Hospital Chaplains, Edinburgh Diocese of the Episcopal Church of Scotland

Scope and Content

List of duties; routines and timetables; visiting etiquette; scriptural texts; list of Church property; annual and Christmas accounts; baptism, confirmation and burials registers; annual returns 1939-1960; graphs relating to activities 1927-1962

Administrative / Biographical History

Prior to Herbert T. Coles's appointment in 1940, Episcopalian hospital patients were visited by ministers on a rota basis. As well as providing cover for normal church services, the principal duty of the Supernumerary and Hospital Chaplain was to make Communion and pastoral visits to those receiving care in a variety of institutions in and around Edinburgh. Initially over 20 local institutions were visited and, in 1960, a second Chaplain was appointed (Rev. C. F. Crichton).

Arrangement

Chronological within record class

Access Information

Public access to these records is governed by the UK Data Protection Act 1998, the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and the latest version of the Scottish Government Records Management: NHS Code of Practice (Scotland). Whilst some records may be accessed freely by researchers, the aforementioned legislation and guidelines mean that records with sensitive information on named individuals may be closed to the public for a set time.

Where records are about named deceased adults, they will be open 75 years after the latest date in the record, on the next 01 January. Records about individuals below 18 years (living or deceased) or adults not proven to be deceased will be open 100 years after the latest date in the record, on the next 01 January. Further information on legislation and guidelines covering medical records can be found on the LHSA webpage (http://www.lhsa.lib.ed.ac.uk/).

LHSA can support the use of records closed to public access for legitimate clinical, historical and genealogical research purposes. Please contact the LHSA Archivist for more details regarding procedures on how you can apply for permission to view closed records. Telephone us on: 0131 650 3392 or email us at lhsa@ed.ac.uk

Acquisition Information

National Archives of Scotland (Scottish Record Office), July 1991

Note

Compiled by Mike Barfoot and Jenny McDermott using existing handlists

Other Finding Aids

Manual item-level descriptive list available

Custodial History

Unknown

Accruals

No further accessions are expected