staring at the operating table below.  At the time, surgeons were prized for their speed. Many of the operations were amputations, because St. Thomas’s was in a neighborhood of laborers, some of whom were injured by machinery. Before anesthesia, removing a limb quickly led to a better recovery for the patient. So my fictional surgeon was expert and speedy, and yet he had been murdered. You can read my book to find out whodunnit!

A Hospital in a Zoo

As I researched the history of the hospital, another mystery emerged. Today’s St. Thomas’s Hospital is across the river from the Houses of Parliament, next to Westminster Bridge. But the present building took nine years to build after the Southwark location closed in 1862. What happened to the patients, doctors, probationary nurses, and medical students in those nine years?

The answer was: it moved to the zoo. Well, not an active zoo. Surrey Gardens, the location of a large music hall and a zoological gardens, was the site chosen after much debate. The dissection room for medical students was in the old elephant enclosure. The cholera ward was in the giraffe house. And the main hospital was in the refurbished music hall, which had burned the year before.

There are few records of the nine years that St. Thomas’s was at Surrey Gardens. I did find some showing that the death rate of patients declined during the stay there. St. Thomas’s nursing school was based on the precepts of Florence Nightingale, which included such novel ideas as fresh air in the wards. I suspect that her techniques, applied at Surrey Gardens, may have helped the survival rate.

The Wonders of Anesthesia

The 1860s were an exciting time in medical history, and that plays a role in my novel. Anesthesia was just coming into use, first for dentistry and then for surgery. Its adoption was controversial. Surgeons were accustomed to working as fast as possible on conscious patients. With the patient asleep, many surgeons had more time, but felt they were operating on the dead. 

In addition, early experiments in anesthesia caused some deaths, making adoption slower. But the examination of such cases in the medical journals helped make anesthesia safer.

Disinfection was also becoming more popular and was also controversial. Post-operative infection was a greater cause of death than surgery. In my novel, surgeons are proud of the blood on their clothes. But Nightingale, Joseph Lister, and others were popularizing hand washing and the use of disinfectants. 

St. Thomas’s Hospital, and Guy’s Hospital nearby, were pioneers in both anesthesia and disinfection, and that theme runs through my book. While some readers may see Victorian medicine as primitive, it was not barbaric. Throughout the nineteenth century old ideas were continually questioned and researched, which gave way to new methods. Many lives were saved and improved by the surgeries done in the Victorian age, especially at places like St. Thomas’s.

Because of the innovations achieved at places like St. Thomas’s Hospital, surgery is much safer and more comfortable today. Visiting a historical locale like St. Thomas’s can bring an era alive in the way only a small museum can.

___

Except as indicated, all photos by the author.

Recommended Reading

Fiction

• Murder at Old St. Thomas’s by Lisa M. Lane — A Victorian mystery set in 1862 London, where the body of a famous surgeon is found and the shadowed world of old hospitals, medical ambition, and class-bound justice gives young Tommy Jones another perilous brush with murder. 
• Beloved Poison by E. S. Thomson — Set in 1846 London at the decaying St. Saviour’s Infirmary, this darkly atmospheric mystery follows apothecary Jem Flockhart through crumbling wards, buried secrets, medical rivalries, and the poisonous underside of Victorian hospital life. 
• The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry — Set in 1847 Edinburgh, then a great city of medicine, this historical crime novel follows a young medical apprentice into the orbit of Dr. James Young Simpson and the thrilling, dangerous frontier of early anesthesia. 
• The Resurrectionist by James Bradley — Set in London in 1826, this gothic medical novel enters the chilling trade in stolen bodies, as an aspiring anatomist becomes entangled with resurrection men and the moral darkness behind surgical advancement. 

Non-Fiction

• The Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret by The Old Operating Theatre Museum — A fascinating companion resource on Europe’s oldest surviving operating theatre, tucked into the roof space of old St. Thomas’s Church, where the history of surgery, herbal medicine, anatomical study, and pre-anesthetic medical practice comes vividly—and rather bloodily—to life. 
• Notes on Nursing by Florence Nightingale — Nightingale’s landmark guide to practical nursing, cleanliness, ventilation, light, quiet, diet, and observation; a foundational work that helped transform nursing from domestic duty into disciplined, life-saving care. 
• The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris — A gripping account of Victorian surgery before antiseptics and the revolutionary work of Joseph Lister, whose campaign against infection helped drag medicine out of the bloody, fatalistic age of the operating theatre and into modern science.

Lisa M. Lane is a novelist and historian who writes in several genres, including historical and cozy mystery, literary fiction, and academic work in history and education. She lives in San Diego, California.

The Tommy Jones Mysteries immerse the reader in the bustle and noise of Victorian life. Each novel features a stand-alone mystery with fascinating characters, actual historical figures, and intriguing plots among the gasworks, hospitals, theatres, and galleries of the 19th century. https://grousablebooks.com