Written by Sally-Anne Shearn, Genesis Project Archivist
In April 2015 we launched Project Genesis, an ambitious two year project to create the Institute’s first online catalogue using AtoM, or Access to Memory, a web-based, open-source application for archival description and access. One year on, we are proud to announce that the Borthwick Catalogue (or Borthcat as we’ve begun to call it!) is now live.
The catalogue will continue to grow over the next year, and in years to come, but already it contains descriptions of 376 of our archival collections, spanning 28 countries and 825 years of world history. The subject matter is impressively broad; church and parish, family and estate, manorial, health, television and theatrical, business and political records demonstrating changing attitudes to religion, morality, education, industrial welfare, health and human and civil rights from the medieval to the modern age.
Each archive has a detailed ‘top level’ description in the catalogue, recording its unique reference code, the dates it covers and an overview of its contents, together with key information regarding access and links to related archives at the Borthwick and elsewhere. Why not browse our archives alphabetically, or try our subject or place lists to find out what’s available.
Information about the creator of each archive is also available in a separate authority record, linked in the archival description. You can browse these here.
For others, such as our popular parish record collections, we have made the paper finding aids available on the catalogue as a clickable PDF, enabling online users to browse these lists or search their contents via the catalogue search function for the first time. Please note that these lists do not include parish register indexes which will continue to be available in our search room and on Findmypast. More complete catalogues will be added as we continue to develop Borthcat, opening up our holdings to international audiences and improving our online accessibility.
Look out for new content over the coming months but in the meantime, we hope you enjoy using the Borthwick Catalogue to explore some of our holdings and if you have any thoughts or feedback, we’d love to hear them.
A robin, after bathing, at Askham Bog. (BIA/YWT/A177)
The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust (YWT) is one of the largest Wildlife Trusts in Britain and its 97 reserves cover some of the most varied landscapes in the UK. It works to protect and conserve Yorkshire’s wild places and wildlife, with reserves including Spurn National Nature Reserve, Flamborough Cliffs, Potteric Carr, and my local reserve of Askham Bog. The Trust was established in 1946 and in the year it celebrates its 70th anniversary, it is very exciting to have launched a 12 month project to catalogue and promote the Trust’s extensive archive.
Working in partnership with YWT and supported by funding from the National Cataloguing Grants Programme for Archives, by 2017 we will have described the archive to file level and to have made this accessible through the Borthwick’s online catalogue. The archive of YWT, like their reserves, is of national and international importance. It documents the establishment of the Trust and its development through to the modern day, as well as the bio-recording of internationally scarce habitats, relationships with landowners and the precedent-making legal cases led by the Trust in the 1970s. The archive highlights the UK’s unique role in the development of nature conservation and is the largest body (both in volume and subject coverage) of such material as yet deposited in any public institution. It includes paper, photographs and digital material and covers 3.5m3.
As well as cataloguing the archive, thereby releasing its research potential to new and existing audiences, the project will also include the running of workshops on archival appraisal and conservation. We’ll also be using new and traditional media to continue to promote the archive throughout the year.
The archive as it looks today!
Over the next few weeks, I will be starting some preliminary survey work on the boxes which will help me develop a structure for the catalogue. I’ll also be familiarising myself with Access to Memory (AtoM) the open-source, web-based application we’re using to host our online catalogue. Personally and professionally, I am very excited to be working as the archivist on this project. It really will be a fascinating (not to mention busy!) twelve months and I look forward to keeping you all up-to-date as it develops. In the meantime, if there’s anything in particular you’d like to know about the project or how we’re approaching it do feel free to comment below or to get in touch through our Bluesky or Facebook.
York County Hospital was established in 1740 and until 1977, when the current hospital opened, was the main hospital in York. The hospital was originally run as a charity, supported by wealthy subscribers. It continued to be run in this way right up to the 20th century when the income from subscriptions and investments was supplemented by patient fees and insurance schemes. It joined the NHS in 1948 and treated its last patients in 1980. The original County Hospital buildings are still standing and can be seen just off Monkgate.
In 1914, when World War One broke out, the hospital allocated 50 beds for military patients. By the end of that year it had treated 102 sick and wounded soldiers. The percentage of military patients treated at the hospital increased throughout the war and, to accommodate them, two additional hutted wards were built at the back of the main hospital building.
Photograph of sick and wounded soldiers, Annual Report 1916 (BIA YCH 1/2/9)
The hospital treated both medical and surgical patients. During 1916, amongst other medical cases, staff dealt with 7 cases of gas poisoning and 13 cases of trench fever. This extract of the surgical treatments carried out on military patients includes numerous bayonet, bullet and shrapnel wounds, as well as several shell shock patients.
Analysis of military cases Annual Report 1916 (BIA YCH 1/2/9)
During the First World War, around 10% of British casualties were classified as suffering from shell-shock. At the start of the conflict, it was believed that shell-shock was caused by physical head injuries resulting from bombardment. In 1915, a paper in the medical journal The Lancet put forward an alternative, psychological, explanation for the disorder noting that many soldiers that were suffering the symptoms of shell-shock had not received a head injury. By 1917, the British military authorities tried to limit the use of the diagnosis and continuing debates over causes and treatments created further controversy. By World War Two, to diagnose shell-shock was forbidden.
Photograph of the night staff, 1914 (BIA YCH 1/6)
The coming of war meant that the County Hospital faced huge financial strain. With an existing debt of £3,800 and the price of commodities rising, the hospital’s 1916 annual report noted an increased expenditure of 24%. A special appeal in 1915-16 sought to raise funds and the generosity of hospital supporters is documented in the lists of gifts donated to the military patients. An extract of this list is included above, showing a range of the gifts given: from eggs, tobacco and newspapers to concert tickets, gramophone records and car rides.
List of gifts donated for wounded soldiers Annual Report 1916 (BIA YCH 1/2/9
By May 1919, the County Hospital had treated over 2000 military patients. As the hospital slowly returned to its peace-time operations, the wards built for the soldiers were converted into new treatment spaces. One space formed an orthopaedic department for discharged servicemen and other patients who required ongoing therapy. The continuing treatment of veterans was something at the forefront of the minds of those running the hospital, succinctly displayed in this quote from their annual report (BIA YCH 1/2/9):
“It is, of course, essential that those who have been disabled or broken in health in the service of the Country should receive the best possible treatment, and it seems obvious that such treatment is not most readily available at the general hospitals…Pending the satisfactory arrangement of conditions, the Committee, with the complete agreement of the Medical Staff have decided that the full resources of the Hospital shall be placed at the disposal of all discharged men who are recommended for treatment.”
This blog is in part based on a forthcoming exhibition at York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
Sources
Ben Shephard ‘Pitiless psychology’: the role of prevention in British military psychiatry in the Second World War’ in History of Psychiatry October 1999 10: 491-524
Edgar Jones, Ph.D., D.Phil. Nicola T. Fear, D.Phil. Simon Wessely, M.D. ‘Shell Shock and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: A Historical Review’ in Am J Psychiatry 2007; 164:1641–1645
K.A. Webb From County Hospital to NHS Trust, The History and Archives of NHS hospitals, services and management in York 1740-2000(Vol 1: History) Borthwick Texts and Calendars 27, UoY 2002, pp.147-173
‘We had a boy of 17 with us in the holidays, one of the dearest people I’ve ever known. He was asked to write the enclosed for someone in Canada, & did it in the hope that it might help people to understand that the persecution is not made up of isolated pogroms, but of a fear that is continual & unremitting. I am sending it because perhaps it will give some idea of the background from which Mr Feller will have come.’
– Letter to the Dean of the Society of the Sacred Mission from Marjorie Milne, 1939.
A full transcript of the following account is available below.
The account of Otto T. is included among the papers of the Society of the Sacred Mission, an Anglican religious order whose archive is deposited here at the Borthwick. In 1938-9 the Society worked with Miss Marjorie Milne of Scarborough, and others, to arrange safe haven to England for the Fellers, a Jewish family from Vienna.
Transcript.
(1)
By O.T. a Viennese boy of 17.
I write this because I see how few people can know what happens in Germany now. I know very well what the unemployed have to suffer but I was in Germany and know that it is not to compare with the sufferings of the German Jews. What I tell here I have seen with my own eyes.
The German Jew has not the chance to get even a little occasional work, they have not the possibility to go elsewhere because all money is taken from them, and they are no minute sure they will not be imprisoned without the least reason just because they are Jews. The Jew without friends or relations in other countries is practically condemned to die. Have you realised this till now? Can you as Christ watch this?
I was living for a long time from the Jewish poor kitchen; sometimes the Nazis enjoyed to ruin all this kitchen; then all many thousand people had nothing to eat for a few days. You can say also an unemployed can have nothing to eat for a few days, but can this happen to him? At 11 o’clock night, 10 S.S. men come into a Jew’s flat, awaken him and force him to come with them. He is brought to a cellar with other Jews. Here S.S. men take out their revolver, the Jews have to face the wall. After a minute one shoots into the air, and then the Jews half-dead of his horror can go again.
On the day that Rath was killed 15,000 Jews, only in Vienna, were imprisoned. Anybody who was seen without a swastika was imprisoned on this day. After being beaten awfully they were imprisoned. First in schools and other official buildings. The prisons were all full. They were so many in one room that they could not move one step. (I say not more than absolutely happened). 8 hours they stood like this, then about the half was sent to a concentration camp, the other were falling on the floor to sleep on the wood but they could not because
(2)
the S.S. came and forced them to pray Jewish prayers, 5 days they get nothing to eat and slept on the floor. A few died. One killed himself springing out of a window. The S.S. officer said “If anyone try to escape like this man, every tenth will be shot.” On the 7th day came the Gestapo. In all cross- questionings the Jew had to face the wall not knowing what happened behind him. (All this has no sense and happens only to make the Jew nearly mad with nervous-ness). The half went also to concentration camps, the other were imprisoned 2-8 weeks. In concentration camps people are kept 3-18 months. One third never come back. There was no family of my many Jewish friends in which some person had not been arrested. Many got a letter “If you want the coffin of your son, send 700 marks to concentration camp. Dachan [sic].” The coffin came sealed and no one could see of what he died.
Imagine a 70 years old man jumping over a chair, 50 times, 100 times so long as laughing Nazis enjoy it.
Imagine a 70 years old man loading old iron (which Goering collected for guns) on a car while the jeering Nazis throw it down on the other side.
Imagine the mentality of the human being who can say after 50 strokes with a riding-whip – “It could have been worse.”
What shall I tell more? I could tell for hours only what I have seen. Horror, horror, horror. I do not want to bring hate between the Germans and the English, the most Germans have no idea of all this. The only people who know it are the Jews and the S.S. men and the others of Hitler’s troops who get the salary of an officer of the army only for beating Jews.
However large the need for help is here in England, strong and soon the help is not less necessary there. The unemployed themselves realise this and collect money for refugees. I know people who spent two-thirds of their possession for refugees.
(3)
This boy’s uncle was let out of a concentration camp because someone had procured him a ticket for Shanghai where he is going with Otto’s parents. They have no prospects whatever there; are allowed to take no money, and not even the knitting-machine with which latterly they had earned a little. They may not be allowed to land at Shanghai where there have been boat-loads of them landed already. God help them.
Strangely enough Otto has no bitterness about it all, and says Hitler’s policy is understandable. He also says of the tormentors – “They are only boys. They do not realise how terrible are the things they do.” I wish I could believe that. But it can’t be only the young. We couldn’t find a guarantor for a man some months ago and he was sent back to a concentration camp and was at last let out to have his feet cut off as they’d been so mutilated in the camp. And there are too many like this for it all to be done by the hard, unimaginative young.
George Harris was a confectionery manufacturer who is generally credited with the renaissance of the York-based Rowntree business during the 1930s. This paper is an account of Harris’s life which begins by tracing his involvement in World War I through to his marriage in 1923 to Frieda Rowntree. Enrollment in his new wife’s family business followed and he rose through the company to the Group Board and then Chairman from 1941 to 1952. The volume continues chronologically through landmark launches of classic chocolate brands such as Black Magic (1933), Aero (1935), Kit Kat (1935), Dairy Box (1937) and Smarties (1938). The development and marketing of these brands by Harris are placed within the context of shifting economic and national circumstances between the two wars.
Black Magic advert, 1933
The paper’s author is Dr Ralph Kaner who is a former Director of Rowntree & Co. Ltd. Kaner notes that whilst no formal building or dedications mark George Harris’s contribution to the City of York his transformation of Rowntree and the prosperous growth that took place during his time with the company was extremely important. His achievements as a pioneer of British marketing were undoubtedly influenced by a formative visit to the United States in 1925-26. Hallmarks of Harris’s approach included a drive for product innovation, quantitative consumer research and creative advertising. A lasting legacy of all these efforts was the success of the high-quality brands that Harris developed and the fact that they remain well-known global brands to this day.
The volume is Borthwick Paper 125 and is published by Borthwick Publications. Copies are available through our online store priced at £5.00.
As the Archbishops’ Registers Revealed project is drawing to a close along with the year 2015, I wanted to offer a brief overview of my involvement in the project. It can be quite tricky for a conservator to accurately convey exactly what it is they do in the workshop. This blog certainly isn’t as catchy as the 12 Days of Christmas – but I hope that it provides some advent calendar-sized tasters of the work I have been doing.
12 Limp parchment volumes
There are some things that conservators can do to improve the digitisation process – cleaning, unfolding, repairing, etc – but there are also some things that we cannot improve. We can clean a surface, which will lighten the areas around the ink and make the ink stand out better, but we cannot replace abraded or faded ink. Consequently we do need to assess archives before a digitisation work plan is put in place, so that we know what we will need to tackle and how long it might take.
Abp Reg 11 with the highest number of treatments recorded
Abp Reg 11 is the volume that required the greatest number of treatments.Within the 37 volumes that were treated but not disbound 610 treatments were documented in total. 127 of these treatments were undertaken within Abp Reg 11. Treatments ranged from dry cleaning the surface of folios or unfolding the corners of a folio, to removing a previous repair that was obscuring text or repairing the edge of a folio that had suffered loss and damage. We would only undertake treatment where either text had been obscured (by dirt or folds) or the area was vulnerable to further deterioration during handling. Without this guideline in place it would not have been possible to complete the treatments in time for the digitisation to take place!
10 volumes contained paper in need of treatment such as this document
The majority of the folios in the Archbishops’ Registers are parchment, but there are occasional paper inserts and modern paper endleaves in the volumes too. 33 of the 610 treatments mentioned above were on paper, but almost all of the others were on parchment.
This is a very subjective number, which would certainly fluctuate depending on who you spoke to! I first became involved with the metadata when it became apparent that not all of the images could take their image number from a folio number. The Archbishops’ Registers are nothing if not inconsistent, and there were various hiccoughs to accommodate, as well as the structural features of each volume (and those thrown in from previous bindings). A lot of my time was spent deciding what information to include, what to leave out, and which terms best reflected what the end user would see in the image.
9 (give or take) descriptive phrases for the metadata that gave me a headache!
8 volumes requiring only minor treatments such as the dry cleaning shown here
As opposed to 32 volumes requiring major work! In my initial assessments, ‘minor work’ refers to cleaning or small areas of flattening. ‘Major work’ includes larger areas to flatten and more invasive or time consuming treatments. A small local humidification with a non-aqueous solvent could be applied and dried within an hour or so, whereas the application of a repair would take a minimum of 3 days of treatment when drying time is taken into account. My workflow planning needed to take all of this information into account, so that I could ensure the photographer had a seamless flow of volumes to image and process.
The Archbishops’ Registers vary in size, but the most memorable volumes are the largest. 7 of the volumes have spines between 10 and 15cm wide. Several of these have also been bound with thick wooden boards, and consequently they are large, heavy and unwieldy to manoeuvre. This has made them challenging to handle safely during conservation and digitisation. In spite of this (or partly because of this?) these are some of my favourite Registers – most of the bindings still function well, and they have an undeniably weighty presence. I can’t help but think when I look at them that they must contain a formidable number of sheep!
7 spines over 10cm in width
In the summer of 2015 we held a Summer Institute for 12 participants on the subject of the Archbishops’ Registers. Classes and workshops covered the history and context of the registers, reading and interpretation of the registers and the opportunity to develop a mini-research project. I was privileged to be asked to take the students for a whole day, and managed to pack in information and investigative tasks regarding the materials, tools and techniques with which the registers were created, as well as explaining and demonstrating the role that Conservation has played in this project and discussing some of the ethical implications and dilemmas we have been working with.
6 hours of Conservation talks and activities with students at the Summer Institute
This is the material I have been using to support damaged and vulnerable areas of the parchment folios. Over the course of the project I have repaired over 100 parchment folios and each of these takes a minimum of 3 days to complete. When treating parchment it is important to keep moisture to a minimum; consequently the repairs are applied in stages so that they can dry in between applications of adhesive.
5 sheets of goldbeater’s skin used to repair damaged parchment such as the example above from Abp Reg 10 f.25 before treatment
5 sheets of goldbeater’s skin used to repair damaged parchment such as the example above from Abp Reg 10 f.25 after treatment)
4.3kg my favourite magnetic pull strength
I have been using magnets as a tool to restrain parchment when it is drying. I use a ferrosheet under the parchment folio, so that a magnet placed on top of the parchment will hold the parchment in place. I have experimented with various sizes and strengths of magnet, but my current favourite is a neodymium cylindrical magnet of 12mm diameter and 6mm height at a strength of N42 which gives a pull of 4.3kg!
The decision to disbind any of the registers was not taken lightly. The process is very invasive and can risk damaging the register; loose leaves are more vulnerable to future deterioration than those in a binding; removing the binding alters the format of the register; and historical evidence can be lost during disbinding. On the other hand the bindings we were considering were not original bindings; they were very stiff, which obscured a significant proportion of text on the majority of folios; and the stiffness of the binding was also hindering the functionality of the volume. 3 registers have been disbound and digitised as loose leaves. A major concern for the New Year will be to discuss with the archivists whether these registers will be re-bound, and if so in what manner.
I have been using gelatine as my main adhesive of choice for both paper and parchment repairs. I have also used gelatine to create poultices, which I have used for a number of treatments. Poultices allow a slow transfer of moisture. I have used them to soften the adhesive of previous repairs in order to remove them. I have also used poultices to remove paper guards from parchment inserts. Lastly, I have been using gelatine poultices to remove materials that have been adhered to the spines of the volumes I have disbound. Including the volumes that have been disbound, I have used poultices to treat 289 folios, and removed spine linings from 3 volumes. This has used 61 sheets of gelatine – with 2 sheets left over for the New Year.
I have sincerely enjoyed working on this project. It has been a privilege to work on the Archbishop’s Registers, and a pleasure to work with such beautiful volumes. I look forward to seeing the images of all the registers available online in the not too distant future!
Today is December 21st, Midwinter day and also the traditional date of the feast of St Thomas, which sees winter traditions continuing all over Britain, Europe and further afield.
In York, the longest night and shortest day heralded the ancient custom of the Yule Riding and the beginning of Christmas festivities. During the reign of Elizabeth I, in around 1570, an anonymous balladeer wrote Yule in Yorke, a broadside ballad describing the Riding. [1] The custom included a disguised couple carrying a leg or shoulder of lamb and a cake of ‘purest meale’, the playing of music and the throwing of nuts by the following crowds. The full text of this ballad and many others like it has been made available through the Bodleian Libraries Ballads Online project, which brings together a rich collection of often unique printed songs, satires, news and moral advice.
The ballad of Yule in Yorke, shared under Creative Commons licence.
This pious representation of the celebration links (sometimes rather tenuously) each part of the festivities to the birth of Jesus. A rather different view of St Thomas’ Day and ‘the very old, gray bearded Gentleman called Christmas’ is shown in a satirical passage printed in London in 1645, which describes a Bacchanalian Father Christmas enjoying, food, drink and gambling amongst other activities!
Printed by the festively named Simon Minc’d-Pye and Cissely Plum Porridge. Thewhole document can be read at Early English Books Online
One can imagine that it was celebrations more like these that prompted the 1572 letter written to the Mayor and Aldermen of York decrying the city’s ‘verie rude and barbarouse’ Yule Riding. Recorded in the Act Book of the High Commission, the letter bemoans the profaning of the holy day and despairs at the crowds of people drawn from otherwise divine services to watch (and presumably participate in!) the spectacle.
HC.AB.7 f41r
HC.AB.7 f42v
Transcribed, the letter reads as follows:
13 November 1572
After our hartie commendacions, whereas there hath bene heretofore a verie rude and barbarouse custome mainteyned in this citie, and in no other citie or towne of this realme to our knowledge,
that yerelie upon St Thomas Daie before Christmas two disguised persons called Yule and Yules Wief should ryde thorow the citie verey undecentlie and uncomelie, drawinge great concurses of people after them to gaise, often times committinge other enormities, forasmuche as the said disguysed rydinge and concourse afforesaid besydes other enconvenientes tendeth also to the prophanynge of that daie appointed to holie uses and also withdrawethe great multitudes of people frome devyne service and sermons, we have thought good by thes presents to will and require yow & nevertheles in the Quenes Majesties name and by vertew of hir highnes commission for causeis ecclesiasticall within the Province of Yorke to us & others directed, straitlie to charge and commaunde yow that ye take order that no such ryding of Yule and Yules Wief be frome hencefurth attempted or used, and that yow cause this our preceipte and order to be registred of recorde and to be duelie observed not onelie for this yere but also for all other yeres ensueng, requiringe you hereof not to fale as our truste is you will not and as ye will answere for the contrarie. Fare you hartelie well atYorke this XIIIth of November 1572
Your lovinge frendes
Edm. Ebor Matth. Hutton[2] John Rokbye Thomas Eymis Will. Stryckland Chrisofer Asheburne
[To the] Maior and aldermen of Yorke
The letter was signed by Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of York (previously Bishop of London and later Archbishop of Canterbury). Upon his appointment two years earlier, he had already found that “many superstitious practices remained” amongst the people of York and he recommended that the boisterous Yule festival be banned ‘for all other yeres ensuing’. When read to the council, it was agreed that “no disguysed persons called Yule and Yule’s wif … shall ryde this yere nor any yere hensforth, on Saynt Thomas Day before Christmas”.
But do not despair! Although the Yule Riding was banned in 1572, to this day the York Waits process from Micklegate Bar around the city on Midwinter night, accompanied by traditional Tudor instruments and a crowd of followers. Maybe if you’re out after dark, you’ll be able to hear the sounds of Elizabethan York in the ancient streets once more.
[1] Broadside ballads were printed on large sheets of paper and sold from street-corners, or stuck up in pubs, by travelling ballad singers. [2] Then Dean of the Minster and later Archbishop himself.
Sources
R. Davies, Municipal Records of the City of York, 1843. F. Drake, Eboracum, 1736 A. F. Johnston, Records of Early English Drama, Vol.1, No.1. 1976
We’re now coming to the end of a project which started life in October last year to conserve, digitise and make available online the Registers of the Archbishops of York 1225-1646. The project – generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation – will also develop new tools and resources to allow us to add index data to the Register images, opening the content of many of the Registers for the very first time.
When I came back to the Borthwick in June 2014, I’ll admit that my direct experience lay more with old title deeds, Police records and local authority minute books than the day to day dealings of an Archiepiscopate.
The oft-quoted description of the Registers is that they are an ‘administrative record of the business of an Archbishop’, which – let’s face it – doesn’t immediately sound like the most exciting source on the planet. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t agree with that description – they’re a largely unexplored record of how we came to be who we are; filtered through the eyes of the church. They’re the evidence of attitudes to morality and immorality, life and death, love and hate, war-making and peace-making.
I’ve spent some time over the last couple of days considering what some of the highlights of this project have been from my own (entirely selfish) point of view. In no order whatsoever, I’ve settled upon:
Register 1 unrolled
Register 1 (split into parts A + B) doesn’t take the form of a bound volume – they’re both rolled examples and a crucial first step in the process of developing Episcopal Registration at York. They’re also very, very long – over 21 metres in length (or 70 feet), when taken together. Being able to stand at the top of the Reg 1A, seeing it unravelled into the distance and knowing that not many people will see (and will have seen) a sight such as this was one of those moments of ‘temporal vertigo’ that we’re lucky to experience on occasion when working on projects such as this.
Reg 1A and 1B unrolled
The story of Thomas de Whalley
As part of the preparation for the Summer Institute held in July, I spent some time searching out interesting – and challenging – content for our students to work on. came across a visitation of Selby Abbey by Archbishop Wickwane, dated January 1279/80. I have honestly never had a more entertaining working afternoon than the one I spent translating the various misdeeds of Thomas de Whalley (the then-Abbot of Selby). He didn’t teach, didn’t preach, didn’t observe the rule of St. Benedict; was never out of bed to hear Matins (a service before dawn); as well as having a predilection for the gatehouse keeper’s daughter. The final straw was, it seems, the fact that a brother’s body was found in the river Ouse, and de Whalley tried to remedy this via the use of a ‘Wizard’. He was, as you may expect, excommunicated.
Visitation of Selby, 1279/80, Abp Reg 3, f. 27 r
Summer days (and nights)
The whole of the Summer Institute was a highlight for me. The Borthwick hadn’t run anything like this for some time and I could fill a whole blog post with individual moments of brilliance. One that always springs to mind was seeing the students (who were all experienced researchers on their way to a PhD) really enjoying working with the texts, seeing how they could link them to their research interests, and seeing them really dive into the possibilities in the source. At the end of the course, one student outlined how he’d been encouraged not to apply at one point, but had done so anyway. Later in the Summer Institute we shared a moment of discovery when he happened upon an entry relating to the person he was researching – a special moment, illustrating the potential in the records we were working with and his own development of his skills in reading medieval handwriting which I’d been teaching him the week before!
Students working with the Registers at the Summer Institute
The unstitching debate
An afternoon spent with the Keeper of Archives, wrestling with a fundamental dilemma – to unstitch, or not to unstitch? In some of the earlier Registers, supplementary documents are either stitched or bound in, giving some folios the appearance of a flip-book of small parchment items. As part of the preparatory work, we had to consider strategies for dealing with these along with the Project Conservator and ask ourselves, carefully, if we had the justification to undertake this kind of invasive work. It took thought, careful consideration and time. Was it right to interfere, in this way, with a document? By doing this, did we change its meaning? How much did the fact an item was in a particular position mean, and if we moved it, would we change the interpretation? Did it need to be done, or was there another way? In the end, we made the decisions we needed to make, but the time we spent really considering the ethics of this kind of digitisation was a really valuable part of the process.
Parchment inserts, Abp Reg 4 f 18 v
Questions, answers and discoveries
This, I think, has been one of the ongoing highlights – challenging what we think we know about the Registers. Even something as simple as looking at the ordering of the original quires within a volume has raised so many questions about the order and creation of the volumes – were they always in that order? Did it change? We’ve worked with projects looking at the DNA and protein structures of the parchment in the Registers – does the nature of parchment give us an idea of where the folios were created and used? Working with the Canterbury Registers at Lambeth Palace raised a question – were they opened from the front, or the back? Who decided what content went into a Register, and why? Allied to that question – can we work out what was left out? To me, it has been a case of picking away at the threads of what we know, and divining useful, vital research questions for the future.
13th century hunting scene found in the margin of Abp Reg 4
The future
In some ways, I now need look less at what’s been done and more at what’s to come – seeing and hearing about people using the Registers, getting out on the road in 2016 to talk about them and advocate for their use by a whole range of researchers; and in developing the projects ahead to make use of the tools, techniques and experience we’ve developed. We already have two projects on the go that will provide index data for the Registers 1570-1650, and 1304-1306, with more projects under development.
The fantastic images we have created will be available online (and free of charge) from the end of the year, with index data being added as 2016 progresses. This feels like a long first step. The combination of the tools we’ve developed and systems behind it have laid the ground for an exciting journey into our shared past – and we’d love you to join us along the way.
Written by Sally-Anne Shearn, Genesis Project Archivist
In 1975 a portion of the archive of the Christian Faith Society (CFS) was transferred to the Borthwick Institute from Lambeth Palace. The transferred records concerned the manor of Brafferton in Yorkshire, which had been purchased in 1694 as a landed endowment by the trustees of what would later become the CFS. The Brafferton papers contain many of the items you might expect to find in such an archive; deeds, surveys, rentals and other papers detailing the business of the estate and the development of Brafferton village. However included among them are three documents that highlight a surprising link between this small Yorkshire village and the history of America in the 17th and 18th centuries; one which gave a name to a colonial college building in Virginia and set a legal precedent in a groundbreaking court case following the American Revolution.
The CFS was created through the charitable bequest of Robert Boyle. Born in Ireland in 1627, Boyle was the youngest son of the Earl of Cork and a celebrated natural philosopher, chemist, and physicist in his own right, with a keen interest in theology. He financed the publication of an Irish language bible in the 1680s and donated money to various missionary societies working in the East where he himself had interests as a director of the East India Company.
The Shannon Portrait of the Hon. Robert Boyle, F.R.S. (1689). Reproduced with permission of The Chemical Heritage Foundation
Boyle died in 1691 and in his will he directed that £4,000 from his estate be used for the advancement ‘or propagation of the Christian religion amongst infidels.’ His trustees, which included the Bishop of London, used the bequest to purchase Brafferton and in 1693 a large portion of the annual income of the estate was awarded to the newly founded College of William and Mary in Virginia, America.
Copy of enrolment of bargain and sale of the manor and advowson of Brafferton, in trust for the propagation of the Gospel in Virginia, 31 August 1695 (CFS 39)
The choice was not as strange as it might appear. At this time Virginia was still a British colony under the spiritual authority of the Church of England, as vested in the Bishop of London. It was his commissary in Virginia, Reverend Doctor James Blair, who travelled to England in 1691 to petition King William III and Queen Mary for the establishment of a college in the colony and there heard of the Boyle legacy. Blair appealed to the Bishop of London and the money was duly granted to the new College – it was perhaps in deference to the Boyle bequest that the college pledged in its 1693 foundation charter to propagate the Christian faith ‘amongst the Western Indians, to the glory of Almighty God.’
In keeping with this pledge, and Boyle’s wishes, the College established an Indian School where, in return for annual payments from the Brafferton estate, they would keep ‘Indian children in Sicknesse and health, in Meat, drink, Washing, Lodgeing, Cloathes, Medicine, books and Education from the first beginning of Letters till they are ready to receive Orders and be thoughts Sufficient to be sent abroad to preach and Convert the Indians.’
Excerpt from an appeal to the Lord Chancellor from Masters and Professors of the College of William and Mary, Virginia, against the Bishop of London and Mayor and corporation of the same concerning timber at Brafferton, 1773 (CFS 13)
The governor of the colony enlisted Indian traders to take the news to the local tribes, but they proved resistant to the offer of European education until 1711 when Governor Spotswood offered to remit the tributes they owed if they sent their male children to the school. As a result of this policy, the Indian School had 20 native boys by the summer of 1722, including members of the local Pamunkey, Nansemond and Chickahominy nations. The students were taught English reading and writing, arithmetic and catechism, as well as drawing, for which they were said to have a ‘natural’ and ‘excellent genius.’
Initially the boys were housed in the town and their classes were held in temporary quarters, but in 1723 the income from the Yorkshire estate was used to build The Brafferton, a two storey brick ‘House and Apartments for the Indian Master and his Scholars.’
The Brafferton c.1907. P1979.1051, University Archives Photograph Collection, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary
Classes were held downstairs, with the boys sleeping in dormitories on the first floor. Despite this improved accommodation, student numbers soon dropped again and would remain low for the remainder of the life of the school. Without coercion, native tribes remained unwilling to part with their children. In 1744 an Iroquois speaker declined one such invitation to provide students, saying ‘we love our Children too well to send them so great a Way,’ while other children who were sent to the college simply ran away, or completed their education only to return to their own people and take up their previous way of life – to the great frustration of the colonists. From the 1750s onward the school could only maintain an enrollment of between 3 and 5 students.
The outbreak of war between the American Colonies and the British Crown in the 1770s brought an end to the college’s Indian School and to the Boyle endowment they had enjoyed for some eighty years. At first the war had merely disrupted payments from Brafferton, but after America declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776 the College attempted to reclaim its lost rents, with the accumulated arrears, prompting Bielby Porteous, then Bishop of London, to challenge their claim in the Court of Chancery. It was a pioneering legal case. As the bishop himself later wrote, ‘the question was, whether they, being now separated from this kingdom, and become a foreign, independent state, were entitled to the benefit of this charity. It was the first question of the kind that had occurred in this country since the American revolution, and was therefore in the highest degree curious and important.’
Chancery eventually ruled against the College and the income from the Brafferton estate was instead diverted to the conversion and religious instruction of enslaved people in the British West Indies, a particular cause of Bishop Porteous.
‘The township of Brafferton…the Estate of the Society for the conversion and religious instruction of the negro slaves in the British West Islands, by John Tuke, 1796’ (PR/BRAF/44.1)
With its principle source of income severed, the Indian School had ceased to function by 1777 and in 1785 The Brafferton building was repurposed by the College. While it is hard to see the Indian School as anything but a failure for its colonial founders, it was not always so for the native students who were sometimes able to use the language skills and the knowledge of British culture they acquired to serve as interpreters between their own people and the colonists.
The Brafferton estate was broken up in the 1950s. Today the Christian Faith Society continues to direct its income to the training and religious instruction of clergy and laity in the West Indies. Meanwhile the estate’s namesake, The Brafferton, is still standing. Having had much of its wooden interiors torn out for firewood and fortifications in the American Civil War, it was extensively restored in the 1930s and is now the second oldest building to have survived at the College of William and Mary, housing the offices of the college president and provost.
The Brafferton today (courtesy of Wikimedia commons)
Sources
Helen C. Rountree, ‘Pocahontas’s People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia Through Four Centuries’ (Oklahoma, 1990).
Margaret Connell Szasz, ‘Indian Education in the American Colonies, 1607-1783’ (Nebraska, 2007).
Irvin Lee Wright, ‘Piety, politics, and profit : American Indian missions in the colonial colleges. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education Montana State University’ (Montana 1985).
‘The Indian School at William and Mary’ (http://www.wm.edu/about/history/historiccampus/indianschool/index.php).
In August 2015 three members of Borthwick staff travelled across land and sea to present papers at the annual Archives and Records Association conference in Dublin. The theme of the conference was ‘Challenges, Obligations, or Imperatives? The moral and legal role of the Record Keeper today’. The three sessions that our staff presented demonstrate a range of ethical concerns that exist within the worlds of archives and conservation, but also offer a glimpse into the inner workings of these two relatively little-known professions.
Screen shot from Tracy’s presentation ‘Why do you do what you do to me? Conservation Prioritisation and Collaboration in the Digitisation of the Retreat Archive’.
Tracy Wilcockson was the opening speaker for the conservation strand on the second day of the conference with her presentation ‘Why do you do what you do to me? Conservation Prioritisation and Collaboration in the Digitisation of the Retreat Archive’. Tracy’s talk addressed her role in preparing material for the digitisation of the Retreat archive, which is a part of the wider ‘The Asylum and Beyond’ project funded by the Wellcome Trust. The depth and breadth of Tracy’s knowledge of conservation theory and practice enabled her to discuss the nature of digitisation as ethically problematic, while still clearly explaining the practical implications and processes that have affected the digitisation of the Retreat Archive. I was particularly struck by the application of digitisation to the ‘balance triangle’ that she described from Chris Caple’s book ‘Conservation Skills’, which demonstrates how every conservation process can be expressed by a balance between preservation, investigation and revelation. The talk also highlighted several examples of collaborative responses to digitisation problems between the Conservation and Digitisation teams, such as the use of light boxes for the image capture of receipts, so that they do not need to undergo the time-consuming process of removal from the documents that they are attached to.
Tracy’s talk was very well received, and generated a number of enthusiastic and complimentary tweets from listeners. The presentation has also resulted in some excellent contacts with a number of other organisations running digitisation projects, and the potential for further collaboration. Colleagues are interested in further information regarding how the Borthwick project has been managed, equipment and techniques that have been used, problems that have arisen and how they have been overcome. It will be exciting to see where this goes next.
My presentation ‘The Archbishops’ Registers of York: A case study of ethical dilemmas in conservation and digitisation’ was directly after Tracy’s, and also used a digitisation project as a case study, this time to study the role of the conservator as an arbitrator of ethical problem-solving and decision-making. One of the points I addressed was the tension that can exist between the available research into materials (which may recommend against certain treatments) and the need to access or digitise an archive (which may need treatment to enable access).
Working with magnets on the ‘York’s Archbishops’ Registers Revealed’ project. For more information visit: www.york.ac.uk/borthwick/projects/archbishops-registers/
As an example I talked about the ethics of removing creases from parchment using solvents. Although I only had time to briefly outline the technique I finally used in the project, I had set up a demonstration volume for the delegates in the adjoining room, along with a selection of magnets and magnetic material to try. In the coffee-break after the first session I chatted with a stream of colleagues, discussing the materials and the technique, as well as other applications. The magnets generated a flurry of discussion comparing the many different ways that they are currently being used in conservation workshops around the country: in exhibitions and displays; for restraint of parchment during treatment; wrapped in blotters for restraint and drying of local repairs; for construction of boxes and book rests; and one enterprising department are using them as very effective darts… I was pleased that a presentation that had aimed to highlight the importance of communication and collaboration had generated so much productive discussion.
After lunch the conservation, digital preservation and archive strands merged into a hot-pot of workshops, panels and break-out sessions. Gary Brannan, our Access Archivist, was running a workshop entitled ‘From Filth to the Future: Reviewing the ARA training offer’. The session was based heavily upon the ARA Northern Region’s 2013 Filth conference, and was designed to get delegates thinking about the role that ARA could – and perhaps, maybe even should – have in supporting members dealing with difficult, disturbing and legally dubious collections.
The exercises were based on real experiences sent in by ARA members and featured issues including I still sometimes find myself picturing the photograph from a Coroner’s notebook showing the image of a man who had been murdered by having his head nailed to a tree and Male reader requesting (repeatedly) access to 1950s photographs of schoolgirls in gym clothes. Delegates were asked to sort the issues provided into those which they felt they needed emotional support to deal with, and those which may be helped by practical advice and training. Some of the results were surprising – for instance, much unease at processing and making available content that may upset third parties, and a desire for training in dealing with requests from customers for embarrassing (but not legally exempt) data. However, the greatest need came in the desire for both training and support in dealing with content and imagery related to death and inquests.
Gary’s session received considerable interest and encouragement from delegates, and provided a supportive outlet for frank discussions in a profession whose members often work in small teams or in isolation. The subject matter and style of delivery really embodied the theme and aims of the conference as a whole: addressing relevant issues amongst our peers, sharing experiences and exploring practical solutions. Talking to Tracy and Gary on our journey home I was struck by how much we had taken away from the conference – new ideas and perspectives, new contacts – and for myself a renewed motivation for the job that I do and respect for the colleagues that I work alongside, both within the Borthwick and without. The overlapping worlds of archives and conservation might not be very well known – but they are passionately appreciated by those that know them well.
