Dr Stephen MacKeith

The following is an interim description which may change when detailed cataloguing takes place in future:

Psychiatric case records of private practice in Norwich, c1951-1958, arranged alphabetically by surname.

Please note that this archive comprises patient data that is highly sensitive in nature. When the archive is catalogued, the patient data will require closure for the lifetime of the data subjects in accordance with the 1998 Data Protection Act. We anticipate that it will not be possible to make patient records from the archive available for research before 2043 at the earliest (and later if the case records relate to children as well as adults).

1951-1958

4 boxes

Given to the library at Wellcome Collection Dr James Mackeith in January 1996.

Dr Stephen MacKeith, OBE, MRCS, LRCP (1906-1995), was a consultant psychiatrist with a special interest in the social aspects of medicine, as well as the less popular sub-specialities of child psychiatry and learning disability.

MacKeith was born in 1906 into a medical family. His clinical career was highly varied, including posts at Hatton Hospital, Warwick and Graylingwell Hospital, Chichester, service with the Royal Army Medical Corps as a War Office adviser and command psychiatrist during World War Two, and a period as Physician Superintendent at Napsbury Hospital in St Albans. His next post was a purely clinical consultant post in Norwich, where he developed the private practice from which the case records in this archive collection derive.

From 1964 MacKeith established the Wessex Regional School of Psychiatry and organised one of the first comprehensive day-release courses in postgraduate psychiatry, initially for the Diploma of Psychological Medicine and later for the Membership of the newly formed Royal College of Psychiatrists, of which he was a Founder Fellow.

On MacKeith's retirement in 1973, the Regional School and its courses were taken over by the academic department of psychiatry in the newly formed Medical School at Southampton.

At Wellcome Collection:

Other papers compiled by Stephen MacKeith can be found at GC/135/B.

Other members of the MacKeith family occur in the Wellcome Library's holdings: namely, Norman MacKeith (1901-1989), MS.8011; Ronald MacKeith (1908-1977), PP/MKH and mentions in other collections such as PP/DWW, PP/PRE and PP/SML; James MacKeith (1938-2007), PP/MCK; and John S. MacKeith (b.1934), PP/JMK. A general collection of material on the MacKeith family, compiled by John S. MacKeith, can be found at MSS.9203-9209.

This collection is currently uncatalogued and cannot be ordered online. Requests to view uncatalogued material are considered on a case by case basis. Please contact collections@wellcomecollection.org for more details.