Category Archives: Uncategorized

New Conservative Party Archive releases for 2026

20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Humanities, Newly available (2026), Uncategorized, , ,

Each January, the Archive of the Conservative Party releases files which were previously closed under the 30-year rule. This year, files from 1995 are newly-available to access. This blog post serves to outline strands of information contained in these files, while exploring a number of interesting highlights. These demonstrate not only their intrinsic value in helping to develop a more complete understanding of the era but also provide valuable source material for researchers and historians. This archive material is open to those who wish to investigate the mechanics of the Conservative Party, but also those in search of a greater appreciation of British Political history.

1995 saw the continuation of Conservative government, with John Major serving his fifth year as Prime Minister. However, despite a steady economic situation, John Major’s position was becoming overshadowed by significant internal divisions over the issue of European integration. To assert his authority and to silence his critics, Major resigned as Party Leader in June 1995, and immediately put himself forward for re-election, challenging his opponents. He won the ballot with over 66% of the vote. However, this did not stem the series of defeats the Conservative Party experienced in successive local elections. These issues are amongst those covered within the newly-released files, alongside monitoring of opposition parties, and an insight into the Conservative initiatives abroad, including the European Democratic Union.

Again, as in subsequent years, a large proportion of our new releases are from our collections of CRD (Conservative Research Department) files. Material is drawn from various sources including subject briefings, directors’ papers and letter books of desk officers. It also includes CRD files covering topics such as agriculture, environmental issues and food standards. Alongside these CRD files we will also be releasing papers relating to the international arm of the Conservative Party.

International relations – 1990-1995

This year we have released a number of files from the International Office (previously, Conservative Overseas Bureau), who were responsible for improving links with overseas political parties, as well as providing briefing material on international issues. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Conservative Party, through the International Office’s links with groups such as the European Democrat Union (EDU) and the International Democrat Union (IDU), gave support and encouragement to the formation of democratic political parties in former Eastern bloc countries, and sent observers to monitor elections. The Conservative Party was a founding member of both the EDU and the IDU, and from 1983 to 1999 the secretariat of the IDU was based at the International Office.

Being released this year is COB 7/4/1/8, which contains papers regarding the EDU’s Committee on the Promotion of Stability and Security in Europe. The briefing summary does admit that “the main problem is that of strengthening the will of European governments to engage in joint action.” It also references that “the continued presence of Russian troops in the Baltic countries is in sharp contrast with international law and must come to an end.”

CPA COB 7/4/1/8 – “The Promotion of Stability and Security in Europe”, 1995

It is noteworthy that much discussion in 1995 is focused on the European Union. It is clear that there were differing opinions in just how Britain should be part of that community. Within the Conservative Party, there were hardliners who did not want to be part of the single currency as well as those who embraced the single market. The Conservative Political Centre set out several local policy discussion groups to encourage consensus through discussion and debate on the way forward in Europe. Looking at Richard Normington’s (Head of the International Office and Head of the Overseas and Defence Section of CRD, 1994-1999) letter books, thanks can be found by the Foreign Secretary, Malcom Rifkind, to these groups.

CPA COB 3/3/2 – Letter book, February 1995-December 1995

National Issues, 1993-1995

In addition to international relations, the International Office was also responsible for working with parties relating to Northern Ireland. Again, 1995 proved a pivotal year in the political landscape of Northern Ireland, with a landmark visit by US President Bill Clinton. Against the backdrop of the Troubles, work was ongoing to ensure the continued progress of the peace process. In the midst of trial and tribulation, Richard Normington received a letter from Sinn Fein, reaffirming their mutual desire for a stable peace. They welcomed “the opportunity to exchange views of the important task and responsibility which we all have to create the conditions to bring about a just and lasting peace settlement.”

CPA COB 3/3/1 – Letter book, Richard Normington, 1994-1995

As well as the ongoing questions surrounding Northern Ireland, in 1995, Labour began to float an idea regarding Devolution. The Labour Party, under the leadership of Tony Blair, expressed an intention to set up Regional Development Agencies, to help develop regions on a local level. Additionally, there were discussions regarding a referendum regarding Welsh and Scottish devolution. This raised some questions about how the devolved system would work. It also reignited issues surrounding the West Lothian Question, as to whether MPs in Scotland and Wales would be stopped from voting on issues that involved England only, as the reverse had been purported to be something they were considering.

CPA CRD/D/11/18 – Director’s Files: Strategy and Elections, 1989-1995

Furthermore, being released this year is a large collection of CRD briefings on various domestic issues. As well as briefings on agriculture and food standards, there are also briefings regarding transport. For example, the upgrading of the Channel Tunnel rail link. So, although the Channel Tunnel had officially been opened in 1994, a Bill was put through Parliament to extend the rail link.

CPA CRD/B/31/18 – Transport briefs, 1995

These CRD papers also include a few papers regarding the ongoing privatisation of England and Wales’ water supply. This issue is still very much alive. However, an analysis of the papers identifies that even after the privatisation, the Conservative government worked closely with the water companies to ensure fair charging and good water quality.

CPA CRD 5/6/42 (left) and CPA CRD 5/6/7 (right)

Strategy papers, 1994-1995

Among the CRD papers are also records which afford insight into the internal Conservative strategies for the upcoming General Election in 1997. The Campaigning Department, working towards the General Election, started their work in 1992, right after the previous General Election. However, it is apparent that 1995 was a crucial year, as a number of local elections had taken place. This had resulted in the Conservatives losing a number of local seats and it was clear that new strategies were needed. Therefore, a decision was made to focus on the national position, rather than the local level. Throughout this period, the Conservative Party remained optimistic that the 1997 election would provide them with another victory.

CPA CRD/D/11/16 – Director’s Files: Strategy and Elections, 1989-1995

All the material featured in this blog will be made available in January 2026. The full list of de-restricted items can be accessed here: Files de-restricted on 2026-01-02

Introducing Wacksy: a library for writing WACZ collections

Social Media, Uncategorized, Web Archives,

Blog published on behalf of Pierre Marshall, Technical Research Officer, Algorithmic Archive project.

As part of the Algorithmic Archive project, we have been building tooling to support a prospective social media archive. This post introduces Wacksy, a Rust crate we wrote for packaging Web ARChive (WARC) files in WACZ collections.

Web Archive Collection Zipped (WACZ) is a format for packaging web archives. A WACZ collects WARC files along with any other related resources into a single hermetic zip archive. Each WACZ collection is self-describing and should contain within it all the resources necessary to replay a WARC file.

Motivation

The main advantage to independently replayable WACZ files is that you don’t need to maintain an external indexing server. Eliminating that dependency on an external indexing system is beneficial for digital preservation, in the long run the most reliable database is just the file system.

Of course, this also means that packaging a WARC file in a WACZ involves indexing the WARC, and so the scope of this little project grew from ‘wrap some things in a zip archive’ to ‘build a WARC indexer’.

Thankfully, WARC files are easy enough to parse. One of the useful side-effects of this project was that we got to learn the WARC and WACZ specs very well. The process of implementing the WACZ format also brought up a few issues (#161, #163, #164, #166, #167) which could be used to tighten the spec in a future revision.

Archiving the datafied web

There’s another reason you might want to package resources together in a WACZ. We’ve spent a lot of time in this project trying to understand how to represent a social media post.

While sidestepping arguments about mass literary culture, we can think of social media as a kind of electronic literature, and preserving it is an extension of ongoing web archiving work. This approach includes preserving the ‘look and feel’ of a post in context, surrounded by comments and advertising and blobby Frutiger Aero buttons.

Social media posts are also data, in the sense that they exist in the form of structured json. Each post is an object with properties: text, username, datetime, maybe links to associated media. All raw content, easily searchable, indexable, and ready for researchers to throw into a data processing workflow.

Ideally, you want to capture and preserve both: a web archive snapshot and the structured data.

You could include the json inline in a WARC header field, or add it to the WARC file as a resource record. Or, you could package the WARC and json files together in a WACZ collection, this is the use case we had in mind when writing Wacksy.

How to use

With a stable Rust toolchain, run cargo add wacksy to add the crate to your cargo manifest.

The API provides a WACZ type with two functions: from_file and as_zip_archive.

from_file() builds the WACZ object, it takes a path to a WARC file, indexes it, and returns a result with either a WACZ struct or an error. The indexer was recently rewritten and contains almost no error handling. Use with caution! Also, the format requires all resources to be defined in the datapackage, so when you construct a datapackage you’re already building a structured representation of the WACZ collection. This is a neat feature, Ed Summers and Ilya Kremer really did a good job on the WACZ spec here.

as_zip_archive() takes all the resources in the WACZ object and passes them through into a zip file, making use of Nick Babcock’s rawzip library.

Here is an example from the documentation (current/latest):

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn Error>> {

    let warc_file_path = Path::new("example.warc.gz"); // set path to your ᴡᴀʀᴄ file

    let wacz_object = WACZ::from_file(warc_file_path)?; // index the ᴡᴀʀᴄ and create a ᴡᴀᴄᴢ object

    let zipped_wacz: Vec<u8> = wacz_object.as_zip_archive()?; // zip up the ᴡᴀᴄᴢ

    fs::write("example.wacz", zipped_wacz)?; // write out to file

    Ok(())

}

This API is still missing a way of adding arbitrary extra resources into the WACZ, although the code is flexible enough to accommodate that in future.

Shipping binaries

There are two other WACZ libraries out there:

Besides the library API, another goal is to provide a simple command line interface, and wrap that up into a standalone binary. This would be the main distinguishing feature of Wacksy, that you don’t need to set up Python or Node.js runtimes. For example, there would be fewer steps involved if you were packaging up WARC files in an automated workflow.

Although, py-wacz is better tested and more feature-complete, so take that into consideration. We have used py-wacz as a reference implementation to test against.

We’re also working on packaging Wacksy for Debian, and other systems after that. When it’s all packaged, it’ll be much easier for users to try out.

Performance

The WARC indexer was written with an eye on performance and memory use. When reading plain uncompressed WARCs, the indexer only reads the headers of each record. With a known header length and the WARC content-length value for each record, we can calculate the next record offset and skip through the file without passing record contents into memory. Where possible we’re also using a buffered reader rather than reading reading byte-by-byte. For gzip compressed WARCs it’s more complicated, and we’ve avoided doing anything more fancy like streaming decompression.

We’ve also tried to limit the dependencies used. At the moment, a binary compiled from the example above comes out at ~600 kilobytes — not super small, but more lightweight than most web pages. As a bonus, pruning the dependency tree will make Wacksy easier to package and distribute.

Use it!

At time of writing, the library is still experimental, not yet integrated into any other software, and it has only been tested against a few example WARC files. It would benefit from wider testing on real world use cases.

The code is all open source and available under an MIT license; contributions welcome!

Reporting from the RESAW2025 Conference Workshop: Towards an “Algorithmic Archive”

Social Media, Uncategorized, Web Archives, ,
Welcome sign at the University of Siegen

At this year’s REsearch infrastructure for the Study of Archived Web materials (RESAW) conference, my colleague Pierre Marshall and I organised a workshop titled “Towards an “Algorithmic Archive”: Developing Collaborative Approaches to Persistent Social and Algorithmic Data Services for Researchers”. The workshop was accepted as one of the RESAW2025 pre-conference workshops and took place on 4 June 2025. We had around twelve participants, including researchers at various career stages and web archivists, that contributed to lively discussions and to the Algorithmic Archive project thanks to their experience with social media data.

The workshop was articulated in two sessions: the first one focussed on gathering researchers’ perspectives and information about the use of social media data in research. The second session invited participants to imagine a long-term archive of social media data, asking them to think about the features they would like to see in a social media data service. Both sessions offered a valuable opportunity to gather insights for the Algorithmic Archive project, particularly regarding issues and expectations related to short- and long-term access to social media data.

Key themes and takeaways are summarised below.

Social media data (re)use and data management practices

Researchers appeared to work mostly with small datasets, especially after free access to data for research purposes came to an end with the deprecation of the Twitter Academic API in 2023.  Among the researchers that shared their experience with social media data, one noted how they currently work with information about the number of followers, which is often supplemented with screenshots taken at different points in time. They explained how screenshots are essential for their research as enable to capture the “look and feel” of the social platforms, which is an essential part of the research they are conducting. In this regard, one of the web archivists participating in the workshop noted how at their institution they use Webrecorder[1] at least once a year.

In addition, a researcher whose research focussed on algorithms, noted that social media data collected via APIs is only one of the sources they use for their study. Other sources include existing policies, new regulations (e.g. EU Digital Services Act) and other archival sources such as information on GitHub.[2]

As for long-term preservation, researchers participating in the workshop appeared to not have specific plans in this sense, with some indicating that they usually delete social media data sometime after the end of the project. Despite some concerns related to potential ethical issues, researchers expressed a general interest in reusing datasets that include social media data. Nevertheless, they emphasised that effective reuse would require detailed documentation from the dataset creator to understand how the data was developed.

Access and user requirements

For the second session, we organised a post-it note exercise where we asked researchers to reflect on the type of metadata they would find useful for their research and would like for memory institutions to collect/provide. Researchers suggested several metadata or information they would like to see associated with the archived resource, includingdate of capture; date of publication; technical and curatorial metadata; hardware (e.g., mobile, tablet, laptop); sensitivity assessment; andthe type of tool used to collect the information.

Post-it note session

There was a general agreement among participants about the need for the collecting institution to preserve at least some instances of the context in which the data was embedded. For example, walkthroughs of social media platforms recorded using tools such as Webrecorder, would be crucial for researchers and future users of the collection to get a sense of platforms’ “look and feel” at certain points in time.Some of the participants noted the importance to get an understanding of potential functionality loss when replaying archived social media material.

Nevertheless, Access, particularly free access to platform data is still one of the major blocks for researchers who need such information for their studies. This has become even more crucial after the Twitter Academic API was deprecated in 2023 and replaced with a paid tier system which due to the high fees required to get access to the required amount of data, has often led many researchers to redirect their research goals, either significantly reducing the amount of data needed or focus on other platforms.

Overall, the workshop brought together diverse perspectives from practitioners and researchers working with social media data, fostering discussions regarding the development of sustainable strategies to collect social media platforms. This was a unique opportunity to discuss some of the Algorithmic Archive findings, clarify researchers’ perspectives on concerns related to the use of social media data as well as raise further questions that the Algorithmic Archive project should take into consideration for the development of a social media data service.

[1] Webrecorder homepage: https://webrecorder.net/

[2] More information about the GitHub Archiving Programme can be found here: https://archiveprogram.github.com/

The catalogue of the archive of Robert Craft and Igor Stravinsky is now available

20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2025), Uncategorized

Robert Craft (1923-2015) was a conductor and composer, who was known for his professional, and personal, association with Stravinsky. He conducted several orchestras in America, Canada, Europe and the rest of the world. Some of Stravinsky’s later works premiered with Craft conducting. His recordings include numerous works by Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Webern. His writings include collaborations with Stravinsky, such as Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (1959) and Memories and Commentaries (1960). He also wrote extensively on Stravinsky, as well as other notable figures in music and literature.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was a Russian composer and conductor. He is considered an important and influential composer whose works inspired many. During his life he composed more than one hundred pieces that spanned various genres and styles. His early works include his ballets commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev for the Ballet Russe, such as ‘The Firebird’ (1910), ‘Petrushka’ (1911), and ‘The Rite of Spring’ (1913). His neoclassical period included pieces influenced by Greek mythological themes, including his 1933 work ’Perséphone’. His later music was influenced by the twelve-tone technique used by Schoenberg, and the music of the Second Viennese School, a change that came about after meeting Robert Craft.

Craft and Stravinsky remained close until Stravinsky’s death in 1971.

The archive comprises a variety of material belonging to both Craft and Stravinsky. In this first edition of the catalogue, researchers will find correspondence, photographs and music papers spanning both the lifetimes of Craft and Stravinsky. As work progresses further material will be added.

New Conservative Party Archive releases for 2025

20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2025), Uncategorized, , , , , ,

Each January, the Archive of the Conservative Party releases files which were previously closed under the 30-year rule. This year, files from 1994 are newly-available to access.

Despite continuing to make a steady economic recovery from the recession that ended in 1993, John Major’s fourth year as Prime Minister was partly overshadowed by internal party conflict over Europe and allegations of scandal following the launching of the Party’s ‘Back to Basics’ campaign. These issues are amongst those covered within the newly-released files, alongside monitoring of opposition parties, including a profile of Gordon Brown written by David Cameron, and an insight into the foundation and meetings of the Commission for the Greater Europe.

Following on from recent years, a large proportion of our new releases are from our collections of CRD files, including subject briefings, directors’ papers, letter books of desk officers, and Conservative Research Department (CRD) files covering topics such as environmental policy, public opinion research on the NHS, and election preparations. Alongside these CRD files we will also be releasing papers, correspondence and memoranda from the Organisation Department of Conservative Central Office (CCO), Conservatives in the European Parliament, and Conservative Party think tanks, amongst other material.

This blog post will explore a number of highlights of the newly-available files, demonstrating their value for researchers and historians interested in the Conservative Party and/or British political history in general.

Opposition Monitoring, 1991-1992

This year’s releases contain a number of files relating to opposition monitoring, including profiles of the Labour Party shadow cabinet in the early 1990s. Carried out by the political section of the CRD, opposition monitoring involved creating profiles on opposition candidates and monitoring their media statements to provide the Conservative Party with crucial information and ammunition. They should be a useful resource for researchers, providing examples of the inside workings of the Research Department in the lead up to a general election and the processes involved in dealing with the opposition.

Some of the profiles in this year’s releases include Tony Blair, Neil Kinnock, John Smith, Bryan Gould and Gordon Brown, all of who played a key role in the Labour Party’s 1992 General Election team, and several in the later 1997 General Election, indicating that the Conservative Party was beginning to look ahead to the 1997 General Election. Of particular interest, is the file CRD 5/11/1/19 which contains a profile on Gordon Brown by David Cameron from March 1991. Written in the lead up to the 1992 General Election and during Cameron’s early political career as the head of the Political Section of CRD, this file provides us with an interesting insight into two future Prime Ministers. Firstly, the file sheds light on Browns’ position as an emerging figure in the Labour Party in the early 1990s, when he held the position of Shadow Trade and Industry Spokesman (1989-1992), and an insight into the Conservative Party’s perception of him.  Furthermore, Cameron’s analysis demonstrates his abilities as a political strategist and researcher of opponents from his early career, setting the stage for the pairs battle for leadership at the 2010 General Election almost 20 years later.

A profile of Dr Gordon Brown MP – CPA CRD 5/11/1/19

Labour Party leadership election, 1994

In addition to the opposition profiles discussed above, an important part of the operations of CRD opposition monitoring was gathering information on the Labour Party leader. This was particularly important in 1994, as the death of the Labour Party leader John Smith triggered a Labour leadership contest. After a brief interregnum leadership by Margaret Beckett, Tony Blair won the leadership election on 21 July 1994, defeating John Prescott and Margaret Beckett.

Being released this year is CRD 5/11/1/34, which contains correspondence and research related to the leadership election, shedding light on the Research Department’s strategic approach to the change in Labour Leadership. One notable example is a memorandum from Rachel Whetstone titled ‘Ways of opening up Labours leadership contest’. In the memoranda, Whetstone highlights the minimum wage as a “weak point for Tony Blair”, stating that “Blair argues that youth unemployment is a major cause of crime”, yet he “supports policies that would increase unemployment among young people”. This provides insight into how the Research Department aimed to exploit perceived weaknesses in the candidate’s characters and their positioning on key policy areas, in order to undermine the change in leadership.

Ways of opening up Labour’s leadership contest – CPA CRD 5/11/1/34

Additionally, CRD 5/11/1/34 provides an interesting indication to broader trends in British political strategy, particularly in regards to the increasing emphasis on ‘spin’ in political communication. Throughout the 1990s, the use of spin by politicians and parties in the UK accelerated. The emergence of 24-hour news and the growing influence of the tabloids and television increased the pressure placed on journalists to provide non-stop content. This led to a marked decline in the quality of British media content, especially surrounding political commentary, prompting political parties to employ spin doctors to craft messaging, shape narrative, and manage crises. For example, the image below shows a memorandum from Andrew Lansley outlining the Conservative Party’s line toward the leadership election result. Lansley recognised the need to “brief independent spin doctors on our line to take” and specified a number of individuals to contact, such as Harvey Thomas, former Press and Public Relations Director, and Brendan Bruce, former communications director, to assist in shaping the party’s messaging on the leadership result, highlighting the growing emphasis on spin in the operations of CRD opposition strategy and political communication.

Labour leadership results: Lines to take – CPA CRD 5/11/1/34.

Commission for the Greater Europe, 1993-1996

Among this year’s releases from the papers of the Conservative Overseas Bureau, is COB 7/3/1, a file on the Commission for the Greater Europe. The Commission for the Greater Europe was an international, non-governmental organisation established on 28 May 1993, under the direction of Jacques Chirac. Formed in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Commission aimed to bring together members of the European Democratic Union and the Liberal International with members of the Russian reformist movement with a view to ‘seeking new ways towards a united Europe’.

COB 7/3/1 contains foundational material, meeting papers, general correspondence, and reports on the state of Russian politics, economy, and security in late 1993, providing insight into the sensitive situation in Russia following the Russian constitutional crisis of October 1993. COB 7/3/1 should be a useful resource for researchers, providing examples of how European Leaders made efforts to bridge the divide between Eastern and Western Europe in the aftermath of the Cold War.

Of particular interest in this file, is a letter from Geoffrey Pattie to Jacques Chirac from December 1993. In this letter, Pattie expressed anger at Chirac’s decision to cancel the Commissions planned meeting in Moscow due to Boris Yeltsin’s inability to attend, stating that he was “disappointed and upset that you [Chirac] could have taken a decision so far remove from your usual sound political judgement”. Patties frustration at Chirac reveals the differing perspectives within European Leadership on how to navigate the potential integration of Russia into Europe, and reflects British concern for the need to address the post-Cold War situation in Europe through diplomatic cooperation and dialogue.

Correspondence from Sir Geoffrey Pattie to Jacques Chirac – CPA COB 7/3/1, folder 1

Back to Basics campaign, 1993-1994

‘Back to Basics’ – CPA CRD 5/35/12

Lastly, among the significant portion of CRD files being released this year, are files that concern Conservative Party tactics and strategy. One example is CRD 5/35/12, which offers insight into the planning and strategy of the Conservative Party’s ‘Back to Basics’ campaign, a campaign which sought to “reassert traditional values, common sense and concern for the citizen”. The image below shows a page from the background briefing for the ‘Back to Basics’ campaign from January 1994, outlining what exactly John Major meant by back to basics in social policy, economic policy, in all policy, and in the country at large. In the document, Major justifies the campaign, arguing that “we need to foster and encourage some of the traditional British values- neighbourliness, self-discipline, courtesy and decency, and taking responsibility for yourself and not shuffling it off on others”.

However, the campaign became infamous when a succession of Conservative Party politicians became emmeshed in allegations of scandal. The contradiction between the campaign’s messaging and the actions of some of the Party’s MPs highlights the challenges the Conservative Party faced in maintaining credibility and public support during the 1990s.

All the material featured in this blog post will be made available from 2 Jan 2025.

The Flying Machine of Hiram Maxim

19th century, 20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Humanities, Modern, New acquisition, Newly available (2024), Sciences, Uncategorized,

On Tuesday 31st July 1894 the American-born inventor and engineer Hiram Maxim (1840-1916) was testing the latest version of his flying machine at his home, Baldwyn’s Park near Bexley in Kent. He had laid out a steel track, 1800 feet in length, in order to run the machine in a straight line between the trees of the Park.

Photograph of Hiram Maxim's flying machine in the grounds of Baldwyn's Park, c.1894.
Hiram Maxim’s flying machine in the grounds of Baldwyn’s Park, c.1894. MS. 21798, file 4. Click to enlarge.

On the final attempt of the day, having increased the pressure of the machine’s steam boiler, the wheels rose from the track and it flew for eight seconds at a speed of 45 miles per hour before crashing to the ground. The flying machine weighed more than three tons. Maxim was on board along with two mechanics, Arthur Guthrie and Thomas Jackson.

Should this be recognised as the first heavier-than-air flight, nine and a half years before the Wright brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on 17 December 1903?

Photograph of the flying machine after crash landing, 31 July 1894
The flying machine after crash landing, 31 July 1894. MS. 21798, file 4.

William McGregor Ross (1876-1940), a young admirer of Maxim who also became an engineer, thought that Maxim’s achievement had not received the recognition it deserved. He used every opportunity to correct this and a collection of papers and photographs, recently donated to the Bodleian by his grandson, records the efforts he made until the end of his life. William was educated at Southport Grammar School and began keeping a diary from an early age, recording in meticulous detail and tiny handwriting the events of his daily life. His diary of 1892, when he was 16 years old, reveals his interest in flying machines and in August he wrote to Hiram Maxim asking for advice on screw propellers.

William McGregor Ross's diary entry for 30 August 1892, describing the receipt of a letter from Hiram Maxim.
William McGregor Ross’s diary, 30 August 1892, MSS. Afr. s. 2305, box 1, item 3

Maxim replied (sending ‘several wrinkles’, i.e. tips or hints) and a lifelong friendship developed between them with Maxim and his wife Sarah supporting William’s interest in engineering, which he went on to study at Liverpool and Dublin Universities. In September 1892 William was invited to visit Baldwyn’s Park where he saw the development of the flying machine which Maxim had been working on for a year, eventually testing the thrust of over 200 types of propeller before the flight in 1894.

William McGregor Ross's diary entry for 5 September 1892, describing an invitation to visit the Maxims at Baldwyn's Park.
William McGregor Ross’s diary, 5 September 1892. MSS. Afr. s. 2305, box 1, item 3

William’s diary entry for 15 September 1892 records the running of the machine on the track through the Park, reaching a speed of 27.5 miles an hour. He notes that photographs were taken after the experiments and the donation to the Bodleian includes one of the photographs of young William together with Hiram Maxim on board the flying machine.

William McGregor Ross's diary entry for 15 September 1892, describing the testing of the flying machine.
William McGregor Ross’s diary, 15 September 1892. MSS. Afr. s. 2305, box 1, item 3

Photograph of William McGregor Ross and Hiram Maxim on the flying machine, 15 Sep 1892.
William McGregor Ross and Hiram Maxim on the flying machine, 15 Sep 1892. MS. 21798, file 4.

William did not witness the short flight in 1894 – his diary records that he was in Southport on the day – however his interest in flying machines continued as evidenced by a letter full of questions to Mrs Maxim in February 1899.

                 Letter from William McGregor Ross to Mrs Maxim, 9 Feb 1899. MS. 21798, file 2, click images to enlarge

Maxim continued to develop his machine but came to realise that powering it by steam, requiring boilers and water, added excessive weight and his experiments came to an end.

Following Hiram Maxim’s death in 1916 William continued to correspond with Sarah Maxim and in 1934 made particular efforts to have the 40th anniversary of the flight recognised, writing to the national press, scientific journals, the BBC and film companies. He repeatedly argued that any history of aviation excluding Maxim’s role in the development of heavier-than-air flight was incomplete and pointed out that he held the altitude and duration records for 9 years and 139 days and the weight record for even longer. The newly available papers present William’s observations on the remarkable events at Baldwyn’s Park on their 130th anniversary.

 

Sources

Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. 21798: Papers of William McGregor Ross relating to Sir Hiram Maxim and his flying machine

Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MSS. Afr. s. 1178, 1876 and 2305: Papers of William McGregor Ross and Isabel Ross

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)

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

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.’

Continue reading The life and poetry of Ivor C. Treby →

The persistence of tradition: the curious case of Henry Symeonis

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

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).

 

 

The man with many faces

19th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Spotlight, Uncategorized, University Archives,

Is there anyone who doesn’t like to doodle? This is clearly not a modern trait. As ‘Doodle Day’ 2023 approaches in September, it seemed timely that we should come across some rather charming drawings by one of the examiners signing his name in two ‘Registers of Examinations’ held by the University Archives.

Frederick York Powell (1850-1904) was a law lecturer and examiner (he later became the Regius Professor of Modern History, 1894-1904) whose duties included lecturing and examining on political economy for the Pass School. The Pass School was introduced in the second half of the nineteenth century for those students who did not seek honours and offered the opportunity to study a different combination of subjects (see this previous blog for more details on the The Pass School)

Powell was an examiner for Pass School Group B (which included political economy) from 1877 until at least 1888, but he did not examine every term or every year. It is through his records of examinations that we meet his doodles.

Whenever Powell was the one to write the list of names of successful candidates, he bracketed together the names of the three (or sometimes four) examiners, who signed their names underneath, and drew a face as part of that bracket. Powell had extremely neat and legible handwriting, which was not always the case of examiners at this time.

Signatures of examiners for Pass School Group B, 1883 (from OUA/UR/3/1/27/1)

One of the fascinating things about Powell’s doodles is that whilst he consistently draws faces, they are all different. It’s tempting to wonder whether these drawings were actually caricatures of his fellow examiners or other academics in Oxford. The pictures are not always kind, sometimes showing exaggerated features:

Signatures of examiners for Pass School Group B, 1883 (from OUA/UR/3/1/27/1)

Signatures of examiners for Pass School Group B, 1883 (from OUA/UR/3/1/27/1)

It is important to remember that these registers were administrative records and were the official record kept by the University. As such, it’s all the more striking that Powell doodled so frequently – it wasn’t a momentary slip in an instance of absent-mindedness, but something he did consistently across several years. It is tempting to speculate as to whether his fellow examiners approved of such decorations or rather disapproved of his flamboyant style.

The second register featuring Powell’s doodles is the Register of Examinations for Modern History, 1872-1913, where he was an examiner from 1886 onwards. The examples in this volume are typical Powell style but the faces are different. The one below looks rather like Voldemort in Harry Potter!

Signatures of examiners for Modern History, 1887 (from OUA/UR/3/24/1)

Of all the faces drawn by Powell, of which these are only a selection, my favourite is shown below. The face looks rather elegant and distinguished with quite a head of hair:

Signatures of examiners for Modern History, 1888 (from OUA/UR/3/1/24/1)

Details of face drawn by Powell as examiner for Modern History, 1888 (from OUA/UR/3/1/24/1)

There are no other examples of examiners doodling or drawing like Powell in these two registers. If Powell was hoping to inject a little light heartedness or fun into a serious administrative record and perhaps encourage others to do the same, it does not look like this happened. It would be interesting to discover whether Powell continued to doodle once he was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History in 1894. I could find no further examples of doodles by Powell from this date onwards within any records held by the University Archives.

According to his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (subscription required), Powell seems to have been a rather original yet disorganised character, not necessarily renowned for his scholarship but for his generosity of his time and sense of fun. I rather suspect that Powell may have continued to doodle no matter what position he held.

For other examples of drawings and doodles on records in the University Archives see Notes in the margin | Archives and Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library (ox.ac.uk)
For further information on Frederick York Powell, see his Wikipedia entry.