Set in the heart of the East End amid horrific danger and poverty, when illnesses such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, measles, syphilis, diphtheria are rife, Whitechapel life tumbles through the emergency room doors daily in victims of violence, suicide, drink and drugs. Themes of funding crises, terrorist threats, medical advances, and deadly infections still resonate today, but in many ways this is a shocking and foreign world, in which relationships were not permitted between staff and some treatments seem fascinatingly remote. Through extreme hardship shines a spirit of forbearance and self-sacrifice that seems remarkable now.
The Casualty 1900s series is an innovative hospital drama that plunges the viewer into the Receiving Room (today’s A&E) of the London hospital deep in the teeming East End. The drama is shot with the pace and action of its modern day counterpart and namesake, Casualty, but every case and character is true. Focusing on cases, characters and events taken from the actual hospital records, nurse’s Ward Diaries and intimate memoirs, ‘Casualty’ is an unbroken experience of life with pioneering doctors and nurses a hundred years ago among the desperately poor.
Includes Casualty 1906, 1907 and 1909.
Starring Cherie Lunghi, Nicholas Farrell, Charity Wakefield.