Ambulance Service

The story of the capital’s ambulance service

In July 2008 we commemorated the 60th anniversary of the National Health Service (NHS). Its central principle in 1948 was that healthcare would be provided free at the point of delivery, funded through taxation. That same principle still stands today. Our Trust is an integral part of the NHS in London and we work closely with hospitals and other healthcare professionals, as well as with the other emergency services. To mark 60 years of the NHS we are taking a look back at our own history, to discover how the London Ambulance Service began and evolved into what it is now – the busiest emergency ambulance service in the world.

It may be hard to imagine today, but in the 1890s if you were injured, it was left to the police, firefighters and even taxi drivers to staff a fleet of wheeled stretchers, named ‘litters’, to take patients to the nearest hospital or doctor’s surgery.

A full-time ambulance service was established shortly before the turn of the twentieth century. The Metropolitan Asylums Board (MAB) ran just six ambulance stations, each adjoining the Board’s hospitals at Deptford, Fulham, Hampstead, Homerton, Stockwell and Woolwich. Almost the whole of London fell within a three-mile radius from one of the stations. Early on, the ambulance fleet was horse-drawn. The first petrol-driven ambulance appeared in 1904 and could carry a single stretcher at up to 15 mph. Major change came in 1930 when the Government announced proposals for the reorganisation of local government in England and Wales, including the transfer of responsibilities for the ambulance service to the county councils. So, on 1 April 1930, the Board’s duties and responsibilities passed to the London County Council (LCC), which also took over responsibility for all the hospitals.

Starting out

As the second world war approached, an auxiliary ambulance service was set up as part of the Government’s civil defence service. Ennis Smith (pictured in...