HOSPITAL RECORDS
Admission books often contain information such as next of kin
You may become aware of an ancestor’s illness through various sources. The most obvious is a death certificate, but you may also pick up indications of poor health from an obituary, coroner’s inquest, probate, employment records or the wording on a gravestone, while serious accidents were often covered in newspapers – try the
British Newspaper Archive (britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk).
Frequently, it’s not possible to find the details of any hospital admission because most healthcare records were destroyed. However, you may be lucky enough to have ancestors in a location where selected information about hospital patients is available.
The most common types of clinical record to survive are admission books, which list everyone coming into hospital and usually their reason for admission. Often these books contain other
