Royal Sea Bathing Hospital, Margate - sun, sea water, fresh air

I had already read Dr Richard Russel (1687-1759)’s Dissertation on the Use of Sea Water in Diseases of the Glands, published in 1752. He focused on scurvy, jaundice, leprosy and consumption, and was seen as one of the people who built up a passion, based on science, for healthy living. Apparently referred to as “Sea-Water Russel”, the good doctor described the recreational and therapeutic advantages of sea water, sunshine and fresh air. Dr Russell could not have known that people would embrace healthy seaside holidays, only a few decades after his death.

Dr Russel's dissertation, 1752

The attraction of the beach was popularised amongst wealthier families when King George III recovered from one mania or other in Dorset in 1789. In the 1790s, the royal family’s annual holidays were always taken at Weymouth, thus making the town one of the first seaside “resorts” in the country.

Brighton had to wait a little longer. During the early C19th, the Prince Regent popularised Brighton as a fashionable alternative to the wealthy spa towns. Even later Queen Victoria's long-standing patronage of the Isle of Wight and Ramsgate in Kent ensured the ongoing attraction of classy beach towns.

But what of ordinary working families who might have also benefited from fresh air, sea water and sunshine. Dr John Coakley Lettsom (1744-1815) was a well known London doctor. Lettsom achieved some important breakthroughs in his career but none as important as the founding of the Royal Sea Bathing Infirmary in Margate Kent in 1791.

Abandoned Britain noted that The Royal Sea Bathing Hospital was founded using funds donated by Prince regent to create a specialist hospital for treating Tuberculosis. Perhaps that is why the building was given such a grand entrance and imposing columns.

Sea Bathing Hospital, posh front entrance

Historic Hospital Admission Records Project provides us with vital information. The infirmary’s specifically stated purpose was to be a ‘receptacle for the relief of the poor whose diseases required sea-bathing’, a practice which in the past had been possible only for families who could afford the substantial costs. This hospital was to house patients in open-air shelters so they could benefit from the sun and sea breezes, in addition to sea bathing. The infirmary opened (after a long contest between Margate and Southend to be the host for the institution) in Spring 1796. The new hospital was situated close to the beach and had a ‘bathing machine …built for the patients sole use’.

The Royal Sea Bathing Infirmary would have been flooded with customers, had there not been some sort of queuing system, and some costs to the referring agencies. In the early days, patients were accepted into the hospital under recommendation by subscribing governors. And they also had to be examined by a medical board either at London Workhouse or St George’s Hospital. The Radcliffe Infirmary at Oxford paid to maintain beds for its own clients. The St Pancras Workhouse also used the Margate facility. The Hospital for Sick Children started sending its first patients to Margate in 1855.

Sea Bathing Hospital, backing onto the sand

The hospital admitted both adults and children, male and female, although by early Victorian times, children were beginning to predominate. From the start, the majority of patients were suffering from some form of tubercular infection. Dr Sakula noted that scrofulous children from squalid London slums appeared to benefit most from Margate’s lovely lifestyle.

Clearly the hospital pioneered the use of sea bathing as a treatment, at least during the summer months when the service stayed open. But it took another 50 years before indoor salt water baths were installed; only then could in-patient treatment continue all year round.

What a shame that this grand old institution was closed in 1996 and was left to fall into decay. Abandoned Britain has amazing photos of the relic, before rebuilding commenced.

What an even greater shame that the building, which once served ordinary working families, was to be converted into 272 luxurious flats exclusively for very wealthy families (although as discussed in the comments section below, the plans were not successful). I am certain Dr Lettsom’s Quaker values would have been outraged. At least the hospital building and original chapel are Grade II listed and will be preserved.

F.G St Clair Strange wrote History of the Royal Sea Bathing Hospital Margate: 1791-1991, published by Meresborough Books in 1991. Alas the vandalism to the building didn’t start until 1996, after the book was in the bookshops. Many thanks to LondonGirl for sharing her knowledge.

Sea Bathing Hospital, sun treatment programme