From the Collections

On the 150th anniversary of the birth of Oscar Wilde, it seems apt to draw attention to one of the more surprising letters in Henry Wellcome’s papers. Why would Wilde be writing to Wellcome? The answer reveals a surprsing string… Continue reading

Francis Cowley Burnand (1836-1917) was educated at Eton and Trinity College Cambridge, and while at Cambridge founded the Cambridge Amateur Dramatic Club in 1855. (The club still flourishes today, now as then called the ADC.) Burnand subsequently became well known… Continue reading

For World Mental Health Day: Emma Hancox opens up the Mind archive. Over 80 boxes of material from the archive of Mind, the leading mental health charity in England and Wales are now available for consultation in the Wellcome Library.… Continue reading

Dr Richard Aspin pursues the dramatic account by a Victorian barrister admitted to a lunatic asylum in 1875 in the newly digitised casebooks of Ticehurst House Hospital. “I was therefore ‘removed,’ half-dying, in a state of semi-consciousness, I can scarcely… Continue reading

Hot on the heels of its Locarno Film Festival success (the Golden Leopard for the Best International Short Film in  the Leopards of Tomorrow Competition), Abandoned Goods, a documentary by Pia Borg and Ed Lawrenson, part funded by a Wellcome… Continue reading

With World Mental Health Day coming up on October 10, we’ve decided to dedicate all this week on the Wellcome Library blog to mental health themes. On Tuesday Anna Ostrowska discusses Abandoned Goods, a documentary film about ‘asylum art’, showing… Continue reading

The complete John Sulston archive (PP/SUL) has been catalogued and is available to researchers in the Library. The final two sections have been catalogued, with Section B covering Sulston’s role as Director of the Sanger Centre (now the Sanger Institute)… Continue reading

Facing the entrance to the Wellcome Library are two large paintings by Frederick Cayley Robinson (1862-1927), from his series Acts of Mercy. This pair, painted in 1916 and 1920, both under the influence of World War I, were formerly facing… Continue reading

This royal menu card from Balmoral Castle takes us back to the reign of Queen Victoria. Then as now, the monarch spent her summers in Aberdeenshire. Some of the Queen’s most intimate body-servants also hailed from Scotland; not only the… Continue reading

Psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, authority on human sexuality, media pundit, acclaimed artist and prolific writer: whichever way you look at it Ismond Rosen (1924-1996) was possessed of an exceptional intellect. His archive, which comprises 119 boxes of documentary material, photographic images, art… Continue reading