Just what the Doctor ordered?

A new blog today on medicinal alcohol, courtesy of our Summer Intern (and York history student) Gaby Davies.

Whilst looking through the York Medical Society records, it was interesting to find the York County Hospital ‘Wines and Spirits book’ 1861-1865.  The pages contain lists of names of doctors, rooms and incidents, and the corresponding number of servings of port, sherry, brandy or gin that was needed.  Doctors seem to be doling out spirits and wines on a daily basis to their patients, and giving more for particularly bad events; September 29^th 1861 required 20 servings of brandy due to the ‘Lendal Bridge accident yesterday’, and on 9^th January 1861 8 servings of port were needed due to a ‘railway accident’.  This seems to make it clear that this is medicinal alcohol, rather than that beverages ordered by patients (and not doctors getting through a particularly difficult shift).

BI, YMS/5/1/2

This reliance on alcohol seems startling from a contemporary viewpoint, but in the early- to mid-19^th century, Victorian doctors relied on alcohol heavily for quite general medical purposes, although towards the late 19^th century medical opinion did start to turn against alcohol as a catch-all solution to ailments, and it started to be seen harmful and addictive.  Before this point, however, alcohol was prescribed liberally both as a stimulant and a sedative.  Brandy was used to ‘stimulate circulation’, to resuscitate the unconscious much like smelling salts, and in emergencies, especially outdoor pursuits such as hiking and skiing.  In hospitals it was often given intravenously or even (wince) rectally.  Even in 1920, physician William Hale White espoused its virtues, primarily as ‘A pleasant depressant, peculiarly efficacious in inhibiting peripheral impulses, such as pain here, and discomfort there, that it diminishes those trivial worries which bother the sick.  In larger doses it has the advantage of inducing sleep.’  This rather unscientific viewpoint may have been the reason the alcohol in this book seems to have been given to patients so regularly; for lack of other drugs it was a quick solution to mild pain or lack of sleep, and was an easy way to improve a patient’s comfort.  It was even used for children when teething or colicky, and many ‘tonics’ sold by unlicensed practitioners for babies could be up to 50% alcohol.  The fact that it was ‘opium free’ was often enough to convince mothers that the tonic was safe.

Victorian doctors also used alcohol enthusiastically as a painkiller for the dying, along with ether and opium.  Combinations of ether, brandy and port wine were often used as a stimulant for a weak heart and to promote circulation, and brandy was additionally favoured for its aid to the digestive process. Doctor William Munk recommended that for those with a terminal illness, small quantities of alcohol should be given frequently, favouring port and sherry over champagne as the latter tended to wear off quickly.  

Choosing the right alcohol for the right patients.
BI, YMS/5/1/2

It was not just in England that this culture of medicinal alcohol was prevalent; in America during Prohibition, doctors could prescribe spirits to their patients and there was even a medical beer campaign, which congress had shut down by 1921 for fear that, as the New York Times put it, ‘druggists become bartenders and the drug store a saloon.’

Looking through The Retreat documents we find similar evidence of this general use of alcohol by doctors.  One 1860s circular advertising ‘cheap light wines’ has two full pages of doctors’ recommendations, published in the Medical Times, of how wine can be used as an aid to breastfeeding (unless you are working class, in which case beer will do), a cure for acidity which would ‘add ten years to your patient’s life’, a drink to ‘fill the veins with pure healthy blood’ and as a healthier substitute to tea.  

BI, RET/4/8/2/134

Pure clean claret for nursing mothers?
BI, RET/4/8/2/134

Several articles also recommend that wines are ‘admirably adapted for children’, and that for children ‘puncheons of cod-liver oil might be spared at the age of 16-20, if, at the age of 7-10…the physician had said, ‘give her some kind of light, clean tasting, sub-acid wine…so that it might tempt her to relish her mutton’.  The document is an advertisement so these articles have clearly been cherry-picked, but the fact that they were published at all despite medical opinion beginning to turn at this point is an insight into the respect given to various quasi-scientific opinions of individual doctors, and the resulting effect that this had on patients.

‘Medical alcohol’ would clearly have worked, to a certain extent, in dulling pain and making patients fall asleep. It can only have been a relief for mothers when, after hours of crying, their teething babies would finally drift off thanks to some ‘medicinal’ tonic which was basically the equivalent of giving them a shot of vodka.  However, developments in the mid-to-late-19^th century led to medicinal alcohol slowly declining as a cure.  A better understanding of the pharmacology of alcohol came about, improved alternative treatments were developed, anaesthetics such as chloroform and nitrous oxide became more widespread, alcoholism and its dangers to the human body became better understood and the temperance movement became more prominent.  Brandy was still occasionally recommended even in the 1930s as a general sedative, a food for those finding it hard to take in physical nutrition and up until the 1940s there were still debates as to whether it could help in cases of pneumonia.  This ‘wine and spirits’ book is a fascinating relic of a time where the virtues of alcohol were widely accepted and recommended by doctors, and can give us an insight into the lack of alternative, effective medicines at this time.  

And on a purely curious note, it leaves us wondering why the laundry maid regularly checked out 3 servings of port!

Port for the laundry maid?
BI, YMS/5/1/2

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The Retreat Archive is currently being digitised.  More details are available at the Wellcome Library website.

Bibliography

Beverly Gage, 'Just What the Doctor Ordered' in Smithsonian Magazine (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/just-what-the-doctor-ordered-80480921/?page=2&no-ist)

Henry Guly, 'Medicinal Brandy' in Resuscitation (July, 2011).

Patricia Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family (Oxford, 1996).

R. H. Kinsey, 'An Address on Alcohol and on Drainage' in The British Medical Journal (1883).

The Rose Melnick Medical Museum, 'Medicinal alcohol and Prohibition' (https://melnickmedicalmuseum.com/2010/04/07/medicinal-alcohol-and-prohibition/)

William Hale White, 'Discussion on the value of alcohol as a therapeutic agent,' Proc R Soc Med. 1920.

Revealing the Registers: thoughts of an indexer

Our Marc Fitch Fund Project Archivist, Helen Watt, gives us some thoughts and reflections following the completion of initial work in indexing one of our Archbishops' Registers and attempts to answer and old indexers' question - can you ever really be sure when using a previous index? 

Having worked on the pilot for ‘York's Archbishops’ Registers Revealed’ in 2012, generously funded by the  Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, it is excellent to be able to put the theory devised during that pilot into practice. Thanks to funding from the Marc Fitch Fund, since October 2015, work has been underway on Registers 31 and 32 using the newly-developed indexing tool. This period covers 1576-1650 and includes the tenures of Archbishops Edwin Sandys (1577-1588), John Piers (1589-1594), Matthew Hutton (1595-1606) in Register 31; and the archiepiscopates of Archbishops Samuel Harsnett (1619-1631), Richard Neile (1632-1640) and John Williams (1641-1650) in Register 32. 

Since the examination of Register 31 was completed last month, it is now possible to reflect on the process of indexing a register of the Archbishops of York of this date and, crucially, the kind of material found within it. To put them into some context, none of the registers for this period have been subject to any previous indexing work - unlike their medieval predecessors where various published and indexed versions have been created since the 19th century. 

First of all, the quality of images of the registers produced during the Mellon project is excellent, especially for remote use, The images may also be greatly enlarged, so that even the smallest, faintest penstrokes may be read with ease.

Thanks to the quality of the images, we were able to discern this date as being the 'xvth day of febuarie' (Reg 31 f 76v)

The schema of subject headings compiled during the pilot has been integral to indexing subjects found in register entries, although some amendments have had to be made to cater for the post-reformation matters found in this register, as well as for matters to do with probate and archbishops’ visitations.

When indexing persons, there are two methods of dealing with personal names in the tool, either by inputting details of an individual straight into an entry, or by populating the Persons List with details before indexing. Using the second method, it was possible to draw on the work of several other projects, such as the Clergy of the Church of England Database, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae (via British History Online), the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, particularly for parish and higher clergy, to build up the required information and so streamline input of persons.

Similarly, to speed up the indexing of places, not only could the project draw on lists of places compiled during the Borthwick Institute’s previous work on the Cause Papers, but also automatically harvest place-names from the Digital Exposure of English Place-names (DEEP) and the online Ordnance Survey.

As regards the contents of the register, these have mainly comprised probate of wills and grants of administrations, confirmations of elections of bishops and archbishops’ visitations, and guides to the procedures involved in all of these topics will be made available shortly. Wills copied into the register are mostly those of clergymen and although there is an existing index in the Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series vol. 93 (1937), comparison between this index and the original wills has allowed small errors to be corrected, mostly concerning dates of wills and probate - understandable when you consider the quality of the images we are working with now!

Notification of the Vacancy after the death of Abp Sandys, 1588 

Even though these wills are well-known through that index, the new indexing tool has made it possible for them to be searched and explored online, making them so much more widely accessible and available and opening up their contents for research, so that many aspects of clerical life could now be studied. 

For instance, the pious preambles of wills, often not simply formulaic in nature, but long and involved, together with the titles of books left as bequests, may reflect the doctrinal inclinations and learning of these clergymen. We might also see the clergyman as farmer, and father of his family as well as shepherd of his flock. We can sometimes see far-reaching connections with the Universities, with court, members of London Livery Companies, and relationships with gentry and noble patrons. 

Long preamble in the will of  Ralph Kay, vicar of Topcliffe, 1613

With the commencement of work on Register 32, all these topics and more are bound to be further illuminated, so, as they say, watch this space!

Yorkshire Wildlife Trust: 70 years on

Certificate of Incorporation
BIA/YWT/A108/2

On 2nd May 1946, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, then called Yorkshire Naturalists’ Trust, was legally incorporated. Founded in a post-war context, where the Government was keen to provide a ‘vision of a brighter Britain’¹, the Trust’s first objective was “to protect places and objects of natural beauty or of ornithological, botanical, geological, zoological or scientific interest from injury, ill-treatment or destruction.”

The Trust was established to receive the gift of two plots of land at Askham Bog, a remnant of ancient Yorkshire fenland to the south of York. The bog was considered of particular interest due to the survival of many original species of flora and fauna. Indeed, it was later described as being "as uniquely interesting to the botanist and entomologist as is any archaeological treasure to the historian or antiquarian."² The plots had been purchased two years earlier, in 1944,  by keen naturalists and confectioners Sir Francis Terry and Arnold Rowntree. These plots, along with the plot of land entrusted by Mr Lycett Green, made up the Trust's first reserve.³

Vegetation Map of Askham Bog, 1933. BIA/YWT/A182

At its formation the Trust had a Council of eleven members, including President Sir Francis Terry and Vice President A.S. Rowntree, and five aristocratic patrons - the Duke of Devonshire, the Marquess of Zetland, the Earl of Feversham, the Earl of Halifax and Lord Middleton. 

Individuals could become Ordinary members of the Trust upon application and a subsequent annual payment of 10 shillings, or a Life Member for £10.

In 1946, the aims of the Trust were already clear - a letter to the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves, written by Sir Francis Terry in that year, stated that 'the acquisition of this Sanctuary is regarded as a first step only, as it is hoped that other suitable areas in Yorkshire will come into the hands of the Trust'.⁴ In the seventy years since that letter was written, the Trust has certainly fulfilled this early vision and now cares for over 100 reserves across Yorkshire, as well as campaigning for wildlife on a regional and national level. 

The archive itself, even at this early stage of the project, has been fascinating to work through. With documents ranging from minutes of the first meetings to detailed site reports, from correspondence with local members to relationships with national organisations, it presents a unique and vital record of the important work of the Trust both in 1946 and in 2016.

Lydia Dean
Project Archivist


Box count: 32.5 boxes surveyed...


----Sources:
1. Sands, Tim. Wildlife In Trust (2012) p.19
2. Report on Askham Bog (BIA/YWT/A177/5)
3. Correspondence on Askham Bog 1966-1973. (BIA/YWT/A177/5)
4. Letter from Francis Terry, August 1946 (BIA/YWT/A108/2)

‘Till death us do part’?: marriage, love and wills in the Archbishops' Registers

When David Cressy examined aspects of marriage in Tudor and Stuart times, he asked whether or not love played a part in courtship and marriage then (1). Unlike other historians, such as Laurence  Stone, he considered that love was fundamental to marriage in that era and in support of his argument cited one Stuart source which stated that ‘to the end that marriages may be perpetual, loving and delightful betwixt the parties, there must and ought to be knitting of hearts before striking of hands’(2).

So is it possible to discover the affection in which an Elizabethan testator held his wife from the wording of his will? Perhaps, judging from wills being examined in the ‘York’s Archbishops’ Registers Revealed’ project. A project generously supported by the Marc Fitch Fund is currently indexing the Archbishops' Registers for the period 1576-1650, and much of the content for this period consists of probate records, largely for beneficed clergy.

Take, for instance, the will of Charles Daintith (1557-1595), vicar of Kirk Ella, 1591-5, made shortly before his death (3). He mentioned his wife Isabel several times in strikingly loving terms, which do not seem to be merely formulaic, as ‘Isabell Jepson my beloved freind and my true and lawfull wief now by the lawes of this Realme established’ and ‘Isabell Jepson my welbeloved wief’.

'my beloved freind'

He left the residue of his estate to his ‘beloved wief’ and made her his executrix on one condition, which was ‘desiring as there was ever true love betwixt her and me ... that she will not forgett at hir ending if she keep hir so long unmaried my brother Gabriell and his children and my sisters children’.

Was this the same experience for all? Perhaps not, and the will of Barnabie Shepherd (d. 1588) may be a case in point (4) This was a nuncupative will, spoken before witnesses who recalled:

‘Memorandum that the Fyftenthe day of Februarie in the yeare of our Lorde God one thowsande, fyve hundrethe eightie seven, accordinge to the course and computacioun of the churche of Englande Barnabie Shepperde, bachelour of devynytye and parson of Bulmer, of the dyoces of Yorke being of perfecte mynde and memorye, and being asked and desyred to knowe to whome he woulde dispose or gyve his goodes, whether to his Wyfe, (meanynge Brygett Shepperde then his Wyfe) or not Annswered and sayd, yea to his wyfe, or the like wordes in effecte, in the presence of Fraunces Layton and Josias Fawether.’

So was he in pain or just bad-tempered or were relations between him and his wife less than loving?

'yea to his wyfe'

We will never know!

Are these just two examples at either end of the spectrum of marital affection or are there many others waiting to be discovered as work progresses? Watch this space!

Helen Watt
Marc Fitch Project Archivist

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(1) David Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford, 1997), pp. 260-3.

(2) Ibid., p. 262, citing from John Dod and Robert Cleaver, A Godly Forme of Houshold Government (1630).

(3) BIA, Register 31, fol. 132 v, entry 2, Will of Charles Daintith, vicar of Kirk Ella, made 24 June 1595, proved 3  October 1595; Alumni Oxonienses; Clergy of the Church of England database (CCEd), available at http://theclergydatabase.org.uk/.

(4) BIA, Register 31, fol. 105 v, entry 1, Will of Barnaby Shepherd, Rector of Bulmer, made 15 February 1588, proved 14 March 1588; Alumni Cantabrigienses; CCEd.

Introducing the Borthwick Catalogue

In April 2015 we launched Project Genesis, an ambitious two year project to create the Institute’s first online catalogue using AtoM, or Access to Memory, a web-based, open-source application for archival description and access.  One year on, we are proud to announce that the Borthwick Catalogue (or Borthcat as we’ve begun to call it!) is now live.

You can find the catalogue here (need some tips on searching? Try our help page or check out our Frequently Asked Questions)

The catalogue will continue to grow over the next year, and in years to come, but already it contains descriptions of 376 of our archival collections, spanning 28 countries and 825 years of world history.  The subject matter is impressively broad; church and parish, family and estate, manorial, health, television and theatrical, business and political records demonstrating changing attitudes to religion, morality, education, industrial welfare, health and human and civil rights from the medieval to the modern age.  

Each archive has a detailed ‘top level’ description in the catalogue, recording its unique reference code, the dates it covers and an overview of its contents, together with key information regarding access and links to related archives at the Borthwick and elsewhere.  Why not browse our archives alphabetically, or try our subject or place lists to find out what’s available.

Information about the creator of each archive is also available in a separate authority record, linked in the archival description.  You can browse these here.

In certain cases, full archival catalogues are included with these top level descriptions.  These include the catalogue for The Retreat psychiatric hospital, the British Music Society of York, and the papers of Sir Charles Wood, Secretary of State for India.  

For others, such as our popular parish record collections, we have made the paper finding aids available on the catalogue as a clickable PDF, enabling online users to browse these lists or search their contents via the catalogue search function for the first time.  Please note that these lists do not include parish register indexes which will continue to be available in our search room and on Findmypast. More complete catalogues will be added as we continue to develop Borthcat, opening up our holdings to international audiences and improving our online accessibility.

As Project Archivist, it has been very exciting to see the catalogue taking shape and there have been more than a few surprises along the way.  Personal highlights have included the log books of a 17th century admiral, Robert Fairfax, the discovery of a female Sexton at Holy Trinity Goodramgate in the 19th century and a school book with a link to Railway Children author Edith Nesbit, not to mention a 1956 letter from Harry Corbett and Sooty!  

Look out for new content over the coming months but in the meantime, we hope you enjoy using the Borthwick Catalogue to explore some of our holdings and if you have any thoughts or feedback, we’d love to hear them.

Happy searching!

Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Project

A robin, after bathing, at Askham Bog. (BIA/YWT/A177)

The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust (YWT) is one of the largest Wildlife Trusts in Britain and its 97 reserves cover some of the most varied landscapes in the UK. It works to protect and conserve Yorkshire's wild places and wildlife, with reserves including Spurn National Nature Reserve, Flamborough Cliffs, Potteric Carr, and my local reserve of Askham Bog. The Trust was established in 1946 and in the year it celebrates its 70th anniversary, it is very exciting to have launched a 12 month project to catalogue and promote the Trust’s extensive archive.

Working in partnership with YWT and supported by funding from the National Cataloguing Grants Programme for Archives, by 2017 we will have described the archive to file level and to have made this accessible through the Borthwick’s online catalogue. The archive of YWT, like their reserves, is of national and international importance. It documents the establishment of the Trust and its development through to the modern day, as well as the bio-recording of internationally scarce habitats, relationships with landowners and the precedent-making legal cases led by the Trust in the 1970s. The archive highlights the UK’s unique role in the development of nature conservation and is the largest body (both in volume and subject coverage) of such material as yet deposited in any public institution. It includes paper, photographs and digital material and covers 3.5m3.

As well as cataloguing the archive, thereby releasing its research potential to new and existing audiences, the project will also include the running of workshops on archival appraisal and conservation. We'll also be using new and traditional media to continue to promote the archive throughout the year.

The archive as it looks today!

Over the next few weeks, I will be starting some preliminary survey work on the boxes which will help me develop a structure for the catalogue. I’ll also be familiarising myself with Access to Memory (AtoM) the open-source, web-based application we're using to host our online catalogue. Personally and professionally, I am very excited to be working as the archivist on this project. It really will be a fascinating (not to mention busy!) twelve months and I look forward to keeping you all up-to-date as it develops. In the meantime, if there’s anything in particular you’d like to know about the project or how we’re approaching it do feel free to comment below or to get in touch through our Twitter or Facebook.

Lydia Dean

Project Archivist

Box count: 2/200 surveyed...

York County Hospital and World War One

York County Hospital was established in 1740 and until 1977, when the current hospital opened, was the main hospital in York. The hospital was originally run as a charity, supported by wealthy subscribers. It continued to be run in this way right up to the 20^th century when the income from subscriptions and investments was supplemented by patient fees and insurance schemes.  It joined the NHS in 1948 and treated its last patients in 1980. The original County Hospital buildings are still standing and can be seen just off Monkgate.

In 1914, when World War One broke out, the hospital allocated 50 beds for military patients. By the end of that year it had treated 102 sick and wounded soldiers. The percentage of military patients treated at the hospital increased throughout the war and, to accommodate them, two additional hutted wards were built at the back of the main hospital building. 

Photograph of sick and wounded soldiers,

Annual Report 1916 (BIA YCH 1/2/9)

Analysis of military cases

Annual Report 1916 (BIA YCH 1/2/9)

The hospital treated both medical and surgical patients. During 1916, amongst other medical cases, staff dealt with 7 cases of gas poisoning and 13 cases of trench fever. This extract of the surgical treatments carried out on military patients includes numerous bayonet, bullet and shrapnel wounds, as well as several shell shock patients.

During the First World War, around 10% of British casualties were classified as suffering from shell-shock. At the start of the conflict, it was believed that shell-shock was caused by physical head injuries resulting from bombardment. In 1915, a paper in the medical journal The Lancet put forward an alternative, psychological, explanation for the disorder noting that many soldiers that were suffering the symptoms of shell-shock had not received a head injury. By 1917, the British military authorities tried to limit the use of the diagnosis and continuing debates over causes and treatments created further controversy. By World War Two, to diagnose shell-shock was forbidden.   

List of gifts donated for wounded soldiers

Annual Report 1916 (BIA YCH 1/2/9)

Photograph of the night staff, 1914 (BIA YCH 1/6)

The coming of war meant that the County Hospital faced huge financial strain. With an existing debt of £3,800 and the price of commodities rising, the hospital’s 1916 annual report noted an increased expenditure of 24%. A special appeal in 1915-16 sought to raise funds and the generosity of hospital supporters is documented in the lists of gifts donated to the military patients. An extract of this list is included above, showing a range of the gifts given: from eggs, tobacco and newspapers to concert tickets, gramophone records and car rides.

By May 1919, the County Hospital had treated over 2000 military patients. As the hospital slowly returned to its peace-time operations, the wards built for the soldiers were converted into new treatment spaces. One space formed an orthopaedic department for discharged servicemen and other patients who required ongoing therapy. The continuing treatment of veterans was something at the forefront of the minds of those running the hospital, succinctly displayed in this quote from their annual report (BIA YCH 1/2/9):

"It is, of course, essential that those who have been disabled or broken in health in the service of the Country should receive the best possible treatment, and it seems obvious that such treatment is not most readily available at the general hospitals...Pending the satisfactory arrangement of conditions, the Committee, with the complete agreement of the Medical Staff have decided that the full resources of the Hospital shall be placed at the disposal of all discharged men who are recommended for treatment."

Lydia Dean

Archives Assistant

This blog is in part based on a forthcoming exhibition at York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

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Sources:

Ben Shephard 'Pitiless psychology’: the role of prevention in British military psychiatry in the Second World War' in History of Psychiatry October 1999 10: 491-524

Edgar Jones, Ph.D., D.Phil. Nicola T. Fear, D.Phil. Simon Wessely, M.D. 'Shell Shock and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: A Historical Review' in Am J Psychiatry 2007; 164:1641–1645

K.A. Webb From County Hospital to NHS Trust, The History and Archives of NHS hospitals, services and management in York 1740-2000 (Vol 1: History) Borthwick Texts and Calendars 27, UoY 2002

pp147-173