Catalogue description MILL ROAD MATERNITY HOSPITAL

The archive of Mill Road Hospital is a valuable source for the genealogist. In particular, maternity records and creed registers contain valuable information such as date of birth, parents' names, fathers' occupations and addresses. The volumes relating to the training of student nurses and midwives provide valuable insight into the background of nursing pupils.

The collection is arranged as follows, but readers are advised to read the headnote of each section as cross-referencing to other items of interest is included at this level.

Liverpool Record Office and Merseyside Record Office hold significant collections of hospital records. These include for example, Sefton General Hospital. For a comprehensive guide to holdings in this region readers are advised to consult Public Health on Merseyside: A Guide to Sources, edited by Margaret Procter with an introduction by Adrian Allan, Merseyside Archives Liaison Group, 1991. Readers are advised to consult individual repositories for information regarding more recent accessions. Liverpool Record Office holds a substantial amount of secondary source material relating to health and hospitals in the region, including books, photographs and health service reports.

Some of the records in this collection contain sensitive personal information. Those records containing sensitive personal information of adults are closed for 75 years. Those records containing the sensitive personal information of children are closed for 100 years. This is in accordance with Section 1 (Principles 1, 2 and 7) of the Data Protection Act, 1998. Permission to consult closed records should be sought from the Legal Services Manager, Liverpool Obstetrics and Gynaecology Services NHS Trust, Liverpool Women's Hospital, Crown Street, Liverpool City Council, L8 7SS.

Acc. 3633; Acc. 4413; Acc. 4937

The Health Records Survey Team and Adrian Allen of Liverpool University surveyed the records of the hospital on site on 8 January and 16 - 17 January 1981. The archive was deposited at Liverpool Record Office in 3 separate accessions in 1981, 1987 and 1993.

• Liverpool, Lancashire
• Liverpool, Merseyside
• Health services

Mill Road Hospital was originally built by the West Derby Union Board of Guardians as the "Workhouse for the Sick Poor". By 1891 it had been re-named "Mill Road Infirmary" and remained a general hospital until the Second World War. The only major addition to the original institution was a new outpatients department which was built in 1938. During the war, the hospital was severely damaged by air raids and patients in 1941 were transferred to Broadgreen Hospital where 610 beds were made available for Mill Road patients. Fortunately the new outpatient block was not damaged. When the war was ended, there was some debate as to whether or not the hospital should be re-built. When it did finally re-open in June 1947, it no longer retained its former "general" category, but now specialised in obstetrics. In November 1993 the main part of the hospital was closed. Eventually the hospital was replaced by a larger maternity hospital in Toxteth, which opened in 1995. This new hospital is called "Liverpool Women's Hospital".

Changes in legislation relating to the organisation of local government and to various aspects of the Health Service had a bearing on the record keeping practices of the organisation. These should be borne in mind when consulting the archive.

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