Hauntings

The nurse of University College Hospital

Also known as: Lizzie Church; The morphine nurse; Marcus Beck's shutters

Former University College Hospital building, Gower Street and Euston Road

Edwardian era onward; undated reports

Mysterious Britain quotes a 1990s piece by Mark Gould on hospital ghosts: a classic of the genre is the nurse in a bluish-grey uniform seen by patients at University College Hospital. She appears only when screens go up around a bed and is said to be the spirit of a nurse who gave a patient a morphine overdose and was so upset that she took poison and killed herself. The nurse is thought to be named Lizzie Church. Londonist's haunted tube map dates her to the Edwardian period and says she walks the wards still attending to patients.

The site has other folklore. UCH's archivist Annie Lindsay is quoted describing the nightly ritual of closing the shutters on a portrait of the long dead surgeon Marcus Beck. It was the night sister's first duty to close them and the day sister's to open them, and if the shutters were left open at night, somebody was said to die unexpectedly. Anyone who fell asleep under the picture was said to become ill. The portrait was stolen in 2001.

Mysterious Britain points out that the current hospital on Euston Road only opened in 2005, so the hauntings must have been reported in the older cruciform building of 1906 behind it, which is now part of University College London. No dated sighting, witness name or hospital record for the nurse has been found, and Mysterious Britain and Londonist differ slightly on the details. Tellings of this kind are common across British hospitals, so the story is kept as a traditional ghost legend, not a documented event.

Hospital and university premises; not generally open to the public.
Evidence
Long-standing local tradition
Access
No public access
Location
51.525, -0.135 (Sited to the building or field)

Sources: Mysterious Britain, University College Hospital, London [other]; Londonist, The Haunted Tube Map [other]

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