How do i go about obtaining my United Kingdom ancestors Medical records?

Question:

How do i go about obtaining my United Kingdom ancestors Medical records?

no silly answers please and only british websites to be posted thanks!

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Short answer to your question - no, you cannot do this online. You will either need to go to a record office in person or pay a professional to do it for you. A lot of this question also depends WHEN you are looking for records. If it is pre-1900, it is usually doable if a bit hit-and-miss (records have been known to get destroyed in the intervening years in floods or fires or in German bombing raids during the war, and in many cases were simply routinely destroyed as being no longer required). It is only comparitively recently that things are being kept no matter what.

Medical Records are personal, and where kept, are closed to public access for 100 years. Many people have enough trouble trying to get their own records, without trying to get copies of their forebears. If you have a legitimate reason for wanting to see an ancestors records (inheritable diseases or gene defects for example) then this would be much easier to do than citing "genealogy" as your reason for wanting access, as they will do their best to get rid of you, probably quote the "Data Protection Act" at you, and hope that you will go away.

General medical records themselves are unlikely to survive. Your best hope is with old admission registers from hospitals, asylums and workhouses, which if released to public access will be at the nearest local County Record Office to the hospital in question. Some hospital NHS trusts keep their own records on site, in which case you'd need to speak to the archivist. If they let you in to the hospital to look at anything younger than 100 years, there will usually be very strict conditions as to what you can look at. Frankly, it's not worth the hassle, but then you'll find that out for yourself soon enough!