Katherine Twining Journal Club

My friend Khalid Khan, the new editor of the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (BJOG), has set up the KT Journal Club as a Twitter group to discuss important BJOG papers. The next virtual meeting is Thursday 13 Dec. at 6:30 pm.

Topic – Timing of prophylactic antibiotics in Caesarean section. Click here for the paper. Follow @kt_network.  To contribute add the hashtag “#ktjc”. If you’re stuck – email: ktnetwork@qmul.ac.uk, or contact: @elaineleung (twitter) or elaine.leung@qmul.ac.uk (email).

And Katherine Twining?

She was a young nurse who in 1889 bought a modest house in Howard’s Road, Plaistow and started providing maternity care to local women. She called it St Mary’s Nursing’ Home. A few years later she converted two nearby houses into a midwifery training school, and later opened branches all over the East End. The original premises expanded until 1923, when Queen Mary opened a new building on Chesterton Road.  In 1926 this was renamed the Plaistow Maternity Hospital, the first such hospital in the East End of London. By the time the NHS took it over in 1948 it had 60 beds.  In 1976 the NHS transferred its services to Newnham General Hospital, and the buildings have long since been been pulled down and replaced by flats.  But on 1st April this year Newnham merged with Bart’s, Whipps Cross, and The London Hospital, to form one of the largest NHS organisations in the capital, Barts Health NHS Trust.

Is it too fanciful to trace a link from her modest beginnings to the swish new Barkantine Maternity Centre and the mighty Royal London Hospital Maternity Unit?

Jim Thornton