The Elephant Man, a drama by American playwright Bernard Pomerance, was first performed in London in 1977, then off-Broadway in early 1979 and moved to Broadway in 1979-1981, where it ran for 916 performances. The play was made into a movie in 1982 and has had two Broadway revivals—in 2002 and 2014.

The first scene of the play occurs in 1884 in the office of Carr Gomm, the administrator of the London Hospital in Whitechapel. The hospital was originally called the London Infirmary when it was established in 1740 in a rented house on Featherstone Street. The hospital moved to another rented house on Prescot Street in 1741, and by 1752 the Prescot Street location proved inadequate, and a building was erected for the hospital in Whitechapel, where the first patients were admitted in 1757.

In 1888, two years before the final scenes in The Elephant Man occurred, the hospital played a part in the "Jack the Ripper" murders that were committed near the hospital in Whitechapel, specifically the murder of Catherine Eddowes.

A portion of a kidney which was believed to have been from Ms. Eddowes's body was examined by Thomas Openshaw, a surgeon at the hospital. Dr. Openshaw later received a letter signed by "Jack the Ripper" which briefly discussed, and confirmed, Dr. Openshaw's findings about the kidney. "Jack" remarked in the letter that he had intended to commit another murder "close to your hospital," but a "copper" happened on the scene and "spoilt the game."

Seated in Carr Gomm's office in London Hospital is Frederick Treves, a surgeon and lecturer in anatomy. Gomm quickly reviews Treves's qualifications. Treves is thirty-one years old, and he's already published books "on Scrofula and Applied Surgical Anatomy."

Gomm congratulates Treves on his accomplishments and his "industry." He welcomes Treves to the hospital, where he says Treves will find "a continual medical richness," and Gomm praises London Hospital as "certainly the greatest institution of our kind in the world."

Gomm encourages Treves to add to the hospital's reputation, which appears to be Gomm's ambition for the hospital, the doctors who work and teach there, and for himself.

Gomm says that Treves will be able to command "100 guinea fees" before he's forty, and adds enigmatically, "You'll find it an excellent consolation prize." Treves has no idea what Gomm means, and Gomm doesn't explain.

Gomm leaves the room, giving Treves an opportunity to provide the audience with a little more information about himself:

TREVES. A happy childhood in Dorset.

A scientist in an age of science.

In an English age, an Englishman. A teacher and a doctor at the London. Two books published by my thirty-first year. A house. A wife who loves me, and my god, 100 guinea fees before I'm forty....

As of the year AD 1884, I, Freddie Treves, have excessive blessings. Or so it seems to me.

Treves clearly shares Gomm's ambitions for the hospital, and clearly has some as yet unrealized ambitions of his own.

As for Gomm's reference to "consolation prize," Treves asks himself, "Consolation for what?"