This month's subject is presented by:
Speaker: Dr Judith Godden
Title: Researching the history of Crown Street Women's Hospital
When: 10.30am - 11.30am, 25th August 2011
Where: Randwick Branch Library
Address: Level 1, 73 Belmore Rd, Royal Randwick Shopping Centre
Bookings: Bookings are not required
Cost: Free
Contact: For more information, call Jane on 02 9314 4888
Email: contactus@randwick.nsw.gov.au
Dr Judith Godden is a professional historian who is writing a commissioned history of Crown Street Women's Hospital. Her book Lucy Osburn, a lady displaced. Florence Nightingale's envoy to Australia (Sydney University Press) was short-listed for Australia's 2008 National Biography Award. She will have two books published this year: Australia’s Controversial Matron: Gwen Burbidge and Nursing Reform (The College of Nursing, Sydney) and, with Carol Helmstadter, Nursing before Nightingale 1815-1890.
Her illustrated talk will be on her work in progress writing the first comprehensive history of Crown Street Women's Hospital in Surry Hills. Her talk will focus on the reasons for writing its history and why people protested so vigorously against its closure in 1983. An important theme is how the surviving records, and gaps in that record, determine our understanding of the past. She especially welcomes the opportunity for discussion and to hear any memories you might have of Crown Street.
Are you researching relatives that worked or were patients at the Crown Street Hospital? Here is where we would start our research:
- State Records NSW: Archives in Brief 88
- State Library of NSW
- City of Sydney Archives , or direct your query to
- The Medical Records Manager, Royal Hospital for Women, Locked Bag 2000, RANDWICK NSW 2031 | (02) 9382 6111
Photograph of Crown Street Women’s Hospital courtesy of State Record
