Cardigans, Cake...Career? My 8 weeks at the Borthwick Institute

I didn’t really know what to expect when I first started interning at the Borthwick; I had never visited the institute before, but as a history student I knew that spending eight weeks surrounded by old papers and documents, in one of the UK’s biggest and most well-respected archives, would be heaven.  My role for the past two months has been digitising the finding aids of several archives and putting them on the Borthcat website, making them more easily accessible so people know what archives the Borthwick has without having to call up and ask for a list.  I have also been contributing to Facebook and Twitter posts whenever I find something interesting, and I wrote a blog post about medicinal alcohol, a subject which I wanted to investigate after puzzling over a ‘wine and spirits book’ found in the York Medical Society catalogue.  I was given a lot of freedom to write about anything I thought was interesting, and I love the way that everyone working in accessions with me was encouraged to do personal research into what really interests them, as it leads to impassioned blogs and social media posts that are well-researched and great for drawing people in and inspiring them through our collection.  

Questionable medical advice in The Retreat Archive,

I have especially loved digitising the finding aid for the Miscellaneous Documents archive; the collection is so eclectic, and from such a diverse range of sources and time periods, that without being able to access the listing online people had no idea of the amazing and often surprising things hidden within the archive.  Items in MDs can range from an early 13^th century charter, to a 1930s album of Nestle-produced stamps, and from beautiful 18^th century family photographs to a euphemism-laden medical pamphlet for teenagers from the early 1900s entitled ‘The Dawn of Womanhood’ (side note: this is a very entertaining read).  

A letter from the poet W. B. Yeats in the MacCarthy Foulds Archive

The whole process of digitising the archive included linking accession records and writing authority records associated with the items, which involved a lot of research, and I also photographed many of them to use the most interesting on social media.  The social media I was particularly excited about, as I wanted to photograph the documents that would inspire people to take an interest in this seemingly random collection.  (There will be tweets about the MDs soon, by the way; look out for the hashtag #miscdocuments!). I feel like this is a significant mark I have been able to make on the Borthwick online catalogue, and it has been incredibly enjoyable being able to go through these items and research more about them.  I was, however, very worried about breaking something priceless and for the first few weeks found myself constantly asking ‘Are you sure I’m allowed to touch this?  Absolutely sure?! I might just leave it there…’

Commemorating the launch of the new National Health Service in this 1948 magazine from the
York County Hospital Archive

I have also learned so much about the process of archiving collections, various archival schools of thought and the importance of archives to academia as a whole.  My wonderful colleagues Sally and Lydia showed me how an archive goes from being deposited to being catalogued, the importance of organisation and thoroughness in all aspects of the archive, the correct way of handling documents and some very important research skills, as well as being encouraging and friendly throughout.  They’ve also given some very useful advice on how to work towards a career in archives.  The people who work at the Borthwick make it such a welcoming and exciting environment to work in; ask any Borthwickian what they have been doing that day, you are guaranteed to receive an interesting story about a document they found that morning, or a snippet of historical information they’ve been researching.  Some of the most interesting bits of history I’ve learned about during the internship have been completely unrelated to the documents I’ve been looking at, and have just been things stumbled upon whilst researching authority records or talking to others.  Did you know, for instance, that in late 16^th century East Sussex puritans often baptised their children with strange, devoutly Christian names, such as in the case of ‘If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned Barebone’ and our own Archbishop of York ‘Accepted Frewen’?  Or that in the 16^th century it was assumed that if you were born through caesarean section you would have a lifelong fear of women?

One of the many hidden gems of the Miscellaneous Documents collection.

Interning here has made me want to rush out and remind all of my fellow history students at York about the amazing resource that we have, sitting in the library packed to the brim with incredible documents that you can look at for free.  I will definitely be using the archives for future history projects, or maybe just if I have a spare hour next time I’m in the library and I want to look at some old editions of the student newspaper.  I want to thank everyone at the Borthwick for making my internship so enjoyable and for teaching me so much, I’m going to miss working here and it has inspired me to consider a career in archives, as it seems like a job in which you can take immense personal pride in your achievements, is interesting and varied and you can always be intricately involved with the subject that you love, and surrounded by people who love it as much as you do.

Gaby Davies

University of York History undergraduate

Just what the Doctor ordered?

A new blog today on medicinal alcohol, courtesy of our Summer Intern (and York history student) Gaby Davies.

Whilst looking through the York Medical Society records, it was interesting to find the York County Hospital ‘Wines and Spirits book’ 1861-1865.  The pages contain lists of names of doctors, rooms and incidents, and the corresponding number of servings of port, sherry, brandy or gin that was needed.  Doctors seem to be doling out spirits and wines on a daily basis to their patients, and giving more for particularly bad events; September 29^th 1861 required 20 servings of brandy due to the ‘Lendal Bridge accident yesterday’, and on 9^th January 1861 8 servings of port were needed due to a ‘railway accident’.  This seems to make it clear that this is medicinal alcohol, rather than that beverages ordered by patients (and not doctors getting through a particularly difficult shift).

BI, YMS/5/1/2

This reliance on alcohol seems startling from a contemporary viewpoint, but in the early- to mid-19^th century, Victorian doctors relied on alcohol heavily for quite general medical purposes, although towards the late 19^th century medical opinion did start to turn against alcohol as a catch-all solution to ailments, and it started to be seen harmful and addictive.  Before this point, however, alcohol was prescribed liberally both as a stimulant and a sedative.  Brandy was used to ‘stimulate circulation’, to resuscitate the unconscious much like smelling salts, and in emergencies, especially outdoor pursuits such as hiking and skiing.  In hospitals it was often given intravenously or even (wince) rectally.  Even in 1920, physician William Hale White espoused its virtues, primarily as ‘A pleasant depressant, peculiarly efficacious in inhibiting peripheral impulses, such as pain here, and discomfort there, that it diminishes those trivial worries which bother the sick.  In larger doses it has the advantage of inducing sleep.’  This rather unscientific viewpoint may have been the reason the alcohol in this book seems to have been given to patients so regularly; for lack of other drugs it was a quick solution to mild pain or lack of sleep, and was an easy way to improve a patient’s comfort.  It was even used for children when teething or colicky, and many ‘tonics’ sold by unlicensed practitioners for babies could be up to 50% alcohol.  The fact that it was ‘opium free’ was often enough to convince mothers that the tonic was safe.

Victorian doctors also used alcohol enthusiastically as a painkiller for the dying, along with ether and opium.  Combinations of ether, brandy and port wine were often used as a stimulant for a weak heart and to promote circulation, and brandy was additionally favoured for its aid to the digestive process. Doctor William Munk recommended that for those with a terminal illness, small quantities of alcohol should be given frequently, favouring port and sherry over champagne as the latter tended to wear off quickly.  

Choosing the right alcohol for the right patients.
BI, YMS/5/1/2

It was not just in England that this culture of medicinal alcohol was prevalent; in America during Prohibition, doctors could prescribe spirits to their patients and there was even a medical beer campaign, which congress had shut down by 1921 for fear that, as the New York Times put it, ‘druggists become bartenders and the drug store a saloon.’

Looking through The Retreat documents we find similar evidence of this general use of alcohol by doctors.  One 1860s circular advertising ‘cheap light wines’ has two full pages of doctors’ recommendations, published in the Medical Times, of how wine can be used as an aid to breastfeeding (unless you are working class, in which case beer will do), a cure for acidity which would ‘add ten years to your patient’s life’, a drink to ‘fill the veins with pure healthy blood’ and as a healthier substitute to tea.  

BI, RET/4/8/2/134

Pure clean claret for nursing mothers?
BI, RET/4/8/2/134

Several articles also recommend that wines are ‘admirably adapted for children’, and that for children ‘puncheons of cod-liver oil might be spared at the age of 16-20, if, at the age of 7-10…the physician had said, ‘give her some kind of light, clean tasting, sub-acid wine…so that it might tempt her to relish her mutton’.  The document is an advertisement so these articles have clearly been cherry-picked, but the fact that they were published at all despite medical opinion beginning to turn at this point is an insight into the respect given to various quasi-scientific opinions of individual doctors, and the resulting effect that this had on patients.

‘Medical alcohol’ would clearly have worked, to a certain extent, in dulling pain and making patients fall asleep. It can only have been a relief for mothers when, after hours of crying, their teething babies would finally drift off thanks to some ‘medicinal’ tonic which was basically the equivalent of giving them a shot of vodka.  However, developments in the mid-to-late-19^th century led to medicinal alcohol slowly declining as a cure.  A better understanding of the pharmacology of alcohol came about, improved alternative treatments were developed, anaesthetics such as chloroform and nitrous oxide became more widespread, alcoholism and its dangers to the human body became better understood and the temperance movement became more prominent.  Brandy was still occasionally recommended even in the 1930s as a general sedative, a food for those finding it hard to take in physical nutrition and up until the 1940s there were still debates as to whether it could help in cases of pneumonia.  This ‘wine and spirits’ book is a fascinating relic of a time where the virtues of alcohol were widely accepted and recommended by doctors, and can give us an insight into the lack of alternative, effective medicines at this time.  

And on a purely curious note, it leaves us wondering why the laundry maid regularly checked out 3 servings of port!

Port for the laundry maid?
BI, YMS/5/1/2

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The Retreat Archive is currently being digitised.  More details are available at the Wellcome Library website.

Bibliography

Beverly Gage, 'Just What the Doctor Ordered' in Smithsonian Magazine (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/just-what-the-doctor-ordered-80480921/?page=2&no-ist)

Henry Guly, 'Medicinal Brandy' in Resuscitation (July, 2011).

Patricia Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family (Oxford, 1996).

R. H. Kinsey, 'An Address on Alcohol and on Drainage' in The British Medical Journal (1883).

The Rose Melnick Medical Museum, 'Medicinal alcohol and Prohibition' (https://melnickmedicalmuseum.com/2010/04/07/medicinal-alcohol-and-prohibition/)

William Hale White, 'Discussion on the value of alcohol as a therapeutic agent,' Proc R Soc Med. 1920.

Answering Critics with Laughter, Shakespeare and Toilet Paper: The Comedy of Alan Ayckbourn

In a preface to his 'Norman Conquests' Alan Ayckbourn writes that

"Few women care to be laughed at and men not at all, except for large sums of money".

This seems somewhat appropriate from one of the most successful and prolific playwrights ever to emerge from these shores. Ayckbourn's work has been engaging audiences with biting wit, flourishes of comic genius and well-tuned subtleties of pathos for over half a century and now the Borthwick Institute for Archives in York has been given the opportunity to delve into drafts, letters and scripts of a writer largely considered a national treasure.



Photograph copyright of Scarborough Theatre Trust/Stephen Joseph Theatre

Throughout an extensive career, it is perhaps Ayckbourn’s masterful use of comedy to illustrate what can sometimes be the ugly truth that has and will continue to immortalize him. For a playwright who walks the thin line between comedy and tragedy, often moving his audience to tears of laughter and sorrow in one sitting, the boundary between the two genres is often blurred. As one admirer put it, Ayckbourn’s writing is “a superbly funny and devastating commentary on corruption”.  This week, I have been looking though the many letters sent to Alan Ayckbourn by audience members who have come away from his theatre with an all-consuming discomfort that comes with the knowledge that everything you thought you knew has been challenged. Or, after an Ayckbourn play, ripped from your cradling arms with all the brutality of a powerful genius. And yet, in amongst countless letters of complaint and reproach, Ayckbourn fervently defends his artistic choices. 

“The balancing act is to say things that need saying without emptying the stalls. Tricky….My real fascination is in seeing just how much one can say through comedy. And sorry, yes, I also enjoy making people laugh….In this country, if we see pain coming, we close our eyes. Comedy is the Optrex of the mass

(Taken from a letter in reply to a complaint from a member of the audience of ‘A Small Family Business’. Dated August 1987)

It is in this vein that Ayckbourn answers his critics; with a careful balance of truthful response, seasoned with a (sometimes painful) pinch of wit. Although the majority of letters from his audience in this archive are overwhelmingly positive, Ayckbourn answers them all with the patience and grace of someone who truly understands and cultivates the relationship between playwright and spectator. With complaints ranging from the volume of the music, the acoustics of the theatre and the occasional expletive, Ayckbourn’s work never fails to come under scrutiny. One attentive member of the audience even wrote to Ayckbourn to inform him that the set designer had put the toilet roll on the wrong way around in the bathroom set.

But, it is precisely this wish to interact with and the boundless enthusiasm for Alan Ayckbourn’s work that has meant his enduring popularity. The audience feels it can write to this playwright of such repute and tell him their grievances because more often than not, they will receive a reply; albeit humorous, instructive and sometimes firm. Ayckbourn is a playwright willing to answer to his critics, but always ready to defend his craft. On receipt of a letter from a theatregoer complaining that they could only bear to stay for the first half of his play ‘A Small Family Business’, Ayckbourn replied by imagining the reaction of audience being subjected to one half of a Shakespeare play: “Just saw the second half of your play Hamlet. Really, Mr S, all those bodies…"

This post was written by Maddy Pelling, Ayckbourn Intern.

Read more about Maddy's work in her post Archiving Ayckbourn.

'Everyone must make sacrifices, even golfers' - Heslington Hall during WW2

One of the most significant periods in Heslington Hall’s history is its occupation by RAF Bomber Command No.4 group  from 1940 until 1947. Whilst attempting to reimagine life in the Hall and the village during these tense years of British history, Donald Ward’s Heslington Memories have become our discoveries. And whilst recounting life in the village in these notoriously dark times for the British, writing always with a comfortingly upbeat undertone he sheds some light on Heslington’s ‘War Years’. The anecdotes we have had the fortune of reading show the way servicemen and women, villagers, in Heslington and no doubt villages and towns up and down the country refused to let the tragedies of war weigh too heavily on their outlook, and life went on.

Heslington Hall was thankfully never hit by any bombs during the war, the nearest place that was hit was a house called Spring Villa; we hear that although thankfully there were no fatalities the watchdog had to be put down, and ward remarks ‘I bet it was a Christmas they never forgot, as all the windows were broken and the house was covered in soot’.

Heslington village, undated

Ward was too young at the time to join the RAF himself, but he was still active in village work .He recalls one particular night on fire duty from which we can envisage the tensions and anxiety that would befall a village, especially one with a Bomber Command headquarters through the long nights. The pair were patrolling in front of the Hall when his partner ‘a nervous man’ jumped into him and let out a terrific scream, shouting ‘It got me!!’ .Far from capture by Nazi invaders he had, in Dad’s Army fashion, walked into the head of a horse.

Ward came across other troubles while undertaking another job of transferring the cattle. A problem similarly and frequently encountered by his father who would often receive angry messages from RAF bases requesting him ‘to remove his cows from the runway’, since planes were able neither to take off nor land. After Donald had successfully and without trouble guided his cattle to the golf course, they immediately and frantically broke into a gallop right across the fairways. This was much to the outrage of ‘all associated with golf’ but in these difficult times for everyone they were quite rightly told that ‘There’s a war on and everyone must make sacrifices, even golfers’.

Before the RAF took over during the war the house had been occupied by the 4^th Lord and Lady Deramore and Ward describes one particularly amusing scene during a shooting trip. The shoot, at Langwith woods, had stopped for lunch and the Lord Deramore, having taken a walk, noticed that the lavatory of one of only three residents of Langwith, an old lady, had fallen down. She answered his concerned enquiries with a description of a somewhat less effective set up involving a plank of wood between two trees. Deramore was understandably upset by this and on his return home sent his joiner to build her a new lavatory. Upon his return to Langwith he asked how she was finding her new lavatory to which she replied that it was too good to use, so she was keeping her hens in it!

This post was written by Hugo Laffey, one of our student interns.
For more on the work of our student interns see Heslington Hall - Country Life and Archiving Ayckbourn

Archiving the Life and Works of Alan Ayckbourn

Photograph copyright of Scarborough Theatre 
Trust/Stephen Joseph Theatre

For two years now, the Borthwick Institute for Archives has been holding the library of Alan Ayckbourn. As the author of over seventy plays, Ayckbourn is one of Britain’s most successful and prolific playwrights. But, whilst Ayckbourn is primarily a writer, he is also known for his work as an educator, a businessman and for many in the arts, as a friend. Over the next eight weeks, we will be delving into personal correspondence, drafted plays and interview transcripts in order to better understand this colossus of the theatre. And indeed, in amongst the audition notes, scribbled stage directions and countless fan letters, we have already begun unearthing surprises that have started to sketch the outline of the life and works on Alan Ayckbourn.

Ayckbourn’s first play ‘The Square Cat’ premiered in 1959 and was followed by over half a century of work during a long and exciting career. A notoriously busy man, Ayckbourn has spent the last fifty years of his professional life dividing his time between the bright lights of London’s West End and the sea-mist drenched cobbles of Scarborough, where he held the position of artistic director at the Stephen Joseph Theatre. But far from epitomising the lonely lot of a playwright, shut up in isolation and feverishly scribbling away, Ayckbourn has proven himself a writer of the people. Within his seventy-something plays there inhabit the voices of countless characters; ink and paper creations that, sharpened with the biting wit of a playwright unafraid to look beneath the covers, have continuously taught their audiences undeniable truth about themselves. Be it negotiating the delicate power balance of marriage, or navigating the comic intricacies of farce, his work has continually reached high acclaim and is not devoid of even the most challenging material. Alan Ayckbourn’s work will often give the members of its audience a slap around the face that will draw laughter and tears in one sitting and inevitably send the tingle of uncomfortable familiarity down their collective spine. 

 For the Borthwick, perhaps the most exciting aspect of archiving the writing of Alan Ayckbourn is that he is still living and writing. With his latest play premiering in Scarborough next month, Ayckbourn’s vast career is a testament to the growth and development of his own writing craft. Over fifty years in theatre has produced creative partnerships with colleagues such as Andrew Lloyd Webber, Michael Gambon and Prunella Scales, to name but a few. Ayckbourn’s work also extends to the support of children’s theatre, with the playwright linked to youth groups and having written several plays aimed at an underage audience. With an archive as rich in social and contextual history as it is in professional insight, the works of Alan Ayckbourn are already highlighting new and exciting stories from one of Britain’s most revered writers.

 This post was written by Maddy Pelling, Ayckbourn Intern. 

You can read more about Maddy's work with Alan Ayckbourn's archive in her post Answering the Critics with Laughter, Shakespeare and Toilet Paper: The Comedy of Alan Ayckbourn.