University College Hospital, London
The current University College Hospital on Euston Road opened in 2005 at a cost of £422 million. However, the haunting this article refers to must have occurred in an older building, which I assume may be the cruciform building which opened in 1906 and is just behind the new hospital. This building is now part of University College London.
The following reference to the haunting was found in Mark Gould’s article ‘Ghosts of sisters past’ which was published in The Guardian on 22 December 2004.
A classic of the genre is the “nurse in a bluish-grey uniform” seen by patients at University College Hospital, London. It appears only when screens go up around a bed and is said to be the spirit of a nurse who administered a morphine overdose to a patient and was so upset that she took poison and killed herself.
Annie Lindsay, archivist at UCH, describes the nightly ritual of closing the shutters on a picture of long-deceased surgeon Marcus Beck.
“It was the night sister’s first duty to close the shutters, and the day sister’s duty to open them in the morning. If the shutters were not closed at night, then somebody unexpectedly died.”
Re: University College Hospital, London
The Paranormal Database refers to the portrait of Beck and the tradition of closing the shutters on it. Anyone falling asleep under the picture apparently became ill and possibly died. It was stolen in 2001.
Re: University College Hospital, London
The legal and social reformer, Jeremy Bentham (Born 15 February 1748 – Died 6 June 1832) is also generally thought to haunt the University College Hospital. His will left his body for dissection in an anatomy lecture and his skeleton and head were subsequently preserved and put on display in a wooden cabinet. The skeletal remains were dressed in his Bentham’s clothes and stuffed with straw. The Auto-icon, as it is known has a wax head, though the original head was for a while kept in the same cabinet. The University College Hospital acquired the Auto-icon in 1850 from the physician Thomas Southwood Smith (Born 21 December 1788 – Died 10 December 1861) and was kept on display in the main building.
The following account was printed in ‘Chambers Guide to London The Secret City’ – ‘Some years ago, a mathematics teacher, Neil King, working late into the night, heard the distant echo of a walking stick tapping in the corridor. He opened the door and was amazed to see Jeremy Bentam coming toward him, dressed in the embalmed figure’s clothes and wearing white gloves. When it was no further than about two yards, the ghost suddenly reached forward as if to seize him. Just when the terrified Mr King expected to be thrown to the ground, he found himself alone. The spectre of Jeremy Bentham had disappeared.’
Note, Bentham’s walking stick had a name: Dapple.
Re: University College Hospital, London
The name of the nurse who accidentally administered a deadly dose of morphine and subsequently is thought to haunt the hospital is thought to be Lizzie Church.