All speakers are very enthusiastic about their topic and are happy to answer questions. Talks last between 45-90 minutes and are subject to the speaker's availability.
Please email Louise Price for details and prices (louise.price10@nhs.net).
Join Louise Robinson BSc (Hons) Anatomical Studies, on a journey of discovery through 19th century operating theatre practice, from a time before anaesthesia and antisepsis.
19TH CENTURY SURGERY
Sarah Dentith talks about the female and the male patients discovered in original records held at the Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service at the Hive in Worcester. The patient casebooks have rarely been accessed since the information is protected by the 100 year rule and additional legislation designed to protect the identity of vulnerable people. However, Sarah tells the stories of some of the patients at Powick during the war, the woman who attacked her neighbour, another who liked to undress, a man who believed he was an opera singer and another who escaped. She talks about those local men who were so worried about the war it affected their delusions, and those soldiers who hadn't finished basic training but told heroic stories of winning medals in France.
She recreates the lives of lost people and talks about their experience as staff tried to help them with occupational therapy and medicines in a time when the mentally ill have hardly been studied yet.
WAR WORRY: HOW THE FIRST WORLD WAR AFFECTED PATIENTS OF A MENTAL HOSPITAL
DEATH MASKS AND PHRENOLOGY
Louise Robinson, BSc Anatomical Studies (University of Birmingham) gives a fascinating talk about the history of Phrenology and the George Marshall Medical Museum's collection of death masks.
This talk looks at the great and the good of Worcester, who funded the Infirmary but it also looks at economic change at the turn of the twentieth century when middle class women were gaining a little freedom in the charities they supported and working class men could fund their own medical expenses before the National Insurance Act
Sarah Dentith’s award-winning undergraduate dissertation was about the history of Worcester Infirmary, looking at the people that funded it at the end of the Victorian Period and why.
why did they pay for the hospital?
THE POWICK EXPERIENCE
Ken Crump RMN speaks passionately about his time at Powick Hospital between 1963 and 1979. As Student Nurse and later Staff Nurse and Charge Nurse, his talk covers the staff, the hospital environment and its function until the hospital closed.
Based on Sarah Dentith’s own family research this talk concentrates on Worcester Dispensary built by her great x3 grandfather. It includes information and tips on family history, the history of dispensaries and the controversies over financing medical institutions, all despite a shortage of original sources on this particular topic.
how they built a dispensary
THE BRIDGNORTH INFIRMARY
Gillian Waugh Pead was trained as a nurse, educated in public policy and has a keen interest in Bridgnorth’s local history. In this talk, she speaks about the history of the Bridgnorth Infirmary: Philanthropy, Prejudices and Patients between 1832 and 1948.
