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Bill Oddie was motivated to look into the history of his family because of what happened to his mother. By his own admission, Bill has few memories of his mother, apart from the fact that she was afflicted by mental illness and was admitted into an asylum for treatment when he was a child. Consequently, Bill harboured feelings of resentment towards his mother because he considered he had been abandoned.
The research into his story took him back to the hospital where his mother had been treated, but it transpired that her patient’s notes had been destroyed. All that remained were administrative staff records, although Bill was able to track down some of the nurses who had worked in the hospital during his mother’s treatment. Many local health authorities destroyed medical records as a matter of course, although applications by former patients or next of kin can be made; in many cases, it should be at least possible to ascertain when someone was resident in hospital, and then use other sources to establish what treatment they might have received. The first port of call if you want to track down surviving health records is the HOSPREC database, available from The National Archives.
In addition, the National Archives has a wide range of records deposited with the Ministry of Health and successor departments that reveal in great detail how patients were treated for mental illness, and the length of their residence in hospital.
Catalogue reference: MH 85/7
Patients in institutions, health notes
These are representative case notes relating to the original admission of Alfred Fuller to an asylum in 1867, with his eventual transfer to another establishment 60 years later having spent his entire life under medical supervision.
Catalogue reference: MH 94/198
Patients Admission Register (Mental Deficiency Patients, 1955)
This is a sample page from an admission register. In most instances, records of admission and discharge are all that remain.
You can find deposited hospital archives via the Hospital records database. You can also search The National Archives’ catalogue for related health records created by the Ministry of Health and its successor departments.
