The collection includes two of his diaries (1854 and 1875), letters of condolence on his death and many of his personal letters. Some of the letters pertain to his work in the explosives industry while many are correspondence between him and his social and professional contemporaries: Sir William Armstrong, Sir James Dewar, The Duke of Devonshire, Michael Faraday, Thomas Graham, Carl Haag, A W von Hofmann, William Odling and William Rockerfeller as well as the private secretaries acting on behalf of Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales (latterly King George V).

Robinson's volatile temperament and his impatience with administration and routine have seriously affected the survival of material. Thus little survives of his correspondence which he usually wrote in longhand and without copies, or of his public life, service on committees, advisory boards, learned societies, and in the launching of new journals. There are, however, many manuscript notes in varying lengths of sequence and a few notebooks relating to research topics. Examples are a sequence of ideas on the possible structure of strychnine, tentatively dated 1945-1947 by J.W. Cornforth, and from a later period two relatively extensive sequences of research and correspondence, on the origins of petroleum and on drug research. Lacunae in the collection are to some extent compensated for by the autobiographical material. There are the background material and corrected proofs for the first volume of his memoirs published in 1976, and substantial typescript drafts of the second volume which was unfinished at his death together with narratives, correspondence and photographs sent to him by colleagues. There are also tape-recordings of conversations with colleagues covering similar types of recollections.

Records of the London County Council Public Control Department relating to the storage of petroleum, celluloid and explosives, 1872-1960, including correspondence with the Home Office as to necessity for an amendment of the Petroleum Acts; report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Petroleum Bill; the London County Council (Celluloid, etc.) Act, 1915 and Code of Practice; report of the Departmental Committee on Celluloid; suggested Legislation for control of storage of manufactured celluloid articles; conferences at the Home Office on adequacy of existing celluloid law; increase in size of cine reels; projectors; Celluloid Storage Committee papers and report; pamphlets and abstracts concerning celluloid; wartime measures for celluloid storage; notices regarding manufactured celluloid articles; fires involving celluloid; Explosives Registers and street index to premises registered for storage of explosives.

Records of the Middlesex County Council Public Control Department, 1904-1965, including personal papers of Chief Officer John O'Keefe (1950-1960) including files on the foods and food standards commission, food labelling, weights and measures regulations, Consumer's Advisory Council, samples sent to the public analyst, articles on food and drugs legislation, correspondence, photographs of the work of the department and examples of labels and forms used by the department.

Papers relating to food standards including files on coffee, gelatine, fish paste, ice cream, margarine, mustard, salad cream and mayonnaise, jams and jellies, beverages, wines, spirits and liquors, bread, milk, butter, cream, yoghurt, confectionary, vegetables, meat, eggs, soups, herbs and spices, cakes, pies and biscuits, slimming foods, vinegars and condiments, cheese, cereals, crisps, honey, soya products, vitamins. Also files on drugs, cosmetics, pollen tablets, and animal fats.

Papers relating to merchandise marks including legislation; notes regarding legal points; and files regarding honey, fruit and vegetables, meat, poultry, butter, turpentine, bleach and fabrics. Papers relating to the interpretation and labelling of poisons.

Papers relating to weights and measures including regulations; notes for the guidance of inspectors; correspondence and enquiries relating to sand and ballast; files regarding coke, coal, liquid fuels and lubricating oils; files regarding weighing equipment and measuring instruments including weighbridges.

Also registers and index cards of infringements; reports of infringements and legal appeals.

Books, pamphlets and folio-size posters on explosives and firearms dating from 1598 to 1920. Many of the pamphlets in the collection relate to the manufacture and use of gunpowder.

Papers of John Heaviside, c1792, comprising transcript of lecture by John Hunter on fractured patella, gunshot wounds, cancer, scrophula, locked jaw, mortification or partial death, undated; notes from poisons by John Hunter, c1790; notes on lecture by John Hunter on venereal disease;

notes on an introductory lecture to a course of 58 lectures on surgery; notes on a lecture on inflammation; notes on opium; accounts of cases and post-mortem examinations, 1792.

Records of G F Dickson and Company, merchants, comprising copy out-letters from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to London, and vouchers to account for goods bought in South America.

Papers of Lt Col David Norman Furness-Gibbon, 1987-2006, including: photocopy of citation for award covering period March-November 1980 as officer commanding 321 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit, Royal Army Ordnance Corps; information cards detailing how to check a vehicle for explosives, procedure if explosives are discovered and codes and radio procedures; photographs, 1988-1989, showing bomb disposal teams at work in Northern Ireland, bomb disposal equipment, the aftermath of explosions, and group photograph of squadron; group photograph of delegates at the International Conference on Terrorist Devices, Camberley, Surrey, 1988; the Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Terrorist Devices and Methods', Washington DC, 22-26 June 1987; articleBomb Squad Belfast' by Chris Ryder, Sunday Telegraph, 2 April 1989; RAOC Ammunition Technical News' Number 13, September 1991, brochure50 Years of Central Ordnance Depot Bicester and Bicester Garrison 1942-1992', May 1992. Also copy of book A Special Kind of Courage: 321 EOD Squadron - Battling the Bombers by Chris Ryder (London, 2006).

Records of Fulham Road Pharmacy, Chelsea, including prescription books, 1887-1989, controlled drugs and poisons books, 1939-1978 and loose prescriptions 1953-1980.

Correspondence, mainly to Martin Folkes on a large variety of subjects, including administrative matters for the Royal Society.

Notes on nitrogen and on explosives, c 1860-1870.

Bad trip to Edgewood consists of, interview transcripts, research files and videos for a television documentary on US Army testing of chemical and biological warfare agents on human 'guinea pigs' between 1955 - 1975, and includes files of mainly photocopied documents, reports, scientific articles, letters and newspapers articles, with some printed brochures, as well as videotapes. There is also a video copy of Bad trip to Edgewood which was produced by Michael Bilton, Yorkshire Television, and broadcast as a First Tuesday film in March 1993.

The files focus on secret projects carried out by the US Army Chemical Corps at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Edgewood, Maryland USA, between 1955-1975, in which US Army volunteers were used to test the effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), benzilates such as BZ (3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, also known a QNB) and glycolates.

The testing programs were suspended in 1975 when information about them became public. A number of volunteers claimed to have suffered long term mental health effects from the tests. They also claim they were not informed at the time of immediate or long term effects of the agents tested. In 1977 US Army notified 686 volunteers who has been tested with LSD and conducted a follow up study of their health. The LSD follow-up study report released in 1980 found 'the majority of subjects evaluated did not appear to have sustained any significant damage from their participation in the LSD experiments'.

There are notes and transcripts of interviews conducted with former US Army personnel who were volunteers in the research programmes, individuals involved in the running testing programs, medical experts and lawyers.

Several files relate to particular law suits including that of Sgt James B Stanley, US Army, volunteer at Edgewood during 1958. In 1977 he was informed by the army that he had been given LSD as part of the testing program. In 1987 a controversial judgement by the US Supreme Court found against Stanley, effectually granting immunity from liability for money damages for all federal officials who intentionally violate the constitutional rights of those serving in the military.

Other notable cases frequently mentioned in the files include that of Frank Olson and Harold Blauer. Dr Frank R Olson, US Army scientist at Fort Detrick, apparently suicided, on 28 November 1953. In 1975 the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States (the Rockefeller Commission) revealed Olson had been given LSD without his knowledge while attending a meeting of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) personnel eight days before his death. A civilian, Harold R Blauer died on 8 Jan 1953 after being given a lethal injection of Experimental Agent 1298 supplied by the US Army Chemical Corps to the New York State Psychiatric Institute where he was a patient. A 1975 Senate investigation revealed the facts of his death. Files also contain material on bacteriological testing by the Army and the CIA carried out in Washington DC, Florida, San Francisco, and New York. Particular reference is made to the case of Edward Nevin, a civilian, who died on 1 Nov 1950 in San Francisco as a result of a rare bacterial infection Serratia Marcescens, which coincided with a significant and unexplained outbreak of this infection between Oct 1950 and Feb 1951. In 1976 it was revealed that the US Army had conducted bacteriological warfare experiments with Serratia Marcescens over San Francisco Bay during September 1950.

There is a small amount of material relating to the role of American Citizens for Honesty in Government, a Church of Scientology sponsored organisation who campaigned during 1979 for a full investigation of the testing and storage of BZ and compensation for volunteers suffering long term effects from testing of the substance, and to chemical testing carried out in the UK at Porton Down, Wiltshire, UK and production of chemical agents at Nancekuke Base, Cornwall, and Anglo American cooperation in this area.