Tag Archives: Completed projects

The Children’s Society Archive Completes Major Wellcome Trust Funded Project

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The Children’s Society Archive has just celebrated the completion of its Wellcome Trust funded ‘Unexplored Riches in Medical History Project’. The project was funded by a major grant from the Wellcome Trust and has shed a whole new light on aspects of the well-being and health of children up to the 1920s, as well as their care and social circumstances.

Thanks to the funding, the project has conserved and catalogued a significant part of the archive collection, helping to preserve it for the future and open it up for social history and medical history research, while making it more accessible to others, such as schools, universities and community groups.

A boy who was in the care of The Children's Society over 100 years ago. Modern photograph by: Wellcome Trust | Thomas S.G. Farnetti]

A boy who was in the care of The Children’s Society over 100 years ago. Modern photograph by: Wellcome Trust | Thomas S.G. Farnetti

Looking at children’s case files from the 1880s to the 1920s they found a huge body of evidence for the diseases and treatments of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. This included: high rates of tuberculosis and rickets, and high rates of malnutrition in children coming into care.

Documents from The Children’s Society’s homes that ran from the 1880s to the 1980s show how The Children’s Society set up homes to treat orthopaedic conditions and diabetic children, as well as creating swimming techniques for children with mobility difficulties.

The project has created an online catalogue of these case files and residential home records. You can explore the completed catalogue here:
http://www.calmview.eu/childrensociety/Calmview

Nearly 9,000 of the earliest case files were in very poor condition, and the project has conserved and strengthened these files for the future.

Archive ref: CF08464 Admission Form

Archive ref: CF08464
A 114 year-old document from a case file – before conservation

Archive ref: CF08464 Admission form The same document - during conservation

Archive ref: CF08464 Admission form
The same document – during conservation

Archive ref: CF08464 Admission Form The same document - after conservation

Archive ref: CF08464 Admission Form
The same document – after conservation

The project was carried out by a professional team consisting of an archivist and two conservators, along with a team of volunteers.

Ian Wakeling, Head of The Children’s Society Archive, said: “These records are vitally important for studying changes in medical knowledge over the past 130 years because they show us how those changes affected real people. The children in the care of The Children’s Society came from some of the poorest and most disadvantaged families in the country, and we can now see what this meant for their well-being and how their families struggled to provide for their healthcare.”

Simon Chaplin, Director of Culture and Society at the Wellcome Trust, added: “The records held by The Children’s Society chart the impact of more than a century of turbulent change on some of the poorest members of society, disadvantaged children and their families. By cataloguing and maintaining this important archive, we hope that these medical histories will be the subject of further research and that their stories will continue to be told.”

Further information about the Unexplored Riches in Medical History project, including the project blog showcasing items found within the collection, can be found on the project webpages: http://www.hiddenlives.org.uk/unexplored_riches

There is also a video that has been produced by the Wellcome Trust that gives a really great introduction to the Unexplored Riches in Medical History project: http://youtu.be/SGeDtaBeXYo and the project also features on the Wellcome Trust’s website: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Funding/Medical-humanities/Funding-schemes/Research-resources-awards/Projects-funded/index.htm

The final product: conserved, catalogued, indexed and re-boxed children's case files

The final product: conserved, catalogued, indexed and re-boxed children’s case files

 

Exploring the history of disabled children in care

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It’s UK Disability History Month, which is a good time to reflect on disability history and what it means for today. The Children’s Society has helped disabled children ever since it was founded in 1881; this means that our collections here at The Children’s Society Archive can tell a lot about the history of disabilities and attitudes to them over the past 130 years.

Leaflet celebrating 50 years of the Children's Union, a body which raised funds for The Children's Society's homes for disabled children, leaflet dated 1938

Two years ago we finished a project called Including the Excluded, which catalogued and preserved our archival collections relating to The Children’s Society’s work with disabled children.

Click here to visit the project’s webpages and find out more about The Children’s Society’s work with disabled children (and to see catalogues of the documents we hold that can be used to study disability history).

We blogged about the Including the Excluded project as we went along, so check out the Including the Excluded category to see the stories and insights that we came across.

Including the Excluded project complete

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Following on from my last post, I am happy to announce that the Including the Excluded project has now been completed.

In addition to cataloguing The Children’s Society’s records that relate to the care of disabled children, we have repackaged 600 of our children’s case files, making them easier to use and preserving them for the future.

This blog has allowed me to highlight some of the interesting items that I have found amongst The Children’s Society’s records. If you would like more information, we also have summaries of the stories found in some of the children’s case files, giving examples of what life was like for disabled children in care in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

As fascinating as the items and case files we’ve selected here are, they’re just the tip of the iceberg. Looking into any of the records that have been catalogued as part of this project will reveal information about disabled children in The Children’s Society’s care, what life was like for them, and how attitudes to disability have changed over the years.

Thanks to Including the Excluded, many of the catalogued records are now available to view in person by making an appointment at The Children’s Society’s Records and Archives Centre in London.

If you are interested in the records we hold that relate to the care of disabled children, please do take a look at our catalogues. Information on how to make an appointment to view the records can be found at the front of each catalogue.

Many thanks to our volunteers and to all my colleagues who have helped to make this project a success.