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Berkeley Moynihan Collection

Archive Collection: MS 2066

Please note

Users are advised that this collection may contain descriptions of medical symptoms and treatments and / or graphic images of wounds, injuries or disease and / or medical illustrations and images. General readers may find these upsetting.
See the Access and usage section below for further details.

Details

Type of record: Archive

Title: Berkeley Moynihan Collection

Level: Collection

Classmark: MS 2066

Date(s): 1890-1927

Size and medium: 2 volumes, 2 envelopes, 2 folders

Persistent link: https://explore.library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/615017

Collection group(s): Medical Collections

Description

A collection of manuscripts by Berkeley G.A. Moynihan. Contains a volume of clinical notes made whilst visiting the clinic of Ernst von Bergmann in Berlin, 1890; files of receipted invoices for purchasing various personal and professional goods and services; an appointments diary for 1927; and a set of manuscript notes for an article or lecture on cholelithiasis, thought to be in Moynihan's hand.

Biography or history

Berkeley George Andrew Moynihan (1856-1936), 1st Baron Moynihan, was an eminent surgeon based in Leeds.


Moynihan pursued a career in medicine, undertaking his training at the Leeds School of Medicine from 1883 and graduating in 1887 with a degree from the University of London. He then took up the post of house surgeon at the Leeds General Infirmary under Arthur Fergusson McGill. He stayed at the Infirmary for the rest of his life, eventually becoming consulting surgeon from 1927. He specialised in abdominal, gastric and pancreatic surgical techniques.


Moynihan was demonstrator of anatomy for the Leeds School as Medicine (1893-1896); he went on to become a lecturer in surgery, and was the first professor of clinical surgery at the University of Leeds by 1910. He was President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England between 1921 and 1931.


In 1909 he set up The Moynihan Chirurgical Club as a society of clinical surgery. The aim was to form a group of a number of provincial surgeons to observe operations and discuss medical practice, and the group is still in existence today.


He was knighted in 1912, appointed a CB in 1917, a KCMG in 1918, a Baronet in 1922, and then first Baron Moynihan of Leeds in 1929.


In 1895 he married Isabella Wellesley Jessop (?1872-1936), daughter of the surgeon Thomas R. Jessop (1837-1903). They had three children. He died in 1936, and was buried at Lawnswood Cemetery, Leeds.



Sources:

Hugh Dudley, ‘Moynihan, Berkeley George Andrew, first Baron Moynihan (1865-1936)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35138, accessed 7 Feb 2017];


University of Leeds, Faculty of Medicine and Health, School of Medicine website, ‘People of Achievement: Rt Hon Lord Berkeley Moynihan (1865-1936)', http://medhealth.leeds.ac.uk/info/299/history_of_the_school/365/people_of_achievement/7;


Plarr’s Lives of the Fellows Online, ‘Moynihan, Sir Berkeley George Andrew, Lord Moynihan of Leeds (1865-1936)’ http://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/biogs/E000226b.htm

Provenance

The Berkeley Moynihan Collection has been created from bringing together a number of different manuscript files or items by Moynihan, which were previously catalogued individually under separate reference numbers. These include: MS 544, MS 545, MS 546 and MS 686. These were each received by Special Collections in 1981.


Catalogued as part of the Wellcome Trust-funded Medical Collections Project (2015-2018).

System of arrangement

The items have been arranged generally into chronological order.

Access and usage

Reproduction

Access

This collection is subject to various access conditions. Please see individual catalogue descriptions for further details on access.

Users are advised that this collection may contain descriptions of medical symptoms and treatments and / or graphic images of wounds, injuries or disease and / or medical illustrations and images. General readers may find these upsetting.

View the Cultural Collections sensitivity policy

Material in this collection is in copyright. Photocopies or digital images can only be supplied by the Library for research or private study within the terms of copyright legislation. It is the responsibility of the researcher to obtain the copyright holder's permission to reproduce for any other purpose. Guidance is available on tracing copyright status and ownership.

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