The Historic Hospital Registers Project

In 2007 the centre was successful in securing funding from the Wellcome Trust for a one year project to extend the work on the Great Ormond Street admission registers into other hospitals. The Historic Hospital Registers Project, which began in January 2008, focuses on two more London children's hospitals in the Victorian period: the Evelina Hospital and the Alexandra Hospital for Children with Hip Disease.

The project will use the same methodology developed for the Great Ormond Street work to construct databases of admissions to these two hospitals. In particular, the same standardisation of data such as diseases and addresses will be applied, rendering comparisons between all the hospitals possible. Both hospitals will contribute new information on the state of child health in Victorian London, complementing that already made available from Great Ormond Street. The Evelina served a very different area of London: many of its children came from the poverty stricken boroughs south of the Thames, such as Southwark and Bermondsey. The Alexandra Hip Hospital has several features which make it of interest. It was a specialist hospital which attempted to treat diseases of the joints (usually tubercular in origin), one of the scourges of poor children from this era. In addition, it had very close ties with Great Ormond Street, having been founded by two of the latter's lady nurses, and it shared many of its eminent surgeons and physicians.

The two databases, when completed, will be made available via the web to researchers. They will facilitate comparative studies with Great Ormond Street, creating a rich source for medical historians and epidemiologists. As these three hospitals are the only English Children's Hospitals for which Victorian admission records have survived, the preservation of their contents in easily accessible form is of even higher significance.

It is planned, subject to funding being available, to extend this project further in the future. The admission registers for three Scottish children's hospitals have survived, and it is hoped to work with Glasgow and Aberdeen in 2009. Work on these Scottish hospitals will extend further the opportunities for comparative analysis for medical historians and demographers.