Last November we reported on the acquisition via a sale at Sothebys of nearly 4000 index cards of notes of Sir Bernard Spilsbury's autopsies.This collection has proved highly popular with readers since it has become available.
We are now delighted to report that as a result of the publicity around this important acquisition, a further 3000+ case cards have been received as a gift to the Library.
These cards clearly follow on from the sequence previously received, covering the years 1933 to 1946, although there are still some unaccounted for gaps. There are no cards at all from the years 1939 and 1940, some breaks in the sequence for other years, only three cards from 1945 and a single specimen from 1946. As with the previous accession, the cards reflect the extremely wide range of Spilsbury's routine investigations of sudden and unexpected death from all causes, not merely his notorious high-profile involvement in murder cases.
These cards clearly follow on from the sequence previously received, covering the years 1933 to 1946, although there are still some unaccounted for gaps. There are no cards at all from the years 1939 and 1940, some breaks in the sequence for other years, only three cards from 1945 and a single specimen from 1946. As with the previous accession, the cards reflect the extremely wide range of Spilsbury's routine investigations of sudden and unexpected death from all causes, not merely his notorious high-profile involvement in murder cases.
This new accession of cards has now been catalogued: to see the catalogue, go to the Archives and Manuscripts catalogue and put PP/SPI in the Reference field of the search interface. Click on the blue numerals in the lefthand column of the resulting hitlist for the detailed descriptions. The cards are available for research subject to the usual conditions of access to archive material.
