Clement Attlee's ‘Indian Books’

In the first of two posts to mark the 70th anniversary of Indian Independence, Alex Jubb explains how his internship led to him learning about the Library's collection of books once owned by Clement Attlee.

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This will be the first of two blogs written about an internship undertaken with the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past (IPUP). The first post will discuss how this internship came about, the first stages of the internship, and the internship's successes. The second post will develop the narrative that I have unearthed whilst progressing through the internship.

The accessories book, available in the Borthwick
Archives, open on just one of the many
pages of Attlee's donations

Every summer, IPUP offer part-time internships 'intended to give graduate History students an
opportunity to develop their skills, experience and CVs in various employment contexts.' I was lucky enough to be offered an internship closely associated with the History Department and the University Library's Special Collections. The University Library holds a vast array of hidden wonders within its collections; many of which are catalogued without copy specific details, leaving these particular books difficult to locate even if an avid historian tries to find them on the University's databases. Clement Attlee, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom immediately following the end of the Second World War, donated many books to the Library in the early 1960s. Attlee was one of the most important figures in orchestrating the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947. As a result of this, in his vast collection of books he had obtained many works on Indian and Pakistani affairs. Attlee donated over 100 of these works to the Library, and I was to play a role in finding these works on the Library's shelves, listing them, and ensuring that they are widely advertised and explored thoroughly by other researchers, not just myself through improved catalogue records, and promotion via social media and exhibitions. This was primarily because this year marks the 70th anniversary of the Indian Independence Act, and is fresh on the minds of many eminent scholars and historians.

It is only known that these works originally belonged to Attlee through the exploration of the University's 'Accessions Book'; a book detailing all of the books, articles and other items donated to the Library over a two year period between 1961 and 1963. I spent a day working with this book in the Borthwick Reading Room, transferring the data from the book onto an electronic spreadsheet. It soon became obvious that there was minimal detail on the accessions book, and from a quick search of several of the books using 'Yorsearch', the University of York's online catalogue,  it soon became evident that these details were also missing from the online catalogue. Publishers were missing, first names of many authors were missing, and the title of the book and date of publication were often incomplete. To the outside world, and to most within the University itself, there was no indication that these were donated by Attlee. Only the accessions book had this crucial information. This lack of information was initially quite worrying, but a day spent collating all of the relevant works from the accessions book allowed me to 'fill in the gaps'. This was a long and arduous process, but one that will be of use to future researchers of Attlee and the independence stories of India and Pakistan. Many of these works have authorial inscriptions to Attlee, Attlee's family crest and bookplate, and other notations made by Attlee himself. These works are not known to scholars and biographers of Attlee, and by sharing the database of these works that I have now created it is hoped that this information will soon be out in the public domain via the online catalogue.

The accessories book, held in the Borthwick Archives, showing Attlee's donations.

This new research into Attlee's donations will also lend itself to the creation of an exhibition within the University Library. This exhibition will showcase several of the books that have been researched, and will be the first step to bringing Attlee's relationship with the University to life.

Clement Attlee with his instantly
recognisable smoking pipe

Being given the chance to work alongside both Sarah Griffin, the Rare Books and York Minster Librarian, and Mark Jenner, one of the University's Research Champions and also a Reader in Early Modern History, has certainly been something that I have really appreciated. The works that I have looked at within this internship were initially unknown to me, but I now have a much clearer understanding of the immense wealth of material that the University has within its collection. A simple use of the Library catalogue might highlight the location of a particular book but, at present, it is not always possible to tell via this method just how important an individual the book belonged to. This opportunity has been something that I have relished; it has provided me with inspiration for future avenues of research, and invaluable experience of working within the Special Collections Department of an academic institution. Not only will this be of great use in future when I am searching for jobs and deciding which career path to follow, but has provided me with a newfound set of skills; I am now confident in working on a project where the narrative has not been created and is not necessarily easy to come across. The second part of this blog will discuss the 'narrative' and story of Attlee's donations to the University, particularly focusing on his relationship with India and Pakistan. This relationship can be told through the information within the accessions book and Attlee's donated works, and the story is an interesting one indeed.

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Photo of Clement Attlee used under a Creative Commons licence from Wikimedia Commons. All other photos taken by Alex Jubb.

Philip Larkin’s connections to the City of Culture

Kyra Piperides, a PhD student in the Department of English and Related Literature, looks at Larkin’s connections to Hull including the recent preservation of his flat in the city by Historic England.

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Some of Larkin's poetry set up in a printing press.
(Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

As a researcher studying Philip Larkin’s poetry, I am frequently confronted with the comment: “I remember his poem about… you know… what your parents do to you!” In 2015 Professor Edwin Dawes, chair of the Philip Larkin Society, remarked that “[Larkin’s] words are quoted more frequently than those of any of his poetic contemporaries”. While the often allusively rephrased first lines of This Be The Verse roll so easily off the tongues of so many, it is the closing line of An Arundel Tomb that demonstrates the poet’s continuing relevance. A quick Twitter and Instagram search shows that #WhatWillSurviveOfUsIsLove has become associated with such diverse topics as LGBT+ rights, war and random acts of kindness. It is easy to see why Larkin became known as the country’s unofficial laureate.

Philip Larkin photographed in the
newly-completed Brynmor Jones
Library, 1969.  Photograph
by Fay Godwin. 

In 2003 Larkin was named favourite poet by the Poetry Book Society and the Poetry Library and in 2008, he topped The Times’ list of greatest British postwar writers. Despite declining the position of Poet Laureate shortly before his death, Larkin was finally memorialised in Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner in December 2016. Further official recognition has come very recently, with the announcement in July 2017 that Historic England are to preserve the Hull flat in which he lived for eighteen years and wrote much of his poetry, with a Grade II listing.

While it may have taken a little longer for Westminster to officially recognise the poet, Larkin has long been celebrated in Yorkshire. From the windows of the University of Hull’s Larkin Building, you have a perfect view of the Brynmor
Jones Library, the iconic building that the poet-librarian oversaw the development and running of from 1955-1985. In the city immortalised in Here – “Here domes and statues, spires and cranes cluster/ Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded water” – Larkin’s statue greets those arriving by train, his poems engraved below their feet. The Larkin trail guides visitors through significant points in Hull and beyond, and 40 technicolour toads graced the streets to mark 25 years since the poet’s death in 2010.

One of the technicolour toads.

CC-BY 2.0

It was the poet’s poignant words that introduced the promotional video for Hull’s successful campaign for the title of UK City of Culture 2017. The year’s celebrations have provoked all-the-more interest in Larkin, with a biographic exhibition opening in July 2017. Larkin: New Eyes Each Year features an enormous collection of the poet’s possessions, fittingly presented in the Brynmor Jones Library. Shelf after shelf of books are displayed, still in the order that the poet-librarian had them arranged, their breadth of topics highlighting his diverse interests. The words “books are a load of crap” are wittily placed, half-concealed on the shelves, behind his collection. As the complexities of the poet’s character are explored in the exhibition, visitors are given the opportunity to take a seat on a park bench, to immerse themselves in the former librarian’s poetry. Biographical interest and controversy aside, it is ultimately Larkin’s poetry that secured his place in Poet’s Corner and the title of the nation’s favourite poet.

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A statue of Philip Larkin
(Flickr CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The University of York library houses a range of Larkin’s work alongside related critical and The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin (2015), edited by Archie Burnett, contains all of Larkin’s published Larkin, Ideology and Critical Violence: A Case of Wrongful Conviction (2008). Andrew Motion’s Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life (1993) and James Booth’s Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love (2015) are engaging biographies. Audio cassettes of Larkin reading his poems are also available.
poems and a selection of unpublished pieces, complete with a comprehensive commentary. The library’s collection includes several introductions to Larkin and his poetry, as well as a selection of excellent critical works including John Osborne’s
biographical texts.

A number of Larkin’s works are held in the Poetry Society Library collection, shelved at the end of the literature section in the JB Morrell Library. This collection has over 10,000 books available to borrow, concentrating mainly on 20th century poetry in English. The Library’s rare book collection also has the Eliot collection, focusing on 20th century literature with a wide range of different authors. All the material held by the Library can be searched using the catalogue YorSearch.

Larkin: New Eyes Each Year is open until Sunday 1 October 2017, and Hull is only an hour away by train!

William Wilberforce, slavery and Whitby

Matthew Wigzell explores items in our collections that tell us more about slavery, and the journey towards its abolition.

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We have recently undertaken work to make available and promote some of the more unusual items in our collections, and to record the context and stories behind them (for example, our earlier blog post about a Scarborough siege coin).

As part of this process we discovered that we hold an election ticket or medal, issued by William Wilberforce during the 1807 general election. Wilberforce was a sitting MP for Yorkshire, and was one of three candidates seeking two seats. The other candidates were Charles William Fitzwilliam (Viscount Milton), and the other sitting MP, Henry Lascelles. One of the big issues of the time was slavery, with Wilberforce leading the abolitionist movement in Parliament. Lascelles on the other hand, was a slave-owner from an aristocratic family, and had vast wealth based on plantations in the Caribbean.

The Borthwick Institute here at York holds the Lascelles Slavery Archive, a wonderful resource documenting the business interests of the Lascelles family, and shedding light on slavery in the Caribbean and life on the plantations.

William Wilberforce medal

The election itself was highly significant. Yorkshire was the largest constituency in the country and regarded as a highly valuable seat. The candidates spent the vast sum of £250,000 on campaigning, with Lascelles and Milton accounting for most of the expenditure. Such was the scale of the campaign, it was dubbed the "Austerlitz of electioneering", and was the grandest election in the pre-reform era. The University Library has recently acquired a copy of "The Great Yorkshire Election of 1807" by Ellen Gibson Wilson, and you can also see copies of the original poll book in our collection, containing lists of voters and their chosen candidates.

The medal in our collection has a hole in the top, allowing it to be hung around the neck of Wilberforce supporters. Wilberforce was returned with the most votes, with Milton a close second. Just a few months before the election, the slave trade had been outlawed by the Slave Trade Act of 1807, but it wasn't until 1833, and the Slavery Abolition Act, that slavery itself was finally outlawed in British law.

Sidgwick's Best Virginia

We have several other items in our collection with links to the slave trade. This copper plate was used for printed packaging or advertising material, for Sidgwick's best Virginia tobacco (you can see the letters are are reversed so that they appear correctly on the printed copy). Unfortunately we don't have an awful lot of information about Sidgwick's, but they seem to have been a tobacco dealers based on Briggate, Leeds.

The plate probably dates from the 18th century and is evidence of the lucrative trade in tobacco and other goods from British colonies, built on the exploitation of slave labour. By the mid-1800 they were around 300,000 slaves in Virginia working large, labour intensive tobacco plantations, which were the backbone of Virginia's economy. We have a number of books in our collection where you can find out more information about the slave trade in Virginia.

Civilization of Africa lecture

Finally, our collection has evidence of the links between Britain and the United States abolition movements. This handbill advertised a lecture by Elliott Cresson, an American philanthropist and outspoken critic of slavery. Cresson participated in movement which promoted the idea of moving freed slaves to Africa, where he thought they would have a better life than in the US. The handbill shows he travelled to Britain in 1832, trying to find support for the idea. In 1835, he founded a colony in Liberia with around 120 freed slaves. Unfortunately this venture proved unsuccessful, and the colony was attacked and destroyed by local tribesmen.

The handbill is part of a collection printed in Whitby in the 1820s and 1830s, which provides an insight into the public life of the town at the time. All the items are part of the Raymond Burton Yorkshire collection and can be viewed in the Borthwick Institute for Archives.

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All images taken by Paul Shields. Copyright is University of York

The discovery of a Scarborough siege coin

Ilka Heale, Metadata Specialist, explores the history of siege coins after discovering one from Scarborough in the Raymond Burton Yorkshire collection.

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Through my job at the University of York Library, I get to see and catalogue some rare and interesting items in our varied collections.

Coins. Photograph by Albert from Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Recently, I came across a small metal item in the Raymond Burton Yorkshire collection.  With it, there was a handwritten note ‘Scarborough Siege, 1645’ but no further information.  This thin, square shaped piece of metal measuring at 28mm by 25mm was also engraved.

Using this as a starting point, I turned to your old friend and mine, Google* and found more information on an auction website.  From looking at examples on the site and by doing some research, I began to see that what we had might be a siege coin from Scarborough possibly dating from the English Civil War.

Siege or obsidional coins were made by besieged towns during the war in order to pay the troops.  As there was no proper minting equipment available, these coins were made from irregular pieces of

The coin is stamped on one side with a rough representation
of Scarborough Castle. Photograph by Paul Shields.

metal cut from trenchers, plates or cups.  The values, which were punched into the coins, depended on the weight of the piece of metal.

Between 1642 and 1646 England was divided by civil war.  On one side were the supporters of King Charles I (Royalists) and on the other were the supporters for the rights and privileges of Parliament (Parliamentarians).  During the English Civil War, the country was split into a broadly Royalist north and west with the south and east in the Parliamentarian camp. Both sides gained and lost towns during battles and by changing loyalties.

Scarborough was one of the towns that changed hands. In September 1642, Sir Hugh Cholmley, was commissioned to hold Scarborough for Parliament, but he was soon persuaded to change sides. For the next two years Scarborough served as an important Royalist base. In 1645 Parliamentarian forces closed in on Scarborough.  After three weeks Cholmley was forced to retreat from the town to the castle, where for five months he resisted one of the bloodiest sieges of the civil war. The bombardment was so intense that the massive walls of the great tower and half the building collapsed. Eventually Cholmley ran out of gunpowder, water and food and finally surrendered on 25 July 1645.

Scarborough Castle painted by John Constable, 1832.
(http://www.artnet.com/artists/john-constable/scarborou
gh-castle-UZZKji0aMz8nz-sCAc4wYQ2)

retreat from the town to the castle, where for five months he resisted one of the

There is an inscription on the reverse of the coin, ‘OBS Scarborough 1645’. Whilst researching the coin, I found this reference in The obsidional money of the Great Rebellion by Phillip Nelson. In it, Nelson wrote the following about the Scarborough siege coins…..

The reverse of these coins is blank, save for the few specimens which bear engraved upon them the words OBS Scarborough 1645 which engraving, however, may possibly not be contemporary with the siege, but may have been added subsequently, as a memorial, about the date of the Restoration.

Reverse of coin showing an inscription. Photograph by
Paul Shields.

The University Library Special Collections have many items from the civil war. Sarah Griffin, the Rare Books Librarian has written about some of these items in this blog post.

All items in Special Collections are on YorSearch, our Library catalogue where you can view images of the Scarborough siege coin. To arrange to view items in our Special Collections, please contact the Borthwick Institute.

* Please note that other search engines are available!

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References

• For books on the history of coins see the Library shelves at LG 7.4.
• The obsidional money of the Great Rebellion, 1642-1649 by Philip Nelson.  Morrell LG 7.4942 NEL.  The above quote is on page 18.
• A little barrel of ducatoons : the civil war coinage of Yorkshire by Craig Barclay and Edward Besly. Morrell LG 7.494274 BAR.
• The story of British coinage by Peter Seaby. Morrell LG 7.4942 SEA.
• You can read the account of the siege of Scarborough written by Cholmley himself in The English Historical Review (volume 32, number 128 (Oct. 1917), pp. 568-587).   The article Sir Hugh Cholmley’s narrative of the siege of Scarborough, 1644-5 by C. H. Firth is available as an e-journal via the e-resources guide or search for the journal in YorSearch.
• The Raymond Burton Yorkshire collection was donated to the University Library and Archives by Dr Burton.  His collection of books and ephemera on Yorkshire range from Edwards of Halifax bindings with fore-edge paintings to early writings about Dick Turpin.  Search for further items in the collection in YorSearch.
• Dr Burton also donated his collection of historical records on Yorkshire to the Borthwick Institute which can be viewed via Borthcat, the Borthwick catalogue.

Smoking bananas and fake news

Sue Elphinstone, Collection Development Manager in the Library, investigates early fake news articles from the 1960s underground press. This information and more is available in the new Independent Voices database.

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"Fake News Figure", 2017. Cropped from a
Library of Congress illustration from the
magazine Puck, by Stuart Rankin.
(CC BY-NC 2.0)

Underground newspapers are a rich source of information, and fake news is nothing new. “One of the most entertaining rumors to which underground papers contributed was 'The Great Banana Hoax of 1967'", as described by historian John McMillan (McMillian, John Campbell. Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America, Oxford University Press, 2011.)

In the Spring of 1967, publishers of underground papers printed a recipe for smoking banana peels.
The belief was that smoking it produced a similar experience to that of smoking marijuana. The recipe involved freezing the peels, blending them into a pulp, baking the residue at 200 degrees, and then smoking it in a cigarette or pipe.

We know about this because the Berkeley Barb is one of the many underground newspapers newly available online through Independent Voices - read the banana hoax article (The Berkeley Barb, March 17, 1967, pg 3) or the blog that this information is contained in.

"Andy Warhol's Bananas", 2014.
Photograph by Mark Seton. (CC BY-NC 2.0)

The periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.

Independent Voices is still a work in progress, but currently represents the largest digital collection of alternative press periodicals, with over 1,000 titles and 750,000 pages. It is made available as part of an innovative library crowdfunding model. Content is hosted on the Reveal Digital platform. The University of York has pledged and in the UK half of the amount pledged will go towards the digitisation of UK alternative press content for future inclusion in Independent Voices. Full access to Independent Voices is available exclusively to funding libraries until December 2018. The collection will then become entirely open access from January 2019.

Users may register for an account that will allow them to save links to images and save searches. The link to sign up for an account may be found at the top of the Independent Voices home page. Further information about Independent Voices is also available via your academic liaison librarian.