Sources Guides list

Sources Guide: Southern Africa (A&M)

NB collections range in size from single items to large personal or organisational archives

Further information about the materials mentioned below can be found on the Archives and Manuscripts Online Catalogue

In some cases the full detailed catalogues of archive collections are not yet in this online database: hard copy versions are available in the Rare Materials Room of the Library and on request to archs+mss@wellcome.ac.uk

Anders Sparrman (1748-1820): Notes and extracts, on Hottentots among other subjects, from his ‘Voyage au Cap de Bon Espérance’, possibly taken by Dr. Ange Elizabeth Louis Antoine Bonnier d’Alco (1750- ), president of the Cour des Aides at Montpellier, late C18th century MS.4679

Royal Army Medical Corps Muniment Collection: Register of in-patients, Regimental Hospital, Cape of Good Hope, 1807-16; Sir John Hall’s papers as Deputy Inspector General of Hospitals, Cape of Good Hope, 1846-51; drawings of habitations and racial types, Cape of Good Hope, 1858; lists of doctors and medical officers serving in the South African campaign of 1879; report by the PMO, South Africa, re medical establishment in Zululand, 1880; letter book and order book of No 1 Bearer Company, 1880-1; diaries and letters of Sir Maurice Holt, Zululand, 1895-6, Boer War 1899-1900; Sir David and Lady Bruce’s photographs of research in Zululand, 1890s; report by the PMO, Field Force, South Africa, 1899-1900; Boer War diaries, including of Sir David Bruce, Sir Anthony Bowlby, Colonel H M Morton, Major F J W Porter and Bearer Company Corporal R Dyer; many photographs, letters, memoirs and souvenirs, especially of service in the Boer War; memoirs of Lance Corporal John Roberts on troopships, Second World War. See ‘South Africa’ in place name index and ‘Boer War’ in subject index RAMC

John Davy (1790-1868): army surgeon, journal of a voyage from Britain to Ceylon via the Cape of Good Hope,1816 MS.7696

Thomas Hodgkin (1798-1866): correspondence with Basuto chiefs and Basutoland missionaries; papers and other material relating to South Africa (correspondence with Sir Andreas Stockenström), and other anti-slavery and philanthropic materials, 1817-66 PP/HO/D

Travel journal: Anonymous journal of the voyage of the ship William Miles from the UK to India and back, including passages via the Cape of Good Hope., 1819-21 MS.7114

Robert McCormick (1800-1890): diaries of Antarctic expeditions of HMS Erebus, including visits to the Cape of Good Hope area, 1839-43 MSS.3366-70

James Backhouse (1794-1869) Quaker traveller: letter, 1843 MS.7328/4

Benjamin Stephen Hobson (1840-1869): Letters to his father, Benjamin Hobson MD (1816-1873) and other members of the family, mainly from the goldfields of South Africa, and letters to B.S. Hobson from members of his family (plus miscellaneous papers) chiefly on his work at the Clarendon School, Natal, 1844-69 MSS.5836 & 5849

Thomas Graham (d.1850), assistant naval surgeon: Diary of passage to China, via Cape of Good Hope., 1849-50 MS.5462
Frederick Courtenay Selous (1815-1917): Letter, 1855 MS.7328/43

William Johnson Calder, practitioner in Jamaica and South Africa: miscellaneous papers and correspondence, including letters from Lord Lister, 1875-1927 MS.6195

Norman Walter Hill (1852-c.1920) collector: correspondence, papers and cuttings including material on South Africa, with particular interest in rinderpest.; correspondents include J.C. Cronwright-Schreiner, husband of Olive Schreiner, 1878-1920 MS.7044

Wellcome Foundation: material relating to business operations of pharmaceutical company in the area, 1880s-1990s WF

Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene: papers of Sir David Bruce (1855-1931) and Mary, Lady Bruce (d.1931): Sir David’s notebooks of research into bacteria in drinking water and ‘horse-sickness’ in Natal, 1894-9, dysentery and plague in South Africa during the Boer War, 1900-1, and trypanosomiasis (nagana) in Zululand, 1894-6, 1903; with texts of talks, reports, etc, to 1915; Lady Bruce’s illustrations of trypanosomes including trypanosoma brucei in Zululand, 1913; collected reports on trypanosomiasis, 1920s WTI/RST/G see also RAMC

Mrs. Haines: Diary of a voyage from New Zealand to Great Britain and back, calling at Cape Town, 1896-7 MS.8146

Wellcome Archive: Records of the Historical Medical Museum, 1903-85,include material relating to Southern and Central Africa (database can be searched under country name) WA/HMM; records of Bureau of Scientific Research, 1913-38, and Chemical Research Laboratory, 1899-1946, include material on research relating to South Africa WA/BSR, WA/CRL; Sir Henry Wellcome's personal papers include material on the firm's business activities in South Africa, 1901-60 WA/HSW

Sir Anthony Alfred Bowlby: Diary and photograph albums from service in the Boer War as Senior Surgeon with the Portland hospital at Bloemfontein, 1899-1900, with 1901 report of the Committee of the hospital and account of the work undertaken there, and scrapbook including press cuttings and correspondence GC/181

Sir Humphrey Davy Rolleston (1862-1944): photograph album kept during medical service in the Boer War; photographs taken at Pretoria, Deelfontein and elsewhere, 1900-1 MS.6124

British Nurse: extracts from letters reflecting daily lives of doctors and nurses during Boer War, written at Kroonstad and Pretoria, 1900-1 MS.6034

Cecil John Rhodes (1853-1902): photographic copies of the record of the post-mortem examination carried out in 1902 in the presence of the imperialist and leader of the “Jameson Raid” Sir Leander Starr Jameson (1853-1917) and other important South Africans, 1938 MS.7479

Aylmer William May (1874-1950): paper on “The isolation of a para typhoid bacillus from a drinking water supply”, written at Johannesburg, 1909 MS.1719/5

Spirillum Fever in Swaziland: Copy report and correspondence between the Acting Medical Officer and the Assistant Commissioner, Hlatikulu, Swaziland, on the probable prevalence of spirillum fever (African relapsing fever), 1913 GC/138

British Medical Association: Files on the organisation of the medical profession in South Africa, 1920-48, including the Federal Council of the Medical Association of South Africa SA/BMA

Marie Stopes (1880-1958): Correspondence with members of the public about her book Married Love and birth control, including many resident abroad, c1918-c1950s; one file of ‘South Africa’, 1932 correspondence in ‘overseas’ section PP/MCS

James Alexander Acheson (1892-1968): Casenotes and photos of patients with yaws, Kasempa District, Northern Rhodesia, 1923-6 WTI/JAA

Benno Heckel, Benedictine monk and missionary in Nyasaland: ‘Education among the Hyao tribe’, 1928 MS.8126

Major General Sir Leonard Rogers (1868-1962): Synopsis of correspondence,1924-40, with the Secretary for Public Health on leprosy in South Africa. Files on ‘leprosy problems in British African areas’, including Basutoland, 1929, and Southern Rhodesia, 1939 PP/ROG

Sir William John Ritchie Simpson (1855-1931), specialist in tropical medicine. Photographs and papers relating to his investigation of sanitary conditions in the mines of Northern Rhodesia, 1930 MS.5708

Eugenics Society (f.1907): File on the South African Eugenics Society, 1930-1 SA/EUG
PLEASE NOTE: this collection is being digitised and parts of it will be unavailable during the process. Check the schedule for further information.

Cancer Research Campaign (f.1923 as the British Empire Cancer Campaign, renamed 1970): Files on the National Cancer Association of South Africa, Cancer Association of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and Natal Radium Trust, 1930-64 SA/CRC

Bernard Moiser (1879-1965), leprologist to S. Rhodesia government: manuscript investigation into leprosy, 1946-8 MS.3591

Grantly Dick Read (1890-1959): Correspondence re natural childbirth with mothers and patients and with doctors, South Africa, 1948-56; correspondence and legal papers concerning Read’s case against the South African Medical and Dental Council for refusing to register him after he settled in South Africa in 1948 PP/GDR

Family Planning Association (f. 1930) : Correspondence with family planning organisations and reports from clinics in South Africa, 1954-62; general correspondence with Rhodesia, 1950s-60s SA/FPA

National Birthday Trust Fund (f.1928): Correspondence with the Methodist Missionary Society re presentation of gas and air machine for use in Southern Rhodesia 1951-2 SA/NBT

Air Marshal Sir Harold Whittingham (1887-1983): Notebooks of inspections, as Director of Medical Services, BOAC, of airport medical and health facilities in Johannesburg, 1952-6 PP/HEW

Sir Christopher Andrewes (1896–1989), virologist: travel journal of trip to Africa 1953, includes lists of birds in South Africa GC/168

Cicely Delphine Williams (1894-1992): Report on visit to Africa, including Johannesburg, 1953-4, funded by the Colonial Office Nuffield Fund. Publications re health in Africa, especially re kwashiorkor and maternal health PP/CDW

Queen’s Nursing Institute: District Nursing Overseas files include South Africa (including Zululand), and Zambia, 1954-73 SA/QNI/U.3

Professor Sir Robert Macintosh (1897-1989): Correspondence re anaesthestics in South Africa, 1961-86, and diaries of visits to South Africa, 1956, 1959, 1970 PP/RRM

Multiple Sclerosis Society (f.1953): Correspondence with the South African Multiple Sclerosis Society, 1966-73; copies of their newletter, 1966,1967 SA/MSS

Stanley George Browne (1907-1986): reports on visits to South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) 1968 , South Africa 1974, 1976 and 1979; papers re the Council of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland policy towards South Africa and Apartheid and Browne’s personal view on sanctions, 1980-5; some references to The Leprosy Mission South Africa WTI/SGB

International Confederation of Midwives: correspondence with Lesotho, Malawi, Swaziland (non-member countries), 1970s; ICM/WHO/UNICEF pre-Congress Workshop Midwifery Practice - Measuring, Developing and Mobilising Quality Care Botswana, Zimbabwe, 1990s; Project reports, Zimbabwe, 1981-90, Zambia, 1979-80 SA/ICM

Eldred Hugh Owen Parry (b. 1930): Questionnaires on disease in African countries, 1971-2 (for Principles of medicine in Africa, 1976), include Zambia WTI/EHP

Sir William Drummond Paton (1917–1993): file as Rhodes Trustee regarding eligibility to Rhodes Scholarships in South Africa, 1972–4 PP/WDP/G.1/2/3

 World Federation of Occupational Therapists: files relating to local associations in South Africa, 1977-98, and Zambia, 1986-9 SA/WFO