Workhouses/Hospitals/Asylums And Sanitoriums

Boston Workhouse Gatehouse submitted by Jennie

Records of patients and their treatment are closed for 100 years. Similarly with Asylum and/or workhouse records, although entry and discharge dates may be available. Hospital and Asylums should appear on census records, with the names of the people that worked there. Patients or inmates are sometimes only listed by initials.

Records about people that worked in these places are available in some cases, as are administration and records in relation to committees and other involved groups/people.

Sources for finding specific hospital records can often be found on: National Archives Hospital Records Database where you will find towns searchable by name, and once having located the hospital, find information as to where records are held and the history of the particular establishment, its status (who ran it and when) and any former names.

Some hospitals - bigger ones - may have their own archives. The ARCHON Directory includes contact details for record repositories in the United Kingdom and also for institutions elsewhere in the world which have substantial collections of manuscripts noted under the indexes to the National Register of Archives.

To access closed records you need to contact a relevant NHS Trust - often a letter of permission is then needed, with very good reason, and someone from the records office will seek out the particular record you need rather than hand it over so as to protect the privacy of others mentioned in the record. This is due to data protection act 1998

General Sites

• County Asylums, The Fate of Britains Asylums and Mental Hospitals, Searchable by County

• Life in a Victorian Lunatic Asylum

• Coram Foundling Hospital Association

• St Marylebone, Middlesex, London

• Stepney Union Workhouse

• The Workhouse

• Rossbret Workhouses Website

• Christchurch and Bournemouth Union Workhouse

• Rossbret Asylums Website

• Industrial & Reformatory Schools in England and Wales During the 19th and Early 20th century

• Index of English and Welsh Lunatic Asylums and Mental Hospitals

• The UK UE Urbex Urban Exploration Forum (Asylums & Hospitals)

• Unlocking the past - Royal Albert Hospital Archive

Irish Maps of Poor Law Unions

• Poor Law Union Maps of County Kilkenny

• Cavan Poor Law Unions

• County Clare Poor Law Unions

• Poor Law Unions (and Superintendent Registrar's Districts) of Donegal

• Poor Law Union and their records

Welsh Poor Law Unions

• Poor Law: Board of Guardians-Wales-Powys

• The Workhouse at Caersws

Other Information Sites

• Wiki Poor Law Definition

• TNA's Hospital Database Search Facility

• Surrey History Centre Collections Catalogue

• High Littleton & Hallatrow History and Parish Records

• Poor Law Unions, Workhouses, and Hospitals Links

• Records of patients at "The Retreat" (Large Quaker Mental Hospital in York)

• Establishment of Hospitals, Asylums, Hospital Ships, Smallpox & TB

• Northampton Poor Law Union Records

• An Index to Institutions in The 1901 Census of England and Wales

• Although written as an introduction to the Apprenticeship Register for Dawlish, Devon. Parish Apprenticeship system in England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

• For more information see Poor Law and Workhouse Records

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