RECORD ROUND-UP
What’s available online and in the archives
Medical registers
There are increasingly many important medical records appearing online, with the main vendors hosting several useful collections on their sites in recent years to get you started. Copies of medical directories and registers, noting the careers of many practitioners from the 19th century onward, are available on Ancestry ( ancestry.co.uk) through its ‘UK & Ireland, Medical Directories, 1845-1942’ and ‘Medical Registers, 1859-1959’ collections. Other collections of interest on Ancestry include the ‘Dentist Registers, 1879-1942’, ‘Medical and Dental Students Registers, 1882-1937’, the ‘Physiotherapy and Masseuse Registers, 1895-1980’ collection, detailing members of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, and ‘Royal Navy Medical Journals, 1817-1857’. TheGenealogist ( thegenealogist.co.uk) has a graduate list from the University of Aberdeen from 1901-1925 available, as well as matriculation records from the University of Glasgow from 1728-1858. Several medical directories and gazetteers are also available at familyrelatives.com.
Military medics
Findmypast ( findmypast.com) has several useful collections for medical ancestors, including a medical register from 1913, and the site’s Military Nurses 1856-1994 collection. This includes service details of Scottish Women’s Hospitals nurses from 1914 who saw service in the First World War, as well as members of the Army Nursing Service and Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service, amongst others. If your Scottish ancestor was involved with the British Red Cross, the site’s website at redcross.org.uk/en/About-us/ Who-weare/ Museum-and-archives/ Collections has many useful archival collections and catalogues worth consulting.
Hospital admissions
Although very few hospital records are online, the admission registers from Glasgow’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children from 1883-1904 are free at hharp.org, and papers from Glasgow’s Gartnavel Hospital, founded as Gartnavel Lunatic Asylum in 1814, are available on the Wellcome Library website ( wellcomelibrary. org/collections/digital- collections/mental
healthcare/gartnavel-royal- hospital). The monthly Notices of Admission compiled by the Superintendent of Mental Institutions from 1858-1962, and General Register of Lunatics in Asylums 1805-1978 are being indexed by Scottish Indexes. There’s a guide available at
scottishindexes.com/helpmc.aspx, while its proprietors, Graham and Emma Maxwell, can perform look-ups for a fee if you are unable to visit the archive.
Scottish physicians
Catalogues for the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh are available at archives.rcpe. ac.
uk/calmView, with many digitised records and publications from the college available on the Internet Archive at archive.org/details/
rcpedinburgh. The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow has a family history page available at rcpsg. ac.uk/library/ collections/family- history, and is also digitising many record sets at rcpsg.ac.uk/
library/digital-volumes. These include Vaccination Registers from 1801-1831 and the Register of Inoculations, Glasgow 18321854, which you can see on p53. These are also freely available on the Internet Archive at bit.ly/ RCPSGrecords.