| Administrative History | Sydenham College was founded in 1851 by a group of physicians and surgeons at Birmingham General Hospital, led by Dr Bell Fletcher, as a medical school. It was named after the progressive English physician Dr Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689). The college was established as a rival school to Queen's College, founded by William Sands Cox, a Birmingham surgeon, under the name of the Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery in 1828. The school changed its name after the hospital set up by Sands Cox, which had opened in 1841, was granted a royal charter in 1843 and named The Queen's Hospital. The staff of the General Hospital believed their students were at a disadvantage compared with those of Queen's College, who could obtain the whole of their training under one authority, and this was what prompted the establishment of Sydenham College as a training school for students of the General Hospital.
The first premises of Sydenham College were at 12 St. Paul's Square but as the college prospered, it moved into larger premises in Summer Lane in 1858. Queen's College suffered from its Anglican connections in a city with strong non-conformist influences, and it failed to attract as many students as Sydenham College. After a Charity Commission Inquiry the Charters of the college were repealed by an Act of Parliament in 1867, separating it from Queen's Hospital, which became an autonomous body. The following year, Sydenham College was dissolved and its students were transferred to Queen's College. In 1873 a joint clinical board was set up for both the Queen's Hospital and the General Hospital. In 1892, the Medical Faculty of Queen's College became the Medical Faculty of Mason College which, in turn, became the University of Birmingham.
Sources: Ives, Drummond & Schwartz The First Civic University: Birmingham 1880-1980, Birmingham 2000; University of Birmingham Medical School http://www.medicine.bham.ac.uk/history.htm Accessed 22 May 2003; A Short History of the Medical School, published by the Medical Faculty of the University of Birmingham, 1957 |
| Custodial History | Purchased at the auction of the library of the late Dr Benjamin Tillett Davis, at Phillips, 16 June 1999 |