2-621-447 - The London Archives (City of London)/Heritage Images

A copy of a photograph of the ward deck of the Atlas Smallpox Hospital Ship, c1890-c1899. Joyce Green Hospital was once the centrepiece of the Metropolitan Asylums Board complex of smallpox and isolation hospitals. The hospital had a railway system, which conveyed patients from ambulance steamers bringing them down river. The pier, the steamers and the horse-drawn trams have now all vanished. In 1903 the Joyce Green Smallpox Hospital opened at Dartford, Kent, replacing the old wooden battleships (Atlas and Endymion) which had been used as smallpox hospitals.