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 on the Hospital for Sick Children at Great Ormond Street, and its sister institution, the convalescent home, Cromwell House which was situated in Highgate, north London. At its centre is a unique database of admission records, which for the main Hospital cover the period from the day it opened, on 14 February 1852, to the end of 1914; while the convalescent home records relate to admissions from 1869 (when it opened) to 1904.

In addition to the database there is 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; and those from Cromwell House, the convalescent home, from 1869 to 1904. It represents a unique collection of information on children’s health in the Victorian and Edwardian periods.

Each database record provides information on an individual admission to either institution. Children moved frequently between the two as their conditions progressed or they suffered relapse. Records which refer to related admissions are linked together to enable users to easily follow the children’s progress through the system. There are 84,190 records relating to admissions to the main Hospital and 10,290 relating to admissions to the convalescent home. It was highly unusual for children to be admitted directly to Cromwell House, so the majority of records for that institution have a related admission to the main hospital.

The original registers provide the following information on each 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 in hospital

5. The Cromwell House records also contain information on the child’s vaccination status and a history of childhood diseases encountered (for a small number of records).

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

Linking Records

Children admitted to Cromwell House were usually referred there from the main hospital at Great Ormond Street. In the database such related records have been identified and linked together, so the child’s full stay at the institution can be viewed on screen. A list of all related admissions is provided in the record display view (where appropriate) and links from this list lead to other records related to the admission. In this way a user can view all records related to a child’s admission to the whole institution, following its progress from hospital to convalescent home, and sometimes back again.

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 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 child was admitted less than one hundred years ago (see below).
4. Members of Staff:  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 be anonymised. As a result, records from 1907-1914 ARE published but with the names of children hidden. This means it is not possible to search for specific patients whose admission dates are less than one hundred years ago. The children’s names are revealed as the date of their admission passes the one hundred year mark. By the end of 1914 all anonymisation will have been removed.

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

Database Fields

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.

Institution field enables users to restrict searches to either Great Ormond Street or Cromwell House, using the drop down menu. The default setting ‘All Records’ searches across both institutions.

Street, Registration District and Sub-registration district fields have been added to aid searches for London addresses, while addresses outside London have been assigned to counties, to aid analysis. See Help Patient details for more information on searching for addresses.

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. See Help Diseases for more information.

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
• Print and download records.

Registration enables us to analyse 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.

For more information on searching specific fields see the related HELP topic.

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: Users are limited as to the number of records which can be viewed. A message will alert you if your results set exceeds this limit.

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, or use the previous, next buttons to view adjacent records.

HELP in 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 available on the Results Table page. This facility 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’.

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.

Each record (row) in the downloaded table contains the following fields

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 users have valid reasons for requiring larger volumes of data they should contact the project, using the ‘Permission Request’ button, stating the purpose for which the data is required and a decision will be made within 28 days,.

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 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.

Help