Bangour General Hospital

Patients (bound records) 1959-1988; patients (unbound records) 1939-1948; buildings 1953-1954

Bangour General Hospital was built during the Second World War as an annexe to Bangour Village Hospital for Mental Diseases and was run by the Department of Health for Scotland under the Emergency Hospitals Scheme. When the demand for beds to treat war-time casualties did not materialise, accommodation was made available to a neuro-surgical unit working in conjunction with the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. Tuberculosis patients also began to be admitted, and facilities to treat plastic and facio-maxillary surgery and thoracic surgery were established. In 1974 it was decided to build a new general hospital for West Lothian at Livingston, and in 1989 services began to be transferred there. Bangour General Hospital closed in the early 1990s.

Chronological within record class

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

Jim Eunson, West Lothian NHS Trust

Compiled by Mike Barfoot and Jenny McDermott using existing handlists

Manual item-level descriptive list available

Records held within the National Health Service prior to transfer

Further accessions are expected

Levin, Ernst, medical practitioner (GD8)Levin, Ernst, medical practitioner (GD8)Penicillin, wartime distribution to civilians (GD1/74)Penicillin, wartime distribution to civilians (GD1/74)Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (LHB1)Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (LHB1)Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh Samaritan Society (GD2)

Hendrie, W.F. and MacLeod, D.A.D. The Bangour story: a history of Bangour Village and General Hospitals. Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1992