George Marshall Medical Museum volunteer wins prestigious Heritage award

Dr. Frank Crompton has been recognised in the Renaissance West Midlands Best of the West Awards 2010, winning in the category for Outstanding Volunteer.

Dr. Frank Crompton retired in the late 1990s from a lengthy career in academia and with the intention of having plenty of time to research and publish books in his field of nineteenth century poor law, healthcare and asylums. He was approached almost on his first day of retirement by staff at the city’s NHS education centre in Ronkswood to see if he would consider helping to set up a new museum. Fatefully for Frank, he said yes, and since that day he has volunteered with the museum that he almost single-handedly created on a virtually full time basis.

Frank helps to write bids, manage the museum, give talks, develop connections with local community groups, and any other tasks, minor or major, that we set him. He consistently makes himself available for all the museum’s activities as and when he is asked.

To give one recent example, Frank has helped to set up this website and has allowed his research into Powick Asylum records to be available for members of the public to view for free. This archive represents thousands of digitised images and innumerable hours of copying records from the originals into a database to allow a search facility.

But above all of Frank’s many and varied tangible contributions sits his never-ending enthusiasm and positive attitude. From a personal point of view, Frank has supported me in the first stages of my career in museums and heritage by always being a friendly face and by having seemingly unshakable faith in my ability to succeed in the work I do at the museum. He has fulfilled this role for two curators before me and, I hope, for many after me. (Catriona Smellie, Curator. 2009)