Lives in the ledgers: gaining new insights through our latest project
Our last blog post focused on the story of Barbara Adams — and how the life of one individual can be revealed through entries in archive records.
This week, the archives team have been looking at a series of records from the London Hospital (now the Royal London) that demonstrate how the whole life of an institution and the community of people who keep it running can be captured in a single volume — and we have the current community of the hospital to thank for bringing them into light.
Over the last few months, we have been holding project workshops for our Bringing the Collections Closer at the Royal London Hospital project. Thanks to generous funding from Barts Charity, the project will develop new interactive digital heritage displays for busy waiting areas in The Royal London Hospital. The new displays will provide new ways for patients and visitors to the hospital to explore material from the historic collections of the hospital, which span nearly three centuries.
Patients, staff and local residents are joining us at the workshops as 'Community Curators' to select items from the historic collections of the Royal London Hospital for the displays. So far, every Community Curator has been a first-time visitor to our archives, and we have been delighted at the questions they are seeking to answer and the new perspectives they are bringing to the many histories of the hospital.
Working with the participants to find material relating to their areas of interest has allowed the archives team to undertake new research, and looking at the collections catalogue with new eyes is bringing us into contact with material we have never looked at previously. Some items, like the series of 'Trademen's Ledgers' for the London Hospital have been particularly fascinating!
Although a true 'discovery' in the archives of a previously completely unknown document is rarer than some newspaper reports might have you believe, it is certainly the case that archive catalogues do not always provide enough information about a record, its research potential and the stories it can tell. The Trust and its predecessors have run an archive for over 100 years, and the way we catalogue has changed a lot in that time. You can find out a little more about how and why we catalogue archives today, in this old blog post for our past St Mark's Hospital archives cataloguing project ; but some older catalogue descriptions can be very brief, and give little idea of the content or form of an item.
The catalogue descriptions for the series of Tradesmen's Ledger's (series reference RLHLH/F/8), consisting of twelve volumes covering the years 1751-1814 were minimal, giving just a title, reference and dates covered for each volume. But we thought that they might shed some light on, for example, purchasing of food or candles in the early decades of the Royal London — questions asked by one of our Community Curators — and so we retrieved them from our stores.
The Tradesmen's Ledgers, as it turns out, are detailed account books recording the purchase of goods and services from individual suppliers, covering every aspect of the business of the London Hospital. They shed light on local businesses in Whitechapel and the City, and the nature of trade in 18th century London, as well as the day-to-day activities of the hospital, for a period when no patient records survive. The hospital was founded (as The London Infirmary) in 1740, and moved to Whitechapel Road (where Tower Hamlets Town Hall now occupies some of the old hospital buildings) in 1757. At that time, the area was still a semi-rural suburb of London, with densely-populated areas surrounding some of the industrial sites located there like tanneries and foundries.
Unlike the collaborative regional purchasing arrangements of today's NHS, supplying the London Hospital was a local affair in the 18th century. Many suppliers, such as 'Thomas and William Quarrill, sellers of soap &c' and 'Thomas Lewis, butcher', were based in Whitechapel, while others like 'Joseph and Thomas Hunt, cheesemongers' of Bishopsgate, were located on the eastern side of the City. The ordering of goods for the hospital was coordinated by the Steward, and the breadth of the orders, from meat to sand, medical instruments to bedding, and laundry supplies to charcoal, represent the work of the large and busy institution that the hospital had already become within a decade or so of its foundation.
The role of women as business owners and traders in their own right is demonstrated by the number of female suppliers, such as Mrs Lucy Mason, who provided haberdashery supplies to the hospital in the 1760s and 1770s, Mrs Appollonia Waters, charcoal seller, and Mrs Catherine Lewis, who supplied herbs - including two pounds of poppy heads - presumably for use in the hospital's apothecary's shop, as well as leeches. The volumes also shed light on the experience of patients in the early hospital. No patient records survive for the 18th century London Hospital, but through these records of the material culture of the hospital, we can understand more about what it might have been like to be a patient, from the bedding to the treatments. In 1774, for example, Messrs Phipps and Shepherd, upholders (an archaic word for upholsterer), restuffed a mattress and cleaned "a bedtick bolster and 2 pillows", while the regular purchases of quantities of 'stump caps', crutches and amputation instruments from the relevant suppliers reflect how common an outcome limb loss must have been for patients. Tow, which was regularly bought in bulk, might have been used for stuffing furniture or as oakum, for sealing wounds.
Although some requirements of a hospital, such as the need for laundry services, remain unchanging, products recorded in the ledgers which are unfamiliar to the 21st century reader reflect how much the tasks themselves have changed. The 'stone blue', made of indigo and starch, was added to laundry rinse water to make white fabric appear whiter, while the 'swanskin' ordered from the hospital's haberdasher is not what it appears — it was in fact a type of flannel cloth used as an ironing cloth over a table when ironing clothes and sheets. And presumably the 'washing machine' repaired by Thomas Deming, turner, is more likely to be a washing dolly or mangle than what we would think of today!
We have so enjoyed getting to know these volumes in more detail and sharing them with our Community Curators. If you like the sound of getting stuck in to our collections and helping share the incredible history of the Royal London Hospital, you can still join up to take part in the project. We still have some spaces available for workshops on Saturday 11 May and Wednesday 15 May 2024; if you are interested in taking part, please contact us to find out more and join us for a workshop. Community Curators will each receive a £40 voucher as a thank-you for participating.
Researchers are also welcome to make an appointment to use these volumes in the archives — find out more about visiting the archives here and contact us to make an appointment.