Topical Press Agency medical collection

The Topical Press Agency medical collection consists of 4,050 black and white photographs taken between 1938 and 1943. The photographs document medicine and healthcare in England, providing an insight into medical and nursing practices in the country during the Second World War and the time immediately before the foundation of the NHS. The collection includes photographs detailing medical procedures and equipment alongside images of improvised wartime hospital wards and evacuated children. The collection also records nurses in training and in practice, including industrial nursing in factories.

We will preserve, catalogue and digitise all the photographs in this recently discovered collection. The catalogue and digital images will be available on the Historic England Archive website, providing a unique visual resource for academics studying this period in the history of medicine.