Behind the Frieze
|
THE BUILDING The impressive building of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is the sole occupant of what remains of Keppel Street; a street which, until the building of the Senate House of the University of London in the 1930s, ran from Gower Street to Russell Square. Keppel Street commemorates Lady Elizabeth Keppel, the bride of the Marquis of Tavistock, heir to the fourth Duke of Bedford. Although the marriage looked as if it would be a case of 'they both lived happily ever after' Lord Tavistock was killed in a hunting accident less than three years after their marriage and Lady Elizabeth went into a decline and died a year later. In its day Keppel Street was home to some distinguished tenants: the novelist Anthony Trollope was born at no.16 where his mother, the resourceful author, Fanny Trollope, was then living. Two other residents were the artist John Constable, and the Irish nationalist and politician Charles Stewart Parnell, who lived in the house formerly occupied by the Trollopes. Before the First World War the site had been bought from the Duke of Bedford's estates for a National Theatre but the idea was shelved for the duration of the war although a Shakespeare Hut was set up for the 'entertainment and reception of soldiers'. At the end of 1921 it was realized that a National Theatre on the site was not going to be built and the area was acquired for the projected London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine with the aid of the munificent gift of $2 million from the Rockefeller Foundation. The design was put out to competition and won by the partnership of Morley Horder and Vernor Rees, Rees being the architect. Rees not only designed the building in the Art Deco style, but also stipulated that the furniture for the Board Room and Library should be to his design and made by a guild of craftsmen. Eric Henri Kennington (1888-1960), a friend of Rees, was commissioned to provide the bas-relief which was placed over the Library's main entrance. The sculpture - whose symbolism has not been recorded - depicts a pregnant woman embracing an infant while behind her a man is about to strike a serpent. Kennington, who sculpted many memorials including two to Lawrence of Arabia and one to Thomas Hardy, was also a distinguished war artist in both World Wars, and provided some of the illustrations for T E Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The foundation stone was laid by the Minister of Health, Neville Chamberlain,
in July 1926 and the building was opened three years later by the Prince
of Wales. Although it was one of the first buildings to be designed
with a steel frame, wooden scaffolding was still used in its construction.
Despite enlargement, the addition of extra floors and infilling of some
internal courtyards, the School's external appearance has not greatly
changed since its opening. THE FRIEZE Twenty-three names form the frieze on the exterior of the School. Mystery surrounds the reasoning behind their selection which was made by a committee of unknown constitution who pondered deeply on which of the names of the great and good in the fields of hygiene and tropical medicine merited such public acclaim. The only female name on the short list was that of Florence Nightingale, who was excluded because her surname of eleven letters was too long for inclusion. However room was found for the name of Max von Pettenkofer (count the letters!) who denied that cholera was a water-borne disease! The arrangement of the brief biographies that follow is chronological, as the lives of some of their subjects interwined. Please click on a name to see a short biography of each individual. Edmund Alexander Parkes 1819-1876 Baron Lister of Lyme Regis 1827-1912 Timothy Richards Lewis 1841-1886 Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran 1845-1922 William Crawford Gorgas 1854-1920 Hermann Michael Biggs 1859-1923 Sir William Leishman 1865-1926 Each biography contains an image, these were digitised from photographs which have been mounted onto boards for an exhibition and therefore we have no way of discovering the copyright owner from the photograph itself. We have started to research the copyright owner of each photograph but if you are aware of the copyright owner for any of the above images we would appreciate hearing from you. Behind the Frieze was published by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1995, text by Mary Gibson. |
