Blog

Author: Lesley Hall

Show Navigation
Lesley Hall

Lesley Hall

Lesley Hall, FRHistS, PhD, DipAA, has been an archivist at the Wellcome since 1979. She has published extensively on the history of sexuality and gender in Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries, given many talks and conference presentations, and featured on radio and television. Further details can be found at her website.

  • blood bags

    The Blood is the Life

    07/10/2013

    The Library is delighted to announce a significant addition to our holdings on blood transfusion: the Harrison-Howell Blood Transfusion Collection is now catalogued and available for research. The Harrison-Howell Collection consists of memorabilia relating to the British blood transfusion service,… Continue reading

  • Having a ‘typewritten conversation’

    30/09/2013

    The records of the Pioneer Health Centre Peckham, along with the personal papers of its originators, George Scott Williamson and Innes Pearse, came into the Wellcome Library over a period of years from a variety of different sources, having ended up dispersed… Continue reading

  • “Possibly… of advantage to the subject of Pharmacology”

    02/09/2013

    The archive of the British Pharmacological Society (BPS) has recently been catalogued and is now available to researchers at the Wellcome Library. The BPS was founded in 1931 and the collection covers a wide range of areas: minutes of the… Continue reading

  • Sexology in the Wellcome Library

    14/05/2013

    Last week I attended a colloquium in Berlin, Das Erbe der Berliner Sexualwissenschaft: Eine Fachtagung sexualwissenschaftlicher Archive, commemorating the 80th anniversary of destruction of Magnus Hirschfeld‘s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft by the Nazis on 6 May 1933. I had been asked to… Continue reading

  • From secret diseases to sexual health

    28/03/2013

    Recently received, and now catalogued and available, in Archives and Manuscripts, are the archives of the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV, which has also given us books from its library collection. This adds significantly to our existing archival and… Continue reading

  • Paying attention to what women say

    08/03/2013

    International Women’s Day seems a good time to commemorate two amazing (and long-lived!) women doctors and researchers whose major breakthroughs were the result of listening to what women told them and paying attention to the implications. Cicely Williams (1893-1992) was… Continue reading

  • A collector of rare diseases

    28/02/2013

    Today (28th February) is Rare Disease Day, and it seems appropriate to draw attention to our holdings of the papers of a major figure in the history of unusual diseases and syndromes, Frederick Parkes Weber FRCP (1863-1962). Parkes Weber’s contributions… Continue reading

  • Archival top of the pops 2012

    13/02/2013

    Referring back to the popularity contests of previous years reported in the Library blog, 2012’s most popular favourites were pretty predictable:   The Royal Army Medical Corps Muniment Collection, the Wellcome Foundation archives, the Family Planning Association archive, the archives… Continue reading

  • Suspicious poisonings and the insane: stories from the archives

    17/01/2013

    The author in search of inspiration for a blockbusting novel could do worse than seek this in some recently catalogued manuscripts in the Library. B. Bolton’s 1819 domestic recipe book (MS.8765) certainly suggests the groundwork for a gritty saga of early… Continue reading

  • Sex, religion and royalty: also dairy farming

    20/12/2012

    Religion, sex, and royalty are supposed to be the perfect storm for creating a bestseller. Archives and Manuscripts have recently acquired some papers of Lord Dawson of Penn, physician to four monarchs (Edwards VII and VIII, Georges V and VI),… Continue reading