A series of coincidences resulted in the discovery of a remarkable collection of material which documents the development of plastic surgery at the beginning of the 20th Century. Driven by the persistence of Harold Gillies, and fuelled by the flood of casualties from the battle of the Somme, the Queen's Hospital, Sidcup was developed as the First World War's major centre for maxillo-facial and plastic surgery. Opened in 1917, the hospital and its associated convalescent hospitals provided over 1000 beds and between 1917 and 1921 admitted in excess of 5000 servicemen.
The Plastic Theatre, Queen's Hospital, 1917
The Hospital's medical staff were organised on national lines, with contingents from Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Each detachment removed its records after the war. It was assumed that the British records had been donated to the Royal College of Surgeons and destroyed when the College was bombed in the Second War; the Canadian records have disappeared. The New Zealand records (the Macalister Archive) resurfaced when rescued from imminent destruction by Sandy Macalister,Professor of Oral Surgery at the Dental School in Dunedin, and he generously donated them to us in 1989. After publication of a brief article about these in 1993, the British records (the Gillies Archive) emerged from hiding at Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton, where they had languished, almost untouched, since 1925. They include many cases illustrated by Gillies in his seminal textbook, "Plastic Surgery of the Face", published in 1920. Altogether the archives contain over 2500 records. Most of the casenotes are in their original folders and contain notes, photographs, diagrams and X-ray photographs. The New Zealand records also contain a series of 98 watercolours and a life-sized wax model illustrating surgical techniques. Queen's Hospital patients of this era were almost exclusively servicemen. Most were soldiers, with a small number of Navy and Flying Corps personnel, most of whom had suffered burns. The records include rank, number, regiment and date of wounding so that the action in which they were wounded can often be identified.
A watercolour in the Frognal Centre collection
The Gillies and Macalister Archives are listed alphabetically and record the extant contents of the notes. The two are cross-referenced and also list whether other material is held elsewhere, either in the Tonks Pastels of the Royal College of Surgeons, London (on permanent loan to the RADC Museum, Aldershot), or in the archives of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, Melbourne, where the Australian section's records are deposited. The Archives at Queen Mary's also include many photographs of the hospital, old and new, and an important reference collection of contemporary literature.
A life-size wax model illustrating surgical techniques
The Gillies and Macalister Archives are probably the most important and complete collection of facial surgery records of their age in the world. They are available to researchers by application to Dr Andrew Bamji FRCP, Curator, Gillies Archives, Frognal Centre for Medical Studies, Queen Mary's Hospital,Frognal Avenue,Sidcup, Kent DA14 6LT. Telephone 020 8308 3030 Fax 020 8308 3285, email andrew.bamji@qms.nhs.uk.
Copies of archive material are freely available; a price list is available on request. Much of the important and representative archive material has been reproduced on film or digitally, and Dr Bamji is available to lecture worldwide on the subject of facial injury in the Great War. Requests should be addressed as above.
A spreadsheet of the WW1 database can be downloaded. This includes the British section notes held at Queen Mary's, the NZ Section records, together with an indication of the material held in the Hocken Library, Dunedin, the Australian records in the College of Surgeons, Melbourne, and a list of Canadian names (which includes a small number for whom notes survive within the British Section notes) compiled from a list of material listed in the shipping manifest of 1919. All the Canadian material has been lost. As we hear of men treated at Sidcup, but for whom no notes exist, this database will be expanded. To download the spreadsheet click here.
The archives have been collaborating with the artist Paddy Hartley in Project Facade, an exciting venture responding to the images of facial reconstruction from WW1. Best to visit the website! Below are two views of Paddy's studio in St Thomas's Hospital, and one of the experimental works he has made, creating a dramatic needlepoint image from a photograph.
The Curator scans Ebay regularly! As a result the archives have acquired a number of interesting postcards of WW1 hospitals and most recently purchased a small box of medical instruments, including scalpels and bullet extractors, which has a brass plate engraved "W.P. Herringham". This must have belonged to one of the most prominent physicians of the War, Sir Wilmot Parker Herringham, and we are very pleased to have acquired it.
Until now, the Gillies Archives have concentrated on the records of Sidcup's contribution to the development of plastic surgery in the Great War. After the war Harold Gillies and his colleague Tommy Kilner were joined by Archibald McIndoe and Rainsford Mowlem, and all of them were involved in the treatment of facial casualties in the Second World War. The re-opening of Sidcup was mooted, but dismissed as at risk from bombing, and the plastic surgery service was split up on service lines. Archibald McIndoe went to the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead. His work with burned airmen is widely recognised and the Guinea Pig Club even today is world renowned. Mowlem and Kilner worked at St Albans while Gillies established the army service at Rooksdown Hospital, near Basingstoke.
In 2001 we were offered the medical notes from Rooksdown and in acquiring these, together with a number of cine films of Sir Harold operating in the 1930s and 40s, many colour prints and Sir Harold's personal collection of reprints and glass slides, we now possess a unique record of the entire career of the man who is recognised as the father figure of modern plastic surgery.
The cine film, which was very fragile, has now been transferred to video and .mpg.
We are also very pleased to have acquired some important records from Frenchay Hospital, Bristol in WW2 - plastic surgery performed by US personnel and part of the Monica Britton Collection. The records include a list of all the US servicemen treated at Frenchay under the direction of Clifford Kiehn, many photographs and some summary casenotes. There is also a photograph of Clifford Kiehn with Sir Harold Gillies, who visited Frenchay to assess results.
The library continues to expand and has now outgrown its space yet again. A recent purchase is the 5 volume set of the McDowell Series of Plastic Surgery Indexes.
Digital image update...
The original 84 Macalister watercolours have been digitised; subsequently another 13 came to light and are included in this updated gallery. Drawn on Whatman art board, they have faded somewhat and I have corrected the colour balance just a little. En masse they can be somewhat daunting; below are two images as an example.
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Gunner
Sprout: before and after surgery
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Before
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Watercolours from the Archives
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After
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The Macalister Watercolours warning: these images show disturbing facial injuries
The gallery uses Macromedia Flash so you may need to allow your computer to use ActiveX controls
The Tonks pastels (uploaded 21st June 2007)
This gallery contains the pastels created by Henry Tonks at Aldershot and Sidcup. The images are copyright of the Slade School and the Royal College of Surgeons and are watermarked accordingly. Comparison with the Macalister collection is interesting; the quality of the portraiture is quite different, with only Daryl Lindsay of the New Zealand section artists coming anywhere near Tonks in his portrayal of mood. I am grateful to Simon Chaplin for allowing us to upload the RCS images.
The clinical archive is supplemented by an extensive collection of books relating to surgery and medicine of the Great War, which includes a number of textbooks as well as personal reminiscences, hospital journals and general history books. The collection contains books from Great Britain, the USA and Canada, France, Germany and Belgium and is probably the largest library of WW1 medical experience in the world. A copy of my bibliography (76 pages in all) may be found on this site; it's big (file size just over 1Mb) but once downloaded it may be copied into a blank Word document. The Bibliography is mirrored on the WW1 Document Archive site. Our grateful thanks to Denis McDonnell of Homesdale, Pennsylvania for his tireless work in tracking down new acquisitions for us.
WW1 Document Archive Medical Bibliography
The Archive Volunteers
We are grateful to the band of helpers who have tirelessly worked to sort and catalogue the collections. Pat Howley, our Honorary Archivist, sadly died in September 2006 after a prolonged period of ill-health. Doreen Hale, who was responsible for organising the WW1 notes, retired to Norfolk but without her the collection would be in disorder. Roseann, Brenda and Jean have taken on the mantle. Their knowledge of the hospital is extensive, so we are often able to put names to faces, particularly in our photographs from 1948 to 1974.
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Roseann
Gibbs, Brenda Holmes and Jean Holden
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Pat
Howley
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