St Pancras Hospital

St Pancras Hospital is part of the Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust in the St Pancras/Somers Town area of central London, near Camden Town. The hospital specialises in geriatric and psychiatric medicine.The hospital was formerly the St Pancras Workhouse. The Workhouse dated back to before 1777 and the hospital is partly housed in the original buildings. From 1951 to 1998 some of its buildings (the former maternity wards) were occupied by the London Hospital for Tropical Diseases. The remainder was managed by University College Hospital as general wards. The chaplaincy is run from St Pancras Old Church.ControversiesIn January 1999 an independent report revealed abuse at Beach House, one of the geriatric units of the hospital, where nurses hit and tied up elderly mentally ill patients, and racially intimidated colleagues who threatened to report them.A paedophile nurse was sacked in February 2005 and subsequently struck off. The number of mental health beds were reduced in 2007-08.Notable connections Writer Robert Heron died in the hospital on 1807. Charles Sydney Gibbes, English tutor to the children of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, died in the hospital on 24 March 1963. Comic novelist Sir Kingsley Amis died in the hospital on 22 October 1995. Boxer Tommy Lowne was born 15 May 1919.