Old soldiers' home in the ranks before receiving a commission. The site for the Royal Hospital was an area of Chelsea which held an incomplete building "Chelsey College", a theological college James I founded in 1609. The Royal Hospital opened its doors to the Chelsea Pensioners in 1692 for "the relief and succour" of veterans. Some of the first soldiers admitted included those injured at the Battle of Sedgemoor. The hospital maintains a 'military-based culture which puts a premium on comradeship'. The in-pensioners are formed into three companies, each headed by a Captain of Invalids (an ex-Army officer responsible for the 'day to
Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust million patients. The Free Hospital was founded in 1828 to provide free hospital care to the poor. The title 'Royal' was granted by Queen Victoria in 1837 in recognition of the hospital's treatment of cholera victims. For a long period the Royal Free Hospital was the only hospital in London to offer clinical instruction to women and was closely associated with the London School of Medicine for Women, later renamed Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine. Royal Free Hospital moved to its present site in the mid-1970s, bringing together the old Royal Free Hospital on Gray's Inn Road with the