The archives of the Royal Free Hospital and London School of Medicine for Women were transferred to London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) in 2013 following the closure of the Royal Free Hospital Archive Service. The Royal Free Hospital began life as a small dispensary in Holborn providing free medical care to those who could not afford it. The title ‘Royal’ was granted by Queen Victoria in 1837 in recognition of the hospital’s work during the nineteenth century cholera epidemics. Demand for free hospital treatment was high that in 1844 the Royal Free Hospital moved to larger premises in Gray’s Inn Road where it stayed until the 1970s, when it moved to its current site in Hampstead. The hospital is notable not only as the first free hospital in London, but also as the first in Britain to accept women as students. It was also the first to appoint an almoner (forerunner of the social worker), and pioneered treatments for kidney and liver diseases, haemophilia and cancer. The archives contain some of the earliest surviving patient case notes including those by the first women surgeons and physicians. In 2015 the Wellcome Trust awarded LMA a Research Resources in Medical History grant for a year-long project to repair and refurbish fragile and damaged items to enable physical access to items within the archives unavailable for research owing to their poor condition, and to repackage the archives to ensure their long-term preservation. It also funded a 12-month public engagement programme to promote the project within the academic and non-academic communities and build themes from the collection into LMA’s schools and outreach programmes. This pack consists investigations into the archives of the Royal Free Hospital and the NHS today. The enquiries deal in various ways with the development of healthcare for the poor and the developing roles of women in health professions particularly as doctors and almoners in the later nineteenth century. These investigations provide ways of exploring social reform, the history of medicine in the nineteenth century, and local history. They could be undertaken in three substantial lessons or broken up over a longer scheme of work to suit students’ needs. They can be used together or separately to provide experiences of source-based enquiry using the kinds of materials usually found in archives. Teachers and students are considered as co-investigators with the teacher in a facilitative role, using their experience to guide investigation and questioning and taking care to appreciate and challenge students’ conclusions as a critical friend. These are investigations into history not accounts of the past. There are, therefore no teachers’ notes as such.