| Administrative history | From the foundation of the hospital in 1123, record-keeping was a key function of the institution. As a major landowner, St Bartholomew's Hospital had an extensive collection of deeds recording the hospital's property holdings, as well as other rights and entitlements recorded in letters patent, grants, rentals, title deeds and other indentures. Surviving deeds from this period are catalogued as SBHB/HC/1. The cartulary of St Bartholomew's Hospital (SBHB/HC/2/1), sometime's known as Cok's Cartulary since it was begun by Brother John Cok, was composed according to practice of the time to compile copies of documents relating to properties and rights of an institution in a single ledger. It is thought that one reason for this was for ease of consultation in the increasing number of lawsuits in which religious houses were involved over the medieval period. Cartularies also provided a copy of key documents in case of loss of the original records through negligence or fire, and when the names of donors and tenants mentioned in the rental of properties, 1456 (ff.7-38) are compared with those in the Cartulary, it is clear that many of the original deeds and leases had already been lost by the fifteenth century. As a religious institution, custody and care of the hospital's estate and endowment records would have been undertaken by a religious clerk or brother who also undertook the role of Renter. It is likely that the property deeds of the hospital (alongside the cartularies catalogued as SBHB/HC/2/1 and SBHB/HC/2/2) were the only pre-Reformation records of the Hospital preserved by the newly appointed Governors, as they were the only evidence of the rights of the Hospital to its endowments.
Administrative records of the hospital were kept from the refoundation of the Hospital in 1546/7. The hospital Renter also assumed the function of Clerk; he had to write and index the minutes of the meetings of the Governors, which were the main administrative records at this date, and presumably also had responsibility for keeping and caring for the records. By 1600, the post of Clerk had been established as a separate post, and the administrative business of the hospital, and hence the records created, continued to grow. From the late 18th century, the record-keeping began for the first time to include medical records of the hospital's patients. The Clerk clearly continued to have a significant role in record-keeping at the hospital; in 1883, William Cross, Clerk to the Governors, undertook some early cataloguing of the medieval deeds (see SBHB/HC/1).
However, the first person employed specifically to care for the hospital's archives was D'Arcy Power, Surgeon to the Hospital, who became Honorary Keeper of Muniments in 1934. The first paid post was taken up by Gweneth Whitteridge became Assistant Archivist in 1935, and Archivist in 1947, and there has been an unbroken succession of archivists with various job titles since then. The hospital was appointed by the Lord Chancellor as a Place of Deposit for Public Records in 1964 (see Minutes of the Executive and Finance Committee, 17 Sep 1964 (SBHB/HA/7/1/9).
A letter from Gweneth Whitteridge, then assistant archivist to St Bartholomew's Hospital, dated 12 Feb 1946, (in SBHPP/KOK/1) suggests that the hospital archives were at that date not housed on the hospital site, but had been moved for safekeeping during the Second World War. She notes that the records are at 'Prickett Manor' [possibly Piggott's Manor, Letchmore Heath, Hertfordshire, then in use as a nurses' home], and expresses her wish "to help the Governors to the best of my ability to reinstate the Archives and to continue with the cataloguing and external publication of them."
The archivist was also responsible for a small collection of historic objects, which grew in size over the course of the twentieth century through acquisition from archaeological digs and other items found around the hospital site. In 1997, St Bartholomew's Hospital Museum was opened to display some of these items, alongside documents from the archives; the Archives Department became the Archives and Museum, taking on responsibility for the museum also. In 2010, the Archives Committees of the Royal London Hospital Archives and Museum and St Bartholomew's Hospital Archives and Museum merged, and following the creation of Barts Health NHS Trust in 2012, the joint department become known as Barts Health NHS Trust Archives and Museums. The service was amongst the first to receive accreditation under the new Archive Service Accreditation scheme in 2014. In 2024 it became known as Barts Health NHS Trust Archives. The retained records of the merged service from 2012 will be catalogued in the Barts Health NHS Trust collection as RLHBT/AR. |