Florence Hanbury, first Library Assistant
In 1917, the London School of Tropical Medicine was located in the Albert Dock Seamen’s Hospital in the London Docklands and as a result, the explosion damaged the School. Florence Hanbury, the School’s first library assistant, noted in her diary ‘The Silvertown explosion shattered the windows in the Printing Room, but did not damage the Library’. Hanbury’s description of the damage suggests the School sustained minimal damage, yet in Sir Philip Manson-Bahr’s memoir of the School’s history, he writes:
‘All the windows were broken and the floors were littered with powdered glass. A large number of casualties were carried into the Hospital and School by rescue workers until every available space was full to capacity. Nurses and medical staff alike worked like Trojans and earned universal praise. A squad, led by Major C.H. Barber, I.M.S., who was himself a patient at the time, rushed out to the scene of the disaster and rendered heroic services.’
Silvertown after the explosion, 1917
Robert Mackay, 1912
Manson-Bahr also wrote that Robert Mackay, one of the School’s first Laboratory Assistant who worked at the school for nearly 30 years, was at the School at the time of the explosion, an event that, ‘shook him greatly’.
Fortunately, the School did not record any casualties and, due largely in part to time of the explosion, the number of casualties were relatively low as there were few people were working in the area.
Two years after the explosion, the School eventually moved to the Seamen’s Hospital in Endsleigh Gardens and later to its current site in Keppel Street in 1929.
London School of Tropical Medicine, Endsleigh Gardens, c. 1920s
For more information or if you have any queries, please contact the LSHTM Archives at: archives@lshtm.ac.uk
Feature image: Courtesy of the Museum of London.
