Creating databases of Victorian children's hospital patient admissions (360G-Wellcome-087567_Z_08_Z)

This project builds on previous RRMH-funded projects which aim to give historians a unique means to study hospital provision for the sick child in 19th century Britain. Databases of patient admissions to Great Ormond Street Hospital (GN073912, completed), Evelina Children's Hospital and Alexandra Hospital for Children with Hip Disease (GN084252, completion date December 2008) formed the focus of the previous projects. The new project will add the Royal Hospital for Sick Children (Glasgow, Yorkhill) to the collection, enabling comparisons between London and Glasgow to be made. The databases, which will be made available free over the internet to academics and the general public, will form a core research tool for an academic project on the development of institutionalised childcare in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Archival-standard microfilms of the registers will be deposited at the Yorkhill repository. The project will produce papers in refereed journals, and a symposium on childcare history. The addition of Glasgow to the series will leave only two extant collections of 19th century admissions to children's hospitals for inclusion in future projects: the Aberdeen Royal Children's Hospital and the Royal Edinburgh Children's Hospital. However, children were also admitted to general hospitals and a previous pilot project (GN83076) has identified a selection of such institutions in the provinces with suitable surviving records, which could be included in a future project. It is planned to meet historians working on nineteenth century child health in autumn 2008 to determine the future priorities for further database creation.