GAS-PROOF

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 2, 4 January 1937, Page 4

GAS-PROOF

A LONDON HOSPITAL

London's first gas-proof hospital, which will embody many new ideas in structure planning, equipment, and scrvice is to be built by the side of St. John's Garden, in Horseferry Road, "Westminster (says the "Daily Telegraph";. The new buildings, which will be on the east, south, and west sides of the garden, will cover an area v of 66,000 square feet, and their total cost will be £850,000. Mr. Bernard Docker revealed some of the secrets of the new hospital to members of the House, Appeal, and Building Committees, assembled in the bare brick and concrete section of the nurses' home which is to be the Junior Nurses' Common Room. After pointing out that the hospital must remain in a district especially liable to air. attack, he added: I "We have agreed upon certain plans, ■ after consultation with the Air Raids ' Precaution Department of the Home 1 Office. At either end of the covered 1 road we shall be able to erect at very ■ short notice double doors constituting ■ an air-lock, within which gas victims - can be cleansed from gas contamination i and so transferred to the hospital for. s shelter and treatment. In addition, the • roofs of the hospital will be specially ■ strengthened, and its windows will, as I far as possible, be arranged to protect > the l 'patients from splinters. Further, : all rooms below a certain level in each ■ wing will be supplied with fresh air • from an air-conditioning plant. What ! we are doing in this respect entitles I the new 'Westminster' to be called 'the first gas-proof hospital.'"