Half of the Royal Brompton hospital was built thanks to a Will mysteriously left in the drawer of an early nineteenth century ‘square’ piano.
The piano is still owned by the hospital today and, recently, was tuned and played – possibly for the first time in decades – at an event to mark the significance of this curious tale.
The story begins in 1841 with Philip Rose, a 25-year-old up-and-coming lawyer then living in Hans Place, Chelsea.
Rose was an extremely compassionate young man and, when he discovered a clerk at his law firm had the common, deadly disease of TB (tuberculosis), and could not be treated anywhere, decided to do something about it.
Despite its prevalence among the Victorian population at that time, particularly in large cities like London, TB was so severe a disease – being both highly contagious and usually fatal – that, shockingly, it was considered too difficult to treat.
Victorian hospitals effectively closed their doors to TB sufferers, most of whom went on to die miserably at home.
In what we would now call a campaign against extreme health inequality, Philip Rose brought together a group of influential friends and lobbied to open a new hospital, specifically to treat TB patients.
He managed to secure the support of Queen Victoria and, in 1842, the ‘Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest’ opened its doors in a building called the Manor House in Chelsea.
The hospital immediately did well, attracting patients, donations and influential supporters, including both Charles Darwin and Charles Dickens, who spoke at the hospital’s anniversary dinner in 1843. At the dinner, the famous author said of the new institution and its patients:
If this charity had not existed, the doors of no sick house within London’s wide bounds would have been open to these poor persons. Before the hospital was founded they would have suffered, lingered, pined, and died in their poor homes, without a hand stretched out to help them in their slow decay.
Not surprisingly, given TB’s terrible hold on the Victorian population and the success of the new specialist hospital, there was by 1846 a brand new, custom-designed and magnificently decorated hospital building in Fulham Road, replacing the old manor house.
This building can still be seen today, although it is now a luxurious block of private apartments called The Bromptons.
Directly opposite is the Royal Brompton’s current Fulham Wing which, when it was originally built, was known as South Block – as you can see from the sign that still exists over the ‘main’ entrance facing Fulham Road – since it was south of the original Brompton block.
Both North and South Blocks are rather beautifully designed and echo each other’s architectural styles.
And if you look at that former main entrance, and allow your eye to travel upwards, you will see just under the first window a pink granite stone which is engraved with the words ‘In memoriam Cordelia Read obiit 1872’ – which brings us back to the piano.
Because it was Cordelia Read, who died in 1872, that owned the piano.
Cordelia Angelica Read had grown up in a wealthy family in the early nineteenth century. Her father owned a lot of property in Southwark and, by the time he died, Cordelia inherited several adjoining houses in Stamford Street.
In suitably Dickensian fashion, she was by this stage considered rather reclusive and was said to live in haunted property, its rooms stuffed full of dusty old possessions.
Among these was an early type of piano called a ‘square piano’ and it was in the locked drawer of this piano that her Will was found, leaving all £120,000 – now equivalent to about £15 million – to the Brompton.
The money funded the building of the South Block, now Fulham Wing, which thus bears her name.
The piano, which can still be played, now sits in Britten Wing and has a plaque on its lid which says “In this spinet was found the will of Miss Cordelia A Read, who bequeathed her estate to the hospital with the proceeds of which the south wing was built.”
So why did Cordelia leave her money to the Brompton and not to her family?
There are two possible reasons. One was that her mother, Jane Beetham, had wanted to marry a painter called John Opie, who had divorced his wife in order to do so – but her wish was refused by others in Jane’s family.
Jane Beetham and John Opie went on to marry others and became successful painters in their own rights, Opie particularly so. Pictures by both hang in the Royal Brompton boardroom, including a portrait by Jane of her daughter, Cordelia.
Another possible reason is that a cousin of Cordelia, James Chabot, an unpleasant man who physically abused his wife, had also acted in a famous court case of the time. Philip Rose’s law firm acted in the same case and, as a result of this, Philip fell out with them and left the firm.
So perhaps Cordelia was angry at the way her family had treated her mother. Perhaps she was angry at the way her cousin had, however indirectly, treated Philip Rose.
Either way, thanks to Philip Rose’s compassion and Cordelia’s passion, the Brompton doubled in size and out of their care arose the hospital we know and love today – which never closes its doors to those with diseases, no matter how serious they might be.