Funding for research available

Did you know that the Wellcome Trust gives out research bursaries of £5,000 to £25,000 to fund research into collections, like The Children’s Society Archive, that have received Wellcome Trust funding previously?

Click here to find out more about the Wellcome Trust’s research bursaries.

Our Wellcome Trust-funded Unexplored Riches in Medical History project here at The Children’s Society will be coming to an end in the next few months, and we’ve done so much since we started. We have catalogued and conserved thousands of records that can be used to study medical history. Soon our catalogue will be online for you to search and see what we have for yourself.

And this is where you come in. At the moment our medical history records are an untapped resource, crying out for research. We didn’t call these records ‘Unexplored Riches’ for nothing; they now need to be explored further! A quick browse through this blog will show you just some of fascinating things that you could find in the collection, but that really is just the tip of the iceberg.

Children receiving fresh air treatment in the outdoor ward of St Nicholas' Home, Pyrford, Surrey, early 20th Century

Thanks to the Wellcome Trust’s research bursaries, you can give your research the financial help you need. The bursaries will fund academic research using collections like ours, and it doesn’t have to be historically grounded research either. If you’re not an academic, the bursaries will also fund work in the creative arts, whether you’re an artist, writer, performer or broadcaster wanting to use our collection.

So what medical history sources do we have? Check out these links:

Our records can be used to research many things, but some of our strengths include:

  • Children’s health
  • Victorian and Edwardian healthcare
  • Diseases of poverty
  • Contagious diseases
  • Orthopaedic conditions
  • Historic medical treatments
  • Charities and pre-NHS healthcare
  • Sanitation
  • Vaccination
  • Diet and nutrition

Will you be at the forefront of discovering what our medical history records have to offer? See the Wellcome Trust’s website for more details on how to apply for a research bursary.

If you have questions about the bursaries or about using our collections for research, please email us at: Hidden-Lives-Revealed@childrenssociety.org.uk

Unexplored Riches in Medical History – in action!

I’ve got something exciting to share with you today. The Unexplored Riches in Medical History project has now been captured on film!

In a short video that has been produced by the Wellcome Trust, Ian Wakeling, the head of The Children’s Society Archive, gives a really great introduction to the Unexplored Riches in Medical History project.

Have a watch and see us all in action! And, more importantly, see some of the wonderful archive documents that we’re working on.

Come hear a talk about our medical history project on 8 December 2014 in London

Here’s a reminder that I will be giving a talk about our Unexplored Riches in Medical History project next Monday, 8 December.

I’ll be discussing how far we’ve come in this project and I’ll also be looking at some of the fascinating medical history trends that we’ve discovered as we’ve gone along. For example: how was The Children’s Society affected by the flu pandemic of 1918? And just what was so unusual about chicken pox?

Please come along to find out more! The talk will be held at Senate House in London on Monday 8 December, starting at 5:30pm. Attendance is free.

Click here for more details.

Children undergoing hydrotherapy treatment at St Nicholas' and St Martin's Orthopaedic Hospital and Special School, Pyrford, Surrey, c1930s

I look forward to seeing you there!

The end is nigh! Find out about the final stages of our project at a seminar in London on 8 December 2014

Want to hear what we’ve discovered in our Unexplored Riches in Medical History project? Now you can!

I’m happy to announce that I will be giving one of the Voluntary Action History Society’s seminars on 8 December where I will be discussing the results of the Unexplored Riches in Medical History project. Want to come along? The seminar will be held at Senate House in London on 8 December, starting at 5:30pm. Attendance is free.

Click here for more details.

Children undergoing hydrotherapy treatment at St Nicholas' and St Martin's Orthopaedic Hospital and Special School, Pyrford, Surrey, c1930s

We’re drawing ever closer to the end of the Unexplored Riches in Medical History project, and I’ll be using this seminar to discuss just how far we’ve come in the two and a half years since the project began. In particular I’ll be highlighting the historical trends in children’s health and healthcare that we’ve discovered during the project. And, for those of you wanting to take on a challenge, I’m going to talk about the parts of our archive collection that could really benefit from further medical history research. (As with any project like this, we’ve uncovered more questions than we have answers.)

Please come along to hear what we’ve found. It would be great to see you there.

Visit the Voluntary Action History Society website for further information.

Discovering medical history and childcare at the Child Care History Network Conference 2014

“Healing the Wounds of Childhood” That was the name of the conference we attended two weeks ago. It was the annual Child Care History Network conference and this year the focus was on children’s medical history.

You can listen to the talks from the conference, including my own, on the Child Care History Network website.

The conference venue, Buckerell Lodge Hotel in Exeter

The conference was held at the Buckerell Lodge Hotel in Exeter, and as we were still in the last throes of summer (despite the fact that it was October!) the day was warm and sunny. What better time to go to Devon?

There was a whole day full of speakers talking about medical history. First up, though, was myself!

Janine speaking about the Unexplored Riches in Medical History project at the conference

I gave the delegates an overview of what we’re doing in the Unexplored Riches in Medical History project, explaining how we’re cataloguing and conserving our records relating to medical history so that they can be used for medical history research. It was also a great excuse to show off some of the fascinating records we have here at The Children’s Society Archive, including a medical book listing the day-to-day medical care given to children at St Cuthbert’s Nursery in Darlington, County Durham, in 1966; and the case file of Annie, a girl who came into care in 1907 aged thirteen, and the struggle of medical professionals to diagnose the condition that left her seriously ill in 1909.

Want to know more? The good news is that you can now listen to my talk and see my slides on the Child Care History Network website. Hopefully video recordings from the conference and slides from some of the other talks will go up in the next few weeks, so keep an eye out for them!

The other talks on the day were really interesting. We heard about the Charity Organisation Society and its 19th Century involvement in healthcare in Oxford. There was a lot of discussion about 20th Century views on children’s healthcare and development, including the child guidance movement, and the work of people such as Truby King and John Bowlby. We heard about historical views on adoption and its effects on children. Finally, we learned about modern practice and how art therapy can be used to help treat mental health problems.

It was all fascinating stuff, as were the conversations held during the tea and lunch breaks about people’s research interests and backgrounds in child care or medical practice. On top of all that, as with the previous conference we went to, we had a stand with leaflets about the Unexplored Riches in Medical History project, where we could talk to the delegates about the project in more detail.

All in all, it was a great day. But you don’t have to take my word for it! Visit the Child Care History Network website to listen to the talks for yourself. And as I said, more slides and hopefully video recordings will go up over the coming weeks so make sure to keep checking the webpage for more.

Learn about our project at the Child Care History Network conference

Here’s a quick reminder that I’m going to be speaking at the Child Care History Network conference next month. It will be held at the Buckerell Lodge Hotel in Exeter on 3 October 2014.

Visit the conference website to book your place:
Healing the Wounds of Childhood – the Medical and Psychological Care of Children: Historical and Current Perspectives

Children and staff at St Denys’ Home, Clitheroe, Lancashire, 1919

Please consider coming along if you’d like to hear more about our Unexplored Riches in Medical History project. It would be great to meet some of you there.

The keynote address of the conference will be given by Professor John Stewart from Glasgow Caledonian University. Other speakers include Jeremy Holmes, Sarah Hayes and Annie Skinner, and I’ve just heard that another exciting speaker may be added soon.

Click here to see the conference programme and book your place.

A further grant for the Unexplored Riches in Medical History project

We are pleased to announce that The Children’s Society Records and Archive Centre has obtained a further £42,180 grant from the Wellcome Trust for the ‘Unexplored Riches in Medical History’ project to continue paper conservation work on the earliest children’s case files. The additional money will allow our two professional paper conservators to work for a further eight months to better preserve the files and make them accessible to the public and researchers.

The project, including the launch of an online catalogue of case files and children’s homes records, is due to be completed in March 2015.

By creating an online archive catalogue and through conservation work, the records will be widely accessible to The Children’s Society, medical, social and academic researchers and the general public.

To find out what we’ve discovered during the project recently, take a look at some of our blog posts:

For more information, the project’s homepage can be found here: http://www.hiddenlives.org.uk/unexplored_riches

And check out our Facebook page for updates: http://www.facebook.com/HiddenLivesRevealed

Find out more about our project at the Child Care History Network conference – Exeter, 3 October 2014

Today I am excited to announce that I will be giving a talk about our Unexplored Riches in Medical History project at this year’s Child Care History Network conference. The theme of the 2014 conference will be Healing the Wounds of Childhood – the Medical and Psychological Care of Children: Historical and Current Perspectives, and it will be held at the Buckerell Lodge Hotel in Exeter on 3 October 2014.

Click here for the conference website, where you can find the conference programme and details of how to book your place.

Children and staff at St Denys’ Home, Clitheroe, Lancashire, 1919

For my talk I’ll be discussing the Unexplored Riches in Medical History project in more detail. As we’re coming closer to the end of the project, it’ll be a great chance to look at what we’ve achieved so far and what medical information has been unearthed in the archive of The Children’s Society. I’m looking forward to sharing some of the great resources and stories we have here in our archive.

Alongside myself, there will be speakers covering various aspects of the history of children’s health and healthcare. This includes keynote speaker John Stewart, Emeritus Professor of Health History at Glasgow Caledonian University, who will be talking about the history of child guidance.

For more information and to book a place, please click here.

Making connections at the Society for the Social History of Medicine Conference 2014

Things are rather busy here at The Children’s Society Archive, as we’ve just returned from attending the Society for the Social History of Medicine’s 2014 conference. The theme for this year’s conference was Disease, Health and the State. It was held at St Anne’s College in Oxford over three days, and it hosted a multitude of speakers and attendees from across the world, all of whom had an interest in medical history.

St Anne's College, Oxford

Myself and the head of The Children’s Society Archive, Ian Wakeling, attended to run a stand in the conference marketplace. On our stand we had lots of information about the Unexplored Riches in Medical History project, including some facsimile case files and some posts from this blog that I’d printed out. See the stand and a few of our leaflets below.

Janine and Ian at The Children's Society Archive stand

Some of leaflets we took to the conference

It was my first time running a stand at a conference and I have to say that I really enjoyed it. Our aim was to promote The Children’s Society Archive and its wealth of medical information to the conference attendees. This was a big success. We spoke to a lot of people, most of whom hadn’t heard of The Children’s Society before and certainly wouldn’t have realised how useful our archive is for medical history research. They all seemed to be pleasantly surprised!

Janine talking to conference attendees

Not only were we able to give out our details to lots of people who were interested in the archive for research (for themselves or for their students, colleagues and friends), but we were also able to discuss people’s research interests, which were fascinating. It was really interesting to hear about all the research into medical history that’s going on, and to discuss how The Children’s Society archive collection can help.

I hadn’t quite realised, until I started discussing it, what a broad range of medical topics our archive covers. To help me write this blog post, while at the conference I was jotting down the subjects of all the conversations I had with attendees. It turns out that my list is so long that there’s no way I can put it all down here; instead, here’s just a highlight of some of the interesting topics we were talking about:

  • Nursing
  • Convalescent homes
  • Mental health
  • Hygiene
  • Foster care
  • Institutional healthcare
  • Rickets
  • Phototherapy
  • Diabetes
  • Deafness
  • Drug use
  • Funding for medical treatments

Not to mention, there were many times where we discussed how The Children’s Society started and how it got to where it is now, including the whole range of records it created during that time, from children’s case files to records from the individual children’s homes.

I could go on for a lot longer, but I’ll leave it here to say that Ian and I are both really glad that we went along. It was great to talk to medical historians about their research and introduce them to an archive that they may never have considered using before. Thanks to the conference organisers for a great event!

Conference attendees enjoying the sunshine

More information about the conference can be found on the 2014 conference website.

The website of the Society for the Social History of Medicine can be found here: www.sshm.org

The Children’s Society’s Medical History project continues with further funding from Wellcome Trust

I have good news to bring you today. Our Unexplored Riches in Medical History project has received a second grant of £102,309 from the Wellcome Trust’s Research Resources scheme.

The project, now in its second year, has been making great advances in cataloguing and conserving the records of the residential homes that The Children’s Society ran for almost 100 years up until the 1970s and the case files of the children who stayed in them.

In particular we’re focusing on the wealth of information about child health and the effects of poverty contained in these records. This will help to shed light on the history of childhood diseases, treatments, medical care and social health in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Four nurses, wearing face masks, feeding babies, c1940s

In the first part of the project, we’ve found that before the establishment of the NHS, many families had to seek help from charities such as The Children’s Society as they couldn’t give their children vital medical treatment, and some families were pushed into poverty directly because of medical costs.

Historically, The Children’s Society helped to provide medical treatment for these families, and the records shed light on the experiences of children with diseases such as tuberculosis, rickets, pneumonia and heart conditions among others.

By creating an online archive catalogue and through conservation work the records will be widely accessible to medical, social and academic researchers the post-care community and the general public among others.

Thanks to the recent grant from the Wellcome Trust, which takes the current total funding from the Trust to £211,124, we can build on what has already been completed. Through the project, we will be able to open up access to The Children’s Society’s valuable records and promote important research into medical history, social history, and the history of childhood poverty and neglect.

UPDATE: This information has now been posted on the Wellcome Trust’s website.