Since the 19th century, the number of doctors, hospitals, and medical organizations in and around Harley Street has greatly increased. Records show that there were around 20 doctors in 1860, 80 by 1900, and almost 200 by 1914. When the National Health Service was established in 1948, there were around 1,500. Today, there are more than 3,000 people employed in the Harley Street area, in clinics, medical and paramedical practices, and hospitals such as 111 Harley St., The Harley Street Clinic, Hifu Skin Clinic, Medical Express Clinic, Harly Medical Foot and Nail Clinic, Harley Street Fertility Clinic, Sonoworld Diagnostic Services, The London Women's Clinic and The London Clinic. It has been speculated that doctors were originally attracted to the area by the development of commodious housing and central proximity to the important railway stations of Paddington, King's Cross, St Pancras, Euston and, later, Marylebone. The nearest Tube stations are Regent's Park, Great Portland Street and Oxford Circus. Harley Street has also been featured in many films and television programmes.
Violet Edith Grey-Egerton, daughter of Sir Philip le Belward Grey-Egerton, 11th Bt. and Hon. Henrietta Elizabeth Sophia Denison, and wife of John Gaspard le Marchant Romilly, 3rd Baron Romilly, died on 1 March 1906 at age 36 at 77 Harley Street.
John St. John Long, a famous quack, practiced in Harley Street from 1827–1834.
Sir Morell Mackenzie, the 'Father of British Laryngology' lived in 19, Harley Street till his death. Involved in the great controversy while treating the German Crown Prince Fredrick III, the Son-in-law of Her Majesty Queen Victoria for his Laryngeal Disease, allegedly Cancer of the left vocal cord which led to the demise of the Emperor in 1888.
Fictional references
In Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, medical professional Sir William Bradshaw lives on Harley Street. In Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, the Dashwood sisters, Lucy Steele, Mrs Jennings, Edward Ferrars, and others spend some of their free time there while in London. P.G. Wodehouse's Sir Roderick Glossop, the “nerve specialist", was said to maintain a practice on Harley Street. In Agatha Christie’s The Secret of Chimneys, Lord Caterham ruefully mentions that his doctor advised him to “avoid all worry. So easy for a man sitting in his consulting room in Harley Street to say that.” Earlier in the book, a surgeon in Harley Street is mentioned among names listed in a phone book. In Agatha Christie's Death in the Clouds, Dr. Bryan, one of the passengers and suspects of the murder, is a Harley Street physician. In Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, murder victim Dr Edward Armstrong is a Harley Street physician. In Agatha Christie’s Crooked House, Edith de Haviland visits Harley Street. In the movie The Revenge of Frankenstein, Dr Victor Frankenstein aka Dr Franck after his brain transplant begins his medical practice on Harley Street W In John Banville's The Untouchable, Victor Maskell visits his doctor and is told "I should have thought you had died already, in a way."... which is "not the kind of thing you expect to hear from a Harley Street consultant, is it."
