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 WHAT IS IN THE ARCHIVES? The material held in the Archives is available for research, subject to some statutory restrictions.. Most of our catalogues have been added to the Access to Archives (A2A) site at www.a2a.pro.gov.uk where you can carry out detailed searches of the catalogues of over 200 archive repositories in England.
Catalogues available for consultation
Bicester Cottage Hospital Brackley Cottage Hospital Bradwell Grove Hospital Chipping Norton War Memorial Hospital Churchill Hospital Cold Arbour Hospital
(later Rivermead Rehabilitation Centre) Cotshill Hospital Cowley Road Hospital Didcot Hospital Horton
Hospital, Banbury John Radcliffe Hospital Littlemore Hospital Neithrop Hospital Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre Oxford Eye Hospital Park Hospital Pines Hospital Radcliffe Infirmary Slade Hospital Warneford Hospital Warren
Hospital, Abingdon Watlington Hospital
Catalogues available for consultation Banbury and District Hospital Management Committee Banbury and District Hospital Management Committee 1948-1974 Isis Group Hospital Management Committee 1968-1974 Littlemore Hospital Management Committee 1948-1968 Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre Hospital Management Committee 1955-1963 and Nuffield Hospital Management Committee 1963-1974 United Oxford Hospitals 1948-1974 Wallingford Area House Committee 1948-1958 Warneford and Park Hospital Management Committee 1948-1968 Wingfield-Morris Orthopaedic Hospital Management Committee 1948-1955
Partial catalogue available for consultation Almoner and Medical Social Work
Almoner and Medical Social Work
League of Friends of the Littlemore, Warneford and Park Hospitals
League of Friends of the Littlemore, Warneford and Park Hospitals League of Friends of the Radcliffe Infirmary
Lists available for consultation Radcliffe Guild of Nurses
Radcliffe Guild of Nurses Wingfield League
What information can be found about patients?
What information can be found about patients? We can help you if you have definite evidence that an ancestor was a patient in one of the hospitals; a death certificate would be an example. However, if you have no such evidence but are hoping to find a familiar name by a random search this could be very time consuming and ultimately yield very little information. There are thousands of people mentioned in the records and very few entries have any details. If anything is found at all it is often only a note of a patient's name on admission to a hospital, and possibly a note of the date of discharge or death. In these cases there will be no home addresses and no names of relatives. Access to patient case records is governed by several statutes, including the Data Protection Act and the Freedom of Information Act. Usually records will be available for general access 100 years after the death of the individual concerned.
And what about hospital staff? The appointments of senior staff are usually recorded in minute books, but early nurses and all junior and support staff are hard to trace. It is unlikely that we can help you unless you have a name and approximate date. A few photographs of staff survive, but individuals are rarely identified. Generally the best you can hope for is dates of appointment and of departure or death for senior administrators, doctors and matrons. For members of staff and of the public who were on hospital committees it is likely that the dates of their membership of the committee can be found, and possibly minutes of their participation in meetings. The survival of a few account books means that occasionally junior staff can be identified for a short period. If a member of staff was dismissed or disciplined there may be details of the offence in the minute books.
Sources for local history: Oxfordshire, Sussex and elsewhere Oxfordshire
As well as plans, drawings, engravings and photographs of the hospitals and their immediate surroundings the records provide occasional evidence of the previous history of hospital sites. Both the John Radcliffe and Warneford Hospitals are built on land which was originally part of the manor of Headington. Plans of Littlemore Hospital show the location of the adjacent railway station, long since disappeared, and the Radcliffe Infirmary's records throw light on the history of the Radcliffe Observatory. Members of the local communities and of the University served on committees, were subscribers to the hospitals or supported voluntary activities. Sometimes records throw condsiderable light on one individual. Rev. Vaughan Thomas (1775-1858), Rector of Yarnton and Stoneleigh, was a member of the Committees of both the Warneford Hospital and the Radcliffe Infirmary, and his strident personalitiy dominates correspondence, Visitors' Books and other records. The benefactions of William Morris, later Lord Nuffield (1877-1963) appear in the records of several hospitals. Local tradesmen supplied and served the hospitals, and so accounts and other papers provide information about them, from builders to butchers. And prisoners: the Radcliffe Infirmary baked its own bread, sending the corn to be ground on the treadmill at Oxford Gaol. In 1843 Samuel Wilson Warneford presented the Broad Estate (in Hellingly and adjoining parishes) in trust to the uses of the Radcliffe Asylum in Headington, subsequently named the Warneford Asylum. Consequently a considerable collection of material relating to these properties is preserved among the records of the Warneford Hospital. The documents begin in 1567 and include the Court Books of the Manor of Warlington 1630-1934.
There are also records of properties in Kent, Surrey and London.
Sources for the history of medicine The collections provide a source in one place for comparisons between different hospitals, administrations, nurse training schools and alumni organizations. A particular strength is the records of two mental hospitals in the same town: a private asylum founded for the middle classes in 1826 (the Warneford) and a pauper asylum opened in 1846 (the Littlemore); the case and administrative records of both are almost complete. The Warneford's early collection of correspondence and papers is particularly good and includes advice sought from asylums in other parts of the country. There have been many ground breaking developments in Oxfordshire hospitals. After the First World War G.R. Girdlestone's plans for the organization of orthopaedics in Oxford were made the model for the rest of the country; the Wingfield Orthopaedic Hospital, later the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, became a world leader in orthopaedics. On 27 January 1941 the first dose of penicillin was given intravenously to man at the Radcliffe Infirmary, and five months laterthe first accident service in Great Britain began in the same hospital. In 1948 the Nuffield Foundation established a research unit in Oxford which found and measured the missing clotting factor in the blood of haemophilic patients and produced a substitute. At the Cowley Road Hospital in Oxford Lionel Cosin pioneered the concept of the Day Hospital for the elderly. In the psychiatric field the first Group Homes in the country were set up in Oxford (houses in which psychiatric patients were able to live in the community), and it was here that Community Psychiatric Nurses were first attached to GP practices. The Archives and related local bodies have in their care several runs of local patient case records. These include two runs covering periods of over 100 years (psychiatric) and three of 50 years (ophthalmic, general and maternity). As most cover local families there may be implications for research into genetic relationships. Where records are not available for general access potential researchers would be required to make a detailed application to the appropriate senior officers or committee so that matters of confidentiality and data protection can be considered. There is no guarantee that permission would be granted. |
