Sources Guides list

Sources Guide: The Caribbean

(Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Haïti, Jamaica, Martinique, Monserrat, Puerto Rico, St.Kitts-Nevis,St.Lucia, St.Vincent, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, and the various small other Caribbean islands administered by France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States)

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

Jamaica merchant, unidentified: trade notes and general memoranda by a merchant captain trading to Jamaica, 1671-2 WMS Amer107

Corbyn & Co., chemists and druggists, London: correspondence, letter-books and papers relating to trade with North America and the West Indies, c.1745-1851 MSS 5441-5443

Amedée François Frezier, French military engineer: description of the economically-useful plants in the French section of Santo Domingo (now Haïti), c.1755 WMS Amer 104

Dr Robinson, probably based in the West Indies: letter to London sending specimens of snakes and giving details of the effect of the bite of one, 1762 MS 7544/5

Ship's log, French: journal of the voyage of the Brilolle from France to Cayenne and the West Indies, 1764-5 MS 7099

Royal Army Medical Corps Muniment Collection: Look in 'Place Name Index' under 'West Indies', 1780-1975

Mathieu Laurent Michel Manne, French naval surgeon: document certifying that Antoine Allary, fusilier, has been wounded at St Lucia, 1781 MS 7242

Richard Price, British non-conformist minister, radical: letter concerning the birth-rate in Britain's colonies in North America and the West Indies and referring to questions asked by "Mr. Clarkson", probably the anti-slavery campaigner Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846), 1786 MS 7433/26

Commonplace Book: journal, accounts, recipes and other notes by a member of the Chardon family of Auxerre: compiler apparently a merchant formerly resident in the West Indies, 1788-1819 MS 7333

Naval Hospital Barbados: ‘State of …’ 25 Jan and 1 Feb 1789, with letter from John Crawford, surgeon, concerning leave MS 8401

Rebel slaves: documents relating to the conveyance of rebel slaves from Port-au-Prince to Jamaica (part of collection of material on slavery), 1792 MS 7151/4-9

Venereal Disease, French West Indies: descriptions of the preparation and administration of two mercurial compounds for the treatment of venereal disease, by an anonymous surgeon, apparently from the French West Indies, n.d. (watermark, 1795) MS 7033

Thomas Thomson, British army surgeon: commonplace book including notes on travels to St. Kitts (1807-1808) and Martinique (1809) MS 4781

James Robertson, Barbados: letters to Dr. James Currie (1756-1805) of Liverpool concerning the use of cold water in cases of fever, 1801 WMS Amer 137

A Sanderson, son of the Irish MP Francis Sanderson (1754-1827): letter written in Portsmouth announcing his departure to Madeira and possibly the West Indies for health reasons, 1806 MS 7780/4

Ship's surgeon, French: Accounts of voyages, including to the West Indies, 1808-16 MS 4956

Nicolas Chervin, French physician: collection of professional opinions concerning the contagiousness of yellow fever, received chiefly from Guadeloupe but also from St.Kitts-Nevis, Martinique, St.Barthélemy and points in North and South America, 1817-22 WMS Amer 113

Robert McCormick, British naval surgeon and naturalist: diaries and sketchbooks including material on journeys to the West Indies and South America, 1823-34 MSS 3356, 3359 & 3361-3363

Thomas Clarkson, English anti-slavery activist: letters concerning the West India Committee (part of collection of material on slavery), 1832-42 MS 7151/13 & 16 Letters to and from Clarkson also appear in the papers of Thomas Hodgkin, PP/HO

Sir James McGrigor, military surgeon, Director General of the Army Medical Department from 1815: partial manuscript of autobiography, his career including service in the West Indies in the 1790s, c.1835 MSS 3388-3391

Richard Robert Madden, surgeon, traveller and activist in issues relating to slavery: draft poem, 'The Slave Trade Merchant', later used in revised form in his Poems by a slave in the island of Cuba, on the slave author Juan Franciso Manzano (1797-1854), 1838 WMS Amer 138

Thomas Hodgkin, pathologist and campaigner against slavery, colonialism and the mistreatment of native peoples: see General section. Particularly relevant in this section are material on the West Indies and the West India Association, 1840-8 and n.d. PP/HO/D/D135-147. See Hodgkin collection catalogue for full details of this and other material including index to correspondents PP/HO

Thomas Neville Ussher, British consul in Port-au-Prince, Haïti: notebook-cum-diary, recording official and unofficial life, medical details, trade and other matters, including descriptions of 1842 earthquakes, 1841-56 WMS Amer 105

Hector Gavin, Medical Commissioner to the West Indies 1851-1853: papers, including biography of Gavin written after his death in the Crimea, c.1855 MS 5155

John Davy, Army surgeon, Inspector of Hospitals in the West Indies: journals recording inspections of hospitals, other matters relating to health and general travels in the West Indies area, 1845-7 MSS 7699-7701

John Watson, Surgeon-in-Charge of the Naval Hospital, Jamaica: letter to James Anderson M.D., Deputy Inspector of Hospitals, on the lack of proper accommodation for junior medical officers in Jamaica, and the resulting effect on their health; with a list of Assistant Surgeons at the Hospital, 1826-51, noting those invalided out of service and deceased, and remarks comparing their mortality rate with that of Officers-in-Charge, 1852 MS 6233

Andrès Poey, Cuban astronomer: letters to the mathematician François Napoléon Marie Moigno (1804-1884), including discussion of the Comet Donati and lunar phenomena as seen in Cuba, 1858-62 MS 7429/7-9

Albert B Farn, medical man, apparently based in Jamaica: notes on anatomy, medicine and ornithology, c.1860 MS 2337

Dr A Mauffler, Guadaloupe: letter to the Colonial Ministry, 1865 MS 7317/92

Wellcome Foundation: material relating to pharmaceutical company’s operations in the region, 1880s-1990s, search by place-name WF

Sequah : James Kasper (PA Gordon) as agent for 'Sequah' products in West Indies (inc Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad), 1890s GC/69

Walter Reed, American army surgeon, investigator of transmission of yellow fever: photocopied letter to a fellow military surgeon based in Cuba, describing work on yellow fever, 1900 MS 7559/7

Wellcome Archives: records of the Historical Medical Museum and Bureau of Scientific Research contain various files relating to Caribbean, early C20th

Joaquin Maria Albarrán y Dominguez, Cuban-born physician later based in Paris: manuscript of his Exposé des travaux scientifiques, 1905 WMS Amer 102

Maj-Gen Sir Leonard Rogers, specialist in tropical medicine: material relating to leprosy in Trinidad, 1924 PP/ROG

Arthur Hombersley: typed and manuscript work on Some Trinidad Ferns: an amateur's list of ferns collected in Trinidad, giving localities of the ferns enumerated, 1927 MS 8563

Health Visitors' Association: group of papers of GK Burne as District Nurse, Nevis, Leeward Islands, 1930s-40s SA/HVA

Eileen Palmer: material relating to birth control: includes material on Edith How-Martyn’s birth control tour to Jamaica, 1938-9 PP/EPR

Queen's Nursing Institute: District Nursing Overseas 'Countries' files include Bermuda, British Guiana, British Honduras, Jamaica, Trinidad, Trinidad and Tobago, 1940s-60s SA/QNI

Cicely Delphine Williams, paediatrician and nutritionist: research on vomiting sickness, Jamaica, 1950s; courses at the University of the West Indies, 1960s-70s (CDW was born in Jamaica) PP/CDW

Sir Robert Macintosh, Nuffield Professor of Anaesthetics, Oxford, 1937-1965: correspondence with anaesthetists in Bahamas, Cuba, El Salvador, Jamaica, and West Indies 1960s-70s; diaries of visits to Barbados, Curacao, Grenada, St Thomas, Trinidad, 1950s-70s PP/RRM

Professor John Chassar Moir, obstetrician: photographs of maternity and children's wards, West Indies, ?1950s PP/JCM

Charles McMoran Wilson, Lord Moran, physician: ephemera and correspondence re visit to Bermuda Conference, in capacity as Winston Churchill's doctor, 1953 PP/CMW

Air Marshal Sir Harold Whittingham, consultant in aviation medicine: notebooks with notes of inspections, as Director of Medical Services, BOAC, of airport medical and health facilities in Montego Bay and Kingston, Jamaica, and Bermuda, Trinidad and Barbados, 1954 PP/HEW

Family Planning Association: correspondence with foreign countries includes Puerto Rico, Jamaica, West Indies, 1950s-60s SA/FPA

International Confederation of Midwives: correspondence with Jamaica (member), 1967-81, Antigua, Barbados, Haiti (non-member countries), 1970s; Report of the Caribbean Working Party, 1974 SA/ICM

Professor Ciprian Emmanuel Amoroso: papers of this Trinidad-born biologist include files on his involvement with the Trinidad and Tobago Medical Task Force and the Grand Cayman Turtle Farm, correspondence with and lecturing at the University of the West Indies, 1970s-80s PP/AMO

Sir Alan Sterling Parkes, endocrinologist: some material re Grand Cayman Turtle Farm, c.1980s PP/ASP

World Federation of Occupational Therapists: Antigua and Caribbean Association, Bermuda Association 1991-3 SA/WFO/H/1