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All users should be aware that some topics or historical content may be culturally sensitive, offensive or distressing, and that some images may contain nudity or are of people not yet identified. Certain words, terms or descriptions may reflect the author's/creator's attitude or that of the period in which they were written, but are now considered inappropriate in today's context.
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In the Library (or anywhere with a Library card for NSW residents) |
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Only in the Library |
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Publicly available |
Search the Surgeons at Sea database on the The National Archives (TNA) website to find entries for passengers (convicts and emigrants) in medical journals on voyages to Australia. This is a cataloguing project which has indexed over 1,000 Surgeon’s Journals (the complete ADM 101 series).
You can search by ship, surgeon, patient, disease and voyage date for information including case notes for patients visiting the ship doctor and details of deaths on board.
This index to Surgeons journals includes a transcript only from the medical journal. Links are provided to the full digitised records in Ancestry UK, but a paid or trial subscription is required to access these. If you are in the Library, you can access the Library's subscription to UK, Royal Medical Journals, 1815-1857 in Ancestry Library Edition.
In this example, we're going to search for the following emigrant:
On The National Archives search page, enter your patient information in this format:
You can then browse the search results, as matches to your search query are highlighted:
From the search result, click through to see the full extract.
The Surgeons Journals & Captains Logs cover the 19th century, but these lists from the Board of Trade (BT) cover the 20th century.
UK Outbound Passenger Lists 1890-1960 (BT 27) is particularly important as it includes passengers/emigrants arriving in Australia.
