Category Archives: Uncategorized

Fiftieth anniversary of the students’ Senate House sit-in

5 December 2018 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the start of a sit-in by a group of University of Bristol students, who occupied Senate House for eleven days, until 16 December 1968. The students were campaigning for a greater say in the running of the University and for the University of Bristol Student Union to be open to students from other education establishments in the city.

Whilst the sit-in took place, other students held a mass meeting in the Anson Rooms (Students Union) calling for the sit-in to end.

The Union Council asked the 400+ students to leave Senate House and a Joint Staff Student Working Party was set up under Professor Roderick Collar.

Editions of Nonesuch (to be found in Special Collections) dating from December 1968, cover these events as do other printed and archival material.

Tony Byers, a University of Bristol student who photographed many of these events at the time, deposited his archive of photographs (DM2269) in Special Collections. Here we share some of his photographs and press coverage.

Sue Tate and Kevin Whitson gave a talk in May 2018 on the topic for the Bristol Radical History Group.

Related resources:

DM1635: Documents and press coverage of the student unrest of 1968 and the occupation/sit-in of Senate House, including the controversy over reciprocal membership of the Student’s Union. Includes the Complicity statement, copies of the Informal newsletter and Nonesuch, general newspaper articles, ‘conspiratorial’ publications such as ‘Open Conspiracy’, letters, minutes of meetings and statements, 1969-1969. Also, newspaper coverage of student unrest in other Universities.

DM2476, Transcript of a lecture by Gordon Strong about the University of Bristol 1968 sit-in, 16 February 2006.

All photographs are copyrighted to Tony Byers.

Ruth Donaldson’s summer 2018 in Special Collections

Papers relating to Margaret Leach (DM2701).

This summer I spent a wonderful two months as an intern with the Special Collections team, based in the Arts and Social Sciences Library. My main responsibility was supervising the Reading Room. This meant getting to grips with the archive’s vast collection and retrieving documents for readers. I became familiar with some of the archive’s most fascinating collections, from feminist archive posters to the 18^th Century diaries of the Pinney family (DM58). Another of my key responsibilities was to work through Special Collection’s paper catalogues, eventually entering the data into the archive software CALM so that it could be searchable by the public on the Special Collections online catalogue.

John Pinney’s Letter concerning Pero’s health. Pinney Letter Book 14, page 74 (DM58).

Poster in the Feminist Archive South Collection (DM2123).

I was also given the opportunity to catalogue the papers of Margaret Leach (DM2701), which were donated to the archive several years ago and form part of the Long Ashton Research Station collection. Margaret kept a diary for every year of her life, a hugely impressive feat. It was strange and wonderful to trace the life of this woman from the age of 11 – with entries on the hours spent in an air raid shelter during WWI – through to her flourishing scientific career and rich retirement.

Another fascinating part of the collection are the bundles of letters from Margaret’s brother, Thomas Leach, positioned in Nigeria as a military veterinarian, to Margaret and their mother, and Ida. Reading the accounts of holidays, neighbourhood gossip and correspondence of everyday life it is difficult not to feel privileged by the window of access into the life of this close family.

Margaret’s senior role as head of the Domestic Preservation Section of Long Ashton Research Station was the pinnacle of a long and illustrious career. She would frequently travel the UK giving lectures on food preservation to amateur and professional groups. A hugely accomplished person, Margaret is just one example of the many remarkable women whose papers lie in the archives waiting to have their stories told.

One of the things I will take way from my two months as intern was the passion and commitment of the team I was working with. The lengths to which they went to help researchers, as well as their incredible knowledge of the collections, meant that not only did I learn a lot but feel enthused the archive is in the hands of a team dedicated to sharing it with the public.

DM2734 General Election 8 June 2017

The 2017 General Election was held a year ago today. The catalogue of our collection of election addresses, leaflets, campaign literature, manifestos, press coverage, and other related materials is available online at DM2734 and can be accessed via our Webpage at: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/library/special-collections/ or through our Online Archive Catalogue at: http://oac.lib.bris.ac.uk/DServe/

Our Politics collection includes the largest and longest-established collection of election addresses and campaign literature relating to UK Parliamentary elections dating back to the 1890s, with some examples from even earlier. We also hold material from the London County Council and European elections along with campaign literature from other important national plebiscites such as the 1975 and 2016 referendums on membership of the European Union. These collections are used regularly by students, researchers, journalists, political activists, and members of the public.

We would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude for the efforts of all those who responded to our appeal to send in their election leaflets from throughout the country. We would not be able to maintain such an excellent collection without your contributions.

Special Collections and Women

6 February 2018 marks the centenary of legislation which allowed all women over 30 with a property qualification the right to vote. This vote also gave all men over 21 the right to vote. Many argued that this did not go far enough, and it wasn’t until 1928 that men and women could vote on an equal footing.

Special Collections, housed in the Arts and Social Sciences Library, and open to all, has such a wealth of materials relating to the politicisation of women, that we couldn’t miss the opportunity to celebrate this date.

Have a look at this website to see a copy of the 6 February 1918 Representation of the People Act, which is also available in the University of Bristol Library.

And this web page gives more of the story.

Our online archive catalogue is a good start for an explore as to what we hold.

Also, look at the Library book catalogue to discover gems such as:

Lucienne Boyce, The Bristol Suffragettes, Bristol, 2013 [available to borrow from ASSL].

Madge Dresser ed., Women and the city: Bristol 1373-2000, Bristol, 2016 [also available to borrow from ASSL].

University College Bristol was founded in 1876. The College could not award degrees itself, until it became the University of Bristol in 1909, but from the outset women were admitted as students on an equal footing as men.

Staff and students, Chemistry Department, University College Bristol, 1907-08. DM2740.

We have evidence of the activities of female students, academics, and administrative staff including one of the first female Registrars Winifred Shapland; Marian F. Pease (1859-1954) who was one of the first women to enrol in University College Bristol; and early female professors such as Lilian Hawker, Professor of Mycology.

In the 1970s the University Library purchased the Library of the National Liberal Club. This includes a wealth of materials relating to General Elections and by-elections for the Westminster Parliament.

Our 1918 Election Address volume, for the 14 December 1918, includes the leaflets of five female candidates. Most candidates mention female suffrage.

Our election leaflets go up to 2018, so you can trace female candidates from all parties over the years.

Election address/leaflet for Mrs How Martyn, Hendon, Progressive Independent Candidate. General Election, December 1918.

Election address/leaflet for Emily Phipps, Chelsea, Independent Candidate. General Election, December 1918.

We hold the papers of Jane Cobden Unwin (1851-1949), DM851, who stood and was elected with one other woman (Margaret Sandurst) as one of the first female County Councillors in the UK in Bow and Bromley in 1889, as Liberal candidates. Her papers also show her campaigning activities on behalf of the rights of indigenous people.

Poster for a public meeting addressed by Miss Jane Cobden. London County Council Elections, January 1889. DM851.

We hold extensive papers of the Women’s Liberal Federation, DM1193. Here you can follow debates within the Liberal Party concerning the enfranchisement of women, and the founding in 1913, of the Liberal Women’s Suffrage Union, which supported the cause of women’s suffrage within the Liberal Party.

A more recent arrival has been the papers of the Feminist Archive South, DM2123, which covers the women’s movement from c.1969-2000. The Feminist Archive South hits forty this year and has been held in Special Collections for ten years. A series of workshops are taking place this spring. If you want to see how women have campaigned and built on the vote from 1918 this is the place to go. Campaigns on all topics under the sun are covered.

Rights demand poster, 1970s. Feminist Archive South. DM2123.

“We all wish to secure peace.” Dora Russell’s Caravan of Peace, 1958. DM2123 FA/Arch 9.

There is some coverage of the Suffragette Movement in Bristol. In particular of an incident in October 1913, when University of Bristol students, angered after suffragettes had burned down the Coombe Dingle sports pavilion, attacked the Suffragettes’ headquarters on Queens Road, Bristol. This postcard (DM325) shows the aftermath of the activity.

The Bristol headquarters of the WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union), after being wrecked by some 500 undergraduates, Queens Road, Bristol, October 1913. DM325.

Evie Porat’s summer in Special Collections

Evie Porat cataloguing part of the Penguin Archive, July 2017. Photograph by Jamie Carstairs.

This summer I spent a fantastic ten weeks working as an intern with Special Collections, based in the Arts and Social Sciences Library. The main purpose of the internship was to catalogue various series of the Penguin Archive, and put them online to make them more accessible to researchers. However, there were tasks associated with the job, and no two days were the same. Supervising the reading room, helping researchers in finding relevant material and fetching boxes from the archive were all regular duties. I also had the opportunity to assist with and learn more about digitisation, to sort ephemera from the recent General Election, and to help with an exhibition of Special Collections sources on the history of the University, held at Royal Fort House.

As mentioned above, the main project I worked on was cataloguing the Penguin Archive. The Archive includes editorial files for books published from 1935 to the early 1990s. I worked on cataloguing several series: the Penguin African Library, Penguin Classics, the Penguin English Library, Penguin Poetry and Penguin Specials. The extents of these series vary greatly: for example, the English Library comprises only 7 boxes, whereas Penguin Poetry consists of 55 boxes.

The Penguin Book of French Verse Cataloguing these files required a great deal of concentration and attention to detail, maintained over long periods. There were other challenges, too: getting to grips with the house style, working out how to list files that didn’t follow the usual format and learning how to use the cataloguing software, CALM.

Hiroshima by John Hersey

A key lesson I learnt during the internship was of the necessity of resisting the urge to get drawn into the history detailed in each file. All the series are fascinating, and I could have easily spent hours reading correspondence with some of the Beat poets (DM1107/D78), or poring over Bertrand Russell’s correspondence with John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis (DM1107/S220). By maintaining a level of detachment, however, I managed to catalogue 121 boxes of files during the period of the internship.

As well as being educational, the internship provided me with great practical experience. As a result of my time with Special Collections, I am convinced that a career as an archivist is the right path for me, and I will be applying for a Master’s degree in Archives and Records Management.

Homer The Odyssey One of the things that made my time with Special Collections so worthwhile was all the help and advice I received from the department’s staff, who were all incredibly generous with their time. I am very grateful for the excellent experience they gave me, and should a similar opportunity be advertised again, I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone who is considering a career as an archivist.

Evie Porat

Open Day Delights

Open days offer a great opportunity for prospective students to find out about many aspects of the University. For Bristol’s open day on 9^th September, Special Collections opened its doors for an exhibition of just some of the delights held in its vast and wide-ranging collections. We welcomed a steady flow of students and parents for much of the day, many of whom were delighted at the opportunity to see some of the rare books and archives held at Bristol.

The materials for display were chosen to give a taste of the diversity and scope of the collections. Many visitors were interested to see a first edition of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), alongside S.H. Grimm’s watercolour of Reading Abbey gatehouse (where Austen once went to school) which is one of a large suite of extra-illustrations in Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum (1817-30).

Another item which received much attention was Cowper’s Anatomy of Humane Bodies (1698), one of the most comprehensive atlases of human anatomy at the time of its publication, known not only for the quality of its text and illustrations, but also for prompting a ferocious intellectual property dispute. There was speculation among visitors about how the large volume was used and whether it provided a reference source at the operating table (no one examining it managed to find evidence of bloodstains, however!)

The earliest item on display was a fragment of music from a gradual of the 12^th century, which had been used as a binding for an early alchemical tract from the abbey of Melk in Austria. It was not uncommon for unwanted manuscripts to be used as binding material for later books in this way, as the vellum or parchment on which they were written provided a useful and sturdy material.

Much more recent in date were notebooks of Bristol physicist Cecil Powell, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1950 for his discovery of the pion subatomic particle. These were displayed alongside other items from the Powell archive and proved a timely exhibit, as the 70th anniversary of the discovery has been celebrated at the University this month.

Other highlights included a miniature library of children’s books; a display from the Penguin books collection; items from the Feminist Archive South relating to Dora Russell’s ‘Women’s Peace Caravan’, which travelled across Europe in 1958; as well as masterpieces of botanical illustration, architecture, geology and map-making.

We hope that the exhibition enriched the day of those who visited it and proved enticing to prospective students.

Thank you for the #GE2017 flyers!

First of all we would like to say thank you to all of you who answered our call to send us election leaflets sent out by some of the c.3000 candidates in the 650 Westminster constituencies from Aldershot to West Dunbartonshire, via Foyle and Ogmore.

We have been delighted with what we have received so far, and are beginning to sort the materials out and catalogue them. Materials have been scooped up from door mats and popped in envelopes, or attached as pdfs on emails. We have appealed by email, local radio, twitter, press coverage and more.

We have collected and read manifestos and leaflets, been engaged by political discussions, voted, stayed up too late watching results, and watched the outcome and formation of the new government. We are sure that you have done the same, and hope that our collection will make it easier for people to see in the future what the main issues were during the June 2017 General Election.

Watch this space for some of the delights we have, and remember if you find an election leaflet for 2017 consider sending it to us rather than popping it in the recycling.

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/library/resources/specialcollections/archives/election/

The catalogue reference for the 8th June 2017 General Election is DM2734.

Our political collections in Special Collections are open to all, so do get in touch.

Special-Collections@Bristol.ac.uk

0117 928 8014

Twitter: @BrisUniSpColl

http://www.bris.ac.uk/library/resources/specialcollections/

Link

General Election 8 June 2017

The University of Bristol Special Collections has an extensive collection of election addresses (over 30,000) relating to British General Elections from 1892 to date. There is also extensive coverage of by-elections. We also hold election addresses for European Elections 1979 to date; and the London County Council elections 1889-1913.

With the General Election having been called for Thursday 8 June 2017, we would like to appeal to people to collect what comes through their doors, and to send it to us at Special Collections.

1955 General Election flyer

Remember:

We collect in all Westminster Constituencies (all 650 of them), and cover all political parties (both big and small).

We would welcome donations from members of the public, political parties, or the parliamentary candidates themselves.

We collect election leaflets/addresses, manifestos, and related publicity.

Please bundle up what comes through your door, and send it to us after the Election, in an envelope with a note of where you received the material, ie. 1 Tyndall Avenue, Bristol, BS8 1TJ.

Our Elections appeal webpage:

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/library/resources/specialcollections/archives/election/

Our online archive catalogue:

http://oac.lib.bris.ac.uk/DServe/

Have a look at DM2676 for our holdings on the 2015 General Election:

http://bit.ly/21D7Yh9

We really appreciate this, and hope that it is of interest. By collecting you help the academic community, politicians, independent researchers, and others in the future see what was really discussed in the 2017 General Election. Thank you.