Tag Archives: Investigation

Restoration Filming

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I’m afraid it’s been a while since I last blogged and, although I do have an interesting piece about the Maddison Collection and Joseph Priestley almost completed, every time I sit down to finish it, something else comes up! In the meantime, however, I thought it would be interesting to share yesterday’s events with you.

Reed Mill in 1934

Reed Mill in 1934

Way back in March, we were contacted by researchers from the Channel 4 programme The Restoration Man. They were looking at the restoration of Reed Mill in Kingston, just outside Canterbury, in Kent. We have a small amount of material on this particular mill, mostly from the C.P. Davies collection, although  there are a couple of images of the mill in its dilapidated state in the Muggeridge Collection as well. It turns out that C.P. Davies’ notes (listed on our webpages under Kingston) hold some important clues to the origin and dating of the original Reed Mill, which the programme makers were keen to include. Unfortunately, our reading room is not particularly photogenic but after a visit to the Cathedral’s archives the researchers were keen to do some filming there. Although it took several months to organise, we finally arranged for the transfer of the relevant University’s Special Collections material down to the Cathedral Library and Archive for the filming, which took place yesterday afternoon.

Reed Mill in 1940

Reed Mill in 1940

I was lucky enough to be in charge of our material during the course of the shoot, which meant that I could watch the work as it was going on. The Cathedral Library, for those who don’t know, is not normally open to the public, unlike the Archives Search Room, which meant that the crew could wander around and do multiple takes under the watchful eye of the Cathedral Librarian, Karen Brayshaw. I had heard (and seen) some horror stories about TV crews working with rare books and archival materials, but everyone working on Restoration Man was very sensitive to the materials and to the environment in which they were working. They were also quick to ask Karen or myself before they moved or touched anything. We have some other TV researchers looking at some of our materials at the moment, and I have to say that if they are all like the Restoration Man crew and researchers, then I will have absolutely no qualms about allowing them to use materials which we hold.

And the results of the research? Well, you will have to watch the programme, which will hopefully be coming onto our screens in January, to find out. All I can say for sure is that both Karen, myself and the crew had a great time filming!

If you are interested in our mills collections, have a look through our webpages to find out more about them.

If you or someone you know is involved in restoring Reed Mill, please do get in touch and let us know how it is going; we would love to add contemporary materials and information to our existing records on this mill.

Jewel in the Archive

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The last few weeks have been so busy that there hasn’t been time for any posting! Long term project ideas are beginning to take up the slack left by the end of term, including an effort to inventory all of our Collections to ensure that they are properly stored, labelled and catalogued. However, thanks to the hard work of Chris and Hazel on this, I’ve managed to find a few spare moments to write a little bit about one of our major collections which I feel is very underused.

The Weatherill Collection consists of working papers, letters and photographs gathered over the lifetime of Bruce Bernard Weatherill (1920-2007), known to his friends as Jack. During the Second World War, Jack Weatherill was stationed in India. Every time I look at one or two items in this section of the collection, I find hidden gems. For this post, I’m just going to focus on two letters which Jack wrote home to his parents and sisters, but there are many more to be investigated.

Jack's signature

Jack’s letter from Dehra Dun, dated 18-20 July 1942

On 6 September 1939, Jack enlisted in the army from his apprenticeship at the family firm, Bernard Weatherill Ltd., Sporting Tailors of Saville Row. In December 1940 he was commisioned as an officer but it wasn’t until 15 April 1942 that he set sail from Liverpool on the SS. Orbita for India. After two months, Jack arrived in Mumbai on 7 June and was attached to the 2nd Gurkha Rifles in Dehra Dun. Unfortunately, the postal system took some time to catch up with him; he wrote to his family on 18 July that ‘Your long awaited letter arrived on Tuesday…posted on the 23rd April’. Nevertheless, these letters were presumably the only contact which Jack and his family in England had with each other during his post abroad.

 

Weatherill’s described Dehra Dun favourably as ‘plenty doing and a pleasant climate, although the rains have set in now and when it rains there is no half measure about it’. The Indian weather caused ‘chaos’ during Jack’s posting near Poona in October that year, when ‘a hurricane …descended upon the camp on Saturday night’. He went on:

Inside the chappa

Inside the chappa

It was raining pretty heavily; when, suddenly, this wind descended with a roar. I just had time to grab the tent pole on my side of the tent, in an effort to keep it upright before a sudden gust lifted the tent like a parachute and deposited it some twenty yards away, together with our tables and odd belongings. I was still clinging onto the pole. The rain was so strong that it was impossible to see more than two yards in any direction, and the only thing to do was to flatten and wait for it to stop, which it did in a short time. The chaos was pretty terrific. Nearly every tent was flat and everyone rushing around madly trying to salvage their belongings… Surprisingly little has, in fact, been lost…”

Kiledar Khan, the bearer

Kiledar Khan, the bearer

 

Along with the drama of extreme weather, Jack wrote home of the culture which he found himself immersed in. In October, he wrote of a Regimental holiday being declared to mark Eid ul-Fitr, the local holiday marking the end of Ramadan. In the same letter, he remarked on ‘a Rajput Festival yesterday – I forget the name – at which a goat is sacrificed to the Goddess of War’. There was clearly a concerted effort to introduce the men stationed in India into the culture, including monthly exams in Urdu. After his first exam, Jack wrote ‘I now join the ranks of those form this unit who crack at it monthly…in the 46th everyone has to take it every month irrespective of standard. At any rate, it means at least one week-end in Town each month.’

Overall, the sense of these letters is of the mundane, commenting on the family’s holiday in Bournemouth and exchanging news of friends and relatives at home and abroad; ‘You remember Larry Rathbone…? He is in the Middle East somewhere – lucky dog.’

Climbing precipaces

‘Hugh climbing one of the many small precipices we encountered on that little scheme. He only just made this one!’

However, in July 1942, before he was stationed briefly with the 46th Cavalry near Poona, Jack wrote home of ‘the little scheme we had on Monday last….A hardening test, it was supposed to give us experience in moving through the jungle by day, and by night.’ The photographs which Jack had to send seperately have been reunited with the letter, and illustrate the expedition. Initially, Jack, Hugh and ‘a Spaniard’ did well, completing the first, eight mile section and trekking into the hills where they ate their rations of a pound of raisins and a pound of nuts. ‘…we found this quite adequate although next time half the amount and a packet of tea would seem to be the ideal thing.’ However, as they set out on the last stage, with night closing in, things became more difficult. ‘It was terribly dark and the going across the hills and through the jungle was frightfully hard; on top of that it rained like mad.’ At midnight, still cutting their way through the jungle, they had a narrow escape ‘only just seeing a precipice in time’, at which point some of Jack’s companions decided to ‘call it a day. Unfortunately, they were the owners of the only torch.’ Those left had to spend the night in the open, with Jack commenting that ‘to give up in that manner was a pretty poor show.’

Needless to say, no-one slept a wink – no-one, that is, except Hugh, who slept soundly all night kept dry by the major portion of his neighbour’s groundsheet on both the left and the right. Actually it was very cold, and I for one was never more glad to see the daylight.

Cutting through the jungle

‘Our Gurkha knives were absolutely indispensable for cutting a path’

Although it continued to rain the next morning, Jack and his remaining companions made it back to the town in time for morning coffee. ‘Thank the Lord for instinct’, Jack wrote on seeing the terrain that they had managed to cover during the night. Unfortunately, after deciding to take a tonga for the last stretch of the journey, ‘feeling sure that no-one of importance could possibly be about at that unhealthy hour’, the group passed the Brigadier in his car, coming out of the camp!

Weatherill ends the anecdote by commenting:

“On looking back I cannot help feeling that in spite of the discomforts the whole thing was worth it, if only for the bathe we had on that Monday evening – water clear as crystal and cold as ice – straight from Nanda Devi itself it seemed; and so refreshing that even now it does one good to remember it.”

The sense of a positive outlook seems to run throughout Weatherill’s life and career.  Jack was first elected to Parliament in 1964 and subsequently re-elected for Croydon North East seven times. He undertook several offices in government, including offices within HM Household and Privy Councillor and within the Conservative Whip’s Office. From 1983  to 1992, he served as Speaker of the House of Commons and was elevated to a life peerage as Baron Weatherill of North East Croydon in 1992. During this time, he was known to be ‘a gentleman’, keeping his word even if it meant losing his own cause. The Collection contains substantial materials on his public engagements and political work during his Parliamentary career, but to me these early letters are fascinating. Not only do they show Jack Weatherill’s progress through the war, one of so many men stationed to India during this time, but they also record an Englishman’s reaction to a largely unknown culture, with some glimpses of the Indian reaction to the soldiers stationed to the far flung part of the British Empire. As a historical record and as a glimpse of discovery in an unknown world, I think that the Weatherill Collection is one of the most intriguing in our archives.

All of the material in the Weatherill Collection is available through the normal Special Collections request process. You can have a look at the website for a detailed break down of the Collection, which is fully catalogued. To request access to any materials, please email us at specialcollections@kent.ac.uk.

The balance…

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Exhibition imagesWhen you walk into an archive or library, it’s often much more exciting to find a variety of interesting and colourful materials laid out to look at than to enter a dull and stale space. Displaying Special Collections materials is one of the parts of my job which I enjoy the most; I’m lucky enough to do this several times a year for seminars and visits. Displays can celebrate a newly acquired collection, or the completion of a project, be used to show off some of the lesser known parts of a collection, or to pique interest and draw in people who might not otherwise think to look at the Collections. I find this especially satisfying because it allows us to delve into the lesser used materials in our store which deserve to be more widely studied: usually, being shown an object like this will encourage people to carry out their own research and discover the archive for themselves. From my experience as a researcher, I know how exciting this can be!

However, there is a major trade off in this method of drawing people’s interest and, having just been on an excellent course about the handling and display of rare books, it occurred to me that no-one in this sector has really come up with a satisfactory solution, yet.

The reality is that all books (even new ones) and archival objects are damaged by factors which are impossible to Display caseremove in most normal workspaces. Light (daylight and electric), fluctuating temperatures and humidity, transport, dust and handling all play a part in slowly degrading a book over time. For preservation of books, the ideal would, I suspect, be to keep them in a climate controlled store, in the dark and fully sealed so that pests, mould and other external problems could not cause damage. Of course, in the real world, this isn’t possible: not least because the reason for having these books and items is help in research and learning. To be honest, it would be a waste to have a collection which was rarely seen or used, even if it was maintained in a perfect environment. Certainly in Special Collections, the materials need to be used and investigated to prove that they are worth having.

A major part of my work is focused on limiting the possible damages to collections. We store our materials in an environmentally controlled and locked store. The reading room is difficult to make an ideal space for the books, but we do have UV filters on the windows. Considering that most of the damage done to items is through use, we can limit this by putting items in protective covers, using copies and providing book supports. The ban on food, drink and pens in the reading room is to make sure that accidents don’t end up irrevocably damaging any of the materials. Our attitude towards copying, through scans or photocopies, is guided by the same principles. It’s worth noting as well that most archives or rare book collections no longer advocate the use of gloves because, among other reasons, wearing gloves makes it difficult to handle materials gently. It is much better for the materials that researchers have clean, dry and oil-free hands: the Natural History Museum has started issuing alcohol free hand wipes to all of their readers.

Dion Boucicault's Deed BoxDisplays can be difficult because I often have material that I would love to share but is just too fragile or delicate or bulky for an exhibition. This is where I really have to weigh up what can realistically be used. While using the originals is much more interesting, sometimes a copy is enough: if researchers are interested, they can then request the original to look at in a more controlled environment. If, as we hope, we are able to expand our displays beyond the reading room, this will require more careful thought and planning about how to minimise risks to materials and maximise the insight people can have into the collections.

The materials in Special Collections were donated or bought on the understanding that they would be maintained and protected but at the same time made available to researchers in a way that has a real and useful impact on their research. This is our main aim in our work: a difficult balance which I spend most of my time trying to maintain. If we get it right, which I hope we do most of the time, the collections will be here to entrance and interest researchers for hundreds of years to come!

A theatre manager’s arsenal

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Following on from my earlier Melvillodrama post, we have one brief typescript reminiscence of Walter Melville of the dangers of weapons on stage which I’m desperate to share (0599807/19). I often get this out for seminars, but I think most people don’t get around to reading it, which is a shame because it shows all the trademark humour and eccentricity of the Melville family.

‘A Melodrama would be lost without a scene in which a dagger, revolver or gun is used’, according to Walter. In order to legally use a weapon on stage, a licence had to be granted; in one case, Walter ran up against problems due to the fact that a named person had to be granted the right to carry a revolver. Since Walter himself was not playing the part, and could not be sure that the same actor would be in that role on every night, the imaginative ‘…Inspector of police…decided to grant a licence…in the fictitious name of the villain in the play. Thus a non existing person possessed a licence to carry a revolver’.

Discussing the dangers of weapons on stage, Walter relates the tale of a faulty prop, which, unknown to the Property man  ‘continually misfired’ and so was

‘loaded…until the charges came to the mouth of the barrel. This gun…exploded with wonderful effect – it put out every gas light in the Theatre.’

Although it seems a fitting drama for a melodrama, you wonder whether the people nearby thought it was a wonderful effect!

Publicity postcard for The Worst Woman in London

Publicity postcard

Disasters with weapons didn’t always involve blood or explosions, however. During an 1899 production of ‘The Worst Woman in London’, the gun with which the villianess was supposed to kill her elderly husband failed to go off,

‘…and the man in the wings who is supposed to safeguard this happening, for some reason of another did not fire the deputy shot. The Villainess realising the old man’s death was desirable for the good of the Show, crossed to the bedside and stabbed him with the end of the revolver. The old gentleman seemed perfectly satisfied with the change in the method of his murder and spoke his usual line – “I am shot”.’

Walter’s story of how he came to be in possession of a revolver of his own is a real-life melodrama;

An acquaintance of mine, not in the Theatrical business, got himself into some difficulties and decided that the only way out of the scrape was to shoot himself. He came along to my office and making up his mind very suddenly – he pulled out this revolver, fully loaded, and said to me – “Goodbye Walter” Acting on the spur of the moment, I brought my fist into play and knocked the revolver out of his hand, telling him that if he claimed to be a friend of mine not to do this dirty business in my office, but to go into the Street and do whatever he liked to himself there.

Of course, the others of the Melville family seem just as unusual as Walter. Walter once mentioned to his ‘Brother’ (presumably wither Fred or Andrew II) the necessity of having a licence for his firearms, pointing out that he had none and owned ‘100 rifles, 30 revolvers and 3 machine guns’, a sizable arsenal for a theatre manager. When this brother finally asked for a licence, in a provincial town,

‘the Inspector told him he was only in the position to licence one article and as he was in possession of an armoury, he had better get out of the office and do what he liked in the matter’.

I look forward to discovering more of the dramatic life and times of the Melvilles as I continue to get out parts of the collection for researchers!

Flu a hundred years hence

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Given that there’s so much in the news about flu outbreaks at the moment, I thought it would be interesting to look at some of the reactions to the influenza outbreak in 1919, from the Kingsley Wood scrapbook which covers the period November 1918 to October 1919. During this time, Sir Howard Kingsley Wood was involved in the setting up of the new Ministry of Health, as well as being part of the Local Government Board and M.P. for Woolwich.

The Spanish flu outbreak of 1918-1920 swept across the world with huge numbers of fatalities, particularly killing  younger victims through an overreaction of the immune system. Those with weaker immune systems were therefore more able to survive the virus. The devastating effects of the Spanish flu were exacerbated by the First World War, through lifestyle and the unusual population movement of seriously infected individuals.

The Daily Sketch published a self-congratulatory account of a ‘conference on influenza’ on 1st March 1919, which it claimed to have inspired. In the course of the public debate, the government’s advice to ‘keep fit’ was criticised, since fit people also fell ill. The chairman, Sir Malcolm Morris, also described the prescription of ‘a permanganate of potash and salt as a nasal douche’ as ‘”a horrible solution”‘. Dr Murray Lesli advised:

Start the day with a good breakfast ; have a brisk walk before starting work. Mental strain, lack of food and sleep, owing to the war are predisposing causes of influenza.

Oral cleanliness and good ventilation of public transport and public spaces were advocated; Dr Kirkhope, the Medical Officer for Health in Tottenham, advised that all badly ventilated cinemas should be closed. However, Kirkhope also argued that the disease was not influenza but a ‘continuation of many diseases’, since, at this time, scientists not yet conclusively discovered the causes of the flu virus.

‘Dr Lowe argued that we eat too much boiled food’

More ‘striking’ opinions included the demand by Sir St. Clair Thomson that anyone who coughed or sneezed on public transport ‘without putting a hand or handkerchief to the mouth should be prosecuted for indecency’. The possibility of taking ‘disciplinary measures’ against infected people who handled food and did not take precautions against infecting others seems to have been popular.

‘Persons with a cough should wear masks, but not the general public.’

According to this article, there was a difference of opinion amongst the experts about the ‘question of alcohol’; perhaps it is a coincidence that the lower section of the page is taken up by an endorsement of supplying whisky to those suffering with influenza!

As part of the ‘war on disease’, the first Minister for Health for England was appointed on 10th June 1919. Dr. Christopher Addison (1869-1951) had entered politics because he believed that governments were more able to change the health of the poor, and of society in general, than individual doctors. The Daily Mail announced Dr. Addison’s appointment in June 1919 as the start of a ‘war on disease’, where prevention was paramount in a country in which:

‘consumption is as prevalent today as smallpox in the seventeenth century.’

One of the many improvements associated with social welfare and efforts to improve the nation’s health following the First World War were housing reforms. As the cutting from Answers from 2nd August 1919 put it, the intention was to ‘Scoot that Slum!’ The Daily News had reported in May of the same year that over three million people were living in cramped conditions of two to a room, describing a ‘great breeding place of disease.’

‘Bred in towns, reared in alleys, mewed up in stuffy rooms, no wonder people became irreligious, bat-eyed, materialistic, and Bolshevik.’

Kingsley Wood’s opinion of the place of slums as the cause of all the country’s ills were popular amongst many public-spirited gentleman of the time, who also wanted to build for the future. However, this proved difficult for the people who wanted to live in the newly developed ideal homes. Ways and Means from 6th September 1919 describes a leaked interview which Kingsley Wood gave to the Observer, in which he claimed that the government was ‘to-day settling where the Englishman of a hundred years hence is to live.’ While we may be grateful in 2019, the people of 1919 were more concerned with the ‘leaky lodgings and lack of lavatories’ which they had to put up with while the building work progressed increasingly slowly.

The Kingsley Wood scrapbooks are not yet catalogued but are in date order. They consist of cuttings largely from Sir Kingsley Wood’s political career and items of interest from his work as a lawyer. If you would like to look at these scrapbooks, email us at specialcollections@kent.ac.uk for an appointment.