The 1942 Club

The collection is divided into sections as follows:

A. Background Material 1953-1993
B. Minutes of Meetings 1942-1991
C. Secretaries' Files 1971-1988
D. Presidents' Files 1978-1979
E. Other 1971-1985

At an informal dinner held in January 1942 a group of eminent professors decided to form a small club composed of those holding university chairs in medicine, surgery or obstetrics and who were interested in the future of clinical teaching and academic medicine, particularly in light of the inception of the NHS. The limited membership club thus founded began as a small group of 14, but membership steadily increased, reaching 184 in 1992. Originally membership was limited to heads of strictly clinical departments but has since been extended to professors of paraclinical disciplines. Each meeting of the Club is devoted, after general business has been dealt with, to the discussion of a particular topic of current medico-political or medico-academic importance, ranging from the foundation and operation of the National Health Service and the Royal Commission on Medical Education to issues in the funding of research, the undergraduate curriculum, examination procedures, postgraduate training, medicine and the media, etc. The Club has periodically made reports and recommendations, eg. to the Royal Commission, but has consistently avoided becoming involved in salary negotiations.

Further details of the history of the Club can be found in Section A. of the collection.

At Wellcome Collection:
Papers of the Royal Commission on Medical Education, 1968 (SA/CME), as well as papers of some of the individual members of the Club including: Sir Douglas Black (b.1913) (GC/45); Sir Richard Doll (b. 1912) (PP/DOL); Sir Harold Himsworth (1905-1993) (PP/HIM); Sir Thomas Lewis (1881-1945) (PP/LEW); Sir John McMichael (1904-1993) (PP/JMM); Sir George White Pickering (1904-1980) (PP/GWP); Sir Peter Tizard (b.1916) (PP/TIZ); and Sir Edward Wayne (1902-1991) (GC/171 ).

At other repositories:
Further records, according to Prof. Stephen Tomlinson, are held by the Secretary, Prof Raymond Tallis, of Hope Hospital, Salford.

The following is an interim description of material that has been acquired since this collection was catalogued. This description may change when cataloguing takes place in future:

Four boxes of files were received in September 2009 (acc. 1689) and one box in January 2010 (acc. 1715), both consisting of additional organisational papers of the 1942 Club, mainly minutes. In March 2024, membership index cards were donated as an accrual to the collection (acc. 2755, 2 folders).