Western Hospital, Fulham

You are standing on the former site of the Western Hospital, which was established in eighteen seventy-seven on land previously occupied by the Lillie Bridge racing grounds. The facility was originally constructed by the Metropolitan Asylums Board to house patients suffering from smallpox during a series of severe epidemics. Its presence in a residential neighborhood sparked significant public fear and local protests, as neighbors worried the hospital was actively spreading the disease through the air. These concerns were famously validated by a government investigator who found that infection rates indeed dropped as the distance from the hospital increased.