At the end of March (which feels a long time ago now), our project to catalogue the records of the Herrison Hospital collection ended. Before she left, our Project Archivist, Sophie Smith, gave us her thoughts on the project and the collection…
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Working with a collection as complex and varied as the Herrison Hospital collection has been in equal parts challenging and interesting. From understanding the administrative records and practices of the hospital to identifying various boiler and chimney plans there is a wealth of information about the hospital within this collection. As a wrap up of my time as Herrison Archivist I would like to highlight some of favourite discoveries and records within the collection.
The first of these will be the architectural plans we have Herrison House from 1901, while these are plans we have used images of in various publications before, we have 24 separate plans of the building detailing every part of its structure and layout. These are a part of the catalogue I believe will really benefit from more user access as they highlight really intricate details in full colour and are a wonderful part of the collection.
Secondly, this list would be complete without a mention of the patient Order Papers of which there are over 12,000 records and one was created for each patient admitted into the hospital. These records have been catalogued and indexed to allow quicker access to patients’ details. Our hope for this resource is not just that it will allow researchers to find patients, but it will also allow for further research into certain types of patients and will bring to light admission trends such as patients were often admitted more during winter months rather than summer. This type of trend research could allow a further understanding of psychological needs and care.
Moving forward onto more specific items in the collection I would like to call attention to a letter that was recently deposited by the Dorset County Museum, within the letter there is a complaint detailed by some male nurses who claimed that the medical superintendent of Herrison was refusing Kitchener’s call to arms in 1914 [Ref NG-HH/CMR/5/2/8]. This is a particularly interesting item as, apart from taking shell shock victims into the hospital, there aren’t a lot of items that address how Herrison reacted to these types of conscription notices during WWI, and this gives researchers a further insight into the asylum at this period.
There is always something interesting and different to view in the Herrison Hospital archive; a collection of this many documents is always going to have records of interest and this blog serves to give just a small taste of the types of records that can be found in this collection.
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Please note that hospital patient records are subject to certain restrictions under the Data Protection Act. Access to records containing information less than 100 years old are restricted. For more information visit our website. For enquires email: archives@dorsetcouncil.gov.uk