Category Archives: Activity

What the John Johnson Collection tells us about gender in early modern Britain

18th century, 19th century, Early modern, Social Sciences, Spotlight, Uncategorized, , ,

Written by Kasturi Pindar, Bodleian Libraries intern, Summer 2023

The John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, held at the Bodleian Libraries Special Collections, contains a multitude of images of early modern people who transgressed gender norms. Amongst these images, no two are the same. One image depicts two figures standing in a laundry room. It is captioned ‘Abigail Mary Allen, Pretended Wife of James Allen’ and ‘James Allen, The Female Husband’. Others depict people who, assigned female at birth, donned men’s clothing in order to serve in the military, particularly at sea. One such image is of ‘Mary Anne Talbot, otherwise John Taylor, Foot Boy, Drummer, Sailor, etc. etc. etc.’ Another, shows ‘Miss Theodora de Verdion. The walking Bookseller, and Teacher of Languages, dressed as a Man.’ We also come across Anne Jane Thornton, who donned a cabin boy’s dress in order to sail to New York in pursuit of a romantic interest, continuing life at sea as a man for around two years, though her story is contested. Some of the individuals found in the collection are well researched by historians of gender such as Jen Manion, who has written about ‘female husbands’ and sailors who ‘transed’ gender in order to take part in life at sea. About others, less is known. Nonetheless, these images offer a way in to examine the lives of such figures, the myriad gender expressions of people living at the time, and how gender was perceived in 18th and 19th century Britain.

Abigail Mary Allen, pretended wife of James Allen (1829), Oxford, Bodleian Library, John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, Humans 4 (19)

We can start to understand how gender was perceived in the past when we look at the images in the context of the collection and how it is categorised. In the catalogue of the John Johnson Collection, these images can be found under the headings Entertainment>Humans>4. The categories Humans 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 contain hundreds of images of people that would today be considered to have a disability, whether physical, mental or developmental, a disfigurement, an unusual cognitive ability, or who were transgender. Each person within these headings seems to have been considered a ‘curiosity’ and their images were generally published for the amusement of the general public. Taking a closer look at the images themselves, we can see in the print below the image that the heading ‘Humans’ was once called ‘Human Freaks’. This is the language that was used as the collection was first assembled by John de Monins Johnson and reflects the language of Victorian ‘freak shows’. Since arriving at the Bodleian in 1968, these headings have been reviewed and amended to remove harmful language (see A Note on Language at the end of this blog post). Nonetheless, examining the original language used helps us to understand the context of the images, which were perhaps seen as a printed exhibition for the public to browse, ogle, and laugh at. In fact, many of these images were collected from Kirby’s Wonderful Museum, a nineteenth-century publication which claimed to display ‘remarkable characters, including all of the curiosities of nature and art … drawn from every authentic source.’ Its intention as a source of entertainment through the exoticisation of anything and everything, including human bodies, is described in no uncertain terms. Categorising people as ‘curiosities’ may not have seemed out of place at the time, and it tells us how strange the notion of experimenting with gender expression was to these peoples’ cisgender contemporaries.

In some cases, the fetishization of transgender bodies goes hand-in-hand with the way that they were treated in their lifetimes. For one such person, Mademoiselle de Beaumont, also known as the Chevalier(e) d’Éon, this was certainly the case. D’ Éon was a French diplomat, spy and soldier born in 1728 and assigned male at birth. She lived for many years as a man, before beginning to live as a woman in 1777, eventually moving to England and being legally recognised as a woman. A clipping found next to her portraits in the John Johnson Collection demonstrates a fascination with her ‘questionable gender’. Though the clipping reads as an obituary marking D’Éon’s recent death, most of the text discusses the question of her gender, ending with the conclusion that, following an examination by a physician after her death, her body was that of a ‘perfect male!’ (emphasis in original). Other clippings from the collection also show a similar obsession with her gender that is reflected in how she is portrayed in Kirby’s Wonderful Museum.

La Chevaliere D’Eon (1791), Oxford, Bodleian Library, John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, Humans 4 (22b)

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The archives of poet Anne Ridler and printer Vivian Ridler are now available

20th century, 21st century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2024), Women, , , , ,

The archive of two Oxford literary lights, poet and librettist Anne Ridler and her husband the printer Vivian Ridler, is now available to readers in the Weston Library.

Anne Barbara Ridler OBE (30 Jul 1912–15 Oct 2001), the daughter of Rugby School housemaster Henry Bradby and childrens’ author Violet Bradby, was an English poet whose first job was as a secretary for the poet T.S. Eliot at the publisher Faber and Faber. Early in life she met the poet, novelist and theological writer Charles Williams, a member of Oxford’s Inklings group (along with J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Owen Barfield, who also have extensive archival holdings in the Bodleian, see for example the Barfield catalogue). Anne maintained a close friendship with Charles Williams until his death in 1945 and her archive includes their extensive correspondence. She married the printer Vivian Ridler in 1938 and raised a family while also publishing ten volumes of her poetry and several verse plays (Anne Ridler in the Poetry Archive). Later in life she translated, mainly Italian, libretti for opera companies including the English National Opera. A practicing Anglican all her life, she had a particular interest in Christian poetry and wrote and lectured on poetry and poets including William Shakespeare, Thomas Traherne and T.S. Eliot. Her Collected Poems were published in 1994. She was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1998 and was awarded the Cholmondeley Award for poetry. In 2001 she was appointed OBE for services to literature.

Vivian Hughes Ridler CBE (2 Oct 1913-13 Jan 2009) was a printer and typographer who founded a private press while still in school. In 1931 he apprenticed to a printing firm in Bristol and in 1936 he took a job with Oxford University Press (OUP) as assistant to the Printer of the University of Oxford, John Johnson, whose personal collection now forms the core of the Bodleian’s John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, one of the largest and most important ephemera collections in the world. In 1938 Vivian married the poet Anne Bradby, who in addition to being the daughter of Henry and Violet Bradby was the niece of Sir Humphrey Milford, the publisher at the London office of OUP, and as a result Vivian was summarily fired by John Johnson, who considered Sir Humphrey Milford a rival. During World War II, Vivian Ridler served with the Royal Air Force as an intelligence officer. After he was demobilised in 1947 he became a lecturer in typography and a freelance designer. In 1948 he returned to the OUP and from 1958 until he retired in 1978 he held the post of Printer to the University of Oxford at OUP and from 1968-1969 was president of the British Federation of Master Printers. With his own Perpetua Press and other private imprints like Amate Press he published around thirty books from his garden shed during his retirement, including College Graces of Oxford and Cambridge (a different edition can now be found in the Bodleian shop) and some of Anne Ridler’s own work, including Profitable wonders: aspects of Thomas Traherne (SOLO).

Also newly catalogued and available is a separate album of early jobbing printing work by Vivian Ridler’s Perpetua Press.

The Elspeth Huxley catalogues are now online

20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2024), Social Sciences, Women, , , , ,
Black and white portrait of Elspeth Huxley as a young woman, 1935, held by the National Portrait Gallery, UK

Elspeth Josceline Huxley (née Grant), 3 May 1935
by Bassano Ltd, half-plate glass negative
NPG x26719, © National Portrait Gallery, London

The three catalogues covering the Elspeth Huxley archive are now online [1] [2] [3].

Elspeth Josceline Huxley (née Grant) (1907-1997), an author and journalist who wrote extensively about Kenya and East Africa, was raised on her parents’ struggling coffee farm 30 miles from Nairobi. Educated mainly at home (except for a short stint at an English boarding school before she managed to get herself expelled) she spent her youth in Kenya but returned to England to study for an agriculture diploma at Reading University and then at Cornell in the United States. She never lived in Kenya again but the country continued to occupy her and she visited often and travelled widely across Africa and the rest of the world with her husband, Gervas Huxley, who established the International Tea Marketing Expansion board. They married in 1931 while she was working as a press officer, and Huxley continued to write to earn money.

Her first major commission was the biography of Hugh Cholmondeley, a leader of the European settlers in Kenya. White Man’s Country: Lord Delamere and the Making of Kenya (1935) became a definitive history from the settlers’ point of view.  Following this, Huxley stayed briefly on the Kikuyu reserve and out of this experience came her first novel, Red Strangers (1937), about the Kikuyu experience of white settlement of Kenya. She went on to write numerous detective novels including 1938’s Murder on Safari, as well as a stream of journalism on topics including Africa, farming and environmental issues. From the 1950s to the 1980s Huxley published further works about Kenya including a history of the Kenya Farmer’s Association, Out in the Midday Sun: my Kenya (1985) which was an edited collection of tales from European settlers, travel accounts and analyses of East Africa, and her semi-autobiographical, and most popular, works The Flame Trees of Thika (1959) and The Mottled Lizard (1962). Flame Trees of Thika was adapted for television in 1981. Huxley also wrote biographies of explorers and pioneers including David Livingstone and Florence Nightingale and spent time on commissions relating to Africa including a tour of central Africa from 1959-1960 as an independent member of the Monckton commission to advise on that region.

Her archive includes correspondence and diaries as well as working notes and research for numerous books including White Man’s Country and her well-reviewed economic and social analysis of British East Africa The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: A Journey Through East Africa (1948).

For further information see the Elspeth Huxley article in the Dictionary of National Biography.

New catalogue: the archive of Richard Shirley Smith

20th century, 21st century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Cataloguing, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2024), , , ,

by Bethany Goodman

The archive of the artist Richard Shirley Smith is now catalogued and available to readers at the Weston Library.

Figure 1 Photograph of Richard Shirley Smith (MS. 21920 photogr. 44)

Richard Shirley Smith began his artistic career studying at the Slade School of Fine Art, before moving to Rome for a few years, a period reflected in a large portion of his following work. In 1963 he became a lecturer at the St. Albans School of Art, before taking up a position as Head of the Art Department at Marlborough College in 1966. Although he continued creating artwork throughout this time, it was during the 1970s when his work began to gather momentum.

From the late 1970s into the 2000s, Shirley Smith’s murals were a fixture in London’s interior design scene and featured in a number of magazines, including Vogue. Today, we are fortunate to have three such murals on display in the Weston Library, which we welcome readers to view next time they visit.

Not to be confined to bricks-and-mortar, Shirley Smith also established his work in the publishing world. His intricate wood engravings graced the cover and filled the pages of numerous special edition publications, including those produced by The Folio Society. Additionally, he was commissioned to create bookplate designs for several society figures, each showcasing the individual personality of the client, including several appearances of family pets. His contributions to a florilegium for Highgrove House, designed in conjunction with Charles III, then Prince Charles, can be considered a highlight.

Figure 2 Pulcinella Engine Driver (Second Version) ©Richard Shirley Smith, sourced from richardshirleysmith.co.uk

It is with his paintings and collages, however, that we see Shirley Smith’s own artistic preferences come to the fore. Included amongst these works are several paintings depicting groups of mischievous Pulcinella, my personal favourites, alongside thoughtfully constructed still life scenes and fabulous surrealist designs, many of which were displayed during a comprehensive exhibition at the Ashmolean in 1985.

The archive contains a small number of personal papers and materials relating to various publications and exhibitions. However, the strength of the collection lies in its representation of the diverse breadth of Shirley Smith’s work, with an extensive series containing original artwork in the form of: sketchbooks, prints, photographs, planning works and over 150 printing blocks, including both linocuts and woodblocks. This material presents a comprehensive overview of Richard Shirley Smith’s oeuvre, providing a wonderful snapshot into the work and life of an influential modern British artist.

Figure 3 Woodblock for A Point of Departure (1967) (JL 1072/9)

The life and poetry of Ivor C. Treby

20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Humanities, LGBT+ History Month, Modern, Spotlight, Uncategorized, ,

Written by Kasturi Pindar, Bodleian Libraries intern, Summer 2023

Ivor C. Treby (1933-2012) was a biochemistry teacher by profession, though outside of his professional life, he considered himself a gay literary activist, as well as being an avid traveller and a collector of sand. He is perhaps best known for his research and work on Michael Field, the pseudonym of the Victorian lesbian poets, Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper. As a gay literary activist, he wrote his own poetry, which was published in magazines and journals internationally, and in collections released under his own imprint, De Blackland Press. He was also a member of the Gay Authors Workshop from its early years. By the time of his death, he had published five books on Michael Field and over 400 of his own poems. The motifs, imagery and sentiments found in his poems often reflects the various aspects of his life. Though his poetry is less well-remembered, his talent as a poet is clear when exploring his archive. Therefore, this post will highlight some of his poetry through the lens of his life experiences.

Born in Devonport, Plymouth, the son of a shipwright, Treby grew up by the coast. He lived here until he eventually moved to study, attending Exeter College, University of Oxford, where he studied biochemistry. The sea and the shore are themes that run throughout his poetry, testifying to the influence of life by the sea on his formative years. Many of his poems link the sea to his coming-of-age, or to romantic and sexual encounters that impacted his life. Others, such as ‘Respite’, simply express a feeling of calm and restful detachment that he felt when near the sea. His poem, ‘Sea Light’, describes the sea as part of his heritage, as the son of a shipwright, but importantly too as a young, gay man. He references areas of Plymouth that he frequented as a teenager, during his coming-of-age. The first and fourth verses are reproduced below.

‘Sea Light’

The sea was part of my heritage
I know all the old nautical traditions
Have heard of the phantom toffee-gobbler
Could give lessons on how to blow the man down
In a variety of interesting positions
…

Whenever I see a sailor now, I am back on Citadel Hill
Of an autumn twilight. Across the Hoe’s windy arena
The matelots come. My lads do you still
Walk the Barbican, and wait in Devonport Park
Still relish the hand of a youth on your trouser-leg’s dark concertina?
…
MS. Treby 16 © Darren Perry

***
After graduating from Oxford, Treby moved to London to teach biochemistry, working at Concord College in Tunbridge Wells, then Chiswick Polytechnic, before moving to Paddington College (now City of Westminster College). In 1978, he was charged and convicted of gross indecency under Section 13 of the Sexual Offenses Act 1956. By this time, he was out to his family and his colleagues. Nonetheless, he was subjected to disciplinary proceedings by Paddington College, as well as intervention by the Department of Education and Science who considered determining him to be a person ‘unsuitable for employment as a teacher’ as a result of his conviction. Historically, his case is important as it shows the limitations of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which is commonly thought to have legalised homosexuality in the United Kingdom. Though the 1967 act legalised homosexuality under certain circumstances, research has shown that following the passing of the act, policing of homosexual activity increased, and convictions of homosexual men for ‘gross indecency’ went up by more than 300%. Men continued to be arrested for actions as small as winking and smiling at other men in the street, or public displays of affection such as kissing and cuddling.

As his career was jeopardised by the Department of Education and Science, Treby defended himself vocally. In a written response to the Department of Education and Science, he wrote:

I feel myself under no obligation to give a ‘full explanation’ of a matter which,
(a) is totally irrelevant to my abilities as a teacher
(b) could only have arisen in a society with a grotesque attitude toward a minority of its people who obtain sexual fulfilment and love with adult members of their own gender. Kindly note the word love.

His conviction, and his vocal defence of himself, testify to how difficult it was to be openly gay, even 10 years after homosexuality had been supposedly legalised in the UK. His poem, ‘We Who Burn’ was written the year after the Sexual Offences Act 1967 and was one of his earliest open avowals of his sexuality. It was first published in The Gay Journal in the year of his conviction. The poem explores what it meant to Treby to be gay in the mid-twentieth century. Themes of silence, death and darkness are interspersed with the loss of youth and a reference to ‘cottages’. Writing about the poem later in life, Treby suggested that it may ‘have a permanent place in the history of gay poetry.’

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The archive of John Masefield is now available

20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2024), , ,

On the tote bag that you can purchase from Blackwell’s bookshop on Oxford’s centrally located Broad Street, there is a poem by John Masefield:

I seek few treasures, except books, the tools
Of those celestial souls the world calls fools.
Happy the morning giving time to stop
An hour at once in Basil Blackwell’s shop
There, in the Broad, within whose booky house
Half of England’s scholars nibble books or browse.

Black and white portrait of John Masefield by Elliott & Fry, 1910s, National Portrait Gallery [NPG x82495], CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 Deed

John Masefield by Elliott & Fry, 1910s, NPG x82495, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 Deed

Masefield, whose archive catalogue is now online, was Poet Laureate for thirty-seven years, and wrote many collections of poems, adventure novels, children’s novels, and plays. And yet when I asked in Blackwell’s out of curiosity whether I could purchase a copy of his poems, I was met with quizzical looks. Few had heard his name, and his works are not stocked. During my time as an intern for the Bodleian Library’s Archives and Modern Manuscripts department, I have learned a great deal not just about archiving, the diligence required, and the many departments involved – conservation, rare books, digital archiving, web archiving – but I have also discovered much about the man behind the tote bag.

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The persistence of tradition: the curious case of Henry Symeonis

13th century, 19th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Medieval, Oxford University Archives, Spotlight, Uncategorized

Christmas is a time for tradition, and the University of Oxford is well known for diligently preserving its traditions for centuries. Many of these have long outlived the people who established them, and some are so old and mired in obscurity that even the University itself has no idea what they are or how they came to be. One such example of this is the strange case of Henry Symeonis.

In 1827 the University undertook a major review of its statutes. The statutes were, and still are, the written set of rules and regulations which governed everything that went on in the University. A product of many centuries, some of these were over already 500 years old by 1827. In going through the statutes as part of this review, the University found something rather odd in the section relating to Bachelors of Arts and the oaths they had to swear in order to become a Master of Arts.

As well as being required to swear that they would observe the University’s statutes, privileges, liberties and customs, as you might expect; and not to lecture elsewhere, or resume their bachelor studies after getting their MA, the Bachelors of Arts also had to swear that they would never agree to the reconciliation of Henry Symeonis (‘quod numquam consenties in reconciliationem Henrici Simeonis’).

Statutes VII section 1.5

The oaths required of those proceeding to MAs, from Corpus Statutorum (Statute Tit VII section 1. 5)

Nowhere in the statutes did it explain who this Henry Symeonis (or Simeonis) was, what he was supposed to have done or why those getting their MAs should never agree to be reconciled with him. Who was Henry Symeonis and why was he specifically named like this in the University’s governing regulations? What had he done to offend the University so much?

For much of the operational lifetime of the oath, no-one appears to have known. Brian Twyne, first Keeper of the Archives and renowned antiquary of the 17th century, claimed in his Antiquitatis Academiae Oxon Apologia of 1608 that Symeonis was a Regent in Arts at Oxford who fraudulently claimed he had a BA in order to obtain admission to a foreign monastery. Twyne gave no evidence or source for this so we don’t know where that might have come from.

Anthony Wood, in his published Life and Times writes about the University’s earlier review of its statutes in January 1651/2 when it was first proposed to abolish the statute concerning Henry Symeonis. He notes that the proposal to remove the oath was refused but gives no reason why. Even by that time, one suspects that the oath was of such antiquity that no-one knew anything about it and it was thought best to leave it be.

The identity of Henry Symeonis was only (re-)discovered in 1912 by the then Keeper of the University Archives, Reginald Lane Poole. In an article for the English Historical Review, he looked at the curious statute and tried to get to the bottom of the Henry Symeonis mystery.

Poole identified the man in question as Henry, son of Henry Symeonis. Henry Symeonis the elder was the son of a man named Simeon, hence the patronymic surname of Simeonis (or Symeonis) being passed down to his son and grandson. Henry Simeon, our Henry’s father, was a very wealthy townsman of Oxford; in the early 1200s, there were few richer. Our Henry was also wealthy, owning several properties in Oxford and both their names are found in many property deeds of the period.

For example, Henry is listed as a witness to a grant of c1243 of a boundary wall in Cat Street from William Burgess to Nicholas de Kingham. He is named as ‘Henry son of Henry son of Simeon’.

Grant of a boundary wall including Henry Symeonis as a witness, nd (c1243) (OUA/WPbeta/F/43)

But what was the reason for Henry’s condemnation by the University to five and a half centuries of infamy? It was a murder. In 1242 he and a number of other men of the town of Oxford were found guilty of murdering a student of the University. Henry and his accomplices were fined £80 by King Henry III in May 1242 and were made to leave Oxford as a result, forced to stay away (and allowed no closer than Northampton) at least until the King returned from abroad. The King returned in the autumn and by the spring of the following year, we know (from records of his property dealings) that our Henry, son of Henry Symeonis, was already back in Oxford.

What happened next is not easy to work out. There are few University records from that time and we have to rely on others’ accounts of what was happening to decipher the facts of the case. The chroniclers of those times notoriously disagree with each other, and the picture is muddy, to say the least. We know that over 20 years after the murder, on 12 March 1264, Henry III suspended the University and sent it away from Oxford, saying that he could not protect its masters and scholars in the city and that they would be safer elsewhere. The King was making Oxford the centre of his military operations and was unable to guarantee the safety of the students and masters. Many left, a large number moving to Northampton in spring that year where a thriving university was growing.

A fortnight after this, on 25 March 1264, the King issued letters patent saying that he’d pardoned Henry Symeonis for the murder which had taken place 22 years earlier. He ordered the University to allow Henry to return to Oxford to live there in peace provided he was ‘of good behaviour’ and demanded that the University didn’t leave Oxford in protest. The letters patent stated:

… that the chancellor and university would be content that Henry son of Henry Simeonis, who withdrew for the death of a man, would return to Oxford and stay there, so that the university should not retire from the said town on account of his staying there; then they should permit him to return without impediment and have the king’s peace; the king, at the instance of Nicholas de Yatingden, of his further grace, has pardoned the said Henry the said death, on condition that he stand his trial if any will proceed against him, and has granted that he may return and dwell there so long as he be of good behaviour and that the university do not withdraw from the said town on account of his return and the death of the said Henry

The interpretation of this series of events is difficult. Poole, in his 1912 article, linked the University’s departure from Oxford in 1264 to its unhappiness at having Henry Symeonis pardoned and thrust back upon them from exile. He suggested that a serious eruption of town-gown violence broke out as a result of the pardon. This cannot be the case, however, as the King didn’t pardon Henry Symeonis until after the University had been told to leave Oxford. Besides, Henry had already been back in Oxford for many years and it would have been a bit late to act on that.

Town-gown relations were, at this time, pretty volatile, the problem being that Oxford wasn’t big enough for two bodies fighting for supremacy in a relatively small space. This had often led to violence, and apparently did again in February 1264 when the longstanding bad feeling between the two flared up. But it seems that this was not, despite some chroniclers attributing it to that, the cause of the University leaving Oxford. Henry Symeonis’s pardon by the King would, however, have only added fuel to the town’s fire that the University was always unjustly favoured by the monarch at the town’s expense.

We know that the Government was aware of the volatile relationship between town and gown and was concerned, in 1264, at the prospect of the University leaving Oxford in protest if Henry was allowed to return. This is presumably why it was made a condition of Henry’s return that the University had to promise not to leave.

We also know that both the town and University of Oxford were unhappy about the growth of a rival university in Northampton. Henry III had allowed a university to be established there in 1261 (on the request of the burgesses of the town), the third in England, behind Oxford and Cambridge. At the time, it was believed that it wouldn’t damage its older rivals but such a large number of masters and students from Oxford migrated there that Northampton was soon felt to be a threat to the two more ancient universities. The city of Oxford pressed the King to terminate this threat and on 1 February 1265 he formally closed down the university at Northampton and forbade the establishment of any future university there. All this was playing out against a backdrop of civil war and political unease, with Henry III engaged in a war with his brother-in-law, Simon de Montfort, and both Oxford and Northampton being heavily involved in the conflict.

Further research is needed to discover the exact details of what happened here but it seems that Henry Symeonis had bought the King’s pardon and his permission to return to Oxford. The King was willing to allow his return if the University agreed to it. But the University refused and chose to ignore the King’s order of 25 March 1264, resuming its hostility to Henry Symeonis. In fact, it felt so strongly about it, that it gave Henry Symeonis the unique honour of being named in its own statutes, making the University’s dislike of him official and perpetual.

The oath against Henry Symeonis continued in the University’s statutes for centuries after the events of 1264. Having survived earlier reviews of the University’s statutes, it was finally abolished five and a half centuries later. The records of the decision taken in 1827 are frustratingly brief and unenlightening. Convocation (the body of MAs of the University and its chief decision-maker at the time) took the decision to abolish the oath in February that year, but no background information nor reason for the decision is recorded. It is possible that’s because nobody knew exactly what they were abolishing.

The case of Henry Symeonis is a very strange example of the longevity of some University customs, long after they’ve lost relevance or meaning. The persistence of tradition in the University is famous, but this appears to have been an extreme example of using tradition to hold a very, very long grudge. By naming Henry Symeonis in its statutes as a figure of institutional hatred for centuries, it actually resulted in prolonging his celebrity, immortalising a man whom it had considered a villain.

For RL Poole’s 1912 article in the English Historical Review (vol 27, no 107, July 1912 pp515-517) see https://www.jstor.org/stable/550611#metadata_info_tab_contents

A pleasing coda to the story is that Henry III’s ban on a university at Northampton was finally ended in 2005 when a new university was established there, a mere 740 years after the suppression of its predecessor. See Drew Gray’s article on the ‘Ancient University of Northampton’ on the University of Northampton’s website at Microsoft Word – Ancient_University_of_Northampton[2].docx

The migration of Oxford students to Northampton is discussed in ‘The Alleged Migration of the University of Oxford to Northampton in 1264’ by FM Powicke in Oxoniensia (vol 8/9, 1943-4) at powicke.pdf (oxoniensia.org)

And for more information on Oxford and the Second Barons’ War see The University of Oxford and the Chronicle of the Barons’ Wars on JSTOR  in the English Historical Review (Jan 1980, vol 95, no 374, pp99-113).

 

 

‘Handicapism is a mental disease of the able-bodied …and it affects us all…’

20th century, Cataloguing, Humanities, Modern, Spotlight,

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!

20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Modern, Newly available (2023), Social Sciences,

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.

Catalogue of the archive of C.F.C. Hawkes

The catalogue of the archive of Averil Cameron –available soon!

20th century, 21st century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2023), Women

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

Three books of Averil Cameron