Competition designs for the London Fever Hospital, Liverpol Road, London: plans and perspectives of designs I and III, plan and elevation of design II

NOTES: Mocatta, Charles Fowler and William Railton were invited to submit designs for the London Fever Hospital in September 1847. In November Mocatta's design was selected. In the following year the trustees of the hospital rejected Mocatta's design and appointed Fowler instead, paying Mocatta a fee as recompense and for the use of his designs. When plans and a perspective were published in the Builder in 1848 as by Fowler they appeared to be virtually identical to design III in the drawing seen here. Correspondence ensued and the matter was put before the Council of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Fowler freely said that the designs were based on Mocatta's but that the trustees had bought them and were therefore entitled to use them as they saw fit. The RIBA determined that as a matter of professional ethics, even if a client had bought the right to the drawings, "the author of an original idea, if it be adopted, should be engaged to carry out his own conception, and that every member of the profession should individually do his utmost to establish this principal."