Category Archives: Modern

The Gall of It!

For a long time I’ve been curious about iron gall ink. It’s a term that gets used a lot by archivists, which is unsurprising when it’s the name for the favoured ink used in Europe from the middle ages into the twentieth century, with its use spreading around the globe. It’s the ink used on the oldest document in the University Archives that mentions the University as a corporate entity (dated 1214) and it’s likely to be the same type of ink used in some of the records of the University in the 1800s.

A document, written in Latin, in black ink, on parchment

OUA/WPBeta/P/12/1 – The 1214 Award of the Papal Legate

As well as its rich colour and permanent quality (it is remarkably resistant to water), the ink is also known for a less positive aspect – over time it may “eat” through the paper. I vividly recall seeing a photograph of piece of sheet music which had been written using iron gall ink. After 200 years, the corrosion of ink had left the sheet looking like a pianola roll.

Two pages of a paper booklet, written on with black ink. In places, the ink has burned through the paper, leaving blank spaces.

MS. Rawl. D. 869 – volume one of the papers of Philip Henry Zollmann, showing the damage caused by iron gall ink

I decided, in order to appreciate the ink a little better, the best thing to do was to make some, using an original recipe, and reading secondary sources to understand the process.  The recipe I settled on (as guided by this video) was that of Ugo da Carpi, Thesauro de Scrittori (Rome, 1535), reproduced in Renaissance Secrets: Recipes and Formulas (Wheeler, V&A Publishing, 2009). The recipe reads

“Take an ounce of gallnuts crushed into little pieces. Then put into a linen cloth. Tie it up, but not too tightly. Leave to soak for at least six days in 12 ounces of rainwater. Next boil until it reduces down to 8 ounces. Strain and add a quarter ounce of German vitriol, ground to a fine powder and half an ounce of gum arabic, steeped in vinegar[…] And you will make a wondrously good ink”

Gallnuts can be found on a variety of vegetation, but are perhaps best known on oak trees, where they are often called oak galls or oak apples. They are formed after certain types of insect (often a gall wasp) lay their eggs on a tree. When the eggs hatch as larvae, the larvae secrete chemicals which irritate the tree, causing it to produce gall tissue. The gall tissue acts as both a food source for the larvae, and a protective structure in which the larvae can pupate into a wasp. Last year, I asked my family and friends to gather any galls they might see and I noticed they brought back two types – one smooth and round, and the other rather wrinkly.

On a white background are two natural spheres. They are both brown in colour. One is smooth and mottled, the other is wrinkled and darker.

Thought to be an oak apple gall (left) and an oak knopper gall (right)

A Google search reveals that the wrinkly type are caused by the oak knopper gall wasp, and I think the smoother kind are from the oak apple gall wasp (although they are rather small for this type). I wasn’t sure if I could use the wrinkly type in making ink. Most of the YouTube videos showing ink making seem to show the smoother kind, and so I discounted the wrinkled type. Initially, the galls gathered were rather green, and so I left them to ripen to the brown colour that seemed in popular use. By January, they were ready. Unfortunately, I did not have the ounce required by the recipe and so (keen to get going) I bought some galls online. This provided yet another kind of gall. Given their size and their spiky surface, I believe that these may be Aleppo galls. I also purchased Iron II Sulphate (the modern name for German vitriol, or Copperas) and some Gum Arabic.

A see-through plastic pouch containing a number of brown spheres

Bag of oak galls, purchased from an online retailer, thought to be Aleppo galls

With a sudden wealth of galls, I decided to make two batches of ink – one with primarily “home gathered” galls, and one solely made with the purchased galls.

The first stage of the recipe is to crush and steep the galls in rainwater. Typically, early January was one of the very few periods in the UK with absolutely no rain. Feeling frustrated that I had nearly all the of the ingredients I needed, I turned to Assistant Keeper Alice Millea, who had previously mentioned she had water butts in her garden. Alice kindly agreed to the (admittedly odd) request, and brought in a flask of rainwater.

I measured out two jars of 12 ounces of rain water. Next, I set to crush the two sets of galls, using a pestle and mortar, starting with the batch primarily gathered nearby. However, the pestle and mortar did not work well on this batch, as the galls were rather spongy and could best be torn apart by hand.

A pottery pestle and mortar containing brown, natural fragments

In contrast to this, the purchased galls were extremely hard and took quite some work with the pestle and mortar to reduce to a reasonable size. From da Carpi’s use of the word “crushed” in the recipe, I would presume he was most used to working with Aleppo galls, given their hardness.

Two images, side by side. The image on the left shows a cross section of a pale beige sphere. The image on the right shows a cross-section of the inside of an orange-brown sphere

The purchased galls (on the left) had to be crushed, whereas the local galls (right) were softer and could be ripped apart.

I placed the ripped and crushed galls on squares of muslin (usually used for my jam making!) and tied them into what I can best describe as giant tea-bags. I carefully lowered them into the jars of rainwater, and left them to steep for six days.

A decorated glass jam jar, nearly full of water. At the top of the water is a pouch of muslin, tied around natural contents.

The purpose of this process is to leech out gallotannic acid from the galls, which will react when further ingredients are added at a later stage of the recipe.

After six days the liquid had turned a strong tea-like colour, and there was a small amount of growth on top of the liquid.

A decorated glass jam jar, held up in front of a window. The liquid inside the jar is a pale brown-orange. There is a muslin pouch which contents at the top of the jar.

Thus, I strained the liquids again, after removing the galls, through another square of muslin, before boiling each of the liquids until they were reduced to 8 ounces in weight. Whilst the liquid was boiling, I prepared the other ingredients. I was especially struck by the beautiful pale green colour of the Iron II Sulphate.

A heart-shaped dish on top of digital scales. There is a small amount of pale green powder inside the dish.

I wasn’t sure what the recipe meant by “steeping” the Gum Arabic in vinegar, so I decided to make a reasonably thick paste. I used red wine vinegar, as I thought this might have been the most readily available vinegar accessible for most of the period in which the ink was in use.

Eventually the liquid was sufficiently reduced, and an even deeper brown colour. I decanted this into clean jars.

A dark brown liquid inside a decorated jam jar.

The first ingredient to add was the Iron II Sulphate. The reaction was immediate and impressive.

Orange-brown liquid in a jam jar turning black when a powder is added

The change from transparent brown to dusky black was striking. What’s happening is a chemical reaction. When the tannin (from the gallotannic acid) interacts with the iron sulphate, it forms a “ferrous tannate complex”, essentially a dusky-coloured pigment.

The addition of Gum Arabic serves a number of practical purposes. It acts as a suspension agent for the pigment particles present in the liquid, keeping them distributed throughout the ink. It controls the thickness and flow of the ink, ensuring it is the right consistency for writing. It also controls the absorption of the ink into the writing surface, keeping it “on the top” for a little longer, before allowing the ink to be absorbed into the paper or parchment, making for sharper, cleaner writing marks.

Vinegar isn’t present in all iron gall ink recipes, but it is credited with slowing down the settling of pigment particles to the bottom of the ink, and with inhibiting mould growth during storage.

I could hardly wait to try out the ink (having a new dip-pen ready and waiting) but I restrained myself and waited the suggested 24 hours. Both inks when opened smelled of vinegar, but not overwhelmingly so. It’s a very thin liquid, easy to overload the pen. One noticeable difference between the two inks is that the “home grown” gall ink was black the moment it hit the page, but this could have been partly due to an overabundance of ink on the pen.

"Hello World" written in black ink on a decorative cream card

In contrast to this, the bought gall ink was rather pale when first applied. However, this colour darkened within a few minutes to jet black. The reason for this change in colour is that the iron ions in the mixture oxidise with the air, producing (from the ferrous tannate complex) a ferric tannate pigment with a darker colour, and thus a darker ink.

Furthermore, whilst the ferrous tannate complex is water soluble, the ferric tannate pigment is not, making the ink water resistant.

One final piece of curiosity was, unfortunately, not to be satisfied. I have often wondered what made different varieties of the same ink act so differently. Why do some versions of the ink “eat through” parchments, whilst others affect no damage to the surface? An obvious component is the acidity of the ink, and given that the galls are a variable source of gallotannic acid, I wondered whether different batches of galls would produce different amounts of acid. The Bodleian Conservation department very kindly provided me with some pH testing strips. Unfortunately, the ink simply turned them black, preventing any readings from being taken!

A small warning to those who intend to experiment for themselves – do remember to tighten the lid before shaking the ink…

Sources, Further Reading and Watching

Wheeler, Jo, and Katy Temple. Renaissance Secrets: Recipes and Formulas. London: V&A, 2009.

https://irongallink.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_gall_ink

https://www.rhs.org.uk/biodiversity/oak-gall-wasps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo9rbRRCBv8

New oral histories now online: Oxford’s pandemic perspectives

https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/collecting-covid-oral-histories

The Collecting COVID project (a collaboration of collecting between the History of Science Museum and the Bodleian Libraries) is currently well into its second year of uncovering Oxford University’s innovative and celebrated pandemic research.

The project has acquired a fascinating selection of oral history interviews from across the University, which explore the rapid research response to the crisis in early 2020. Fifty of these interviews are now publicly available in full on the University Podcasts website. An additional fifty will conclude this part of the collection, with new interviews added routinely.

Oxford academics, principal investigators, professional services and medical students all provide insights into their experiences of this time, providing testimonials that will inform research for generations. Topics are varied with contributors from all academic divisions and include vaccine manufacture and clinical trials, drug design and discovery, COVID misinformation, clinical care of patients, and economic recovery.

Collecting COVID (funded by the E. P. A. Cephalosporin Fund) is ongoing and still actively collecting pandemic research related objects and archival material from the University community. Enquiries and submissions to the collection can be sent to collectingcovid@glam.ox.ac.uk

[Guest post] Lewis Namier and the First World War: the “S.O.S. signal” letter of 5 January 1915

Opening paragraph of the letter from Lewis Namier to Robert Brand written 5 Jan 1915 [from MS. Brand 26/1, Bodleian Library]. The letter opens: "I am so sorry to trouble you on a Mon, but this letter is truly written under the S.O.S. signal." Copyright Lewis Namier

[Click to enlarge] The opening paragraph of the letter from Lewis Namier to Robert Brand, 5 Jan 1915 [MS. Brand 26/1, Bodleian Library], ©Lewis Namier

One of the occasional delights of research is the happy chance discovery of a document unrelated to your project but of value in another field. This is especially satisfying when it relates to a subject famous for the limitations of its archival sources.

Working in the Papers of Robert Brand, sometime Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and well-connected banker at Lazard Brothers, I came across a six-page letter, written in scratchy black ink, from L. B. Namier. It is dated 5 January 1915, when Namier was a soldier in the Royal Fusiliers in a PSU (public schools and universities) battalion in Epsom. It is located in MS Brand 26/1.

Lewis Bernstein Namier (1888-1960) became, after the war, one of the most admired historians of his generation. Deploying immense knowledge and meticulous scholarship, he set rigorous new standards in documentary research and pioneered the use of prosopography – and delivered his findings in powerful prose. Constructing an account of his life is hampered by the lack of a substantial personal archive.

There are three major studies of Namier. In Lewis Namier: A Biography (1971), his widow, Julia Namier, is protective of his reputation but captures a sense of him as an individual and gives an account of his brief period in the army based on what Namier had told her. She also utilised various unsorted materials Namier had left, but he burned many of his papers in June 1940, perhaps in fear of a Nazi invasion. Namier’s collaborator on the History of Parliament project, John Brooke, helped bring order to these sources for her. On completing her book, she also destroyed some documents (especially her own letters) in this collection, which is now held by the John Rylands University of Manchester Library.

Linda Colley’s concise volume is a deft, incisive analysis of Namier’s outlook and talents as a historian. She tracked down a number of his letters in various collections in the Bodleian Library but her main sources were the same as those available to Julia Namier. It is not surprising, therefore, that her narrative of this period largely follows Julia Namier’s treatment.

D. W. Hayton’s superb large-scale biography, Conservative Revolutionary: the Lives of Lewis Namier (2019) is the product of painstaking research in an impressive range of archives and benefits from his discovery of a substantial number of documents in the History of Parliament offices, sources unavailable to Linda Colley. He makes use of them to challenge some of Julia Namier’s claims.

None of these studies makes any kind of reference to the letter of 5 January 1915; nor do they cite any other text by Namier on his time in the army. It appears, therefore, to be the only example of Namier’s own words revealing his attitudes and depicting his circumstances in this period. The letter also contains details that allow us to expand our understanding of this episode in his life.

By the time Namier wrote the letter he had been in the army for over four months and had a mounting sense of frustration with life in the camp and was growing desperate to find a means of escape – he twice describes his message as an “S.O.S. signal.”

Hayton accurately explains how unpleasant an experience Namier found his time in Epsom and uses the letters of another soldier serving with the Royal Fusiliers to capture the daily routine of recruits – the drilling and the long days full of menial duties (Hayton, p. 68). But the 5 January 1915 letter provides Namier’s vivid descriptions. He objects to having “every atom of self-respect knocked out of me”; and concludes, “Mentally and morally it amounts to slow, gradual bleeding to death.”

The letter also reveals how Namier enlisted as an ordinary soldier, thereby hoping to contribute to the war effort more quickly than “if I waited for a commission.” But he has become deeply disillusioned by his daily experience as a soldier and by the change in the composition of his unit. It began with many public school and university men with whom he shared similarities of outlook but virtually all his friends have departed for commissions and “my foreign extraction makes it much harder for me to be left among strangers.” Namier is desperate to get away.

Yet there is ambivalence in what he seeks. On the one hand, he writes of wishing to secure a commission in the Army Service Corps, since he could bring to it important skills. This, however, is hindered by his colonel who is “wild” about people leaving for commissions. Nevertheless, he asks Brand if he could intercede on his behalf. On the other hand, he mentions how F. F Urquhart, Namier’s tutor when he studied at Balliol College, Oxford, was trying through Lord Eustace Percy, the diplomat and former fellow student at Balliol, to secure some work for him at the Foreign Office. Hayton discounts the role of Balliol and Oxford (Hayton, p. 70) yet Namier’s words indicate that Julia Namier was accurate when she referred to “Sligger” Urquhart’s endeavours (Julia Namier, p. 119).

There appears to be no record of Brand’s response to the request for help in obtaining a commission. Perhaps he knew through his contacts about Percy’s efforts and regarded them as more promising. In any event, this line of escape from Epsom proved more fruitful. On 1 February Percy invited Namier to the Foreign Office, the wheels were set in motion for his transfer, and by 14 February Namier had been discharged from the army and begun working at Wellington House, the Foreign Office’s new propaganda bureau aimed at promoting American sympathy for the Allied cause in the war. Meanwhile, later in the year Brand himself also joined the civilian war machinery as a member of the Imperial Munitions Board of Canada.

Michael F. Hopkins
Sassoon Visiting Fellow, Bodleian Library Oxford, Hilary Term 2023,
and University of Liverpool

The Anti-Slavery Society and British Slavery in 20th Century Peru

By Nic Madge.

This is the second in a series of posts by researchers drawing on the archive of the Anti-Slavery Society, part of the Bodleian’s We Are Our History project.

The Putumayo Atrocities

The work of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society in exposing the Putumayo Atrocities is well known. In 1907, W. E. Hardenburg, a U.S. railway engineer, left Buenaventura, on Colombia’s Pacific coast, to travel across South America to the Atlantic.   While descending the Putumayo River, he was captured and detained by agents of the British registered Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company. He discovered that “peaceful Indians were put to work at rubber-gathering without payment, without food, in nakedness; … their women were stolen, ravished, and murdered;  [they] were flogged until their bones were laid bare when they failed to bring in a sufficient quota of rubber or attempted to escape, were left to die with their wounds festering with maggots, and their bodies were used as food for the agents’ dogs; … flogging of men, women, and children was the least of the tortures employed; [they] were mutilated in the stocks, cut to pieces with machetes, crucified head downwards, their limbs lopped off, target-shooting for diversion was practised upon them, and … they were soused in petroleum and burned alive, both men and women.” (Hardenburg The Putumayo, The Devil’s Paradise page 29)

Hardenburg escaped and travelled to Britain where he contacted the Anti-Slavery Society. John Hobbis Harris, the Society’s Organising Secretary, raised the issue with the Foreign Office and arranged for questions to be asked in the House of Commons. As a result of the Society’s pressure, the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, appointed diplomat Roger Casement to conduct an enquiry. Casement travelled to Peru in July 1910. His report was finalised in January 1911, but only laid before Parliament in 1912. He found that the worst accounts were confirmed. The company’s agents had enslaved “the whole native population … by intimidation and brutality on a scale and of a kind which forbid description.” Sometimes, victims were pegged-out on the ground. At other times, they were flogged in stocks. Rubber “pirates” were “shot at sight”. Private rubber wars recalled “the feudal conflicts of the early Middle Ages.”

Studio portrait of John Hobbis Harris, seated and holding a pen.

John Hobbis Harris on the front cover of ‘The Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines’ Friend’ (Series V, Volume 30, number 2, July 1940). Shelfmark: 100.221 r. 16.

There was outrage in the British press that representatives of a British company should act in this way. In August 1912, Canon Hensley Henson, who had attended an Anti-Slavery Society committee meeting, used his Sunday sermon in Westminster Abbey to condemn the atrocities. Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle and Lord Rothschild contributed to a Putumayo Mission Fund organised by the Duke of Norfolk.  On 20 November 1912, Travers Buxton, the Society’s secretary, and John Hobbis Harris both gave evidence to a House of Commons select committee which was considering whether the British directors of the company had any knowledge of the atrocities. The Anti-Slavery Society vigorously pursued the issue; sending a delegation to see the Prime Minister; instituting proceedings in the Chancery Division to remove the liquidator of the Peruvian Amazon Company; and drafting amendments to anti-slavery legislation to enable prosecutions to be brought in England for acts committed overseas.

The Prime Minister, Lord Asquith, referred to “the exceptional circumstances” of the Putumayo allegations. Francis Dyke Acland, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, gave an assurance that, “No outrages of any kind were committed by Englishmen.” However, these opinions were disputed by British explorer

Letter from Percy Fawcett to 'The Times', 31 July 1912.

Letter from Percy Fawcett to ‘The Times’, 31 July 1912.

Colonel Percy Fawcett, who wrote to The Times suggesting that the rubber industry in “the whole of forest Peru” should be investigated. It was “obviously improbable that such scandals are confined to one of the better known and relatively more accessible affluents of the Amazon. Other tribes are held up to slavery besides those of the Putumayo.” Fawcett’s view was that “real slavery was the rule (though covered by quasi-legal formalities)”.

A Great Uncle and Colonel Percy Fawcett

My research into Peruvian rubber extraction has focussed upon another British company, the Tambopata Rubber Syndicate, and its enslavement of indigenous people a thousand miles from the Putumayo, at the opposite end of Peru. My interest was triggered by a letter from a great uncle, written to one of his daughters in 1953. He commented on Fawcett’s book Exploration Fawcett and mentioned that Fawcett and his companions had stayed with him between 1910 and 1912 at San Carlos and Marte, two barracas (rubber collection stations) on the Tambopata river. I never met my great uncle and knew little about him, except that he had left Manchester at the beginning of the twentieth century and, apart from fighting in World War 1, spent the rest of his life in South America. Exploration Fawcett refers to Fawcett’s work on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society delineating the border between Peru. He travelled with James Murray, a Scottish biologist, who had accompanied Ernest Shackleton on his 1907-1909 Nimrod expedition to the Antarctic, and Corporal Henry Costin, a former army gymnastic instructor. However, his book gives little detail about San Carlos and Marte.  Was there more information in the diaries and letters of Fawcett and his party?

Fawcett’s diaries are now held by the Torquay Museum. There is a transcript of Murray’s diary in the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. I obtained copies of some of Costin’s letters from his daughter in Australia. I found records of the Tambopata Rubber Syndicate and their British agents, Antony Gibbs and William Ricketts, in the National Archives, Kew, the London Metropolitan Archives and the Archivo General de la Nación del Perú in Lima. Murray mentioned my great uncle briefly, but, more significantly, these sources gave a vivid and disturbing description of the activities of the Tambopata Rubber Syndicate.  

Enganche por Deudas

Tambopata Rubber used between 300 and 500 indigenous workers, mainly picadores (choppers) and peones (general labourers) to collect rubber. Many came from the Peruvian and Bolivian Altiplano. Some were members of the local Ese Eja community who had been pressed into service. Like many other companies in Peru, Tambopata Rubber operated a system of enganche por deudas (literally “hooking by debts”). It was bonded labour, often forced. Employers advanced money or some other benefit (transport, accommodation and/or food) which became a debt which workers had to pay off by their labour. It was common for workers to be forced or tricked into this arrangement. Illiterate peones found themselves bound by written contacts which they had signed or marked with thumb prints, but did not understand. The necessaries provided in return for their employment (food, accommodation) were normally over-priced. Debts tended to increase not reduce. Under Peruvian law, a worker was legally obliged to stay with his employer until the debt was paid off. Often that was impossible. Some of the labourers had been transferred over to Tambopata Rubber from the previous owner of the barracas, a German called Carlos Franck. Effectively, this was the sale of human beings tied to the barracas by their debts. The Franck and Tambopata Rubber contracts provided that the workers would pay interest at the rate of 2% per month in the event of any breach of contract; renounced the legal code of their own area; and secured the performance of their enganche obligations with their “person and the best of their goods.”  In other words, enganche was slavery.

Photograph of Percy Fawcett standing, facing camera.

Percy Fawcett in 1911. Image in the public domain.

The workers were paid on Sundays with lead fichas (tokens) which could only be used in the company almacenes (stores). Prices for food at San Carlos were high and the picadores were routinely swindled over the rubber they brought in.

Tambopata Rubber sought to recover the debts of any workers who fled against their property and via sub-prefects and any new employers. Even in death, workers were bound by debt. On 26 September 1910, a guard who had been working at Marte for over two years, died of a brain haemorrhage. Franck wrote to Lawrence, the local manager, “He has left a wife and three orphaned children. The family of the deceased overwhelm me with their complaints and cries and they demand that I give them at least something to be able to support their little offspring. … I would like you to tell me if the deceased has left any balance so that his family can be protected.”

Lawrence replied, “This ill-fated employee has not left any balance in his favour. On the contrary, he has died owing us a sum.” The Tambopata Rubber Syndicate actively pursued relatives of other workers who died to recover outstanding enganche debts – on at least one occasion forcing them to sell their home.

Food and Health

Fawcett and Murray noted that food at the barracas was always in short supply. In 1910, Fawcett found Marte “in a state of starvation” with only a quart of maize left in the stores. The labourers had existed on leaves and grass for some time. By 1911, there were no provisions at all at Marte and there were often periods when workers went for days without any food. That year, four or five men died of starvation. The Marte manager led raiding parties to rob the banana trees of the Ese Eja in a neighbouring valley.

Given the climate, predatory insects, poor nutrition, the lack of sanitation and the absence of any doctor or medical assistance in the region, it was inevitable that there would be serious health problems on the two barracas. The company’s own records frequently refer to illness and death. In 1910, ten percent of Tambopata Rubber Syndicate workers died as a result of disease and hunger. Fawcett described a group of labourers from Marte arriving at San Carlos as “a grizzly, weak, thin, diseased crew.” There were many cases of malaria and beri beri. In 1911, there was a severe outbreak of fever at Marte. Fawcett described some thirty indigenous workers lying “in a filthy shed … in various stages of collapse, putrid with boils and other disorders.”

Oppression on the barracas

Severe beating was common on rubber estates. Fawcett, Murray and Costin all noted with disapproval that Lawrence frequently flogged workers. Murray stated, “Flogging is practiced at San Carlos, though we could not know to what extent, as a good face is put on things for our benefit. Lawrence, however, uses a whip on the house ‘boys’ and often without justification. For instance, Costin’s pistol was stolen. Lawrence whipped the three house-boys, without having any reason to suspect them.”

Fawcett noted, “In Peru the punishment for whacking an Indian is some years of prison but the Indian has to put up 500 Peruvian soles to state his case.” He described how one of the bookkeepers at San Carlos beat an indigenous worker so badly that complaint was made to the provincial authorities. However, in accordance with the law, the bookkeeper insisted that the victim deposit 500 soles against the expenses of the prosecution. He was unable to produce that sum and instead the bookkeeper accused him of calumny. He was imprisoned for eight months, but died after four months.

Lawrence “bought” people. He boasted to Murray that he bought a woman he kept at San Carlos (despite having a wife in La Paz) for 150 bolivianos. Fawcett wrote, “The savages bring in their children to sell frequently.” On one occasion, Lawrence exchanged two guns, each worth nine shillings and six pence (47½ pence) for two small boys.

From time to time, the workers rebelled against this regime. On 4 September 1909, there was “a serious insurrection” involving one hundred workers at Marte. They fled, after burning the almacen and account books. Tambopata Rubber’s managers, with the help of the local authorities, managed to capture and return most of them. One of the workers who returned surrendered and went down on his knees, begging for forgiveness. A manager shot and killed him as he knelt.

Denunciation of the Tambopata Rubber Syndicate

The final pieces in my research jig-saw were the records of the Anti-Slavery Society at the Bodleian which contain press-cuttings and correspondence with the Peruvian Asociación Pro Indígena. They recount how, in 1910, three picadores managed to escape from Tambopata Rubber’s barracas. They complained about their treatment to the manager of the Inca Rubber Company at Cojata. He informed Pedro Zulen, Secretary of the Asociación Pro Indígena, who wrote to the Puno Prefect:

“Manuel Machicao, Mariano Tito, and Modesto Villa, all three natives of the Department of Puno, have been subjected to corporal punishment, Machiao and Villa at the barraca “Marte” and Tito at the barraca “San Carlos”, which belongs to the Sindicate “Tambopata Rubber”.  The … workmen were punished for the least reason. …  A certain Braulio Peñaranda is named as the chief tormentor of the labourers; the provision of food is not sufficient for the people, who live on half-rations, and are forced to work from 6 in the morning to 6 in the afternoon, so that many get ill with forest diseases.”

The Asociación Pro Indígena petitioned for workers to be allowed to leave the barracas because “at present the labourers cannot leave …   whether or not they owe a debt, but are kept like slaves, condemned to die for want of resources, without receiving any aid”.

This issue was discussed at an Asociación Pro Indígena meeting on 20 January 1911. It resolved to send details to the Anti-Slavery Society under the title “La Esclavitud en la Montaña”. (Due to, in Pedro Zulen’s words, “an involuntary clerical error” publicity of the allegations wrongly named Inambari Para Rubber Estates as the company responsible, not the Tambopata Rubber Syndicate.) The allegations were published in El Deber Pro-Indígena, the Asociación’s newspaper, and repeated in the Peruvian newspapers El Comercio and La PrensaEl Comercio stated that the “abuses reached the point of ripping indigenous people out of their homes to enslave them in the montaña.” The London Times published a telegram from its Lima Correspondent stating that the President of the Asociación petitioned the Peruvian Government to punish and put a stop to the abuses. In London, Ernest Bartlett, Tambopata Rubber’s Company Secretary, wrote to the Under Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, stating, “the alleged ill-treatment of natives can hardly be taken seriously”; “there is not an iota of truth” in the accusation; the allegations were driven by internal “political rather than humanitarian considerations”; and that he had “no doubt nothing in the nature of an outrage has taken place on [their] property”. Just like Peruvian Amazon’s denial of the Putumayo Atrocities, that attempted rebuttal is not credible in the face of the independent evidence of Fawcett, Murray and Costin.

During 1911, the Anti-Slavery Society received reports of “conditions of debt slavery prevailing throughout Peru”, but in the end only actively pursued the Putumayo Atrocities. The complication of Zulen’s “involuntary clerical error” naming the wrong company delayed its investigation into the Tambopata Rubber Syndicate and its Committee concluded that there was insufficient information to enable it to make any definite recommendation.

Postscript

In any event, by 1911, the Amazonian rubber boom was over. Rubber prices were plummeting and it was clear that the Tambopata Rubber Syndicate project was economically unsustainable. The cost of producing rubber was three times higher in South America than in the Far East. Transport was too difficult and too costly. Despite the enslavement of indigenous workers, there was a shortage of labour. There was never sufficient food for the workers. Latex could only be extracted from the local species of rubber tree by felling, rather than tapping, meaning that picadores had to travel further and further to find rubber. The company decided that the barracas could not be made financially viable and abandoned them in 1913. In December 1913, a shareholders’ meeting passed a resolution formally winding up the company and appointed a liquidator.

 

A more detailed version of Nic Madge’s research will be published in the next edition of La Revista de Historia de América (Volume 165, May-August 2023).

www.nicmadge.co.uk

 

Additional Earls of Clarendon family papers are now available

Following the recent release of the catalogue for the archive of the Earls of Clarendon (2nd Creation) an additional, and final, tranche of the family’s historical archive has now been catalogued and is available to readers in the Weston Library. These papers mainly comprise correspondence and papers of Victorian statesman George Villiers, the 4th Earl of Clarendon, but include some additional Villiers and Hyde family papers, including earlier correspondence and papers of Lord Cornbury (the son of Henry Hyde, the 4th Earl of Clarendon, 1st creation) and Thomas Villiers (later the 1st Earl of Clarendon, 2nd creation) as well as family genealogical notes.

George William Frederick Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon (1800-1870), diplomatist and
liberal statesman [Dictionary of National Biography], was ambassador at Madrid, 1833-1839, Lord Privy Seal, 1839-1841, President of the Board of Trade, 1846, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1847-1852, Foreign Secretary, 1853-1858, 1865-1866, 1868-1870 and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1864. In 1839 the 4th Earl married Lady Katharine Barham, the widow of politician John Foster Barham, and as a result this archive includes some John Barham correspondence and financial papers.

This tranche of the 4th Earl’s correspondence and papers makes available significant additional material from his time as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1847-1852) as well as letters concerning foreign affairs (1835-1841) and hundreds of letters of general correspondence spanning his long career in government service (1820s-1870).

Full catalogue of the papers of Howell Arthur Gwynne (1865-1950), correspondent and editor, is now available

The finding aid for the papers of Howell Arthur Gwynne (1865-1950), for which only a hard copy handlist existed previously, has been retro converted and fully catalogued , making access to Gwynne’s papers published and available for the first time on Bodleian Archives and Manuscripts. The catalogue is available here.  The papers, of which comprise Gwynne’s diaries, subject papers and correspondence, were also repackaged into archival standard boxes and folders to support long term preservation. Part of the scope of the retro conversion was also enhancing dates and descriptions, which feature in the new catalogue.

Howell Arthur Gwynne is mostly known as editor of the British conservative newspaper the Morning Post from 1911 until it’s collapse in 1937 when it became absorbed by the Telegraph. Prior to this, Gwynne had a successful early career as a Reuters correspondent overseas; on 16 November 1895 he was appointed special correspondent for the second Ashanti Expedition; his diary of the expedition is at MS. Gwynne dep. 28. He also took the lead of organisation of the Reuters service during the Boer War, and was on hand to accompany Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain’s tour of South Africa 1902-1903 (see MS. Gwynne dep. 29/2).

Papers of Howell Arthur Gwynne: some of the material re-packaged and re-boxed in archival standard C7s, or kasemake boxes for volumes. Photo credit University of Oxford.

Much of the series of subject papers relates to the Morning Post‘s policy and publications, which heralded much controversy at certain points during Gwynne’s editorship. One such instance was the Morning Post’s support, both financially and in print, of General Reginald Dyer after news broke in Britain of the Amritsar Massacre of 13 April 1919, when Dyer gave orders to British led troops to open fire on a non-violent gathering of religious celebrations at Jallianwala Bagh, culminating in mass casualties.  During the Hunter Commission, an inquiry into Dwyer’s actions, the Morning Post initiated a benefit fund the ‘General Dwyer fund’ to raise financial aid for him after the dismissal from his position.  Correspondence relating to the fund, views of the Post‘s readership and an insight to the response to Dwyer’s actions and the massacre can be found at MS. Gwynne dep. 8.

Arrangement of the papers has been retained throughout the cataloguing process; the files allocated ‘major correspondence’ includes correspondence with key figures, social and political, of the early 1900s including Lady Margot Asquith, Andrew Bonar Law, and H. G. Wells. The papers will be of interest for late 19th-mid 20th century colonial and political history as well as the operations of the British Press and censorship during the First World War.

Kelly Collins

The archive of development economist Richard Jolly is now available

The catalogue can be found online at Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts.

Richard Jolly graduated in economics from Magdalene College Cambridge in 1956. Due to his Christian religious convictions, he registered as a conscientious objector and did his National Service not in the military but as a Community Development Officer in the Baringo District of Kenya from Jan 1957-Jan 1959, although he reassessed and relinquished his religious convictions during that time. Jolly’s Baringo service, meanwhile, sparked a change in career focus away from business and into the development field and eventually into the United Nations.

(Immediately after leaving Kenya, however, Jolly took part in the British Alpine Hannibal Expedition, which attempted to retrace, with an elephant called Jumbo, Hannibal’s route across the Alps.)

During the 1960s Jolly studied for a Masters and PhD at Yale University in America, and participated in a research tour of Cuba soon after the revolution. After his masters he became a research fellow at the East Africa Institute of Social Research, Makerere College in Uganda (1963), and did short-term economic consultancies in countries across the world.

He became a fellow and later director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex in 1969. In 1970 he was seconded from the IDS to work for the United Nations as the Senior Economist in the Development Division of Zambia’s Ministry of Development and Finance. Through the 1970s he continued to work on technical assistance and advisory programmes for the UN focussing mainly on labour and employment, including heading missions on agriculture and basic needs to Bangladesh and Zambia.

From 1975 Jolly sat on the governing council and executive board of the Society for International Development (and was vice president of SID from 1982-1985). He helped develop the North-South Roundtable as a project of the Society for International Development, chairing the Roundtable from 1987-1996. The Roundtable was a group founded by Barbara Ward (1914-1981) which incorporated equal numbers of representatives from developed and developing countries to discuss and brief policy makers on global development issues.

Jolly was appointed Deputy Executive Director (Programmes) of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in July 1981 with the rank of UN Assistant Secretary General, serving from 1 Jan 1982 until 1995. He had responsibilities for UNICEF’s programmes globally. His focus on paying more attention to the needs of women and children in economic adjustment policies led to his work on the co-authored book Adjustment With a Human Face (1987).

He was appointed to the UN Development Programme (UNDP) from 1996-2000 as Special Advisor to the Administrator of the UNDP and co-ordinator of the UNDP’s Human Development Report which published reports on a human development approach to growth as well as on poverty, consumption, globalization and human rights.

From 1996-2000 Jolly chaired the UN Sub-Committee on Nutrition and from Sep 1997-Dec 2003 and Nov 2004-Aug 2005 was the Chair of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council. Following retirement from the UN he was a trustee of the charity Oxfam [Oxfam’s archive is also at the Bodleian Library, with multiple catalogues] and chairperson of the United Nations Association (UK), an independent policy association.

In the 2000s Richard Jolly became the co-director of the UN Intellectual History Project based at City University in New York which produced a sixteen volume history of the UN’s contributions to development. His papers here at the Bodleian Library form a significant part of a collection of archives from United Nations staff (the UN Career Records Project), a collection that Richard Jolly has been involved with since its inception.

Rethinking the Aborigines Protection Society through its Informants

By Darren Reid, University College London

This is the first in a series of posts by researchers drawing on the archive of the Anti-Slavery Society, part of the Bodleian’s We Are Our History project.

 

Within the archives of the Anti-Slavery Society are the correspondence records of its cousin, the Aborigines’ Protection Society (1837-1909), which merged with the Anti-Slavery Society in 1909. The Aborigines’ Protection Society (APS) was administered from its headquarters in London by a range of middle-class White philanthropists who felt dissatisfied with the state of relations between Britain and the range of Indigenous peoples who found themselves within the professed territories of the British Empire.

Image from the cover of the publication 'The Aborigines Friend' in January 1850 depicting the meeting of five individuals from differnt parts of the world in their traditional clothing.

Figure 1: Cover of The Aborigines’ Friend, 2 no. 21 (January 1850).

Problematically, the APS was not opposed to colonization, but only believed that colonization could be done in a nicer and more “humane” fashion by ensuring that Indigenous land was taken in a consensual and equitable manner, and that Indigenous peoples were educated to enjoy the best that European superiority could offer. At first glance, such a blatantly imperialist raison d’être may seem to limit the value of the APS as a subject of historical inquiry. For, in an academic and social environment which values diversity and seeks to shatter ethnocentric and racist discourses, do we really want to hear from a group of nineteenth-century do-gooders trumpeting the “White Man’s Burden” to assuage their imperial guilt?

However, while the APS was run by a small group of middle-class telescopic philanthropists in Britain, it was dependent upon a network of informants who wrote letters about colonial events from across the British Empire, and these letters are extremely valuable for assessing diverse lived experiences of empire. The APS correspondent archive contains over 9,000 letters from men and women, settlers and Indigenous peoples, convicts and lawyers, missionaries and soldiers, and everything in-between. Each of these informants interpreted the purpose of the APS in ways reflecting the diversity of their interests and attitudes towards empire.

Here, I examine one particularly complex case study to demonstrate the diverse perspectives on empire that can be found in the APS collections: the Thaba Nchu succession dispute of the 1880s. Thaba Nchu was a small kingdom in southern Africa which, in the mid nineteenth century, found itself within the borders of the newly established Orange Free State. The Orange Free State technically fell under the suzerainty of the British Empire, but due to a complicated series of rebellions and treaties, it was effectively an independent Afrikaner state. The sovereignty of Thaba Nchu was therefore a hot-button issue: as an independent kingdom within an independent state within a suzerain empire, there was no clear consensus on who was actually in control.

Map of southern Africa showing Thaba Nchu in relation to Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Johannesburg.

Figure 2: Map showing Thaba Nchu in relation to Cape Town, Bloemfontein, and Johannesburg. © Darren Reid

The indeterminacy of Thaba Nchu’s status led to crisis in 1880, when the death of the paramount chief led to a succession dispute between two contenders: Samuel Moroka and Tshipinare. Moroka favored strengthening ties with Britain, whereas Tshipinare wanted to strengthen ties with the Orange Free State. Tshipinare made an under-the-table deal with the president of the Orange Free State, Johannes Brand, who arrested Moroka and banished him in return for a generous cession of land. In response, Moroka travelled to London to petition the British government to intervene and back him as the true chief of Thaba Nchu.

Throughout Thaba Nchu’s succession dispute, the APS received letters from at least ten different informants hoping to establish their own narrative of events, five of whom I will discuss in this blog post. There was Samuel Moroka himself, who tried to convince Britain of its obligation to intervene. There were also two settlers, David Smith of the Cape Colony and Edmund Bourdillon of the Orange Free State, who capitalized on Samuel Moroka’s petition to bring their own Anglo-Dutch rivalry before the British public. Finally, there were Richard and Elizabeth Whitfield, a brother and sister living in London who used the succession dispute to argue for the illegitimacy of British intervention within independent states. Attending to the differences in how these informants wrote about Thaba Nchu is suggestive of the multiplicity of perspectives on empire that can be found within the APS correspondent records.

Continue reading

Updated Catalogue: Conservative Central Office – Young Conservatives

We are pleased to announce the arrival of our expanded catalogue of the Young Conservatives, the youth wing of the Conservative Party. Over 40 boxes of new material have been added to the archival collection of the organisation, which existed under this name from 1946 to 1998, and was recently revived in 2018. The new material spans from 1959 to 1994 and covers a range of records from minutes and papers of the Young Conservatives’ National Advisory Committee to campaigning leaflets, posters and manifestos, adding substantially to the existing collection held as part of the Archive of the Conservative Party. The collection covers a range of important events within the history of the Young Conservatives, most notably its swing towards the radical right-wing during the 1980s, as well as its gradual membership decline and the early political careers of some prominent figures in British political and public life. This blog post will explore a handful of interesting topics which can be explored within this expanded collection, highlighting its significant historical value.

Youth for Military Disarmament

Throughout its existence, the Young Conservatives has had varying degrees of power and influence within the Party as a whole. Our new material explores this impact through various series including working groups and reports, external relations, publicity and officers’ papers. One of their most notable areas of influence was through campaigns they led, such as Youth for Military Disarmament (YMD) and the campaign for Sunday Trading.

YMD was set up by the Young Conservatives at the start of the 1980s to counter the message of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, especially amongst youth, instead arguing against unilateral disarmament in the UK. The campaign group had multiple directors, including Nick Robinson, later BBC political editor, and created an array of campaigning materials including posters, leaflets, badges and stickers. Files on YMD included in this catalogue offer an insight into the creation and use of these campaigning materials. The image below illustrates some examples, and the ‘campaigning checklist’ suggests leafletting in streets/schools/colleges and holding public meetings to spread the message.

YMD campaigning checklist and materials – CPA CCO 506/37/7.

This note from Phil Pedley, then Vice-Chairman of the Young Conservatives, demonstrates the early creation stage of these campaigning materials. Underneath a draft sketch and outline of the poster, he explains: ‘With this I’m trying to get the message across that there’s two sides with weapons & both must put down their weapons.’ The file later contains the completed A2 poster depicting a never-ending trail of USSR missiles contrasted with a handful of NATO missiles alongside the caption: ‘Do they really want peace? We do!’, clearly modelled on this initial idea.

Note from Phil Pedley, Vice-Chairman of the Young Conservatives, outlining his ideas for a YMD poster, Jul 1981 – CPA CCO 506/37/6.

Factionalism and swing to the right

From the early 1980s the Young Conservatives began to split into two factions, known informally as the ‘wets’ and ‘dries’, or the moderate and more right-wing sections of the group. This division was a reflection of the Party as a whole, which saw a similar split under the more hard-line leadership of Margaret Thatcher. The 1980s thus saw much in-fighting within the Young Conservatives, manifesting itself in accusations of electoral malpractice, members being banned from events, and scathing newsletters and leaflets spread at conferences. The image below is an example of a poster distributed at the 1988 Young Conservatives Annual Conference by the ‘dries’, criticising the leadership of Nick Robinson, Chairman at the time, specifically for banning 100 members from the event. The ‘wets’ successfully limited the influence of the ‘dries’ for several years until 1989, when Andrew Tinney became the first Chairman successfully elected from the right-wing slate.

Poster distributed at the 1988 Young Conservatives Annual Conference – CPA CCO 506/16/44.

A couple of new boxes contain material related specifically to the Committee of Enquiry, established in 1982 in response to extremist activity and right-wing infiltration into the organisation. As outlined in a circular in file CPA CCO 506/39/1, the need for this Committee ‘had been self-evident to the National Advisory Committee after the appalling publicity – principally in the summer months of 1982 – generated by the activities of the Uxbridge Young Conservatives’, who had ‘invited self-confessed fascists to speak to their branch and produced a newsletter entitled Dreadnought, which carried articles that were blatantly racist’.

The Committee wrote a report on the ‘Infiltration by the Extreme Right into the Conservative Party’ which covered the entire Party, its members fearing that the problem was not confined to the Uxbridge Young Conservatives or even the Young Conservatives as a whole. A draft version of this report was leaked in 1983 and a consequent BBC Panorama programme, ‘Maggie’s Militant Tendency’, made various allegations of far-right sympathies within the Party. These led to two Conservative MPs, Gerald Howarth and Neil Hamilton, successfully suing the BBC for libel in 1986. Below are letters from these two MPs to John Selwyn-Gummer MP, Chairman of the Party, expressing their anger at having been included in this report.

Letters from Gerald Howarth MP and Neil Hamilton MP complaining about their inclusion in the Young Conservatives report on the infiltration of the extreme right into the Conservative Party, October 1983 – CPA CCO 506/39/4.

Notable figures

The Young Conservatives acted as an entrance into politics for many key political figures, catering for roughly the 16-30-year-old age group and encouraging membership by offering social activities and events in addition to political ones. Many of the new files released in this update contain correspondence, election manifestos, reports, and other insights into these early political careers, including future Conservative MPs such as Richard Fuller, Murdo Fraser, and Eric Pickles.

Below are some examples of candidate manifestos for internal elections, including those of:

  • Richard Fuller: Young Conservatives Chairman, 1985-1987, then an MP.
  • Nick Robinson: Young Conservatives Chairman, 1987-1988, then a journalist.
  • John Bercow: MP and Speaker of the House of Commons.
  • Andrew Tinney: Young Conservatives Chairman, 1989-1991.

Election Manifestos of Richard Fuller, 1986, and Nick Robinson, 1987 – CPA CCO 506/20/11.

Election Manifestos of John Bercow and Andrew Tinney, 1989 – CPA CCO 506/20/12.

Event programmes

Whilst the majority of the newly added material covers the 1970s and 1980s, there are a handful of interesting files covering the activities of the Young Conservatives during their earlier years of much higher membership, the group reaching c. 150,000 members in the 1950s. These include event programmes outlining the various social activities put on throughout the year by individual area branches. An example below demonstrates the events hosted by the York Young Conservative Organisation from April to June 1959, including games nights, a balloon race, and a motor treasure hunt.

Event Programme of the York Young Conservatives, 1959 – CCO 506/36/1.

All the material featured in this blog post, alongside the full updated collection of the Young Conservatives, is now available to view at the Weston Library. To browse the catalogue, visit: Collection: Conservative Party Archive: Conservative Central Office – Young Conservatives | Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts (ox.ac.uk)

Oscar Wilde in the Chancellor’s Court

For LGBT+ history month, the University Archives’ blog looks at one of Oxford University’s most famous alumni: playwright and poet, Oscar Wilde. Wilde was a student at the University in the 1870s. He matriculated from Magdalen College in 1874 and studied classics (Latin and Greek), as did most students at the University the time. A brilliant student, he achieved first class honours in his Classical Moderations examination (or ‘Mods’, taken roughly mid-way through the BA degree) in 1876.

Oscar Wilde 1876

Oscar Wilde as an undergraduate, 1876

Alongside his impressive academic performance, Wilde also cut an equally impressive figure in his personal life, dressing stylishly and somewhat flamboyantly for the time. Having joined Apollo, the University Masonic Lodge, he also developed quite a liking, so the story goes, for masonic regalia. Wilde frequented the jewellers and gentlemen’s outfitters of Oxford to stock up and, as we will see, bought a lot of things which were probably not on the shopping list of your average undergraduate.

In late 1877 Wilde’s spending got him into trouble. He owed money to some of the shops at which he’d bought his goods on credit, and whether he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, pay, he ended up before the University’s Chancellor’s Court in the November of that year for non-payments of debts.

The Chancellor’s Court, whose ancient origins lay in the establishment of the post of Chancellor, back in 1214, was the University’s own court. For many centuries it had jurisdiction over University members, both in civil and criminal cases, and for much of that time, also over the people of the city of Oxford. By the late nineteenth century it had lost many of its earlier powers and was chiefly a debt-recovery court, used frequently by Oxford shopkeepers and tradespeople to recoup money owed to them by students at the University.

Two such shopkeepers who were owed money by Wilde did exactly this and took him to the court in November 1877. Wilde received two summonses within that month to appear before the Court.

Oscar Wilde summons 1877

Summons issued to Oscar Wilde, 8 November 1877 (Chancellor’s Court papers 1877/78:2)

The first summons was for the case brought against him by Joseph Alison Muir, a tailor of the High Street. According to the tradesmen’s bills, submitted as evidence to the hearing on 16 November, Wilde had ordered a considerable number of items from him over a period of two years, which amounted to over forty pounds’ worth of gentlemen’s attire. This would be roughly £4000 today. They included a ‘superior fancy angola [angora] suit’, ‘superior angola trousers’ and ‘India gauze pants’. Wilde had already paid roughly half of the bill but still owed the tailor over £20.

Chancellors Court bills 1877

Bills presented as evidence to the Court, 1877 (Chancellor’s Court papers 1877/78:1 and 1877/98:1)

His second summons to appear in the court, only two weeks later, was for the case brought by George Henry Osmond, a jeweller of St Aldates’. Wilde had purchased jewellery and Masonic regalia there, including gold and ivory collar studs and a Masonic apron and sword. Again, he had only part-paid the bill of over £15, still owing the jeweller just over £5.

In both cases, Wilde was ordered to pay the money owed, plus costs (for the summons and the hearing itself). The costs were sizeable: for the second case he was ordered to pay nearly £3 in costs (on the original debt of £5). Wilde was so outraged by this that he wrote a very angry letter to the court in protest. The letter survives amongst the papers for that case. The costs, he claimed, were ‘a most extortionate and exorbitant claim’. He was so incensed that he intimated that the procedure of the court itself was so corrupt that it was in need of investigation by the University Commission. By this he meant the University of Oxford Commission (Selborne Commission), which had just begun its meetings at Oxford, looking into the financial arrangements of the colleges. It seems unlikely that Wilde’s plea ever reached the Commission’s ears.

Extracts from letter of Oscar Wilde to the Chancellor’s Court, 1877 (Chancellor’s Court papers 1877/98:3)

He ended the letter ‘I trust that this monstrous claim will not be allowed to remain’ but it appears that his protests were to no avail. The official accounts of the cases in the Chancellor’s Court registers here in the Archives record that both were settled by payment of the debt in full. There is no indication that Wilde’s letter of protest let him off in any way.

Wilde’s contretemps with the University authorities did not adversely affect his studies, fortunately, and he performed as brilliantly in his final examinations in Literae Humaniores (Classics) the following summer as he had done in this Mods, achieving first class honours again. He also won the University’s prestigious Newdigate Prize for English Verse that year for his poem ‘Ravenna’ (having spent time there the previous year) which he read publicly at the 1878 Encaenia ceremony in June.

The Chancellor’s Court continued its decline and was used less and less as the nineteenth century wore on; very few cases were held throughout the twentieth century. The very last case to be put before the court took place in 1968 and eleven years later, in 1979, the court was formally abolished.

Wilde’s time at Oxford is discussed by Richard Ellmann in his 1988 biography ‘Oscar Wilde’ as well as within his many other works on Wilde.

For more information about Wilde’s involvement with freemasonry whilst at Oxford, see the article by Yasha Beresiner at OSCAR WILDE Freemasons (freemasons-freemasonry.com)

Stories about Wilde’s time in Oxford, and of other LGBT+ students at the University throughout its history, can be found on the ‘Queer Oxford’ website at Queer Oxford – Celebrating 600+ years of LGBTQ+ history and heritage in the city Oscar Wilde called ‘the capital of romance’.