Hi John, All I know is that I made an enquiry regarding surgical records in 1915/16 from St Mary's (which latterly became an Obstetric Hospital). I was initially told that: "the trust no longer have records from the period of time you require. The Trust has a national destruction policy that allows records to be destroyed after a certain length of time. We are obliged to keep children's records until their twenty-fifth birthday, we keep Gynaecology records for eight years and keep Obstetric records for twenty-five years. We do however have a lot of birth registers in our archive room." I then asked if they had records of surgeons around that time and my request was sent to the "Freedom of Information Officer". This resulted in the information from the manager of the Medical Records Dept. that "old archive records are being moved to a new location and then being catalogued. This is going to take some time and they estimate the information will be ready to be looked at around February/March next year." I am told that my request is being kept on file and will be researched as soon as...... Knowing that St Mary's and Manchester Royal are side by side and work together under the same management, I assume they are talking about all records. However, the fact that some info will have been destroyed, whilst on the other hand Archived records are obviously still there...leaves me wondering! Like you, it makes me think (hopefully) that our requested records REALLY are there, and once all records are catalogued - who knows? I also believe that my request will get lost! (I will follow up next year!) Pat W ----- Original Message ----- From: John Murray Hello Pat W I had dealings with the archivist some years ago when the records were kept at Manchester Royal Infirmary, are you saying that they are being moved from there The particular year that I wanted to view could not be found and it may be possible that during the upheaval to move they may be found. I want to view the Royal infirmary records John Manchester England