Putting the project to bed – what the Stannington Sanatorium project has achieved

Over the course of the two phases of our Wellcome Trust funded project we have catalogued, conserved and digitised over 5000 patient medical files, as well as other records and photographs. In this time we hope we have taken an inaccessible, uncatalogued collection and made it accessible to study. In our final blog we will take a look back at what we have done in that time.

Some of the boxes of files waiting to be conserved early last year

Phase one conserved and digitised 949 discharge books, catalogued these, the patient files and the rest of the collection, and digitised a whopping 14671 radiographs (taken of only 2245 of the patients!). The team also created our online exhibition, our exhibition banners, and attended conferences to publicise the collection. You can read more about the first phase in the team’s final blog here.

The radiographs being digitised

After the Wellcome trust kindly granted more funding for a second phase new team focused on the 4095 patient files, which had been catalogued.

A patient file conserved in its new acid-free cover
A patient file ready to be digitised

We conserved and digitised these, and redacted images were attached to our searchable online database. As they are closed records the names and addresses cannot be released, but this enables those researching the disease to access medical information about the cases for the ‘core’ documents. Here is how these look.

Print screens of the search and reference detail

As we could not digitise the entire files in each case the team decided to upload some examples on Flickr. Though there is no such thing as a ‘typical’ or ‘average’ Stannington file, we tried to choose a few redacted examples of the patient files that gave an impression of the collection as a whole, and the type of documents found within them. You can view these here.

The work began in phase one to raise awareness of the collection has continued. We have continued to blog about our progress and discoveries we have made about the collection, the sanatorium itself, and new collections that relate to it, such as May Brown’s the Atkin family’s photographs. There has been academic interest in research projects using the collection from a number of universities, which we hope to will continue to grow.

Our former colleague Rebecca Cessford is using the collection of radiographs and patient files in her PhD thesis to look at the potential as an aid to diagnose the disease in skeletal remains. You can find out more about her research in the blog she contributed to us on World Tuberculosis Day.

Margaret Wilkinson (right) with Dame Sian Philips at the recording of the play.

We also worked with playwright Margaret Wilkinson, who used the collection and our research to write a radio play for BBC Four’s Writing the Century. The play was based on the experiences of former Stannington Sanatorium nurse Marjorie Wilson. Margaret established the scene with Marjorie’s reminiscences, and used excerpts from letters within the patient files. The play was a great success, and listeners found the performance very moving. You can read more about Margaret’s inspiration in writing the play in the blog she wrote for us, and you can listen to the play through Audioboom.

We hope to continue further interest in the collection by launching an education resource, now available through our website. In this we have laid out a little summary of the disease, history, treatment and the records at Stannington, and what life was like for staff and patients. This can be used as a resource for teachers to dip into in developing lessons, but also for older students to use for themselves.

The exhibition on display at St. Mary’s Church, Stannington.

Recently the team have also set up our collection of banners at St Mary’s church in Stannington, with the Stannington History Group. It was a wonderful finish to the project to see them displayed so close to the sanatorium itself, with locals and visitors finding out more about the story of Stannington Sanatorium. We hope to tour the exhibition more throughout this year.

The project has revealed the rich value of the collection in terms of its research potential, as it contains files with detailed medical information and an excellent radiographic record. However it is also rich in the stories of the staff and patients who were associated with the sanatorium, many of whom have recounted their experiences to us during its course. We feel proud to continue to care for the documents, and feel it is important to continue to raise awareness. Far from this being the end of our research with the collection, this is a beginning of a new and more accessible way of learning from them.

The collection itself is housed at Northumberland Archives, and though a hundred year closure period is still in place (from the date of the document’s creation), former patients and some immediate family can still seek permission to access the patient files. If you are interested in accessing the collection for research purposes (we have statistics on the records as well as the files themselves), are interested in loaning our banners exhibition, or have any other queries about the collection please don’t hesitate to contact us at archives@northumberland.gov.uk

NRO 11036/3, one of May Brown’s photographs

If you are interested to know more please have a look at:

Our online exhibition

Our Flickr sets

News from the Archives!

We are pleased to announce that the Wellcome Trust have awarded a second grant to Northumberland Archives to continue the amazing work they have done through the Stannington Sanatorium Project.

The ‘Stannington: From Sanatorium to General Hospital: Opening Up Three Decades of Paediatric Care’ Project has been awarded £49,100. This money will allow us to digitise the main series of case files from the Stannington Sanatorium collection covering the period 1944-1966. These files comprise 100 linear feet of records – that’s a whopping 122,000 pieces of paper to be digitised! We will redact the key documents in each file – the patient progress notes, x-ray card and discharge sheet and append the redacted copies to the catalogue entry. The files span the life of Stannington from it being a tuberculosis sanatorium funded by the Poor Children’s Holiday Association (now Children Northeast), including the introduction of the National Health Service, (1947) to its final conversion to a general children’s hospital (1953), which it remained until its closure in 1984, opening up three decades of paediatric care.

The Stannington Sanatorium Project ran from August 2014-July 2015 and allowed the full cataloguing and part-digitisation of the records from Stannington Sanatorium. However, the digitisation element of the project was primarily focussed upon the original and microfiche radiographs that made up a sizeable portion of the collection and only the early case files up to 1943 were digitised at this stage. This grant will fund the digitisation of the remainder of the individual patient files included in the Stannington Collection and will fund full re-packaging of the original files in conservation grade materials.

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Through this project we will utilise digitisation as a preservation tool thereby minimising further handling and potential damage to patient files through the creation of a digital surrogate which can be viewed electronically. In turn the project will increase accessibility to the collection via the redaction and web-mounting of the files. It will benefit members of the academic community who have shown a vast interest in the previous project and wish to access the files as a teaching resource or for their own research. This new digital content will be added to Northumberland Archives electronic catalogue where the c.20,000 images created in the first project can now be viewed.

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The project will commence in November 2015 and will run for 12 months. Two new members of staff will be employed, one full time the other part time, to undertake this arduous task and they will endeavour to blog about their progress from November onwards so make sure you keep a look out for new postings!

The Stannington Radiographs

The radiographs make up a significant part of the Stannington collection with a total of 14,674 separate images relating to 2220 different patients covering roughly a 20 year period from 1936 to c.1955. When the records were recovered in the 1980s the vast majority of the radiographs were copied on to microfiche and the originals destroyed as they were unstable. However, we still have 326 original radiographs within the collection. Over the course of the project all the microfiche images and the originals will be digitised and made publicly accessible. We also hope to preserve the remaining original radiographs as examples of how x-ray images at the time were produced. The problem here lies with the unstable nature of the film and its natural degradation.

 

All the radiographs were produced on cellulose acetate film, known as safety film as it replaced the earlier nitrate film that was highly flammable and potentially self-combustible, a problem for many film archives today. Over time the cellulose acetate film naturally breaks down, the early stages of this are recognisable by the strong smell of vinegar coming off the film as the process gives off acetic acid and because of this is known as vinegar syndrome. Eventually as the base of the film and the top layer pull away from one another the film will begin to buckle and crack and bubbles can form under the surface.

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Figure 1

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Figure 2

This process is already evident in several of the radiographs we hold (figures 1 & 2) and unfortunately there isn’t anything that can be done to reverse or halt the process. By storing the films in a closely monitored temperature and humidity controlled environment we hope to delay the process in most of the radiographs for as long as possible.

 

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Figure 4

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Figure 3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The x-rays were originally stored in ordinary brown envelopes and there could be as many as 15 in each envelope. (Figure 3)  To help preserve them we have instead transferred each x-ray into an individual acid free sleeve. (Figure 4)  By storing them individually we are able to minimise any accumulation of acetic acid that is produced in the degradation process.  Thanks to advice from conservators at Durham County Record Office and their assistance in sourcing the new x-ray envelopes, all the original films are now safely stored in their own envelopes in our photogrpahic strong room.

 

This degradation is evident in some of the microfiche as well as the original films had obviously started to buckle already at the time they were transferred to microfiche in the 1980s. Consequently some of the images are obscured by a crackling effect. Nevertheless the vast majority of the 14,674 images remain easily readable and the digitisation process will mean that they remain clearly accessible for future use.

 

[See our Flickr stream for examples of some of the radiographs https://www.flickr.com/photos/99322319@N07/sets/72157648833066476/]