Writing the Women's-Hospital History with Medical Records

Abstract

In 1992 I was commissioned to write a new history of Australia's oldest specialist women's hospital, the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne. The Board of the hospital was conscious of the institution's rich, even notorious history and of the limited public interest usually evoked by hospital histories. Before seeking an historian, the Archives Committee of the Board had resolved that the history should really be a social history of women's reproductive health as seen through the work of the hospital from its founding in 1856 through to 1996. The project's scholarly potential, however, was determined by the astonishing archive of detailed patient medical records which have survived since the 1850s. Dr James Evans, the hospital's historian, knew the riches of the hospital's archives, especially of the medical records; and the committee, in planning for a history had first commissioned Dr Therese Radic to undertake a feasibility study of the raw material. Therese Radic found herself in gas-mask and veil, or at least surgical gown and mask, being led on to the roof of the services block. There stood a small room, a cubby hole. The door had a generous gap which probably prevented damp and leaves and dust and rubbish blew in. Inside, half in bound volumes, half unbound and falling out, were over 14,000 gynaecology case histories, one of the best collections so far found in the English-speaking world. The hospital then appointed an archivist, Robyn Waymouth, who was therefore a part of this project from the beginning. This archive was remarkable because the records were made in the