Situated to the south-west of Leicester city centre, the Leicester Royal Infirmary is an NHS teaching hospital with a history stretching back to 1771. It is the largest of the three hospitals managed by the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, and parts of Leicester Medical School are based on the site. The hospital runs an accident and emergency department, a women’s hospital, paediatrics, oncology including radiotherapy, and a range of other specialisms.
A History Rooted in the Eighteenth Century
The hospital was founded by Reverend William Watts as the Leicester Infirmary, opening in 1771 with just 40 beds. In its earliest days, patients paid a deposit on admission: returned if they recovered, or spent on burial costs if they did not. There was no running water at the outset, though the infirmary did operate its own brewery, with beer forming part of the treatment offered to patients. By 1808 the bed count had risen to 60, and a fever house followed in 1820. Nurses were first trained at the infirmary in 1870, and St Luke’s Chapel – known for its stained glass windows and memorials – was built in 1887. The facility was renamed Leicester Infirmary and Children’s Hospital in 1911, then Leicester Royal Infirmary and Children’s Hospital in 1914, before joining the National Health Service in 1948. The Windsor Building was opened by the Queen in December 1993, and a new accident and emergency department was opened by the Princess Royal in March 2018.
Specialist Units and Notable Events
In August 2021, a congenital heart centre opened at the Kensington Building, transferred from Glenfield Hospital with support from Pick Everard. It forms part of the East Midlands Congenital Heart Network. The infirmary also houses the East Midlands Forensic Pathology Unit, which provides Home Office registered forensic pathology services to the police forces of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Rutland, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and Northamptonshire. The hospital also gained national attention in 2015 when junior doctor Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba received a suspended prison sentence following a manslaughter conviction related to the death of a six-year-old boy from sepsis. After the General Medical Council ruled in January 2018 that she be struck off the medical register, the Court of Appeal reinstated her in August 2018. Among notable historical staff, Mildred Hughes served as matron from 1929 to 1946 and was President of the Royal College of Nursing from 1944 to 1946; a stained glass window in her memory, originally in the hospital chapel, has since been moved to the hospital library.