Spotlight on the Retreat archive: a satirical sketch of the Retreat in the early twentieth century

by Kath Webb, with an introduction by Nathan Williams

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts celebrating the Retreat archive and our digitisation project as it nears completion. The Retreat is one of the most important institutions in the care and treatment of mental health patients. Over the last two and half years, staff at the Borthwick have been working through the archive, preparing the documents for digitisation, carrying out conservation treatments where appropriate and photographing each item page by page.

This has been a huge task. Over 600,000 images have been created so far and the focus has been on handling each item with care and capturing a high quality image efficiently and effectively. Of course there have been many items that have caught our eye along the way. In this series of blog posts project staff pick out some of the interesting items that they have encountered.

Here Kath Webb, our resident expert on the Retreat archive introduces ‘Dr. Selfopinion’, ‘Dr. We’llsee’ and the ‘Paying Guest’

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One of the delights of sorting and cataloguing any archive is that you never know what you are going to find. One gem, which I discovered just a couple of years ago, consists of a small but perfectly formed satirical sketch of the Retreat, written in June-July 1922 (RET/6/19
/1/79).

‘A Mock Trial between a patient and the Medical Officers at one of the best and largest mental institutions in the country’, written by ‘Paying Guest’, is an 11 page typescript. The scene is a London law court, midsummer 1922, and the characters include a judge (‘Mr Justice Longhead’), a counsel for plaintiff (‘Miss Cocksure, KC’), two defendants (‘Dr. Selfopinion’ and ‘Dr. We’llsee’) and the plaintiff (‘Paying Guest’ himself).

List of Characters in ‘A Mock Trial’

It opens thus:

The sketch focuses on Miss Cocksure’s examination of ‘Dr. Self Opinion’ and then ‘Dr. We’llsee’, who justify their treatment of Paying Guest’, their patient. After their interrogations are complete, the judge declares:

And he delivers his sentence:

I pronounce sentence on each of them, namely – To be imprisoned with hard labour, for life. They must also pay all the claims made upon them by the Plaintiff, so far as their bankers will allow them still to overdraw their accounts with them.

The sketch ends with the court being cleared ‘with much fighting amongst the blackguards’ and orders relating to visiting of the ‘gaolbirds’ and their special prison clothes.

The sketch is beautifully written and it is very funny but its humour is biting – it is a black comedy.  It isn’t hard to spot that the two doctor defendants are – only thinly disguised – Dr. Bedford Pierce, Medical Superintendent of the Retreat (he is ‘Dr. Selfopinion’) and Dr. Henry J. Mackenzie,  the Retreat’s Assistant Medical Officer (caricatured as ‘Dr. We’llsee’). The plaintiff and author – the ‘Paying Guest’ – is Ralph H., who was a patient at the Retreat in 1922. The sketch focuses on the relationship between the doctors and their patient and it is really intended as an indictment by a patient of his two doctors – a patient’s revenge, if you like. This makes it not only a funny sketch but also a particularly interesting document – reflecting the mind and thoughts of a patient and shining a light into the life and people at the Retreat at that time.

Ralph H. – the ‘Paying Guest’

Who was Ralph H.? His case notes are in RET6/5/1/24A and there are also files of correspondence in RET/6/20/1/8.

He was a patient at the Retreat no less than six times between 1919 and 1930 – dying during his last stay.  He first arrived as a voluntary boarder aged 54 in 1919, suffering from depression. After returning home he made a suicide attempt in 1920, and was sent to Ashwood House, a private hospital in Kingswinford near Dudley, under the care of its doctor, Dr. Pietersen. Whilst there, he became manic and unmanageable, and in September 1921 he was transferred to the Retreat, where he stayed until October 1922. He came to the Retreat, as a voluntary boarder, on three further occasions: January – June 1923, August – December 1923 and March – May 1925. For most of this time he was suffering from depression. In August 1929 he was admitted to the Retreat under an Urgency Order. He was then suffering from cancer of the larynx and he had been in London, being prepared for an operation, when he began to suffer once again with an attack of “elation and general over-activity” which made his behaviour difficult to control; in the circumstances the operation was postponed and he returned to the Retreat for his mental recovery. However he died there, of cancer, before the operation could take place.

What was wrong with Ralph? Nearly all the doctors who saw him were agreed that this was a manic depressive psychosis – we would say today that Ralph suffered from bipolar disorder. He had periods of clinical depression alternating with periods of manic behaviour. During his manic phases he was excited, difficult and troublesome. He had a persecution complex, which was manifested primarily against his carers. At Ashwood House in 1920 he had been “writing reams of libellous screeds, novels, diaries etc” against Dr. Pietersen and his staff. After his transfer to the Retreat, Dr. Bedford Pierce noted in October 1921, “He says exactly the same in speaking of me and Dr. Mackenzie as he has done of Dr. Pietersen”.  

Letter from Ralph H, filed in his case notes,accusing Dr Mackenzie of defamation of character, dishonesty and theft

He was noisy, abusive, swearing at the doctors and nursing staff. He was frenetically busy in devising nonsensical inventions and trying to send out letters to people who might promote them.  He also sent amorous letters to ladies. In return for his freedom to walk into the city of York, the Retreat made him promise not to post letters or make purchases, but these were issues hotly contested between Ralph and his doctors, because he believed (wrongly) that his letters were censored, or stopped, that there was a plot against him and that all doctors were dishonest. On one occasion he walked out of the Retreat and went to Tadcaster to see a solicitor friend. The Retreat was soon contacted and two attendants were sent to escort him back. His liberty was reduced and he was placed for the next three days in a more secure ward, away from his usual room in the Gentlemen’s Lodge which had an ‘open door’ policy.

Once you know this context, you can understand more of the details of “A Mock Trial”. The sketch, for examples, alludes to the issue of letters being opened:

COUNSEL: Now tell me this, doctor. Did my client write a letter to his Solicitor, about the 17th December last, and did he post it?

Dr. WE’LLSEE: He did, I believe, and he posted it in the hall box kept for the purpose, so that the spelling and expressions of delight at being there, should be verified by me.

COUNSEL:  Was the letter sealed by my client, with his crest on?

Dr. WE’LLSEE: It was, but as I had an impression of the seal taken in sulphur I opened the letters to check the contents….

The story of Ralph’s escape to Tadcaster follows:

COUNSEL: What happened next?

Dr.WE’LLSEE: Yes I did. I thought it my duty to his wife. Further, I and my colleague, decided we would put him in the “drying chamber” on arrival, commonly called the “Egg Pit”… it took us three days to get him thoroughly dry…

As one can see from this extract, the ‘allegations’ in the court scene are amusing, and yet have a serious side: they make more sense set alongside the narrative in the case notes and correspondence, and also in Ralph’s letters to the doctors, where the same complaints and topics are aired. “A Mock Trial” is very much the product and the story of Ralph H.’s illness.

When Ralph was not in his manic phase, he appreciated the care at the Retreat. He was keen to come back to the Retreat in 1921 of which he “retained a kindly recollection”: the doctor at the Retreat, he said was “an honourable, straightforward gentleman”.  The Retreat had the sports and facilities he liked: he could garden, play croquet, bowls and tennis. Ralph was a wealthy man: a Birmingham businessman, who occupied a room in the Gentlemen’s Lodge which cost between 7 and 10 guineas per week. The standard of accommodation was that of a comfortable, high class hotel.

Dining room at The Gentlemen’s Lodge

Ralph was a typical well-to-do patient: he enjoyed golf and fishing (there was correspondence over whether he was well enough to have his fishing tackle). He was naturally articulate and demanding, whether he was well or ill. His family too, as evidenced by the letters, were caring, but also assiduous and exacting. Part of the fascination of the correspondence is in how it reveals that the psychiatrist in a middle class asylum always had to act in concert with the patient’s friends and family, who could (especially if the patient was there on a voluntary basis) simply remove the patient elsewhere. The Retreat depended on the sizeable fees of the wealthy, and also on its reputation. The evidence shows that Dr. Pierce dealt with patients and family alike in a courteous and unflappable manner. This was not, however, the attitude of the Harley Street consultant who, at Mrs H.’s request, and with the consent of the Retreat, examined Ralph in July 1922. He afterwards wrote a confidential ‘doctor-to-doctor’ letter to Dr. Yellowlees (who had just succeeded Dr Bedford Pierce as Retreat Superintendent), saying, rather naughtily: “All I have to say in conclusion is that if you could persuade Mr H. that on dismissal [from the Retreat] he would have to live with his wife, you might find him quite ready to remain on indefinitely”.  The Harley Street doctor plainly thought Mrs H. interfering. But a much fairer conclusion would be that life for Mrs H. must have been very difficult and she worked admirably and relentlessly to see that her husband was cared for, with everything possible done to alleviate his condition.

Dr. Bedford Pierce – ‘Dr. Selfopinion’

Above all, “A Mock Trial” is one of my favourite items in the Retreat archive because it paints a perfect little picture – which may be satirical but is also rather touching – of two men: ‘Dr. Selfopinion’ and ‘Dr. We’llsee’ or in other words, Dr. Bedford Pierce and Dr. Henry Mackenzie.  At the time this sketch was written, they had worked together at the Retreat for nearly thirty years. Dr. Pierce was a young man of 30 when he arrived to head the Retreat in 1892. Dr. Mackenzie joined him just one year later. 1922 would be a year of significant change, because it was the year Dr. Pierce retired: by the time Ralph finished his sketch Dr. Yellowlees was already in charge. Dr. Mackenzie stayed on for a while, and retired in 1924. This sketch presents a picture of two doctors at the end of a long, successful and satisfying professional partnership.  The text even alludes to the closeness of this partnership:

COUNSEL: I think on his [the Plaintiff’s] arrival, you and your bosom chum, Dr. We’llsee, who has lived in your house for a great number of years (probably fifty) met my client with open arms.

Dr. Bedford Pierce, centre and Dr. Henry J. Mackenzie on the left, c.1900

Dr. Bedford Pierce was one of the great figures in the history of the Retreat. A remarkable man, he was handpicked to lead the Retreat at the ages of thirty, despite having no previous experience of psychiatry. The confidence vested in him was not misplaced: under his guidance the Retreat entered a ‘golden age’. Not only did he oversee the expansion and enhancement of the interior but he saw the extensive reconstruction and opening up of the grounds and gardens, and the introduction of more varied and interesting programmes of activities, entertainments and sports for patients and for staff. He encouraged greater parole for patients so they could venture beyond the Retreat grounds for walks. A talented artist himself, he promoted art and tasteful decoration which brightened the hospital.  He began a pioneering course of mental nurse training at the Retreat, he opened the home nursing department, through which the Retreat sent nurses into people’s homes, and he started the Retreat pension scheme. He was a notable psychiatrist: President of the Medico-Psychological Association in 1919, he was also the first Retreat doctor to be allowed to open his own consulting rooms for his own private patients. He was clever, charismatic and authoritative, and yet also reassuring, approachable, and immensely well loved.

Ralph H.’s portrayal of Dr. Pierce was at once fantastical and yet in some respects based on reality. (This parallels the way Ralph treats his own story in the sketch). His portrayal of ‘Dr. Selfopinion’ is embellished with outlandish detail which plays ‘topsy-turvy’ with the actual Dr. Pierce, but sometimes the real man peeps out. Here is ‘Dr. Selfopinion’ being described physically:

DEFENDANT Dr. Selfopinion: (A tall, thin, shifty-eyed looking man, dressed in a black frock coat, looking very shiny with wear)

The black frock coat was realistic, and Bedford Pierce was tall and thin – the phrase ‘shifty-eyed’ is Ralph’s embellishment. As is the following:

The topsy-turvydom here lies in the fact that Bedford Pierce was a Quaker – racing, card playing and financial fraud were opposite to the figure of the real man.  And yet, ‘Dr. Selfopinion’ is presented as the figure of authority that he was. There is also a long speech in the sketch where ‘Dr. Selfopinion’ describes how he is acting in accordance with the plaintiff’s wife’s instructions (‘I was to keep him in cotton wool’), which as the correspondence file shows was based on truth. And ‘Dr. Selfopinion’ is described as ‘playing a strenuous game at billiards’ and being in the hockey field, which also reflects Dr. Pierce’s participation in sports – both he and Dr. Mackenzie played in the Retreat men’s hockey team.

Retreat men’s hockey team, 1902: Dr. Mackenzie, centre back row and Dr. Pierce, front left (with dog) – RET/1/8/4/15/1

‘Dr. Selfopinion’ also says:

At the end of March I was obliged, owing to a temporary attack of senile decay to retire from my activities, but the Government Department who keep an eye on my house, asked me just to look in once a week, to see that the garden vegetables were getting on all right, so I consented.

This must refer to Dr. Pierce’s retirement in summer 1922, after which he became a Lord Chancellor’s Visitor to asylums (he was later a Commissioner of the Board of Control).

Dr. Henry Mackenzie – ‘Dr. We’llsee’

Ralph H.’s portrait of Dr. Henry Mackenzie is also composed of the same mixture of fantastical and real. Dr. Mackenzie was Bedford Pierce’s right-hand man – reliable, loyal and efficient. Dr. Marjorie Garrod, the daughter of Dr. Pierce, who grew up at the Retreat, describes Dr. Mackenzie in her short but valuable reminiscence, ‘The Retreat was my Home’ (RET/1/9/2/1).

In this, she describes him as ‘a dour, solemn Scot’. In his overflowing study, he would ‘solemnly stand and talk to us cracking each of his finger joints in turn and blowing through his moustache ’. In ‘A Mock Trial’ Ralph adds to ‘Dr. We’llsee’ a touch of incongruous, fantastical frivolity:

COUNSEL: I should like your colleague, Dr. What’s his name? Oh, I remember now – Dr. We’llsee, to step forward.

However, Ralph mocks Dr. Mackenzie’s Scottish accent, presenting it in an exaggerated way, and with an additional dark undertone:

COUNSEL: Well! My client came to stay in the house in which you live part of the day, but sleep outside, on the front door mat.

Dr. Mackenzie was the doctor whom Ralph saw most of, on a day to day basis, and the doctor who wrote up Ralph’s case notes. For this reason, the examination of ‘Dr. We’llsee’ in the witness box concentrates much more on Ralph’s detailed grievances, and perhaps he is treated less sympathetically. One wonders if the phrase ‘we’ll see’ was one that Dr. Mackenzie frequently used to mollify Ralph’s more outlandish or abusive claims. But in other respects, Ralph also captures the real man: ‘Dr. We’llsee’ is said to be ‘always busy in looking for eclipses of the sun, catching mosquitos, etc’. In reality, Dr. Mackenzie kept accurate statistics of meteorology through his rain gauges and thermometers and had, according to Marjorie Garrod ‘an unending fund of knowledge about scientific and mechanical things’.

…and finally

My last thought about ‘A Mock Trial’ is a question: why does it exist in a typed version? Who typed it up and why? Ralph’s original would certainly have been in manuscript. When he came to the Retreat in September 1921 he was busy writing a book, apparently about asylums. This seems to have been sparked by his experience at Ashwood House, whose doctor and staff first bore the brunt of his persecution mania. Dr. Mackenzie noted that he ‘spends much of his time here in writing a book to expose the iniquities of Ashwood House’; though there was also an indication that it would contain ‘no names’. Dr. Pierce told Mrs H. in September 1921 that Ralph was demanding a typist to make a fair copy of his book, but Dr. Pierce thought it looked ‘feeble, disconnected and uninteresting’, and so he had told Ralph that no publisher would want it. Clearly ‘A Mock Trial’ is not that book. Written during the following summer, one wonders if its form was actually inspired by Ralph’s experiences at the Retreat, whose stage entertainments and shows, as Harold Hunt describes in A Retired Habitation, often included ‘topical jokes’, sketches and allusions to staff. Ralph’s writing had also improved – ‘A Mock Trial’ is tightly written and to the point. One must conclude that the Retreat sanctioned its being typed up. No doubt the doctors would have found it valuable as a record of Ralph’s mind. But one also hopes that, accustomed to those jokes in Retreat shows, they also laughed and appreciated its humour.

More information about the Wellcome Library funded project to digitise the Retreat archive can be found on the resources page of our website. Digital surrogates from the Retreat archive project are available via the Wellcome Library.

How can we preserve Google Documents?

Written by Jenny Written by Jenny Mitcham, Digital Archivist
Originally posted to “Digital Archiving at the University of York”

Last month I asked (and tried to answer) the question How can we preserve our wiki pages?

This month I am investigating the slightly more challenging issue of how to preserve native Google Drive files, specifically documents*.

Why?

At the University of York we work a lot with Google Drive. We have the G Suite for Education (formally known as Google Apps for Education) and as part of this we have embraced Google Drive and it is now widely used across the University. For many (me included) it has become the tool of choice for creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The ability to share documents and directly collaborate are key.

So of course it is inevitable that at some point we will need to think about how to preserve them.

How hard can it be?

Quite hard actually.The basic problem is that documents created in Google Drive are not really “files” at all.

The majority of the techniques and models that we use in digital preservation are based around the fact that you have a digital object that you can see in your file system, copy from place to place and package up into an Archival Information Package (AIP).

In the digital preservation community we’re all pretty comfortable with that way of working.

The key challenge with stuff created in Google Drive is that it doesn’t really exist as a file.

Always living in hope that someone has already solved the problem, I asked the question on Twitter and that really helped with my research.

Isn’t the digital preservation community great?

Exporting Documents from Google Drive

I started off testing the different download options available within Google docs. For my tests I used 2 native Google documents. One was the working version of our Phase 1 Filling the Digital Preservation Gap report. This report was originally authored as a Google doc, was 56 pages long and consisted of text, tables, images, footnotes, links, formatted text, page numbers, colours etc (ie: lots of significant properties I could assess). I also used another more simple document for testing – this one was just basic text and tables but also included comments by several contributors.

I exported both of these documents into all of the different export formats that Google supports and assessed the results, looking at each characteristic of the document in turn and establishing whether or not I felt it was adequately retained.

Here is a summary of my findings, looking specifically at the Filling the Digital Preservation Gap phase 1 report document:

  • docx – This was a pretty good copy of the original. It retained all of the key features of the report that I was looking for (images, tables, footnotes, links, colours, formatting etc), however, the 56 page report was now only 55 pages (in the original, page 48 was blank, but in the docx version this blank page wasn’t there).
  • odt – Again, this was a good copy of the originals and much like the docx version in terms of the features it retained. However, the 56 page report was now only 54 pages long. Again it omitted page 48 which was blank in the Google version, but also slightly more words were squeezed on to each page which meant that it comprised of fewer pages. Initially I thought the quality of the images was degraded slightly but this turned out to be just the way they appeared to render in LibreOffice. Looking inside the actual odt file structure and viewing the images as files demonstrated to me that they were actually OK. 
  • rtf – First of all it is worth saying that the Rich Text Format file was *massive*. The key features of the document were retained, although the report document was now 60 pages long instead of 56!
  • txt – Not surprisingly this produces a tiny file that retains only the text of the original document. Obviously the original images, tables, colours, formatting etc were all lost. About the only other notable feature that was retained were the footnotes and these appeared together right at the end of the document. Also a txt file does not have a number of ‘pages’… not until you print it at least.
  • pdf – This was a good copy of the original report and retained all the formatting and features that I was looking for. This was also the only copy of the report that had the right number of pages. However, it seems that this is not something we can rely on. A close comparison of the pages of the pdf compared with the original shows that there are some differences regarding which words fall on to which page – it isn’t exact!
  • epub – Many features of the report were retained but like the text file it was not paginated and the footnotes were all at the end of the document. The formatting was partially retained – the images were there, but were not always placed in the same positions as in the original. For example on the title page, the logos were not aligned correctly. Similarly, the title on the front page was not central.
  • html – This was very similar to the epub file regarding what was and wasn’t retained. It included footnotes at the end and had the same issues with inconsistent formatting.

…but what about the comments?

My second test document was chosen so I could look specifically at the comments feature and how these were retained (or not) in the exported version.

  • docx – Comments are exported. On first inspection they appear to be anonymised, however this seems to be just how they are rendered in Microsoft Word. Having unzipped and dug into the actual docx file and looked at the XML file that holds the comments, it is clear that a more detailed level of information is retained – see images below. The placement of the comments is not always accurate. In one instance the reply to a comment is assigned to text within a subsequent row of the table rather than to the same row as the original comment.
  • odt –  Comments are included, are attributed to individuals and have a date and time. Again, matching up of comments with right section of text is not always accurate – in one instance a comment and it’s reply are linked to the table cell underneath the one that they referenced in the original document.
  • rtf – Comments are included but appear to be anonymised when displayed in MS Word…I haven’t dug around enough to establish whether or not this is just a rendering issue.
  • txt – Comments are retained but appear at the end of the document with a [a], [b] etc prefix – these letters appear in the main body text to show where the comments appeared. No information about who made the comment is preserved.
  • pdf – Comments not exported
  • epub – Comments not exported
  • html – Comments are present but appear at the end of the document with a code which also acts as a placeholder in the text where the comment appeared. References to the comments in the text are hyperlinks which take you to the right comment at the bottom of the document. There is no indication of who made the comment (not even hidden within the html tags).
A comment in original Google doc
The same comment in docx as rendered by MS Word
…but in the XML buried deep within the docx file structure – we do have attribution and date/time
(though clearly in a different time zone)

What about bulk export options?

Ed Pinsent pointed me to the Google Takeout Service which allows you to:

“Create an archive with your data from Google products”

[Google’s words not mine – and perhaps this is a good time to point you to Ed’s blog post on the meaning of the term ‘Archive‘]

This is really useful. It allows you to download Google Drive files in bulk and to select which formats you want to export them as.

I tested this a couple of times and was surprised to discover that if you select pdf or docx (and perhaps other formats that I didn’t test) as your export format of choice, the takeout service creates the file in the format requested and an html file which includes all comments within the document (even those that have been resolved). The content of the comments/responses including dates and times is all included within the html file, as are names of individuals.

The downside of the Google Takeout Service is that it only allows you to select folders and not individual files. There is another incentive for us to organise our files better! The other issue is that it will only export documents that you are the owner of – and you may not own everything that you want to archive!

What’s missing?

Quite a lot actually.

The owner, creation and last modified dates of a document in Google Drive are visible when you click on Document details… within the File menu. Obviously this is really useful information for the archive but is lost as soon as you download it into one of the available export formats.

Creation and last modified dates as visible in Document details

Update: I was pleased to see that if using the Google Takeout Service to bulk export files from Drive, the last modified dates are retained, however on single file export/download these dates are lost and the last modified date of the file becomes the date that you carried out the export. 

Part of the revidion history of my Google doc

But of course in a Google document there is more metadata. Similar to the ‘Page History’ that I mentioned when talking about preserving wiki pages, a Google document has a ‘Revision history’

Again, this *could* be useful to the archive. Perhaps not so much so for my document which I worked on by myself in March, but I could see more of a use case for mapping and recording the creative process of writing a novel for example. 

Having this revision history would also allow you to do some pretty cool stuff such as that described in this blog post: How I reverse engineered Google Docs to play back any documents Keystrokes (thanks to Nick Krabbenhoft for the link).

It would seem that the only obvious way to retain this information would be to keep the documents in their original native Google format within Google Drive but how much confidence do we have that it will be safe there for the long term?

Conclusions

If you want to preserve a Google Drive document there are several options but no one-size-fits-all solution.
As always it boils down to what the significant properties of the document are. What is it we are actually trying to preserve?

  • If we want a fairly accurate but non interactive digital ‘print’ of the document, pdf might be the most accurate representation though even the pdf export can’t be relied on to retain the exact pagination. Note that I didn’t try and validate the pdf files that I exported and sadly there is no pdf/a export option.
  • If comments are seen to be a key feature of the document then docx or odt will be a good option but again this is not perfect. With the test document I used, comments were not always linked to the correct point within the document.
  • If it is possible to get the owner of the files to export them, the Google Takeout Service could be used. Perhaps creating a pdf version of the static document along with a separate html file to capture the comments.

A key point to note is that all export options are imperfect so it would be important to check the exported document against the original to ensure it accurately retains the important features.

Another option would be simply keeping them in their native format but trying to get some level of control over them – taking ownership and managing sharing and edit permissions so that they can’t be changed. I’ve been speaking to one of our Google Drive experts in IT about the logistics of this. A Google Team Drive belonging to the Archives could be used to temporarily store and lock down Google documents of archival value whilst we wait and see what happens next. 

…I live in hope that export options will improve in the future.

This is a work in progress and I’d love to find out what others think.

* note, I’ve also been looking at Google Sheets and that may be the subject of another blog post

Archivematica Camp York: Some thoughts from the lake

Written by Jenny Mitcham, Digital Archivist with photographs courtesy of Paul Shields, University photographer

Originally posted to “Digital Archiving at the University of York”

Well, that was a busy week!

Yesterday was the last day of Archivematica Camp York – an event organised by Artefactual Systems and hosted here at the University of York. The camp’s intention was to provide a space for anyone interested in or currently using Archivematica to come together, learn about the platform from other users, and share their experiences. I think it succeeded in this, bringing together 30+ ‘campers’ from across the UK, Europe and as far afield as Brazil for three days of sessions covering different aspects of Archivematica.

Our pod on the lake (definitely a lake – not a pond!)

My main goal at camp was to ensure everyone found their way to the rooms (including the lakeside pod) and that we were suitably fuelled with coffee, popcorn and cake. Alongside these vital tasks I also managed to partake in the sessions, have a play with the new version of Archivematica (1.6) and learn a lot in the process.

I can’t possibly capture everything in this brief blog post so if you want to know more, have a look back at all the #AMCampYork tweets.

What I’ve focused on below are some of the recurring themes that came up over the three days.

Workflows

Archivematica is just one part of a bigger picture for institutions that are carrying out digital preservation, so it is always very helpful to see how others are implementing it and what systems they will be integrating with. A session on workflows in which participants were invited to talk about their own implementations was really interesting. 

Other sessions  also helped highlight the variety of different configurations and workflows that are possible using Archivematica. I hadn’t quite realised there were so many different ways you could carry out a transfer! 

In a session on specialised workflows, Sara Allain talked us through the different options. One workflow I hadn’t been aware of before was the ability to include checksums as part of your transfer. This sounds like something I need to take advantage of when I get Archivematica into production for the Borthwick. 

Justin talking about Automation Tools

A session on Automation Tools with Justin Simpson highlighted other possibilities – using Archivematica in a more automated fashion. 

We already have some experience of using Automation Tools at York as part of the work we carried out during phase 3 of Filling the Digital Preservation Gap, however I was struck by how many different ways these can be applied. Hearing examples from other institutions and for a variety of different use cases was really helpful.

Appraisal

The camp included a chance to play with Archivematica version 1.6 (which was only released a couple of weeks ago) as well as an introduction to the new Appraisal and Arrangement tab.

A session in progress at Archivematica Camp York

I’d been following this project with interest so it was great to be able to finally test out the new features (including the rather pleasing pie charts showing what file formats you have in your transfer). It was clear that there were a few improvements that could be made to the tab to make it more intuitive to use and to deal with things such as the ability to edit or delete tags, but it is certainly an interesting feature and one that I would like to explore more using some real data from our digital archive.

Throughout camp there was a fair bit of discussion around digital appraisal and at what point in your workflow this would be carried out. This was of particular interest to me being a topic I had recently raised with colleagues back at base.

The Bentley Historical Library who funded the work to create the new tab within Archivematica are clearly keen to get their digital archives into Archivematica as soon as possible and then carry out the work there after transfer. The addition of this new tab now makes this workflow possible.

Kirsty Lee from the University of Edinburgh described her own pre-ingest methodology and the tools she uses to help her appraise material before transfer to Archivematica. She talked about some tools (such as TreeSize Pro) that I’m really keen to follow up on.

At the moment I’m undecided about exactly where and how this appraisal work will be carried out at York, and in particular how this will work for hybrid collections so as always it is interesting to hear from others about what works for them.

Metadata and reporting

Evelyn admitting she loves PREMIS and METS

Evelyn McLellan from Artefactual led a ‘Metadata Deep Dive’ on day 2 and despite the title, this was actually a pretty interesting session!

We got into the details of METS and PREMIS and how they are implemented within Archivematica. Although I generally try not to look too closely at METS and PREMIS it was good to have them demystified. On the first day through a series of exercises we had been encouraged to look at a METS file created by Archivematica ourselves and try and pick out some information from it so these sessions in combination were really useful.

Across various sessions of the camp there was also a running discussion around reporting. Given that Archivematica stores such a detailed range of metadata in the METS file, how do we actually make use of this? Being able to report on how many AIPs have been created, how many files and what size is useful. These are statistics that I currently collect (manually) on a quarterly basis and share with colleagues. Once Archivematica is in place at York, digging further into those rich METS files to find out which file formats are in the digital archive would be really helpful for preservation planning (among other things). There was discussion about whether reporting should be a feature of Archivematica or a job that should be done outside Archivematica.

In relation to the later option – I described in one session how some of our phase 2 work of Filling the Digital Preservation Gap was designed to help expose metadata from Archivematica to a third party reporting system. The Jisc Research Data Shared Service was also mentioned in this context as reporting outside of Archivematica will need to be addressed as part of this project.

Community

As with most open source software, community is important. This was touched on throughout the camp and was the focus of the last session on the last day.

There was a discussion about the role of Artefactual Systems and the role of Archivematica users. Obviously we are all encouraged to engage and help sustain the project in whatever way we are able. This could be by sharing successes and failures (I was pleased that my blog got a mention here!), submitting code and bug reports, sponsoring new features (perhaps something listed on the development roadmap) or helping others by responding to queries on the mailing list. It doesn’t matter – just get involved!

I was also able to highlight the UK Archivematica group and talk about what we do and what we get out of it. As well as encouraging new members to the group, there was also discussion about the potential for forming other regional groups like this in other countries.

Evelyn admitting she loves PREMIS and METS

…and finally

Another real success for us at York was having the opportunity to get technical staff at York working with Artefactual to resolve some problems we had with getting our first Archivematica implementation into production. Real progress was made and I’m hoping we can finally start using Archivematica for real at the end of next month.

So, that was Archivematica Camp!

A big thanks to all who came to York and to Artefactual for organising the programme. As promised, the sun shined and there were ducks on the lake – what more could you ask for?

Strike in the Chapter House: Archbishop Neville and the Canons of Beverley

Written by Gary Brannan, Access Archivist

The Registers of the Archbishops of York contain a great many interesting stories – but few more dramatic than the story of what has been described as the ‘most notorious clerical strike in medieval English history’ – Archbishop Neville’s feud with the Chapter of Beverley Minster in 1381 from Register 13, f 77r -92v. 

Here, Gary Brannan, our Access Archivist, takes us through this fascinating period – a dispute that eventually resulted in deep divisions between clergy, church and state.

For stories from this (and other) Archbishops’ Registers, see http://archbishopsregisters.york.ac.uk

It is the 2nd March, 1381.

A messenger arrives at the heavy doors of the Chapter House of Beverley Minster. He has come the short distance from the Archbishop’s Manor in Beverley to bring the news that the Archbishop of York – Alexander Neville (c.1332-1392) – intended to visit the Chapter House of Beverley to undertake a Visitation of the Chapter, sometime around Lady Day (25th March). The Canons – and other clergy – were ordered to appear in person. The Archbishop had been busy in this regard, and had already appointed Roger de Pickering as his judicial assessor, and John Stane of Beverley – now at the door with the order – as his official runner and messenger.

To say that this, relatively normal, procedure caused outrage amongst the Chapter understates things greatly. By the 20th of March, an official appeal had been sent to his Holiness Pope Urban VI appealing this jurisdiction. In the appeal, the Chapter set out their many rights and privileges that they said existed over the Archbishop. For 60 years or more, they argued, they had run and governed themselves, and had managed their own issues of discipline and correction and that, anyway, they were all good natured and peaceful men, undertaking their duties lawfully, and that the Archbishop knew this, too. They feared, they said, the Archbishop’s’ use of his power, and that the Archbishop’s’ argument that he had a seat in the Chapter may be true, but that he had no official power such as a vote there. 

The Chapter threw themselves on the mercy of the Papal Court, desperate not to be subject to the Archbishop. The Archbishop was, as one could expect, having precisely none of this, and the footnotes and annotations by the Archbishop give a very rare insight into the fury of a prelate scorned. In a section describing the past use of rights in the church, the Archbishop writes ‘Careful! This story is false!’. 

‘Careful, this story is false!’

Just on the opposite side of the page, next to a section explaining that the Archbishop had usually been absent from Beverley and never laid claim to a Canonry there, the Archbishop furiously responds “And wrongly – consequently, this Archbishop will purge the negligence of his predecessors’.

‘And wrongly, consequently, this Archbishop will purge the negligence of his predecessors’

In an appeal from Richard Ravenser, Archdeacon of Lincoln and Canon of Beverley, he notes a sarcastic ‘Show your authority’. Later, when explaining how the Archbishop was a mortal enemy of his, the Archbishop writes ‘ Yet your messenger came to the Archbishop with this writing and the archbishop asked him to dinner as he would have invited you if you had come’. Others complained of the many occasions the Archbishop had exceeded his authority – going to the place behind the altar, once citing the executors of Richard Kylling to appear; the same with the executors of Robert of Beverley; and wickedly made Margery, wife of Adam Cook of Beverley purge herself for her wicked crimes.

‘Yet your messenger came to the Archbishop with this writing and
the Archbishop asked him to dinner as he would have invited you if you had come’

The notices of visitation were affixed to the seat of the Chapter House on the 26th March (the day after Lady Day). The names of 47 priests were cited to be present- but only 3 appeared. When asked where the rest were, he was told they were outsude, but were scared to appear because of the Canons of the Minster, and so they left. The Archbishop angrily demanded their return. The day after, only another four appeared. Now furious, the Archbishop demanded to know why they should not all be excommunicated. 

By now, it was the 5th April, and only another four vicars had appeared, the rest having left. They were summarily excommunicated. But now, who could undertake services? The Archbishop went to Matins – the evening service – on the 8th April, and was so saddened at the fact that the lack of priests meant there could basically be no adequate service, he called for priests trained in serving and chanting to be urgently sent from York to take services in place of the excommunicated priests.

Register 13, showing the Beverley visitation

And at this point – it got serious.

On the 21st April, letters were received from the King, Richard II. In these, he delicately explained that, actually, Beverley’s independence came from the time of his ancestor, King Athelstan. Under pressure to appeal to Rome but worried that this would ‘take more money out of the Kingdom’, the Archbishop was commanded to appear before the King before St George’s day to settle the matter. The matter was settled on the 11th May – with a slight whimper as it was found the Archbishops’ Counsel did not have the full authority to represent him, the visitation was therefore ordered to be formally suspended.

The Archbishop was outraged – he notes in the margin that ‘It is not the business of the temporal to interfere with the spiritual court’ and that ‘the request is not just and is therefore not granted’.

‘the request is not just and is therefore not granted’

In this, the Canons of Beverley had won a significant battle with York over their independence. Beverley was not visited again as a result, though the Archbishop kept a Manor close by, just in case, and was able to visit the other churches in Beverley – all while the Canons no doubt kept a close eye on his comings and goings.

For Neville, the feud with Beverley was a marker of his obsession with local clerical issues, and also a sign of how his strategic decision making with marr his future. Neville became closely involved with the inner retinue of Richard II. Caught in the maelstrom of Richard’s downfall, Neville found himself charged with treason in 1388 after being caught off Tynemouth while attempting a clandestine crossing of the North Sea. Spared execution, he finished his days in Leuven in the Netherlands as a lowly parish priest in 1392.

References

BIA, YDA/Abp Reg 13, available via <http://archbishopsregisters.york.ac.uk>, accessed 29/03/17

‘Memorials of Beverley Minster: The Chapter Act Book of the Collegiate Church of St. John of Beverley’, A F Leach, Surtees Society Vol 108 (1903)

‘Alexander Neville’, Dictionary of National Biography <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19922>, accessed 29/03/17

Image: ‘Beverley Minster’ Steve Cadman, CC-BY-NC-SA, <https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevecadman/7171749305>, accessed 29/03/17

5 Things: The St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel, York

Written by Sally-Anne Shearn, Genesis Project Archivist

Recently I added the archive of the Unitarian Chapel on St Saviourgate, York, to our online catalogue Borthcat.  I knew next to nothing about the chapel or the archive when I began, not even that it was the oldest surviving non-conformist place of worship in the city, dating to 1693! I expected to find administrative and financial records, perhaps some publications and ephemera collected over the chapel’s long history, but instead I found a wonderfully rich archive that reveals as much about the private lives of its congregation as it does the working life of the chapel. 

The following are five items (out of hundreds) that I have selected to demonstrate the wealth of interesting and unusual items that can be found in the archives of local institutions.

1. Pardon of Christopher Brooke of Lincoln’s Inn, 1626.

One of the earliest items in the archive is this grant of pardon made by King Charles I to Christopher Brooke of Lincoln’s Inn, one of the London Inns of Court.  It is a grant of general pardon, covering everything from murder and insurrection to theft, and it has a large Royal Seal attached displaying the enthroned King on one side and the King on horseback on the other.  

UCSS/5/19
UCSS/5/19

It’s not clear from the document itself why Brooke should need such a blanket exemption, or indeed who exactly Brooke is.  Speculation in the office that he was a seventeenth century spy sadly proved unfounded.  A more likely bet is that he was the son of Robert Brooke, a merchant and alderman of York in the late sixteenth century.  Christopher was his eldest son and was educated at Cambridge before becoming a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn in 1610.  In 1626 he returned to York to take up the post of Justice of the Council of the North and it is probable that he was granted the pardon to ensure his clean criminal record before taking public office, and not for any nefarious reasons.

2. An Account of Mr Driffield’s Household Furniture, 1791

This small book is from a cache of papers in the archive labelled ‘Driffield and Bielby’, and named for two local Unitarian mercantile families who entered into a business partnership in the late eighteenth century.  Again it is unclear how their papers, which include business accounts, property papers and plans, came to be in the archive but this particular item offers a fascinating glimpse into the layout and contents of what must have been a comfortably situated eighteenth century house and shop.  Compiled by a Thomas Hardisty of Castlegate, York, the account most closely resembles the inventory often found with probate documents.  However a search of the probate indexes here at the Borthwick has found no Driffield wills registered around 1791 and certainly the Driffield most closely connected to St Saviourgate Chapel, merchant Robert Driffield of Mount House who has a handsome memorial on the chapel wall, did not die until 1816.

UCSS/9

The account shows us that Mr Driffield had 14 rooms in his house, including his ‘shop’.  The rooms included six bedrooms, all with feather beds, hangings, dressing tables and looking glasses.  Some had additional chests of drawers, desks and washstands in mahogany and oak.  One had a ‘glass Fearne and glass’, another a ‘picture.’  Downstairs he had a dining room with ‘Scotch carpits’, a ‘Mahogany Tea Table’ and six chairs.  The room adjoining contained his ‘oak dining table’ and all his tableware.  The account lists cups, saucers, coffee mugs, three tea pots, ‘blue China plates’, decanters and glasses.  He had both a large and small kitchen filled with pots, pans, kettles and ‘toasting prickers’. Finally his parlour with its mahogany table, oak desk, chairs, stool, ‘Hair seat’ and tea chest, as well as a bird cage, ‘4 Pictures’ and ‘carpits.’  The total value came to £110, with a further £23 and 4 shillings added from the value of fixtures and fittings in his shop.

3. Laws of a Book Society established at York, 1795.

The archive includes another small cache of books and papers, this time belonging to the Wellbeloved family.  Their connection to the St Saviourgate Chapel is an obvious one, Charles Wellbeloved had come to York in 1792 as assistant to the chapel’s minister Newcome Cappe.  He succeeded to the ministry at Cappe’s death in 1800 and was a prominent York figure, active in reformist and antiquarian circles for the rest of his life.  

UCSS/10/1

Just one of the many clubs and societies he played a part in was the York Book Society, established in 1794 as a circulating subscription library.   The society initially met at Reverend Wellbeloved’s home.  It was later reconstituted as the Subscription Library Society and from 1812 it had its own premises on the corner of Lendal and St Helen’s Square.   The early ‘Laws’ of the society kept by Wellbeloved show that subscription was one guinea a year, with an additional sixpence charged for missing the monthly society meeting.  Books were to be borrowed first by the member who suggested it, and then passed on to other members in order of seniority.  

The library at that time comprised 35 titles, although this had risen to 140 by 1799 and included such titles as the ‘Life of the Empress of Russia’, ‘Miss Williams’ Tour in Switzerland’ and ‘Bishop Watson’s Apology for the Bible.’

UCSS/10/5

4. Journal of travels on the continent, 1819

Whilst these family papers showcase the involvement of Charles Wellbeloved in York civic life, the majority of items in this small cache are actually by his son, John, including lecture notes, poems and a journal detailing his all too short trip to Europe in the summer of 1819, when he was 21 years old.    

John Wellbeloved was the second son and the one expected to follow his father into the ministry.  He had studied divinity at Manchester College, winning the prize for Greek composition, and the poems he wrote there are a reminder that student life has not changed as much as we may think.  In his poem ‘In Praise of Coffee’ he writes of long hours studying and the reviving effects of his favourite drink,

When late at night we weary trudge,
In learning’s thorny way.
Our strength and spirits will revive,
And all our pains allay.

His father wished for him to become more fluent in German and so in July 1819 he left for the continent with a friend of his father’s, Dr John Kenrick.  In spite of the ‘villanous coffee’ he had to drink in Germany, his journal gives a lively account of the trip, describing the beauty of the countryside and addressing remarks to his family at home who would read it upon his return.  On one evening,

‘Being encouraged by the ladies I ventured to make an attempt at a Waltz with Miss Acherbach.  And now Anne [his younger sister], you must not think a Waltz in Germany the horrible thing which it is thought to be in England.  The ladies here stand up as naturally to a Waltz as they do in England to a country dance & nothing more is thought of it.’

John and Kenrick had planned to spend the winter in Göttingen but tragically it was not to be.  At the end of September, the pair were at Homburg, near Frankfurt, when John became ill with typhus.  He died within the fortnight and was buried in the cemetery of the Reformed Church there.  A college friend described him as ‘gifted by nature with superior talents’ whilst possessing ‘a thoroughly warm, benevolent and guileless heart.’  Years later, Kenrick wrote that his parents never recovered from his loss.

5.  ‘Reflections on the Public Ministry of Christ deduced from the Records of the Four Evangelists’ by Catharine Cappe, 1821

This is the only book in the archive authored by Catharine Cappe alone, yet Catharine looms large in the history of St Saviourgate Chapel and indeed in the cause of Unitarianism and York life in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.  The daughter of Jeremiah Harrison, the incumbent of Long Preston and Skipton, and later of Catterick, Catharine converted to Unitarianism as an adult.  In the eighteenth century Unitarianism was considered as a radical form of dissent from Anglican orthodoxy.  Catharine argued that philanthropy was a way of countering negative views of the movement and encouraged women to take an active role in public life, as she herself did following her move to York in 1782.  She set up a spinning school for girls with her friend, Mrs Gray, that same year, and went on to reorganise the city’s Grey Coat School for Girls from 1785.  In 1788 she set up a female Friendly Society to provide financial support to women in times of hardship.  

UCSS/3/6

In 1788 she also became the second wife of Newcome Cappe, the minister of St Saviourgate between 1755 and 1800.   During their marriage Catharine assisted her husband with his ministry, transcribing his earlier religious writings and taking dictation of his new sermons.  After his death in 1800 she edited her husband’s work into a number of publications, including ‘Discourses chiefly on Devotional Subjects’ in 1805 and ‘Discourses Chiefly on Practical Subjects’ in 1815.  She was also an important benefactor to the Yorkshire Romantic poet Charlotte Richardson, arranging for her first book of verse to be published by subscription in 1806.

On her own account, Catharine published at least three books.  Her ‘Account of Two Charity Schools for the Education of Girls’ was printed in 1800, and her autobiography ‘Memoirs of the Life of Mrs Catherine Cappe’ and ‘Reflections on the Public Ministry of Christ deduced from the Records of the Four Evangelists’ were both published after her death in July 1821.

If you would like to read more about the St Saviourgate Chapel Archive, you can view the catalogue online, or visit the chapel’s own website.

Spotlight on the Retreat Archive: Pianos at the Retreat

Written by Jenny Mitcham, Digital Archivist

This is the third in a series of blog posts celebrating The Retreat Archive and our digitisation project as it nears completion. The Retreat is one of the most important institutions in the care and treatment of mental health patients. Over the last two and half years, staff at the Borthwick have been working through the archive, preparing the documents for digitisation, carrying out conservation treatments where appropriate and photographing each item page by page.

This has been a huge task. Over 600,000 images have been created so far and the focus has been on handling each item with care and capturing a high quality image efficiently and effectively. Of course there have been many items that have caught our eye along the way. In this series of blog posts project staff pick out some of the interesting items that they have encountered.

My input into the Retreat digitisation project has not been very hands-on. I haven’t been conserving the archive, digitising the documents or updating the catalogue. For the most part, I haven’t had cause to interact with the archive at all. My focus has been on facilitating the smooth running of the project, keeping an eye on the budget, arranging meetings and writing progress reports.

I’ve always been pleased when some of the more ‘challenging’ items (from a digitisation or conservation perspective) get brought into our project meetings so we can make decisions about how to proceed. This is normally the closest I get to actually seeing the material that we are working with! This does make it harder for me to pick out an item to blog about when I haven’t actually seen many items.

However, there was one occasion last year when I had to go down to the strongroom to collect an audio tape from one of the boxes that was going to be sent out to a contractor for digitisation as part of this project. Whilst looking in the box to try to find accompanying information for the audio a file entitled ‘Pianos’ (RET/1/5/5/7/22) caught my eye.

As a keen piano player myself I was immediately interested in what this file might contain.

It covers the period 1924 to 1945 and includes letters about repair or purchase of pianos, lists of pianos at the Retreat (they had more than you might expect) as well as a fairly ambitious piano-tuning schedule. You can browse this whole file online through the Wellcome Library catalogue so do have a look.

Looking through this file was an interesting little glimpse into one of the lighter elements of life at the Retreat. At first I was surprised by just how many pianos they had. In 1924 they list eight pianos but at the latest mention (in 1945) they appear to have sixteen. No wonder they needed to maintain detailed lists and tuning schedules.

Much of the file relates to piano tuning. Lists stating that “Twelve of the following piano’s to be tuned each quarter” show which of the many pianos were tuned on which date. This rigorous schedule was pretty much adhered to. My (fairly well used) piano is only tuned once a year so I was struck by how regularly they tuned them. They clearly were an important part of life at the Retreat for both patients and staff and consequently needed to be looked after well.

Of course, some pianos did reach the end of their useful life in this period. The earliest item of correspondence in the file, a letter from John Gray and Sons, ‘pianoforte, gramophone and organ specialists’ on Coney Street, York, in 1924 stated that “Our representative called to tune the piano in the attendants sittingroom of the Retreat yesterday and found it in a very bad condition. He patched it up as best as he was able but he reports it is really a waste of money to have anything more done to it and it would be more satisfactory if it was replaced by a new one.”

Typescript letter from John Gray & Sons regarding the tuning of the piano in the attendants sittingroom of the Retreat
RET/1/5/5/7/22

The Retreat reply with “We will consider the question of the renewal of the piano in the Attendants’ sitting room, but I hardly think we shall be prepared to buy a new one at the moment”.

Letter of reply to John Gray & Sons from staff at the Retreat
RET/1/5/5/7/22

In 1935 a report on Retreat pianos noted that “The pianos in the Attendants’ Quarters and the “Secretaries’ Dining Room” are very poor indeed.” I wonder if this was still the same piano as had been discussed in 1924?

Typescript page from 1935 report on the condition of the Retreat pianos.
RET/1/5/5/7/22

Much of the correspondence within the file concerns the purchase and relocation of an Allison grand piano from Darlington to the recreation room of the Retreat in the 1930’s for the sum of £50. This took some time to arrange (over two years) but was clearly seen as something that was worth holding out for. Writing to the Retreat in March 1933, a letter from Darlington states:

“I have played on the Allison Piano belonging to Mrs Dresser this afternoon and think it is a good one. The tone is full, the touch sympathetic, and except for being rather out of tune because it has not been played on lately, the piano is in excellent condition.

“It might be possible to get a piano for less than £80 in a sale room, but it would be difficult to find one quite so good as this with certainty.”

Manuscript letter regarding the Allison piano, dated 20 March 1933.
RET/1/5/5/7/22

So who used all of these pianos at the Retreat? We can find out a bit about this through other elements of the archive. A quick search of the online catalogue locates several photographs of staff playing the piano at the Retreat. The earliest being this faded and carefully posed photograph of the sitting room of the nurses home in the early 20th century.

Sepia photograph of 2 female nurses seated and 1 standing in front of a piano in a sitting room.
RET/1/8/5/6/2

Another image of nurses in the sitting room of the second nurses home (RET/1/8/5/6/3) dates to the period covered by the pianos file and a later set of images (RET/1/8/5/8) taken in this same room, this time from the 1950’s, are less formal and shows a group of nurses singing round the piano. You can even zoom into the image to see what music they are playing!

Black and white photograph of 1 female nurse seated at a piano and 3 other nurses seated nearby in the sitting room.
RET/1/8/5/6/3
Black and white photograph of 3 female nurses gathered round a piano and 1 nurse seated and playing from sheet music.
RET/1/8/5/8

We also know that pianos at the Retreat were played by patients. Looking at the list of rooms in which the pianos were stationed, some were clearly placed in areas where patients could access them. It is known that some patients also had their own private pianos that they brought with them to the Retreat. For example our catalogue entry for an oil painting by George Isaac Sidebottom (who was a patient at the Retreat from the 1890’s) mentions the fact that he acquired a piano for his room (RET/2/1/7/5).

And coming full circle, the audiotape that first led to me encountering this file about pianos at the Retreat itself provides further evidence of how they were used. It is a recording of a staff revue ‘Sunny Side Up’  held at the Retreat on the 6th August 1960 to raise money for The Retreat Appeal (RET/1/5/5/7/27). Accompanying the singing is (I believe) a piano. Perhaps this is the Allison grand piano that came from Darlington in 1935? You can listen to the audio in full through the Borthwick Catalogue.

Printed page from a programme titled 'The Retreat Staff present their Revue 'Sunny Side Up' in aid of the Retreat Appeal.
RET/1/5/5/7/27

But apparently it wasn’t always this way. In the early nineteenth century the Quaker attitude towards amusements was different. Activities such as playing cards, music and dancing, theatre going and even the reading of novels were frowned upon. As the century progressed attitudes relaxed and the Retreat archive reflects this. Harold Capper Hunt a Steward of the Retreat wrote in his book ‘A Retired Habitation’ in 1932 that “When Dr. Kitching handed over the reins to Dr. Baker he expressed the hope that his successor might be able to add to the number of pianos in the Institution. It was a sign of the times. The ancient Quaker prejudice against music was beginning to give way …” Dr. Baker was Medical Superintendent from 1874 to 1892 so this is several years before the file we are looking at, but it is interesting to see the early signs of this move towards a more relaxed attitude towards music.

We can no doubt find out lots more about pianos at the Retreat by going into other areas of the archive in more depth – for example other administrative or correspondence files, or the section of the archive that specifically relates to entertainments (RET/1/5/5/7). The archive is now available online so do explore it and see what else you can discover.

Today at the Retreat pianos are still present. Of course there are not as many as there were in the 1930’s and 40’s – perhaps inevitable as more modern forms of entertainment have taken over. However I am told there are still 5 pianos at the Retreat (and another in their unit at Strensall). They continue to be tuned – but on the slightly less ambitious schedule of approximately once a year! Today at The Retreat there is music therapy, music groups and a choir. Last year they also arranged their own pianathon – non-stop piano playing throughout the day! I was really pleased to hear that music is still such an important part of life at the Retreat.

More information about the Wellcome Library funded project to digitise the Retreat archive can be found on our website. Digital surrogates from the Retreat archive project are available via the Wellcome Library.

Halfway there… Conservation cleaning of the Atkinson Brierley Archive

Written by Tracy Wilcockson, Conservation Volunteering Co-ordinator

As the program of work to clean the Atkinson Brierley Architectural Archive reaches its milestone of 50% completion – that is a staggering 3167 plans cleaned – we thought that it would be worth looking back over the past five years, to consider the significant achievements and beneficial impact of the volunteer program.

Coloured architectural drawing of St Mary Bishophill Senior church
St. Mary Bishophill Senior (1872), ATKB/6/85

The original project was funded by the Shepherds Trust in 2011. Its aim was to grant a conservator the opportunity to treat the fragmented tracing papers that make up the most vulnerable plans in the archive and to establish a volunteer group in 2012 to surface clean the remaining 6334 plans not undergoing conservation in the Studio. The interventive conservation work paused in 2015, but we have been lucky enough to retain the volunteer program and from April 2017 it will be entering its fifth year.

Photograph of a woman cleaning a large architectural plan with a smoke sponge
One of our volunteers cleaning a plan

As professionals in conservation and archives know, it can often take years of small incremental steps to achieve vast programs of work. When considering the cleaning of the Atkinson Brierley Archive with its 6334 architectural plans, this is especially true. It was, and still remains, a monumental task for any conservation department to face. It was therefore decided to set up a volunteer project that would not only benefit the archive but would also have a greater community benefit to achieve this task.

From 2012 the recruitment process began and the project has since welcomed volunteers from a diverse background, each with a different motivation for volunteering on the project. Some have chosen to volunteer for the social element of the group dynamic, or they want to give back to the archive and/or the community; others are keen to interact with the archive material in a unique way or wish to develop new skill and experience in the field of conservation.

The sessions are rarely dull, as each new plan can throw up new interesting avenues for investigation and conservation challenges. The buildings the plans pertain to and equally the method of conservation needed to care for the physical material often provide easy focal points for discussion. As many of our volunteers are interested in pursuing or have had careers or long term interest in archives, art history, architectural history, archaeology, conservation and heritage, it has led to some interesting debates.

Photograph of a partially cleaned architectural plan of Wistow Church
A partially cleaned plan of Wistow Church, ATKB/6/85

The architectural plans date from the 19th century through to the 1950s and consist of a number of different papers with media comprising pencil, pen, watercolour and photographic chemicals. The condition of the archive is varied and many plans have previously been subjected to fluctuating environmental conditions, alongside poor handling and storage leading to different levels of damage and vulnerability. Over 98% of the plans appear to be covered in layers of dirt and atmospheric pollution from their time in storage. These pollutants can increase the speed of deterioration of the paper and in places obscure interpretation of the plans. Removing these deposits through conservation cleaning is a key requirement for the long-term preservation of the archive. Each plan is assessed before cleaning and in many cases, selective cleaning is applied due to fragile media such as pencil marks or degraded substrates.   

Photograph of sketches of wood carvings resembling monkeys from Sherburn Church
Details of woodcarvings from Sherburn church, ATKB/6/98

The volunteers’ time at the Borthwick comprises building skills, knowledge and experience to deal with these challenges. Training is undertaken on the handling of architectural plans, technical skill in conservation cleaning and the condition checking of the paper and media. The volunteers also spend time focusing and discussing the ethics behind conservation cleaning, when we might clean and when we might abstain and how we, as conservation professionals, work to know the difference.

The Borthwick has been fortunate to have a wonderfully engaged, inquisitive and dedicated group of volunteers during the project. Over that time we have seen over 20 volunteers come and go and we now have a core team of 10 volunteers attending regular weekly sessions for up to two hours a week. They have made a very real and positive long-term impact on the archive and I have felt privileged to be able to work with such a devoted group of people and look forward to seeing the 50% completion develop into 100.

Photograph of a floorplan of County Hall, Northallerton with a dark line of soot on the left hand side and two of the corners bent
County Hall, Northallerton, ATKB/7/4A before cleaning
Photograph of the previous plan after cleaning showing a brighter surface without soot stains and flattened corners.
County Hall, Northallerton, ATKB/7/4A after cleaning

For further information please visit the Atkinson Brierley archive Project pages. 

Spotlight on the Retreat Archive: A splendid time is guaranteed for all!

Written by David Pilcher, Retreat Digitisation Assistant

This is the second in a series of blog posts celebrating the Retreat archive and our digitisation project as it nears completion. The Retreat is one of the most important institutions in the care and treatment of mental health patients. Over the last two and half years, staff at the Borthwick have been working through the archive, preparing the documents for digitisation, carrying out conservation treatments where appropriate and photographing each item page by page.

This has been a huge task. Over 600,000 images have been created so far and the focus has been on handling each item with care and capturing a high quality image efficiently and effectively. Of course there have been many items that have caught our eye along the way. In this series of blog posts project staff pick out some of the interesting items that they have encountered.

Here David Pilcher introduces The Kirks.

It would be true to say that the Retreat archive contains a lot more than mental health records, correspondence and monthly accounts. Folders can be found that include artwork and poetry, landscaping and planting details in the gardens, various sporting activities, in fact a whole plethora of subjects.

One of the cornerstones of the Retreat’s care of the mentally ill was to provide educating and stimulating entertainments which were enjoyed in a shared environment by patients and staff alike and, by the beginning of the twentieth century, most calendar months had a programme of entertainment events ranging from lectures, puppet theatre, magic lantern shows, musical evenings and variety acts. Over time the information and correspondence collected for reference by the Retreat on these mainly travelling acts grew to a considerable amount and in itself has become a valuable potential resource for anyone looking at the history of variety and light entertainment.

Due to considerations of space here it would be impossible to write about all the many acts that aspired to make a living by travelling the length and breadth of the country with their often amusing and eccentric shows so I have chosen one such act to try and put across a flavour of what was on offer during the first half of the twentieth century.

I present, for your delectation and enjoyment ………… The Kirks!  

Page from brochure showing Madam Wingate Kirk blindfolded and M. Wingate Kirk in evening dress reading from a card. The heading says 'Two minds with but a single thought'.
Publicity photo of The Kirks circa. 1924-28 (Ref: RET/1/5/5/7/9)

The Kirks were a double act comprised of Mr. M Wingate Kirk and his wife, who was referred to by her stage name of Madame. Both of them hailed from Scotland. Mr. Kirk performed the majority of the show combining such skills as magic and conjuring, illusions and even some ventriloquism using a kilt clad dummy called, at various times, either “Brown” or “Scottie”.   He had devised several sketches for himself and the dummy, one curiously entitled “A Cigarette and a Kiss”, possibly not the best of combinations by anyone’s standards!       

Madame usually made her appearance after the interval when the couple attempted a routine called “ Transference of Thought” sometimes named “Two Minds with but a Single Thought”. She was seated and blindfolded while her husband moved around the stage with items given to him by members of the audience which then Madame immediately and correctly described without any word spoken by her partner! Coins were named and even dated, rings were identified by size and colour and she would continue to amaze despite some of the articles being wrapped before presentation. It was, as the publicity material announced, A Baffling Exhibition of Instantaneous Telepathy!

The Kirks did their show at the Retreat on Friday, 24th November 1922, and for a show lasting 90 minutes were paid four guineas.  (Ref: RET/1/5/5/7/4)  

It also has to be noted that earlier in that year the same show was performed for HRH Prince Henry and the repertoire included The Cake in the Hat and My Stick.

The Retreat records reveal that the duo were booked several times during the years that followed and were obviously very reliable in providing quality entertainment for all.

In 1928 M. Wingate Kirk notified the Retreat that he would be in the area around October and would the Retreat like his services once more? The reply from the Retreat is strangely obscure in part 

“if you can assure us that your programme will be somewhat changed from what you gave us two years ago we are willing to book you”. (Ref: RET/1/5/5/7/9)

Kirk wrote back with that assurance and suggested he include The Living Marionettes (new for the 1928-29 season!) and also “all the latest novelties which are suitably adapted to Hospital Entertainments”.

Photograph of letter from The Kirks to The Retreat dated 1928 confirming the date of their engagement and promising a programme with 'the living marionettes'
RET/1/5/5/7/9

The Kirks performed once more at the Retreat on Tuesday, 2nd October 1928 and as well as the aforementioned Living Marionettes the act included The Library Problem (?) and The Organ Pipes. The show was traditionally closed with a stirring rendition of God save the King.

The last recorded mention I have been able to trace of the Kirks is towards the end of 1946 when M. Wingate Kirk sent the Retreat his latest programme with an accompanying letter asking about possible dates.

Photograph of letter from M. Wingate Kirk dated 1946 offering dates for shows in January.
RET/1/5/5/7/15

The ventriloquist’s dummy now went under the name of Sandy and the tricks and sketches included The Plume Illusion and the bizarrely titled A Seaside Experience (Pulling a Lady through a Keyhole). Sadly there was no mention of his wife or Madame in either the publicity or the related correspondence so one does wonder if she had passed away by then and Mr. Kirk was bravely soldiering on with the act. Interestingly the headed notepaper used at that time just names M. Wingate Kirk. (Ref: RET/1/5/5/7/15)

Front page of souvenir programme with a photograph of M. Wingate Kirk 'the famous entertainer'
Photograph of inside of souvenir programme listing the various acts, including the horoscope mystery, the glass frame, and the plume illusion.

To conclude this particular thread The Retreat in their reply thanked Mr. Kirk for his offer of entertainment but unfortunately was unable to secure him a fixture at the present time.

Obviously, as the years rolled on, variety acts in general were on the decline mainly due to the rising popularity of the cinema and then later, television. The Retreat had already acquired a cine projector and were hiring major titles for the entertainment of their residents so to coin a phrase …“variety was (unfortunately) dead”.  

In some ways the Kirks were unique in the style of entertainment that they provided. The material was accessible to children and also suited to an adult audience while the content was deemed to be “safe” for the residents of mental hospitals, of which they included many in their nationwide tours.

Never vulgar or crude in their delivery but possibly with a jocular element of cheek they amused and amazed audiences over almost three decades and certainly had a shared passion in their wonderful gift to entertain.   

More information about the Wellcome Library funded project to digitise the Retreat archive can be found on the project pages of our website. Digital surrogates from the Retreat archive project are available via the Wellcome Library.

Spotlight on the Retreat Archive: A Window on the 19th Century Pharmacist

Written by Jane Rowling, Retreat Digitisation Assistant

This is the first in a series of blog posts celebrating the Retreat digitisation project as it nears completion. Over the last two and half years, staff at the Borthwick have been working through the Retreat archive, updating the catalogue, preparing the documents for digitisation, carrying out conservation treatments where appropriate and photographing each item page by page. This has been a huge task. Over 600,000 images have been created so far and the focus has been on handling each item with care and capturing a high quality image in the most time efficient and effective way we could. Of course there have been many items that have caught our eye along the way. In this series of blog posts project staff pick out some of the interesting items that they have encountered. This first post introduces the Papers Relating to Alfred Jones from 1880 (RET 6/19/1/85A). 

As a Victorian, where could you turn to find information on curing a nosebleed, making medicines for dogs, entertaining your children, restoring your hair, polishing soldiers’ buttons, concocting salad dressings, soothing a black eye, extracting teeth, and building a cheap aquarium? Your first port of call would probably have been your local pharmacist. One volume in the Archives of The Retreat offers a fascinating insight into the world of the Victorian pharmacist, and his customers. This volume, Medical and Domestic Formulae by a Pharmaceutical Chemist, is a notebook handwritten by a Retreat patient, Alfred Jones, and dedicated to the Medical Superintendent Dr Baker.

Photograph of the front cover of Alfred Jones' book labelled 'Medical and Domestic Formulae'
RET/6/19/1/85A

Mr Jones clearly felt an affinity with Dr Baker, inscribing the first page of of his book with the words “Experientia Docet” – meaning ‘experience teaches’ – and:

‘Poets are born – not made And so are true Physicians.’ 

These lines express a sense of a shared calling and a certain kind of equality between patient and doctor. The book also serves to show the pride a Pharmaceutical Chemist might take in his work and status in the late nineteenth century.

Photograph of title page of Alfred Jones' book headed 'Tried and Reliable Remedies & Family Recipes etc, The result of 22 years Experience in Chemistry, Pharmacy & Domestic Medicine'
The title page of Alfred Jones’ volume

Until 1842, chemists and druggists did not have to have a formal qualification. Anyone with sufficient funds could set up a shop and sell potentially lethal concoctions of drugs. Accidents with mis-sold or wrongly made-up medicines gave the profession a bad name, leading to the formation of a group of pharmacists who wanted to protect their trade. Jacob Bell, the son of a Quaker pharmacist, quickly emerged as the spokesman for this group. Their greatest successes were the granting of the Royal Charter of Incorporation to the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in 1843, and the 1868 Pharmacy Act, which meant that anyone making up medicines had to have taken the Society’s examination, and had to be registered with the Society. For pharmacists like Alfred Jones, registration with the Society was a mark of status as a trusted individual within a local community, and as a privileged member of a wider medical community which would also include the Medical Superintendent of a Mental Hospital like The Retreat. Thus he writes that his book contains:

‘Tried and Reliable Remedies & Family Recipes Etc. in Chemistry Pharmacy & Domestic Medicine & Veterinary Practise by a Registered Chemist by Examinations (classical & technical) of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain’ 

Alfred Jones’ notebook gives us an overview of the kinds of products people required from a pharmacist in the later nineteenth century, and how dangerous some of them might have been! A ‘Carmmative for Infants’ included a large dose of laudanum, while a ‘Mixture for Excited Brain’ (recommended for children as well as adults) contained bromide and chloral hydrate, a sedative. Just as unappealing is an ‘Indigestion Mixture’ containing dilute nitro hydrochloric acid – a substance which can be highly corrosive if not sufficiently diluted.

Handwritten recipes for a mixture for 'Excited Brain' and another for indigestion
A mixture for ‘Excited Brain’ and another for indigestion

Another page recommends “Chloroform just short of anasthesia [sic] is best treatment of Hydrophobia” in cases of diseases such as rabies. This would be another risky procedure, but probably safer than the alternative, which was to perform a tracheotomy. The Victorian pharmacist walked a fine line indeed!

Some of the less harmful recipes in the book give us an insight into the realities of life beyond the pharmacist’s shop, for example:

‘The Herb called Solomon’s Seal is a reputed cure for Black Eye Geber saith: “It removeth any black or blew spots which occurreth to any woman on falling on her hastie husband’s fists.”

Handwritten recipes for Arnica Lotion, Solomon's Seal, and a recipe 'For a Black Eye'
Treatments for bruises and a black eye

In the nineteenth century, the local pharmacist would also provide cures and tonics for animals, reflecting a world in which working animals were a much greater part of the general public’s everyday lives than they are today. Alfred Jones offers recipes for a ‘Cleansing Drink for Newly Calved Cow,’ consisting of juniper berries, sulphur, aniseed, ginger, cumin seeds, Glaubers salt (sodium sulphate – used as a laxative in crystal form), and Epsom salts. He notes that, ‘some add 1/2 pt Linseed Oil. A different page gives ‘Alterative and Restorative Powder for Horses’ and ‘Cough Balls for Horses,’ reminding us of the ubiquity of the horse for transport at this time.

Handwritten recipes for a newly calved cow, a drying drink for a cow, and a drink for inflammation or threatened pneumonia
Recipes for cows
Handwritten for an alterative and restorative powder for horses and cough balls for horses
Veterinary medicines

The recipes also show a lighter side of life, however. For example, this idea for a children’s entertainment:

‘Magic Designs on a White Sheet Stretch a sheet & draw a design such as the Prince Wales’s Feathers &c with a piece of Chalk & dust thereon lightly a penny packet of Aniline dye Red, Blue, or Any Colour. This is invisible at a distance but on spraying Methylated Spirit onto the sheet with a spray apparatus – it is instantly developed to the amusement of the youngsters.’

Handwritten recipe to stop excessive bleeding alongside a recipe for lacquer for brass and 'Magic Designs on a White Sheet'
Recipe to stop excessive bleeding alongside a lacquer for brass and ‘Magic Designs on a White Sheet’

The pharmacist also held a wealth of knowledge about food and drink, for which ingredients could be supplied. Alfred Jones offered recipes for ‘Sea Side Sauce’, ‘American Cock Tail Bitters’, Doncaster Butter Scotch, Ginger Wine, ‘Currie Powder’ and Salad Dressing, as well as various jams and marmalades. In this book, some of these recipes sit rather incongruously beside much less appetising concoctions, for example ‘Currie Powder’ (nutmeg, turmeric, “cummin seed,” cayenne, coriander, black pepper, ginger and mustard) is followed by ‘Cement for Glass, China &c’ and ‘Insoluble Liquid Glue.”

Handwritten recipe for curry powder, cement for glass and china, and an insoluble liquid glue
Recipe sfor ‘Currie Powder; a cement for glass and china; and insoluble liquid glue
Handwritten recipe for a sea side sauce
Recipe for ‘Sea Side Sauce’

This volume, handwritten by a Retreat patient, is just one of the thousands of documents in the hospital’s archive which can tell us about life outside the walls of the Retreat, as well as within. While there are some unusual additions (a poem entitled ‘Lines addressed to a Kitten’ tucked into a page describing furniture polish and cold cream, for example), this book is a fascinating insight into the world of the Victorian pharmacist, and just one of the documents in the Retreat’s archives which brings a lost world to life.

More information about the Wellcome Library funded project to digitise the Retreat archive can be found on the project pages of our website. Digital surrogates from the Retreat archive project are available via the Wellcome Library.

The Nature of the Job II: Structuring the archive of Yorkshire Wildlife Trust

Written by Lydia Dean, YWT Project Archivist

In my last blog about my project cataloguing the archive of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, I wrote about how I got started with the survey of this archive. In this instalment, I’ll be writing about my experiences in developing a structure for the archive, why it’s important and how it’ll translate to our online catalogue, Borthcat. 

Photograph of handwritten slips of paper arranged on a table top to represent the groups of records in the archive
Trying my hand at some slip listing for the Skipwith Common files.

From the very beginning of the project, I was aware of how vital it was for the structure of the archive to be right. The organisation was (and still is) a complex one and I want the structure of the archive to convey a sense of the wider scheme of the Trust’s business, allowing users to contextualise, through their interrelationship, the individual records they look for. Of course this applies to all archives, but particularly so in this project for a number of reasons. Firstly, the archive is still very much a living repository of information – it is actively consulted by YWT staff as part of ongoing legal and campaign work and there are regular accruals of new material. This means that the records themselves are not necessarily going to be in our physical custody and in turn means that the intellectual control we have over these records needs to be robust. Secondly, aside from the additional deposits of archival material already received, the Trust continues to dynamically develop and so the structure needs to make allowances for future growth. Thirdly, (and perhaps a little intimidatingly for me!) at the time of writing, no other Wildlife Trust in the UK has deposited archival material in such quantities in a public repository so it is hoped that this project will provide a model for any future Trusts in arranging their archives.

Screenshot of initial catalogue structure set out as 7 separate groups
The beginnings of a structure!

So while the latter makes Yorkshire Wildlife Trust unique in both the scope of its archival material and its public availability, it also means that there aren’t any parallel organisations for me to reference in structuring this archive. So I was relying on a number of sources in developing the scheme – first and foremost my own research into the records themselves, then the excellent published history in Tim Sands’ book ‘Wildlife in Trust: A hundred years of nature conservation’ and then on the living memory of the organisation in the shape of members and trustees, some of whom form part of the board monitoring and supporting this project.

Close up photograph of a handwritten page from a notebook
Using survey notes to identify links between files.
Here, minutes copied and sent to Executive Committee

As an organisation, YWT has changed over its 70 year life, shifting from an amateur conservation body in 1946 to a professional campaigning organisation. Alongside this have come numerous administrative changes, all impacting on how records were accumulated by the organisation. Luckily, these changes have been well documented (for the most part) and so I was able to get a good understanding of the provenance of the archive. These records of change were a useful point of reference for me in developing my structure, as were the numerous references to now obsolete filing systems – often filed by the initials of the person generating the correspondence, with date and document references, and then by an increasingly complex system of alphanumeric codes. I used these to give me an understanding of how committees, departments and individuals interacted with one another, as well as documenting the links between the centralised functions of the Trust and the vital operational work carried out all over Yorkshire by volunteer committees.

I started working on the structure of the archive at the same time as surveying the records. I’ve worked iteratively, and initially worked on the overarching structure of the archive. I’m now on the fourth (and hopefully final!) version which incorporates 7 subfonds covering the foundation of the Trust, its governance, administration, liaison work, conservation records and campaigns. The seventh subfonds, and the one I’ll focus on here, is the one covering the sites associated with the Trust. The majority of the material in the archive relates to the sites that the Trust has owned, managed and advised on and each site has anywhere between 1 and 70 files including environmental records, management records and research into each site.

Photograph of print out of catalogue structure for Skipwith Common, heavily annotated
I decided to move away from slip listing and started to use a piece of
mind mapping software. Above: working copy of Skipwith Common version 3!

I started the process using the files of Skipwith Common, which is no longer a Trust reserve, but which was one of the first sites whose records I surveyed. My first, uncertain, attempt at a structure split the files into three subsubsubfonds (!) but I felt that this structure was too generic to really reflect with accuracy the unique and complex nature of the ecology and management of each site. This became increasingly apparent as I tried to apply this structure to more sites. I decided to go back to the drawing board and began to work on a different structure, which even as I started it, felt much better in tune with the nature of the records. A good lesson in going with your gut feeling, even as a new professional!

This overall structure will well reflect the types of records that are present in the archive as well as the symbiotic relationship between the ecology of each site and its stewardship. Further, although loosely based on the same framework, the records of each site will have their own individual structures according to the records that are deposited. 

Screenshot of Askham Bog section of the catalogue
Sneak peek at how the records for Askham Bog will look on our online catalogue

But how will it look online? This structure looks lovely and clear on paper (at least to me!) but will appear very differently through our online catalogue. Above you can see a sneak peek of the entry for Askham Bog as it currently stands, although before it’s published there will be more information added and probably a different iteration of AtoM too! I’ll be adding the descriptions of each file very soon and I’ll be blogging about that process in the next instalment of this series. For now, I’ll continue to add files to my skeletal framework and to refine the structure, adding new levels as more information comes to light. It’s really exciting to see it finally taking shape and emerging from my sea of drafts!