Identity area
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Description area
Dates of existence
History
Clapham Maternity Hospital was founded in 1889 by Dr Annie McCall and Miss Marion Ritchie. It was the first maternity hospital where women were treated only by female doctors, and where midwives, maternity nurses and female medical students were trained entirely by women. Poor married women were admitted to the hospital, as were unmarried women expecting their first child. A district midwifery service was also provided to deliver women in their own homes.;The hospital was situated initially at 41 and 43 Jeffreys Road, Clapham. Later 39 Jeffreys Road was purchased to enable the hospital to expand. By 1939 it had 50 beds for in-patients. In 1935 the name of the hospital was changed to the Annie McCall Maternity Hospital.
The Battersea Maternity Branch was situated at Saint John's House, 31-33 Albert Bridge Road, Battersea (formerly Queen Anne's Terrace). Clapham Maternity Hospital took over responsibility for the home in 1892 from Saint John's House, an Anglican nursing organisation, which had founded the maternity home in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, in 1877.