Written by Gary Brannan (Access Archivist and formerly Archives Trainee 2004-5)
I was just 21 (horrifically young, with a taste in fleeces and baggy cargo trousers – it was the early 2000’s, we did things differently there) when I arrived at the Borthwick Institute for Historical Research at the start of a warm September in 2004.
I was the new Archives Trainee, and I was nervous. St. Anthony’s Hall on Peasholme Green, York, was somewhere where I had spent a few happy months researching my undergraduate dissertation the previous summer, and during that period something had got under my skin that had made me come back.
I knew that I was starting at a pivotal time in the Borthwick’s history. The Institute, as the sign on the door reminded me, was closed, about to move to brand new premises on the Heslington campus.
Well, that’s me told.
It’s strange to think that it’s just about 10 years today since the first documents were carried from the old building to the new. The moving process had started in early October with the move of a lot of furniture and library stock, but the 15th October 2004 was the last day for the collections at St. Anthony’s. Monday 18th was The Day the Documents Moved. And they didn’t stop moving for well over a month and a bit, to 2 miles of new shiny shelving.
I was there that day, with my tiny digital camera – a very small (but at the time, really quite cool) item– hence the quality (or lack of) of the images. The camera didn’t have a flash and had a ridiculously long exposure, so a steady hand – and subject – was required, especially when shooting in low light levels. Really, the lens and processing in the camera will now be beaten by the cheapest smartphone – but I’ll wager that they don’t come with a cool like LCD screen you can slide over the viewfinder!
Obviously, 22-year-old-me was a bit snap happy, but the images below give a flavour of that heady time, of the old Borthwick, its creaking floors, draughty windows, beams soaked in history, and mysterious, untraceable footsteps in the distance.
Lots of people were taking photos at the time, so I’m sure over the next few months other photographs will emerge, but these images mean a lot to me. For once thing, they mark the start of my journey in this career.
10 years later I’m back as Access Archivist, and it’s really quite an odd experience – as an Archivist – looking back on the images. Day to day I’m dealing with our mediaeval collections dating back to the 11th century, but the images I made then remind me that we’re all making, shaping and recording our personal life stories and sometimes, it’s fun to look back – before looking forward.
The images below are only a small part of our story – you can find much more on our website
The Hall – full of boxes as part of the packing up process!
The view through the cage door into the bottom of strongroom 1
The downstairs of strongroom 1 – all our parish collections ready to go
The see-through floor, which I never really got the hang of..
Map Storage
Conservation, pretty much all packed up and ready to go…
The courtyard, accessible only by a very narrow passageway to the right
And there she lies – the searchrooms were the line of windows facing the camera!
The York Lunatic Asylum opened in 1777, at a time when little was understood about mental illness. Without organised institutional care available, families were left to deal with the mentally ill at home as well as they could. It was usual to chain lunatics to the walls and to leave them naked (it was not thought possible for mentally ill people to feel cold) and alone. Madness turned people into animals.
Although there were grand ideals when it was first conceived of providing ‘relief to those unhappy sufferers who are the objects of terror and compassion to all around them’, York Lunatic Asylum soon fell onto a darker path. In 1790 a Quaker woman called Hannah Mills died at the York Asylum. No Friends had been allowed to see her during her six-week residence, to support her faith or to see the conditions in which she was being held. This led William Tuke to encourage the foundation of the Retreat in York, an institution built upon the Quaker idea that everyone should be treated kindly, and as an equal.
Letter to Earl Fitzwilliam by Godfrey Higgins (1814), RET/8/1/1/1/11
Concerns about the York Asylum continued to grow. After William Vickers was badly treated by the staff at the asylum, a Justice of the Peace for the West Riding called Godfrey Higgins interested himself in the case. Vickers had been released from the hospital bruised, lousy, dirty and so weak he could hardly stand. Other poorly-treated patients were discovered: Reverend Schorey who had been kicked down the stairs by his keeper, and Martha Kidd whose hip was dislocated during her stay. A meeting was called to examine Higgins’ accusations and nearly 40 local gentlemen (including members of the Tuke family and a number of their friends) took advantage of an old rule and paid £20 in order to qualify as governors of the asylum and effect change.
Investigations discovered that the number of patients at the Asylum had been growing, but poor financial management meant that the institution was struggling and conditions for the patients were poor. This should have caused a higher death rate but the figures published in the Asylum’s annual reports did not reflect this. Closer examination of the steward’s books made it clear that deaths had been concealed. In addition, it was discovered that the physicians at the Asylum had misappropriated significant sums of money from the institution. Before further assessments could be made, a fire began which destroyed one wing of the asylum and all of its early records. Four patients died. Rumours said it had been set by the steward deliberately to conceal the truth but this was never proven. Dr Best was never charged for his fraud but was forced to resign due to ill health.
Affluent patients at the Asylum were generally well treated. It was the poor who suffered. On a surprise inspection in March 1814, Godfrey Higgins insisted that the staff opened locked doors near the kitchen. When the key could not be found he threatened to break open the doors with a poker. Finally he gained entrance and found ‘a number of secret cells in a state of filth, horrible beyond description’, full of female patients, ‘the most miserable objects I ever beheld’. Elsewhere, ‘you might see more than 100 poor creatures shut up together, unattended and uninspected by anyone’.
In August 1814 at the governors’ annual court, new rules were made and the officers of the asylum were all dismissed. The staff were replaced with help from the Retreat Hospital.
In the aftermath, there was a full parliamentary enquiry to which Godfrey Higgins, Samuel Tuke and others contributed. The report was published in 1815 and can be read for free via GoogleBooks.
Written by Kerstin Doble, Project Curator: Who Were the Aero Girls?
Nearly a year after the search for the real life Rowntree Aero Girls began, I am delighted to announce the launch of a website dedicated to the remarkable stories of the women and men behind this collection of postwar paintings.
Left to right: Stephanie Tennant, Aero Girl portrait by Anthony Devas [R/Aerogirls]; Stephanie Tennant (Archive photograph, 1960s); Aero advert, 1956 [R/Guardbooks/W20].
As many as 40 Aero Girls portraits appeared in Rowntree Aero chocolate advertising between 1950 and 1957, in British newspapers, magazines and early ITV commercials. An accompanying slogan proclaimed, “For her – AERO – the milk-chocolate that’s different!”
These representations of modern young women formed part of a successful campaign to relaunch the Aero bar onto the UK market following a break in production during the Second World War. Since the early 1990s, 20 of the portraits have been stored in the Rowntree & Co. Ltd Archive, with little known about the artists or the sitters. While the advertisers J. Walter Thompson wanted the portraits to stand out as being ‘different’ – like the chocolate itself – they kept the female sitters anonymous, and the product firmly in the foreground.
THE SEARCH
After launching a public appeal for information and hosting a landmark exhibition at York Mansion House in October 2013, we were contacted by our first living ‘Aero Girl’, Pamela Synge. Synge, now in her 90s, is a visual artist, performer and writer. Her portrait was also the only Aero painting to feature in a television advert, on the newly-launched ITV in 1955.
Pamela Synge at home, 2014 (Kerstin Doble)
Frederick Deane at home, 2014 (Kerstin Doble)
Pamela de Meo, Venice, 1955 (Synge Archive)
Another of our early successes was tracing the last living Aero artist, Arnhem veteran Frederick Deane, whose recollections provided the names of two more Aero Girls, former JWT Art Department employee Rhona Lanzon and the Vogue model Myrtle Crawford. Then, in March 2014, we discovered that the renowned contemporary painter (and soon to be winner of the John Moores Painting Prize 2014) Rose Wylie had been an Aero Girl. Wylie reflects that she was a “rebellious art student” at the time, adding that her true image was “more punk than Mills & Boon cover.” In fact, many of the other Aero Girl sitters also worked in the creative industries, as painters, lithographers, film directors and dancers.
Relatives of the Aero Girls and Aero painters have been tireless in helping us to piece together countless fascinating stories behind the paintings, which lead from the battlefields of the Second World War, through polite society in post-war London, to present-day celebrity, touching on art, social history, fashion, the changing role of women and even the Profumo Affair.
Who Were the Aero Girls? project website pages (York Digital Library, 2014)
A new website gathers together archive images, footage, biographies and first-hand accounts about the Aero Girls collection for the very first time and you can explore it all at York Digital Library.
Over the last few days we have been contacted by another Aero Girl, the subject of Anthony Devas’ Art Student (c.1950). Painter and former art teacher Barbara Pitt was aged 17 and studying at Goldsmiths College of Art, London, when Devas painted her portrait. She moved to South Africa in 1965, and contacted us from her home in Cape Town with some colourful reminiscences of bohemian London and invaluable material from her own archive.
We would love to continue adding information to our online resource. If you would like to contribute to the ‘Who Were the Aero Girls?’ project please contact us at borthwick-institute@york.ac.uk
Written by Ruth Mather, Volunteer on the Atkinson Brierley Conservation Project
Atkinson Brierley rolled plans in the strongroom
Archivists might baulk at the old stereotype of the ‘dusty archive’, but it is an image that rings true for some of the items in the Atkinson Brierley collection. When the collection was assessed in 2011/2012 of the 6414 architectural plans there were only 99 that did not require cleaning. This is where we volunteers come in. Thanks to generous funding from the Shepherd Charitable Trust, we meet every Wednesday morning under the supervision of the Borthwick’s conservation technician, Tracy Wilcockson. There are four regular members of our team – our longstanding volunteers, Catherine and Dave, and more recent (August 2013) arrivals, Kate and myself. We also occasionally have additional students or volunteers who want to find out more about conservation. At the start of the project we received training in handling the plans and in careful cleaning with special brushes and smoke sponges, and since then we have cleaned architectural plans of all shapes and sizes and in various degrees of disrepair. We get through about 1.5 smoke sponges per two-hour session and, as of June 2014, have now cleaned 25% of the plans identified for attention.
It might seem like a fairly mundane task, but cleaning the plans is a really important part of ensuring the Atkinson Brierley collection remains accessible to the public. Even when the plans don’t look particularly dirty, they can carry ingrained dust and grime which then rubs off on archive user’s hands and can be transferred onto other documents. Over time, the dirt will cause the document to deteriorate, so it’s really important that we clean as many of the plans as possible. Doing so means that people can continue to visit the Borthwick and use this fascinating collection, which includes plans of many of the public buildings in and around York, providing a wonderful source for local and family historians as well as those interested in architectural history from the Georgian period onwards. The collection includes documents as well as plans, and covers schools, churches, war memorials and country houses, not only in Yorkshire but as far afield as Ypres in Belgium.
As for us, the volunteers, we’ve gained a vital insight into what goes on behind the scenes in an archive. Every week, we handle a number of interesting documents and learn more about how they are cared for. We’ve also had talks on more intensive conservation procedures from the team, and learned about a digitisation project which used some of the plans we had cleaned to create an exhibition about the war memorials designed by the architectural firm. Last but not least, there is always good conversation during our sessions, and even occasionally cake and a coffee once the plans are safely back in storage! Our current list of plans to clean stands at 4618 documents, and we are hoping to secure funding to continue with the project after our current grant expires in October. The best thing about working on the project is the sense of helping to preserve a collection so that it can continue to be enjoyed for a long time to come, and possibly be digitised for even wider use.
We’d love to hear from others who’ve used the collection – what do you love about the plans and why?
Small oil painting, coloured, from Retreat Archives c.1890-1900 by George Isaac Sidebottom
Like most archives, although most of our holdings are manuscripts on parchment or paper, bound into volumes and loose leaf, we do have other objects in our strong-rooms.
This painting shows people in the grounds of the Retreat, York, in the late nineteenth century. The Retreat was, and is, a psychiatric hospital run by the Society of Friends. It was established in the late eighteenth century and pioneered moral treatment for the mentally ill. The hospital saw its patients as no less human because of their illness, and emphasised that they should be cared for just like other people. This certainly does not sound unreasonable today but at the time it was extraordinary – standard Georgian treatments for mental patients included chaining to walls, leaving them naked in bare cells and sound beatings.
By the time of this painting, moral treatment was standard and you can see here that the patients were occupied with a variety of sports and activities including golf, cricket, tennis, croquet and football. Some figures in the background are riding bicycles. A slightly surreal element is provided by a patient lying under the tree in a bed. Painting was another pass-time. We know this because the artist who painted this picture was a Retreat patient at the time.
George Isaac Sidebottom was a resident at the Retreat from 1894 until 1912. He had been a merchant in the north-west of England and was a non-conformist. He suffered from moral and religious delusions and had been ill, and in care, for some years before his admission. A letter from the transferring doctor called him “a very good fellow indeed it would be hard to find a more agreeable man. He can paint watercolours very decently, sings a little… and can accompany himself fairly well.” In his case-notes, George is described as occupying himself in painting, reading, walking (including walking into town) and singing. He even played the piano, and there is correspondence to show that he was allowed to acquire a piano for his room.
He had a keen interest in games at the Retreat, and played cards, billiards, chess, croquet, cricket, hockey and tennis; he even skated in January 1895. He attended the Retreat’s ‘entertainments’ and ‘amusements’ (which vary from picnics to dances to amateur dramatics) and had holidays in Scarborough at the Retreat’s branch house.
References to paintings are made throughout although unfortunately this particular painting was not mentioned specifically. In January 1896 he ‘painted a scene for the Lady’s party at the beginning of the month’ and in October that year ‘he occupied himself with painting in oils and gives great attention to his work’. In December 1900 he was ‘busy on a scene for the Xmas party’. Towards the end of his life, George painted ‘peculiar’ caricature portraits, which gave him much satisfaction. He continued painting virtually up to his death at the Retreat in early 1912.
This painting provides us an interesting glimpse of life inside a Victorian mental hospital from the patient’s point of view which is all too rare among psychiatric archives. But, since this post is in honour of World Cat Day I also have to ask… Can you spot the cat? Comment below when you spot him (and no peeking until you do!)
The Conservation Department has recently been involved in the installation of two new exhibitions: ‘The Architecture of War Memorials’, which can be found on the third floor of the Raymond Burton Library, and ‘The Pity of War’, which is on display along the ground floor main corridor in the Harry Fairhurst. We decided that this would be a good opportunity to set up some environmental monitoring, so that we could investigate the environmental conditions within the display cases for the duration of an exhibition. We positioned data loggers in various cases to record temperature and relative humidity, hiding the loggers under exhibits and behind stands. We also agreed that we would conduct some light monitoring for the exhibition areas.
It is difficult to be discreet about our light monitoring – the blue wool sample cards that we have positioned in the cases need to be in direct light to give an honest indication of light exposure in the cases. You should be able to spot two sample cards in each exhibition.
Blue Wool Sample Card
The principles behind the blue wool scale were originally developed for the textile industry in the early eighteenth century. French chemist Dufay was appointed to be Inspector of Dyeworks in 1729, and instructed to develop regulations to control the operations of the dyers.[1] He carried out systematic comparative testing on dyes, by exposing test materials alongside standard samples of graded fastness. Although there have been various developments in the materials, this method of using dyes of known light-fastness is still widely used today.
Blue wool scale card in exhibition case
The blue wool scale tests for light fastness. The sample card we use today is made up of eight swatches of blue wool, which are dyed so that each consecutive dyestuff has an increased resistance to fading when they are exposed to light. Standard 2 takes twice as much exposure to fade to the same level as standard 1, and standard 3 takes twice as much exposure to fade as standard 2 and so on up to standard 8. The sample cards are used in a variety of industries that need to test their products for light-fastness. This could include testing the dyes in clothes, the colour in wallpaper or watercolour paints used by artists. A standard test will expose the blue wool card to light alongside a sample of the dye. Half of the blue wool sample is covered (as you can see in the sample in our exhibition cases) and half of the dye sample is also covered. After a pre-determined amount of light exposure both the blue wool sample and the dye sample are uncovered and compared, and the dye will be awarded the standard on the blue wool scale that has faded the closest amount.
Conservators monitor light exposure so that we can limit damage to the materials that we care for. Light is energy, and energy is damaging to organic materials. I read a comparison of light and heat damage recently that I thought very expressive. Garry Thomson suggested that we imagine organic molecules as people on a commuter train.[2] People are jostled, but this causes minimal physical damage, just as a steady, cool temperature causes minimal chemical damage to our archives. If the temperature on the train is raised, this jostling can get out of hand, and this is when chemical reactions to our molecules also become increasingly likely.
The Electromagnetic Spectrum
Now, Thomson associates light energy with projectiles fired at the commuters by a riot control squad. The damage that the projectiles cause is dependent on the type of projectile: a ping-pong ball or a pebble might only cause minimal damage, whereas a rocket or a hand grenade would cause considerably more. Light travels in waves, with the shortest wave-lengths in the visible spectrum at the violet end, and the longest at the red end. Ultraviolet (UV) light lies beyond the visible at the violet end, and infrared (IR) at the red end. The shorter the wavelength, the more energy delivered; and the more energy delivered, the greater the damage. As a result the violet waves of light are more dangerous than the longer red waves; and the UV waves are the most dangerous of them all, equivalent to the hand grenades thrown by the riot control squad. During my research, I was amazed to discover that to get a supply of useable energy from heat comparable to the energy delivered by light in the UV range one would have to heat up to 200°C.[3] This demonstrates how powerful light energy can be.
In our exhibition cases we are not testing individual specimens, but have chosen to use the samples to give us an overall indication of light exposure over a fixed period of time. We also take light measurements with a handheld monitor in our exhibition areas, which give us ‘lux’ and UV values. These tell us how much visible light and how much ultraviolet light can be detected. To reduce light exposure in our Borthwick exhibition area there are blinds on the windows. A shaft of light that once escaped from between the blinds was measured to be 1767 lux, whereas the next highest reading from the cases next to the windows with the blinds down has been 582 lux. Direct sunlight can be very intense, and the blinds significantly reduce this exposure.
Graph: UV levels in Harry Fairhurst Exhibition Area
The glass of windows and exhibition cases also reduce the amount of light that reaches our archives. UV light is reduced, and only between 80 and 90% of visible light is transmitted.[4] As UV is the most damaging type of light, we aim to reduce this as much as possible, and so we also use UV filtered glass for our exhibition cases. The graphs shown here relate to the display cases in the Harry Fairhurst, and demonstrate how much visible light is blocked by the glass as well as how much UV light is filtered by the glass.
Graph: UV levels in Harry Fairhurst Exhibition Area
We calculate light exposure by multiplying the time by the intensity of exposure. We aim to limit the ‘light hours’ that our archives receive by restricting the length of time we have them on exhibition. Some more light sensitive materials, such as photographs or watercolours, are given even shorter exhibition periods, and are frequently substituted with surrogate images. We also alternate between exhibitions of original items with those full of surrogate material, so that we can continue to raise awareness of the collections we hold at the Borthwick without putting any items at risk from regular display.
Although our exposure calculations are necessary, we are excited to see the results of our blue wool samples at the end of these exhibitions. Our calculations convey some numerical sense of light exposure, but the sample cards will be a significant visual indication of deterioration.
References
Forrester, Stanley. ‘The fast and the fugitive: light fastness testing of dyed textiles up to the 1870s’, Journal of the Society of Dyers and Colourists, 91 (July, 1975), 217-223.
Guthrie, J., N. Tayan and L. Wilson, ‘A novel approach to light-fastness testing’, Journal of the Society of Dyers and Colourists, 111 (July/August, 1995), 220-222.
Pugh, Samantha and James Guthrie. ‘The development of light fastness testing and light fastness standards’, Review of Progress in Coloration and Related Topics, 31 (2001), 42-56.
Thomson, Garry. The Museum Environment, Second Edition, London: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1986
With thanks to Tracy Wilcockson for the photographs and light monitoring statistics.
In your day-to-day life you’ve probably walked past one of George Pace’s buildings before and not realised it. Pace (1915-1975) was a York-based architect who is famous for his contributions to modernist ecclesiastical architecture. Perhaps his strict religious upbringing was the reason behind his career. Upon the death of his associate, Ronald Sims, the Pace and Sims documentation was gifted to the Borthwick. Today, more than 250 rolls of plans, drawings and correspondence lie uncatalogued in storage: it was our job to begin this exciting quest.
Design for a war memorial
As work experience students from the University of York – under the guidance of Dr. Amanda Jones – we immediately got our teeth stuck in (not literally!). Armagh Cathedral was the first building we unrolled. Seventy-seven architectural drawings took us on a virtual tour of the Royal Irish Fusiliers Chapel. The Dean of York personally recommended Pace for this project; this is the foundation of Pace’s illustrious career. Some of the most interesting drawings from this roll related to the war memorial design. We saw many designed for such memorials; it served as a powerful and poignant reminder of the lasting impact of the World Wars.
Another part of our project was to help conserve some of the Atkinson Brierley archives. This involved cleaning the documents using specialised tools. Alex was swept away by, “the cleaning experience. I couldn’t believe the amount of dirt that has accumulated on the documents!” Through this, we learnt how important conservation is for the preservation of these valuable documents. We enjoyed working with the conservation staff and current volunteers and through their help and knowledge, we gained a new set of skills in basic conservation.
This was Guy’s favourite part,” I am currently working on a Masters dissertation on Brierley so the chance to contribute to the preservation of these wonderful documents was really rather special.”
In three days, we managed to catalogue 347 documents. This process was one in which the past was unrolled before our very eyes. From memorials to dossals, radiator covers to electrical installations, and candlesticks to altars, we saw the extensive work and skill behind being an architect. Joy particularly enjoyed the data collecting. “It is wonderful to think that my work is contributing to the preservation of ‘the past in the present for the future’. Through the database, these documents can now be brought to light again and truly appreciated.”
“I built on my communication and team skills through the data inputting. Also, the project gave me the chance to further my palaeographical skills. This week has been really fun and insightful.” Caitlin.
“Analysing the documents was very interesting. I normally study 19th century architecture, so getting the chance to see 20th century work was fascinating.” Rebecca.
This is how Joy rolls.
What made the experience truly worthwhile is the fact we have made a lasting contribution to the archives. Before we began this placement, we did not truly appreciate the important work of archivists and the volume of information stored. A career in archives is one that should be respected as archivists are making a remarkable effort to preserve our heritage. In fact, we are all interested in pursuing a job in this field. Aoife found that, “all the staff were friendly and helpful, and their career advice was really useful.”
“A fun and fascinating week with a great group of people.” Mark
Written by Sarah Griffin, Rare Books Librarian at the University of York
Nowadays many books are produced with a ‘perfect’ binding where the pages are stuck to the spine and invariably split open as soon as any pressure is applied. They are still the common book shape we are all familiar with but they are very different to books printed before 1801. Until the early nineteenth century bindings were all made by hand so each one is unique.
Books were produced by printing on a large sheet of paper and then folding, cutting and sewing the sheets to make the familiar book shape. The size of the book depends on how many folds are made, so for a quarto the page is folded four times and for an octavo eight times, and so on. The text block that has now been created needs something to protect it and keep it clean and the best and most efficient way of doing this is to provide a rigid board front and back covered with a material such as leather. You end up with a space that can be decorated in any way you want.
Sewing Structure of a binding
This picture shows a book which has lost its spine showing the sewing structure. You can see the different gatherings of pages laid next to each other. The large thick cord is what is holding the boards on and providing a stable mount for the pages to be sewn onto.
There are many different sorts of bindings and fine bindings actually only represent a tiny proportion of those surviving, but their beauty and craftsmanship mean that they never fail to delight. There have been many wonderful binders through the ages, some known only through their distinctive work such as the ‘Centre Rectangle Binder’, or the ‘Small Carnation Binder’ but there are other names that we can identify.
Binding for ‘The Prince’s Progress and other poems’ by Christina Rosetti, 1866
This is an early binding designed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It was for a book of his sister Christina’s poems. Rossetti was a poet, painter, and illustrator among many other talents. His work with its clean pure lines influenced the generation that came after him including artists such as William Morris. Rossetti’s art was also characterised by his love of all things mediaeval and this binding is a good example of that. The book is bound in smooth green cloth and has then been gilded, the design pressed into the surface with hot tools with gold leaf between the tool and the leather. The design wraps round the spine so is best seen when the book is open. The lines coming out from the spine top and bottom suggest ornate hinges and the small gold circles could represent the nail heads that would have held book clasps or furniture on a mediaeval binding. The design was developed over several months in 1865-1866. Rossetti had also done the design for Christina’s first book of poetry, Goblin Market, and this is similar in style with the small gold circles, although the lines for that book were straight not gently curved as in this binding.
The second named binding is from the beginning of the 20th century.
Sangorski & Sutcliffe were early 20th century bookbinders famous for using precious stones and metals in their extravagant bindings. One of their most famous creations was on a copy of the ‘Omar Khayyam‘ and was known as the Great Omar. It was a beautiful binding featuring golden peacocks with jewelled tails but sadly Great Omar went down with the Titanic and has never been recovered. A second copy was made but was then destroyed during the Blitz in World War Two. Undaunted, a third copy was produced and, to date, this resides safely in the British Library.
Although, at first sight, this seems one of their less ornate bindings, the design, fashioned by inlaying different coloured leathers, creates a real sense of movement among the rose stems.
Sangorski and Sutcliffe binding for The Hind and The Panther by Dryden
The binding is not contemporary with the book which was published in 1697. It is a poem by John Dryden called ‘The Hind and the Panther’ and was written after his conversion to Roman Catholicism. The poem is an allegory with the hind representing the Catholic Church and the panther the Church of England.
It is interesting to speculate as to why this style of binding was chosen for the book. The tortuous thorny rose stems ending in the tight red rosebuds might be a metaphor for the struggle Dryden had to undergo, hiding his true religious beliefs until he was able to openly convert under James II. The use of roses as a symbol of achievement and completion is well established. After having battled with the long thorny stems, the toiler is rewarded with the beauty and the fragrance of the flowers. The rosebud represents beauty and purity and the rose leaves denote hope. However the binding was put on over 200 years after the book’s first publication so perhaps the owner just liked the design!
These and many other examples of fine binding can be found in the display cases along the Harry Fairhurst corridor in the University of York library. The exhibition will be in place until the end of April 2014. For more information please contact Sarah Griffin, Special Collections Librarian at sarah.griffin@york.ac.uk
.Don’t miss Sarah’s free talk on the Special Collections of the University of York, ‘A Journey Through the Pages’ on Thursday 6th March 2014 at 6.30pm (drinks and canapés from 6.00pm), in LFA 204/205
1848 did not provide a good or happy Christmas for the Crosby family. On December 21st, the overseers of the poor for the parish of St Mary Castlegate in York applied to the Justices of the Peace for the city of York for the right to remove them.
PR Y/MC.100/32/1 Notice of Intent to Remove George Crosby and family
George Crosby was married to Mary and they had had at least four children. By December 1848, only two still lived: John who had just turned seven years’ old, and Mary who was barely eighteen months’ old. They had been living in the parish of St Mary Castlegate, off and on, since 1840 when their eldest son James was baptised there. Now they had fallen upon hard times there, and had turned to the parish for support to help them.
Although the Crosby family lived a long time before the advent of the modern welfare state, there was a safety net (of sorts) to catch people who could not support themselves whether through illness, injury or unemployment. The Poor Law had operated since Queen Elizabeth I’s day and was administered through parishes. The better-off residents of a parish contributed to a fund through their rates, which was then paid out to paupers. By the nineteenth century this system was seen as bloated, expensive and counter-productive and notions of the undeserving poor surviving on handouts from their hard-working neighbours fed into the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. This Act established poor law unions and the dreaded Union Workhouses which loom so large in our collective memory. There had been workhouses before, but they had tended to be small and local. The Union Workhouses were built on a massive scale and unpleasantness, an important part of the ‘less eligibility’ mindset (the idea that the workhouse should be a deterrent to discourage all by the most desperate from seeking assistance), was a fundamental driver of their construction.
York’s Poor Law Union was incorporated in 1837 but for many years was ineffectual. The pre-existing workhouse on Marygate (next to the Minster Inn) was very small, overcrowded and subject to outbreaks of disease. It had been set up in 1769 as a joint initiative by a number of the city centre parishes and could only accommodate 90 paupers. In 1845, an official inspection of the workhouse found that the privies were “without exception in an offensive state”. There was an open cesspool in the girls’ yard. Many of the inmates were diseased and the children were placed “in the infectious wards with adults labouring under syphilis and gonorrhea”.
The spaces in the Marygate workhouse were taken up with the deserving poor: the elderly, the infirm, and children. This meant that other paupers, despite the provisions of the 1834 Act and its aim to stop out-door relief to the able-bodied poor, were still supported by the city parishes with the old-style payments. So at least for the moment, the Crosby family knew they would not end up at the gates of workhouse, to be separated.
They did, however, have to move. The city of York, as a legacy of its rich and ecclesiastical medieval history, had a lot of parishes. Although there had been some rationalisation in the sixteenth century, there were still more than 20 parishes operating in the middle of the nineteenth century. Each of these parishes had poor law overseers who paid out poor relief. Their job also required them to make sure relief was only paid when absolutely necessary. This led to a system whereby pauper families could be removed and sent back and forwards across the city as each parish attempted to avoid paying relief (and thereby, establishing a precedent).
The Order of Removal issued for George Crosby
Luckily for the St Mary Castlegate overseers, a precedent had already been set. On 9th September 1844, the Crosbies had applied for poor relief. Then, George and Mary had had three children: James, John and Emma, and they had been living in the parish of All Saints North Street, whence they had been removed to the parish of St Mary Bishophill Senior. So it was a simple matter to apply for the family to once again be removed to St Mary Bishophill Senior.
The family’s settlement was in St Mary Bishophill Senior because that was where George Crosby was born. All of his legitimate children, and his wife, shared in his settlement. There were a number of ways that George could have gained a different settlement from that of his birth, and the fact that he retained his birth settlement tells us something about him. He had never completed an apprenticeship, for example, or served as a domestic servant for over a year. He had never rented a property of a rateable value of £10.00 or more, or run a business. Looking at the areas we know George Crosby lived in, it seems likely that he was a labourer. Castlegate and North Street in the mid-nineteenth century were notorious slums, the haunts of prostitutes and thieves. Hagworms Nest, a court off one of the Water Lanes in St Mary Castlegate, had been a source of epidemic cholera from the seventeenth century through to the famous outbreak of 1832 whilst North Street recurs again and again in the police records of the period. Labouring was a precarious way to earn a living, and so it isn’t surprising that the family fell upon hard times regularly – nor, sadly, that they lost so many children.
Evidence of Settlement for George Crosby PR Y/MC.100/32/3
Evidence of Settlement for George Crosby PR Y/MC.100/32/3 (reverse)
There is currently an ongoing project at the Borthwick Institute to index all of the surviving poor law papers for the city centre parishes. Perhaps George and Mary Crosby will turn up again in another parish and we can continue to follow their struggle.
In May 2013 we put up a small ‘taster’ exhibition, marking the 60th anniversary of the Borthwick. Now we have just opened a larger exhibition which reflects on the story of the founding of the Borthwick, explores its early days, and looks at aspects of our development, past and present. The exhibition is in the Storey Exhibition Gallery, top floor, Borthwick Institute. It runs from 1 November 2013 to 31 January 2014.
The exhibition poster includes this splendid picture, taken in 1957, of Mrs Norah Gurney. She had arrived the previous year, as assistant archivist – the first such appointment. She is pictured in one of the original Borthwick strongrooms at St Anthony’s Hall, taking a probate act book down from the shelf. The detail in the photograph is superb. It really evokes, for those of us who remember St Anthony’s Hall, the atmosphere of the strongrooms – dark and cramped, with mezzanine floors above, all racked out with rather oppressive dark green metal shelving (state of the art in the 1950s). Things hadn’t changed much between 1957 and when we left in 2004!
Norah Gurney later became the second Director of the Institute, taking over after the retirement of Canon Purvis in 1963. Tragically she died of cancer aged only 52, in 1974. There have been in total four Borthwick Directors (although the title is now Keeper of Archives). It is notable how much continuity we have had between 1953 and today – all our ‘bosses’ served first under their predecessors – this is true of our conservators too.
The exhibition reflects on development and change. Although the past couple of decades – and particularly after our move in 2005 – have seen great changes, there is an obvious continuity in our remit and in what we still think is important.
Searchroom Office 1953
This photo, of the searchroom office, ready for business in 1953, shows, for example, how some things have physically altered. But other things continue: the importance of teaching and research can be traced back to our original purpose, and so can our role in what we now call ‘outreach’.
Here is Canon Purvis with students at an early ‘summer school for archives’. Teaching with documents is still central to our work, but handling techniques have certainly changed for the better!
Canon Purvis with Summer School students
The exhibition traces how distinguished academics quickly arrived in the early days (the first visitors’ book is on display), and yet the first name recorded in the visitors book – and very regularly thereafter – is that of “Mrs T” (as we called her), a professional genealogist and a good friend to the Borthwick, regarded with much affection by staff. The exhibition has some photos of her 80th birthday party at the Borthwick.
We have had quite a low key 60th birthday (though we had cake to celebrate the anniversary of our opening day!) and this is partly because we had big celebrations when we were 50, ten years ago, but also because this year there has been a bigger celebration to mark the 50th birthday of the University, and of course the Borthwick is part of that.
We have been here on campus for eight years now, and only a few of the staff now remember St Anthony’s Hall.
Moving from St Anthony’s Hall, 2004
Here we are moving from St Anthony’s in 2004 – archives are being taken off the green metal shelves (how different from the new electronic mobile shelving!). It was a well-planned six month operation.
The current Borthwick building half-built
You can see here the massive concrete shell of the strongroom block, on the right. We had 10 strongrooms in the old building, but these came in all shapes (usually small) and all sizes (usually inconvenient). The other day, three of us who remembered St Anthony’s Hall found ourselves perplexed in trying to remember where they all were – they were scattered all over the St Anthony’s Hall complex (as were the offices). We found there was even one strongroom (one of the less frequented ones) that we had quite forgotten!
Two of us have memories of the Borthwick going back to 1980, and so in effect remember nearly half of its lifespan. On the one hand it has been a bit nostalgic to remember the past, but on the other it serves to show how important it is to try and record, and carefully consider, our history. The Borthwick really does have origins unique among archive offices.
I hope as many as possible will come and see the exhibition. Find out why we are called “Borthwick” (it has to do with William Borthwick of Bridlington, but in fact he wasn’t personally involved at all!), why we changed our name in 2005 (have people noticed?) and why our logo is a pig (clue – it is the connection with St Anthony’s Hall). There are individual exhibition cases about the Borthwick’s founding, about Canon Purvis, our first Director, about St Anthony’s Hall and why we had to move from there, about the Borthwick in the early days, about conservation past and present, and about our activities over the years.
And if you are interested in learning more about the Borthwick’s origins in relation to the founding of the University of York, come along to the 50th Anniversary Public Lecture at 6pm, Bowland Auditorium, Berrick Saul Building, on 18 November 2013. The lecture is: “In York the opportunity waits, and all history beckons”: the story behind the founding of the University, 1946-1963. Or alternatively why not take a look at the History of the Borthwick pages on our website.
