Our collections include registers of births at the Salvation Army Mothers' Hospital in Clapton - many of the other records of the hospital are held at @salvarmyarchive.bsky.social. Read this fascinating article to find out more about the role of Salvation Army midwives 'on the district' 👀

In 1912 baby elephant, Jumbo, visited the London Hospital to have his heart beats registered. Jumbo was one of a pair of elephants owned by the Daily Mirror. They were used for to fundraise for hospitals and charities before being donated to ZSL. #WorldElephantDay #ElephantDay #Jumbo

A cat in the catering department! Or should that be CAT-ring department? This photo, from 1922, shows members of the St Bartholomew’s Hospital catering staff 🐈 #InternationalCatDay #Archives

Yesterday we hosted an away day for the dietetics team from the Royal London Hospital, kicking off with a display on the rich history of food, diet and dietitians at the London. If you work for the Trust and like the sound of an Archives away day, get in touch!

Our "coolest spoon" - a lithotomy scoop, used during surgeries to remove bladder stones. The surgeon would use tools to break up the stone in the bladder and then use a spoon, like this, and forceps to remove the shards. This example, RLHINV/279, dates from about 1880 🥄

A different type of nurses cap today - swimming caps! These pictures from the 1950s show the London Hospital nurses enjoying some leisure time in hospital pool 🌊 #HistNursing #LondonHistory

First outing for our new BHA banner at the @qmul.bsky.social Founders Day event!

No holiday booked this year? No problem! The RELAXATOR will give you that relaxed feeling - banishing mental tension and restoring your physical energy! This advert was in the St Bartholomew's Hospital Journal, 1968.

#CowAppreciationDay you say? We have several cow horns in our collection. These examples date from around 1700 and were used to feed children and patients that were too poorly to consume solid food 🐮

Weekend reading sorted! 📖👀 Out today, the new issue of our newsletter - read it at the 'Newsletters and Blogs' section of our website, www.bartshealth.nhs.uk/barts-health.... Check your inbox if you're already on our mailing list, or go to the website to sign up and receive future issues!

Ever wondered about the names of some of the old streetscape around the Royal London Hospital? When the new hospital was built on Whitechapel Road in the 1750s, it neighboured a place variously known as a dunghill, a rampart, & a plague burial ground - find out more open.substack.com/pub/theunder...

It's #DietitiansWeek #DW2025, so we're looking back at the development of dietetics at our hospitals. Margery Abrahams, dietitian at St Bartholomew's Hospital & first chair of the British Dietetic Association, was an early pioneer. Her book Modern Dietary Treatment was published in 1937 (🧵 1/)

👀New blog post!👀 Our wonderful placement student from the @ucl.ac.uk archives course, Symona, looks back at her time in the archives www.bartshealth.nhs.uk/archives-blo...

Inspired by some of the marginalia in our 15th century Cok's Cartulary, we designed some stickers for visitors at View Day. Which character are you - the grumpy bunny? A two faced dog/king? A basilisk? A hungry fox? A merry piper?

View Day is here again! Visit our stall in the square at St Bartholomew's Hospital and find out how a day to survey the hospital properties evolved into a viewing of the patients and now an annual celebration of the hospital's work. Ice cream and historic pill making - it's all happening!

Huge congratulations to @sarahphd22.bsky.social for the well-deserved recognition of her #histnursing research and her commitment to making little-known nursing histories accessible to all. Sarah has helped us find out so much about our own collections over the years! www.rcn.org.uk/news-and-eve...

Thank you to everyone who has made suggestions! Given the location of the shelters in front of and possibly attached to the lower windows, we think that they were additional protection from bomb damage and shrapnel, while allowing the top part of the sashes to be opened for ventilation.

Cheers to nurses the world over, and the incredible work they do! #InternationalNursesDay #IND2025

As the world has looked back on VE day this week, we have had a question about St Bartholomew's Hospital in the Second World War, which we can't answer. Can you help?! This photo was taken in the hospital square in the 1940s; what was the purpose of the temporary wooden structures in the background?

We're very pleased to share five new research guides, researched by @qmul.ac.uk students as part of the #qHeritage knowledge exchange programme! The guides cover schools of nursing, physiotherapy and radiotherapy, & historic admission processes at the London Hospital. Find them at shorturl.at/j6jNJ

These bear comparison with uniforms worn by Salvation Army 'Slum Sisters' in the late C19th. Providing practical support to people living in deprived areas (where often even the police would be reluctant to venture), the special uniform legitimated the Salvationists' presence in these communities

We hold the personal papers of Maisie Holt who researched the treatment of dyslexia at St Bartholomew's Hospital. She used play and games as part of her practise. Check out our video about her and discover the story behind the 'house game' tinyurl.com/6uk2d33e #FunAndGames #HistMed #Archives

For much of the 20th century, nurses travelling hospital precincts wore an 'outdoor uniform' to protect them from the elements and protect their indoor uniform underneath from muddy streets and city dirt, while identifying them as employees of their hospital #ArchiveTravel #HistNursing #Archives

Today's #Archive30 is #SomethingSmall. This is a little charm bracelet given to nurse Joy Biggs in the early 1930s to bring her luck in her nursing exams #HistNursing #Archives [SBHPP/BIG/1]

This notebook from the 1940s contains diet lists, recipes, and notes on patient nutrition, compiled by Sister Rachel Mason, who trained and nursed at the London Hospital. It includes early examples of celiac and FODMAP diets, known at the time as Sprue and Lenhart. #ArchiveFoodAndDrink #Archives

Much modern medical equipment is mass-produced, single-use, and disposable. But historically if staff needed pieces of equipment the Royal London Hospital had a workshop for making and adapting medical tools onsite as seen in this photo from the 1950s #ArchiveTechnology

The 'La Barta Girls' showing us how all the 1905 gals were doing their hair! #ArchiveFasion #Archives

Young patients at the Alexandra Hospital for Children with Diseases of the Hip often spent months in traction or confined to their beds, and became separated from the outside world. Sometimes they needed help to understand what was happening beyond the walls of the ward #HiddenHistories #Archives

Patients with TB at Frimley Sanatorium took part in outdoor activities as part of their recovery programme. One of these activities was working on the pig farm! This clip is from a c.1926 film - A Day in a Sanatorium. #ArchiveAnimals Watch the full film, RLHBHFfilm/3/11, here: shorturl.at/4cKXv

It's #NationalUnicornDay! Here is one of the deeds documenting the transfer in 1894 of The Unicorn public house to the Guardians of the Poor of St Leonard's, Shoreditch 🦄 #Unicorns #Archives [SBHL/HC/1/4]

This is one of our oversize plan books of London properties owned by St Bartholomew’s Hospital 1848-1927 (normal sized archivist for reference) #EYAHuge #Archives [SBHB/HC/55]

Brilliant to see Letitia Clark, one of the amazing nursing leaders from our Barts Health history, recognised with a new page on Wikipedia, thanks to the #WomenInRed project #histnursing

During our two week closure period at the start of the year Ginny spent several days condition-checking and repackaging over 800 of our oversized items. A lot of these required flattening and putting in melinex slips before being returned to the plan-chests #ArchiveConservation #Archives

We have vast collections of fascinating pamphlets on London history & society. ‘News from Bartholomew Fair, or The World’s Mad’ (166-) (PAM 4834)- a satirical work about the ‘vanities and fooleries’. Lasting a fortnight in Smithfield in late summer. Est. 1133 & suppressed in 1855 as a nuisance. 🎪

Our collections don't just consist of records and objects, you can find lots of #SoundAndVision too! Check out Voices of Whipps Cross on our YouTube channel - oral history interviews and soundscapes with images from the archives, to explore places and people at the hospital shorturl.at/dmD6H

The first person employed specifically to care for our archives was D'Arcy Power, Surgeon to the St Bartholomew's Hospital, who became Honorary Keeper of Muniments in 1934. Based on this article we think he'd be happy with how're doing things! #ArchiveBeginnings #Archives #Archive30

👀New on the blog!👀 We look back at our Bringing the Collections Closer project and how we have made our collections and our communities more visible in hospital spaces www.bartshealth.nhs.uk/archives-blo...

Archives aren't just for history! Today we ran an Archive Skills session for 1st year Doctoral students from @qmul.ac.uk & @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social with the London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership. Fab to see them leave full of excitement for archive research🎉

📢Issue 8 of our newsletter is out now! 👀 Contact us to join our mailing list, to keep up to date on our news and projects - or access this and past issues in the 'Newsletters' section on our website bartshealth.nhs.uk/barts-health-archives

The wonderful Swadhinata Trust is celebrating it's 25th anniversary of promoting and preserving Bengali history and culture in Tower Hamlets - join them to celebrate at their anniversary Mela on Wed 5 March! Book your free ticket here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/swadhinata...

This little chap - Scruffy - refused to leave the London Hospital ward where his master was. On the reverse it says ' Nurses have tried to make him go home...Every time the door opens he peeps in to see how his master is, but is not allowed inside the ward" #LoveYourPetDay

Some of the work we're doing to care for our collections 📚

Happy Valentines to all our followers 💘

Gosh, this is rather splendid: several steps up from what you normally have to pass the time in a hospital waiting room.

The big reveal!! 🧐 The boxes contained our new interactive digital heritage display units, which can now be found in patient waiting areas around the Royal London Hospital. Patients & visitors can explore items from our collections curated by our 'Bringing the Collections Closer' community curators🧵

Special delivery at the Royal London Hospital! What could it be?🤔 All will be revealed soon!

I feel like we're all struggling with cold hands at the moment. Let's take some advice from these Probationer notes on keeping your hands in good condition, using greasy material and housemaids' gloves #Archives #HistNursing

Today marks 30 years of the Minor Injuries Unit at Barts! Opened on 30th January 1995, the minor injuries unit, led by a team of emergency nurse practitioners provides urgent care for non-life threatening injuries.

Reminder that our collaborative funded PhD with @durhamhistory.bsky.social on The Salvation Army's historic HIV/Aids work is still open for expressions of interest until 31 January. www.northernbridge.ac.uk/applyforastu... ('Projects Recruiting for Entry in 2025/2026' and search 'Aids').

It's pretty blustery out there! We're remembering the big storm of 1987 which brought down trees in the St Bartholomew's Hospital square. The trees had to be sawn up and new trees planted. Stay safe everyone during #StormÉowyn!