A sketch drawing of a cricket team fielder and bowler during a match. Artist signed as E B Bennett, early twentieth century. Photo: Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York: RET 5/15/2/6.

Work is underway to digitise the archives of The Retreat

Retreat online archives project underway

Work is underway to digitise the archives of The Retreat

by Tara Craig 17th April 2015

Work is underway to digitise the archives of The Retreat, the York-based mental health facility founded by Quaker William Tuke.

The project is a cooperation between the Wellcome Library and the Borthwick Institute for Archives.

The first batch of material went online at the beginning of the year. The work is expected to take until June 2016, by which stage the team hopes to have created more than 450,000 digital images. Team members include digitisation assistants and a conservation technician.

The Retreat archive currently occupies over ninety-eight linear metres of shelving in the strongrooms at the Borthwick Institute, which is part of the University of York.

Once digitised, the archive will be freely available via the Wellcome Library’s website. It will include documents such as patient correspondence, records, case notes and photographs.

Jenny Mitcham, digital archivist at the Borthwick Institute, told the Friend: ‘The archive has long been available for researchers to consult within our searchrooms, and has always been a well-used archive, but this project will facilitate much wider and more international use.’

‘The Retreat has a key position not only in the history of mental health care, but in Quaker history and the history of York. Our main aim for this project is to make the information within this fascinating archive more easily accessible to a greater number of people.’

The project was funded by the Wellcome Library, as part of a wider mental health archives digitisation strategy focusing on materials from psychiatric hospitals in the UK from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries.

Archives of St Luke’s Hospital Woodside (London), Crichton Royal Hospital (Dumfries), Gartnavel Royal Hospital (Glasgow) and Camberwell House Asylum (London) will also be made available.


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