William Blair-Bell, Papers

Correspondence, credit notes, receipts, telegrams, memoranda, accounts, invoices compiled by William Blair-Bell, medical doctor and gynaecologist and obstetrician. Subjects include requests for supplies, administrative correspondence with University of Liverpool Medical Department, donations made by Blair-Bell to medical institutions.

The collection also contains a list of William Blair-Bell papers purchased in 1986 by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, an advertisement for the book 'William Blair-Bell - Father and Founder: A Biography', and correspondence sent to Blair-Bell's close friend, Morris M. Datnow, who worked with Blair-Bell at the University of Liverpool Medical Department.

William Blair-Bell was born in Wallasey, Merseyside in 1871 and educated at Rossall School, King's College London and King's College Hospital. Obtaining a degree in medicine in 1896, he went into general practice at Birkenhead upon qualifying and later decided to specialise in obstetrics and gynaecology. In 1905 Blair-Bell became gynaecological surgeon in charge of out-patients at the Royal Infirmary in Liverpool, later becoming gynaecological surgery to the Infirmary in 1913. He became professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Liverpool in 1921, a position he held for ten years.

Blair-Bell founded the Gynaecological Visiting Society of Great Britain in 1911, which in turn created the British (now Royal) College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, incorporated in 1929. Blair-Bell was the first President of the college. Bell died in 1936 during a train journey from London to his home in Shropshire.

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