The RCPsych Archives: We don’t want your money!

By Dr Claire Hilton, Honorary Archivist at the RCPsych.

Of course money is rather nice, but that is not what we are after. The RCPsych Archives wants unpublished documents, visual and audio material, hard copy and digital, which tell us about the lives and activities of members and fellows of the College, and others whose experiences in the mental health field interrelated with them. Personal papers, alongside the institutional, have the potential to enhance understanding of the history and development of the College, and of psychiatry and mental health service provision more broadly. There is also something rather magical about handling original and unique material created long ago.

What is an archive?

An archive is a collection of documents and other material selected for long-term preservation as evidence of past activities. Archive collections are unique and cannot be accessed at any other location unless digitised and made publicly available.

There are some massive archive collections, such as the UK’s National Archives at Kew, where the documents would extend 185km if placed end to end. The RCPsych Archives has 183m of paper records, plus material ‘born digital’. At present, it mainly consists of documents relating to the history of the College and its predecessor organisations back to 1841, and only a few papers from, by and about, individuals.

The institutional focus detracts from the real people involved in decision-making processes and experiencing the effects of decisions. Officialdom, for example, tends to prefer the approved minutes of meetings, not the drafts with comments and expletives written by the secretary: those notes can be far more illuminating about the people involved and their objectives, frustrations and successes than the final version.

Letters may reveal the person behind the public or official image. One such letter in the College Archives was from Sigmund Freud in 1938. As a refugee, Freud expressed his gratitude for the gift of sanctuary and a kindly welcome to England. He also voiced his concern to the Royal Medico-Psychological Association, in a self-deprecatory way—"I will be found but a very useless member”—unable to contribute to his new country as he wished. His wanting to offer something back to the country which provided safety for him and his family echoes with the desires of many other refugees, both then and now. 

Archive reference: RCPSYCH/X/2/1. (Photograph by Francis Maunze).

You don’t need to be a mover and shaker for the RCPsych Archives to be interested in you! Understanding the experiences of front-line jobbing psychiatrists is as important as knowing about those more publicly celebrated. We are also aware that our Archives has very little documentation by and about women and people from social, cultural and ethnic minority groups.

We are also interested in ‘grey literature’, often found among personal papers, published documents with a limited circulation which almost disappear once they have served their intended purpose. One which comes to mind is a Ministry of Food booklet from the middle of the First World War. It was sent to each asylum when a glut of salted, pickled and smoked herring came on the market. The booklet gave prices, explained how to open the herring barrels, and suggested recipes. The herrings could be boiled, steamed, fried, grilled, baked, poached, stuffed, soused, curried, served with lemon sauce, put in a pie or salad, or potted in vinegar.[1]

Adding personal archives to the institutional

A recently retired UK civil servant who undertook a unique international project in the 1990s, was told by his secretary that she had binned those files because they were old! To an archivist and historian, they were gold not old. The RCPsych Archives has a Collection Development Policy and we are delighted to accept donations in line with it. The following items, which you, your family, friends or colleagues, may have filed away are the sort of archival gold which we collect:  

• biographical information e.g. curriculum vitae, memoirs, genealogies, biographical sketches
• items relating to RCPsych business e.g. committee, faculty and division minutes, reports and files
• professional correspondence e.g. with colleagues, organisations, and government bodies
• audio-visual material e.g. photographs, films, sound and video recordings
• personal and family e.g. correspondence, diaries, photographs.

Donors’ wishes on the confidentiality and copyright status of the material will be agreed before items are accepted, to make sure there are no blunders especially regarding information about third parties. Records can be kept ‘closed’ for an agreed number of years before being made available to researchers. For ‘sensitive’ information, such as patients’ notes, closure is usually 100 years.

We are also aware that psychiatrists’ personal papers are deposited with other institutions, including hospitals and universities, such as in the University of Manchester Medical Collection or the King’s College London Archives,  or perhaps in the Wellcome Collection, or in local or national archives. In this case, if you know of any relevant, please could you tell us so that we can create a database of where they may be found.

How to donate material to the archives

Please contact the archivist, Francis Maunze, archives@rcpsych.ac.uk, or Claire Hilton Honorary.Archivist@rcpsych.ac.uk, if you would like to discuss donating material or can tell us the whereabouts of other, already deposited, personal archives relating to psychiatrists.

Postscriptum: We are not asking for money, but we would be delighted if you want to give us some to help us digitise the collection!