London's Scientists

1. Mary Seacole, 14 Soho Square, W1D 3QG

Mary Seacole was born in 1805 in Kingston, Jamaica. Although she had no formal training, she learnt her nursing skills from her mother. Her mother was  nicknamed ‘The Doctress’ as she was a healer using traditional African and Caribbean herbal remedies to treat the sick. In 1853 with the outbreak of war in the Crimea, Mary applied to the War Office to join the second group of nurses working in the hospitals. Her application was denied and so she decided to make her own way there against the wished of the establishment including Florence Nightingale. Outside Balaclava she built ‘The Hotel’ out of driftwood and other salvaged materials. The Hotel served officers and tourists and she quickly became established. She worked tirelessly on and off the battlefields to care for the officers, feeding them, tending to their wounds and raising morale. She is often considered to be the first practising nurse and was in 2004 voted the greatest black Briton.  

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2. Joseph Banks, 32 Soho Sq,W1D 3AD

Joseph Banks (1743-1820) is probably most well-known for accompanying James Cook on his voyage in HMS Endeavour, to Australia between 1768-1771. The trip was actually sent to witness the transit of Venus in Tahiti in order to measure the distances between the planets. Whilst in Australia, though Banks collected numerous plants and documented plant and animal life including eucalyptus, acacia and the kangaroo. He was elected President of the Royal Society in 1778, a post he held until his death 41 years later. He was the adviser to the King, George III and was instrumental in creating Kew Gardens. His vision of creating the best botanic garden in the world lead him to send off expedition to all parts of the globe collecting samples.

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3. John Snow, 54 Frith St,W1D 4SJ

The story goes that, during the cholera epidemic of 1854, John Snow noticed that all of the people using the water pump in Broad Street caught the disease, but others didn’t. He reasoned the disease must be water-borne and, by breaking off the handle of the pump prevented further infections. Whilst this is probably not entirely true he did map the disease and as a consequence is often referred to as the ‘Father of Epidemiology’. He was born in 1813 and grew up in a poor area of York. He was noticed for being particularly clever and received a scholarship to study medicine. In 1836 he enrolled at Hunter’s Medical School (see below). After the cholera outbreak of 1849 he was one of the founding members of the Epidemiological Society whose aims were to determine how diseases spread this led to his success during the next outbreak. Snow also, however was interested in anaesthesiology. He calculate the safe dosages of ether and chloroform and was a proponent of the use of these in childbirth. At the time, people thought this was dangerous and unethical until Queen Victoria asked him to administer to her for the birth of her 8th and 9th children, Leopold and Beatrice. The Blue Plaque at 54 Frith St is the location of Snow’s medical practice.

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4. John Logie Baird, 22 Frith St, W1D 4RP

From this house, in 1926, John Logie Baird successfully broadcast the first moving images from a TV he had created from bits and pieces he found lying around the house. He was not, however the first to transmit images. That honour goes to Archibald Low who sent still images 4 miles across London in 1914 using his Televista system. The outbreak of World War I, however meant that he had to give up his work and focus on military technologies. John Logie Baird however was so impressed with the Televista that he took up the research with great success. John Logie Baird was born in 1888 and attended Glasgow University where he studied Engineering. His apprenticeships after university affected his health, meaning he failed to get in to the Army at the outbreak of war. Baird’s first television sent images at a rate of 5 frames per second whereas today they are sent at 60 frames per second. After his initial success with television he went on to develop sending both sound and image and in 1928 built the first colour television.

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Next door, at 20 Frith Street, is a Blue Plaque dedicated to Mozart. Between 1764 and 1765, Mozart lived, composed and performed at a house at this location. Amongst other pieces, he composed his first two symphonies here.   

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Also, as you walk down Frith Street you will pass a Blue Plaque at number 6. This is dedicated to William Hazlitt (1778 – 1830), the essayist, journalist and critic, who died here soon after moving in.

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5. William Hunter, Lyric Theatre, Great Windmill St, W1 7HA

William Hunter was born in 1718 and studied medicine at Glasgow University before moving to London in 1741 to set up a practice. He studied obstetrics and became a leading consultant in London eventually becoming Queen Charlotte’s personal physician in 1764 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1767. Hunter, and his brother John, also taught dissection for which he gained some notoriety. In 1768 he built a lecture theatre and anatomy school on this site and during the 1760s began to collect books, coins, shells, skeletons and other biological curiosities (even going as far as to purchase the body of Charles Byrne, ‘the Irish Giant’, whose skeleton is now in Royal College of Surgeons). After his death in 1783, William and John’s collections became the Hunterian Museums of London and Glasgow respectively.    

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6. Richard Arkwright, 8 Adam St, WC2N 2AA

Richard Arkwright (1732-1792) was an entrepreneur and industrialist who is most often remembered as the inventor of a cotton spinning machine that used water power. This allowed for the mass production of yarn which earned him the title ‘the Father of Industrialisation’. He also developed the complete factory system in other words not just the factory but housing and recreation facilities for his workers. This allowed him to develop a continuously running factory with rota systems and shift work. He built mills all over the north of England and in Scotland, the best surviving of which can still be seen at Derwent Mills Valley in Derbyshire.

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7. Benjamin Franklin, 36 Craven St, WC2N 5NF

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) is best known as one of the Founding Father of the US but he was also a scientist and political philosopher. He was born in Boston but in 1722 ran away from home to Philadelphia. Here he became a successful newspaper editor. Between 1757 and 1775, he spent much of his time in London campaigning against control and the running of the colonies in North America. He arrived back in North America in the middle of the American Revolutionary War and in 1776 signed the Declaration of Independence. After spending more time in Europe as Ambassador to France, he became America’s sixth president in 1785. The house in Craven Street is Franklin’s only surviving house and is now a museum opened in 2006, the 300th anniversary of his birth.

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8. Ada Lovelace, 12 St James Square, SW1Y 4RB

Ada Lovelace, or Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace to give her full name, was born in 1815, the sole legitimate child of the poet, Lord Byron. Almost immediately after Ada’s birth Byron abandoned her and left her mother to raise her alone. Her mother, understandably, was angry with Byron and so encouraged Ada to study maths and science and actively discouraged her from studying the arts. As a teenager she was introduce to Charles Babbage who recognised her mathematical skills and discussed his work on the Difference and Analytical Engines with her. Unlike Babbage who saw these machines as advanced calculators, Ada recognised the potential to programme them to solve complex problems. She wrote an algorithm that would calculate numbers in the Bernoulli Sequence, the very first computer programme. Tragically Ada died at the age of 36 in 1852 from uterine cancer.

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Next door to Ada Lovelace is Chatham House with a blue plaque commemorating ‘Three Prime Ministers’ who lived here: William Pitt, the Earl of Chatham (after whom it is named) , Edward Geoffrey Stanley and William  Gladstone.

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At number 5 St James Square there is a blue plaque for Nancy Astor, the first woman to sit as a Member of Parliament from 1919 to 1945.

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And in the square behind, is a tribute to WPC Yvonne Fletcher, a policewoman who was shot and killed in 1984 during a demonstration by five Libyan protestors in the Libyan Embassy in St James Square.

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9. Isaac Newton, 86 Jermyn St

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10. Florence Nightingale, 10 South Street, W1K 1DE

Florence Nightingale is, of course most famous as ‘The Lady with the Lamp’ for her role as a nurse during the Crimean War but her contribution to nursing was much greater than this as she founded the first nursing school at St Thomas’ Hospital. She was born in Florence in 1820 and was educated at home by her father. She decided to dedicate her life to helping others and to pursue a career in nursing from an early age and despite objections from her family, as this was not the role expected from a woman of her upbringing, she worked hard to teach learn about nursing. She travelled extensively around Europe and in Germany visited care homes for the poor where she learnt the skill of nursing. In 1854, after reports of the horrific injuries being sustained in the Crimean War, she was asked to train a number of nurses to support the doctors working out there. The care for the wounded was completely inadequate and the hygiene was appalling. Florence Nightingale worked hard both in campaigning the government for more equipment (including a new prefabricated hospital designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel), to clean up the hospital and to improve healthcare practices. Her nickname came from an article written in the Times about her work reporting that she walked the wards at night checking up on the patients by the light of her lamp. It has been estimated that she reduced the death rate from more than 40% to about 2%.

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When she returned to the UK, she worked on campaigning for improved conditions in hospitals and in homes. She collected huge amounts of data and invented novel ways of presenting them including a variation on the pie chart. She is considered to be the founder of modern nursing as she set out a practice based on care, commitment and compassion as well as practical hospital organisation and operation. 

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11. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was the first woman in the UK to qualify as a doctor. Born in 1836, she was educated at home before being sent to boarding school in London. Although her education was rather lacking, she studied mainly literature with no science or maths, she did develop a love of reading and learning. After a meeting with Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to become a doctor in the US, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson decided to pursue a career as a doctor. She applied to doctors on Harley Street in London for apprenticeships but was turned down by them all so she decided to train as a nurse at the Middlesex Hospital. Proving herself a very successful nurse, she was allowed to attend out-patient clinics and eventually operating theatres. When her application to enter the hospital’s medical school was turned down she persisted and was allowed to attend lectures on chemistry and medicine and eventually she was allowed in to the dissecting rooms. Many of the male medical students were not pleased though and sent a petition to the administration asking her to be removed. As a result, she left the hospital and applied to university medical schools around the country, being rejected by them all. Not undeterred, she discovered a backdoor into medicine by becoming a member of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. By continuing to study privately she eventually sat the exams to gain a license to practice medicine becoming the first woman to qualify as a doctor. Of the nine applicants only three passed with Elizabeth Garret Anderson coming top of the class. Soon afterwards, the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries changed their rules preventing other women following in her footsteps.

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As a woman, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was not allowed to take up a position at a hospital and so she decided to open her own practice, here at 20 Upper Berkeley St. She continued to fight for women’s rights and to help more women to train as doctors. Along with other pioneering women, she set up the London School of Medicine for Women which trained many women around the world. She also helped to introduce the UK Medical Act of 1876 which overturned the previous act preventing women from entering medical school and becoming licensed doctors. Later in her life she was elected the Mayor of Aldeburgh, the first woman to become mayor in the UK. She was a truly remarkable woman who fought overt prejudice for the benefit of all women.

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12. Michael Faraday, 48 Blandford St

13. Charles Lyell, 73 Harley St

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14. Alfred Waterhouse, 61 New Cavendish St, W1G 7AR

Alfred Waterhouse was a Victorian architect specialising in the Gothic Revival style. He built some of the biggest and most expensive buildings of the time, including hospitals, halls, and even prisons. His most famous buildings are Manchester’s Town Hall and the Natural History Museum in London. He used a mixture of styles known as ‘eclecticism’ but his buildings were well designed and laid out and he specialised in designing buildings to fit small spaces.

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Opposite, at 13 and 20 Mansfield St, there are also Blue Plaques dedicated to the architects John Loughborough Pearson (1817-1897), Edwin Landseer Lutyens (1869-1944) and the politician and scientist, Charles Stanhope (1753-1816).

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15. Richard Trevithick, Gower St, (opposite Grant Museum & University St)

16. Charles Darwin, UCL (pass Victor Horsley & George Dance)

 

17. Lilian Lindsay, 23 Russell Sq

Not only was Lilian Lindsay the first woman in the UK to qualify as a dentist but she created and grew the British Dental Association (BDA) to become one of the finest in the world and she was also the first woman to be elected as the President of the BDA. In 1892 she sat the entrance exams for the National Dental Hospital in London and despite passing, the dean refused to admit her as she was a woman. In fact, he was so worried that her presence in the building would distract the male students that he interviewed her in the street. She therefore applied to Edinburgh Dental School and was accepted. When she graduated in 1895, she became the first woman to qualify as a dentist and also the first to join the BDA. As her husband, whom she met in Edinburgh, was also a dentist and was made Secretary of the BDA they moved into this property in Russell Square which was above the BDA. Lilian was made given the task of creating the library and over the next few years worked hard to build it up to one of the finest dental libraries in the world, which still carries her name. In 1946, she was elected as the President of the BDA, becoming the first woman to hold this post.

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Opposite, on the corner of Russell Square is one of the few remaining Cabmen’s Shelters. This one, though was originally in Leicester Square. Here hansom cab and later hackney cab drivers could stop to get a hot meal and a drink. Alcohol and swearing though were strictly prohibited!

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18. Henry Cavendish, 11 Bedford Sq (up Gower St also Millicent Fawcett, James Robinson, Ottoline Morrell & Pre-Raphaelites)

19. Thomas Wakley & Thomas Hodgkin, 32 Bedford Sq (also in Bedford Sq Harry Ricardo, Lord Eldon, Ram Mohun Roy, Bedford College for women, UCL, William Butterfield)