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Croydon: Covid-19 care home deaths soar beyond 100

Figures compiled by Public Health England will be discussed by the council's cabinet next week
Dave Hill

Care homes in the borough of Croydon, which has the largest number of such facilities in London, had seen 127 Covid-19 related deaths as of 4 May, according to figures compiled by Public Health England (PHE).

The information is included in a report by Croydon Council officers for a meeting of the council’s cabinet next Monday. The report also says that the 123 care homes of various kinds in the borough, where over 1,500 people live, are “responding well” to the pressures they are under but that “over a quarter” of them have reported cases of Covid-19, with the largest impact in nursing homes, where “many residents have sadly passed away”.

Sixty-three of the care homes in Croydon support older people, with the remainder looking after other vulnerable groups. A senior Croydon councillor warned at the beginning of April that care homes in the borough and the sector in general were a coronavirus “ticking time bomb“, due to a failure to recognise or record the impact of the pandemic on their residents.

Croydon Council has implemented a response plan for care homes, which including managing the return of residents from hospital visits to reduce the spread of infection and monitoring workforce levels an a daily basis, where staff absences are, the report says, “at around 30 per cent”.

Care home deaths caused by the virus were only recently included in official national figures, but Croydon has been compiling its own figures from an earlier stage with care homes’ help. These have been been very similar to those since retrospectively gathered by PHE. Not all the deceased have been tested for the presence of the virus, but their deaths have followed the appearance of Covid-19 symptoms.

The relevant section of the report to cabinet begins at paragraph 5.20 (agenda item 5). Next Monday’s meeting will be webcast. Photograph: Croydon Town Hall.

OnLondon.co.uk is doing all it can to keep providing the best possible coverage of  London during the coronavirus crisis. It now depends more than ever on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories: News
Tags: coronavirus, COVID-19 London, Croydon Council, Public Health England

Charles Wright: Will the Covid crisis bring more ‘active travel’ to London’s streets?

The Mayor is to publish a "streetspace" plan, but effecting permanent change won't be easy
Charles Wright

As plans to get the country back to work begin to firm up, the struggle for space on London’s previously crowded streets is gathering pace.

The lockdown in the capital has temporarily demonstrated what the significant shift away from cars envisaged in Sadiq Khan’s transport strategy might look like: more Londoners walking and cycling, cars left at home, and air pollution plummeting.

But with public transport capacity likely to remain restricted in the coming months and commuters remaining wary of the Tube and the bus, car use could rapidly increase. 

With City Hall walking and cycling commissioner Will Norman predicting that even a small shift from public transport to driving could see London “grind to a halt”, choking off the city’s economic recovery, the Mayor’s new “streetspace” plan is expected later this week.

The plan will “fast track the transformation of London’s streets to enable millions more people to safely walk and cycle as part of their daily journeys”, creating “low-traffic neighbourhoods right across London”, according to Norman. 

It’s not before time, according to environmental campaigners. “There is the potential to lock in the reduction in air pollution we have seen over the past weeks if we get this right, but as people begin to go back to work and can’t or don’t feel safe using public transport, there is the potential to instead lock in a huge increase in car use and pollution,” sustainable travel specialist Dr Rachel Aldred from Westminster University warned last week.

For Jon Burke, Hackney cabinet member for transport and public realm and leading campaigner for sustainable transport, action to discourage driving is urgent: “We haven’t got weeks to deliver it, we need to deliver it now, because this crisis is happening now.”

Hackney, along with other councils, has begun temporarily widening pavements, recently closing Broadway Market to through traffic and looking at further action to deter through- traffic.

“We are extremely concerned about the potential impact on road safety and air pollution if the lockdown is lifted without adequate measures to enable people to use public transport safely,” Burke told On London. “If this happens, more people may be encouraged to drive. That’s why it’s more vital than ever that we reallocate road space.”

Lewisham is also among boroughs setting out immediate and longer-term measures, including a call for residents to suggest possible safety schemes promoting active travel. Lambeth has announced a similar programme “to prevent a rush back to the private car”, according to cabinet member for sustainable transport Claire Holland. 

City-wide action is a significant challenge: Transport for London manages just five per cent of London’s roads – the key “red routes” – with the remaining 14,000 kilometres controlled by the individual boroughs. Councils and City Hall don’t always see eye to eye, as demonstrated by Khan’s failure to progress pedestrianising Oxford Street and cycleways in west London and Swiss Cottage in the face of borough opposition. Unlike other major city mayors, Khan does not have the power to push schemes through.

Consultation requirements also limit boroughs’ immediate ambitions. Town Hall lawyers are concluding that minor changes to regulations recently announced by Whitehall do not sanction action more extensive than temporary safety measures without adhering to existing lengthy procedures. Hackney has sought urgent clarification on the powers available to councils during the crisis.

Money is tight too, with the capital receiving no central government support for road schemes and TfL, the major provider of funds for borough road schemes, facing a financial black hole as its income plummets. 

Pre-crisis, people hadn’t been voting with their feet in support of sustainable travel either. Recent Centre for London analysis suggested the shift to “active travel” had stalled, with Khan’s transport strategy target of 80 per cent of all journeys to be by public transport, walking or cycling by 2041 unlikely to reached until 2075.

In the “new normal” though, campaigners are hoping that Khan’s plan, while likely to focus initially on emergency measures, will be a route map to permanent sustainability – to be used, as Burke says, as a “teachable moment to see what’s possible”.

Photograph: Omar Jan.

OnLondon.co.uk is doing all it can to keep providing the best possible coverage of  London during the coronavirus crisis. It now depends more than ever on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

 

Categories: Analysis
Tags: air quality, Broadway Market, buses, Centre For London, Claire Holland, coronavirus, COVID-19 London, cycling, environment, Hackney Council, Jon Burke, Lambeth Council, Lewisham Council, London Underground, Mayor's Transport Strategy, Oxford Street, pedestrians, pollution, public transport, Rachel Aldred, Swiss Cottage, transport, Transport for London, Will Norman

Coronavirus London: ‘There’s a lot of fear out there…you’re thinking “virus” all the time’

A nurse practitioner shares her emotionally draining frontline experience of helping to tackle Covid-19
Joshua Neicho

As well as writing a big explainer article about the structure of the NHS in London, Joshua Neicho has been talking to healthcare workers in different settings during the coronavirus crisis. Below is the extraordinary and moving account of Francina Hyatt.

“Driving home from the surgery where I work as a practice nurse one day a week, I get a lot of people waving at me. I’ve never had that before in my career. The surgery is near Ikea in Croydon and run by AT Medics, the biggest GP consortium in London. I work as an hourly-paid sessional locum alongside four days a week as a senior lecturer/practitioner at Kingston University.

For face-to-face consultations, I’m donning PPE and making sure I’m social distancing. There’s a point when you realise a child is looking at you and thinking, Who are you? So you take your mask down, smiling, but you’re safeguarding them and trying to safeguard yourself. You’re playing with the child’s dolly and explaining to the parents things such as their child may get a high temperature immediately after a vaccination, but this doesn’t mean the whole family need to self-isolate unless other symptoms are seen suggesting Covid-19. You’re thinking ‘virus’ all the time.

I’m doing a lot of telephone triage. You explain to callers that there’s an impact on services, that the NHS is working differently. You’re sitting a lot, which gets uncomfortable – I have found that I’ve had to stand. I’m typing as I go, which I don’t like to do as patients think you’re doing a checklist, but it’s the only way to keep up with the information.

When you’ve worked a long time in one place, you know your patients. You’ve got a list in your head of the vulnerable ones – the lady who’s had domestic violence, the nursing home patient on lockdown – since you can’t see them to check how they are. Deaths feel very personal, such as one patient who I’ve been doing years of diabetes reviews for.

In late March, together with my twin I nursed my father and stepmother at home with Covid-19. The Princess Alice Hospice Clinical Nurse Specialists enabled dignified and peaceful deaths. For me it was very sudden. I had three weeks off, and both my twin and I got Covid-19 very badly ourselves. It was frightening: it felt like my lungs were on fire. I got to days five and six and thought this could go either way.

We had to self-isolate at my dead parents’ house for seven days. It was really hard emotionally to be in the house so soon after their death and away from our husbands and children. As Christians, we received tremendous support from our church ministry team and friends, which gave us ongoing strength and peace at a difficult time.

At the practice we are delaying some interventions, for example by encouraging patients to obtain blood pressure machines. The chair of South West London Primary Care has written to practices reporting back GPs’ concerns about fewer patients presenting with non-Covid conditions, and fears about sick children, those with serious mental illness, and domestic violence victims who are not being seen.

There’s a lot of fear out there. We’ve had dozens of patients get in touch with suspected Covid-19. If patients don’t have a sats probe [blood oxygen saturation probe], you might need to work out how sick they are on the phone, leaving GPs having to make a decision without all the physical assessment data they normally have.

Video consultation makes this easier in many cases, as patient respiratory rates can be assessed and a quick look at the patient can aid clinical judgement. Our surgery’s homegrown online consulting platform, Dr. iQ, allows the whole clinical team to consult with patients using video or messaging.

Practice leader Dr Quraishi says, “We were getting wonderful feedback from patients about using Dr iQ before Covid-19. This period has significantly accelerated uptake of the app. I am pleased by this trend, as we want to ensure patients do not feel worried about contacting us or visiting the surgery, but we must also ensure choice and safety for patients who may not have access to the internet or a smartphone.”

The surgery now offers access to online consultations seven days a week, from 8.00 am to 8.00 pm. In addition, to reflect the rapidly evolving situation, all clinicians are encouraged to attend webinars taken by the most senior GPs in the group covering a range of skills and best practice issues.

We’ve got algorithms, but at the end of the day you have to use your own clinical reasoning. There’s really clear worsening care advice –if that happens, you do this, if the other happens, you do that. There’s plenty of safety netting as you don’t know how patients are going to fare. It’s an emotionally draining experience, and you think how many families are going through the same thing.”

On London is very grateful to Francina for finding the time to talk.

OnLondon.co.uk is doing all it can to keep providing the best possible coverage of  London during the coronavirus crisis. It now depends more than ever on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

Categories: News
Tags: coronavirus, COVID-19 London, Kingston, NHS

Darren Rodwell: Labour can learn a lot from its Barking & Dagenham fight back

Ten years ago, the party was under siege from the BNP in the east London borough and the lessons it learned there should be more widely applied
Darren Rodwell

This Thursday, 7 May 2020, will mark 10 years since a Conservative Prime Minister entered Number 10 and austerity became the new show in town. But many of us in the Labour Party in Barking & Dagenham remember it for a different reason – as the night we broke the far right British National Party’s hopes and dreams into a thousand pieces.

They had secured 12 seats on the council at the previous local election in 2006, and if they had stood a full slate of candidates that year they would have won control of it. The 2010 election night was my very first. You could say I was somewhat spoilt: as well as unseating the 12 BNP councillors, Margaret Hodge saw off their party leader Nick Griffin in the Barking parliamentary seat on the same day. She made the best speech I have ever heard from her. “Get out and stay out, you’re not wanted here, and your vile politics have no place in British democracy.”

It had been a long road to victory and there were times when we felt lost. We had our knock backs on the doorstep, in the streets and in draughty church halls, and there were personal attacks. But we never lost our resolve and over four long years, we reconnected.

At the heart of our journey was the relentless wearing down of shoe leather, but it was about so much more than that. We stopped telling people what we thought was best for them and instead, we listened. They said they wanted more opportunities for better jobs, better housing and a better place to live. We turned the tide on years of complacency and a reliance on safe majorities by tackling the things that mattered to them.

We can take heart from the lessons we learned 10 years ago. They showed that if we listen to our communities and show them that we are responding to their concerns, they will meet us halfway and give us their confidence. That is the only way we can ever gain enough support to deliver a Labour government in the future.

It is also clear to me, and to others who were part of that fight against the BNP, that we must earn the right to govern, not take it for granted. Barking & Dagenham is the last bastion of the blue collar, working-class in London. We may be half an hour away from Fenchurch Street station, but we have more in common with the northern towns and the Welsh Valleys that turned away from Labour last year. The difference is that in Barking & Dagenham, Labour has kept on winning. If we can do it here, then the movement can do it anywhere.

Today’s Barking & Dagenham is a world away from where it was 10 years ago. It has become a beacon of hope for modern Labour values – the same working-class values in which our community has always believed. We have won national and international recognition for our re-engagement with voters. Our social cohesion has never been stronger, even with 130 cultures from around the world.

We celebrate with festivals and flag-raising. We talk about moving forwards, not backwards, with London’s first Youth Zone, a brand-new university and plans for a new film studio. London’s three food wholesale markets, Smithfield, Billingsgate and New Spitalfields, will be relocating to the borough. The council has reorganised from top to bottom (we have been council of the year not once, but twice).

And at the outbreak of Covid 19, we pulled together our own Citizen’s Alliance Network of local voluntary, community and faith groups, which between them have contacted and supported over 25,000 people, delivering food parcels, medicines and messages of hope.

On Friday 7 May, 2010 we thought we had won the fight. Of course, it was just the beginning. The message from Barking & Dagenham is clear: the road to recovery may be long and hard but there is much that Labour can learn from it. The past 10 years have been a lost decade for us. As we edge slowly away from the peak of the pandemic, we need a Labour movement and government to shine a beacon of optimism across the country.

Above all we need a new deal for Britain. We need investment into infrastructure to create more jobs, not more zero-hour contracts. We need more truly affordable “homes for heroes” for all workers. We need investment in transport. If people are to work in the socially distanced new reality, we also need investment in new technologies and low carbon alternatives.

We need all of this and more, because we cannot stand by and leave people to fend for themselves through another lost decade or allow the dark spectre of hatred back on our streets.

Darren Rodwell is the leader of Barking & Dagenham Council.

London.co.uk is doing all it can to keep providing the best possible coverage of  London during the coronavirus crisis. It now depends more than ever on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

 

 

Categories: Comment
Tags: Barking, Barking & Dagenham Council, British National Party, coronavirus, COVID-19 London, Fenchurch Street, housing, Margaret Hodge

It’s 20 years since the first election day for London Mayor

The office has been a success, but a strengthening case for greater devolution needs to be heard
Dave Hill

Fourteen years had passed since Margaret Thatcher’s abolition of the Greater London Council and with it, she might have thought, its leader at the time, Ken Livingstone. But on 4 May 2000, 20 years ago today, Londoners directly elected the very same “Red Ken” to be their first executive Mayor. The Prime Minister of that time, Tony Blair, wasn’t any keener on Livingstone than Thatcher had been. Indeed, Livingstone was the last person the architect of “New Labour” had wanted at the helm of the new kind of London-wide government he had introduced to fill the void Thatcher had created.

Blair had practically ordered Labour members in London to select Frank Dobson, the MP for Holborn & St Pancras, to be their party’s candidate. The defeated Livingstone responded by running as an Independent, winning with room to spare (Dobson finished a distant third, well behind Conservative Steve Norris) and soon announced that he would take the government to court over its plans to finance upgrading the Underground in partnership with the private sector.

He failed in that endeavour – it later fell to Boris Johnson to, as he put it at the time, “re-nationalise the Tube”. But a striking range of people think Livingstone, especially in his first term, has been the best London Mayor so far. By the time he was re-elected in 2004, he had been re-admitted to Labour and was soon working hand in glove with Blair to win the 2012 Olympics bid. The greatest irony of all is that Livingstone saw City Hall, with its limited formal powers, as a base from which to orchestrate consensus rather foment conflict. Interviewed by Prospect Magazine in 2007, a year before Boris Johnson toppled him, he sounded positively, well, Blairite:

“My role has changed since GLC days. Then, my job was the day-to-day management of the Labour caucus. Now, I just have to make sure my budget goes through the Assembly once a year—and in the rest of my time I can put together coalitions of interests around a common agenda. City Hall is the centre of a web. So, for example, you get everybody signed up to Crossrail. Before, I was looking inward to the party machine, now I look outward. It’s a position that, thanks to the prestige of the office, enables you to broker deals with government or the private sector…There isn’t a great ideological conflict any more. The business community, for example, has been almost depoliticised. One of the first people to lobby me when I became Mayor was Judith Mayhew, from the City Corporation. She came and said, ‘We’ve all changed, it won’t be like the last time, there’s so much we can do together.’ I didn’t believe a word of it, but it turned out to be true.”

Plenty will scoff at all that – Livingstone’s often self-destructive talent for making enemies co-existed with this mayoral convening mission, and went on to long outlive it. Others regard him as having sold out to a “world city” globalisation agenda and being far too keen on skyscrapers. Yet even some who found him disagreeable (and worse) think him the best Mayor London has yet had.

There were big factors working in his favour, not least an eventually friendly national government that was prepared to put big money his way. But it was no mean feat to get the nascent institution working well – in the beginning, the GLA wasn’t even based at City Hall – and after years of finding ways through the convoluted corridors of London municipal power, those who worked and dealt with him marvel that he seemed to know, almost literally, the whereabouts of every building site in Camden and bus stop in Brent.

Comparisons with his successors are inexact: Johnson’s two terms were mostly unimpressive, though not as murky or as clueless as often claimed, and he did have a world economic crisis as a backdrop; Sadiq Khan, though often viewed disapprovingly as being better at a political positioning than running a big city, has had a string of terrorist attacks, a hostile national government and now a shattering public health crisis to contend with, making major progress difficult.

On one thing, though, there is a broad consensus. It is that the powers London Mayors have at their disposal remain far too limited and weak. Devolution to the capital – and to the UK’s other big cities – needs to go much further, and the uncertainties of national government’s top-down Covid-19 response help make the case. Prime Minister Johnson subscribed strongly to this view when he was boss of City Hall. Whether he will re-embrace it once the coronavirus crisis has passed remains to be seen.

OnLondon.co.uk is doing all it can to keep providing the best possible coverage of  London during the coronavirus crisis. It now depends more than ever on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

 

Categories: Analysis
Tags: 2012 Olympics, Bexley, Boris Johnson, Brent, City of London Corporation, coronavirus, COVID-19 London, Ken Livingstone, Sadiq Khan, Tony Blair, transport

How has the latest Covid-19 financial help for London boroughs been shared out?

The government has stumped up on a different basis from before
Dave Hill

The government provided details last week of how its second £1.6 billion lump of additional funding to help councils in England cope with the financial effects of the coronavirus crisis is to be shared out. How have London’s boroughs been treated?

It varies. Compared with the first rescue package, London’s boroughs as a whole have done slightly worse, receiving £245 million between them compared with £254 million of the first £1.6 billion package from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

However, the Outer London boroughs have been allocated about £10 million more overall than last time, while Inner London boroughs have collectively been given about £20 million less.

The differences from the first bail out sum can be explained by a different formula being used: with the first one, 85 per cent of the individual sums given to local authorities in England were calculated according to their social care funding needs, while the other 15 per cent was based on their funding needs in general.

With the second £1.6 billion, the money has been dished out on a simple population basis. Every English local authority has been given £28 for every person living in its area. The context is that councils have recently submitted “impact returns” to the ministry, setting out the financial pressures they’ve been put under by, on the hand, spending more money to help local people and organisations cope and, on the other, seeing their incomes fall.

Individual borough figures include:

  • Barking & Dagenham given £5.8 million, making £12.1 million from the government in all.
  • Brent given a further £9.1 million, making its overall extra support total £18.4 million.
  • Camden receiving £7.4 million to bring its extra funding total up to £16.4 million.
  • Hillingdon receiving £8,4 million to bring its total up to £15.2 million.
  • Newham: another £9.7 million to bring its total up to £20.2 million.
  • Richmond: another £5.4 million to make £9.6 million altogether.
  • Southwark receiving an extra £8.8 million, making £19.9 million in all.
  • Westminster given a further £7.1 million, bringing it up to £16.4 million.

The full details can be perused on a spreadsheet available via here.

The second £1.6 billion from secretary of state Robert Jenrick has been politely welcomed by local government bodies, including in London, but they’ve already made clear they don’t think it’s going to be anywhere near enough. How much more help they receive remains to be seen.

Photograph: Brent Civic Centre.

OnLondon.co.uk is doing all it can to keep providing the best possible coverage of  London during the coronavirus crisis. It now depends more than ever on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via Donorbox or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

 

Categories: Analysis
Tags: Barking & Dagenham Council, Brent Council, Camden Council, Hillingdon Council, London Councils, Newham Council, Richmond Council, Southwark Council, Westminster Council

Rowenna Davis: The food bank heroes of Thornton Heath

The extraordinary work of church volunteers amid the Covid-19 crisis should be recognised and praised
Rowenna Davis

When Pastor Bola picks up the phone, she’s facing a dilemma. Surrounded by plastic bags and food crates, her team still needs to make up another 50 food parcels for the day, but she fears she doesn’t have enough for ten. Today, the only answer is thinning out the bags and saving the tins for those who don’t have the kitchen facilities to cook fresh food.

Lockdown has put an unprecedented squeeze on the nation’s food banks. According to the Food Foundation, over three million people in Britain are going hungry right now, many of whom are turning to food banks like the one at His Grace Evangelical Outreach Church in Thornton Heath, where Pastor Bola works lead as a non-salaried worker.

This church alone is now serving over 500 clients a week. Most of those clients are people who haven’t asked for help before, including breadwinners of families who have been made redundant, furloughed workers on low pay who can’t take that 20 per cent pay cut, or those who are stuck in the five-week wait for Universal Credit.

More vulnerable clients are coming in too, including people just released from prison under a scheme designed to control infections amongst inmates. These new clients now join socially distancing queues alongside more regular clients who are becoming more dependent on Pastor Bola as other forms of support, like soup kitchens, close in the face of safety concerns.

Volunteers know the risks. These heroic individuals are less recognised than those in the NHS and are certainly not given priority for personal protective equipment. On top of that, some food banks are reporting an increase in anti-social behaviour, as vulnerable people desperate for limited supplies become fearful or impatient. Pastor Bola, who works six days a week at the food bank and has people around her who are asthmatic, describes every day as “a walk of faith”.

Food banks have shown great speed and resilience in adapting to these risks. In the church, service users must keep six metres apart and only receive a call to pick up when their parcel is ready. In the past, clients were asked to bring their own bags, but now volunteers have managed to secure 500 new ones from Tesco to reduce contamination risks.

Of course, for some of those going hungry, the problem is not just money but the need to self-isolate. Not everyone can leave the house to get food. To help with these cases, many food banks have instituted a delivery system run by volunteer drivers.

Heroic and admirable though these efforts are, we know that in the long term food banks cannot be the answer. Many fear a further surge in need when rent freezes end, support for furloughed workers is replaced by redundancy, and crisis loans need repaying.

Pastor Bola and her team deserve to be honoured as heroes in our community history, but they cannot substitute for job security. Many of her service users desire the dignity and independence of fairly-paid labour. Pastor Bola and her team know that, and they are praying for it.

You can donate to the His Grace food bank via PayPal. Rowenna Davis is a teacher, political activist and writer. Follower her on Twitter.

Categories: Analysis
Tags: coronavirus, COVID-19 London, food banks, NHS, Thornton Heath, Universal Credit

Vic Keegan’s Lost London 141: The ‘hideous’ Morley’s hotel

It had its critics but also its fans, and its founder has left his mark
Victor Keegan

Augustus J C Hare, a curmudgeonly Victorian essayist, was not a fan of Trafalgar Square. Writing in 1896 he saw a “dreary expanse of granite” with the “miserable buildings” of the National Gallery. Nelson’s Column, he said, was “a very poor work”, flanked by a “hideous hotel and a frightful club”. 

That “hideous” hotel was called Morley’s, and it ran the whole width of the square on the site of today’s South Africa House. It did not generate many plaudits. British History Online holds its breath enough to say that it “possessed a certain charm”. Its guests included Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote much of The Hound of the Baskervilles there. The Northumberland hotel mentioned in the book is almost certainly based on Morley’s. But Conan Doyle soon got bored with it, writing to his mother in 1900 that he was “somewhat sick” of Morley’s and intended to try the nearby Golden Cross instead. 

The hotel cannot have been that bad because it was eventually purchased in 1920 by the Old Colony Club of New York, which was having difficulty booking places in London for its burgeoning membership of US businessmen, who travelled to Europe in their thousands for business and pleasure. The deal was done by club president Albert J Norton, who, after signing it, flew to Paris and bought the prestigious Hotel du Rhin as well. Both deals were, apparently concluded in a single day, a record at the time.

Among other people who stayed in the hotel were “Buffalo Bill” Cody, the US showman, and James Gordon Bennett, the newspaper magnate whose, Gordon Jnr’s controversial behaviour spawned the phrase “Gordon Bennett“ as an expression of incredulity and surprise.

Morley’s was demolished in 1936, but the name Morley has left its mark on London history. Its owner Atkinson Morley gave a handsome donation to help found the Atkinson Morley hospital in Wimbledon, which became one of the most advanced centres for brain surgery in the world. The hospital was closely involved with the innovative British company EMI in developing the CT brain scanner, which won Nobel Prizes for its inventors, Sir Godfrey Hounsfield and Dr Jamie Ambrose.

The Atkinson Morley hospital has since been absorbed into St George’s Hospital, Tooting, obscuring the fact that one of the great medical inventions can be traced back to the money made from a hotel in Trafalgar Square.

All previous instalments of Vic Keegan’s Lost London can be found here.

OnLondon.co.uk is committed to providing the best possible coverage of London’s politics, development, social issues and culture. It depends on donations from readers. Individual sums or regular monthly contributions are very welcome indeed. Click here to donate via PayPal or contact davehillonlondon@gmail.com. Thank you.

Categories: Culture, Lost London
Tags: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, St George's Hospital, Trafalgar Square