Vintage photo collection
22nd June 2018
Capturing hospice history – putting patients at the centre of care, and regarding them as whole people
A un
ique collection of vintage reportage photographs by Life Magazine photographer Derek Bayes is being placed for conservation within the Dame Cicely Saunders Archives at King’s College London.
The photographs document the life of St Christopher’s Hospice in the 1970s and 1980s, and give a fascinating insight into the evolution of a new medical system of care that for the first time put patients at the centre of their treatment, and created a “Home from Home”, a homelike environment where people coming to the end of their lives were offered not just hope and comfort but also the best medical care and symptom control.
Born in 1933, Derek Bayes worked for Life Magazine, and national and international newspapers and magazines. He died of cancer in 2009. His widow Angela Bayes, of Aspect Photo Library said: I recall that Cicely Saunders was approached by The Observer Magazine who were interested in a documentary feature about St Christopher’s in Sydenham. Permission was refused but Derek decided to contact Cicely Saunders anyway. He and Cicely became friends, and over the next few years he was granted special access to photograph patients, families and staff in the hospice.
Derek’s photographs of Dame Cicely and the hospice are well-recognised internationally and are still being published today, capturing an era when palliative care was a new, revolutionary approach, an approach that put patients at the centre of care and regarded them as whole people.