From early times, people have travelled to natural springs and temple baths to ‘take the waters’ either by bathing in them or drinking them to find a cure from various ailments such as rheumatism, arthritis, bronchitis and asthma. Many ancient towns and cities were built around geothermal springs such as the picturesque town of Buxton, Derbyshire, where Mary Queen of Scots was allowed to take the waters to improve her health, and the famous Roman city of Bath, whose curative thermal waters have drawn visitors from afar for centuries. As physicians recognised the healing effects of warm springs, hospitals began to be constructed for the purposes of accommodation and treatment. These institutions sometimes left records which can be of interest and use to family and social historians.

Mineral water and sea-bathing hospitals
The 1890 Charities Record and Digest (online (here) lists the major hospitals specialising in hydrotherapy: the Royal Mineral Water Hospital (1737), Bath; the Royal Sea Bathing Infirmary (1791), Margate; Warneford Hospital (1832), Leamington Spa; the Devonshire Hospital and Buxton Bath Charity (1858), Derbyshire; and Droitwich Brine Baths Hospital (1876), Worcestershire.

Types of hospital records
Medical records for the above institutions still survive to varying degrees and can be accessed online and in local family history centres. You can expect to find admission and discharge registers, death registers and case histories. Burial records may list the hospital as the patient’s former abode. Electoral records can determine if your ancestor lived in a spa town. If patient records aren’t available, census records will show patients and staff on the night the census was taken. Hospitals are difficult to find on census returns due to name and location changes over the years, so references for those listed above are included here where known.

If your ancestor worked as a physician, surgeon or nurse you may find them listed in staff registers and trade directories. The National Archives has links to medical registers (1858–1959) and medical directories (1845–1942) – see here. Administrative records may include patient correspondence, paying subscribers and those who made charitable bequests which you can use to order a will from the National Probate Registry. For other ideas on what to look for, visit here .

Royal Mineral Hospital, Bath
The Royal Mineral Water Hospital opened in 1742 and was the first national hospital to accept patients from anywhere in the UK. Its main purpose was providing thermal water treatment for the impoverished. The Bath Ancestors website has a Mineral Water Hospital Case Book containing a list of patients who were admitted between 1751 and 1759 and includes details of name, age, residence, date of admission and case outcome. Although not related to the hospital, the website includes the Cross Bath Register of Subscriptions which covers the years 1823 to 1829 and is a list of payments made by those who used the Cross Bath (bathancestors.org.uk ).

In 1787 the Bath Hospital published a ‘Narrative of the efficacy of the Bath waters, in various kinds of paralytic disorders’ covering the years 1775 to 1785. The report includes 52 case studies including the patient’s name and attending physician and can be downloaded for free at wellcomecollection.org .

The Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette published a list of cured patients who were discharged from the hospital from the 1820s to the 1850s. The History of Dorset County Council website has a list of 217 Dorset residents discharged from the hospital (historydch.com). To look for discharged patients who lived in other localities, search the two publications at the British Newspaper Archive.

Using multiple sources, I discovered my 3x-great-grandmother, Anna Maria Sheppard, moved from Trowbridge, Wiltshire to 11 Borough Walls, Bath in the 1860s. Her death and burial records list this address for her and her daughter who was present at her death in 1868 at age 72. She died from asthma. Electoral records confirm other members of the Sheppard family lived at this address. It’s likely Anna moved here to ‘take the waters’ and find relief from her respiratory problems.

Hospital census references:
1851: HO 107/1941/204b-208a/53-60; 1861: RG09/1686/47/41;
1871: RG10/2480/50/54;
1881: RG11/2436/22/1;
1891: RG12/1938/111/1;
1901: RG14/2343/188/2;
1911: RG14/14726

Warneford Hospital, Leamington Spa
Benjamin Satchwell founded Leamington Spa Charity in 1806 whose purpose was to provide free baths of the famous spa to indigent patients. The charity merged in 1826 with an existing dispensary and infirmary but as the population increased a larger facility was needed (semanticscholar.org). In 1834 Warneford Hospital opened. It was named after Samuel Warneford, a wealthy philanthropist. In her article Remembering the Warneford, Irene Cardall says of Samuel that ‘it was while he was staying in Leamington Spa in 1831 having spa water treatment for gout that the idea came to him to build a new hospital in the town&helli; [it would be] built and maintained by voluntary contributions&helli; to provide treatment for those who could not afford it’ (districtadvertisers.co.uk). The Hospital Records database has patient registers covering the period 1902–1993 (nationalarchives.gov.uk ).

Hospital census references:
1841: HO107/1135/17;
1861: RG9/2223/77/3;
1871: RG10/3196/59/10;
1881: RG11/3094/59/6;
1911: RG14/18755/008/17;
1939 Register: RG101/5694J/010/11 Letter Code: QEGJ

Devonshire Royal Hospital and Buxton Bath Charity, Derbyshire
Founded in 1779, the Buxton Bath Charity was instituted to help the poor pay for access to Buxton spa waters and to treat gout and rheumatism. Visitors to the hotels and lodging houses in Buxton were expected to donate one shilling to the charity and sign the subscription book. According to The National Archives, ‘In 1858, the Duke of Devonshire handed over to the trustees of the charity part of the Great stables&hellip After adaptations, these were opened in 1859 as the Devonshire Hospital and Buxton Bath Charity, where the charity lodged poor people whilst undergoing treatment’ (discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk). Hospital archives are held by Derbyshire Record Office (Ref No D4508/9/1-5 and 16/1-2) and include lists of paying subscribers and staff for various years and only patient records for the years 1936–7. Visit calmview.derbyshire.gov.uk to search the reference numbers. The 1878 Devonshire Hospital and Buxton Bath Charity report can be downloaded at dlcs.io. This valuable resource includes names of medical staff, lists of house visitors, annual subscribers, life subscribers and those who left bequests.

Hospital census references:
1891: RG12/2779/124/1;
1901: RG13/3269/64/2;
1911: RG14/21244

Brine Baths Hospital, Droitwich, Worcestershire
In 1881 Brine Baths Hospital was established to give indigent people suffering with rheumatism access to the brine baths. The hospital opened in 1892. Subscribers who paid one guinea a year could send one patient to the hospital which included access to the baths and accommodation (https://forebears.io/england/worcestershire/droitwich). According to Droitwichspa.com, ‘The brine baths became famous for treating rheumatic and arthritic problems and were not just open to hospital patients but athletes, footballers, the rich and famous and holidaymakers.’ (http://www.droitwichspa.com/history.shtml). Worcestershire Archives contains a few records on this hospital. Visit http://e-services.worcestershire.gov.uk/CalmView/advanced.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog and use ‘Brine Baths’ as the search term. A visitor’s book exists for the years 1836 to 1850 (Ref 3891/2/1).

Hospital census references:

1901: RG13/2796/35/3;
1911: RG14/17757

Royal Sea Bathing Hospital, Margate
Dr John Lettsom, a prominent London physician, founded the Royal Sea Bathing Hospital in Margate in 1791. He was concerned about the scrofulous poor children of London, so he pioneered an open-air treatment for the use of these patients which was way ahead of its time. Scrofula is caused by the same bacteria that cause tuberculosis, but the symptoms appear outside the lungs rather than inside them, usually inflaming the lymph nodes in the neck and causing an unsightly appearance. Prior to 1858 the hospital only opened during the summer months when patients bathed in the sea using a special bathing machine. Once an indoor bath was built the hospital opened all year round. The fresh air and water had a good effect on the patients’ skin lesions. The hospital focused on curing tuberculosis for the first 100 years of its operation and then became an orthopaedic hospital.

Some records survive but there are gaps where records were lost or destroyed during WW2. Clinical and patient records exist for the years 1855–1898 and are held by the Kent Archives and Local History Centre among other records (https://www.kentarchives.org.uk/

collections/). For insight into what it was like being a patient at the Royal Sea Bathing Hospital, visit http://freepages.rootsweb.com/

~stanier/family/81.html#letter to read a letter dated 1829 from a patient to his mother.

Hospital census references:
1871: RG10/993/107/6;
1881: RG11/985/23/41;
1891: RG12/ 729-104-108;
1901: RG13/824/49-54

Spa medical records are fascinating documents and give us a glimpse into the lives of our ancestors who sought the best medical care at the time to relieve or cure their diseases. We are grateful, too, for the early work and pioneering efforts of the physicians who developed these hydropathic cures long ago, many of which are still in use today.