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Original Text (Annotation: EPW015774 / 2107705)
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South Wharf Receiving Station, Metropolitan Asylum Board, Rotherhithe Street, SE16. One of the three places (the other two were at Poplar and Fulham) in London to which smallpox victims would be brought during the epidemic at the turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries, for onward transport by ambulance ships ('Red Cross', 'White Cross', 'Geneva Cross', 'Albert Victor' and 'Maltese Cross') to Dartford. Three hospital ships were moored there from 1882, (Atlas [men's wards], Endymion [administration, kitchen and laundry] and Castalia [women's wards]) being replaced by the Long Reach Hospital on adjacent land in 1902. The ships were taken out of service and scrapped in 1904. After the smallpox epidemic, South Wharf Receiving Station and the ambulance ships were used for patients with highly infections diseases such as diphtheria until the 1930s when replaced by road transport.
See images EPW001410, EPW046833 & EPW024256
Lost Hospitals of London - https://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/southwharf.html
http://dartfordhospitalhistories.org.uk/long-reach/long-reach-introduction/
for a photograph of the three original hospital ships - https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/L0006809EB.jpg/full/full/0/default.jpg
and for two photographs of the entrance to South Wharf - https://wellcomecollection.org/images?query=South+Wharf '
