[Editor’s notes: This page was transcribed by Brittni Criglow, who wrote the explanatory note below. The editors are grateful for her invaluable assistance.]
Section OO-2 — which comprises Section 151 and which is labelled in the Guyana Index as “Supplies Medicine” – consists of 477 pages. The complete PDF for this section as released by the FBI is here.
OO-2 is also one of three sections designated by the FBI that contain the inventory records from Jonestown’s pharmacy. These sections, as designated by the FBI, are J-1, OO-1, and OO-2 which have been compiled into one searchable database.
The pharmacy inventory pages included the medication name, generic medication name, dosage, date and amount received or issued, inventory on hand, and usually where or to whom they were dispensed. There is one sheet per medication per dosage. Overall the records appear to be grouped by type – such as Injectables or Inhalers – and then organized alphabetically, but only Antihistamines [AH], Major Tranquilizers [MT], Minor Tranquilizers [T], Pain Killers [N], and some Suppositories are actually marked with their pharmaceutical designation.
This spreadsheet includes the FBI section designation, FBI-assigned page number, medication name and generic name, dosage, the earliest date and inventory on hand and the latest date and inventory on hand, the number of entries for items received, issued, and total entries, and names when provided. Temple staff dated their entries using the D/M/YY format which is used in Guyana among most other countries other than the United States. This spreadsheet provides the dates in M/D/YY in the columns next to the inventory counts but also provides them in D/M/YY format in columns O and P.
Any pages within these files that were different from the Temple’s pharmacy inventory template have been given their own secondary page within the spreadsheet and named according to their FBI-assigned page number. Typically they are still records of pharmaceutical inventory, for example, page OO-2-197 lists the inventory for six assorted types of ear drops. Some of the secondary spreadsheet pages include Thorazine and Phenobarbital, medications that played a dark role in the Jonestown story.
This spreadsheet does not include each count per entry for each medication dosage. Page J-1-A-2a, Diphenhydramine Hcl (Benadryl) 50mg, has 30 entries for stock received or issued and even continues to the next page. The first entry is the initial count at the time the medication was added to the inventory and these entries are not included in the Total # of Entries column with the exception being those medication inventories that continued on to the next page. Only the date and inventory count number from the first and last entry per page has been used for the spreadsheet. For those pages with only one inventory count date, only the earliest date and inventory number columns are used and they have no information in the entries count columns.
The earliest inventory count date is March 14th, 1978 with 46 entries. Far more interesting is the latest date count of November 5th, 1978 when record keeping within the pharmacy appears to have ceased completely. There were 14 entries on this date. If you sort the data by the earliest date there are a few dates with a notable number of initial entry dates, which is possibly the staff catching up on backlogs of pharmaceuticals.
The last column on the inventory sheets is the Name column on the spreadsheet and relates to where or to whom the medication was dispensed. On the original inventory forms, this column is not labeled but is used as such throughout the records. A majority of the time the medications were dispensed to “Nurse’s Office” – oftentimes abbreviated “N.O.” – to Dr. Schacht’s office, or to a person. At times they are issued to a Guyanese visitor, the emergency kit, and a few times they are sent to the piggery. When a name is provided I have included it in the spreadsheet.
The Jonestown pharmacy records provide useful information about the medical needs of the agricultural mission tucked away in the vast jungles of Guyana. It is my hope that this spreadsheet will assist other researchers by providing a sortable and searchable document that makes the over-900 medication inventory records more accessible.