When the national capital of India was shifted to Delhi, Lady Hardinge, the wife of the then Viceroy of India, Baron Charles Hardinge, decided to establish a medical college for women, as she recognized that the lack of such a college made it impossible for Indian women to study medicine. The foundation stone was laid by Lady Hardinge on 17 March 1914 and the college was named Queen Mary College & Hospital to commemorate the visit by Queen Mary in 1911-12. Lady Hardinge was actively involved in collecting funds for the college from the princely states and the public until her death on 11 July 1914. The college was inaugurated on 7 February 1916 by Baron Hardinge in the Imperial Delhi Enclave area. On the suggestion of Queen Mary, the college and the hospital was named after Lady Hardinge to perpetuate the memory of its founder. The first principal was Dr. Kate Platt and the college admitted 16 students. As the college was then affiliated to University of the Punjab, the students had to sit their final examinations at King Edward Medical College in Lahore. The college became affiliated to the University of Delhi in 1950 and post-graduate courses were started in 1954. Dr. Ruth Young CBE, who as Ruth Wilson was the first Professor of Surgery at the College, served as Principal from 1936 until 1940. The Kalawati Saran Children's Hospital, one of the two hospitals attached to the Lady Hardinge Medical College, was built in 1956. Initially, the college was an autonomous institution managed by a Governing Body. In the year 1953, the Board of Administration constituted by the Central Government took formal charge of the management of the institution. In February 1978, the management was taken over by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India under an Act of Parliament. One of the director professors is chosen as the president of the college, the most senior post in the college.
Present form
The hospital has provided services to male patients since 1991. Since 2011 the admission capacity to the MBBS course has been raised to 200 seats. The college has two teaching hospitals, Smt. Sucheta Kriplani Hospital and Kalawati Saran Child Hospital, with 877 and 350 beds respectively. The college and hospital also provides tertiary level medical facilities to the city. The college's Department of Microbiology is internationally acclaimed for its salmonella phage typing, and it is a World Health Organization collaborating centre for reference and training in streptococcal diseases for South East Asia. It is also a surveillance center for AIDS. The first ART center for children in the country, was also started in LHMC in 2007.
Campus
The college's campus has a hostel, library, auditorium and laboratories. It also includes a ground for sports and extra co-curricular activities.
Library
A new central library building is part of the auditorium building. The college's library is one of the oldest medical libraries in India and has also a good collection of number of old journals in the biomedical sciences. The library has a collection of 50,000 volumes.
Rankings
The college was 9th among medical colleges in India in 2020 by India Today.
