Professor Richard Worthington Smithells: Archives

The collection is arranged into sections A-E as follows:

A Personal items, 1992-2009

B Paediatric research, work and other activities relating mainly to thalidomide, 1960-2000

C Smithells' papers on the Thalidomide Trust, 1968-2000

D Lectures and Publications, 1962-2001

E Textual resources on thalidomide, 1926-2003

It was in Liverpool that Smithells embarked on his lifelong research interest in the prevention of disease in children and specifically in congenital malformations. His publications from that period ranged over congenital abnormality registers, genetic counselling, rubella in pregnancy and the correlation between vitamin deficiency and neural tube defects. Smithells demonstrated the value of vaccination in reducing the incidence of babies being born with disabilities as a result of maternal rubella, and he coordinated rubella vaccinations in the north of England. Another project he brought with him from Liverpool concerned the importance of folic acid supplements for preventing malformation of spine and brain, such as spina bifida, findings which the Medical Research Council endorsed in 1991.

Neither of these significant strands of Smithells' work are much represented in the archive here, which grew out of his activities in connection with the teratogenic effects of the sedative thalidomide. Smithells' original involvement with thalidomide research was as an innovative clinician who had recently set up the Liverpool Registry of Congenital Abnormalities. The Liverpool Registry opened in January 1960 and recorded all malformations in live and stillborn babies born in the region. On the announcement in December 1961 that thalidomide was being withdrawn, Smithells began systematic investigations into the potential link between prescription drug use during pregnancy and birth defects. His results bore out the claims of W. Lenz in Germany and W. G. McBride in Australia, who had independently discovered the teratogenicity of thalidomide in 1961. Smithells became a leading expert on thalidomide diagnostics whose medical testimony supported the plaintiffs' case against the UK distributor of the drug. His subsequent involvement with the trust that was set up in 1973 "for the purpose of giving relief and assistance" to thalidomide children was both academic and practical: he served on the Thalidomide Trust's National Advisory Council from 1974 and as trustee from December 1976.

Smithells retired from his chair at the University of Leeds in 1988. His subsequent appointments included membership in vaccine damage tribunals 1989-1997 and consultancy on the European Registration of Congenital Abnormalities and Twins (EUROCAT). From 1994 to 1996 he also acted as Director (part time) of the International Centre for Birth Defects, Rome, Italy. He was awarded the James Spence medal of the British Paediatric Association (1992), the Rank Prize for Nutrition (1995, jointly), the Dawson Williams Memorial Prize of the British Medical Association (1998), and the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr Foundation International Research Award (2000, jointly).

Smithells died 13th June 2002. In 1948 he married Joy Muriel Foster Beaver, who died 4th February 2010. They had five children and eleven grand-children.

Further biographical information can be found in the citation for the award of the James Spence Medal, Archives of Disease in Childhood, vol. 67 (1992): 1061-1062; and the special commemorative issue "A Festschrift in honour of Professor R. W. Smithells", Birth Defects Research Part A: Clinical and Molecular Teratology, vol. 85 (4) (April 2009), especially Sheila Sheppard's "In memoriam" at pp. 252-253.

Departmental papers from Smithells' time as Chair of Paediatrics and Child Health 1968-1988 can be found among Departmental Records of the School of Medicine in the Leeds University Archives. There are photographs in the same repository as well. Material relating to Smithells' award of the James Spence medal, 1992, and to his instrumental role in the campaign of the British Paediatric Society becoming the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) can be found in the archives of the latter institution. As of 2009, Smithells' journals were still in the hands of his family.

Wellcome holds several other archive collections relating to thalidomide: