 It is on the historical site of the first purpose built nurse training institution, the Nightingale Training School for Nurses, which closed in 1996, at St Thomas' Hospital.The collections held by the Museum may be traced back to the gifts from Florence Nightingale to the nurses at St Thomas' in the late 19th century; Lloyd Still was Matron of St Thomas' from 1913-37.There were plans for a Nightingale Museum as early as the 1930s but these were shelved with the Second World War and not reconsidered until the late 1970s.