General help

About the Database : Registration : Searching : Results : Printing and Downloading : Library : Gallery : Links

Small and Special is a collection of resources about the development of healthcare for children in the Victorian and Edwardian era, and focuses particularly on the Hospital for Sick Children at Great Ormond Street. At its centre is a unique database of admission records for the Hospital from the day it opened, on 14 February 1852, to the end of 1914.

In addition to the database Small and Special offers a library of articles and a gallery of images of the hospital from that era.

About the Database

The Small and Special database contains records transcribed from the earliest Patient Admission Registers for the Hospital for Sick Children at Great Ormond Street, covering the period 1852-1914. It represents a unique collection of information on children’s health in the Victorian and Edwardian periods.

Each of the 84,190 records in the database provides information on an individual admission:

1. Child’s name, sex, age on admission and address

2. Date of admission, name of the admitting doctor (and in earlier records the name of the child’s sponsor), the ward to which he or she was admitted and date of discharge

3. Initial diagnosis, discharge date and outcome of stay in hospital, and details of referrals to other hospitals

4. Remarks on aspects of the child’s stay on hospital

Not all the information was recorded for each child, but most have personal details, dates of admission and discharge, diagnosis and outcome.

What is NOT in the Database

It is possible that you will not find what you are looking for in the database. The principal reasons for this are as follows:-

1. The child you are seeking was not treated at Great Ormond Street. The hospital was the first children’s hospital with in-patient facilities in Britain, but, in the years immediately after 1852, many other small children’s hospitals were established throughout Britain, and the larger voluntary hospitals opened children’s wards. It is possible that a child in-patient was treated at another of these hospitals.
2. The child was an out-patient. Most of the patients treated at the hospital were never admitted to the wards. Out-patient registers have not survived.
3. The member of staff you are looking for is not there. The names of nurses, junior doctors and ancillary staff are not given in the registers from which the database has been created.

Data Protection

Data protection rules require that records relating to children admitted less than 100 years ago should annonymised. As a result, records from 1907-1914 have been published with the names of children hidden. This information will be released on the 100 year anniversary of the child’s admission date, until all records are made fully available at the end of 2014.

Added indexes

There was little if any standardisation of information by the clerks who created the Registers, and they also introduced errors at the time of creation. Some errors appear to have occurred as a result of transcription, probably from individual ward books to the big Registers, and sometimes appear to be errors resulting from misheard verbal information.

Standard spelling was not of primary concern to the Victorians so many phonetic variations of names and addresses can be found.

A standardised nomenclature and nosology of diseases did not exist in the period covered by Small and Special so many variations are used to describe similar diseases or symptoms

In order to help users of Small and Special find information against this background of non-conformity, several indexes have been added by the Project team.

Street, Registration District and Registration Sub-district fields have been added to aid searches for London addresses, see Help-Patient Details for more information.

Length of Stay and Year of Birth have been calculated from data in the Register, and added to the database. These fields did not exist in the original books.

Admitting Doctor was created to enable searches by particular doctors. It contains a standard version of the doctors’ names, as they were often abbreviated in the Registers, and occasionally they were misspelt.

The largest additional indexes, developed to simplify searching for diseases, are Disease Name, Disease Group and ICD10. The information on diagnoses in the Registers suffers from a lack of standardisation, misspelling, and (from a 21st century point of view) clarity. These three indexes have been created to help users find a way through the maze of Victorian and Edwardian medical terms and their understanding of medical sciences. (Link to Diseases Help)

Registration

Both registered and unregistered users can use the Small and Special web site and database. However, several advantages are gained by becoming a registered user:

• Access to more advanced search options
• Access to more detailed records of individual admissions
• Ability to print and download records.

Registration enables analysis of the types of user on the system, helping us to plan enhancements and future developments more effectively. Registration also helps to deter inappropriate use of the database, thus protecting free access to this unique source for bona fide researchers. The registration process is simple, and requires only that you provide minimal personal information.

Your details will never be passed on to third parties and will only be used in the administration of this web site.

Searching

The Search Form is split into four distinct areas (Personal Details, Residence, Admission and Stay, and Disease, Outcome and Discharge) grouping related pieces of information together. Each area has its own Help. Searches can combine elements from within and between these areas, although it is advisable not to attempt to combine too many elements in a search. It is always advisable to start a search broad and narrow down to reduce the number of hits.

Use the Clear Form button before starting a completely new search, otherwise search terms left over from a previous search will affect the results.

Once all the search terms have been entered simply click on Search (at the top or bottom of the form) to begin the search.

Results

The results of your search are displayed in a table which provides brief information extracted from each record.

You can sort the results table by any of the columns, by clicking on the down arrow in the Sort By box and clicking on the desired sort format.

If the results were not what you were expecting you can click on ‘Amend Your Search Criteria’, which takes you back to the Search Form.

Note: There are limits on the number of records which can be printed or downloaded. This limit is set automatically at 200 records for any one search. If the working dataset exceeds 200, only the first 200 will be accessible. If users have valid reasons for requiring larger volumes of data they should contact the project, using form under ‘Contact Us’ stating the purpose for which the data is required and a decision will be made within 28 days.

To view a full record click anywhere on the line relating to that record in the results table. The Full Record screen displays the information in the same format as the Search Form. To view another record click on the link ‘Back to search results’ and select another record to view.

Help on the right hand navigation provides an explanation for each of the elements seen in the records.

Printing and Downloading

Both the Results Table and individual records can be printed by clicking on the Print button on the appropriate screen.

There is also a download facility. This is available on the Results Table page. It allows users to download the full results set into a tabular .csv file (comma separated values) which can then be opened in most spreadsheet applications. Click on ‘Download results in csv format’. Note: see Printing for volume restrictions on downloading.

If, when using Excel, the file opens with all the data in the first column, highlight the first column, click Data from the toolbar and select ‘Text to Column’. Choose ‘Delimited’ and on next screen choose ‘comma’, and follow the remaining instructions to ‘Finish’. The data will be separated into columns representing fields in the database.

The download facility downloads the full record for each line in the results set. Each record (row) in the downloaded table contains the following fields:

Library

The Library contains a collection of short articles describing various facets of the Hospital. It includes a brief history of the hospital up to 1914, short biographies of some of its pioneering doctors and of the matrons who organised and managed the wards and the housekeeping arrangements. Here also you will find stories of some of the patients who were treated in the Hospital, and descriptions of various hospital departments, such as the ‘Electricity Department’ and the ‘Milk Department’. Articles will continue to be added to the Library over time, so be sure to keep checking for new arrivals.

Gallery

The Gallery contains a collection of images of the hospital from the earliest times through to the Edwardian era. They show views of the interior and exterior of the hospital buildings, and images of the people who inhabited them, including the patients, nurses and doctors.

Links

The Links page lists links to a wide range of web sites dealing with subjects related to the content of Small and Special.

Help