Lady Sybil Free Hospital

This hospital is located on Attic Bee Street, near Goose Gate, in Ankh-Morpork.

• Discrepancy -- In Night Watch it is described as "a large corner site in Goose Gate" — which is a crumbling gate in the old city wall, built when the city was smaller. In the official city map app, the hospital is directly across from the old Goose Gate, on the corner of Goose Gate and Kicklebury Street, which then curves around a bend and changes names to Attic Bee Street. The hospital also borders Elsewhere Alley. (app "Discworld: The Ankh-Morpork Map" based on "The Compleat Ankh-Morpork" Copyright Terry & Lyn Pratchett and the Discworld Emporium, 2012).

The hospital is unique in several ways. It is not run by a Guild or other similar organisation or business. It is run with the aim of getting the patients better. It does not require fees from those who don't have enough money.

The hospital is headed by Dr. J. "Mossy" Lawn. Established following a most generous endowment of land and cash from the Duke and Duchess of Ankh (in gratitude it takes its name from the latter), it accepts continuing donations and endowments, to help it in its day-to-day business of caring for the sick in body and mind.

Sometimes, a suggestion might be expressed with some force that while the patient is quite clearly in need of charity and free medical care, his employer, who will clearly benefit from having the employee well and back at work again, should express gratitude to the Hospital trustees in the form of an acceptably large cash donation.

The latter group, the sick in mind, are at least partially represented by those who are securely cared for in the Havelock Vetinari Ward. Although it is open to speculation as to just exactly who might have made the charitible donation enabling this ward to open, and for sufferers of an identity crisis causing them to think they are the Patrician to be discreetly locked away, (until such time in the future as a cure may be effected for such a sad and above all difficult affliction). Dr Lawn, after all, is very capable of keeping a secret, and is aware of who else in the city is entitled to wear the lilac...

First appearance in Going Postal ---but the vision of a free hospital was first implied when Samuel Vimes gave the property and generous start-up funds to Dr. J. "Mossy" Lawn at the end of Night Watch.

If you want to find the location of this hospital on The Streets of Ankh-Morpork: the Hospital is not marked because it hadn't existed when the map was published, but direction to the location would be:

• Look on right edge of the map, locate Limping Gate.
• Go toward the city center along Kicklebury Street.
• On a large street intersection is Goose Gate.
• Keep going inward, Attic Bee Street is "upward" (on the map) of the next large street intersection.

--- This differs only slightly from the (2012) publication of a digital map app, which does show the hospital's precise location, as detailed at the top of this page.