Cicely Saunders Archives: catalogue now available online
27th June 2016
Dame Cicely Saunders bequeathed her archives to her alma mater King’s College London. Thanks to generous funding by the Wellcome Trust, an archivist was appointed in 2014 by King’s College London to catalogue and preserve the items in the archives. King’s College London has announced that the archives are now ready for consultation. The catalogue can be viewed on the King’s College London website:
Cicely Saunders Archives at King’s College London
Archivist Chris Olver writes about the project in the current edition of ehospice.
“The main challenge I faced during the project was acclimatising to the sensitive nature of a considerable number of the papers within the collection.
Difficult subjects that they explored will not be new to those who are familiar with her work – death, bereavement, grief, suffering, loss, pain and the right to die. And it was hard not to be moved sometimes when coming across a particularly affecting letter, especially her own bereavements that fuelled her own work and spurred on the creation of St Christopher’s.
Yet, even though some of the archives record moments of individual suffering and sadness, they also reflect many accounts of uplift, salvation, love and kindness and one cannot come away without having a great deal of admiration of Saunders, her staff and institutions involved in delivering end of life care.”