The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7238 p313
1 March 2003

Society summary

Museum partnership exhibition opens

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society's museum and Hackney Museum have jointly created an exhibition on the history of the former German Hospital in Dalston. The display traces the history of the hospital, its staff and the community it served.

The display is based around a selection from the large number of objects acquired by the Society's museum from the hospital dispensary. Also on show are photographs of the hospital in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The German Hospital opened in 1845 as a voluntary subscription hospital serving the East End's large, poor German community. It was run by German nursing staff and doctors. New hospital buildings were opened in 1864. After the 1914-18 war, during which the German staff remained at the hospital, the buildings were further improved and extended. A new wing opened in 1936 housed maternity and children's wards, and a roof-garden for convalescents provided views across the city. In 1940 the staff were interned on the Isle of Man and British staff took over. In 1948, now German in name only, the hospital was taken into the National Health Service. From 1974 it cared for psychiatric and psychogeriatric patients. It closed in 1987 and its services were transferred to the new Homerton Hospital.

Briony Hudson, the Society's keeper of the museum collections, said: "Working with Hackney Museum has been a fruitful partnership. The Society's museum has the appropriate objects and subject expertise and Hackney Museum has a thriving exhibition venue and provides the geographical link that enables the objects to mean something in the community. Bringing the two elements together has resulted in a really interesting insight into the German Hospital's history."

The exhibition marks the first outreach project through which the Society's museum is seeking to collaborate with other museums with the aim of creating broader access to its collections.

In another collaborative project in East London, items from the Society's collection are to be used to help Newham Heritage Services tell the story of its building in Stratford, which was a dispensary between 1861 and 1879.

The exhibition about the German Hospital opened at Hackney Museum on Thursday 27 February and will run until Tuesday 29 April. The museum is based in the new Hackney Technology and Learning Centre at 1 Reading Lane, London E8. Its opening hours are 9.30am to 5.30pm Monday, Tuesday and Friday, 9.30am to 8pm on Thursday, and 10am to 5pm on Saturday. It is closed on Wednesdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays. Admission is free.

Further information about the exhibition is available from Hackney Museum (tel 020 8356 3500; e-mail hmuseum@hackney.gov.uk).