Catalogue description Records of Rubery Hill Hospital

The records consist mainly of patient records, some of which date from the opening of the hospital, to circa 1960, however some of the records only go up to the mid 1930s. There is also a large number of photographs of the hospital, patients and staff.

Pre-1948 records: Copyright passed to the Crown unless otherwise specified.
Post-1948 records: Crown copyright applies unless otherwise specified.

1 Administrative Records
1/1 Annual Reports
1/2 Reports
1/3 Minute books
1/4 Time books

2 Financial Records
2/1 Patients ledgers
2/2 Order Books
2/3 Passbooks

3 Patient Records
3/1 Admission Registers/Registers of Admissions
3/2 Registers of Patients
3/3 Civil Registers
3/4 Admission and Discharge Registers
3/5 Trial and Discharge Registers
3/6 Casebooks
3/7 Registers of Ear Nose and Throat reports
3/8 Registers of Tuberculosis cases
3/9 Registers of Operations
3/10 Registers of Infectious Diseases
3/11 Registers of Fits
3/12 Registers of mechanical restraint and seclusion
3/13 Civil Registers of Deaths
3/14 Post Mortem notes
3/15 Special reports and certificate books
3/16 Medical Journals

4 Site Records
4/1 Plans

5 Chapel Records
5/1 Burial Registers
5/2 Burial Sanctions
5/3 Chaplains Journal

6 Miscellaneous Printed Material
6/1 Mental Treatment Acts
6/2 Pamphlets/Brochures
6/3 History

7 Statistical Records
7/1 Daily Returns
7/2 Schedule of Accommodation
7/3 Standard of Accommodation

8 Photographs
8/1 Photographs of the buildings
8/2 Photographs of the grounds
8/3 Photographs of patients
8/4 Photographs of staff
8/5 Miscellaneous photographs
8/6 Photographs of other hospitals
8/7 Miscellaneous photographic material

A source list to Birmingham Mental Hospitals is available in the Archives and Heritage searchroom.

For Rubery Hill Hospital management committee and various sub-committee minutes from 1948 to 1960 see HC HO/1/1/1-4. During this period the hospitals were jointly administered.

See also MS 1602 which comprises index cards to patients admitted to the various mental hospitals in Birmingham (Winson Green, Rubery Hill, Hollymoor, Highcroft Hall). Information given includes name, age, address, which hospital patient is admitted to, dates of admission, discharge and death and name of next of kin.

Ancestry holds searchable digitised copies of Lunacy Patients Admission Registers, 1846-1912; this series contains registers kept by the Lunacy Commission, 1846 to 1913, of asylum patients in both public and private asylums. They record the name and sex of the patient; the name of hospital, asylum, or licensed house; and the date of admission and of discharge or death of each patient. Can be found at: https://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=9051

Rubery Hill Hospital

Records containing sensitive information about patients or members of staff are closed for 100 or 80 years respectively from the date of the last entry. Please see item level records for details.

Birmingham Borough Council adopted the 1845 Act for the care and treatment of lunatics and proceeded to purchase and build on farmland at Winson Green, to provide an asylum (known as All Saints Asylum), which came into use in June 1850. In the following years it became apparent that more accommodation was required for patients, particularly for the chronically ill, and in 1876, a site of 151 acres at Rubery was purchased, to ease the overcrowding in All Saints and the expense of sending paupers to other local authority asylums. The hospital was to be mainly for the seriously ill patients of the imbecile class, for whom there was very little provision.

The architects Martin and Chamberlain were commissioned to build Rubery Hill Hospital, and it opened on 4 January 1882. There was accommodation for over 600 patients together with a library and administrative buildings and provision for outdoor exercise, farming and gardening. Extensions were made to the Hospital in 1893-5 and in 1887 the Holly Moor estate was purchased, and a further hospital built in 1900-1905 [these records can be found in HC HO]. During the First World War the Hospital was used as a war hospital, forming the 2nd Birmingham War Hospital, with all the patients being transferred to either All Saints or other hospitals in Birmingham. During the later stages of the war Rubery Hill was a specialist Orthopaedic Hospital. The 2nd War Hospital closed in 1920, and the normal operations of the hospital recommenced.

Following the Second World War Rubery Hill Hospital and Hollymoor Hospital were administratively amalgamated as part of the No. 6 (Rubery) Group of Hospitals until they were reorganised in 1962. Joint management minutes and the minutes of various sub-committees can be found at HC HO/1/1/1-4.

Rubery Hill Hospital closed in 1995 and most of the buildings were subsequently demolished.