2-798-396 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Ward of the Receiving-House of the Royal Humane Society, 1844. Facilities of the Royal Humane Society, 'for the recovery of persons apparently drowned or dead', at Hyde Park in London. Inside there was '...a room for medical attendants on the left, and waiting-room on the right; parallel with which are two separate wards for the reception of male and female patients. Each contains beds warmed with hot water, a bath, and a hot-water, metal-topped table for heating flannels, bricks, &c.; the supply of water being by pipes around the walls and beneath the floor of the rooms. Next are a kitchen and two sleeping-rooms, for the residence of the superintendent and his family; adjoining is the furnace for heating water, planned by Messrs. Simpson and Thompson, engineers of the Chelsea Water works. In the roof of the building are two cisterns for cold, and one for hot water'. From "Illustrated London News", 1844, Vol V.