Winterton hospital

[birdlucas]

Hi     This is the reply from the county record office concerning my research request so I'm not sure if this is the answer to your question Jomot and Arthuk or whether I should push them some more.

 I checked the index to admissions to Winterton Hospital and located the entry for Agnes Farish, which confirmed that she was admitted on 29 May 1931 from the Jarrow area, admission number 23295. From 1913 the hospital case papers are filed by date of discharge or death, since you established that she was resident at Winterton in 1939 I checked the female discharge files from 1939 to 1945. Unfortunately I could find no records relating to Agnes Farish. Although (virtually) all case notes survive from the period up to 1945, from 1946 only a 2% sample of papers was preserved, and Agnes’ papers are not among those I then checked a series of indexes listing female patients resident at various dates, and it would appear that Agnes was in the hospital until at least1961 (the date of the final index). In the index covering 1956-1958 there is a note against her entry ‘Regraded to Vol. 6-5-58’. I am afraid that we hold no later records for patients at Winterton

[arthurk]

Thanks for posting that. It seems a reasonably full, though disappointing, explanation of why there's nothing to be found.

The only thing I can think of at present that you might ask them is if they could confirm that the admissions register is simply an index to other documents, or whether it also contains a summary of the patient's condition or the circumstances in which they were admitted.

Beyond that, do you have Agnes' death certificate, and does that offer any clues as to her time in Winterton?

[birdlucas]

Yes I'll try that tomorrow when they are back at work. I have the death certificate and it just says usual address as Sedgefield Community hospital and was signed by a lady with her own address who I guess was a member of staff at the home as under 7(b) qualification, it just says 'causing the body to be buried' rather than Doctor or similar.

[stanmapstone]

Causing the deceased body to be buried means she was not just registering the death, this is the person who is giving the instructions to the undertaker and was doing the funeral arrangements.

Stan

[birdlucas]

Then I guess Stan that she may have been a member of staff at Sedgefield who felt close to Agnes, I hope so anyway, pity I can't get hold of her.

[birdlucas]

Hi
Jomot,  I asked the Durham record office to recheck their findings because of the paragraph that you pointed out to me and this is their reply.

From 1913 Winterton case notes were kept as a number of sheets relating to each patient, and when the patient was discharged or died all their case notes were then filed in a discharges or deaths file for that year.  As I explained in the Research Report, we could find no record of Agnes Farish among the female discharge files from 1939 to 1945, and since you know that she died in 1992 she could not be among the deaths files for that period.   We did find evidence that Agnes was in the hospital until at least 1961, when the indexes that we hold cease. From 1946 a decision was made by the NHS to destroy all case notes apart from a 2% sample, and Agnes’ papers are not among that sample.   This would mean that they were destroyed in their entirety, not just those from 1946.  I am sorry you feel that the information on our website misled you and I will amend it to explain the post-1945 situation.

So it is true that all case files were destroyed but I have noticed that at least the former paragraph on their Winterton site has been amended now.
My only hope of gaining any information I think is from the person who signed the death certificate but I have no idea how to find her.
Thank you for reading this

[Jomot]

The two fuller emails do seem to clarify the situation, although it would have been helpful if the records office catalogue had been clearer from the outset. 

Such a shame the records were destroyed - it's as if the 'powers that be' from the time decided her life, and those of others like her, was of no consequence.  So sad.

[birdlucas]

Yes Jomot, I quite agree it is a very sad story of one particular lady who was 'punished' the whole of her life, I feel for her and the others who were sent to Winterton in circumstances that were deemed unacceptable at the time.