DANIEL STRATFULL son
of Frederick Stratfull and Alice Farmer was born 18 October 1907 in 11 Green Street, Paddington,
London., and died 11 October 1971 in St. Richards Hospital, Chicester, West
Sussex.. He married MARGARET EVELYN BUTLER 9 February 1929 in Paddington
Registry Office, London., daughter of CHARLES BUTLER and EMMA COOPER. She was
born 17 October 1906 in 39 Preston Street, St. Pancras, London., and died 21
July 1987 in Abbas Combe Nursing Home, Chicester, West Sussex.
Notes taken from an e-mail from Kevin Brown, curator of the Alexander Fleming Museum, dated 3 March 2000.
"Dan Stratful worked at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington in the Inoculation Department from the 1920s until the 1960s. He was a lab technician in the Inoculation Department, subsequently known as the Wright Fleming Institute (from 1946-1967), and worked as technician for Alexander Fleming.
Dan Stratful was given a mounted spore of penicillin mould by Fleming which he later gave to his niece Mrs Joyce Keir. She deposited it with the Fleming Museum in March 1996 after a BBC news item on the Museum.
Why not visit the Fleming Museum at St Mary's Hospital and see the lab where Dan Stratful and Fleming worked?
If you or Dan Stratful's daughter would like to visit let me know on 020 7886 6528 as I'd like to meet you both. I am away until 20 March."
Notes taken from article on the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum (see reference at end of this article).
Penicillin Reborn - Review of the newly opened Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum
In the 1940s Alexander Fleming discovered one of the strongest forces known to science - the power of the press. His little laboratory, perched over the bustle of Praed Street, Paddington, became a place of pilgrimage. Visitors found it steeped in cigarette smoke and reeking of lysol, cluttered with papers and petri dishes. Now the look of the laboratory has been lovingly recreated, and in September 1993 it was opened to the public as a medical museum.
The exhibits are on several levels. There is a shop dispensing memorabilia (a guide to the displays in a range of languages, picture postcards, trinkets) - and a tiny video room where a ten-minute tape gives excerpts of the flickering films which charted Fleming's life, and recreates Fleming himself as a miracle among men. There is the original laboratory , wonderfully crowded with memorabilia. Almroth Wright's slide cabinet stands near a window, there is a copper water-bath, hand-drawn pipettes, a contemporaneous copy of The Times and a scattering of text-books. The mycology laboratory at St Mary's have even produced authentic agar cultures in which staphylococci and a colony of Penicillium vie with each other, just as they did in 1928. The intention is to show the room as a working laboratory, though it is sanitised without the aroma of the autoclave and the scent of smoke and disinfectant.
But not everything can be original. Fleming's bench had gone, so the curator, Kevin Brown, salvaged one from the Paddington Green Children's Hospital. The old rectangular tiles had long since been stripped from the laboratory walls, so the surfaces have been carefully painted and fitted with a dado to mimic the appearance of the 1930s. Although Fleming smoked incessantly, there is no sign of an over-filled ashtray, nor of an old packet of a favourite brand of cigarettes. Modern views on health have over-ruled any desire to include those personal details.
And then there is the museum room itself. Wall charts, newspaper cuttings, photographs and instrumentation are carefully lit to reveal their secrets to the casual visitor.
The Fleming Laboratory Museum at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, offers guided tours every hour from 1000h - 1200h, Monday to Thursday. For appointments at other times ring 020 7886 6528. Adult admission £2.
Published as: Penicillin reborn - review of Alexander Fleming exhibition, British Medical Journal, 307: 875-876,2 October 1993.
Extracted from : Penicillin
Reborn on 06 March 2000
One of the penicillin cultures given to Dan Stratful (click on
image to enlarge).
Penicillin culture sells for $35,160
LONDON (Mar 8, 1996 9:15 p.m. EST) - Penicillin reaffirmed its status as one of medicine's most valuable findings on Friday when a small culture of the original mould used by scientist Alexander Fleming sold for
£23,000 or $35,160.
That was twice the price that Sotheby's the auctioneers had expected for the culture. It was one of two specimens given by Fleming, whose discovery helped revolutionise the treatment of disease, to his laboratory assistant Dan Stratful.
The spore is mounted on a glass slide. There is a hand-written inscription on the back reading "The mould that makes penicillin. Alexander Fleming."
The mould was purchased by Pfizer, an American health care company. A spokesman said the company had discovered the means to mass-produce penicillin in 1942.
The company plans to display the slide to the public, although no firm plans have yet been made. Pfizer outbid the Sydney-based Australian Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences for the item.
