Welcome...to this Archive of historical material related to a part of the Stretton family. Please see further down the page for information on its structure and how best to access the material herein.
Recorded in the Leicester area at least as early as the 1600s, a branch of the family became established in Kidderminster from 1856 where three generations of surgeons, Samuel, Lionel and John, played an important role in the town’s development for nearly one hundred years. Their story is told in the Exhibition Virtual Tour on the John Lionel Stretton website.
Lionel has an important place in medical history having pioneered the use of Tincture of Iodine in surgery as reported in his letter published in the British Medical Journal on 9 August 1909.
Archive Collection
The material in this Archive was largely collected by Antony Stretton, son of John, and digitised by his nephew Chris Stretton between 2012 and 2014. All the original, hardcopy documents are deposited in the Worcestershire County Archive. These may be inspected by visiting The Hive in Worcester and the index can be searched on-line at: http://e-services.worcestershire.gov.uk/CalmView/ : entering stretton in the search box will show a ComputerRef No of 15607, which is the Home page for the Archive. It may be searched by entering individuals’ names.
Also in The Hive’s Archive is a considerable quantity of documentation from the Kidderminster Infirmary, deposited as Accession Number 8481. In 2016 these were reviewed by Rosemary Byrde and Chris Stretton and those with relevance to the Stretton story were scanned and summarised. The results of this can be accessed through the Archive/Infirmary Old Records menu item or through the Kidderminster Infirmary Records tab in Lionel’s Archive section. The Infirmary Day Book 1872 – 1897, therein, is a fascinating document and well worth a browse. It contains many hand-written entries recording significant events in the Infirmary’s day-to-day running. A favourite can be found on page 75 of the document, dated May 23 1888: “An in-patient, name of Henry Stafford, having misconducted himself and disobeyed the orders of a nurse, has this day been discharged for the same”.
Using content
You are welcome to download material from this Archive for your own private use. If you wish to use anything for commercial purposes then please contact us first using the Contact Page on this website.
Archive Future
The Archive is ‘work-in-progress’ and additional material will be added over the coming months as it is systematically indexed and reformatted. Initially material was uploaded for the three surgeons but this has now been extended and there is now material for over 30 separate family members.
We are keen, also, to add material from other sources and family members. If you have anything suitable, any queries or corrections, please get in touch using the Contact Page on this website.