The working life of Museum of London

The excavations at the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel (RLP05) in London’s East End have yielded a small, but unique, group of pottery and glass relating to the selective clear out of hospital equipment around the 1860s. Excavated from the Bedstead area of the east wing of the Hospital, this adds to the large volume of fascinating disarticulated human and animal bones already found from the old Hospital’s cemetery.

Filled with pharmaceuticals from the dispensary of the hospital, the two glass prescription bottles (see image below) have the embossed text of ‘STOLEN FROM THE LONDON HOSPITAL’ written down the side. This warning ensured that if taken, they could not be refilled and resold: similar warnings on glass from this period are common with companies sometimes prosecuting individuals for illegal reuse.

Glassware from the Royal London Hospital

However, it is the specially commissioned blue transfer-printed whiteware crockery bearing the image of the London Hospital that provides most of the stuff thrown away here. Supplied as a special commission, probably by one of Stoke-on-Trent potteries, it is thought these pots were brought to coincide with the hospitals extension and refurbishment during the 1830s. In addition to the new board room furniture and hospital equipment added, pottery was also purchased for use in the wards. The blue transfer-printed whiteware vessels found were used as wash basins, saucers, plates and jugs but the most well preserved vessels are the sputum mugs (see below image). These spit mugs were used to collect the patient’s phlegm, water was then added to distill its contents which were concealed by a removable funnel….

Sputum mug

Nearly all the commissioned pieces have numbers ranging from 1 to 4 painted on their base – we think this was the individual ward or floor they belonged – to make sure each could be accounted for.  The remaining hospital pottery comprises plain whitewares bedpans and an invalid feeding cup used for serving pap – a mixture of flour or bread and diluted milk – usually to infants.

Ward crockery was necessary as patients to the hospital had to supply their own tea, sugar, and butter and so needed jars to store their food and plates to eat their meals from. It is therefore easy to imagine the many ways in which this pottery could have been broken, not least because running water was not extended beyond the first floor of the hospital until the early 20th century, and therefore boxes of washing up water had to be carried up and downstairs for the nurses to wash the crockery. Any breakages were taken out of the nurse’s wages!

Comparisons can be made between this assemblage and the objects curated by the Royal London Museum with pottery bearing similar images of the Hospital also present. Like the excavated examples, many have also have a number on the base and the range of vessels in their collection includes a teacup and saucer, a butter dish, sugar and soup bowls, and hygiene wares such as a chamber pot and soap dish.

Combining and further researching the Royal London Museum’s with our excavated collection will significantly add to understanding the context of use and the pottery and glass in London’s hospitals during the mid to late Victorian period.