The Infirmary Cases of Victorian and Edwardian Leeds: Making the Papers

Ronnie Walsh is speaking at The Leeds Library on Thursday 18 February, with a talk titled The Infirmary Cases of Victorian and Edwardian Leeds: Making the Papers. He'll be drawing on the Surgeon Ledgers of The Leeds Infirmary, those old records of patients and their treatments, to bring to life some of the medical cases that passed through the hospital during the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

It's part of the library's programme of heritage talks on local history, so it sits right alongside the other sessions they run throughout the year. The focus here is on the people behind the entries in the ledgers—the patients who were treated at the Infirmary and the stories their records leave behind. If you've ever wondered what it was like to be a patient in a Leeds hospital a century or more ago, this is exactly that.

The venue itself is one of the city's proper hidden gems. The Leeds Library sits at 18 Commercial Street, right in the middle of a busy shopping centre, but once you're inside it's a different world. It was founded in 1768 as a proprietary subscription library, and it's now the oldest surviving example of its kind in the British Isles. Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) is still listed as one of its original subscribers, and the collections run deep in travel, topography, biography, history and literature. The library became a charity on 1 July 2008, and 2018 marked its 250th year.

It's a free talk, so you can just turn up and listen. The date is Thursday 18 February, and the address is 18 Commercial Street, Leeds LS1 6AL.