Library and Learning Services’ Day Out to The Suffolk Records Office
by Craig Martin on 2019-11-21T14:17:00+00:00 | 0 CommentsBack in the Autumn, the Learning Service team were invited to visit the current Records Office on Gatacre Road, Ipswich. With The Hold starting to take shape outside our office windows, we are eagerly awaiting it’s opening next year and wanted to get a sense of ‘Before’ and ‘After’ for ourselves and explore how we can connect resources for our students.
So off we went on our little team road trip! (FYI: we made a Spotify playlist especially for the occasion, check it out here).
We were shown into a room, with a table laden with beautiful hand sketched local maps of Suffolk. One particularly caught my eye: Ipswich dated 1778. The names of the landowners were individually etched onto their plots. Clusters of houses were shown in dark blocks with familiar street names like Upper Brook St and Silent St and rows of little trees showing boundary lines.
These maps could provide valuable data for those studying History, Economics or Business, exploring how Suffolk has expanded in population and commerce; the growth of infrastructure and use of local building materials may also be of interest to our Architecture students. The design and craftmanship of these maps alone could be enough to inspire our Art and Graphic Design students.
The staff had selected some particularly interesting medical catalogues for us to view: huge leather-bound logs, beautifully handwritten, their context however was a little bleak.
Separated into male and female patients, each catalogue detailed residents in local asylums: name, age, occupation and the diagnoses that led them to be institutionalised. Further ‘matter of fact’ details were also listed such as the patient’s muscularity, fatness and bodily state! Patients as young as early teens were listed, others lived and died there: their lives plotted out in inked data entries.
The occasional page revealed a photograph, like the one below of Clara, 27 yrs from Samford (now known as Babergh council). Admitted on the 21st January 1888, her record stated that she was ‘deaf/ mute from birth’ and ‘had always been deficient in intellect’.
It was a stark delve into the past of how those with disabilities or poor mental health were treated as ‘other’, locked away from society and kept isolated. The treatments and diagnoses were archaic. It was normal to use awful terms that we have thankfully left behind such as hysteria, crippled, dumb and weak minded. These records provide valuable insight into medical history and the evolution of models of health, that would make a fascinating project for those studying SEND, Health, Psychology or Policy; reading the pages and looking over the photographs and charts made these people’s stories become real.
We all left with a sense of connection to the past and reflected on how one day, people will look back at how the University has changed the local landscape and the lives of those who have passed through it. The Hold is certain to provide us with an almost endless supply of valuable resources and inspiration for students and academics alike.
Alex Read
Academic Skills Advisor
@AlexUoS
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