Hamilton, Lillias Anna (1858-1925)

Identity Statement

Reference code(s)	: GB 0120 PP/HAM
Held at	: Wellcome Library   Click here to find out how to view this collection at http://wellcomelibrary.org/ ›
Full title	: Hamilton, Lillias Anna (1858-1925)
Date(s)	: 1886-1971
Level of description	: Collection (fonds)
Extent	: 9 boxes
Name of creator(s)	: Hamilton | Lillias Anna | 1858-1925 | physician
Detailed catalogue	: Click here to view repository detailed catalogue

Context

Administrative/Biographical history:

Born 7 February 1858 in New South Wales, brought to the United Kingdom in 1860; educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College under Dorothea Beale; studied painting and music in Germany; trained as nurse in Liverpool Infirmary; studied medicine in London, Glasgow and Brussels; LRCP and LRCS(Edinburgh); MD (Brux) 1890; practiced in Calcutta for some years; went to Afghanistan to recoup her health and became personal physician to the Amir; visited England 1895 in the retinue of his son the Shahzada Nasrullah; returned to England 1896 and did settlement work in Liverpool; practiced medicine in England until her health broke down; went to South Africa (where her brother Dundas became a farmer); became Warden of Studley College, Warwickshire (established to train women for careers in horticulture and agriculture and allied professions); was a member of the Women's Freedom League; c 1915 went to Montenegro under the auspices of the Wounded Allies Relief Committee and ran a hospital there: returned to Studley where her health became progressively poorer and died at Nice in January 1925.

Content

Scope and content/abstract:

Papers of Lillias Anna Hamilton including correspondence, writings and other papers from career including as personal physician to the Amir of Afghanistan, 1894-1896, Warden of Studley College, Warwickshire (training women for careers in agriculture and horticulture), and doctor in Serbia in 1915 with the Wounded Allies Relief Committee; photographs of Afghanistan. There is little in this collection of specifically medical interest, but it gives some indication of the life, career and varied interests of an early woman doctor.

Access & Use

Language/scripts of material:
English

System of arrangement:

These papers are archivally mixed and were discovered in a confused state. Some of them had undergone a preliminary sorting which consisted of placing individual items inside a folded sheet of paper which was marked with the date of the item. Certain items had been catalogued as library books or autograph letters: they have been restored to this collection in the interests of archival consistency.

It has been possible to deduce that this collection falls into four groups and it has been arranged as follows: the papers of Dr Hamilton herself, which are disappointingly scanty, though they include a fine set of photographs of Afghanistan in the 1890s [PP/HAM/A]; papers of her brother Col Claud L C Hamilton who assisted her with her business affairs and was her executor, and kept a considerable amount of more general letters from her, from 1906 [PP/HAM/B]; one file of letters kept by her Deputy at Studley College, Miss Ekins [PP/HAM/C]; and various items of biographical interest brought together by Mr Gaskell [PP/HAM/D].

Conditions governing access:

The papers are available subject to the usual conditions of access to Archives and Manuscripts material, after the completion of a Reader's Undertaking.

Conditions governing reproduction:

Photocopies/photographs/microfilm are supplied for private research only at the Archivist's discretion. Please note that material may be unsuitable for copying on conservation grounds, and that photographs cannot be photocopied in any circumstances. Readers are restricted to 100 photocopies in twelve months. Researchers who wish to publish material must seek copyright permission from the copyright owner.

Finding aids:

The catalogue is available on microfiche via the National Inventory of Documentary Sources (NIDS).

Archival Information

Archival history:

Immediate source of acquisition:

This collection was originally brought together by the personal interest in Dr Hamilton of Mr E H Gaskell, formerly Librarian of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. He had acquired them from various sources: principally from her nephew Lt-Cdr J. Hamilton, and from Studley College.

Allied Materials

Related material:

In the Wellcome Library: Portrait of Dr Hamilton in Wellcome Library Iconographic Collection

Publication note:

Description Notes

Archivist's note:
Copied from the Wellcome Library catalogue by Sarah Drewery.

Rules or conventions:
In compliance with ISAD (G): General International Standard Archival Description - 2nd Edition (1999); UNESCO Thesaurus, December 2001; National Council on Archives Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997.

Date(s) of descriptions:
Jan 2009