In 2007 Andrew Motion, who was Poet Laureate at the time and also a biographer of John Keats (1795–1821), unveiled a bronze statue of Keats in a quadrangle outside Guy's Hospital.
The statue is life-size and sits in a niche of the original London Bridge replaced in 1831 and bought by the hospital for ten guineas (or £10.50 in decimal currency). Between 1815 and 1816 Keats had trained at Guy's Hospital as a surgeon-apothecary.
Stuart Williamson was the artist commissioned to commemorate the life of Dr R. K. Knight (1923–2005), who was a physician at Guy's.
The oak band around the inside of the alcove gives Keats's dates of birth and death, states he was apothecary here in 1816, and quotes 'Sure a poet is a sage: a humanist, physician to all men' from Keats's The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream (1856–7).
This plaque is on a house on St Thomas's Street a few yards away from the statue in Guy's Hospital:
'ON THIS SITE
POET & APOTHECARY
JOHN KEATS
& his friend, the
POET, APOTHECARY, SURGEON
& CHEMIST
HENRY STEPHENS
shared lodgings while studying
at
GUY'S & ST. THOMAS'
HOSPITALS
(1815–1816)'
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