Borthwick Newsletter - November 2021

Posted on 29 October 2021

Welcome to the Borthwick's November newsletter

November in the Archives - delve into our catalogues with this month’s featured description

‘One Night in November’, a Fifth Form Play Programme, 1947 [Records of the Mount School, York, MOU/6/4/2/5/15]

What’s New?

We’ve enjoyed some beautiful Autumnal weather in October, with some spectacularly coloured leaves on campus, but as we move into November the temperature is dropping and the nights are drawing in. Cold and dark may be the preferred conditions for archival preservation, but the same cannot be said for archivists! We’ve been keeping busy as usual however at the Borthwick with October seeing the completion of some fantastic ongoing projects and the launch of exciting new archives. We’ve also been out and about, both literally and figuratively - appearing in the local and national press, giving a number of online and in-person talks, and resuming our usual teaching commitments for the new academic term.

Our biggest news from October was the launch of the Frankie Howerd Archive. The comedian, who was born in Hartoft Street, York, in 1917, was a mainstay of British popular culture in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, appearing most famously in the BBC comedy serial ‘Up Pompeii’. The archive comprises some 36 boxes of annotated scripts, contracts and agency correspondence, detailing Howerd’s career on stage, sound and screen and featuring such well known writers as Eric Sykes, Spike Milligan, and Marks and Gran (whose archive we also hold). The archive became available for sale last year and we were able to purchase it with the generous support of The Friends of the National Libraries, the V&A Purchase Grant Fund; the Storey Fund for Library and Archives; and the Friends of the University of York Library and Archives. The archive now has its own website where you can read more about Frankie Howerd and see excerpts and photographs from the archive.

New Accessions

We had a number of new accessions to the University of York Archive in October, including some very early IT records! Today the university’s IT department plays a central role in supporting staff and students, but it wasn’t always so and the latest accession charts the development of York’s exciting new ‘computing service’ from the 1960s to the present, featuring newsletters, committee papers, photographs and reports. In addition we’ve also added the records of another innovative York department, York Student Television, covering its output from around 1988 to 2006, and including coverage of Children in Need events, university open days, election nights, music shows and news bulletins, to name just a few highlights. Finally, and bringing us right up to date, we’ve added records of honorary graduates of the university for 2020-2021, comprising presentation addresses, parchments and photographs.

We also took in a new addition to our Bishopthorpe Parish archive which were discovered in the vicarage loft and happily transferred to us. Although we have yet to go through them in detail, we have already spotted a rather wonderful scrapbook of photographs and ephemera relating to Bishopthorpe, York and London dating from 1902. We look forward to finding out the story behind that one!

News from Conservation

We have been conducting some environmental monitoring again this month, and our focus has been on pests. We have numerous sticky blunder traps and chemical traps around the building to monitor the types of pests we have and whether numbers are increasing or decreasing. Many of the pests that show up are not harmful to the archives in themselves, but can be an indicator of other things; for example woodlice like to live in humid environments, and so large numbers of woodlice might indicate that an environment is damp, or that a leak has occurred.

There are also pests that can be harmful to the collections, and we keep a keen eye on this data. One or two booklice won’t do too much damage, but large numbers of them could be a problem, and so we monitor the population. Silverfish also enjoy eating the organic matter that can be found in archives, such as paper and adhesives. They scrape the surfaces, thinning the materials and leaving holes. Since 2016 a new species of silverfish have been found in the UK which appear to survive in lower humidities, and that could be a problem for us going forwards, so we try to distinguish between the species of silverfish too.

Unfortunately at this time of year as the temperature is dropping many pests are making their way indoors to seek a warmer environment. Wish me luck!

New Catalogues

Number of archival descriptions on Borthcat on 1st November 2021: 84,133

October has been a very productive month for new catalogues, with the addition of the Mount School catalogue to Borthcat and the creation of a working catalogue for the Frankie Howerd Archive. Our Mount School catalogue has existed in paper form for a number of years but getting it on Borthcat took the combined efforts of an archives volunteer and two of our searchroom team. The archive comprises 154 boxes of material and the catalogue includes nearly 1,400 descriptions. The earliest material in the archive dates to 1658 and concerns the Society of Friends in York, although the origins of the school itself can be traced to 1785 when Esther Tuke, the wife of William Tuke, the founder of The Retreat, opened a Quaker girls’ school on Trinity Lane, Bishophill, York. Although the school closed in 1814 the idea of a Quaker girls school in York was not abandoned, and in 1831 a boarding school opened in Castlegate. In 1856 it relocated to Dalton Terrace on the Mount, and the Mount School for Girls was born.

Today it is a Quaker run independent day and boarding school for girls. The archive includes all of the administrative records of the school from 1784 onwards, as well as an enormous range of staff and student records, from lists of students, school books, exam papers and personal diaries, to hand made school magazines, photographs and artwork. It’s an incredibly rich source of information about the educational, cultural and employment opportunities available to women and girls across more than 200 years and we’re very pleased the catalogue is now available to browse in its entirety.

We’ve also added box lists for the whole of the new Frankie Howerd Archive. Box lists are usually the first stage in the cataloguing process, a way of quickly establishing control of an archive by making a basic list of the contents of each box or container. Traditionally we haven’t shared box lists publicly as they are regarded as part of the catalogue ‘work in progress’, but in recent years our thinking has begun to change on this issue. As a group, Borthwick staff felt that it was better to share as much information as we can about our archives, as soon as we can, rather than making our users wait for the final polished catalogue. In time such box lists will of course be superseded by a full catalogue, but for now you can browse the contents of the Frankie Howerd Archive, as we received it, as well as checking out the collection’s website.

Borthwick in the Media

The big Borthwick news last month was of course the launch of the Frankie Howerd Archive. As well as our own press release and the dedicated archive website, the archive was covered nationally by The Times (paywalled) and locally by The York Press. We were even covered by Planet Radio and the Chortle comedy website!

Frankie was not the only archive getting its moment to shine however. October saw the completion of the Rowntree Leisure Time Interviews project, based on our Rowntree Family Papers, with the final three films shared on the Borthwick’s Twitter and Facebook. Beginning with the post war experiences of a young London typist, and a bus inspector, and finishing with an original piece by project creator Rachel Feldberg drawing on the experiences of Black immigrants to the UK. The large collection of interviews on which the project is based is notable for not identifying any interviewees of colour. Rachel based ‘A Reading Man’ on the true stories of some of those people from the Caribbean who made their lives in Yorkshire, and imagines what they might have thought of the book on ‘English Life and Leisure’ produced by Seebohm Rowntree and G.R. Lavers. You can now watch all nine of the completed films on our website.

One of our archivists also contributed a short blog to the Railway Work, Life and Death website, part of a project to improve knowledge and understanding of British and Irish railway worker accidents from the 19th century to the Second World War. A chance discussion of railway workers who appear in the patient records of both the general and psychiatric hospitals at the Borthwick inspired an investigation into the case of George Hey, a young railway worker from York who was grievously injured in an accident at Strensall Station in 1861. Drawing on the patients records of York County Hospital and, more surprisingly, its Wine and Spirits Book, the blog looks at how dangerous life could be on the railways, and how such injuries were treated.

Last but certainly not least, you may have attended one of our live talks over the past month! Keeper of Archives Gary Brannan gave an online talk to the York Humanists on ‘Time Travel for Beginners’; Access and Digital Preservation Archivist Laura Yeoman talked wills with the Airedale and Wharfedale Family History Society; and Collections Information Archivist Sally-Anne Shearn introduced the Dringhouses Women’s Institute to the Retreat Archives in the 21st Century. Gary also spoke at the launch event for the university’s new Anne Lister College on the 21st October to share some of the archives we hold that relate to Anne and her family and friends.

And don’t forget, if you are a student at the university you can still register for Dr Jessica Lamothe’s short course on ‘Reading English Handwriting (1500-1700)’ which begins on the 27th November.

Archive of the Month: Harrogate Medical Society’s Collection of Pamphlets on British Spas

What is it? Bound volumes of original pamphlets concerning spas in the British Isles from the 16th to the 19th century.

Where can I find it? The full catalogue for the pamphlet collection is available on Borthcat.

Why is it Archive of the Month? This small but mighty collection came to us in 1979 from its previous home at Harrogate Public Library. As the title suggests, it is a collection of pamphlets on British spas, both general and specific, beginning with Walter Bailey’s 1587 pamphlet on 'A Briefe Discours of certain Bathes or medicinall Waters in the Countie of Warwicke neere unto a village called Newnam Regis' and finishing c 1791 with William Simpson’s ‘Observations on Cold Bathing’. The term ‘spa’ derives from the town of Spa in Belgium, called Aquae Spadanae in the Roman era and known for its natural mineral springs. Historically such springs were believed to offer a range of medicinal benefits, not so different perhaps to the association of spas and ‘wellness’ today.

In Britain the Roman practice of medicinal bathing was revived in the 16th century, particularly at Bath, where visitors could take advantage of the city’s natural geothermal springs, and at Harrogate, which became the first resort in England for drinking medicinal spa waters. By the end of the 18th century spas were a booming industry, particularly among the wealthier classes. Spa resorts like Harrogate, Bath, Brighton, Cheltenham, Malvern, Buxton, Tunbridge Wells and Leamington attracted a seasonal influx of visitors, ostensibly to bathe and drink the mineral waters for their health, but also to engage in the whirl of the social season, to see and to be seen.

Unsurprising then that doctors should want to study the various spas and their effects on health, and to advertise their own varied treatment regimes - how often to bathe, at what temperature, how much water to drink and what to eat while under treatment, and how the waters would affect different ailments. The pamphlet collection captures the debate and discussion as it happened, covering all the most well known British spas - and a few you might not have heard of. Read about the water of Glastonbury which cures rheumatism, blindness, ulcers and leprosy, or the hot spring at Bath which was particularly good for ‘women’s diseases’. Instructions for medical treatment sit alongside descriptions of spa and bathing facilities and the areas in which the spas were situated, making these a very informative source of social, topographical and medical history.

We’ll be back in December for our final newsletter of 2021!