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In December, 1919, not long after the Great War, a group of well-intentioned physicians and clergymen convened in the drawing room of Lady Margaret Nicholson on Pont Street, in South West London, to plan the opening of a specialist clinic for men, women, and children suffering from nervous illnesses, who would be treated by the newly popularised intervention known as psychotherapy. Spurred by the vision of Dr Hugh Crichton Miller, a medical practitioner who had deployed depth psychology in his work with shell shock survivors, this forward-thinking band of social justice advocates decided that the new clinic should offer assistance to those members of the public who could not afford private fees.
The committee leapt into action and rented a four-storey building at 51, Tavistock Square, in West Central London, the former headquarters of a Victory Club hostel for veterans. Tavistock Square proved a most favourable location as many of the physicians who would volunteer their clinical services already maintained private offices nearby in Harley Street.
On 27 September, 1920, the Tavistock Clinic for Functional Nervous Disorders opened its doors, comprising, inter alia, four consulting rooms, a lecture hall, a large drawing room covered in grey and white Chinese wallpaper, and a stone staircase. Dr Edgar Alan Hamilton-Pearson, one of the staff physicians, treated the very first patient—a child. Not long thereafter, Dr Mary Hemingway (who subsequently married the clinic's second medical director, Dr John Rawlings Rees), consulted to the first adult patient. Delighted by this achievement, Crichton Miller, the founding medical director, beamed, “My dream has come true.”
During the first year of operation, between 1920 and 1921, the clinic welcomed 248 new patients and raised approximately £300 in order to pay for basic operating costs. Not only did the honorary physicians donate several hours per week but so, too, did Sylvia Leith-Ross, the clinic's secretary, who lived in the