Discover Issue 5/April 17

Issue 5/April 2017 INSIDE: Threads of Empire • Biggleswade bigamist • 5 minutes with Elizabeth • Indian treasures

DISCOVER The University of Nottingham’s Manuscripts and Special Collections

Welcome

Welcome Welcome to the latest edition of Discover, The University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections’ Newsletter.

Recent weeks have been dominated by the presentation of our Archives Service Accreditation Award and the launch of our iBook both of which I report on elsewhere in this issue and have been the culmination of a huge amount of work.

As Storm Doris rages as I write this, I hope some of you have enjoyed our Weather Extremes exhibition and will be coming to view our next exhibition, Threads of Empire: Rule and Resistance in Colonial India.

This edition of the newsletter includes a fascinating article on a collection of glass plate negatives of India which we have recently acquired. Digitisation has helped to preserve these extremely fragile objects, extended reader access and enabled the use of the images in the exhibition.

The article on recent acquisitions shows the wide range of material being acquired including University archives, hospital records, business records, ecclesiastical archives and additions to our printed Special Collections.

This emphasises the truly diverse range of our holdings. A fascinating article on the Biggleswade Bigamist also reveals the amazing stories which can be pieced together from archives.

At Manuscripts and Special Collections we are offering an increasing number of student placements across a range of subject disciplines. These students are undertaking projects which we do not have the capacity to complete. They provide the students with a unique learning experience whilst also enhancing their employability in the highly competitive heritage sector. The interview with Elizabeth Ingham shows the extremely positive outcome of one of these placements and the enthusiastic engagement of the student.

If you would like to find out more about any aspect of our work please do not hesitate to contact me. Meanwhile I hope that you enjoy reading Discover.

Mark Dorrington Keeper of Manuscripts and Special Collections

2

Mark Dorrington, Keeper of Manuscripts and Special Collections, and Dr Paul Greatrix, Registrar of The University of Nottingham, being presented with the Archive Service Accreditation award by Dr Valerie Johnson, Director of Research and Collections at The National Archives.

Manuscripts win accolade from National Archives Manuscripts and Special Collections were presented with the Archive Service Accreditation award on 13 February. At a special event attended by staff, volunteers, owners of archives, members of the University Executive Board and the Departmental Management Team, the award was presented

by Dr Valerie Johnson, Director of Research and Collections at The National Archives and accepted on behalf of the University by the Registrar, Dr Paul Greatrix.

Accredited Archive Services ensure the long-term collection, preservation and accessibility of our archive heritage. Accreditation is the UK quality standard which recognises good performance in all areas of archive service delivery. Achieving accredited status demonstrates that The University of Nottingham has met clearly defined national standards relating to management and resourcing; the care of its unique collections and what the service offers to its entire range of users.

In her speech Dr Johnson pointed out that Manuscripts and Special Collections is now one of 62 accredited services in the UK which is an elite group of only 2.5% of archive services nationally. So showing the prestigious nature of the award. We are also the first Midlands university to be accredited.

The award marks the culmination of more than a year’s work and involved an 81 page application form and 23 supporting documents, followed by a validation visit by an assessment team. It was a real team effort on our part in compiling this evidence and in some cases drafting new policies, plans and procedures which will prepare us for the future. Dr Greatrix paid tribute to the hard work and dedication of the Manuscripts and Special Collections staff in looking after our wonderful collections and making them available for teaching, research and public enjoyment.

The Archive Service Accreditation Panel “…congratulated the service

Launch of iBook: Parchment, Paper and Pixels On 28 February Professor Jeremy Gregory, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Faculty of Arts formally launched our first iBook Parchment, Paper and Pixels: Highlights from Manuscripts and Special Collections at The University of Nottingham.

The iBook showcases some of the treasures held in Manuscripts and Special Collections, with a range of short articles illustrated with images, sound and video.

It includes mediaeval manuscripts, archives, maps, posters, photographs, rare printed books and music and covers the globe from Iceland to China by way of Nottingham and the Soviet Union. Notable personalities featured include Robin Hood and DH Lawrence and it introduces the father of English geology, William Smith, and one of the world’s first ornithologists, Francis Willughby.

on their excellent sense of themselves in the context of the University and beyond, and on their detailed and comprehensive policies and planning which combined ambitious aims with practical objectives. The service demonstrated a commitment to review and improvement which was warmly commended, as was its ongoing commitment to communicate with a variety of audiences”.

The award enables Manuscripts and Special Collections to retain our status as a Place of Deposit for Public Records under the Public Records Act. It also provides us with an improvement plan for the future to ensure that we can continue to provide high quality archive services.

The iBook has been produced in partnership with colleagues in Learning Technology. Articles have been contributed by Manuscripts and Special Collections staff and a range of international experts from both within the University and from across the world, selecting some of their favourite items from our holdings. We would like to thank them for generously giving up their time to share their knowledge and expertise and also the owners of collections who have given permission for their materials to be used in the iBook. It has been supported by a generous donation from the late John Robinson, a history graduate and supporter of the University.

Parchment, Paper and Pixels can only provide a taster to our rich collections.

We hope you will be intrigued by our selection and it will whet your appetite to find out more. Our collections are already used for teaching, research and public engagement within the University but we hope that this iBook will bring them to the attention of a wider audience.

The iBook has been produced to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the move to the Kings’ Meadow Campus which provided more expansion space for the collections and improved facilities for conservation and digitisation.

Parchment, Paper and Pixels can be accessed through:

www.nottingham.ac.uk/open/ebooksandibooks.aspx 3

e r i p m E f o s hread

Exhibition news

T

Elephant of India.

Naturalist’s Library, Vol. 24, Mammalia edited by Sir William Jardine, Special Collecion, QL 703 NAT, barcode 6100915055

Get in touch Are you an academic, archive or local business interested in working with Manuscripts and Special Collections to host an exhibition in the Weston Gallery? If so please contact Hayley Cotterill.

e: hayley.cotterill@ nottingham.ac.uk t: 0115 951 4565 4

T

hreads of Empire: rule and resistance in colonial India uses The University of Nottingham’s archival collections on India to explore the rise of British rule in India and Indian resistance to that rule.

Britain’s relationship with India began in the early seventeenth century, when the East India Company established a small trading post in Surat on the North-west coast of the Indian Subcontinent. The Company gained a royal charter from Elizabeth I in 1600 and the right to trade from the Mughal Emperor in 1613.

From then on, the East India Company began exporting textiles, tea and spices to meet an increasing demand for Asian goods in Europe.

During the eighteenth century, the East India Company employed military power to wrest control over trade routes and land revenues from local rulers in East, West and Southern India. Exploiting divisions between, and within, established ruling families, the company had, by the nineteenth century, become the dominant power on the Indian Subcontinent.

Early eighteenth-century British accounts of India focused on the fine textiles and splendour of the various Indian courts that East India Company administrators encountered. A rare, early letter written by an English woman living

in Madras in 1743, details the exquisitely decorated clothes and jewels worn by the female relatives of the Nawab of Arcot, Safdar ‘Ali Khan. In comparison, the inventory list of items of clothing needed for an East India Company cadet travelling to India in the 1820s, looks mundane indeed!

Yet clothing was also a source of contention, which often became the catalyst for resistance to East India Company rule. The Vellore Mutiny of 1806, in which approximately 800 Indian soldiers, and 150 Europeans, were killed, illustrates the fragility of East India Company dominance and its reliance on coercion and violence. The reports on the mutiny, included as part of the exhibition, document the failure of East India Company administrators to respond to the growing discontent with new uniform regulations amongst Indian soldiers.

As the letters of accusation and protest to and from Indian rulers illustrate, British imperial power was continuously contested. The exhibition includes a letter of protest from the Prince of Mysore, Jamh O’Deen, held hostage by the East India Company, as well as the Company’s subtle accusation that the Nawab of the Carnatic had instigated his people to rebel against its rule. As the documents in

EXHIBITION EVENTS A series of events will be held at Djanogly Theatre to accompany the exhibition. Places are limited. Book in advance on 0115 846 7777.

LUNCHTIME TALKS 1-2pm. Free.

THE ‘THIN WHITE LINE’: EUROPEAN SOLDIERS IN COLONIAL INDIA 20 April 2017 The military sat at the core of imperial rule in India. Although the army was composed largely of Indian troops, European soldiers were thought to be crucial to maintaining colonial rule. In this talk, Dr Erica Wald explores the professional and daily lives of the European rank-and-file in India during the nineteenth-century.

CLOTHING THE OTHER: FASHION AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN INDIA 18 May 2017 Indian clothes and textiles were key items of trade for the British East India Company. Yet clothes were more than just commodities, they symbolized the differences between ruler and ruled. In this talk, Ibtisam Ahmed looks at the role of clothing in defining and enforcing British rule in India.

‘SINGING THE LORD’S SONG IN A STRANGE LAND’: NINETEENTHCENTURY DEBATES OVER BRITISH RULE IN INDIA 6 June 2017 British imperialism in India was a contentious subject, especially amongst those who actively participated in the imperial project. Drawing on the correspondence of British imperial elites and Indian rulers, Dr Onni Gust examines early nineteenth-century debates about the rights and wrongs of British conquest and rule in India.

DANCE/SPOKEN WORD

Man and woman of Hindostan. A Geographical Present

by Mary Anne Venning, Briggs Collection, LT210.G/V4, barcode 1003206692

this exhibition illustrate, the British Empire was always precarious. “Were the wind to change”, wrote Thomas Metcalfe in his Minute on the Future of the East India Company (1829), the Empire would ‘vanish’ with the same rapidity with which it had risen.

This exhibition has been jointly curated by Dr Onni Gust (Department of History), Ibtisam Ahmed (PhD Student, Department of Politics and International Relations) and Manuscripts and Special Collections at The University of Nottingham.

Opening hours

Weston Gallery Nottingham Lakeside Arts, University Park Open Tuesday-Friday 11am-4pm, Saturday, Sunday and Bank Holidays 12noon-4pm Closed Easter Sunday

AAKASH ODEDRA COMPANY ECHOES & I IMAGINE Tuesday 13 June, 7.30pm £15 (£12 concessions) £9 restricted view. Suitable for 14+.

Echoes is an exhilarating, high-octane Kathak dance experience which explores relationships with our ancestors.

In I Imagine, Aakash combines beautiful choreography with powerful spoken word in a collaboration with award-winning poet Sabrina Mahfouz.

WORLD CINEMA THE CHESS PLAYERS (1977) PG Monday 17 July, 7.30pm (129 mins) £5 (£3 concessions).

A seminal piece of Indian cinema, The Chess Players looks at the dynamics at play at the time of the annexation of Awadh (or Oudh) during the 1857 Rebellion. The film focuses on the actions of two chess-obsessed noblemen, Mir (Jaffrey) and Mirza (Kumar). The juxtaposition of their interest in a game of strategy with their ineffectiveness in real-world politics is a scathing commentary on elitism and classism in India as much as it is a critique of British colonial policy. The film is implicitly political and Ray’s subtle use of chess as a metaphor parallels the cunning moves by the British to capture the King.

Free Admission

5

Spotlight

c i h p a r g o t o Ph : a i d n I f o s e r u Treas Glass Plate Negatives (1860s-1870s) Dancing girls, executions by elephant, the Toda people, and stone temples. These are just some of the remarkable images to be seen in the 310 glass plate negatives housed in the Swinnerton Collection (MS 148). Each plate measures 8cm by 8cm and captures a vivid record of life in India during the late 1800s. Formerly in the possession of Professor Henry H Swinnerton (1875-1966) the negatives were transferred to Manuscripts and Special Collections in June 2016.

The collection captures a story of a long gone era in India’s history.

Each negative offers a silent snapshot of a time now well beyond human memory. From towers to temples, we are visitors to a world that can no longer be seen except by survivals such as these. The glass plates are in a varying state of survival, with some perfect and others having been damaged.

Many of the plates appear to have been taken or owned by a ‘Captn. Lyon’ (or Lyons). It is known that a Captain David Edmund Lyon (1825-1891) established a photographic studio in India in 1865 and was commissioned to photograph archaeological sites and architectural antiquities, but further research is needed to conclusively prove that our negatives are his work. What is certain is that Lyon was at work in India at the time these plates were created, and interestingly many of the plates show ‘India Museum’ stamps. How they travelled from India to Nottingham and how they came to be in the possession of Professor Swinnerton is unknown.

Photographic plates preceded photographic film. Put simply, a photographic plate was a small square of glass displaying an image. The image would be captured by fixing a light-sensitive emulsion to one side of the glass. To do this, a photographer first placed the plate into a camera, opened the camera’s shutter for a predetermined length of time, and exposed the plate to the light in order for a chemical reaction to occur. Developing was then carried out and this was done by using a chemical solution, which secured the image.

Stone Temple. A man sits at the stone doorway of a temple. The scratched writing reads ‘Patan’, which is likely to be Patan, Gujarat, MS 148/12/173.

Preparation for scanning

Contained in an original wooden storage box in-between squares of soft tissue paper, each fragile plate required careful handling.

Gloves were worn when handling the plates and cleaning them with a hand-held dust-blower. They were then placed onto a flatbed scanner.

Scanning and identification

Each plate was scanned at 1200dpi to capture a high quality image. Then the process of gathering details about all the images took place. Some, such as the Taj Mahal, were easy to identify, but others required careful deciphering of the handwriting upon the emulsion. Quirky and historical spellings and unfamiliar place names also had to be dealt with. Google came to our aid with one search revealing that the ‘Neelgerris’ scratched into a number of photographs of the Toda people was in fact ‘Nilgiris’. Some images initially proved impossible to identify because they had no annotations to help us. Comparison with other, annotated plates made identification possible when labelled plates holding the same exact image were found.

These glass negatives were digitised for a number of reasons. Not only were they to support our exhibition work, but their fragility means that we cannot produce them for readers in the reading room. Having scanned images enables us to share the images with a wide audience, whilst the original glass plate negatives stay safe in our archive.

Creating metadata Details of annotations from some of the glass plate negatives.

Once the initial identification process was complete, metadata was created. This involved creating an individual record for each plate in an Access database, a process enabling our archive staff to locate individual images in the future.

A small number of images from MS 148 will be on display in our Threads of Empire: Rule and Resistance in Colonial India exhibition at the Weston Gallery, Lakeside Arts (page 4). Digitised images of all the glass plates are available to view in the Manuscripts and Special Collections reading room.

6

The original wooden box that held the slides when they first arrived at Manuscripts and Special Collections.

Dancing Girls. Studio portrait of two dancing girls in dresses and jewellery, MS 148/12/276.

MS 148/12/131 and MS 148/12/211 showing emulsion damage.

Execution by elephant. This stonework shows a common method of capital punishment that continued into the 19th century, MS 148/12/50.

Toda people. The native Todas of the Nilgiri Hills are seen here with their tools and spears, MS 148/12/300.

7

Spotlight

Robert Boyle, the Biggleswade Bigamist With dark eyes, broad shoulders and a black suit with a gold-embroidered waistcoat, former soldier Robert Boyle cut a dashing figure. He used his confidence and charm to win the hearts of young ladies wherever he went – and then ruined them.

Just five days into her marriage, Susannah Boyle was confronted with the reality that her husband, and her fortune, were gone. It was an abrupt and unhappy ending to a whirlwind romance.

At the beginning of August 1727, the landlord of the White Lion in Nottingham rented a room to 21-year-old Boyle and his servant.

Boyle was sociable and generous, and soon had an audience for his stories about life as an army drummer, which he often accompanied by beating a rhythm on tables and walls. He also showed off the crucifix and letters RH ‘marked or stained in or on the skin’ on one arm, and a tattoo of the stoning of St Stephen on the other arm. If he was aware that such unusual and distinctive markings could be used to identify him, it didn’t worry him.

One of Boyle’s drinking companions was Beaumont Toppot, a widower living in St Mary’s in Nottingham. Believing Boyle’s tales about being heir to a considerable estate, Toppot encouraged a relationship between his daughter Susannah and Boyle. On the 12th August 1727, Boyle applied for, and received, a marriage licence. This allowed couples to marry quickly with minimal publicity because Banns did not have to be read in church for three weeks before the ceremony. Whilst there are many innocuous reasons for marrying by licence, Boyle’s motivations were anything but.

Boyle and Susannah married the day after being granted the licence. Within a week, Boyle took the £150 Susannah had been given on her wedding, and fled Nottingham. It was the second time that summer he had done this.

Earlier that year, Margaret Harris had been living an unremarkable life in Bedfordshire when Boyle seems to have arrived in Biggleswade as suddenly as he did in Nottingham, with no information as to his previous whereabouts. He probably made Margaret’s acquaintance through her brother-in-law, an innkeeper named William Greatorex.

According to an anonymous

letter, Margaret’s beauty brought the 19-year old many admirers. She was also reputed to have a considerable fortune.

In March 1727, the dark-eyed Marriage bond of Robert Boyle of young man with a crucifix and Biggleswade, bachelor and Margaret the letters RH tattooed on his Harris of Ampthill, 12 June 1727. arm and a fondness for gold AN/LB 237/11/1/2. accessories began courting her. On 12 June 1727, Boyle applied for and received a marriage licence; the following day he and Margaret were wed. As a minor (under 21), the bride needed permission to marry and that was granted by William Greatorex, presumably as her parents were deceased.

Whether or not claims of Margaret’s £400 fortune were true, Boyle was only officially accused of taking £60 when he abandoned her, literally by the side of the road ten miles from home, after only a month of marriage. To make matters worse, poor Margaret was pregnant. She gave birth to a son, John, in March 1728. By the time Susannah’s case was heard in the ecclesiastical court, Greatorex had died, leaving Margaret and her widowed sister Elizabeth to support themselves by running a coffee house.

After he’d abandoned his second wife, reports circulated in Biggleswade and Nottingham that Boyle’s real name was Handleby (hence the RH tattoo), and that he was a serial bigamist who travelled around using the aliases Boyle and Hannibal in an attempt to conceal his crime. We don’t hold baptism records but online transcriptions show Margaret’s baby was baptised on 29 March 1728 with no father listed and an alternative surname of ‘Hannibal’.

Susannah successfully petitioned to have her marriage annulled.

All the surviving documentation – the copy marriage licences and registers, depositions and letters from friends and family of both women submitted as evidence, the charges against Boyle – comes from her case in the ecclesiastical courts in 1733 to prove Boyle was a bigamist.

Boyle was ordered to pay £30 court costs and excommunicated in absentia. He never saw his wives or son after abandoning them. Nothing more is known about what happened to him, or if he duped any other women. In 1733, aged 26, Margaret’s marriage was considered valid, leaving her unable to remarry, unless she proved that she was not Boyle’s first wife. If she did, the case records would be with the Bedfordshire Archdeaconry Court archive, but there’s no suggestion she’d attempted to get an annulment. Once Susannah’s case was finished, she vanishes from history. Unlike Margaret, her story potentially had a happier ending. Women of that name appear later in Nottingham marriage registers, so perhaps she did eventually find a loving husband.

Documents relating to Toppot v Boyle are in the archive of the Archdeaconry Court of Nottingham, in AN/LB 237/11/1-28, AN/ LB 237/2/8, AN/LB 237/4/10.

8

Documents relating to Toppot v Boyle. AN/LB 237/11/1-28.

Profile

m a h g n I h t e b liza

E

Which course are you studying here at the University?

I’m doing an English BA degree.

Why did you apply for a Student Placement in Manuscripts and Special Collections?

I knew at the end of the first year of my degree course that I was interested in the conservation of books and manuscripts, and really loved the idea of being able to combine volunteering at Manuscripts and Special Collections with my third year Project Dissertation module. Also, in order to get a place on a relevant postgraduate course I would need to have some practical experience, and this placement provided the perfect opportunity.

I’ve loved doing the module and although I’m doing an English degree, the module gives you the chance to be a literary historian, which has been an amazing opportunity.

Which collection are you working on and what does that work involve?

I’m working on the papers of Connie Ford, who was born in 1912 and qualified as a vet in 1933. The collection contains a huge variety of material, which all needs sorting and listing. I’m going through everything and making notes about what’s in each box, so for example, I’m reading all the letters, grouping them by person, and putting them in folders. Once all the sorting has been done, everything can be grouped in a more organised way and then catalogued by an archivist.

Connie seems to have kept just about everything and I never know what I’m going to find when I open a box. It’s like delving into someone’s private life and you do get emotionally attached. A typical box might contain items as varied as birthday cards, letters from important political figures, and parking tickets! I even found a small cuddly toy animal in one box, and a signed napkin in another.

The earliest item in the collection is a description of the city of Cambridge, written by Connie when she was just six years old.

Another interesting item is a letter from a fellow vet, sympathising with Connie’s struggle to find work after graduating in what was then a male-dominated profession. She was awarded an MBE in 1970 and the actual award is amongst her papers.

She was a very prolific letter-writer and in return she received an astonishing amount of correspondence. There are letters from penfriends, one of which contains a pressed snowdrop, sent by a Swedish penfriend in 1936. Other letters touch on her career, interests and hobbies. She was a life-long supporter of

communism and received letters from many important political figures. I’m amazed that she was in contact with so many influential people.

She loved writing poetry and there are several letters from fellow authors who, like Connie, struggled to publish their work. Writing under various pen-names, such as Olive Pugh and Connie Rivers, Connie did eventually self-publish some of her poems, and her biography of Aleen Cust (Britain’s first recognised female veterinary surgeon) was published posthumously in 1990. Her interest in politics was often combined with poetry. She wrote an ode to the British Marxist philosopher Maurice Cornforth called ‘M.C.’, and another poem called ‘The General’ was written on the back of a letter she received from the Thatcher government.

The Connie Ford papers will form the basis of my third year dissertation, which will hopefully be comprised of a small edition of Connie’s poems and a reflective piece of writing considering the significance of materiality and textual interpretation based on my experiences with the collection. If I had to sum up Connie’s life I would say that she was a trailblazer on the fringes of history. The strength of her determination in veterinary science, politics and in her literary work is remarkable.

How will your experience here influence your future career plans?

I’ve applied for an MA in Conservation, but through the scheme I have been bitten by the volunteering bug, and will undoubtedly try to continue volunteering wherever my future career will take me.

Would you recommend the Student Placement scheme to other students?

Yes, I’d recommend it to everyone, it is such an invaluable and rewarding experience. But be warned – you will get attached to the collection you’re working on!

9

Recent acquisitions

Dealings with the Fairies by George MacDonald, Briggs Collection, barcode 1007763900 and Little Lessons for Little Learners by Mrs Barwell, illustrated by Kate Greenaway, Briggs Collection, LT210.PE/B2, barcode 6001917827.

Letters and lessons in literature Students from the Mansfield Nursing Studies Centre, 1980s, UMP/10/15.

10

Items submitted for the 3rd issue of The Letters Page. ACC 2792.

A good variety of material has come to us in the last few months. We are pleased to continue to add interesting items to the University archive, and welcome donations from former staff and students.

University archive

It is unusual for us to receive an ongoing archive, but we were delighted to accept material relating to the literary journal The Letters Page (ACC 2792) from its editor Jon McGregor, a local author and part-time lecturer with The University of Nottingham’s School of English.

The online journal, www.theletterspage.ac.uk, begun in 2013, publishes essays, stories, poetry, memoir, travelogue, and criticism; but all in the form of letters. The contributors, which have included George Saunders, Eimear McBride, Colum McCann, and Naomi Alderman, are interested in the literary traditions of letter writing, and in the idea of correspondence in a digital age.

The bulk of the archive consists of the letters submitted to the journal, only some of which were selected for publication. It also includes evidence of the processes of editing the journal, with post-it notes attached to letters showing the thoughts of the editorial team. As further editions are published, we expect to add to the archive.

An addition to the papers of The University of Nottingham Medical Faculty (ACC 2791/UAF1) has come from Robert Graham, the former Deputy Registrar and Secretary of the Medical School. The papers, dating from the 1960s to the 1990s, include photographs and reports relating to the Medical School, as well as programmes, menus and invitations to various events around the wider University. It also contains news cuttings and photographs relating to the development of the Clifton Bridge and the construction of the flyover near the Queen’s Medical Centre. Videos record the opening of the Medical School in 1970, the Queen’s visit in 1977, and the School’s Silver Jubilee in 1995. A separate accession contains colour slides of The University of Nottingham Medical School, c.1968-1978 (UMP/10/16).

We have also received plans, correspondence and minutes relating to the construction of the new Department of Physics building in 1959-1960, and inventories of equipment (ACC 2786).

Hospital records

Additions to the records of Nottingham General Hospital and Nottingham Children’s Hospital (ACC 2781), dating from the 1940s to the 1990s, include documents relating to reconstruction work following fire damage at the Memorial Nurses’ Home, the conversion of Fleet Ward at Nottingham General Hospital, and the formation of a patients’ recreation room at Nottingham General Hospital. The collection also contains slides, negatives and printed photographs, and scrapbooks of thank you cards sent to Fraser Ward in the 1980s and 1990s. One of our volunteers has started work on transcribing the index to the General Hospital In-Patient Registers, which will prove invaluable when tracing former patients.

Many nurses and midwives who qualified prior to the 1990s will have attended nursing studies centres run by the Health Authority.

Material relating to these students has recently been transferred to us (UAD1/5 and UMP/10/15). The collection includes photographs of cohorts of nurses studying in Lincoln and Mansfield in the 1980s, and memorabilia from the Mansfield centre dating from the 1980s and 1990s.

Business and industry

Three boxes of miscellaneous material relating to the Nottinghamshire mining industry (ACC 2793) were kindly given to us by Dr David Amos of the Department of History. The collection includes letterbooks and ledgers, some dating back to the 1880s.

It also includes minute books of the Welbeck Colliery Branch of the Notts Area of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), 19421948; the Nottinghamshire Miners’ Association, 1918, 1921, 1924 and 1937; the Nottinghamshire and District Miners’ Federated Union, 1943; and the Mineworkers Federation of Great Britain, 1936-1937 and 1943.

We have also received a copy of a minute book from Jersey Fabrics Ltd of Albert Mills, Gamble Street, Nottingham, 1938-1959 (MS 986). The company manufactured novelty fabrics in wool, cotton, rayon and nylon, hair and slumber nets, lace trimmings, ladies’ neckwear, collars, jabots and blousettes.

Art and literature

Cassettes of talks by Colin Wilson (ACC 2785), several given to The College of Psychic Studies, have been added to the Colin Wilson archive. We have also received a large accrual of papers relating to New Perspectives Theatre productions (ACC 2796), including two set models for the productions of Faith Healer and Dolly.

Religion

We have received six boxes of material relating to the Church of Christ in Nottingham, mostly 1950s-2000. The accession includes minute books, files and correspondence, and some wonderful photographs, the earliest of which shows members of the Church at the Church of Christ Annual Conference in 1923. (MS 937)

Family and estate archives

Volunteers and staff are working hard behind the scenes to upgrade catalogue entries in the Portland and Galway collections.

Correspondence in French in the John Achard collection (PwC) is being summarised in English, and the subject matter in letters in the Galway collection is being described in full. This work is ongoing, and is not always immediately uploaded to the online catalogue. When it is, however, the upgraded descriptions will enable readers to identify relevant material much more accurately.

Special collections

Notable purchases have been made to the Briggs Collection of Educational Literature, including a first edition of Dealings with the Fairies published in 1866 by George MacDonald. He was a Scottish fantasy writer and mentor to Lewis Carroll and is cited as a major influence on CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. We also purchased a number of books illustrated by the renowned children’s artist Kate Greenaway, such as William Mavor’s The English Spelling Book which was first published in 1801 and was reprinted many times throughout the 19th century. This edition of 1885 features Greenaway’s artwork for the first time.

11

Contact details Manuscripts and Special Collections The University of Nottingham King’s Meadow Campus Lenton Lane Nottingham NG7 2NR e: mss-library@nottingham.ac.uk t: +44 (0)115 951 4565 www.nottingham.ac.uk/ manuscriptsandspecialcollections

@ mssUniNott

Parchment, Paper and Pixels provides a taster of the wonderful collections held by Manuscripts and Special Collections.

This iBook introduces you to a selection of archives, maps, photographs, posters and music covering the globe from Iceland to China by way of Nottingham and the Soviet Union.

www.nottingham.ac.uk/open/ebooksandibooks.aspx