Dundee Royal Infirmary Admissions

The scale of Irish immigration to Dundee is clearly demonstrated in the admission registers of Dundee Royal Infirmary held by Archive Services.   

Our volunteers are currently undertaking a long term project to transfer the information contained in the Dundee Royal Infirmary admission registers, which start in 1842, onto a searchable database. This will make it much easier for researchers to use the information contained in these volumes, particularly for family historians looking for relatives who had been patients. So far more than 2,700 entries have been added to the database which covers the period January 1842 to November 1843.

The data has already revealed some interesting information about Dundee at that time (not just related to medicine) for example the admission registers record the nationality of the patient and the county or parish in which they were born.

For the period 1842-1843:

•  72.28% of the patients admitted were Scottish, 22.19% were Irish,  just 2.51% were English and 0.80% were ‘foreign’ 

Of the 610 patients who were recorded as Irish 91 had Ireland listed as their place of birth and of the remainder the most common counties recorded were:

·         Armagh: 57 patients

·         Sligo: 53

·         Kings County (now Offaly): 48

·         Cavan: 47

·         Derry/Londonderry: 45

·         Monaghan: 43

·         Antrim: 36

·         Tyrone: 32

The registers also state the patients’ current residence so we know that the 57 patients from Armagh settled in 25 different locations in Dundee. The most popular areas were:

Hawkhill (8)

Bonnett Hill (7)

Gowden Knows (5)

Scouringburn (5)

This is just a small example of the kinds of information and statistics that can be gathered from these patient admission registers. Many other avenues can be examined as the registers show patient name, occupation, marital status, age and dates of admission and discharge. Watch out for future blogs which will explore this further.

The admission registers are available to be consulted in the archive searchroom, please contact us for more information, archives@dundee.ac.uk.