Using press cuttings to understand the early history of the University of York

 By Victoria Taylor

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Picture this: the year is 2546, and the University of York as it was in 1966 – and as we know it today, in 2021 – has long since ceased to exist. 

Only the ruins of the campus remain, with the lone surviving documentary evidence concerning the University’s origins to be found in the form of contemporaneous press headlines that have somehow survived the ravages of time. Perilously, you work to pull together broken pieces of a narrative, and your conclusions laid out are thus:

UOY/PC/1/13/12, Yorkshire Gazette (October 1966)

Ironically, and rather meta-textually, I stumbled across this press cutting from the Yorkshire Gazette discussing how headlines might be used to help piece together history during my very own foray into press cuttings concerning the origins and early history of the University of York which I have been undertaking as part of my Public History MA placement at the Borthwick. Thankfully, the archive that I was working with contained both articles and headlines, allowing me to discover slightly more about the early days of York! 

Whilst some of 1960s humour might be lost on us today, the satirical sketch – which was performed by some of York’s staff and students as part of an historical exercise after the appointment of York’s very first honorary doctorates in 1966 – highlights the importance and limits of archival holdings, and one way in which a specific kind of archive – namely press cuttings – might be used to help us understand and remember the past, distant or not. 

Although excavation of York’s hypothetical ruins would reveal a certain amount of information relating to buildings’ dating and development, only so much would be able to be garnered about the people – and ideas – behind them. For this information, it is into the archives that we must – as the brave researchers of 2546 will do in the future – head. For it is in archives that we find stories from the past. 

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York’s early years: stories from the press cuttings

The prospect of a university in York was a hot topic from the late 1940s onwards; consequently, there are thousands of cuttings detailing various aspects regarding the development of the University. From the early days of the summer schools, when the hope of a University was nothing but a distant glimmer on the horizon, to the graduation of the very first cohort in 1966, the press reported on a multitude of subjects. It would be impossible to adequately summarise the vast scope of the holdings, but I will take a moment to highlight the versatility of the contents by picking out some of my favourite cuttings and the stories they reveal.

The enduring popularity of family history

Today, if one wishes to research their family then they can hop onto one of the many ancestry sites that have popped up over the recent years and trawl over a variety of records (from archives!) that have been digitised or request them through the post. In the past, the onus was on archival institutions to deal with such requests for genealogical information, and the Borthwick Institute – officially opened at St Anthony’s Hall in 1953 – was one such institution that was inundated with requests.

UOY/PC/1/13/30, UOY/PC/1/2/58: Northern Echo (June 1966), 
Yorkshire Post, Northern Guardian (November 1953)

Several cuttings in the archive are concerned with genealogical requests at the Borthwick, which – indicative of the 60s' opinion that family history was a less worthy historical research pursuit – apparently impeded the ‘proper’ historical research being undertaken at the Borthwick due to the sheer number of them. Requests came from far and wide, including America, and led to, quite possibly, my favourite piece of wordplay throughout the entire archive:

“…it may not be possible to see the historical wood for family trees.”

 A diverse student population

UOY/PC/1/7/103, Northern Echo (October 1963)

If you were asked to guess at the relationship between the man and women in the adjacent picture, with the only context given that it depicted people linked to the University of York, a variety of conclusions could be reached. The most obvious answer, perhaps, would suggest that this was a lecturer talking to students. This explanation would certainly fit comfortably with traditional perceptions of what academics and students looked like. However, this was not the case. Every person in the photograph is a student: indeed, this is a group of students from the very first undergraduate cohort to pass through the gates of Heslington Hall in 1963. 

George Crofts – pictured seated – was 64 years old when he enrolled at the University of York to study Economics: he was, unsurprisingly, the oldest undergraduate. A World War I veteran and a pharmaceutical chemist, Crofts – following his retirement – moved from Newcastle to York to take up his place at the University and was successfully awarded his degree in Economics with Economic and Social History in 1966. 

Crofts was not the only mature student to enrol in 1963. Mary, a mother of four from the City of York, joined in her thirties to study Economic and Politics because she saw no reason for women her age being confined to making tea or knitting. Like Crofts, she was one of the first graduates of the University and set a fine example to her daughters. Anyone, seemingly, was welcome to study at York provided they had the qualifications: there was no conventional image of a ‘York student’ to be upheld. 

UOY/PC/1/13/37, Yorkshire Evening Press (July 1966)

Not only were mature students welcome, but so, too, were overseas students. Even in the earliest days of the Architecture and Archival summer schools, there had been a focus on establishing York as an internationally renowned place of study. In 1953, York was one of various cities cooperating with the British Council to host a yearly course in the spring entitled ‘Life in an Historic City’, which offered overseas students studying in UK universities the chance to experience the machinations of local government and life in British cities: a course which ran regularly in the following years. International students were commonplace in York, and it is unsurprising that there was talk of York becoming a ‘School of Britain’ at one point when it seemed as if the university dream was dead in the water. 

UOY/PC/1/1/24, 160, Northern Echo (August 1949), Yorkshire Gazette (August 1952).

(L) Michael Onafowokan of Nigeria, studying architecture at Glasgow University, undertakes measured drawing at York Castle in 1949 as part of a York Summer School on architecture. (R) Students from the UK, Malaysia and Sudan sketching and measuring features at the Treasurer's House, 1952.

UOY/PC/1/3/66, Yorkshire Evening Press (April 1966).

The first cohort of students in 1963 was not lacking in international students but, unsurprisingly, they were in the minority. Students arrived in York from India, Kenya, the USA, Nigeria, Hong Kong, Iraq, Sudan, France, and Germany, to name but some of the countries. A name that may be known to those already familiar with the University’s early history might be Pradip Nayak, a student from Kenya studying Economics and Politics, who was elected the first president of the Students’ Representative Council in 1964. Nayak was actively involved in student politics, with the Yorkshire Post describing him as “a leading light of the student movement”.

Following its official establishment, it did not take long for York to actively seek to develop its international links. In 1964, links were established with, what was then Northern Rhodesia, Zambia; in the 1964/1965 academic year, York – in association with the Ariel Foundation – hosted several African students studying Economics. The Zambian contingents of this group even celebrated their country’s independence at King’s Manor a day early so that they could travel to London the following day to take part in official celebrations.

UOY/PC/1/9/99, Yorkshire Post (23 October 1964)

Student activism

Universities in the 1960s were well-renowned for their student activism, and, despite York’s climate being tamer than some of the more radical establishments, York students proved to be just as committed to their causes.

In 1964, for example, students from the University of York and St John’s College joined together to protest the life sentences that had been handed down to South African anti-apartheid activists by holding an all-night vigil in King’s Square.

UOY/PC/1/9/21, Yorkshire Evening Press (June 1964)

York students also took to the streets in the winter of 1965 to condemn Rhodesia’s Universal Declaration of Independence (much to the chagrin of some York residents who were out to see Father Christmas). 

UOY/PC/1/11/155, [unattributed cutting] (November 1965).

The Vietnam War was also a point of focus throughout the early years: in 1965 York’s Debate Society passed a motion condemning American aggression in Vietnam demonstrations were planned, and signatures were collected for a petition to be sent to the Prime Minister that urged the government to encourage a peaceful resolution to the conflict. In 1966, some York students got into hot water with the British Legion for giving out white poppies for others to wear on Armistice Day in recognition of the impact of the Vietnam War.

Indeed, so fed up with the image of the protesting student in mid-1965, two York students protested the protests that had been taking place, positing contrary opinions on several subjects that had other University of York students up in arms!

It was not all protests, however. Students were often behind fundraising attempts. The York University Movement for Racial Equality worked in tandem with Keighley International Friendship Council in 1965 – as well as the Linguistics and Education departments at York – to help teach English to immigrants in Keighley. The Movement launched an appeal – which was successful – for £1,000 that was to pay for the upkeep of a rented social centre that would enable the scheme to develop. 

UOY/PC/1/11/150, Telegraph and Argus (November 1965)

'Sporting’ endeavours

Forget the annual ‘Wars of the Roses’ competition with Lancaster University: the hottest sporting action to be found in the archives concerns the University of Hull’s challenge of a Winnie the Pooh contest in 1966. Posted on University of York’s noticeboards, Hull students challenged York students to a game of Poohsticks and Pooh hums – for those uninitiated, Poohsticks is a game that involves two sticks, a body of flowing water, and a bridge (what better campus than York’s for such a competition with its largest plastic-bottomed lake in Europe and bridges, one might ask; one with faster running water, one might answer), and Pooh hums were to be songs that would be judged on their “Poohishness”. 

Sadly, I could find no articles discussing whether any courageous York students took up this most daring of challenges – should the University of Hull, or any students of the time, be able to clarify any information, I would gladly welcome it. [1] 

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Limitations and lacunae: memory and forgetting in the archives

 

Whilst there are many and myriad benefits from examining the archive to gain an understanding of the University of York’s early history, it is also necessary to recognise the archive’s limitations. The 1966 sketch acknowledged that, in the distant future of 2546, there would be no evidence of the sketch having taken place, and this observation highlights the fact that archives, no matter how varied their contents, cannot record everything, which can have a significant impact on what and who is remembered. 

The art of selection

In fact, archives contain only brief slivers of a vast, expansive past. For the researchers of the future to be aware that the sketch had taken place, an account of the sketch would have to have been documented in a newspaper headline. This would require: a journalist to decide the moment was worth documenting in the first instance; the volume’s compiler to decide that the cutting was worth including; an archivist to decide to keep the volume in an archive; a useful finding aid to be created to search through the surviving cuttings; and it would require this archive to be cared for to survive into the future (whether this survival would be in paper or digital form is a question for another day). For survival, selection is imperative at every point. 

Selection highlights just how easy it is for an event, a person, a group of people, to be consigned to the cutting-room floor: to be forgotten even in the quest for memory. The necessity of selection has, in the past, created lacunae in archives, and it is frequently the least powerful in society that suffer from this lack of documentation and lack of representation in the archives. Thankfully, action has been taken – is being taken – to redress this wrong: whether in state archives, or in more local, community archives, efforts are underway to preserve the histories of the most marginalised groups on their own terms.

Selection at work in the press cuttings archive

In terms of where selection fits into the archive that I have been working with, it is not necessarily a case of archival selection that delimits the contents – in fact, the collection process seems to have been rather indiscriminate, with the only criteria necessitating that articles must mention the University in some capacity – but rather the nature of the archive itself. It is an archive of press cuttings and press cuttings alone, which ultimately means that its contents reflect the interests of the press throughout the 1950s and 1960s. 

Stories included in the press cuttings can vary from the mundane to the scandalous, but there is little doubt that they do not – indeed could not – report on every minute happening concerning the University. Selectivity at work once again. Moreover, the articles often tease at information that they cannot further elucidate on. A case in point: a 1966 Yorkshire Evening Press article discussed an Eboracum article written by a first-year student concerned with the relationship between overseas and home students and the existence of unofficial segregation. The cutting acknowledges the existence of this tension but does nothing more to explore the matter: there are no interviews with international students documenting their experience at the time, for example. 

UOY/PC/1/12/89, Yorkshire Evening Press (March 1966)

Combating selectivity

How do archives avoid complacency and recognise the gaps in the historical record? I already mentioned the efforts that have been taken elsewhere in archives to combat the impact that such selectivity can have, and similar principles might be applied here. The early years of the University of York’s history are still within living memory, and this means that steps can be taken to counter archival gaps, helping to guarantee that the archival record will be more inclusive and representative of everyone involved in the University of York’s history. 

In other words, let us hope that the exploration of a press cuttings archive can be used to start conversations about the early years of the University of York as opposed to finishing them, creating a comprehensive and inclusive archive that might survive into 2546 and even beyond. 

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[1] Do you know if York accepted the challenge? Do you have a photographic record of the events or an original 1966 Hum or rhyme? If so, please contact the Borthwick and let us know!  

My Year as an Archive Trainee

By John-Francis Goodacre

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As my year as Archives Graduate Trainee comes to an end, I have been reflecting on my time at the Borthwick and what I’ve learnt along the way. The last twelve months have been a fantastic experience and a great introduction to working in archives. Special thanks go to my manager Amanda, and to all the Archives Assistants for their helpfulness and willingness to share their expertise.

Working with the wills and inventories in the Borthwick’s probate collection was at the heart of my year, and this gave me great insight into a wide range of archival skills and processes. I developed my understanding of how the documents were created, their archival history, and what they can reveal to researchers today. I learned to use the finding aids (both analogue and digital), retrieve documents from the strongroom, and collaborate with our conservators who clean and flatten the tightly-rolled bundles. Last but not least, I made digital copies of many hundreds of these documents to send to researchers around the world. Following up my own interests, I even researched and wrote two blog posts about the probate collection - one concerning a seventeenth-century book owner, and one about Charles Dickens.

I also worked in the searchroom, where I helped students, family historians, academics, television companies and even the university’s own Vice-Chancellor to find and use archival material. This gave me a taste of the bewildering variety of enquiries that archivists get to answer, as well as an appreciation for how important access to archives is. On top of this I have helped with packaging projects, updating the online catalogue, and attended conferences and training events across the country.

A real achievement has been learning to read and interpret the handwriting in some of the Borthwick’s oldest documents. Over the course of the year I took two palaeography modules alongside history postgraduates, and a course in medieval Latin. It’s a great feeling to be able to read documents that seemed impenetrable only one year ago, and I hope to put these skills to use in the future.

A document from our probate collection

As a literature graduate with a love of early printed books, I particularly enjoyed the opportunities to work with York University Library’s staff and collections. I was part of the team that organised the Library and Archives’ student enterprise competition LibInspo, and I helped bring archives and rare books together for Wonders on Wednesday exhibitions. One of the highlights of my year was developing a hands-on bookbinding activity for one of these events.

Sewing a facsimile of The Strange and Wonderful History and Prophecies of Mother Shipton, a chapbook printed by James Kendrew of York in 1809

Running the Borthwick’s social media gave me lots of opportunities to find intriguing stories and new ways of presenting archives to a wider audience. Having a pandemic-related tweet go (mildly) viral was certainly something I didn’t expect from this year!

"the archive is closed until further notice"
- technically true
- a bit boring
- everyone is saying it

"we have sealed the vault until the plague passes"
- heroic
- sounds like you have a treasure hoard in the strongroom
- nobody can check as the archive is closed

— UoY Borthwick Institute for Archives (@UoYBorthwick) April 1, 2020

As my final four months were spent working from home, I was glad to return to the strongroom one last time before leaving. I'm now looking forward to beginning my masters degree and the next stage of my career, and I wish all the best to my colleagues and to anyone considering working in archives.

 

Isaac Havelock: a book-lover in seventeenth-century York

By John-Francis Goodacre, Archives Trainee

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Imagine stepping into a house. Nobody is at home, but a row of books lines the bookshelf. How much can you tell about the person who lives there?

This is the situation we can find ourselves in when reading probate inventories, the lists of movable goods that were drawn up after a person’s death in order to assess their wealth and calculate church court fees. These lists can offer an incredibly rich insight into the everyday lives of people long dead, through a snapshot of what they owned at the time of their death. Though many inventories only record clothing, household furniture and livestock, some occasionally contain detailed evidence of book ownership. One such inventory in the Borthwick’s Yorkshire Probate Records tells the story of an avid reader in seventeenth-century York.

Isaac Havelock died some time before September 1640. His estate passed through the Prerogative Court of York, and four men were instructed to make an inventory of his goods, which they did on the 31st of August. This inventory - a long piece of parchment written on both sides - records an impressive array of furniture in York, as well as a large selection of goods in Berwick upon Tweed, including fine clothes, five gold rings, a silver watch and chain, and a horse. What makes the document stand out, however, is the category of items that is given its own space in the end, making up a good third of the entire inventory and over a quarter of its value. The “Schedule of his books” records at least 132 books, of which 43 are individually named.

The beginning of Isaac Havelock’s inventory.

There is little else we know about him. The other documents that one would expect to find in a probate bundle - a will, a grant of administration, a bond - haven’t survived, so it is not clear what his occupation was or to whom he left his possessions. There seem to have been Havelocks living in the villages of Skelton-in-Cleveland, Marske and Guisborough in the North Riding of Yorkshire, and the parish register of Skelton records the baptism of an Isaac Havelock, son of John, on September 28th 1587. Isaac Havelock also appears as a witness in a number of deeds from the area around York between the 1610s and the 1630s, including one where he is described as a servant to Richard Bell Esq., a counsellor-at-law of York. Of all the archival sources, it is thus the list of books which gives us the most detailed insight into his life.

It is not entirely surprising that the inventory begins with “One large bible in folio”. The bible would have been a vital part of any 17th-century book collection, and the mention of its large size and format, as well as its relatively high value of 16 shillings, emphasises the primary importance of the scripture in Havelock’s collection. Moreover, the attention to its physicality reminds us that books were also objects to be valued for their aesthetic qualities. Next comes the most expensive book in the inventory, John Foxe’s influential Protestant martyrology called Acts and Monuments (here referred to by its popular title, The Book of Martyrs). This massive folio, full of distinctive woodcut illustrations, was given the value of £1 6s 8d - more than the price of the sword with a silver hilt that was among Havelock’s possessions at Berwick upon Tweed.

The ordering of the books in the inventory tells us a lot about the importance that was assigned to them. From these and other large-format works of theology and history, the inventory moves on through a mix of quartos and octavos, and finishes with an undifferentiated group of “83 little books besides” as well as a bag of songbooks. Whether or not this seemingly hierarchical arrangement was how Isaac Havelock organised the books in his house, we cannot know for sure. While inventories tended to reflect the layout of goods in a house, the historian Donald Spaeth has recently explored the ways that their order and arrangement could be dependent on the methods of individual appraisers or local conventions.

Woodcut illustration of the burning of John Rogers, the first victim of the Marian persecutions in England. From the first English edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. (Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain)

The Bible and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs are a fitting beginning to a list that paints a picture of someone well-read in a variety of Protestant writings. Havelock owned a range of works by important figures in the Reformation from across Europe. These included the works of William Tyndale, whose English translation of the Bible played an important role in the English Reformation; an edition of the New Testament by the French reformer Theodore Beza; the Commonplaces of the Italian-born Peter Martyr Vermigli, a standard textbook of Reformed theology; and the Meditations of the German Lutheran Johann Gerhard. He also owned a copy of De civitate Dei by Saint Augustine, whose works had become popular among Protestant reformers.

In addition to these pan-European religious bestsellers, Havelock had had an interest in vernacular works of popular devotion. Among these were Lewis Bayly’s hugely popular religious self-help book The Practice of Piety, John Norden’s A Poore Mans Rest, and treatises and sermons by the Puritan preachers William Cowper, Richard Stock and John Dod. He also possessed a copy of George Herbert’s collection of religious poetry, The Temple. However, the inventory isn’t uniformly Protestant. Havelock owned The Passions of The Mind, a treatise on the passions written by Thomas Wright. Wright, born in York to a Catholic family, was a Jesuit who had spent much of the 1590s imprisoned in York due to his recusant activity.

In the fore chamber of his house in York, the same room that contained his desk and writing materials, Havelock had a “large mapp”. As this is listed in the same entry as “a woodden frame with pictures”, it is tempting to imagine the map hanging on the wall above him as he sat writing, perhaps providing a window onto distant lands. From his books, it does seem that Havelock had a particular interest in travel and the world - and in particular the Middle East. His library contained Heinrich Bünting’s popular Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae, a book describing the geography and landscapes in which biblical events and journeys took place. He owned an account of the travels of George Sandys, son of Archbishop of York Edwin Sandys, which included a map of the Middle East along with lavish illustrations of Constantinople’s skyline, the Egyptian pyramids, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. More sensational was an account of the travels of the Scotsman William Lithgow, whose journey by foot through Europe to the Middle East and North Africa purportedly involved daring escapes, shipwrecks and encounters with pirates.

A map of the holy land from the 1585 German edition of Heinrich Bünting’s Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae. (Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain)

These travel narratives are complemented by other larger-scale works of world history and geography by John Swan, Peter Heylyn and Walter Raleigh. Together, their variety demonstrates that the early modern interest in the world wasn’t solely restricted to the category of knowledge we now call geography. These books ranged from biblical history to current affairs, carefully sourced scholarship to highly personal accounts, and indeed from fact to fiction - the authoritatively-titled History of Trebizond in Havelock’s library was actually a collection of romances.

The rest of the inventory suggests that Havelock’s reading covered a wide range of subjects.
Law is well represented; he owned books of statutes and decrees, a manual on the role of justice of the peace, and the earliest treatise on women’s rights in English known as The Womans Lawyer. He owned a large chronicle of British history from the Roman conquest, as well as two histories of the reign of Elizabeth I. An interest in Latin authors is suggested by a translation of the Roman historian Justin, a copy of what is likely to be Lucan’s epic poem on the Roman civil war, and a parallel translation of the Distichs of Cato - a popular schoolbook for teaching Latin. We may also wonder about Havelock’s connection to music, as he owned a bible “with singing psalmes”, an Introduction to Practicall Musicke by the composer of madrigals Thomas Morley, and a bag of songbooks valued at a pound - although there is no mention of any instruments in his possession.

Where would Havelock have got these books from? At the time of his death, no books had been printed in York for more than a hundred years, and it would be another two before King Charles brought the royal printer to York at the onset of civil war. Rather, Havelock’s library was made up of books printed in the centres of the early seventeenth-century print trade in Britain. Most came from London, a number from the two university cities Oxford and Cambridge, and at least one of his books was printed in Edinburgh.

However, he wouldn’t have needed to travel far to get his hands on them. York was part of an impressive distribution network for books that stretched across the country and beyond, and the Minster Yard was home to a number of booksellers, bookbinders and stationers. The inventory of John Foster, the owner of one of these shops who died in 1616, attests to the scale of the trade. His stock included three and a half thousand copies of over a thousand titles, with books printed as far away as Venice, Zurich and Lyon. In fact, a number of books in Havelock’s inventory match titles that were on sale in Foster’s shop, suggesting he may have been a regular customer.

Can this list of books tell us who Isaac Havelock was? The inventory gives us an impression of a wealthy protestant reader, who was buying books well into the last decade of his life: a man who was interested in the wider world, history, and law. His library, writing equipment and the “3 dozen of parchment skinns” listed alongside his books suggest that literacy was an important part of his profession. He may have been involved in music-making, either in connection with the Minster or one of York’s many other churches.

However, there are also significant gaps in the information provided - what were the 83 “little books besides” that the appraisers didn’t list by name? Nor does the inventory tell us anything about the social lives of the books. Reading was frequently a social activity as books were read aloud or passed among friends, but we cannot know about the other women or men who interacted with Havelock’s library. Finally, we all know that the books on our bookshelves can mean different things to us. Some we buy for pleasure, others profit. Some we read once, others we return to time and time again. Some books change our way of looking at the world, others reinforce what we already believe. The book historian David Pearson entreats us to bear this in mind when researching books and their readers: “We should think of these libraries not so much as mirrors of the particular interests of their owners, but more as platforms or springboards from which their own ideas and perceptions of the world developed” (2010: 159). Nonetheless, Isaac Havelock’s inventory offers a remarkable insight into seventeenth-century York’s literary world.

A transcription of the whole inventory with a glossary is available here.

Bibliography

Barnard, John, and Maureen Bell, ‘The English Provinces’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, edited by John Barnard and D. F. McKenzie, with Maureen Bell, vol. 4, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 665–686.

Pearson, David, ‘Patterns of Book Ownership in Late Seventeenth-Century England’, The Library, 11.2 (2010), 139-167.

Spaeth, Donald, ‘“Orderly Made”: re-appraising household inventories in seventeenth-century England’, Social History, 41.4 (2016), 417-435.

Tillott, P. M., ed., A History of the County of York: the City of York (London: Victoria County History, 1961).

Winters, Jennifer, ‘The English provincial book trade: bookseller stock-lists, c.1520-1640’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of St Andrews, 2012).

Using the York Cause Papers for Family History

As a family historian I’m always on the look-out for record collections that add some colour to the past lives I’m researching. Sources such as parish registers, general registration and census records are indispensable sources, but on their own they can only give a small number of clues to the life a person led. Sometimes that may be all you’re looking for, but I generally find that once you have an outline view, you become hungry to find more about the person. How did they live? What was their personality like? What did they do in their life? What were their beliefs? Who were their friends? How did they interact with others? What did they own? The list goes on…

Dioceses of the Church of England between the
Reformation and the mid-19th century

I recently had my eyes opened to the documents from the church courts of the Archbishop of York. Known as the York Cause Papers, these documents hold information on people mainly living in the Diocese of York, and the Northern Province and run from 1300 to 1858. The papers are well known and well used by academics researching church, legal and medieval history, but less so by family historians researching the lives of specific individuals or families. Certainly, I’d always felt a little intimidated at the prospect of delving into them and feared that I could spend a lot of time finding very little!

I was looking for a project subject for my studies at the University of Strathclyde, and Alexandra Medcalf from the Borthwick Institute showed me the papers for the cause of Hannah Willmott from Ellerburn. Hannah died in 1820 without leaving a will and had no immediate next of kin. Administrators carried out the initial distribution of her estate, but the scale of wealth she had inherited meant that lots of people started to come out of the woodwork, disputing the actions of her administrators and staking a claim to a share of the estate. The detail of Hannah’s cause deserves a blog post of its own, but what really challenged my preconceptions about Cause Papers were the records I found in this case: 5 detailed family trees, more than 60 “certified” copies of parish register entries and 30 witness testimonies giving vivid descriptions of individuals and events.

Examples of copies of parish register entries and an excerpt from a genealogical chart, TEST.CP.1820/3

With more than 15,000 causes and appeals in the overall collection, I suspected that there could be great potential locked into the records, so I had to find out more. The courts heard causes relating to probate, marriage, immorality, defamation and tithes, and I felt that the probate records could hold details of particular interest to a family historian. And so my project was launched!

I spent time building a high-level view of the entire Cause Paper catalogue, then looked in detail at a selection of testamentary (probate & administration) causes dated between 1733-1858. Here are some of the things I found in the causes I looked at:

A relatively large number of people can be found in the collection. Across the 100 causes I looked at in the catalogue, I found 720 named individuals. Causes most often involved only 2 participants, but some (admittedly exceptional) causes had more than 30 people involved. The average number of participants was 7 people per cause. Looking more broadly, and with 15,000 causes in the full collection, it means that there is the potential to find details for more than 30,000+ individuals (possibly up to 100,000). Although this is not a large number when compared to collections such as parish registers or census records, when considering the relatively humble background of those listed, and the periods covered, this is a significant collection.

The individuals came from a wide range of backgrounds. The occupations of people involved in causes were not just limited to legal or church officials. They also included producers (e.g. agricultural workers), manufacturers (e.g. clothing, food, construction), sellers and dealers, professionals and transport workers. This is great news for family historians, as biographical information about individuals from such a broad range of backgrounds is extremely scarce prior to the 1841 Census.

Occupations found for 50% of the 720 people named in testamentary catalogue sample

Most of the individuals came from Yorkshire. This was not really surprising, but given the complexity of church court jurisdictions (there were 372 active in England & Wales in 1832), it’s useful to know that I found 84% of participants came from Yorkshire (all Ridings). 13% came from elsewhere in the Northern Province (mostly Lancashire, Durham and Nottinghamshire), and 3% came from the Southern Province.

Heat map showing locations of testamentary cause participants

The depositions (witness testimonies) and case exhibits are generally the most useful documents. I looked at 20 causes in great detail and found more than 400 documents, across 1000 images. These documents contain a wide variety of facts and clues, some of which may not be available elsewhere, and this is where I found I could glean most information about a person’s character. Other records such as parish records, family trees, guardianship, debtor/creditor accounts, etc. may open up new lines of enquiry helping break through a brick wall.

Examples of documents in causes: an account of funeral costs from 1779 (TEST.CP.1779/2 p. 2)
and a sample of questions put to witnesses 1820 (TEST.CP.1820/3 p. 106)

The catalogue has a wide range of search terms. Many family historians will be searching for a person by name. Whilst the search allows for a search by name or variant, I’d love to see an enhancement to allow for a phonetic search. During the period of the records, names would have been spoken much more often than written, and given the rich variety of dialects across Yorkshire, a phonetic search would help to track individuals down. The search is not just limited by name. The cataloguing team have indexed a wide variety of terms, all of which can be searched in the advanced search. Places, occupations, dates, roles, sex, status are all indexed (where they appear on the source record), and while I did find a small number of inconsistencies, errors and omissions, this doesn’t in any way diminish the fantastic job the team did in compiling the catalogue.

The quality of online images is excellent. People familiar with attempting to read parish registers from digital versions of grainy, feint microfilm images, will be delighted with the quality of the images in the cause paper collection. I only found a couple of less than perfect images in the 1000 I looked at.

The records are (relatively) easy to read and understand. Armed with a basic understanding of court procedures, and a good reference book, the records were surprisingly easy to follow. The handwriting was generally clear, most records types were easy to identify, and the standard records were consistent in their structure. After 1733, English was the mandatory language, and I also found it used in many pre-1733 records. Those pre-1733 records written in Latin were harder to decode, but they were generally formulaic so once the record type had been identified, I found it possible to pull out keywords.

Having found all of these benefits, I also need to sound a word of caution which will be of no surprise to family history researcher. Always keep in mind the context of the records, don’t just take them at face value. These records were created in adversarial court cases, so there is a risk of bias and this needs to be taken into account before accepting what is written. This is made difficult on some occasions, where a cause did not have a full set of papers, making it harder to reconstruct the case and determine a record’s context. However, understanding the verdict and cross-referencing facts to other sources (e.g. newspaper accounts of proceedings) will help in this area. 

So is it worth the effort? Absolutely it is! The project team which created the online catalogue have created a fabulous, easy to access, free to use resource. Anyone researching a Yorkshire tyke living between 1300 and 1858 should have this on their list to check and may well tap into a rich seam of information that will bring real colour to their research.

The catalogue of York Cause Papers can be found at here, with images (where they are not linked directly through the catalogue) here. 

To get a deeper understanding of the records, the following are invaluable sources of information:

• The Cause Papers Research Guide.
• Tarver, Anne. (1995) Church Court Records: An introduction for family and local historians. Chichester, England: Phillimore.
• Withers, Colin Blanshard. (2006) Yorkshire probate. 1st edition. Bainton, England: Yorkshire Wolds Publication.

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This blog was written by Paul Wainwright, a volunteer at the Borthwick Institute working on the Retreat Letters Project . Paul is a student on the University of Strathclyde's MSc in Genealogical, Palaeographic and Heraldic Studies and a student member of the Register of Qualified Genealogists. 

An A-Z of life as a Trainee at the Borthwick Institute for Archives

By Sarah Moses, Archive Trainee

Welcome to my A-Z of what I’ve learned while I’ve been a trainee at the Borthwick Institute for Archives! I started working here in July 2018 and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the traineeship but, as I’m almost finished, I wanted to provide some insight into the life of an Archive Trainee. 

A is for Archive Graduate Trainee: This traineeship is an opportunity for someone interested in being an archivist to learn more about the practical side of working in an archive, before pursuing a formal postgraduate qualification. The Borthwick role includes a huge variety of tasks from copying probate orders to social media to working in the searchroom, as well as training in aspects of an archivist’s job and visits to other repositories to learn even more. In this blog post, I’ll be attempting to show just how varied the trainee’s role truly is! 

B is for Borthcat: The Borthwick Catalogue (https://borthcat.york.ac.uk/) provides all manner of information about our archives and their history. Whether you need a quick search to check some information or you have time to get lost in the depths of archival descriptions and authority records, Borthcat is your one-stop shop for all things holdings-related. (Although I’ve also learned that you sometimes just cannot get by without the paper catalogues in the searchroom.) 

C is for Conservation: Our conservators form a vital part of the team at the Borthwick. As a trainee, I’ve got to know them as the people who work magic on the rolled probate records I bring in to have made flat. They are also the fount of all knowledge when it comes to packaging, and don’t seem to mind too much when I repeatedly ask questions about how to deal with specific documents/objects/photograph albums. On the subject of photographs, most of these (along with some scientific instruments) are held in our cold store, which is (as the name suggests) COLD. I quickly learned that if I would be spending a large amount of time in there, I needed to wear extra layers. (On a side note, this sartorial advice actually applies to working in archives anyway - many areas are colder than you expect!) 

D is for Data Protection: Before I started my traineeship, my only known experience of data protection was the numerous emails I had received the previous year relating to GDPR. But I now know far more about the 100-year rule and the various regulations for medical records in particular. Although a more knowledgeable member of staff has always been happy to answer any questions about data protection because this is one area in which I really didn’t want to mess up!

E is for Exercise: An unexpected side effect of being an archive trainee is the exercise I’ve got. Although I have lifted heavy items more than once in my life, it is slightly different when you are moving dozens of boxes every day. Not only have I actually got arm muscles for the first time in my life, but climbing stairs and walking between strongrooms and the searchroom and accessions (where I’m based) and the digitisation suite and the staff area have made me fitter, despite all the cake archivists eat.

F is for File: While fixing problems on Borthcat, I asked what I assumed was a very simple, very stupid question: in a description of an archival collection, what is the difference between file-level and item-level? Apparently, this is not such a simple, stupid question after all, which provokes debates on, for example, whether a minute book is an item in itself, or whether it is a file in which individual entries/pages are items. I found myself surrounded by hours of discussion and had books recommended to me on the topic.

G is for General Staff Meetings: The highlight of every three months. It is the trainee’s job to provide statistics on rolled wills given to conservation, which will inevitably involve a fight with a spreadsheet and more time than it should take manually copying and pasting and adding up, but I always managed (eventually) to obtain the right information. I also learned that it’s advisable to read other people’s summary reports that are provided before the meeting, so you don’t end up sitting in a room of 20 people where everyone else seems to know what is being discussed and you don’t have a clue.

H is for Handwriting: Or more accurately: palaeography. This is one of the greatest archival skills I have learned in my traineeship. Through both 1:1 study with a member of staff and seminars taught as part of a postgraduate module, after a few weeks of studying early modern material, I started to realise that maybe I could actually read it. And if in doubt, I learned to count the minims and ask myself if the letter I was stuck on was ‘c’ or ‘h’ or ‘r’ or ‘&’ (it’s normally one of those). I also had the opportunity to work on some 19th and 20th century material, which made the 16th century palaeography seem like a doddle. On a slight tangent, I was also able to participate in the Medieval Latin course run by the University’s Languages for All scheme (https://www.york.ac.uk/lfa/courses/latin-medieval/). This can be taken at either beginner or advanced level and provides a solid foundation in Latin grammar and vocabulary, as well as information on standard phrases used in legal and probate documents. 

 The first palaeography document I attempted to read - the will of Jane Stapilton

I is for Instagram: And Facebook. And Twitter. One of my most time-consuming roles has been maintaining the social media channels of the Borthwick. We may not have reached the dizzying heights of The Museum of English Rural Life or Orkney Library but social media is a great way to show what we do. I’ve learned to be creative, have fun and, most importantly, ask my colleagues for ideas. Typing in a certain word on Borthcat may provide an overwhelming selection of records to use, but it is most likely that someone will have a random nugget of information tucked away deep in their memory banks that was stored for such a time as this. And I’ve had the privilege of staging many a photoshoot for Archie (our dearly loved archive squirrel). He could be doing anything or saying anything (more or less) and get away with it. Because he’s a squirrel. 

Archie the Archive Squirrel

J is for Jobs, Odd: As a trainee, I’ve ended up doing jobs that I’d never expected. From staging photo shoots for a squirrel to creating a post-it note crown for said squirrel (twice), I’ve occasionally found myself in slightly bizarre circumstances during my traineeship. One of my most ‘what am I actually doing’ non-squirrel-related moments was when we got a new safe for our keys and I spent an hour sitting on the floor, writing out sticky labels with staff names on, attaching these to the new cabinet and transferring the keys across (which had helpfully been mixed up moments beforehand). 

The first outfit I made for Archie - a crown and a paperchain

 

K is for Key Cabinet: A few months into my traineeship, we got a new safe for the keys we use to access various parts of the building. With its handy touchpad to ensure ease of opening, this safe will seem perfectly normal to anyone beginning a career at the Borthwick. But, unfortunately, they’ve missed out on the rite of passage that was the old key cabinet. Transferred from the Borthwick’s old home at St Anthony’s Hall, this cabinet had a dial that was incredibly temperamental. A fraction of a degree out of place could make all the difference (as could pounding the door of the cabinet), and I thought I would never learn how to use it and instead be reliant on other people getting my keys out for me...until Day 3 of my traineeship, when I opened the safe by myself and, of course, no one was around to see it! Sometimes change is good.

L is for Lifelong Learning: Our main classroom space is known as the Lifelong Learning room. I’ve spent plenty of time in here setting up for various classes and visits. Sometimes it is simply a case of moving some chairs and tables; sometimes I’ve spent more than an hour laying out archival material that will be studied by the visiting group. Sitting in on classes (especially at the start of my traineeship), was a great way to learn more about the holdings of the Borthwick, and to see how outreach can be done in an archival setting. 

Archie in Lifelong Learning

M is for Milk: We’re halfway through my A-Z, so I think it’s time for a tea break, but is there milk in the fridge? This is one of my most inconspicuous, yet vital, roles. If there’s milk in the fridge, no one bats an eyelid. If there isn’t, someone else will have to buy milk from the shop on campus and I feel like I’ve failed at life. 

N is for The Northern Way Project: And the Rowntree Archives Project. And the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Project. And the Alcoholics Anonymous Project. And the Yorkshire Historic Dictionary Project. It’s always a great idea to learn about the projects being undertaken at the Borthwick. The project archivists have provided me with all sorts of fascinating information and taught me about cataloguing (and I’ve been able to hear them discussing times when they’ve found funny/sad/annoying records which provide an insight into their project). Because they know their project material so thoroughly, they are also great people to ask for ideas for social media.

O is for Orders Database: What to say about the orders database. It is a fantastic spreadsheet, providing a wealth of useful information but it is full of all kinds of formulae and buttons I never ever want to mess with. When people order anything through the research or copying services on our website, their request arrives in the orders database, from which we can generate invoices and store any necessary information. I use it almost daily, so I’ve had to become familiar with the columns I need. And in the worst case scenario, it does ask whether you really want to type in a box which should not be changed, so I can quickly say, “No, thank you” and get back to what I was trying to do. And in the worst worst case scenario, the database can easily be restored to a version from a few hours before (but I always ask someone who actually knows what they’re doing to fix it).

P is for Packaging: As part of my traineeship, I’ve been asked on several occasions to transfer archival material from the cardboard boxes/plastic bags in which it arrived, to archival standard packaging, checking for rusty paperclips, plastic wallets or anything that maybe should be treated slightly differently (like a box of matches - yes, really). My repackaging tasks have varied from school records to ecclesiastical records to scripts for plays to miscellaneous business records. I’ve also been asked to create lists of the contents of each box - such a simple exercise and yet incredibly useful for finding stuff. 

Some examples of box lists I've created

Q is for Questions: This is questions in two senses: (a) questions I receive, and (b) questions I pose. Firstly, when working at the searchroom reception desk, I am asked many many questions. These enquiries could be received by email (in which case I can consult other members of staff before replying), by telephone (in which case I can ask them to email us, or say that I will email them, if I don’t know the answer), or in person (in which case it is more difficult to hide my lack of knowledge). The questions could be anything from general queries on using probate indexes to incredibly detailed analyses of a person’s ancestors. Secondly, there are the questions I have posed as a trainee. Throughout my first few weeks (and, let’s be honest, all year) it was reiterated to me on multiple occasions that there were no stupid questions and I could ask for help as many times as I needed. And, to be fair to my colleagues, everyone has treated me with patience and kindness, even if I have forgotten something incredibly basic. I had to ask how to turn a computer on a few months into my traineeship, so it’s pretty impossible to do any worse than that.

R is for Rowntree correspondence: Presented with three boxes of hundreds of letters written to and by the Rowntree family in the middle of the 19th century, I faced the daunting prospect of writing a short note on the author, recipient, date and contents of each letter. Fortunately, some work had already been done to find the common thread in each bundle, and so, armed with a fairly detailed family tree of Joseph Rowntree, I began this task. However, I hadn’t reckoned on the challenge of reading Victorian handwriting. And, as luck would have it, the least legible writing style came from Joseph’s mother Sarah, hundreds of whose letters are contained within the collection. Fortunately, I quickly learned that if I was really struggling to read someone’s handwriting, I should take the time to actually sit and transcribe whole letters. Although this was time-consuming, it enabled me to “get my eye in” and pick out common stylistic variations.

The first Rowntree letter I read - from Joseph Rowntree Sr to his son Joseph

S is for Searchroom/Strongroom Duty: This is arguably the most fun, and yet most daunting, part of the traineeship. On a quiet day, I’ve spent most of my time at the computer in the searchroom reception, tackling email and telephone enquiries. But on a busy day, I’ve run to the strongrooms and back multiple times an hour. However, I’ve been able to see first-hand how archives are used by members of the public and enjoyed several joyful experiences of a researcher finding just the information they needed. Doing searchroom/strongroom duty has taught me more about our archival holdings than I could have thought possible, and within a few weeks I knew which part of the strongrooms I needed to be in to find the requested material (most of the time). I also quickly learned that when showing a visitor how to use a digital microfilm reader, there is a diagram on the machine itself, so if I pointed them to it while I explained how to put the reel on, they didn’t know that I’d forgotten how to do it. Finally, I had the joy of using our hanging map cabinets several times. Although it wasn’t ideal that my first experience of using them was at 5pm on a Friday, when I couldn’t get it open properly and then the lid wouldn’t stay up, and I ended up with numerous people trying to talk me through how it works over the phone and then in person. 

Archie in the Searchroom

T is for Teamwork: Teamwork is incredibly important in an archive. As I mentioned elsewhere, my colleagues have given me so many suggestions for records to highlight on social media and provided insights into the life of an archivist. I’ve also had some very team-focused tasks. Just one example is the day an addition to the Alcoholics Anonymous Archive was transferred to the Borthwick. After the archive arrived during mid-morning, it took four members of staff the rest of the day to put all the boxes back into order and move them up a floor to the correct strongroom. It was good fun! (But I wouldn’t want to do it every day.)

U is for University: Although the Borthwick is situated within the Library of the University of York, we don’t just hold University records. We also have archives relating to the church (Church of England and non-conformist), health and medicine, businesses, families, architecture, horticulture, the environment, social welfare organisations, charities, schools, societies, music, writing and performance. And as the trainee, I’ve had to learn everything there is to know about all of these! Well, not quite, but I’ve certainly acquired some knowledge about each of these and added constantly to my learning. But I quickly learned that there was always someone around who knew more than I did, so I shouldn’t be afraid to ask for advice.

V is for Visits: During my traineeship, I’ve had the opportunity to visit other archives (university archives, business archives, museums and local record offices).  These visits have been great times to ask questions and discover something new about the archival profession. It’s easy to become accustomed to one way of working and assume that this is the best way but through visiting other places, I could learn from the systems in place which may work better or worse than what I’ve experienced in my traineeship. Visits are also a great method of networking with other people working in archives. Likewise, training days provided me with the opportunity to meet other archive trainees and gain a more theoretical knowledge of what I do in practice. It was only through a training day that I truly learned just how prestigious the Borthwick is in the field of archives, so I knew that I needed to make the most of my time here!

W is for Wills: The Borthwick holds more than 750,000 probate records, dating from the 14th century to 1858. As the trainee, the 14 aisles containing wills are my domain. At times I love these records; at others I strongly despise them (when I just can't seem to find the one I need). Most people will use Find My Past to request copies of probate documents, but I’ve also learned to appreciate the ease of having full searchroom indices (or is it indexes?) of all probate records. When someone has paid for a copying order, it’s my responsibility to find the will or administration they have requested, digitise it and email/post it out. This does require a lot of time but I quickly got into a rhythm of knowing when I enjoy doing each stage of the process (and being aware of any problems in conservation which might cause a backlog). 

This is how the wills look before they visit our conservators

X is for X marks the spot: By which I mean “treasures”. Every archive has its treasures - those records that get wheeled out time and time again to wow visitors. A 12th century manuscript fragment, a medieval Archbishop’s Register, the baptism register entry for Guy Fawkes, the will of Charlotte Brontë, papers relating to meetings between Lord Halifax (the British Foreign Secretary) and Adolf Hitler, the list goes on. I’ve seen these treasures (and got them out of the strongrooms) several times, yet the wonder never quite fades.

Y is for Yorkshire: The best part of England. Fortunately, I spent my years as a student here in York, so I already had a great appreciation for this wonderful city and the area in which it is found. But through my time at the Borthwick, I have learned so much to make me love it even more. I’ve become more familiar than I ever anticipated with the names of the old deaneries within the Diocese of York, until I could rhyme them off alphabetically: Ainsty, Buckrose, Bulmer, Cleveland… On more than one occasion, when out in the Yorkshire countryside, I would suddenly recognise the name of a small hamlet I was driving through. But why? I racked my brains and then realised that just last week I had located the will of someone who lived there in the 18th century.

Z is for Zest of Lemon: Apologies for the slightly tenuous link here, but as any archivist will tell you, cake is important. Just take a look at #archivecake on Twitter. In my experience, bringing cake/biscuits means your colleagues will love you forever (well, for the rest of the day at least). So - apologies, another tenuous link ahead - I’m going to end my A-Z on a truly soppy note about the wonderful people who work at the Borthwick. They’ve put up with me for more than a year, so they must be pretty amazing and it’s thanks to them that I’ve enjoyed my time as a member of staff at the Borthwick so much!

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