There’s a police car outside the hospital tonight. In front of it, an alcoholic sits on a plastic chair, can of Special Brew in hand. His friend – a man with a savaged face – goes into the hospital, pushing through the transparent plastic swing doors.

This is the scene in casualty at King’s College Hospital in Camberwell one recent weekend night. It is one of the busiest accident and emergency departments in London.

It’s a deprived hospital in a deprived area, but is known for its excellent nursing and medical care. And it was here that they just had the Walworth Bell pub shootings – six shootings – six acute emergencies in one hour, and with new doctors who had been in the job for only three days. It’s 9.30 pm and already there is a queue of walking wounded that will take at least a couple of hours to deal with. A sign on the cream walls says: ‘There is a . . . hour wait to see the doctor. Emergencies seen first.’ The empty space has been covered with blank card.

The recent record time for someone waiting in casualty for a bed was 26 hours – with a fractured leg. But at the moment, things aren’t too bad. And people seem resigned to long waits.

The casualty patients – anyone who is not acute – queue on benches in front of a partition. A blurred and soundless TV is set up high and on the floor are cigarette stubs, drink cans and litter. A baby is crying: staff say they try to see children in half the waiting time. Alongside the infant, a cardiac case, with deathly face, is wheeled down the corridor. Just inches behind the casualty queue, the other side of the screen, are six patients lined up on stretcher trollies. One woman writhes in agony with renal stones. She has an ochre-yellow face.

Next to the trollies, in this smaller than small casualty area, people are examined in one of three curtained cubicles – discussing their problems with the corridor – or one of the three cubicles. Nearby is the emergency room, where they take the unconscious, diabetic, cardiac, asthmatic and ‘trauma’ victims – for example stabbings and shootings – who need to go to theatre.

There’s room for five here, but in the last few months they’ve been accommodating eight – more than 100 beds were closed last year due to financial restraint. If someone dies in casualty, it is here (with perhaps an asthmatic child to the left and a chap with stab wounds to the right) that the relatives come to view the body behind curtains.

The nurses take calls on the emergency red phone – one RTA (road traffic accident) and a young man who has been critically beaten up. Yet tonight they say it’s really quiet.

Behind the reception area, out of the view of patients’ eyes, there is a blacklist on the wall of regular hospital abusers. And on the door there is a memo concerning a bogus female doctor who is operating in the area. An Asian man with a public school voice and what looks to have been a bottle smashed over his head comes to reception. His ear hangs off. ‘Human bite,’ the receptionist writes on his form. His boyfriend bit him. They refused even to be admitted to the same accident and emergency, so his lover has gone to Guy’s.

It’s 10.30 and the tramps have started to arrive for the night. Two dossers are fast asleep on the cushioned bench in the hallway. The nurses sometimes let them sleep off their drink on the trollies behind the screen: rather that than the men go out and injure themselves.

Wiflred is a regular and this is his second home (whether his first home is a fixed address is unclear.) He doesn’t come to be seen by a doctor, and brings his dog and squirrel and bottle of meths. If a fight is going on, he protects the staff.

Now they’re bleeping security. A man with a shaved head and a tracksuit, late forties, is punching fisticuffs in the air. He’s drunk and with a face full of aggro. His friend got beaten up, so he wants to bash up the nurses. Someone calms him down. Then he proceeds to stand in front of every trolley that they try to wheel through. He tells the nurse that he’s come to the hospital because he wants to become a Christian. Then he lies on the floor, head down on the red tiles, in front of reception.

‘Come on, go and sit in the corridor,’ says one of the ambulancemen. The aggressive man paces, threatens to beat up the staff, lolls his tongue out at the nurse, red eyes rolling, and hits his head. (It later turns out he has a psychiatric history – as do many of the patients who make their way across the road from the Maudsley.) At 2.30am, a staff nurse attempts to discharge him, medically fit. Her voice is rising – and he is jerking himself off through his tracksuit while she talks to him.

The nurses rush around and despite the stressed working conditions, there’s an amazing feeling of dedication and supportiveness. Morale may waver according to the bed situation, but the nurses are in reasonable spirits. To alleviate the problems, the hospital opened an emergency admissions ward with 20 beds in August, which cuts down emergency queuing. They are also planning a rehabilitation centre, which will free up even more beds.

At 11.35 three undertakers, grim faced and charcoal suited, come in to pick up a body. A boy pushes up against the reception glass. ‘I’ve got bad sunburn,’ he says. A woman arrives: ‘I think I’ve sprained my wrist.’ In emergency casualty, a policewoman emerges from a cubicle. She’s wearing a plastic apron. The staff are pressurised and she used to work in A and E – an unusual occurence, this – so she’s helping clean up the body of a young boy battered to death. The sister says she sees about one serious assault a week. Back in the reception office, a policeman is on the phone. ‘We’ve managed to identify the body, it’s Mark . . .’

Outside, a teenager keeps getting up from a trolley. He has overdosed on heroin. ‘I want to go ‘ome.’ The security guard keeps bringing him back. They’ve admitted one overdose each night this week. ‘Fackin’ ‘ell,’ he says. ‘You take too long to see me around ‘ere.’ Later on he walks out, on his fifth attempt. ‘Oh let him go,’ says the nurse. ‘We can’t keep on watching him.’

An ambulance has just knocked down a pedestrian. They bemoan the fact that the vehicle is now going to be off the road for three hours. The 999 calls are stacking up. They’re legally allowed only one patient in an ambulance – but a nurse says she saw seven getting out of one vehicle after a fight on New Year’s Eve.

Sid is one of the community of regulars. He has duly medicated himself before arriving. ‘Me and me mate was taking all sorts of pills.’ He has a cross tatooed on his forehead and a look of permanent mourning. He perks up to tell about the time he came to have his spleen taken out. That was when someone ‘who used to be a friend’ beat him up. Sid tells his war story with relish. He appears really to enjoy life – and its attendant attention – only when he’s ill. Tonight he’s in because he rode his pedal bike into a stationary vehicle when cycling around a corner .

His apparent enthusiasm is matched by that of Mr and Mrs Blidi, an Algerian couple, with their 22-month-old daughter Hannia. She wears Moslem head dress. ‘We all been here regularly,’ says Mr Blidi. ‘We go here, Guy’s or Westminster.’ Hannia fell down when she was in an aeroplane. She sleeps through her parents’ concern. One family bought their child in because she was having nightmares. The trouble is, GPs won’t go out in this area at night.

Nearby, a dear old lady – 90-plus with hennaed hair – lies wrapped in a red blanket. She looks spirited and her feet – bare and gnarled – protrude. She’s fallen over. The air smells deeply dank, of feet and the strong and acrid smell of anxiety sweat. There is no air conditioning. ‘Damn fool thing to do,’ her daughter, who lives with her, bellows. ‘What were you doing? Playing football?’ The daughter, wearing brick-coloured shorts and a vindictive expression, paces up and down. ‘People will think you’re loopy. They won’t be far wrong.’

It’s 3.45am. A lady who was mugged and has no money sits waiting for some coins from petty cash before she can go home. Inside, the nurses who work a nine-hour 23 minute shift remain. Outside, the police car has gone and three empty wheelchairs stand discarded.