A Year in the Life of a Borthwick Trainee

In July 2017, I became the latest in a long line of Borthwick Institute Trainees when I accepted the position over the phone while wedged between the skips out the back of York Waterstones (it was the quietest place I could find on Coney Street!). Despite this inauspicious start, I quickly fell in love with my new job. The Borthwick staff kept me busy with a wide variety of tasks and projects. All ofthem were quite happy to share their knowledge about their own personal area of expertise, and the Archive Assistants in particular happily endured my endless barrage of questions. A year on, I have finished my traineeship, and would like to share with you six items from the Borthwick archives that I think sum up my role over the last year.

Number one: Will of Jane Staple

Naturally, a key part of being a trainee is receiving training. Palaeography, the art of reading old handwriting, was one of the hardest and yet most rewarding things I learned at the Borthwick. In my first lesson, I was asked to read the will of Jane Staple. I sent a photo of it to a friend with the caption “It’s completely illegible!” She replied that actually this was quite a nice document and they’d get harder. Not exactly encouraging! But a year on, this document is no longer illegible; and she was right: they do get much, much harder!

Number two: Will of Lancelot Thorpe

The Borthwick have somewhere between 750,000 and 1,000,000 wills (depending on who you ask). One of my jobs was to make copies of wills for researchers. This was a simple, yet time-consuming task, not helped by the fact that I would regularly get distracted by the contents of the wills themselves. The will of Lancelot Thorpe particularly caught my attention. The will itself was clearly written by a scribe, and is fairly standard in form and content. However on the back is a letter to Lancelot’s wife written in his own hand, explaining that he has total faith in her to act as his executrix. Lancelot died aboard ship not long after.  

Number three: Parish Magazine from Micklefield

When I was asked to repackage and list a collection of parish magazines, I don’t think anyone realised that there were nearly 6000 of them! Again, I became hopelessly distracted by the contents of the magazines, in particular the serialized stories. This tale was a personal favourite: the story of a young lady who must choose between caring for her mother (‘inept at housework of all kinds’) or pursuing a career as a potter when a young man from London offers her a job. Unfortunately, the next few editions of the magazine have not survived, and come the next surviving issue he is in court accused of a serious crime, and she leaves him after a dramatic scene at a bus stop. The December edition of this story is also missing, but I like to imagine they lived happily ever after.

Number four: A Letter from Lawrence Rowntree to his sister Jean

After the parish magazines I moved on (via a couple of other projects) to listing the letters of Lawrence Rowntree.  Laurie wrote nearly 600 letters to his mother over the course of his life, starting when he was just six years old and ending with his death on the Western Front in 1917 aged just 22.  On the whole these letters were a joy to read, as Laurie’s letters are full of humour. On one occasion, he went to have his hair cut. The barber did not know his last name, and spent the entire hair cut telling Laurie how awful the Rowntree family were. Laurie wrote to his mother that he now had an entirely new view of his grandfather!  In one early letter, Laurie rejoices at the birth of his youngest sister, and asks that she be called Cello. Instead, she was named Jean. Over the next few years, Laurie often comments on how awkward it is writing to Jean, because she is just so little. By January 1917, when this letter was written, the two were clearly very close, and Laurie jokes about his Christmas celebrations and present. 

Number five: Rowntree Black Magic Advert

To end my traineeship, I was given the opportunity to devise my own project. Having been a teacher in a previous life, I decided to use the archives at the Borthwick to create a series of teaching resource packs.  My favourite was about the use of persuasive language (to tie in with the KS3 English syllabus) as shown through Rowntree adverts. I especially love the early Black Magic adverts, because they provide little snippets of a story and leave you to fill in the blanks. Much as with the parish magazines, my imagination ran wild!

Number six: Archie

Archie is a toy squirrel and the Borthwick’s unofficial mascot. Having been asked to help out with the Borthwick social media accounts I thought we could have a bit of fun with him. Often we would have themes or campaigns for our social media streams, such as Archives 30 (in which the Archives and Records Association set a different theme each day) or our collaboration with the English department at the University of York to try and provide dissertation ideas for undergraduate students.  Having come up with ideas for photos I wanted to take for these campaigns, I would take Archie with me and photograph him with any interesting or unusual things I found while in the Strongroom. As such, Archie ended up being photographed with some very unusual items!

As I mentioned at the beginning, this traineeship program has been running for a long time now, and hopefully will run for many more years. While I have now left the Borthwick and returned to university to complete a Masters degree in archival and information studies, the traineeship programme goes on.  So I’d like to end with some quick advice for my successors.  

Firstly, always lift the archive boxes with two hands (trust me on this one).  

Secondly, if you ever have a spare ten minutes, there is endless fun to be found in wandering into the Strongroom, picking a box at random, and seeing what you can find.  It’s the closest you will ever come to finding buried treasure.

And thirdly, the staff at the Borthwick are fabulous. Not only are they incredibly knowledgeable about their collections and generally all things archives, but they are very happy to share this knowledge with you.  Ask as many questions as you want (you won’t annoy them) and learn as much as you can. Don’t waste this fabulous opportunity, because you are incredibly lucky to have it. Good luck! 

Rosie Denton
Archives Trainee 2017-2018

When the guns fell silent: York and the 1918 flu

The signing of the Armistice in November 1918 was a bittersweet time for the people of York. Doubtless, many would have been looking forward to seeing their loved ones again after four years of conflict. Many would have been feeling the bite of the recently introduced rationing. Still more would have been feeling the Armistice all the more keenly when looking at the photographs of those they had loved and lost.

As the crowds mingled in York to mark the moment, any would have been feeling under the weather. Some may have been feeling the first signs of a cold-like virus, with a sore throat and high temperature. Others would have been at home in bed with a full blown fever, delirious, in pain with excruciating muscle cramps. Others would be in the final, terrible stages of influenza, developing a purple tinge to the skin, their breathing becoming ever more shallow, rapid and laboured as they effectively drowned in their own beds. 

The H1N1 virus - erroneously known as Spanish flu - was the final act of a war that had already claimed up to 19 million lives. The virus, most likely a mutation of a swine-borne flu, had manifested itself in military camps in the United States, and crossed the Atlantic with the massive moves of men as the US bolstered its efforts in France. The massing of men in hospitals and camps provided the ideal breeding ground, and the moves of so many men as the war drew to a close provided the ideal medium for transporting the virus all over the world. By the end of 1920, between 50-100 million people would have died from the disease and to to 500 million infected people infected worldwide. 

The reports of York’s Medical Officer of Health (MOH/Y/10) suggest that the 1918 flu hit York very much like anywhere else – in two distinct waves, the first in the summer (approximately 30th June - 27th July 1918), the next in late autumn, 'commencing just before the Armistice', though officially recorded as 12th October 1918-11th January 1919. It was this second wave that was to be the more deadly. 

MOH/Y/10: Medical Officer of Health report for York, 1919

The first signs that the city was taking the outbreak's return in October seriously came with the closing of 12 of the city's schools on the 22nd-23rd October, with a further 11 closed on the 24th-25th. 600 children had been reported as being ill up to the 25th October. On the 30th October, all of the city's schools were closed, at the very least until the 18th November.

By this point it was becoming apparent to the authorities that they were in the midst of a crisis. Unlike the summer wave, which had manifested as 'normal' flu, this iteration was much more virulent and deadly. Health visitors and school nurses were transferred to the job of supporting doctors in visiting cases at home. Here, the danger inherent in medical care was brought into sharp relief with the deaths of two home visitors from flu. 

The Medical Officer of Health 'engaged the services of disengaged midwives and other handy substitutes' to bolster the city's medical provision, with a panel formed to draw up guidance for home nursing. It was in vain. Nine of the city's doctors had reported visiting over 6000 cases between them. The MOH report notes that as a result of the flu outbreak, 'the professional nursing staffs of the city and district were absolutely overwhelmed.'

The city took further measures to try and slow the spread of the infection. It had already been noted that Armistice celebrations had provided the perfect conditions to spread the infection further, with a combination of packed tramcars and crowds jostling in the streets in scenes of spontaneous and civic celebrations. Cinemas were asked to close for an hour in the early evening to subject theatres to free ventilation and disinfectant spray. On the 18th November, the national Local Government Board recommended that all places of public entertainment should not be operate for more three consecutive hours and places should be thoroughly ventilated for a full 30 minutes between performances. By the 22nd November, this was extended to four hours.

By the end of November there were reports of multiple bodies in households, with delays in burying the dead. As a result, soldiers from local barracks had been deployed to aid the authorities in digging graves.

The Medical officer of Health, in typical fashion, reported the bare facts in his end of year report. There had been 1,318 deaths in York during 1918. Of these, 530 occurred between October and December, more than double the rate of the previous year. 226 deaths were attributed to influenza, with a further 166 being listed as being down to flu's common complication, pneumonia. It was noted that it was difficult to distinguish between the two, mainly as those who died in hospital were classed as dying of pneumonia as opposed to flu.

MOH/Y/10: Medical Officer of Health report for York, 1919

A defining feature of the 1918 flu was its mortality, disproportionately affecting those who would be classed as in their physical prime. This was reflected in York, with those aged 15-45 faring the worst. The poorest districts in the City were hit particularly hard - presumably due to their cramped living conditions – 89 deaths from influenza and 71 from pneumonia in Walmgate ward, 76 from flu and 59 from pneumonia in Micklegate ward. The outbreak had largely hit 'indoor workers' – those working in factories and offices, for instance. The nature of the workforce by the end of the war meant that the outbreak had hit women almost twice has hard as men.

The majority of people had died at home. Only 58 people had died in local hospitals – 26 in the Workhouse Infirmary, and 25 in the County Hospital. In addition to the city's own dead, 56 soldiers had died of flu at Fulford Barracks, in addition to 19 visitors to the city.

The records of the city's hospitals display, likewise, a struggle to cope with the sudden and extreme pressure they found themselves under. The Fever Hospital at Naburn was quickly emptied of cases to provide extra bed space, but even this was insufficient. York County Hospital reported 80 inpatients over the course of the outbreak, with a mortality rate of 50% for those admitted, 35% of those admitted dying within 48 hours of admission. In addition to patients admitted with flu or pneumonia, 7 patients already in the hospital contracted flu when 6 flu cases were admitted to a ward.

The House Committee minute book (YCH/1/1/3/10) records the situation. On the 12th November, 10 nurses, 2 maids and a porter were reported as being absent with flu. By this point, 16 staff had been infected. The meeting must have been a sombre one, as one nurse – Nurse Harrison – had died that morning. Accommodation was being arranged for those staff who were still recovering from flu but wished to work.

YCH/1/1/3/10, note stating that 10 nurses, 2 maids and 1 porter off duty with influenza, 12th November 1918

Patient records reveal that many of the nursing staff infected were treated in a hastily re-purposed Board Room. Treatments were rudimentary and were recorded as aspirin, brandy and, finally, morphine. Patients whose temperatures stayed below 100 degrees tended to survive; those who found their temperatures going higher than this rarely did.

The Committee 'desired to place on record their high appreciation of the zealous and devoted manner in which all the members of the staff are discharging their duties under the present exceptionally trying conditions’. This is something of an understatement. Later minutes from the hospital's Medical Board (YCH/1/1/6) stated that ‘the hospital was practically closed for two months’ due to shortage of staff, with only ‘extremely urgent’ cases admitted.

By the end of the year, the virus had passed. The 1918 strain of flu was virulent, but short lasting. It left behind in its wake yet more broken families, another swathe through a population in its prime. There is no memorial to the dead of the 1918 flu. Society, as a whole, has chosen to try and forget the deadly autumn and winter of 1918. Perhaps, as the evenings draw in and we look towards the end of the year and all the joys it brings, we should stop for a moment and remember the 400 of York’s community who lost their lives, and the many thousands more who found their lives changed forever - just as the guns stopped firing.

Magical Yorkshire

The magic of Yorkshire's history can sometimes be literal as well as figurative! 

We are all familiar with the idea of wisemen and wisewomen as people involved in occult activity. In Yorkshire, such people seem to have been helpful rather than malicious, although that didn't mean the Church approved. 

V.1567-8/CB1 f. 25v, Borthwick Institute for Archive

In 1567, Robert Garmann was the subject of testimony to the archbishop of York during a visitation, where he was accused of being a wiseman who 'had healed beastes beinge forespoken' (bewitched or charmed). The magic spell he used to break the enchantment was 

God and sancta charytie blysse the beast. 

The belief in forespeaking carried on in Yorkshire into the ninteenth century. Around 1840, a farmer from South Crosland near Huddersfield who was noted as a cow-doctor wrote down instructions for curing a forespoken cow: 

When Cattle is forspoken Catch her waters then get a new Pipkin never been used put the waters therein then Get some Glass shave both horns a little of then Cut some hair from between her horns and Tail end then get 9 Clogg nails 9 pins never used put all together into the pipkin then as near the full Moon as Possable at twelve O Clock at Night make the doors then set the Pipkin with the above in it on a good red fire and sit with it till all be boiled away and no Smook from it then take it off and when Cold scrape all the black in the pot and nails etc on to some paper then put all in as small a parcil as you can turning each end Contrary way and if any body come to the door don’t open nor speak when doing this then in the morning take the parcel and a Gimblet big enough and go to a live Oaktree and bore a hole and put the parcel in and make a peg for it and put it in and drive it up with a hammer and then Get a egg and break the small end and put tarr in when emptied and give it to the Cow next morning keep warm and give Aird water to drink a time or two till well 

Clearly, un-forespeaking an animal was a complicated process!

Other wisewomen are on record as folk healers. During the 1598 vistation, one Widdow Carre of Darfield was reputed to be a wisewoman with skill at curing sickness. And in 1693, at the Quarter Sessions in Silkstone, appeared one William Beever who was supposed to be able to 'finde things that are lost' by the use of 'a booke whiche he calls an alminacke'. 

A wiggen, or rowan tree, Barbondale

Although these people professed benign powers, there was still obviously a fear of magic and bewitchment. The wiggen (the rowan, or mountain ash) was supposed to protect people from evil. In 1674, a witch's plot was foiled because 'they tye soe much whighen about him, I cannot come to my purpose'. It was even a cure against sickness: in 1782, an Ecclesfield man's diary records an attack of ague from which he recovered after six days 'Under Bark of Wiggin'. 

We can even track the suspicion of the occult into people's names. The surname Pricker was evidently occupational but its meaning is uncertain. In some contexts a pricker was a huntsman and in others a witch-finder. One by-name which may derive from witch-finder is Helya Prickescin, who lived around Fountains Abbey 1168-1194.


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Edit 25/01/18 The Yorkshire Historical Dictionary is now available online at yorkshiredictionary.york.ac.uk 

Howzat?: Cricket and the Yorkshire Historic Dictionary

A guest post by Dr George Redmonds, author of the Yorkshire Historic Dictionary 

Stool-ball, 1767, from A Little Pretty Pocket-book

The game of cricket is traditionally difficult to explain, especially to foreigners, but the history of the word itself also poses problems. Even the Oxford English Dictionary has no answer, placing the words ‘Etymology uncertain’ after the entry. The first recorded reference to ‘cricket’ as a game is in the Borough Records of Guildford in 1598 – in Surrey therefore! In that year a man called John Denwick testified that he had known a certain parcell of land ... for the space of Fyfty years and more, a fact secured in his memory because hee and several of his fellowes did runne and play there at Creckett. We can presume from this that cricket was being played at the end of the reign of Henry VIII, but unfortunately it makes no contribution to our understanding of the word.

A cricket stool

Several possible interpretations are commented on in the OED including one theory that links cricket with stool-ball, a game played especially by young women, to which there are references from before 1473. That game is still played in Sussex, where it is thought to have originated, and the relevant point for cricketers is that two stools were formerly the wickets. The fact that a low wooden stool was once called a ‘cricket’ persuaded some historians of the game that this was a vital link in the word’s meaning. The OED view on that theory is that any connection ‘is very doubtful’ since ‘cricket’ in the sense of stool ‘is itself not in evidence till a later date’, not until just before 1643. 

Excerpt from the inventory of George Brough, Selby, 1673,
Selby Peculiar probate

Evidence in a Yorkshire will now removes that particular objection to such a link. In 1559, when Ninian Staveley of Ripon Park died, an inventory was made of his goods, and In the Greate Chambre were 2 old chaires valued at 12s and one litill crekett stole, worth 4s. Similarly, a Selby blacksmith was in possession in 1656 of 1 letle clap table & a crekit stole. It was not invariably a compound term. In 1673, a tanner called George Brough, also from Selby, owned 2 crecketts and 5 greene chares. Of course this does not finally solve how ‘cricket’ came to be the name of the game but it certainly renews the debate about its connection with stool-ball and the south-east of England.  

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The Life and Letters of Queen Emma of Hawaii

In the autumn of 1865, Powderham Castle in Devon received an unusual and distinguished guest. Queen Emma of Hawaii was touring England attempting to garner financial donations and support for Hawaii’s first Anglican Cathedral when she stopped for a few days at the home of the Earl of Devon. There she met his daughter, the twenty-seven year old Lady Agnes Elizabeth Courtenay. The two women became fast friends, and for the rest of Emma’s visit the two maintained a regular correspondence. These letters were clearly treasured by Agnes, as she took them with her when she married Charles Wood Viscount Halifax in 1869, and thus they eventually found their way into our collection.

Emma Kalanikaumakaamano Nae’a Rooke was born in 1836, two years before Agnes Courtenay, in Honolulu. Her parents were both High Chiefs directly descended from royalty, and her ancestors included Hawaii's first king, Kamehameha the Great. She was adopted and raised by her aunt and uncle, Grace and Thomas Rooke. Grace was also a High Cheifess, but her father had been a British-born military advisor to the crown, while Thomas was a British doctor who had moved to Hawaii in adulthood. As such, Emma was raised in both Hawaiian and English traditions and spoke both languages fluently.

Emma was sent to the Royal School, previously called the Chiefs’ Children’s School, in Honolulu to finish her education. Interestingly, as Hawaii had an elected monarchy, it was not always certain who the next monarchy would be so this school aimed to give each of the possible candidates received an equal education. While studying at the Royal School, Emma fell in love with Alexander Liholiho. He became King Kamehameha IV in 1855, and married Emma in June of the following year. They had one son together, Prince Albert Edward, who sadly died at the age of four in 1862 of a ‘brain fever’.

Inspired by Emma’s adoptive father, Emma and Alexander dedicated much of their reign to providing their subjects with accessible and affordable healthcare. After deciding they wished to establish a hospital in Honolulu, the king and queen travelled door-to-door throughout the islands asking for donations. As a result, the Queen’s Medical Centre was opened in 1860. The couple were also devout Christians, and in 1860 they appealed to the Church of England for permission to establish the Church of Hawaii. Permission was granted, and Emma and Alexander were baptised by Anglican vicars in 1862. The king and queen then decided to fund-raise to build a cathedral dedicated to St Andrew, as well as a connected school for girls. This was a particular passion of Emma’s, as she had noticed that, outside of the Royal School, girls were rarely educated to the same standards as boys and she wished to rectify this. However, a spanner was thrown in the works when Alexander died suddenly in 1863. Emma spent the next couple of years in mourning, but eventually decided to persevere with the project by travelling to England in 1865 to garner support and financial aid for the cathedral and school.

It’s unclear when precisely Emma stayed at Powderham Castle, but the letters she wrote to Agnes are dated between November 1865 and January 1866. Emma clearly received a warm welcome at Powderham. She wrote early on: “I appreciate deeply the affection and love extended towards me by yourself and your family, and feel that God has indeed given me true, earnest friends in Lord Devon and yourself.” Agnes later wrote to invite Emma to stay with her family over the Christmas period. Emma could not stay with them, but thanked her greatly for the invite, writing: “if you have ever experienced the warmth of true friendship extended to you a stranger in a foreign land? You will then have felt my appreciation of such affection as has been shewen [sic] to me”.

Much of the correspondence between Emma and Agnes was written while Emma was the personal guest of Queen Victoria, and as such Victoria is mentioned frequently in the letters and even had Agnes’s letters read out to her. Victoria had been godmother to Emma’s son, yet the two women had never met before Emma’s visit. Victoria recorded her first meeting with Emma in her diary, where she wrote: “nothing could be nicer or more dignified than her manner.” Agnes had recommended a maid to Emma, who passed the suggestion on to Victoria. One of the letters to Agnes deals entirely with this matter. Emma tells Agnes exactly what Victoria is looking for in a maid, ending with: “She is anxious to have a clever person that can do anything & every thing [sic] without much saying.” Not asking much then!

However, what comes through most in these letters is Emma’s dislike of the English weather. In a letter of November 11^th 1865, she writes: “we have not yet seen the Fog. But it [the weather] looks black, cloudy, and smoky, and very cold…I am convinced that the sooner we go out of England the better.” Just two weeks later, Emma wrote again. She had picked up her husband’s habit of travelling by night so as to have more daylight hours to work. She notes that this is perfectly possible in Hawaii, but in England it often leads to one getting rather wet and cold. She had developed a nasty cough as a result. This was why she was unable to spend Christmas with the Courtenay family; her doctor had ordered her to retire to warmer climes to recover. Instead she spent Christmas in the south of France. Emma seems to have enjoyed the south of France. She wrote that it was much more similar to the countryside of her homeland, and that she had “not been troubled by that noisy cough which I had in England.” Much of her letter focuses on the people she met while in France. She was especially excited to meet a descendant of “one of my favourite Poets,” Sir Walter Scott, whom she found to be perfectly charming.

After her return to Hawaii, Emma continued to live a remarkable life. After the king died in 1874, she ran in the election to become the next ruling monarch. Despite her hatred of the English weather, she remained staunchly pro-British during the run up to the election, while her opponent was pro-American. She lost the election in the Legislative Assembly, but such was the level of public support for Emma that a riot ensued now known as the Honolulu Court House Riot. After this event, Emma retired from public life, although a seat was always left empty for her at state occasions in case she changed her mind.

Interestingly, this collection does contain one further letter from Emma. In 1880, a Mr and Mrs Mills were on a journey that took them through Hawaii. They were friends with the Earl of Devon, and, remembering his daughter’s friendship with Emma, he sent them with a letter of introduction. Emma sent a letter back with a missionary returning to England in which she recalls happy times in England, and relates her joy at hearing news of her old friend. She writes that she heard Agnes and Charles “have a family of your own” and requests “do send me photos of yourselves and children.” She relates little of her own news, but does write that the man carrying the letter for her “has been fortunate enough to witness an eruption of our volcano” and recommends that Agnes ask him about the experience!

In spite of her illness, Emma’s fundraising trip to England was a success. She raised £16,000. Building work started on the Cathedral of St Andrew in 1867 and St Andrew’s Priory School was opened on Ascension Day of the same year. Both are still in operation today, and the cathedral is the home of the Bishop of Hawaii. Emma died in 1885 at the age of forty-nine, while Agnes Wood died in 1919 at the ripe old age of eighty-one.

By Clog and Shoe

 With all the excitement surrounding the imminent Royal Wedding, I thought it would be interesting to look at an older and less formal kind of marriage.

Black leather clogs

We are all familiar with clogs, the traditional northern wooden shoe, strengthened with iron or brass at the heels and edges. Perhaps less familiar is its use in an enigmatic entry in the Haworth parish register for 1733, which gives a list of ‘marriages at Bradford and by clog and shoe in Lancashire’.

This entry has been the subject of much conjecture over the intervening years. The 1867 Notes and Queries correspondent Llallawg asked about the meaning of the entry, noting that ‘in some parts of the West Riding it is customary to throw old shoes and old slippers after the newly married pair when starting on their wedding tour.’ They further mentioned an ancient custom of the forest of Skipton, which is near to Haworth, where in the reign of Edward II ‘every bride coming that way should either give her left shoe or 3s 4d to the forester of Crookryse, by way of custom of gaytcloys’ (here gate will be in the dialectal usage meaning ‘journey’).

I don’t know if they received any responses, but later The Derbyshire Times of 1894 carried a similar query, noting that at a time when legal marriage did not require a priest of religious ceremony (Hardwicke’s Marriage Act was still twenty years away) many people married clandestinely or by unusual methods (similar to 'jumping the broom' which was still referred to as a folk practice when I was growing up). Two solutions were then offered to the ‘clog and shoe’ conundrum. One suggestion was that a pub called the ‘Clog and Shoe’ in the Bradford area might have been operating as ‘marriage shop’. Apparently, taverns were often popular locations for clandestine marriages. This idea was supported by a (poorly cited, so I can’t track down the original) reference to ‘a book at Elwick, Durham’, which suggested that marriages were celebrated ‘by’ the clog and shoe, ‘with’ the clog and shoe and ‘at’ the Clog and Shoe, the constructions seeming to suggest a place such as a tavern.

Frontispiece and Title page from Richard Braithwaite, A Boulster Lecture, London 1640

An alternative was the custom of marrying by exchanging a man’s clog for a woman’s shoe in front of witnesses. A further illustration from Braithwaite’s A Boulster Lecture (1640) emphasizes the potential symbolism of some of these traditions:

When at any time a couple were married, the sole of the bridegroom’s shoe was to be laid upon the bride’s head, implying with what subjugation she should serve her husband.

Dr George Redmonds, the author of the Yorkshire Historic Dictionary, offers a less romantic explanation: it might simply have meant that the couple had walked over into Lancashire to get married. Haworth was, after all, right on the county boundary.

Allegations from CP.I.1110
Isaac Smith c. Benjamin Kennet, 1739

This more prosaic definition has some help from our archival records. In the 1730s, the minister to the Howarth curacy, Rev. Isaac Smith and the vicar of Bradford (its mother parish) Rev. Benjamin Kennet, engaged in a protracted dispute through the church courts around the issue of irregular marriages. Rev. Kennet was accused of conducting improper marriages, by marrying a couple without the publication of banns and out of ceremonial hours (after 12 noon on a Sunday), and by receiving additional payments for doing so. The couple in question, John Arthington and Ann Swaine, had been forbidden permission to marry by her father. When the case was brought several years later, Kennet attempted to clear his name by producing a witness, Lucy Brigg, who swore that she remembered the banns being read at Bradford church sometime in the June, July or August before the wedding but unfortunately it was shown that at the time she was confined to a room for lunacy. I don’t know what punishment, if any, was meted out to Kennet but he didn’t lose his position as he continued as vicar to Bradford until his death in 1752 (outliving Smith, I’m sure to his great satisfaction, by ten years).

The papers for the numerous back-and-forths in the church courts between Smith and Kennet (which include the memorable occasion when Smith hired the Bradford town crier to tell Kennet’s parishioners what he thought of him) are freely available online under the references CP.I.1739; CP.I.1099; CP.I.1100; CP.I.1101; CP.I.1102; CP.I.1103; CP.I.1104.

It’s interesting that we have a verifiable recorded case of improper marriage at exactly the same date as the ‘clog and shoe’ marriages. The situation in Haworth perfectly illustrates the motivation behind Hardwicke’s Act for the Better Prevention of Clandestine Marriage in 1754, to tighten up the legal definition of a marriage service once and for all.

Can you help us to tighten up our definition of clog? Do you know what marriage ‘by clog and shoe’ means? I’d love to hear from you!

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Edit 25/01/2019 The Yorkshire Historical Dictionary is now available online at yorkshiredictionary.york.ac.uk

Introducing our new and improved online catalogue!

If you’re a regular visitor to our online catalogue Borthcat (and if you aren’t I recommend checking it out!) you may have noticed a few changes lately.  This is because we’ve made the upgrade to AtoM 2.4, the latest release from Artefactual systems who develop AtoM, or Access to Memory, the archives management system we use here at the Borthwick.  

We first launched Borthcat in April 2016 with 376 top level descriptions of our archival collections and 578 authority records (histories of the individuals, families or organisations which created or featured in them).  Since then Borthcat has grown enormously, reaching users in 136 different countries.  As of April 2018 it boasts 563 top level descriptions and over one thousand related authority records.  A significant number of these archives now also have full catalogues available online, including the Borthwick’s Yorkshire hospital archives, the archive of the Earls of Halifax, and the archives of the Rowntree Company and Vickers scientific instrument makers.

We are always looking to improve Borthcat and make it more accessible and intuitive for our users.  We created a special guide for those users looking for wills or other probate documents that can be accessed whenever someone clicks in the search box.  We also backed up our detailed help page with a page of frequently asked questions and a glossary of terms to help users better understand the way the catalogue works.

The new AtoM release adds yet more improvements that we hope will fill in some of the gaps on Borthcat and introduce new ways of navigating the ever growing mass of information it holds.

So what’s new about AtoM 2.4 and why should you care?

You can search by date

 You might be surprised to learn this wasn’t previously a feature of Borthcat.  When most of the archival descriptions were ‘top level’ or fonds level descriptions this was not such an issue, but now Borthcat has so many full catalogues the ability to filter your search results by date or to sort search results by start or end dates will be incredibly useful.  Are you looking for patient records at The Retreat hospital but only for the 1860s? Just open the advanced search, search for ‘patient records’ in ‘The Retreat Archive’ and fill in the ‘filter by date range’ fields with the earliest and latest date of your search.

Equally you could open The Retreat Archive, select ‘Browse as list’ from the ‘Explore’ menu to the right and order your results in order of the start or end dates.  

Or perhaps you just want to know what our earliest dated archival collection is (the Takamiya Fragments Collection dating from 900 AD) or our most recent (too many to list! We are constantly adding to existing archives).

One of our Takimaya Fragments

You can keep track of the records you’re interested in

Another new feature that we think will be very popular with both users and staff is the clipboard function, as represented by the paperclip seen here on the top right of the page.

As you look through archival descriptions or authority records on Borthcat you will see the paperclip symbol on every entry when you browse archival descriptions as a list (with the text ‘Add to clipboard’ appearing when you hover over it with your mouse) or the option to ‘add’ to the right of an entry after you open it.  

Clicking on it automatically adds the record to your clipboard which can then be opened using the button at the top of the page.  This works for any authority record and any archival description (at any level of description from fonds down to item) and it means you can create a list of the records you are interested in as you browse, saving yourself the job of writing them out!  Moreover, once you’ve created your list in clipboard you can use the ‘print preview’ button to save the list as an image which can be kept for your own research or emailed directly to us if you’d like to preorder some records before you visit.

Tip:  If you’re saving both archival descriptions and authority records to your clipboard be aware these will display as two separate lists and that you will have to toggle between the two using the ‘Entity type’ drop down menu.

You can see the whole archive structure at once

The clipboard button isn’t the only change you’ll see when you open an archive catalogue on Borthcat.  Whereas before the full hierarchical arrangement of a catalogue was displayed to the left in a small sidebar, now it can be clearly seen at the top of the page.  

If you’ve had experience of navigating a catalogue through the sidebar the advantages to this new page-width display will be obvious.  You can now see the whole of the catalogue structure at once, without long titles being truncated by limitations of space. You can also expand each level to its fullest without concealing the rest of the archive.  You can also expand the display window to take up the full page should you wish!

We can upload or generate finding aids for you more easily

Finally the upgrade to AtoM 2.4 means we have new ways to share finding aids with our users.  We can now generate them from full catalogues already available on Borthcat - or we can upload our paper finding aids for archives that currently have only a top level archival description online.  The latter replaces a rather cumbersome system of linking across to paper finding aids that we’d uploaded to a hidden page on our website, a workaround we used to great success with our parish record collection but which was far from ideal as a long term solution.  

Now users will be able to download full catalogues to browse offline, to share, print out and annotate as needed - just look for the ‘download’ button on the right of the entry!  

To begin with we will only be uploading the finding aids that were already available as linked documents, but going forward we will be generating new finding aids from complete online catalogues and using our Twitter and Facebook accounts to let people know when these become available.

Looking to the future

AtoM 2.4 brings a number of useful new features to Borthcat but this first upgrade is only the beginning.  AtoM is under constant development, both by Artefactual and by its global user community, and future releases promise yet more innovations alongside improvements to its existing functions.  We would welcome your feedback on Borthcat, the new features, or even features you would like to see in the future - you can let us know what you think here. In the meantime we will continue to add new catalogues, new authority records, and new finding aids - so be sure to keep an eye on our ‘newest additions’ list!

Now you’ve heard about all of the new features, why not try them out for yourselves?