Health records come home

BENDIGO Regional Archives Centre has recently received records and registers regarding Bendigo Health that go back 160 years.

Archives coordinator at BRAC, Sue Walter, said she hopes the records become an important resource for historians, genealogists and academics.

“The records cover the administration of what is now Bendigo Health,” she said. “Which covers the old Bendigo Hospital and Benevolent Asylum.”

Ms Walter said the information contained in the archives was vast and detailed for such old records.

“We can look at the decision-making and the day-to-day running of these places,” she said. “But also have all the records of the people who were patients of those institutions.

“That includes things like admission registers. You can see the impacts of poverty on people who had been admitted to the benevolent asylum, and the reason why they are admitted.

“We have records of those who had been admitted for lunacy, what we now call mental health issues.

“You can really see the struggles these people were having as well as the flow-on effects it has on the family as well.”

It’s not just information regarding patients and doctors in the records, Ms Walter said there was a lot to learn about the wider community.

“Among all that information are statistics as well,” she said. “There is the list of people in the community the hospital is delivering food to and a list of those they accept donations from.

“This was prior to Centrelink; this was how the community pulled together and said we have to help look after those who can’t look after themselves.”

Ms Walter said she hopes the archives become an important resource to more than just academics and historians.

“If you are related to one of the patients, you will have an interest in that, maybe you had a family member who worked in the hospital and want to check that out,” she said.

“We are fascinated with the kind of questions you could ask, and hopefully answer, with what these records contain.”

An official launch for the records will be held at the Bendigo Library on Thursday, 20 April.