Simpson, Sir William John Ritchie (1855-1931)

Identity Statement

Reference code(s)	: GB 0120 MSS.5707-5711
Held at	: Wellcome Library   Click here to find out how to view this collection at http://wellcomelibrary.org/ ›
Full title	: Simpson, Sir William John Ritchie (1855-1931)
Date(s)	: 1886-1931
Level of description	: Collection (fonds)
Extent	: 5 volumes
Name of creator(s)	: Simpson | Sir | William John Ritchie | 1855-1931 | Knight | physician and specialist in tropical medicine
Detailed catalogue	: Click here to view repository detailed catalogue

Context

Administrative/Biographical history:

Born, 1855; attended school in Jersey, graduated MB CM at Aberdeen University in 1876, and in 1880 proceeded MD (Aberdeen) and took the diploma of public health at Cambridge; medical officer of health at Aberdeen, 1881; medical officer of health for Calcutta, 1886; chair of hygiene at King's College, London, 1898-1923; co-founder of the London School of Tropical Medicine; lectured on tropical hygiene at the London School of Tropical Medicine, 1898-1923; taught hygiene at the London School of Medicine for Women, 1900-1914; member of a commission to inquire into dysentery and enteric fever among the troops in South Africa, 1900; commissioner to investigate plague in Hong Kong, 1902; investigated sanitation in Singapore, 1906; investigated plague on the Gold Coast, and public health in Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and Southern Nigeria, 1908; reported on plague and public health in east Africa, Uganda, and Zanzibar, 1913, member of a yellow fever commission in west Africa; studied sanitation and plague in the mines and mining villages in the Gold Coast and the Asante kingdom, 1924; co-founder of the Ross Institute and Hospital for Tropical Diseases at Putney, where he became the first Director of Tropical Hygiene, and physician to the attached hospital, 1926; visited Chester-Beatty group of copper mines in Northern Rhodesia, 1929; died, 1931.

Content

Scope and content/abstract:

Correspondence and papers of Sir William John Ritchie Simpson including miscellaneous correspondence, newscuttings and papers, including photographs and papers relating to Simpson's service with the Anglo-Serbian Military Red Cross in 1917; photographs and papers relating to Simpson's investigation of sanitary conditions in the mines of Northern Rhodesia with a typewritten copy of his 'Report on the conditions of hygiene at the Roan Antelope, Chambishi, and Mufulira mines'; obituaries of Simpson; address to Simpson on leaving his post as Health Officer of Calcutta with signatures of members of the medical profession and officers of the Calcutta Corporation and diplomas, comprising Simpson's appointments as surgeon in the Volunteer Forces of India, signed by H C K Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne, as Viceroy, 27 April 1892; FRCP 11 May 1899; Serbian Relief Fund diploma 30 May 1926.

Access & Use

Language/scripts of material:
English

System of arrangement:

As outlined in Scope and Content.

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:

Described in: Richard Palmer, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine: Western Manuscripts 5120-6244 (London: The Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine, 1999).

Archival Information

Archival history:

Immediate source of acquisition:

Presented by Lady Simpson, 1933.

Allied Materials

Related material:

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