Collection BH - BELGRAVE HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN

Key Information

Reference code

BH

Title

BELGRAVE HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN

Date(s)

  • 1874-1948 (Creation)

Level of description

Collection

Extent

218 volumes, 1 box

Scope and content

Records of the Belgrave Hospital for Children, 1902-1948, comprising minutes of the medical sub-committee, 1902-1921 (1 volume); case notes, 1904-1948 (216 volumes); admissions register, 1929-1931, including an index (1 volume). Two bound volumes of out-letters, 1874-1875, minutes of a meeting of the hospital’s General Council, 1901, and printed items including fundraising leaflets, 1899-1902, a pharmacopoeia, 1937, and an annual report, 1946.

System of arrangement

Case notes are arranged chronologically.

General Information

Name of creator

(1866-1985)

Biographical history

Belgrave Hospital for Children, a voluntary hospital, was founded in 1866. New buildings were constructed at no 1 Clapham Road, London SW9 (Kennington, Lambeth) between 1899 and 1926 to an innovative design. Under the National Health Service Act (1946), in 1948 the hospital was amalgamated with King's College Hospital as part of the King's College Hospital Group (a teaching group managed by a Board of Governors), but remained a children's hospital. The Belgrave Hospital for Children closed after a new hospital, the Variety Club Children's Hospital, opened in 1985. The building was restored in the 1990s after some years of neglect.

Archival history

Case notes were transferred to the Royal College of Physicians in 1965-1966.

Custodial history

In 1984 the transfer of papers, including case notes of the Belgrave Hospital, from the Royal College of Physicians to King's College London Archives was agreed. In 1990 Martin Mottram retrieved the minute book from the derelict hospital and gave it to King's College London Archives. The admissions register was retrieved from the derelict hospital by Patricia Methven, King's College Archivist. Out-letter books and printed items were salvaged by Stephen Calvert, a member of the hospital staff, and placed in the Archives in 2017.

Conditions governing access

Administrative records are generally closed for 20 years except for published material and some committee and other minutes.

Files containing personal data are closed for 80 years and sensitive personal data for 100 years from the date of the most recent document in the file.

Where open, access is subject to signature of Reader's undertaking form, and appropriate provision of two forms of identification, to include one photographic ID.

Conditions governing reproduction

Copies, subject to the condition of the original, may be supplied from open material for research purposes only.

Requests to publish original material should be submitted to the Archives.

Language of material

  • English
  • Latin

Script of material

Language and script notes

English (also some Latin in the pharmacopoeia)

Finding aids

This summary guide. A typescript list giving the dates, personnel (to 1937) and (from 1937) reference numbers associated with the case notes is available in the reading room at King's College London Archives.

Related materials

King's College London Archives holds the records of King's College Hospital (Ref: KH), some sub-fonds of which include material relating to the Belgrave Hospital after amalgamation in 1948.

Related descriptions

Alternative identifier(s)

Place access points

People and Organisations

Genre access points

Rules and/or conventions used

Compiled in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000.

Script(s)

Archivist's note

Compiled by Rachel Kemsley as part of the RSLP AIM25 project. Sources: AIM25 description of the records of King's College Hospital; lists of King's College Hospital records (Ref: KH) at King's College Archives; online The National Archives and Wellcome Trust's Hospital Records Database; English Hospitals 1660-1948, ed Harriet Richardson (Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, Swindon, 1998), pp 112-114.

Accession area