emporium, newly opened in the early 1890s. Glass bottles contained everything from medicine to sauce and elixirs to French perfume. Bottles bearing Royal Navy markings were common, reflecting the maritime history of the city of Victoria. China doll parts and glass marbles remind us that children were present in the hospital too. The experience of children is rarely represented in the archaeological record, but we can imagine what a comfort these toys might have been to convalescent children. Items of personal hygiene, such as toothpaste and toothbrushes, were also common, and though they are familiar in form, we have certainly come a long way from early toothpaste formulations, which sometimes included abrasives such as crushed brick.
the hospital campus. In 1991, workers preparing for a major construction project uncovered a unique and unexpected archaeological deposit. Under the direction of Grant Keddie, the Royal BC Museum’s curator of archaeology, over a dozen volunteers from the Archaeological Society of BC were offered the opportunity to conduct a salvage excavation. Several thousand artifacts were recovered, and an analysis of the artifacts and their context indicated that the site was a refuse pit from the earliest days of the hospital. The artifacts were dated to a very tight window of time—between 1890 and 1893—providing a snapshot of a late 19th-century Victorian hospital and the people who spent time there. Objects in the RJH collection speak to a multitude of experiences at the hospital. Differences in the quality of glass and ceramic objects are characteristic of a hospital with separate wards for the wealthy and poor. Plain white ‘ironstone‘ ceramic vessels contrast with delicate and carefully decorated Japanese ceramics, perhaps purchased from a local Japanese
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In 2015, museum volunteer Tom Bown revisited the collection to take photos and complete the artifact catalogue. The collection was revisited again the following year, when Dr. Cook and her students undertook an intensive study of the collection that focused on themes such as ‘modern’ medicine (circa 1890), global connections and personal histories. In order to share the collection and their findings with the public, the students organized a pop-up exhibit. Among the visitors to the exhibit were alumnae of the Royal Jubilee Hospital School of Nursing, who were delighted to see objects that their predecessors would have used, such as glass syringes. Artifacts like these speak directly to the roles of nurses and doctors. Indeed, some of the individuals pictured in the photo (facing page), probably taken in the 1890s, may have handled and discarded the very same objects that were excavated from this site and put on display during the pop-up exhibit.
1. Staff on the steps of the Royal Jubilee Hospital, ca. 1890s. G-00236. 2. Toothpaste Jar, Cat. No. RJH 190. 3. Mercury syringe, Cat. No. RJH 491. 4. Doll head, Cat. No. RJH 497. 5. Blue Bottle, Cat. No. RJH 439.
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