Guest blog by Museum Studies Student Tiffany (3/3)

My eight-week placement officially wraps up this week, and I'm glad to have finished all the projects I was working on. It's a bit sentimental, though, as my time with these amazing people has come to an end. It was a beautiful final day, and I am grateful to Worcester for letting the sun shine on my last day here.

At the George Marshall Medical Museum, I designed a new trail with a hands-on activity called 'Battle with Diseases.' The trail introduces four diseases, and as you visit the museum, you'll learn more about them through their symptoms, diagnosis, and treatments. The activity is very interactive and hands-on, and I'm sure you'll enjoy it and gain a better understanding of the objects, the diseases, and their relevance to daily life.

Additionally, the 'War and Medicine Workshop' is also on the right track. By adding more interactive elements, I hope students will engage better with the objects and have a valuable experience during their visit. Good things take time, so both projects will be launched soon. Stay tuned! I can't wait to see the final results and sincerely hope they help visitors have a better museum experience.

On the other hand, the final installation is complete at the Infirmary Museum. Thanks to a generous donation from Doris Kershaw's family, the cabinet has been updated with more of her collections. This display commemorates her great efforts for the patients and staff of the Infirmary. If you'd like to learn more about 'The Friends of Worcester Royal Infirmary,' be sure to visit the temporary display at the George Marshall Medical Museum! Besides Doris's collection, I also updated an anatomy examination paper from 1840. If you are interested in anatomy or are a medical expert, please visit and challenge yourself to see if you could have been a successful candidate for the college! I had so much fun researching the archive and collections; time flew by as I checked on every piece, all of which were so interesting and new to me!

Throughout the preparation, I gained great experience in curating a display from scratch. Starting from researching, writing texts, interpretation, designing layouts, and installation—all of these processes were new to me. I want to give a huge thank you to Louise and Harriet for their generous help. I couldn't have done this on my own without their warm and experienced support.

To sum up this journey, everything I gained exceeded my expectations. All the wonderful volunteers and people were extremely friendly and caring. It was amazing to spend time with people who shared the same passion for medical history. I'm feeling myself becoming a part of them, and I'm now so invested in medical history! I'm also glad to have gained experience in almost every aspect of a small-scale museum's daily operations. I believe this placement will be a solid foundation for my future career. See you someday, somewhere—I'll definitely be back!

4. OUTSIDE THE ASYLUM - GUEST BLOG BY MADDIE HALE

You may have seen that over the last sixth months or so, we have been working on the Outside the Asylum project, funded by the National Lottery via Arts Council England. Almost forty patients have now been researched by staff and volunteers, with more on the way, and these are available for you to view on the website.  The aim of this project has been, as the name suggests, to find out more about the patients as people, outside of the asylum, and the research done so far has brought to life so many people long forgotten to history. More than 9,000 patient case notes are available for you to search and browse via the online database.

Alongside patient research, I was able to choose some artefacts from the collection at the George Marshall Medical Museum to be photographed and researched, in order to illustrate the experiences of patients at the asylum. The typical narrative of lunatic asylums has been a large-scale one, looking at the buildings or the doctors and medical staff that worked there. An understanding of how mental illness was understood and the day-to-day lives of the patients themselves has often been ignored, and a number of objects were chosen from the collection to illuminate the everyday experiences of people who were admitted to the asylum; things as simple as what they had to eat every day and how they kept busy.

The Outside the Asylum page is now completed and ready for view, alongside an in-person display at the George Marshall Medical Museum, including some of the objects that have been chosen for the website. The project has been the result of lots and lots of hard work by the team of volunteers and curator Louise Price, and we would absolutely love for you to come and visit the museum, to learn more about the people behind the patient numbers.

Guest post by museum studies student Tiffany (2/3)

Time flies, and with only two weeks to go, it’s hard to believe the placement is coming to an end. I am, however, excited to see the final results of the hard work from the previous weeks. I was thrilled and honoured to assist with the setup of the “Outside the Asylum” project and its private viewing on August 12th (See more about the display). It was a wonderful night to see all the hard work from Maddie and all the research volunteers come to fruition. I truly enjoyed spending time getting to know more about the research and these wonderful volunteers.

As my previous blog mentioned, I'm working on the family trail, and it’s almost complete! Through online research and brainstorming activities for families to engage with our objects, I've developed not only new worksheets but also some hands-on activities that will be ready in the apothecary shop. Stay tuned for the launch of these activities, which I hope will help you have a better engagement with our exciting objects.

At the Infirmary Museum, I designed and launched a new information panel and interactive activities at the health station. I am excited to see more visitors engaging with and participating in the interactive section—come and have a look when you are around. Cabinet renewals at the Infirmary Museum are going smoothly, and we hope the new objects will be ready by September. More precious objects will be on display, and we believe they will be fascinating and interesting!

In addition to the cabinet and information panel renewals at the Infirmary, I am also working on accessioning objects at both the George Marshall Medical Museum and the Infirmary Museum. I always enjoy marking objects and exploring collections; they always surprise you in an unexpected way! I am still working on the trail, workshop, and object renewals and believe I will be able to show them to you soon!

Outside the Asylum

Supported with funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England, a new museum display and online collections pages explore objects relating to Worcester City and County Pauper Lunatic Asylum at Powick before 1900 and the histories of some of the patients’ lives outside of the asylum.

With free access to the many thousands of patients’ notes available at the medical museum’s website, for the last two years volunteers have been gathering social and family histories of former patients to bring their stories to life. In early 2025, the museum gained funding to appoint an Assistant Curator to focus on this project, pulling together some of the stories so far, as well as creating a small exhibition about the lives of former patients, inside and out of the asylum.

At a private view on Tuesday 12 August, the Mayor of Worcester Councillor Lamb joined staff in thanking the volunteers of the George Marshall Medical Museum, and all heard a talk by Assistant Curator Maddie Hale before enjoying a drink and light refreshments while taking in the new display.

Come along to the museum before August 2026 to enjoy the display, and head over to our linked webpages at any time to find out about both the people and the artefacts that shaped their lives.