The Doll's Hospital

The Doll's Hospital was a toy shop at 16 Dawes Road, Fulham, London. It traded for over 50 years and had an interantional reputation for repairing dolls sent by mail order. In 1948, the owners were befriended and murdered by the serial killer John Haigh, the "Acid Bath Murderer", who was hanged the following year.

In the 1800s, the first "doll's hospital" opened in the nearby Fulham Road; however it is not known whether this was a forerunner or an earlier incarnation of the premises in Dawes Road.[1][2]|

In the 1937 Kelly's Directory, no 16 was listed as a toy shop, along with toy dealer Albert. E. Wickes.[3] It acquired an international reputation for its doll repair and restoration workshop, and elicited coverage in the Illustrated Sydney News, "Patients are admitted for broken heads, or fractured limbs, loss of hair, eyes, nose, teeth, fingers, hands, toes, and wasting away of the body. Operations take place every day between 9am and 8pm."[3]

In February 1948, the owners, Dr. Archibald Henderson and his wife Rose vanished without a trace.[3][4] They had become the penultimate victims of serial killer John Haigh, known as the "Acid Bath Murderer", as he dissolved bodies in concentrated sulphuric acid.[3] Haigh invited them to his basement workshop in Crawley where he shot them with a revolver stolen from Henderson's house.[3][5] With the aid of forged documents, Haigh emptied their bank accounts, and sold their jewellery, car and property.[5] Haigh killed his final victim in February 1949, and was hanged in August 1949.

In April 1937, Henderson's first wife died and he inherited more than £20,000.[6] In July 1937, Henderson married Mrs Rose Erren, who was recently divorced from Rudolf Erren, a German inventor and engineer, who had been a flying "ace" in the First World War.[6]

Using a forged deed of transfer, Haigh sold The Doll's Hospital to Albert Clarke, and business recovered after the high-profile murder of its owners by an infamous serial killer.[3] Notable local customers included Janet Street-Porter, who had her only doll repaired there, and others from around the world sent their dolls to be repaired there.[3] In its latter years, it was run by John Smith, Clarke's son-in-law, until it closed down in 1987, to be replaced with a non-descript bar.[3]