What did Louisa Garrett Anderson Flora Murray do at Endell Street WC2?

The Story

# Endell Street Military Hospital Plaque Standing on Endell Street in Covent Garden, you're standing at the site of a revolutionary act of medical defiance: between 1915 and 1919, Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson transformed these former workhouse buildings into Britain's only entirely female-staffed military hospital, a 573-bed facility that would treat more than 24,000 wounded soldiers during the First World War. When the War Office initially rejected their proposal to establish a women-run hospital, these two pioneering doctors persisted, converting the austere workhouse into a state-of-the-art medical facility that proved women could not only serve on the front lines of medicine but excel at the highest levels of surgical and administrative care. This specific corner of London became a powerful statement against the medical establishment's entrenched prejudices—every surgery performed here, every soldier saved, every bandage tied by the 100+ female staff members challenged the assumption that women lacked the capability or temperament for advanced medical work. Today, the grey plaque marks not just a building, but the site where two remarkable physicians built a fortress of competence that no one could ignore, fundamentally shifting how Britain—and the world—understood women's place in medicine.