What do a Maternity Hospital, a Lottery, and Daring Prison Escape Have in Common? One man: Bartholomew Mosse (1712-1759), the male midwife behind the founding of the Dublin Lying-In Hospital in Ireland. The Dublin Lying-in Hospital, now known as the Rotunda Hospital, opened on 8th December 1757, taking over from the city’s previous Lying-In Hospital…
Tag: social history
An Audience with Stephen McGann from Call The Midwife, Thursday 17th November 2016
Tickets are on sale now for An Audience with Stephen McGann at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Date: Thursday 17th November 2016 Start time: 6:30pm Location: Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, 27 Sussex Place, Regent’s Park, London, NW1 4RG Stephen McGann is best known for his role as Dr Turner in the…
Fantastic Finds for Friday: A Letter from Florence Nightingale
This month’s Fantastic Find comes courtesy of the ‘Lady of the Lamp’. There are few nurses more well known than Florence Nightingale (12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910). Venerated as a hero of the Crimean War for her management of nurses treating wounded soldiers, Nightingale was also an author. Her book Notes on Nursing: What…
Conference, 7th May, Oxford: “Pregnancy and birth: Changing practices over the twentieth century”
We are pleased to announce that The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities and De Partu are holding a study day in Oxford on 7th May as part of a Knowledge Exchange Partnership with the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Hardly a week goes by without a story or advice about pregnancy or birth…
Fantastic Finds for Friday: Satirical Drawings from the Archive
This month’s Fantastic Finds post showcases some of our archive’s satirical drawings and caricatures. Topics such as death, disease and medical reform are fertile ground for dark humour and satire. Medicine can also serve as an affective metaphor for criticising unpopular legislation and political decisions. Likewise, prominent figures in healthcare and politics have long been…
Celebrating 500 years of Pregnancy and Birth
Since April this year the library and archives of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has been involved in a Knowledge Exchange Partnership with The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities and the De Partu History of Childbirth Group. The partnership mines the college’s rich collection of over 2000 books and extensive archive material…
Fantastic Finds for Friday: Roses for Valentine’s Day?
Valentine’s Day. Not much romance in a medical college devoted to obstetrics and gynaecology, I thought, as I wracked my brains to come up with a blog post for this week. So my mind drifted from hearts and chocolates to roses, then the nursery song, ‘Ring a Ring of Roses’ popped into my head, and…
Fantastic Finds for Friday: RCOG Christmas Cards
RCOG co-founder, Professor William Blair-Bell, can be credited with starting the Christmas card tradition at the College, with his card to the Fellows and Members in 1930, in a move which he explained to his Honorary Secretary, William Fletcher Shaw, as a way to ‘increase the personal interest of the Fellows and Members in the…
Fantastic Finds for Friday: How a 1920s Medical College Remembers the First World War
Our Fantastic Finds for Friday this week brings you the culmination of many months’ research work here in the Archive – our First World War display, together with a Roll of Foundation Fellows and Members who undertook active service between 1914 and 1918. This has been a real labour of love, sparked by the discovery…
Fantastic Finds for Friday: Votes for Women!
Although the purpose of this blog is to bring you items which have been ‘stumbled’ upon as I work my way through my daily tasks in the College Archive, this week’s Fantastic Find really is an unexpected find! I have been looking through some papers of the General Secretary of the Midwives’ Institute, dating from…
Fantastic Finds for Friday: ‘May we ask for your advice on the subject of hormones and expensive gynaecological drugs?’
Picture the scene: the War Office, April 1943, in the depths of war planning, blitzed, with rationing looming on the horizon, giving their thoughts to dwindling national supplies as well as theatres of war. Lieutenant Colonel Albertine Winner received a call from the Supplies Department – medical professionals are making demands for all kinds of…
