NRS-17751 | Report Books [Royal Newcastle Hospital]

This series consists of reports submitted to the General Committee of Management of the Royal Newcastle Hospital or to the General Committee’s successor, the Board of Directors, and to the Hospital’s House Committee, including reports submitted by House Committee to the General Committee and Board. Six volumes are currently held. Two of these contain reports from House Committee to the General Committee, covering the period between the establishment of House Committee in 1904 and the replacement of the General Committee by the Board of Directors at the end of 1915. A third includes reports to House Committee by the Matron, commencing upon the appointment of Florence McAllister as Matron in 1905 and continuing until 1913. The fourth volume contains reports submitted to both House Committee and the Board of Directors by the Medical Superintendent during the period March 1936-June 1938. The fifth and sixth volumes contain reports to the Directors submitted by the Matron during the period January 1944-August 1964.Three of these volumes record, in addition to the actual reports which have been entered in them, the attention to these reports of the bodies to which they were presented. The two volumes of House Committee reports to General Committee are annotated throughout to record the approval of each report by General Committee, with cross-references to the relevant pages in the General Committee Minutes (part of NRS 17728). The single volume of Matron’s Reports to House Committee contains not only the original reports, but also House Committee’s instructions to the Matron in response to her reports, and is annotated to indicate which items in each report had been approved, referred to General Committee or otherwise acted upon.The later volume of the Matron’s Reports to the Directors concludes in mid-volume in August 1964, the remainder of the volume remaining blank. This doubtless reflects the dismissal of the Board by H.E. the Governor on 19 August 1964, and the vesting of its powers in an Administrator. There is no indication whether the practice of the Matron submitting reports to the Directors was resumed after the appointment of a new Board in 1965.The three earlier volumes of the series are of the quarter-leather-bound ledger type. The covers of these are all knocked and worn, but the volumes themselves are otherwise sound. The three later volumes, containing the reports of the Medical Superintendent and the Matron’s reports to the Directors, are of the "exercise book"type, with pages sewn in gatherings between cloth- or paper-covered boards with a cloth spine. These volumes also exhibit some external signs of wear, and the gatherings of the 1944-1956 volume of the Matron’s reports have separated from the binding, but the other two volumes are essentially sound.The earliest of the surviving volumes, the first volume of House Committee reports to General Committee, bears the number "4,"indicating that the series once included other volumes which may no longer be extant.