Hi everyone!
We are continuing to catalogue the Thackray Museum of Medicine archive with the help of our terrific volunteers. Below are a few highlights from our collection that have recently been catalogued.
Ida and Robert Arthington Hospital
The Ida and Robert Arthington Hospital, commonly known as ‘The Ida’ was founded in 1886, a hospital in Cookridge, Leeds, for semi-convalescents who were patients of the Leeds General Infirmary. The hospital was originally built by Leeds General Infirmary as an annex to their existing hospital in the city. As Leeds was rife with poor sanitation and illnesses – particularly tuberculosis – patients needed a place to recover which had fresh air, so a hospital was chosen in the Cookridge countryside. The hospital was funded by Mr and Mrs North, who offered money to build the hospital as a memorial to their young daughter Ida, who had died in Italy. In 1906, a similar hospital was built adjoining the Ida, funded by a bequest from a local man and named the Robert Arthington Hospital. The two hospitals were joined and operated together, leading to a name change of ‘The Ida and Robert Arthington Hospital’ which led to a mistaken belief that Ida and Robert Arthington were related.
The hospital had a regular nursing staff and other Leeds General Infirmary nurses were seconded there for short periods. A new rehabilitation service was introduced at The Ida in 1974 to help people who had suffered a stroke or trauma that had affected their ability to lead a normal life. From 1974 The Ida became a centre for excellence in rehabilitation, and the consultant in rehabilitation appointed by The Ida, Doctor Anne Chamberlain, became a Professor in Rehabilitation in 1988 for her work at The Ida, at which she had introduced individual programmes for each patient including physiotherapy and occupational therapy. A ‘Friends of the Ida’ group was established in the 1950s to fund amenities for the patients including equipment, furnishings and furniture, while patients were encouraged to help with gardening work through the purchase of a greenhouse. The Ida became recognised as a National Demonstration Centre for Rehabilitation in the early 1980s but also suffered from financial pressures during the decade, and in 1994 the decision was made to move the Rehabilitation Unit to Chapel Allerton Hospital, thus closing The Ida.
The collection consists mainly of photographs taken around the time The Ida celebrated its centenary year, including photographs of nursing staff and patients undertaking social activities, and a copy of the souvenir programme celebrating the Centenary Victorian Gala of The Ida and Robert Arthington Hospital on 11 July 1987.
One of our volunteers, Carol, was eager to look at the collection herself because she used to work there. And, to her delight, she managed to find a picture of herself alongside other nurses, in 1968.
Dorothy Thornton (nee Wood)
As well as discovering herself in our archives, Carol has recently been busy cataloguing the papers of Dorothy Thornton (nee Wood), another collection of nurses’ papers that we hold in our collection. Thornton trained as a Registered Nurse at Bradford Royal Infirmary and was accepted onto the Register of The General Nursing Council for England and Wales on the 6th of May 1958. She won several awards at the Presentation of Medals, Prizes, and Certificates at Bradford Royal Infirmary School of Nursing the following year, as shown in the photographs below.
Our collection contains correspondence, certificates and photographs from Thornton’s career, alongside over 50 papers of doctors, nurses and surgeons who worked in Leeds and Yorkshire, which have been donated to the Thackray Museum of Medicine.
William Blair-Bell, Collection
Carol then assisted me with cataloguing and preserving a collection of papers relating to William Blair-Bell, medical doctor and gynaecologist and obstetrician. Blair-Bell was born in Wallasey, Merseyside in 1871 and educated at Rossall School, King’s College London and King’s College Hospital. Obtaining a degree in medicine in 1896, he went into general practice at Birkenhead upon qualifying and later decided to specialise in obstetrics and gynaecology. In 1905 Blair-Bell became gynaecological surgeon in charge of out-patients at the Royal Infirmary in Liverpool, later becoming gynaecological surgeon to the Infirmary in 1913. He became professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Liverpool in 1921, a position he held for ten years.
Our collection consists of correspondence, credit notes, receipts, telegrams, memoranda, accounts, and invoices compiled by Blair-Bell between 1920 and 1947. The papers include requests for supplies, administrative correspondence with University of Liverpool Medical Department and donations made by Blair-Bell to medical institutions. There is also correspondence sent to Blair-Bell from estate agents regarding properties Blair-Bell was interested in, the practice of which I suppose is very different to now!
The condition of this collection was not too good when we first accessed it. There were lots of torn pages and papers that had been damaged by rust and dirt. So, we have had to spend time repackaging the collections so they can be looked after long-term and accessed by researchers, including rehousing torn papers into polyester sleeves, so they can be handled without the risk of further damage, and re-arranging the papers into a more logical date order and putting them into acid-free folders. I’ve been used to getting my hands dirty over the years when working in archives, particularly when handling volumes that have suffered with red rot, but thankfully Carol didn’t mind that and was happy also to use our trusty staple remover to get rid of the dirty old staples and replace them with brass paperclips!
We are continuing to catalogue more collections and make them available externally through The National Archives’ Discovery webpages at and the Archives Hub website. I recently wrote an article for the Archives Hub which you can read here.
But also keep a look out on our online catalogue where details of more of our fascinating archives will be added on a regular basis.
Thanks for reading!
Robert