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We offer sincere apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.
Category Archives: Century
‘Handicapism is a mental disease of the able-bodied …and it affects us all…’
So reads a pin badge found in the collection of Keith Armstrong at the Bodleian Libraries Special Collections. The Bodleian holds just one box of Armstrong’s collection (the rest are held by the Bishopsgate Institute in London), but within it we can find evidence of Armstrong’s multifaceted life. Born in South Africa in 1950, Armstrong was an activist and public campaigner for disability rights. At six months old, he contracted polio, confining him to a wheelchair for most of his life. He spent much of his childhood in Oxford, attending Ormerod School, a school for children with physical disabilities. In his adulthood, he helped found the Liberation Network of People with Disabilities, and at different intervals, he was a member of the London Transport Passenger Committee and the committee of Camden Dial-a-Ride.
His collection at the Bodleian Libraries gives us an insight into the different aspects of Armstrong’s life: as a campaigner and voice for disabled rights; a creator of typewriter art; and a poet. It also shows us a darker side to his beliefs. At age 16, he began editing and publishing his own poetry and literature magazine, The Informer. The first issue of his magazine contained an article written by a contributor, Brian Crittindon, containing a repeated number of racial slurs and seeming to argue for Jim Crow laws in the US and against immigration into the UK. As the editor-in-chief of The Informer, it is impossible to ignore Armstrong’s role in producing and distributing material containing hateful language. With the records available, it is difficult to know whether Armstrong held onto these views into adulthood, or if he would have looked back with regret later in life. Whilst his achievements as a disability rights activist are undeniable—his work led to improvements in train and tube access, and to the Disability Discrimination Act 1995—it does remind us of the fact that when examined from all sides, those we admire in history often held views that are incompatible with our own values. It’s therefore important to be able to understand and appreciate the work of those who came before us, whilst acknowledging the impact of their faults and facets which were harmful to others.
Written by Kasturi Pindar, Bodleian Libraries intern, Summer 2023.
UK Disability History Month – 16 November – 16 December (ukdhm.org)
Collection: Papers of Keith Armstrong, typewriter poet | Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts (ox.ac.uk)
The catalogue of the archive of C.F.C. Hawkes – available soon!
Christopher Hawkes (1905-1992) was an eminent archaeologist of European prehistory who made Oxford a centre for archaeological research and post-graduate teaching. This led to the foundation of the Institute of Archaeology in Oxford, of which Hawkes was the first director. His interest in learning about the past started when he was a child, when he visited monuments such as Hadrian’s Wall and Stonehenge, and continued through his time at New College, Oxford, where he took part in excavations at Brecon, Wroxeter and Winchester. After achieving a first-class degree, he worked at the British Museum in the department of British and Medieval Antiquities until he was appointed the new chair of European archaeology at Oxford in 1946. He stayed in Oxford with his second wife, archaeologist Sonia Hawkes, and continued to publish for many years after his retirement in 1972.
This collection comprises his personal and professional papers, including correspondence with colleagues and former students. His working notes show the wide scope of his work and include illustrations and drawings completed in his distinctive style.
Lt. Col. Charles Pascoe Hawkes (1877-1956) served in the Northumberland Fusiliers, 1900-1920, and was a barrister at the Inner Temple from 1902 until 1950. He was a political caricaturist, drawing for Granta, Cambridge University, and for the Daily Graphic. A keen traveller and an avid documenter of his adventures, his collection includes photograph albums titled ‘Kodakings in divers places’ and sketchbooks from his trips to Scotland, Europe and North Africa.
This collection will be available soon.
Tracing the impact of war through the correspondence of C.F.C. Hawkes
Guest post by Eleanor Newman, Summer intern in the Modern Archives & Manuscripts Department
As a Classical Archaeology DPhil student, I was thrilled to learn that my job as Archives Processing intern would be cataloguing the work files of Professor C.F.C. Hawkes (1905-1992), founder of the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Oxford. A complex but brilliant scholar, his archives are made up of everything from scribbled notes to full publications, drawings to photographs, and even a real Roman potsherd discovered in Colchester. The files of Hawkes contain a fountain of knowledge on archaeology from Prehistoric Europe to Bronze Age Greece to Roman Britain and beyond, and provide a wonderful insight into the life and career of an established archaeologist.
The correspondence of C.F.C. Hawkes has been particularly interesting, revealing close friendships, bitter rivalries, and even full-blown archaeological scandals (on more than one occasion). What I have found particularly striking, however, are the consistent references to the unstable political climate of the early 20th century and the effects of war on the field of archaeology. A collection of letters from this time highlight the devastation caused by the Spanish Civil War and World War II and the impact on the careers of archaeologists who were, otherwise, just trying to go about their lives.
Hawkes, like many of his colleagues, was called up for duty during WWII. A letter from Hawkes to the Headmaster of Colchester Royal Grammar School (1944) [MS. 21042/162, Colchester] reveals that he had “war-time duties”, which involved working for the Ministry of Aircraft Production. M. R. Hull, curator at the Colchester and Essex Museum states in a letter addressed to Hawkes (1942) [MS. 21042/162, Colchester] that he was part of the Observer Corps, which was taking time away from his ability to do archaeological work. Of course, war time duties carried great responsibility and may have even been traumatic, but I had personally never considered the impact that it must have had on careers which people such as Hawkes and Hull had dedicated their lives to.
References to war and its ongoing impact have appeared in unexpected circumstances throughout this archive. Correspondence between Hawkes and two colleagues working in Ireland, Seán Ó Ríordáin and Gerhard Bersu, refers to a dispute between the latter two about the approach to archaeology in Ireland in the early 1950s [MS. 21042/156, Ireland]. Bersu claims that Irish archaeologists should follow the continental European approach, while Ríordáin stresses that, actually, the Irish approach is perfectly good. The drama and, in some places, comedy of this dispute is overshadowed by one devastating fact: Gerhard Bersu was working in Ireland at this time because, as a German of Jewish ancestry, he had been removed from his position as director of the Römisch‐Germanischen Kommission in 1935 and was forced to flee Germany, eventually taking refuge in Ireland. As a letter from 1950 reveals, it was still not safe for him to return to Germany even five years after the end of the war [MS. 21042/156, Ireland].
Bersu was not the only one of Hawkes’ colleagues displaced from their home as a result of conflict. In 1947, a letter to Hawkes details the emotional struggle of Pere Bosch-Gimpera, a Spanish archaeologist and the Minister of Justice of Catalonia in the government of Lluís Companys, following the Spanish Civil War [MS. 21042/156, Iberia 1]: “I read…with emotion that my ancient colleagues and pupils remember me and still think that I have done something for the archaeology of my country…I fought more than 20 years for having a real Archaeological Museum in Barcelona and to make an organisation of Archaeology in Catalonia, and when things began to become settled I had to fly away.” This story told by Bosch-Gimpera, who fled to Mexico following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, reflects the personal and professional devastation caused by conflict. Not only did he leave behind friends and colleagues, but he also was not able to witness the impact of his campaign for archaeology in Barcelona and broader Catalonia. A heart-breaking read, this letter shows one man’s touching dedication to archaeology through turmoil.
Finally, Hawkes’ correspondence reveals the severe physical impact of war on museums and collections of artefacts. Museums were no longer able to function as research facilities, as a letter from M.R. Hull to Hawkes in 1940 [MS. 21042/162, Colchester] suggests: “To what extent is the [British Museum] still functioning?” Instead, practical measures for the preservation of material took urgent priority over research and analysis. In a letter from 1947, Bosch-Gimpera details the earlier evacuation of artefacts from a museum in Spain to prevent their destruction by bombings [MS. 21042/156, Iberia 1].
Unfortunately, these preventative measures were not always successful. A devastating letter from A.J.E. Cave, Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, to Hawkes details the damage caused by the London blitz in 1941: “You will be sorry, I know, to learn that our Museum was practically totally destroyed by enemy action on May 10th-11th, and that a mere handful of specimens alone remains of our former incomparable collections. The devastation is truly terrible: I cannot even attempt to describe the extent of this national loss. The most famous historical specimens in British biological science are gone for ever and two centuries of labour and collecting are wiped out at one foul blow. We were burned to the foundations in some places and material placed underground for ‘safety’ has suffered with the rest. A nucleus remains, it is true, for a future Museum, but nothing can ever replace the priceless specimens in osteology, anatomy, pathology and physiology now utterly vanished.” The extent of this loss is inconceivable and its impact on research is surely ongoing even now.
The correspondence of C.F.C. Hawkes highlights the ongoing struggle of archaeologists through conflict in the 1940s. These heart-breaking stories are reflections of the, sometimes surprising, impacts of war on individuals and their work. They are also inspiring demonstrations of persistence and tenacity during difficult times, and echoes of the love that these men held for archaeology.
The catalogue of the archive of Averil Cameron –available soon!
Averil Cameron is a historian of late antiquity, classics and Byzantine studies. She was professor of Late Antique and Byzantine History at King’s College London and Warden of Keble College, Oxford, from 1994 to 2010.
She has been associated with various academic societies including as founding director of the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s College London. Since 2018 she has been President of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies.
She has published several works, including; Agathias (1970), History as Text (1989) and The Byzantines (2006). The archive comprises papers and correspondence mainly relating to Cameron’s academic work. This includes books, published and unpublished lectures, and articles.
This collection will be available soon.
Catalogue of the archive of Averil Cameron
The catalogue of the archive of the Butler family – available soon!
This archive comprises three generations of an Oxford academic family; Rohan Butler (1917-1996), his father Harold Butler (1883-1951), and grandfather Alfred J. Butler (1850-1936).
Rohan Butler was a historian and civil servant. He worked at both the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Information during World War II. From 1963 to 1982 he was Historical Advisor to the secretary of state for foreign affairs. He authored two books, The Roots of National Socialism (1941) and his magnus opus Choiseul: Father and Son, 1719-1754 (1980). He was elected a prize fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, in 1938 and continued to be involved with the college throughout out his life.
Rohan Butler’s papers include his personal papers, literary work, time at All Souls College and work as a civil servant. The subseries relating to Choiseul includes extensive notes on the French military officer and diplomat, and on European history of the time, used by Butler to complete the work. There are also several volumes of unpublished poetry, a draft play and papers relating to an unpublished book titled ‘Redeemers of Democracy’.
Harold Butler was a civil servant and author. He worked in various government departments, including the Ministry of Labour and the Home Office. At the outbreak of World War II, he was appointed southern regional commissioner for civil defence. In 1942 he was appointed head of the British Information Service at the British Embassy in Washington, DC, where he remained until his retirement in 1946. His papers relate mainly to his civil service work, including his time in Washington which brought him into correspondence with Churchill, Eden, Ismay and Roosevelt. There are three diaries, covering 1917-1919 and 1940-1941, in which he talks about the war progress and the home situation. Olive Butler was a frequent correspondent to her son, Rohan, and her correspondence gives an insight into a diplomat’s life in Washington during World War II.
Alfred J. Butler was a historian specialising in Coptology. He was the author of several works including; The Ancient Coptic Churches of Egypt, Vol 1 and 2 (1884), The Arab Conquest of Egypt and the Last Thirty Years of the Roman Dominion (1902) and Sport in Classic Times (1930). His papers relate to his work on ancient Coptic Churches and includes a draft manuscript for an unpublished work titled ‘Greater or Lesser Britain’.
This collection will be available soon.
The catalogue of the archive of Dr Emilie Savage-Smith – available soon!
Dr Emilie Savage-Smith is a historian of science specialising in Islamic celestial globes. Islamic celestial globes are spherical maps of the sky that give the viewer a ‘God’s’ eye view of the stars and constellations, with Earth at the centre, originating from lands where Islam was the predominant religion.
Savage-Smith graduated from DePauw University in 1962 and completed her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1969. She was professor of the History of Islamic Science in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford from 2006 to 2019, and a fellow and archivist of St Cross College, Oxford, 2004-2021.
She has authored several books, including Islamicate Celestial Globes: Their History, Construction and Use, 1985. She was named a fellow of the British Academy, 2010, and the Medieval Academy of America, 2020.
This collection is the largest research archive of material on Islamic celestial globes in the world, with over two-hundred globes and instruments dating back to 1080 featured. It comprises her papers, photographs and drawings collected over the course of her career. Her collection of objects was donated to the History of Science Museum.
This collection will be available soon.
Catalogue of the archive of Dr Emilie Savage-Smith
Science in the Islamic World | History of Science Museum
‘On the roll’: a brief history of matriculation
It’s that time of year again when a new cohort of undergraduates arrives in Oxford to matriculate at the University. Matriculation is the formal admission of a student to membership of the University. Students, who have already been admitted to their colleges (which are legally and administratively separate from the central University), are then presented by that college to the University for matriculation. In celebration, the University Archives’ blog for October looks at matriculation through some of the records we hold of this longstanding Oxford tradition.
The history of matriculation is somewhat obscure for the University’s early years. Before the existence of colleges, students lived in private lodgings and were under the supervision of individual teaching masters. It’s generally understood that the University required every scholar to be on the roll or in the register (in rotulo or in matricula) of one of these masters. It appears, however, that this requirement was not enforced and there are, sadly, no surviving rolls or registers in the Archives documenting these early students. For the first few centuries of its existence, the University repeatedly tried, and seemingly failed, to get its students systematically recorded.
In 1420 a royal ordinance was issued which enacted that all scholars should reside in a college or hall, under the guardianship of a principal and that they, and their servants (more about them later), should swear an oath to observe the University’s statutes. The fact that this ordinance had to be revived in 1552, and the continued absence of any records of this process, suggests that it, also, was ignored. The 1552 ordinance is in fact the reason behind the creation of the earliest surviving list of persons residing in colleges and halls of the University. This list appears in a Chancellor’s register of the period, a register used for a wide range of University business.
Entry listing members of Christ Church in the Chancellor’s register, 1552 (OUA/Hyp/A/5, fol 68v)
The list is divided into sections for each college and each starts with the senior members of that college: masters (magistri in Latin) being denoted by the prefix ‘Mr’, and doctors, by ‘D’. It then goes on to list the junior members, ie students. There is no information about when a particular person entered the University or how long they’d been at the college. It isn’t, strictly-speaking, a record of matriculation at all, merely a list of names providing a simple snapshot in time.
In 1564 the University appointed a committee to look again into matriculation and draw up new regulations governing it. Their work culminated in the University’s first matriculation statute introduced in 1565. This required all scholars and privileged persons (more about them later, too) who, if 16 or over, should swear to observe the University’s statutes. The 1565 statute required students to be registered within seven days of their admission to a college or hall (or if living in the town under the supervision of a master), and to give the University certain personal information such as their age and place of residence.
The statute also established a scale of fees at matriculation whereby different amounts were charged depending on the matriculant’s social status. At the top of this list were the sons of princes, dukes and marquises (who paid 13 s 4d to matriculate). There then followed (in descending order) the sons of counts or viscounts; barons, bishops or baronets; esquires, deacons or archdeacons; knights and gentlemen. Until finally, at the bottom, the sons of plebeians (who paid only 4d). The ranks were peculiarly arranged – higher status individuals were separated into very small categories whilst the remaining 90% of the population were lumped together, effectively, as ‘plebs’.
The statute also made provision for a register or book of matriculations to be kept by the University. The very first matriculation register of the University was created that year. It is divided into sections, one for each college or hall. At first the entries are very much like the 1552 list of names, simply a snapshot roll-call for certain years, and not proper matriculation records. There are also long gaps in the register in which hardly any entries are recorded. Clearly the colleges were still not co-operating with the new matriculation statute. But the University persisted and in 1568 it set up yet another committee to look at the issue. The first proper matriculation entries in this register begin in c1571, presumably as a result of their efforts. In Christ Church’s entry (the first college listed in the register), for example, the first dated matriculation is in 1572. But there are still gaps in the register after that which suggest that matriculations were not being systematically recorded.
From 1581, a new restriction on matriculation came into force. From that date all matriculating students over the age of 16 were required to declare their assent to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, the Book of Common Prayer and the oath of Royal Supremacy. In order to demonstrate this assent, the matriculating student swore the oath of supremacy and signed his name on pages bound up in a register with a copy of the Thirty-Nine Articles. This effectively barred anyone who was not a member of the Church of England from entering the University; students who were Roman Catholic, Jewish, Muslim or non-conformist protestants, for example, were now excluded.
The University appears to have tightened up its recording of matriculations after this and the entries in the register become fuller and more comprehensive. Each student was now required to provide the following information to the University: his age, the rank or status of his father, and his county of origin. Age was required by the University as it determined whether or not the student was required to take the oath of supremacy (if under 16, he was not required to do so). The father’s rank or status was still required in order to determine the matriculation fee. The county of origin was useful to colleges, as certain college fellowships and scholarships were limited to those born in specified counties, but it is not clear why the central University needed that information. From 1616, the registers begin to note whether the person matriculating was the eldest or second son, etc. Eldest sons of certain ranks were granted privileges relating to their studies, such as dispensations from particular University requirements. From 1622, the matriculation registers also contain the name of the student’s father and (it is not clear exactly which), either the parish in which the student was born, or the parish in which the father resided.
The first Christ Church matriculations, 1570s (OUA/SP 1, fol 20v)
What is also clear from the earliest matriculation entries, such as those of Christ Church, is that the ages of students matriculating ranged more widely, and, by and large, students were much younger than today. In the list pictured, Robert Sydney matriculated aged only 12; Edward Montague, aged 13. Putting aside the possibility of less-than-truthful entries, it is certainly the case that students matriculated at a younger age in centuries past. In the late 16th century, their ages ranged between 7 and 30, with one record found of a five-year old, Audley Mervin, matriculating in June 1618 (but it is suspected this might be a clerical error for ‘15’). The general trend has been for students to get older over the centuries until they reach the, more usual, age of 18+ as today.
Some students may have wanted to avoid having to assent to the beliefs of the Church of England and so deliberately came up to Oxford before they were 16 (at which age it became compulsory). Some may have been young boys sent to Oxford at the same time as an older brother. What other records held here show is that most of these very young matriculants rarely proceeded to a degree.
The information given by the matriculants was not checked or verified, as far as we know, and so was not necessarily entirely accurate. Like many records kept by archives, the information these registers contain has its limitations. It is what someone wanted the University to believe, not necessarily what was the case. Some students deliberately understated their social rank in order to pay smaller fees, for example; there’s evidence from college records that students sometimes assigned themselves a lower status to the University, and a much higher one to their college.
There’s also evidence that not every student at a college even matriculated. The University’s matriculation records contain errors and omissions when compared to college admission records. Students unwilling to subscribe, for example, might avoid matriculating entirely. It appears, however, that attendance at colleges without matriculation was rare by the end of the 17th century and had mostly ceased by the middle of the 18th.
A far greater range of people were admitted to membership of the University at this time than today. One large group of these were privileged persons. Privileged persons (personae privilegiatae) were, generally, of two types: servants or tradesmen. Servants (servientes) could be either personal servants or common servants. Any University member could bring his personal servant to Oxford with him and have him admitted to the status of privileged person. ‘Common servants’ included lower-ranked University officers such as bedels, or college servants such as manciples or cooks. The other type of privileged person were tradesmen and workmen of the town (privilegiati), people such as booksellers, brewers or carriers. Privileged status conferred on them the right to trade with the University and its members and gave them access to a large and wealthy customer base that the non-privileged tradesman did not have. Privileged persons appear in the matriculation registers until the late 18th century, often in a separate list at the back of the volumes.
In 1870 the University introduced a new system for recording student information at matriculation: the matriculation form. Completed by each matriculating student, in their own hand, this asked for personal information. For the first 20 or so years, the form was very small, requiring students to give much the same type of information as they had done for years past: ie name, age, whether the matriculant was the eldest or second child, place of birth, father’s name and ‘quality’, date of matriculation and college.
Matriculation form of Oscar Wilde, 1874 (from OUA/UR 1/1/6)
Dates of birth, school and father’s present address were added to the form in 1894, a useful addition for both the University at the time and the genealogist of the future. But one has to wonder how practically useful some of the other information on the form now was. The University had asked for the same kind of information from its students for centuries, long after some of it was of any use at all. Would the fact that a student was a third son be of any relevance in 1890? One suspects not, as the privileges that status had once offered had long since disappeared.
The social ranks had also changed quite dramatically over time and the particular terms used had changed, or lost, their meaning so much that by the 19th century they’d become rather meaningless. Matriculating students were using, and misusing, outdated terminology established over 200 years earlier. In 1891 the confusion felt on all sides led the University to change the question from father’s rank or ‘quality’ to occupation.
A very significant change to matriculation took place in 1871. Subscription at matriculation remained obligatory until 1854 when it was abolished by the Oxford University Act. But religious tests for membership of the University were not finally abolished until 1871 when the Universities Tests Act enabled those of all faiths and none to matriculate. This began the opening up of matriculation to a greater number and range of people.
The University took a little longer to allow women to matriculate. Although women had been studying in Oxford, at the women’s colleges set up in the city from the 1870s onwards, they were still not allowed to matriculate. Women could sit and pass University examinations but until they could matriculate, under the University’s longstanding regulations, they were not allowed to graduate. This finally changed in 1920.
Matriculation form of Isobel Millicent Matthew, 1920 (from OUA/UR 1/2/1)
The first woman to matriculate, Isobel Millicent Matthew, did so on 7 October 1920. As her matriculation form shows, the University had to change its standard male-centric matriculation form for its new women matriculants. But instead of taking the opportunity to review the forms and see whether the information they were asking for was relevant to the 20th century, the University decided to simply tweak them, change their colour, and replace all masculine vocabulary with feminised versions. As a result, the form now asked its female matriculants for some entirely irrelevant information: no-one in the University would ever need to know whether the matriculant was an eldest daughter. This had no bearing on any University procedure. The men’s forms were also restructured into this new, enlarged format, but the redundant information continued to be collected.
The matriculation registers continued to be maintained after the forms were introduced in 1870. These were completed, as they always had been, by University administrative staff and from the 1870s, they simply copied the information from the forms into the registers, effectively creating a second (often much more legible) copy of the information. By 1924, however, the time taken to maintain the parallel series of matriculation registers could no longer be justified and the University decided to stop keeping them. From then on, the forms themselves were to be the official record of matriculation. The last register entries were made in 1925.
The University continued using the matriculation forms all through the twentieth century. The occasional review added another piece of required information to the form (such as the type of school attended, nationality, or proposed subject of study) as demands grew on the University to report statistics of the nature of its student body. It therefore had to add to the forms the kind of information which it needed to answer the questions being asked of it by others (such as social origin, class, income and background). By and large, however, the content, and purpose, of the forms remained the same.
With the advent of computerised student systems in the 1980s, the University revised the matriculation form yet again, with a view to standardising data collection and speeding up the production of statistics. The inevitable progress of technology meant that the decision to stop creating paper matriculation forms at all was finally taken in 2005.
Much has been written about the University’s early matriculation records. A good discussion of the period between 1571 and 1622 can be found in Andrew Clark’s Register of the University of Oxford Vol II, Part I, (published by the Oxford Historical Society in 1887).
For further information about how to access the information in the matriculation records, please see the guidance on the University Archives’ website at https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/universityarchives/guides/past-members. The guidance includes links to published registers, available online, of those who matriculated before 1892. It also provides contact details for sources of information regarding students matriculating after 1892.
For a detailed look at the changing student body of the University over time, see Lawrence Stone’s chapter entitled ‘The Size and Composition of the Oxford student body 1580-1910’ in The University in Society, Vol I Oxford and Cambridge from the 14th to the Early 19th Centuries (Princeton, 1974).
The University recently commemorated the 150th anniversary of the 1871 Universities Tests Act with the creation of the ‘Opening Oxford 1871-2021’ website at https://openingoxford1871.web.ox.ac.uk/
For information about matriculation today, see the University’s main website at https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/new/matriculation
Preserved in Time: A Snapshot of Moss Side in the Archive of Daniel Meadows
Moss Side, Manchester, spring of 1972. On a sunny day, a group of children gather round an old barber’s shop, set into a row of single-storey Victorian buildings. They jostle for space as they peer at photographs on display in the window. The eldest among them holds up a toddler on their hip—perhaps a sibling, relation, or friend—to better see the photographs. To their left, outside the shop next door, stands a rack of second-hand clothes for sale. To the right is Jimmy Thomson’s Tattoo Parlour. Three teenage girls stand outside the tattoo shop, watching the flurry of activity. [1]
Moss Side covers just 1.84 square kilometres of Manchester, pushing up against Hulme to the north and Whalley Range to the south. [2]. In the 1950s, this neighbourhood became home to a small but growing Caribbean population, early arrivals of what is now known as the Windrush Generation. In the 1950s and 60s, many Caribbean people chose to move to Manchester where they knew others, family or friends, or if they had been stationed in nearby Lancashire during the war. Settling in and around Moss Side, a Caribbean community soon laid down roots in the neighbourhood. [3]. In the 1950s, Caribbean people made up the second-largest ethnic group in Manchester after white British people and by 1981 there were over 6,000 people from the Caribbean living in the city. These people came predominantly from Jamaica, but there were other from countries such as Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and what was then known as the West Indies Associated States. [4].
Moss Side has long been stigmatised as an ‘inner-city problem area.’ [5]. In 1981, protests against racist and aggressive policing tactics in Moss Side turned into violent clashes lasting two nights, further consolidating the view of the neighbourhood as a site of violence and crime. This followed similar events in Brixton, Toxteth and Handsworth, caused by high unemployment, poor housing provision, a lack of investment, and racial tensions. [6]. However, photographs of Moss Side held in the Bodleian Libraries Special Collections show a very different story. Taken almost a decade before the disturbances of 1981, but twenty years after the first arrivals from the Caribbean, they are a window into the daily life of this deprived, but neighbourly area.
The shop described above, around which the children gathered to peek at photographs in the window, was the Free Photographic Shop, which had been set up by a photography student at Manchester Polytechnic called Daniel Meadows. Hailing from rural Gloucestershire, Meadows came to Manchester in 1970 and lived in Moss Side. In January 1972 he rented a barbershop at 79b Greame Street, converting it into a photographic studio in which local people could have their picture taken free of charge. Once developed, Meadows’ subjects received a copy of their photograph to keep. [7]. The studio was open for two months during which time Meadows photographed over 200 people, despite the shop being open only one day per week. [8].
The Free Photographic Shop at 79b Greame Street, MS. Meadows 46
The man with many faces
Is there anyone who doesn’t like to doodle? This is clearly not a modern trait. As ‘Doodle Day’ 2023 approaches in September, it seemed timely that we should come across some rather charming drawings by one of the examiners signing his name in two ‘Registers of Examinations’ held by the University Archives.
Frederick York Powell (1850-1904) was a law lecturer and examiner (he later became the Regius Professor of Modern History, 1894-1904) whose duties included lecturing and examining on political economy for the Pass School. The Pass School was introduced in the second half of the nineteenth century for those students who did not seek honours and offered the opportunity to study a different combination of subjects (see this previous blog for more details on the The Pass School)
Powell was an examiner for Pass School Group B (which included political economy) from 1877 until at least 1888, but he did not examine every term or every year. It is through his records of examinations that we meet his doodles.
Whenever Powell was the one to write the list of names of successful candidates, he bracketed together the names of the three (or sometimes four) examiners, who signed their names underneath, and drew a face as part of that bracket. Powell had extremely neat and legible handwriting, which was not always the case of examiners at this time.
Signatures of examiners for Pass School Group B, 1883 (from OUA/UR/3/1/27/1)
One of the fascinating things about Powell’s doodles is that whilst he consistently draws faces, they are all different. It’s tempting to wonder whether these drawings were actually caricatures of his fellow examiners or other academics in Oxford. The pictures are not always kind, sometimes showing exaggerated features:
Signatures of examiners for Pass School Group B, 1883 (from OUA/UR/3/1/27/1)
Signatures of examiners for Pass School Group B, 1883 (from OUA/UR/3/1/27/1)
It is important to remember that these registers were administrative records and were the official record kept by the University. As such, it’s all the more striking that Powell doodled so frequently – it wasn’t a momentary slip in an instance of absent-mindedness, but something he did consistently across several years. It is tempting to speculate as to whether his fellow examiners approved of such decorations or rather disapproved of his flamboyant style.
The second register featuring Powell’s doodles is the Register of Examinations for Modern History, 1872-1913, where he was an examiner from 1886 onwards. The examples in this volume are typical Powell style but the faces are different. The one below looks rather like Voldemort in Harry Potter!
Signatures of examiners for Modern History, 1887 (from OUA/UR/3/24/1)
Of all the faces drawn by Powell, of which these are only a selection, my favourite is shown below. The face looks rather elegant and distinguished with quite a head of hair:
Signatures of examiners for Modern History, 1888 (from OUA/UR/3/1/24/1)
Details of face drawn by Powell as examiner for Modern History, 1888 (from OUA/UR/3/1/24/1)
There are no other examples of examiners doodling or drawing like Powell in these two registers. If Powell was hoping to inject a little light heartedness or fun into a serious administrative record and perhaps encourage others to do the same, it does not look like this happened. It would be interesting to discover whether Powell continued to doodle once he was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History in 1894. I could find no further examples of doodles by Powell from this date onwards within any records held by the University Archives.
According to his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (subscription required), Powell seems to have been a rather original yet disorganised character, not necessarily renowned for his scholarship but for his generosity of his time and sense of fun. I rather suspect that Powell may have continued to doodle no matter what position he held.
For other examples of drawings and doodles on records in the University Archives see Notes in the margin | Archives and Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library (ox.ac.uk)
For further information on Frederick York Powell, see his Wikipedia entry.