Our archive sector team offer some national highlights from healthcare related archives, including correspondence with Florence Nightingale and Charles Dickens, a UNESCO listed collection in West Yorkshire and a hospital archive dating back to 1137.
In honour of the 75th anniversary of the NHS, we’ve been talking to a variety of archive services to shine a light on the records they hold about the NHS and the history of healthcare. Some of these records were created by local NHS organisations such as hospitals, ambulance services, mental health trusts and Clinical Commissioning Groups. These organisations are subject to the Public Records Act, which means that they have a statutory obligation to transfer any records that they regard as having historical value to their local ‘place of deposit’. These ‘places of deposit’ could be a local authority archive service, a university, or a hospital. NHS records are of immense value for anyone undertaking legal, administrative, epidemiological or historical research.
Read on to discover the range of insights that archive collections can provide about healthcare in the past.
Knowsley Archives Service
Knowsley Archives Service houses fascinating records and collections from Rainhill Hospital and Whiston Infirmary, dating from the late 19th century. Knowsley Archives also holds architectural plans relating to these two hospitals and St Helen’s Hospital. In the Rainhill Hospital collection, you can find historic patient case files with photos as well as more modern collections featuring ‘grey literature’, hospital-produced magazines and newspaper scrapbooks from the 1980s until its closure.
During World War II, Whiston Infirmary treated many military casualties, as well as prisoners of war. You can also explore records showing the ways in which the institution offered maternity and acute care along with mental health services and services for geriatric patients and welfare inmates.
West Yorkshire Archive Service
Like Knowsley Archives Service, West Yorkshire Archive Service also holds historic mental health records, but it provides interesting insights into the development of mental health care all the way from 1841 through the 20th century. These collections too contain building plans, patient records and administrative documents offering an indication of the development of healthcare throughout West Yorkshire. This archive is commemorated on the UNESCO Memory of the World register and contains records on patients, staff chaplain services and entertainment.
Bristol Archives
As well as holding the records of at least 30 hospitals in and around the city, Bristol Archives also holds some fascinating collections about the first hand experiences of nurses before and after the foundation of the NHS. Princess Campbell and Peggy Rowe were just two of the nurses with fascinating stories of working at the NHS. Born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1939, Campbell came to England in the early sixties to train to become a nurse at Manor Park Hospital. She was determined and hardworking but describes being overlooked for promotion. With the support of her colleagues, Campbell became the first black ward sister in Bristol in 1974. Bristol Archives holds an interview Campbell recorded in 2007 which she shares her experiences. Another inspiring nurse, Peggy Rowe, worked as a nurse for 13 years beginning her nursing career at Bristol Children’s hospital. Rowe’s training ended a few months after the founding of the NHS and she recounts her stories of the ward and the founding of the NHS in a handwritten note.
Oxfordshire Health Archives
Moving to another county, Oxfordshire Health Archives include the records of several National Health Service hospitals and associated administrative bodies. Unlike some of the archives listed here, you won’t find any GP records of any kind or any hospital patient medical records after 1945. Nevertheless, the collection is a rich resource for those interested in healthcare provision in the county before the war.
The Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability
In London, the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability was the first institution of its kind offering care to people who were living with chronic injury or illness in England. You can find many interesting artefacts here such as historic patient admission records, illustrated annual reports, historical photographs and audio-visual material. The hospital was founded during the Victorian period – you can find fundraising literature and appeals which includes a speech by prominent figures of that era: Charles Dickens and Florence Nightingale! In fact, you can find seven letters from Florence Nightingale to the hospital board which demonstrated the recruitment of a matron and advice on hospital design.
Archives: Wigan and Leigh
Continuing to explore the Victorian era, Archives: Wigan & Leigh hold several collections that help us to understand the history of healthcare in the borough from the 1800s. Explore what healthcare was like before the NHS with various Poor Relief Books from Hindley and Tyldesley in the 1800s, through to the first 500 people to receive ground-breaking hip replacements at Wrightington Hospital. The archives will also be exhibiting records and medical equipment from local hospitals in their temporary exhibition in Leigh Town Hall.
Barts Health NHS Trust
Interested in finding out about healthcare before the Victorian era? It’s worth exploring Barts Health NHS Trust Archives which holds records that date back to the medieval period of 1137. The archive and object collections include staff, patient, and management records in the Barts Health group. The archive is one of the largest hospital collections hosting records which could fill 2.5km of shelving – that’s a lot of records!
Take a look at the full list of archive collections, with links through to the online catalogue. You can also check out their interactive map, to view the locations of the hospitals they hold records for.
Note for researchers: Given the sensitive nature of healthcare collections, personal information within these collections is governed by data protection legislation which will necessarily limit access to some records. Archive professionals managing these collections will be able to advise on access to their records.