The archive of the Queen's Nursing Institute in the Contemporary Medical Archives Centre.

The Contemporary Medical Archives Centre (CMAC) at the Wellcome Library has always endeavoured to draw attention to the importance of archives and to publicize their existence and availability, often by surveying and listing the records of medical bodies in situ. One of the hoards of records to come to the attention of the CMAC in its early days was that held by the Queen's Nursing Institute-QNI (formerly Queen Victoria's Jubilee Institute for Nurses, and from 1928 the Queen's Institute of District Nursing), and in 1982 one of the archivists visited QNI headquarters at Lower Belgrave Street to record the types and covering dates of the material. She found such a rich accumulation of records that, on the.failure of a proposal that the QNI employ someone to sort and catalogue them fully, the CMAC undertook to survey and briefly list them. It was a typical survey of an old-established body, in that the archivist had to hunt high and low through the building, delving into cupboards, filing cabinets and drawers to locate material which had been kept for many years, but it was atypical from the point of view of the long history of the bodies which had generated the material, and the detail and richness of the records. The Institute had organized district nursing and district nurse training for the British Isles from its foundation in 1889, and even after the introduction of the National Health Service it had played a role as agent for many local authorities. A record was kept of every nurse trained by the Institute (the "Roll of Queen's Nurses") and of each preliminary and annual inspection of every affiliated District Association and County Association. The Institute also provided pensions and relief for retired and disabled nurses, ran holiday and convalescent homes, and acted as an information point for enquiries on community nursing projects from around the world. As the state after 1948 took over responsibility for local health services, the charity district nursing associations became redundant, and many sent their surviving records or at least a final report, and often a history, to the headquarters, as did the regional federations of nursing associations. Other nursing and pension-giving bodies amalgamated with the Institute. All this material, received from outside or filed away at the end of its working life, had been sifted through, lent out and rearranged for anniversaries or other