Archives of Hope, or The People We Pass By
Some preliminary reflections on working for the Warneford 200 Project
(originally read out at the Sommerville College Chapel as a Choral Contemplation on 26th October 2025)
Hello everyone. Thank you all for being here, on this day, as the clocks turn by an hour, I hope all of you had (at least!) an extra hour of sleep. Thanks are due to many people for making this happen; I have been a student of Somerville since 2023, but it was only last year that I started attending the Choral Contemplations every Sunday. It was my friend Tanaya Nair—who is off doing fieldwork in different parts of the world now but will be back in Oxford soon—who invited me to attend the Contemplation in which she was speaking, and I have been a regular ever since. I also want to thank Arzhia Habibi, our Chapel Fellow, for inviting me to speak here today. Thank you also to Jane Freebody and Sally Frampton who invited me to assist in the Warneford 200 Project, which I will speak about briefly today.
My DPhil research work is on the histories of science, medicine, health and technology. I study pandemics. This term, though, my “disease-burden” has increased, as I have been working as a research assistant for the Warneford 200 Project. The Warneford 200 is a year-long programme of events led by Oxford Health Charity and partners, marking 200 years of mental health care at the Warneford Hospital in Oxford. The Warneford, for those of you who may not know—I certainly didn’t until I started working on the project—is a mental health hospital located at Headington. The hospital was opened in 1826, and the next year marks its 200-year anniversary. The research work that I am doing will help in a series of exhibitions on the hospital, exhibitions that will travel to different places and take place over the course of 2026. The focus of my research is student mental health at the Warneford; this is significant because the Warneford became particularly popular among students through the 20th century; many chose to take their exams from within its premises, choosing its regimental orderliness during exam season. It is said that this was also triggered by the anxiety generated at the very idea of the exam schools. The Warneford even came to be called “Warneford college” by the students. And that is what I thought I would talk about today—student lives, mental health, and my experience navigating that. But as it so happens as you’re writing something, it changes.
Earlier this week, I ran into somebody who used to work at the Warneford in the 70s and a little in the 80s. When she heard of my research into student mental health at the hospital, she told me how students were such an integral part of the ecosystem, of the community, so much so that the nurses would often compare how well their respective patients did in the exams. She looked up at the sky and said, “I remember one nurse saying, “Mine got a First! How did yours do? I am so happy!”
I considered that for a moment, and thought of my own experiences in the archives. Looking for student admission records in the early decades of the 20th century—for that is what I’m doing now, the records get a bit simpler to navigate in the later part of the 20th century but I haven’t reached there yet–is a difficult task, mostly because their records are mixed among hundreds of “non-student” records. As I thought of that comment about the relationship that the rest of the hospital often shared with the students, I thought of all the people I was passing by in my search for the elusive student record. And I want to talk a little bit about that today—about that living mesh of other lives that often surrounds us in this cold, rainy, bright city. I call this contemplation, “The People we Pass by”.
The reading room at the Oxfordshire History Centre is overlooked by large, wooden frames which act as filigrees sieving light. Every time I go and sit at one of the desks, a little bundle of light falls like a feather and rests next to my hand. I don’t pay much attention to it, but I am glad it’s there. The records arrive, and they are heavy tomes. I have asked for admission records, as a starter, to see if and when students have been admitted to the Warneford. These are early 20th-century records, very few are typed, most of them handwritten, with each entry containing many different sets of penmanship. Handwritings are not the most inviting things in an archive; they are often hard to decipher. One of my professors told me that deciphering handwritings is like picking up an accent. I realise I have picked up many accents, but have no one to speak them with. I go through record after record, looking for a student. The process is arduous—I wade through “non-students”–residents, for instance. They live in places I’ve visited and walked down—Abingdon, Norham Gardens, Cowley, and some even come from places in Wales—but these are “non-students”; they are of no interest to me, I think—and it takes me a while before I find the first student entry. I go through more records and find a few more students. This is the second decade of the 20th century now—many young men have come back from war and are exhibiting strange symptoms that will only be diagnosed “correctly” decades later. Many of these men are younger than many of us here. There has also been the influenza pandemic—the flu is cited as a trigger for many psychotic attacks. Time goes by—a year in pages of the archive, hours in the present, and I find another student. As I’m reading their papers, I shudder. The descriptions are very heavy—detailed records of their first psychotic attack, the specters they were haunted by, the things they muttered, their silences– and I am tempted, many a time, to close the records and look away. Why are they suffering so? I think. I want to help—I know that I cannot—they are all long gone, and all I have left are words. I think of their loneliness—not unlike my own at times, their loneliness hardening around them like coccoons. I wonder whether cocoons are painful, and I feel the room turn cold. I find some records telling me about patient discharges and how some therapies “worked”, but I am still not “hopeful” yet, still cold. And now, I come across something else—an admittance record of a college tutor—in my zeal to think of students, I had never considered this other side.
I am still thinking of what to do, of how to make sense of all that I am feeling, when something else happens. Something sudden and soft—perhaps I imagine this—but a small cough of wind ruffles the pages of “others” I have set aside. The “others” scatter from the neat stack and they fall all over the student records, like a shroud, surrounding them. I look at this for a while and think back to that comment, about students being an important part of the community at Warneford. I think of the second part of that sentence. Of community.
And I think it is something like this: perhaps this archive—like many and most other archives is telling a story both cruel and kind. It is telling me about life in these quarters—life’s watchful offices, its nonchalant, inadvertent cruelties, innocuous kindnesses, accidental joys, and its stubborn insistence to continue. Some get better, some don’t, some cannot, but life here,–as life everywhere– inures; injured, hiccupping, at times, perhaps, but persevering, often as a result of people coming together in different ways. Sylvia Plath famously wrote that she would often have to take a deep breath and listen to the old brag of her own heartbeat—I am, I am, I am. I thought of all those students whose records were—not hidden, but perhaps wrapped, even ensconced among the records of others—and then I felt… hopeful. Hopeful to be reminded—in a strange context, no doubt—of something perhaps many of us forget as we navigate the streets of this place. Was this the old, stubborn brag of Oxford’s heart? We are, we are, we are? That we, as Oxford students, share this city with so many others. Depending on our courses, our stays here can range from very brief to not so brief–but as long as we are here, we are surrounded by this blanket of other lives– I had walked into the archive looking for students. I thought—quite selfishly perhaps—that I would excavate these stories, and in doing so, maybe even “save” them. But they have saved me. In its own, leather-bound, frayed, grand old way, the archive has made me think of my own life as a student here as one which is always a shared life, molded by the presence of the people we pass by. On my first day here in Oxford in 2021, one of my tutors, told us something. Something important that I think I am beginning to understand now. As we were settling into term, she told us that the way one understands Oxford is by going out of “student spaces”, and speaking and interacting with residents. It had seemed strange to me then—what does a student have to do with spaces not for students—the answer: everything. The fabric of our little lives mix into the weave and waft of time and space; we arrive—some briefly, some here to stay longer—but there are always others around us. Our lives peopled, made whole by their very presence, our bloom and their blossom. It is a gift, it is such a gift in this life that we share it with so many others.
I think of that little bundle of light, sitting next to me without incident and with relish. It looks up at me like a cat and spreads itself like a map, making other pages glow. It is not incandescent, but it is enduring. The light falls on both sets of pages now: the one I “need”, and the ones I set aside. As if to say, with soft equanimity, “look at these lives we live–together”. What could be more hopeful than that?
