French invalidity certificates

Certificates of discharge or sick-leave on behalf of French military personnel on account of wounds, injury or illness sustained in royal service. The certificates are signed by senior officers or surgeons, testifying to the nature of the wounds or other cause of invalidity. Most of the certificates include a recommendation for admission to the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris, and are countersigned by [Jean] Morand (1659-1726), chief surgeon of that institution, or, from 1722, by his son [Sauveur François] Morand (1697-1773), and from 1727 by other surgeons, including M. Houstet and [Louis Philippe Zorobabel] Bouquot (fl. 1727-1749), who succeeded Morand as chief surgeon.

1671-1732

88 pieces in four files 88 loose documents of various sizes

Mostly purchased from Charavay, Paris, in October 1928 and April 1929 (acc.63700), April 1931 (acc.64715), May 1932 (acc.65655), August 1932 (acc.65656), April 1933 (acc.66028), January 1934 (acc.67097), July 1934 (acc.67125), September 1934 (acc.67126), at some date before 1936 (acc.69220), in January 1936 (acc.69286) and April 1936 (acc.69426). Other documents were purchased from Degrange, Paris, in May 1932 (acc.65640), an accession described in the accessions register as 'letters and documents from the archives of the Ordre de Malta'. The immediate provenance of the remainder, including those documents numbered with the accession number 69214, which seems to be a mistake, is undocumented.

It seems that a large number, perhaps a majority, of these documents were formerly part of the archives of the French order of Malta. Several documents bear printed archival stamps of the order, including some twenty-seven documents without an inscribed accession number and two of those bearing the apparently erroneous accession number 69214. Four documents, including three with Malta stamps, have stamps of the 'Archives de Noblesse' of the 'Collège Héraldique de France'. This was a private genealogical collection belonging to Jules and Paul Mariton in the early 20th century that included documents accumulated by several genealogists of the order. The bulk of the contents of the 'Archives de Noblesse' was purchased by the Archives Nationales in Paris in 1991 as part of the collection of the genealogist Durand de Saint-Front. The documents acquired by Wellcome were presumably among the minority of the Mariton collection that escaped Durand de Saint-Front's grasp.