History
It was founded by Thomas Cooke in 1870
It had a tank for preserving bodies as well as a large demonstrating room; appropriately, its grounds also included part of the cemetery which is now St George’s Gardens (L. T. Morton, ‘London’s Last Private Medical School,’ Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, vol. 84, 1991)
At its peak, it had over a hundred students a year, and was recognised by several major medical societies and institutions, including the University of London (L. T. Morton, ‘London’s Last Private Medical School,’ Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, vol. 84, 1991)
After Cooke’s death in 1899, the School was run by his son F. G. Hamilton Cooke and Edward Knight, but it declined as the teaching of medicine was overhauled in the early twentieth century (L. T. Morton, ‘London’s Last Private Medical School,’ Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, vol. 84, 1991)
It survived until at least 1914 (Nick Black, Walking London’s Medical History, 2006); Morton says that it was still listed in the Medical Directory in 1918 (L. T. Morton, ‘London’s Last Private Medical School,’ Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, vol. 84, 1991)
Morton also notes the significance of its location, although seeing it only as an “interesting coincidence” that it was opposite the house where the London (Royal Free) School of Medicine for Women was founded in 1874 (although Morton says 1888) and that in 1983 “a London physician contemplated taking over the discarded Royal Free building [ie the former premises of the London (Royal Free) School of Medicine for Women in Hunter Street] to set up a private medical school in London”(L. T. Morton, ‘London’s Last Private Medical School,’ Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, vol. 84, 1991)
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What was reforming about it?
It was remarkably long-lived; most similar private anatomy schools, founded much earlier in the century, had closed by the 1860s
It was the last surviving anatomy school in London (L. T. Morton, ‘London’s Last Private Medical School,’ Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, vol. 84, 1991)
Where in Bloomsbury
It opened in a house on the corner of Handel Street and Henrietta Mews in 1870 (L. T. Morton, ‘London’s Last Private Medical School,’ Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, vol. 84, 1991)
It was supposedly in Brunswick Square in 1878 (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, entry for Sir John Bland-Sutton), although this may simply be a case of the square’s name being used to denote its general area
Website of current institution
It no longer exists
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Books about it
L. T. Morton, ‘London’s Last Private Medical School,’ Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, vol. 84 (1991)
Archives
None found
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