More great websites
Although Ancestry is the strongest subscription site for researching medical ancestors, the other major sites hold useful material. Findmypast has records of Bethlem Hospital ( bit.ly/fmp-bethlem), plus the 1913 Medical Register and both familyrelatives.com and thegenealogist.co.uk offer a range of medical registers.
The People’s History of the NHS ( peopleshistorynhs.org) is a social history hub building towards a new BBC series. It includes a ‘virtual NHS museum’ and a members’ area where you can share your own memories. The NHS at 70 ( bmh.manchester.ac.uk/ nhs70) is also a project worth watching.
Pre-NHS healthcare was often carried out by voluntary hospitals, and the dated but still functioning Voluntary Hospitals Database is at hospitalsdatabase.lshtm.ac.uk. Similarly, The National Archives’ old Hospital Records Database ( nationalarchives.gov.uk/hospitalrecords) can still be searched although it is no longer updated.
Records of hospitals often reside at local archives, but some may still be with the hospital itself, such as St Bartholomew’s ( barts health.nhs.uk/st-bartholomews-museum-and-archives).
Via the website of The Museum of Military Medicine in Aldershot ( museumofmilitarymedicine.org.uk) you can find out more about archives and manuscript items from the four corps of the Army Medical Services. The aforementioned Wellcome Library has digitised Royal Army Medical Corps material at bit.ly/wellcomeramc. You can also search records of First World War volunteers at the British Red Cross website: bit.ly/red-cross-ww1-volunteers.
The UK Medical Heritage Library ( archive.org/details/ukmhl) is a digital library of medical texts (mostly 19th century) uploaded by various institutions. London Museums of Health & Medicine ( medicalmuseums.org) is a centralised website for various museums in the capital, and the individual pages for each institution often feature a ‘Family History’ section. For example, at Bethlem Museum of the Mind the archives include salary books and character books, which provide details of staff; you can request to visit the archives at museumofthemind.org.uk/contact.
The Royal College of Physicians’ Munk’s Roll of Honour, a series of obituaries first compiled by librarian William Munk and published in 1861 under the title Lives of the Fellows, is available at munksroll.rcplondon.ac.uk.
Other useful websites include the British Dental Museum ( bda.org/museum); British Military Nurses ( scarletfinders.co.uk); the Historic Hospital Admission Records Project ( hharp.org); Lambeth Palace Library, which holds medical licences issued by the Archbishops of Canterbury between 1535 and 1775 ( lambeth palacelibrary.org); the Lothian Health Services Archive ( lhsa.lib. ed.ac.uk); the Oxfordshire Health Archives ( oxfordshirehealth archives.nhs.uk); the Royal British Nurses’ Association ( rbna.org. uk/archives.asp); the Royal College of General Practitioners ( bit. ly/rcgp-archive); the library of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh ( library.rcsed.ac.uk); and the Royal London Hospital Museum & Archives ( bit.ly/royal-london-archives).