St George’s University Library would like to invite all library members to put forward their suggestions for new books to add to our shelves. This year’s theme is books for your studies – we want to hear what books would help you succeed during your time at St George’s. Whether you have a specific title in mind or just want more books on a subject area, we welcome all suggestions. This form will be available until the 30th November.
We will review all requests and decide what to buy on the basis of what is most in demand and most likely to benefit to the collection and our library users!
This blogpost has been written by St George’s, University of London (SGUL) Records Manager Kirsten Hylan, Research Data Support Manager Sarah Stewart, and Archivist Juulia Ahvensalmi. You can engage with the day and find out more about our work on Twitter and Instagram using the hashtags #WDPD2023 and #SGULWDPD2023. If you are interested in learning more about digital preservation at St George’s, or would like to get involved, please contact digpres@sgul.ac.uk.
‘Digital Preservation: A Concerted Effort’ is the theme of this year’s World Digital Preservation Day, celebrating how, by working with colleagues at our university and beyond, digital preservation allows us to both share and gain knowledge, which in turn supports our efforts at digitally preserving our digital records.
By engaging in dialogue with our colleagues both at St George’s, and at other institutions we regularly see in practice how the digital preservation community generously shares its experience and knowledge. As a specialist health care university, the information we produce today as part of our research and education endeavours needs to remain accessible to have the greatest possible impact and play a positive role in society. World Digital Preservation Day is another opportunity to consider our challenges, while learning how other practitioners have overcome their challenges. This year’s blogpost will consider a dataset stored on various storage media and the efforts underway to ensure its ongoing viability.
Research Datasets
St George’s, University of London (SGUL), is a specialist health and medical sciences university in South-West London. The Archivist, Research Data Support Manager, and Records Manager work together to advocate for digital preservation, winning funds for a digital preservation system, and identifying areas that hold records that require a long-term storage solution. As a medical school we have created many unique datasets that contribute to scientific knowledge and the teaching of medicine.
We have a responsibility to care for research data to ensure it can be used and reused. The reality though is that the bulk of research data is not published, and we are still building a culture where data is transferred to information managers for preservation. As a result, datasets are vulnerable to obsolescence and cannot continue to be accessed and developed by researchers.
The importance of publishing, sharing and archiving data was underscored during the COVID-19 pandemic, and many research funders such as the MRC, Wellcome Trust and Gates Foundation have clear policies on data sharing and data availability. Legacy research datasets are also important for understanding health outcomes, yet these research datasets are often difficult to access and re-use. The so-called Addicts’ Index is one such example. Legacy records offer researchers context for how research has evolved over time, and how and why decisions were made historically. Without access we are unable to understand and build on decisions that impact society.
Storage media within the Addicts’ Index include digital files, floppy discs, microfilm, external hard discs, and paper documents.
Originally a Home Office project to collect data on individuals seeking treatment for drug dependence, the Addicts’ Index was created in 1968 and ran until 1997. The records are a unique resource for addiction specialists, medical historians and sociologists studying for instance patterns of drug use, providing a record of changing attitudes and approaches to treatment and practices relating to service provision.
The formats of the resource reflect the time of their creation, and the dataset has undergone various changes. From a now lost cardex system to paper files to various computer databases, the resource now exists on microfilm and on .pdf files on external hard drives, neither of which are currently easily accessible. Whilst the dataset provides several challenges in terms of digital preservation as well as in terms of the sensitive data it contains, it is a valuable resource.
The challenges we face in making of the Addict’s Index are mirrored across the research landscape, where it is estimated that 80% of datasets over 20 years old are not available. Our digital records are growing fast with most records produced in a digital form that is at risk of becoming obsolete, lost, corrupt, or unreadable if not effectively managed and preserved.
The Addicts’ Index is one dataset. However, the challenges we face in making it a viable resource again and ensuring its ongoing viability is mirrored across all areas of the university. Between us the digital preservation team are responsible for managing research data, archives, and records such as pensions and contracts that need to be maintain for significant periods of time. The decisions we make now will determine if in the future our records can be accessed.
5 1/4 or 5.25 floppy disk with data relating to the Addicts’ Index.
Software Sustainability
The Addicts’ Index is a good example of the need to preserve software as well as data. Many of the storage media on which the Addicts’ Index or parts of it are stored are now obsolete and require special systems and software to read. The Addicts’ Index underscores the importance for preserving digital data, but also for preserving the software that can be used to read and analyse the data held within the Index.
Digital media carriers, many of them now obsolete.
More broadly, researchers often write specific software programmes or code which can provide a context for their research data, whether this is a simulation modelling a health condition or a code for an algorithm to find patterns within a larger dataset. As research becomes increasingly digital and data-oriented, it is important to ensure that software and code are preserved as part of good research information management.
Digital Preservation: A Concerted Effort
Managing digital records and data is indeed a collaborative effort. Key to achieving our goals at St George’s is the ongoing support of our Director’s and staff of our efforts to raise awareness and take steps to ensure the ongoing viability of our records. Looking outside our own institution we can see an information management community that has recognised the scale of the challenge ahead of us and the need for collaboration and knowledge sharing to put in place mitigating actions. Our shared community of practice is informed by an outlook of sharing knowledge and utilises its networks to discuss the challenges and share and evaluate best practices. It is this concerted effort that will see us in our efforts to preserve our records and ensure that they can be shared with future generations.
This week is International Open Access Week, and this year’s theme is “Community over Commercialization”, which aims to encourage:
“a candid conversation about which approaches to open scholarship prioritize the best interests of the public and the academic community—and which do not.”
While open access is the practice of making scholarly publications (e.g., journal articles) freely available via the internet, ideally under licences that allows for sharing and reuse, open scholarship covers wider aspects. The UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science which is referred to in the Theme Announcement describes open science in particular as:
“a set of principles and practices that aim to make scientific research from all fields accessible to everyone for the benefits of scientists and society as a whole”
Open science is highly relevant for St George’s, as our broad objectives for our research work include a focus on generating a positive social impact, responding to new and emerging healthcare challenges and developing our understanding of health through effective collaboration.
The Recommendation outlines some of the ways, such as by:
Learning about open scholarship and open science (you’re doing that already by reading this blog post!)
Considering your own research and publishing practices (can you publish your work open access? SGUL has many publishing agreements which make this possible)
Thinking about being open at more stages of the research process. For instance, can you participate in open peer review? (watch a lightening talk explaining open peer review).
There’s also pre-registration; pre-prints; data sharing; responsible research assessment; open-source software/infrastructure, and collaborating, perhaps via open dialogue and citizen science.
Is St George’s as an institution practicing open science?
Yes!
We show our commitment to open science values and principles in our Open Access Publications policy
We make publications available via our institutional publications repository, St George’s Online Research Archive, SORA, and St George’s data repository.
We are a member of the PLOS Community Action Publishing, which caps margins and redistributes revenue back to community members.
Community over Commercialization
This year’s theme quotes from part of the Recommendation on the topic of “inequitable extraction of profit from publicly funded scientific activities.”
Who is benefiting from results of our scientific activities?
Who is profiting from the results of our scientific activities?
Where are the incentives to practice open science?
There may be a different perspective on the answers to these questions, depending on who you are and which “communities” you come from.
Researchers … The Recommendation recognises:
“the importance of the existing international legal frameworks, in particular on intellectual property rights including the rights of scientists to their scientific productions”
Here at St George’s, our team in Enterprise & Innovation (sgul.ac.uk) will support commercialisation and innovation activity, which may include some sharing with creators of revenue arising from commercialisation of intellectual property. These aspects should be considered before wider sharing or opening data and publication (and with health data of course there is good practice to think about, as outlined in our policy on Research Data Management (sgul.ac.uk) ).
Other incentives for researchers beyond intellectual property rights considerations are making your research data and other outputs FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-usable), which can benefit both you as a researcher (through increased citation, impact and the potential to develop new collaborations) and also the wider research community.
Licence to… share
Funders have been asking researchers to retain rights to share their manuscripts under open licences, and institutions are starting to move in this direction also.
This handbook was made available on SGUL’s Data Repository in 2020 to raise awareness of how symptoms and signs can present differently on darker skin, as well as highlighting the different language that needs to be used in descriptors.
At the time of writing, this has had 154,139 views and been downloaded 60,722 times.
Institutions
Jisc has a key role in negotiating publishing and subscription agreements for UK HEIs, with several aims, around areas such as reducing costs and accelerating the transition to open access.
This has mostly focused on negotiating read and publish deals (also known as transitional agreements). These have proved popular with many researchers and led to more open access publishing here in the UK, but many, including Jisc, are looking beyond these arrangements with largely already established publishers (whose incentives in providing services may be around delivering value to shareholders) to new initiatives.
The United Nations Sustainable Development goals include have several that directly relate to St George’s work. So, what about other communities – of patients, charities, researchers and readers in the global South?
Jisc, funders, and others in many communities are looking to newer open initiatives that have the potential to make a difference in these areas. If you’re interested, follow the links, and take a deeper dive.
Diamond open access initiatives: where the published version is made freely accessible via the publisher’s website under an open access licence, but without charging a fee to the authors or their institutions (usually relying on external funding sources, such as grants, institution support, donations). The EU has this ongoing project DIAMAS – DIAMAS (diamasproject.eu)
Open Access Community Framework: pilot schemes to support new university, library led and community-based monograph publishers (Our role in open access – Jisc)
From January 2024, UKRI’s open access policy moves beyond journal articles and conference proceedings, to apply to long form publications (monographs, book chapters or edited collections), and UKRI will allow funds to be used to support a range of open access models, including ‘diamond’ or collective publishing initiatives.
St George’s values are identified in the acronym CARE (for Collaboration, Ambition, Respect, and Equity). There are clear areas of overlap with the values expressed in the Recommendation:
SGUL Library can offer guidance and support at all stages of the research process for researchers and authors interesting in making their work openly available, for instance via our institutional repositories, and via our open access publishing agreements.
Welcome to St George’s! Whether you are a new student or returning after Summer, we hope you have a fruitful year. Now that Freshers Fortnight has wound down it’s a good time to get familiar with the library and the resources and services we offer.
If you haven’t visited us yet, you can find us on Hunter Wing, 1st floor. For a quick summary of our services, see the Library at a Glance and our Library Essentials guide. If you prefer an interactive introduction, our canvas page includes a video introducing the library and a quiz to test your knowledge.
The Basics
Hunter
The first tool to know about is Hunter, our library search engine. Whether you need an article, an eBook or a physical title, Hunter is your first port of call for finding any item in the library. If you need help, see our page of finding books, articles and more or our short videos on YouTube.
You might want to familiarise yourself with the LibGuide for your programme with our subject guide lists for IMBE or Centre for Allied Health. These guides provide tailored guidance for your specific course as well as introductory resources and will help you hit the ground running as the academic year begins.
Finally, we have an extensive guide on referencing and support on using the invaluable Cite Them Right, your first port of call for referencing guidance. Check out these guides to get up to speed on referencing and the standards used at St. George’s.
Further Support
Canvas Tutorials
On Canvas, we have created a range of interactive library tutorials to complete at your own pace. Each tutorial includes video guidance with detailed explanations and short quizzes to test your knowledge.
If your course uses Harvard referencing, our Referencing Essentials tutorial outlines the basics of referencing, what in-text citations and references consist of and summarises how to reference commonly used resources. When you’re ready, test your referencing knowledge with our quiz.
For our other tutorials covering literature searching, evaluating information and more, visit the library Canvas module.
Liaison Librarians
For specific questions about finding, managing or referencing information, pay a visit to the on-call librarian. Every weekday from 10am – 2pm one of our expert liaison librarians is available to help with any issues you might have. Just ask for the on-call librarian at the library helpdesk. Outside of these hours, or for more advanced queries, drop an email to liaison@sgul.ac.uk.
Workshops
Our Liaison Librarians also run regular workshops covering referencing, systematic reviews and literature searching for assignments. These are run both online and in-person. These may be integrated into your course to match your specific learning objectives. To register and see what’s available, visit our LibCal.
Fiction and More
We might be a specialist healthcare library but that doesn’t mean we only have specialist healthcare books! Our new Fiction and More collection is available between the self-service kiosks and includes fiction, biographies, poetry and more. We also welcome recommendations – if you have a fiction title you’d love to share, fill out our recommendation form and we will consider adding it to our collection.
Last but not least, you might be looking for help with academic skills, such as essay writing, revision skills or note taking. You can find information on these topics and many more on the Study+ page on Canvas.
You can also get one-to-one support by booking an appointment with the Academic Success Team. You need to book via the Study+ page on Canvas. Appointments are available in person or online.
The following NHS-focused sessions, hosted by St George’s Library, are now open for all staff wishing to update their research skills for evidence-based practice, decision-making and projects. To book a session, click on the links below.
Systematic reviews: finding and managing the evidence
This course will focus on in-depth literature searching for systematic reviewers or researchers. It will provide you with an overview of the importance of literature searching in the systematic review process, the know-how of creating effective search strategies, and techniques for managing your results and documenting the search process. This session is also suitable for University academic staff and researchers.
Come to this session to find out how to access NHS online journals, quickly. The session will cover accessing and using the NHS Knowledge and Library, the NHS A-Z list of journals via BrowZine and LibKey Nomad for one-click access to articles on sites such as PubMed, Wikipedia and publishers’ pages. Please come with an OpenAthens password: http://openathens.nice.org.uk
Finding top-quality evidence is a priority for health care practitioners. This session will introduce the high-quality resources available to you, such as the NHS Knowledge and Library Hub, as well as provide tips on how to use them effectively to support evidence-based clinical practice or decision-making.
The 2023 MoreBooks campaign is now on at St George’s Library until 21st April. This year, we want to focus on widening our collection with more books on equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) topics in relation to health, biomedicine or higher education education. Let us know what you’d like to see on our shelves to reflect YOU better. All suggestions welcome.
How do I take part?
You can do this in two ways:
1) Visit our in-person station in the library between now and 21st April and fill in our suggest a book form.
This blogpost introduces a project in the Archives and Special Collections to uncover the origins and history of the charitable funding model of St George’s prior to the establishment of the NHS in 1948.The project is on-going, and much of the research into the backgrounds of these donors and funders has been undertaken by Arianna Koffler-Sluijter, and research is currently conducted by Patrick Worsfold. This blogpost was written by Archivist Juulia Ahvensalmi.
St George’s history reaches back to the 18th century: St George’s Hospital was founded in 1733 at Hyde Park Corner, and although the medical school (now university) was not formally founded until 1834, its history is closely linked with that of the hospital from the early days: the physicians and surgeons took pupils from the very beginning, and the student registers go back to 1752. Although the hospital and the university are now separate entities, their history is closely intertwined, from shared premises (then, as now) to staff working across both and students learning not only through lectures but also through practice at the hospital.
‘Professional teaching round on a ward’, 1970s; and an extract from St George’s Medical School Prospectus 1866. Archives and Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.
Prior to the establishment of the NHS in 1948, the hospital was funded by charitable donations and subscriptions. SGUL Archives and Special Collections hold various lists of these early donors to St George’s. There are thousands of names; some only donated a small amount of money once, others larger amounts, sometimes spread over a long period, with investments contributing to the income of St George’s.
The annual subscription model provided a means for people to support the hospital, and regular appeals for local subscribers were staged. Those donating above a certain threshold were named governors, allowing them to recommend specific in-patients to the hospital. An endowment of £1,000 in 1895, for instance, provided a bed, and entitled the donor to have an inscribed plate placed over the donated bed. Legacies, as a report in 1895 notes, ‘enabled the Governors to meet all the expenses of the year … without any expenditure of capital’. Various funds provided funds for specified purposes, such as the Samaritan Fund (formerly known as the Convalescent Fund) for instance provided funds for those discharged from the hospital but unable to immediately resume work, or assisted in purchasing clothing, equipment or travel home for convalescing patients.
Jigsaw puzzle sold to raise funds for St George’s Hospital including the slogan ‘We need a million, we have a million needs’,c.1930s; Subscription receipt of Andrew Millar, 1761; Bed-shaped moneybox for collecting donations, c.1930s. Archives and Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.
The project aims to record the names of those listed as donors and subscribers, and add them to the Archives’ online catalogue, where they are searchable. The catalogue currently contains 532 names, and more are added regularly as we continue our research. The lists are digitised and, with the aid of OCR (optical character recognition), the names transferred to spreadsheets and standardised, enabling the results of the research to eventually be imported to the catalogue.
Although for many we only have a name (a Miss Jones or a Mr Smith are impossible to trace any further), many of the donors were very wealthy and well-known at the time, often from aristocratic backgrounds, and we can find out a lot about their backgrounds. An additional layer of difficulty in identifying names is that those with titles are usually listed only by the titles – Lord Brassey, Marquis of Aylesbury, Dowager Marchioness of Lansdowne and so on: this can sometimes make it difficult to distinguish a son from a father for instance. While men are often referred to by their first name or at least initials, women are frequently not afforded those, making a Miss Lambert or a Mrs Smith very difficult to trace.
List of subscribers in 1740; Annual Report of St George’s Hospital and of Atkinson Morley’s Convalescent Hospital, including lists of subscribers and legacies, 1895; St George’s Archives online catalogue showing subscribers, 2023. Archives and Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.
Slavery and colonialism
The lists in the archives record donations from 1733 up to the turn of the 20th century and beyond. In some cases, the wealth of the donors was based on proceeds from slavery, either directly or through family connections. There were also many connected with or employed by or within the empire, including in companies such as East India Company , South Sea Company, Royal Niger Company and Mississippi Company, companies that were involved in or, as in the case of South Sea Company, were explicitly founded as slave trading companies.
Slavery was formally abolished in the British Empire in 1807, with the Slave Trade Act (An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade) making slave trade (but not slavery) illegal. In practice, however, many continued to profit from slavery even after 1833, when slavery itself was made illegal in British colonies. The very beginnings of St George’s were tied to these companies: in 1734, the year after the hospital was first established, the governors invested the capital accumulated thus far from subscriptions and donations in East India Company; any further surplus money was to be invested in either South Sea Company or East India Company bonds.
The catalogue shows those donors or subscribers who have been found to have direct links to slavery, based on the information recorded in the UCL Legacies of British Slavery database, which is based on the records of the Slave Compensation Commission, established to compensate slave owners for freed enslaved people. The British government borrowed £20 million for these compensations, amounting to 40% of the Treasury’s annual income, a debt that was not paid off until 2015. For many later donors, their family wealth was derived from slavery, and many continued to profit from companies that were or had been directly connected with slavery.
Subscribers and donors
Portrait of Bathshua Beckford. Source: Bonhams: John Vanderbank (London 1694-1739) Portrait of Bathshua Beckford, in a Chippendale style carved and gilt frame; Bathshua Beckford in later life. Source: ‘Bathshua Beckford (née Herring), Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery; Engraving of a status of William Beckford, Lord Mayor of London, c.1771. ‘A late Lord Mayor of London From the Marble Statue of Mr. Moore, lately exhibited in Pall Mall’, unattributed etching in the collection of the Beinecke Library, Yale. [The statue of Beckford was erected by the Common Councilmen of London, to thank him for admonishing King George III on 23 May 1770].
Bathshua Beckford (1673-1750) was born in Jamaica, the daughter of Colonel Julines Herring, a prominent plantation and slaveowner. She went on to marry Peter Beckford Junior, son of the lieutenant-governor of Jamaica, and a slaveowner. Bathshua and Peter had 13 children; one of them, William Beckford, became Lord Mayor of London, as well as one of the wealthiest sugar plantation owners in Jamaica, with approximately 3,000 enslaved people. Three of their sons became Members of Parliament, and their grandson Thomas Howard eventually became the governor of Jamaica.
Bathshua moved to England following her husband’s death in 1735. The Legacies of British Slave-ownership database (UCL) shows the details of his will: on his death, he owned nine sugar plantations as well as being the partial owner of seven others, and the owner of property both in Jamaica and in England. He was the sole owner of 1,737 enslaved people, and half-owner of 577 others. Bathshua herself died in 1750. Her will granted her ‘Negro servant Susan and her son their respective freedom’, and for Susan to be paid £8 ‘for life’. To St George’s she left £100, the equivalent of about £15,000-20,000 – or the worth of 21 cows, or a 1,000 days’ worth of skilled tradesman’s time.
Edmund Antrobus (1792-1870) was a ‘life’ subscriber to St George’s in 1845, meaning he donated more than £50. His son Hugh Lindsay Antrobus (1823-1899) was likewise a subscriber in 1858. They were both bankers at Coutts (now Coutts & Co., private bank and wealth manager), and the Antrobus estate in Wiltshire included the site of Stonehenge. Edmund Antrobus was compensated for his ownership of hundreds of enslaved people in Guyana and Jamaica by the British Government under the Slave Compensation Act 1837. Angela Burdett-Coutts(1814-1906), collector and philanthropist, and inheritor of much of the banking fortune of the Coutts family, was also a subscriber to St George’s in 1837.
Frederick Ellis’ (1830-1899) donated £5.5 in 1883. His family wealth was derived from slavery, and the ownership of sugar plantations in Jamaica. Although the family had been forced to ‘emancipate’ the enslaved people working on the plantations in 1832, many had no option but to continue working, albeit on very low wages, which were even further reduced in an attempt by Ellis’ father to improve the profits. Ellis himself assisted in overseeing the plantations later, including installing new machinery to boost production, though unsuccessfully. In 1893, his divorce was the ‘cause celebre of the year’, with accusations of ‘undue intimacy’ outside the marriage, cruelty and physical abuse, threats and accusations of ‘filthy and hoggish habits’.
Roger Palmer (1832-1910) was a ‘life’ governor in 1870, donating more than £50 to St George’s. He was a senior officer in the British Army, and fought in the Crimean War in the 1850s. He was also a landowner and a Conservative MP for Mayo in Ireland. During the Irish Famine in 1848, it was reported that his family’s
‘crowbar invincibles’, pulled down several houses, and drove forth the unfortunate inmates to sleep in the adjoining fields. On Thursday we witnessed the wretched creatures endeavouring to root out the timber of the houses, with the intention of constructing some sort of sheds to screen their children from the heavy rain falling at the time. The pitiless pelting storm has continued ever since, and if they have survived its severity, they must be more than human beings’
Although Palmer’s Wikipedia entry refers to the evictions as having occurred under Palmer himself, he was only 16 at the time the article was written, so the reference is more likely to be to his father.
The project aims to not only uncover links to slavery, but to get a more comprehensive view of the origins of St George’s and the funders who contributed to it. The list of the donors forms a colourful picture of the society, with many well-known names among those who gave money to support St George’s.
Many of the donors were prominent politicians, for instance, such as Leopold Agar-Ellis, a Liberal politician, Percy Wyndham, a Conservative politician and a spiritualist, and Thomas de Grey, Conservative politician and entomologist who donated his butterfly collection to the Natural History Museum. Robert Walpole(1676-1745), who was a Whig politician and is regarded as the de facto first British prime minister, was an early supporter; he also owned shares in the South Sea Company. Arianna Koffler-Sluijter examined the life of Frederick James Halliday (1806-1901), Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal through East India Company, in an earlier blogpost.
Others were merchants, bankers, aristocrats and cultural dignitaries. John Bligh was an amateur cricketer and Jacques Blumenthal was a composer and pianist to Queen Victoria. Charles Booth was an industrialist, social reformer and philanthropist, whose poverty maps starkly illustrated the levels of poverty in 19th century London. Edward Guinness, a philanthropist and the richest man in Ireland due to his family’s brewing business, was a subscriber in 1884. Halford Halford-Adcock was a prison chaplain. Eleanor Louisa Hawkes was a socialite known for her lavish parties, while Emily Danvers Smith was married to William Henry Smith, whose chain of newsagents W.H. Smith still continues strong. Helen Farquhar was one of the founders of the British Numismatic Society, with a particular interest in coins believed to ward off and cure disease. Margaret Jackson, a subscriber in 1880, was a mountain climber, described as ‘one of the greatest women climbers of her time’.
Anne Crayle, painting by unknown artist; ‘Miss Ann Crayle, benefactress of St George’s Hospital’, Archives and Special Collections, St George’s, University of London; Will of Anne Crayle, Spinster of Saint George Hanover Square, Middlesex, PROB 11/945/422, 21 Feb 1769, The National Archives.
Anne Crayle (?-1768) left £1,000 to St George’s in her will, stating that the money was used ‘for the use and benefit of such persons who shall be admitted as patients therein’ and to build wards and other accommodation for patients, in particular the ‘incurable sick’. She lived in the parish of St George’s Hanover Square, where St George’s Hospital was located at the time at Hyde Park Corner.
SGUL Archives holds a painting of Crayle, in which she is depicted as a young woman holding a yellow rose in her hands. There is a note in the archives stating that the portrait had been donated by her cousin’s son, Sir Richard Heron, and the hospital board is recorded to have placed it in a ‘new neat gilt frame’ in 1814 (the note adds that the portrait is said to have been cut in half to remove Anne’s sister from the picture).
The money left to St George’s was invested in ‘various stocks’, and in 1812 in ‘Navy five per cents’, and South Sea annuities, yielding an income of £53,520 that year for St George’s – worth millions of pounds today. St George’s was therefore still profiting from slavery, through the investment in South Sea stock, several years after slavery had been made illegal. Anne’s own wealth was also invested in the South Sea Company.
She died unmarried in 1768, leaving most of her possessions to her nephew (who changed his name from Crayle Bellamy to Crayle Crayle), including a country estate in Gloucestershire and her jewellery: the last-mentioned included a ‘brilliant necklace of 38 collets’ and ‘the picture of the late king of frame set with 18 diamonds’. She had stipulated that on the death of her nephew, the remaining estate should be transferred to St George’s.
Anne was clearly very wealthy, and her mother Sarah also directed money in her will towards benefiting the poor people of Acton. Records held in the archives shed more light on the family background: many of the Crayle family appear to have been watchmakers and goldsmiths, but the family also had other sources of wealth. In her will Anne also bequeathed a considerable sum to the sons of her cousin Robert Heron: Reverend Robert Heron of Grantham in Leicester, Sir Richard Heron and Thomas Heron of Chilham Castle in Kent, whose son Robert was compensated by the government for his shared ownership of 1,004 enslaved people in Grenada.
In 2023 we continue to offer a variety of library skills training sessions for you! We have a range of sessions suitable for your level of expertise or year of study – whether you are a student, academic, or NHS staff.
Below you can find out more about the different training sessions we offer and dates for these sessions. To book, please visit LibCal and register for the session you would like to attend. These sessions are either held in-person or online, via Microsoft Teams.
Please remember, we also continue to run the On-call Librarian service in the Library, Monday to Friday 10am-2pm. We can help you with getting started with finding information for your assignment, doing in-depth literature searching projects and referencing enquiries.
In this session we will introduce you to the St George’s standard of Harvard referencing, based on Cite Them Right. We will also introduce you to the reference management software RefWorks. We will show you how to set up an account, add references, manage them and how to use RefWorks Citation Manager (RCM), a Microsoft Word Add-in. The sessions are suitable for St George’s students and staff.
Literature searching for your dissertation, review or research project
We know databases like Medline (aka PubMed) and CINAHL can be intimidating, but with a little help and guidance we are sure you will get to grips with them in no time. If you have a longer research project, like a dissertation, or you just want to impress in your assignments, this session is for you. You will learn how to effectively run a literature search in a database relevant to your subject. The sessions are suitable for St George’s students and staff.
Finding top-quality evidence is a priority for health care practitioners. This session will introduce the high-quality resources available to you, as well as provide training in how to use them effectively to support evidence-based clinical practice or decision-making.
Skills to appraise and evaluate research literature are key to being able to judge whether it is trustworthy, relevant and of value and if and how we might apply research findings in practice. Developing these skills can seem daunting but during this course we will attempt to demystify this process and introduce the concepts of critical appraisal.
Training sessions on offer to NHS and SGUL staff or Postgraduate students
Systematic reviews: finding and managing the evidence
This course will focus on in-depth literature searching for systematic reviewers and how to manage your results. It will provide you with an overview of the systematic review process, the know-how of creating effective search strategies, systematic searching of the literature, managing your results and documenting the search process.
St George's Library blog 