ROYAL NATIONAL THROAT NOSE AND EAR HOSPITAL

Records of the Royal National Throat Nose and Ear Hospital

These records were transferred to the Royal Free Hospital Archives in 2003.

The Royal National Throat Nose and Ear Hospital was created by the formal amalgamation of the Central London Throat Nose and Ear Hospital in Gray's Inn Road and the Hospital for Diseases of the Throat in Golden Square (near Piccadilly Circus) on 1 January 1942. The two hospitals had agreed to merge in 1939, and established a shared Committee of Management, but the formalities were delayed because of the war. The Home Office and Registrar of Companies were approached for permission to name the amalgamated hospital the "Royal National", and this was granted in 1940.

The Goodenough Report on medical education, published in 1944, resulted in the Founding of the Institute of Laryngology and Otology at Gray's Inn Road. Teaching started in 1945, and in 1949 Professor Frank C Ormerod (1895-1967), formerly an ENT surgeon at Golden Square, was appointed the first chair. Following the Flowers Report in 1980, the ILO became part of UCL medical school in 1982.

In 1947 the Board of Management of the RNTNEH was notified by the Minister for Health that it would become an NHS hospital, and in 1948 it was designated a teaching hospital. Under the terms of the 1946 NHS Act, the hospital had to form a new Board of Governors, and close its facilities for private patients.

During the NHS reorganisation of 1982, the RNTNEH was put under the management of the Bloomsbury District Health Authority. The hospital rejected the opportunity to move into the newly built Royal Free Hospital at Hampstead, but subsequently joined the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust in 1996.