Some of the Library’s rarest printed items are ephemeral publications, pamphlets, broadsides and single sheet circulars, ranging from the 17th century to the present day. Their survival is unusual, and owes much to the way they have been stored, often bound together into guard books or tract volumes. These bindings keep the contents relatively flat, clean and dry, but present their own problems. A variety of differently sized items bound together, sometimes folded up to fit within the volume, can be vulnerable to dust, damage to protruding pages and tearing at folded edges when they are opened out for use.

One of these tract volumes is – no, was – volume H, a four inch thick binding of 225 mainly late 18th to 19th century items.

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Tract vol. H, uncased. Photograph from the conservator.

The volume was bound in 1951 to accommodate 225 separate publications – reports, posters, newspaper cuttings – of different sizes.  Very large sheets had been slit in two and each leaf pasted to a guard. Some items were directly sewn into the binding, others folded and sewn. With regular use by readers, new folds had been made and new sequences of folds attempted. Unfolding had become like solving a puzzle in an effort to prevent further tears along the weakened folds and crossings. Although the volume had a protective slip-case,  London’s sooty dust could be seen not only on the irregular top edges but drifting down between the individual sheets too.

What kept researchers coming back to this volume was its contents. The spine read: “Tracts H – On slavery. The War Victims &c.”, and these miscellaneous contents included reports of the Friends War Victims Fund on the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/1, reports of the relief work Quakers carried out in Nantes, appeals for funds for child war victims in Eastern Europe (1876), and a tri-lingual poster for the Quaker Relief Fund for Distressed Peasantry.

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War Victims Fund poster. Photograph from the conservator after disbinding and before unfolding and conservation
Ref.: Vol. H/38

Among the slavery related publications were multiple issues of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter of 1844, and surviving circulars from a wide range of anti-slavery organisations – local anti-slavery committees in Nottingham, Bradford, and Settle, the Society of Sierra Leone and the Quaker inspired Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the first such committee.

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The epistle of the Society of Sierra Leone, in Africa : to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ [etc.] (1811)
Ref. Vol. H/75

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East India sugar basins. B Henderson, china-warehouse, Rye-Lane, Peckham. – [London] Printed at the Camberwell Press, by J.B.G. Vogel [ca. 1828]
Ref.: Vol. H/22

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Plymouth Society for the Abolition of Slavery. Plan of an African slave ship’s lower deck
(Plymouth : Trewman and Haydon, printers, [1789?])
Ref.: Vol. H/85

So what has become of Volume H?

Using funds from the BeFriend a Book appeal fund, this tired volume was finally dispatched to a conservator for full dis-binding and repair of the contents. After separation of each component item, the surface dirt was carefully removed, the dog-ears and creases eased away, and the tears and small paper losses made good with Japanese papers and wheat starch paste. Items which had been tipped, or glued together were separated, and the folded items flattened.

The separate items previously bound together are now individually stored in protective transparent sleeves and securely housed in appropriate sized boxes. Researchers can now examine the extraordinary slave ship plan published by the Plymouth Society for the Abolition of Slavery, or the plan of the Spanish schooner Josefa Maracayera, without dread of tearing – cleaned, repaired and far easier to handle.

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Cross section plan of a slave ship
[Plan of] the Spanish schooner, Josefa Maracayera of 90 tons, 21 seamen, belonging to the Havannah, captured by the Driver, Capt. Wolrige, in the Bight of Benin, on the coast of Africa, on the 19th of 8th mo. (Aug.) 1822 with 216 male slaves on board (London : printed under the direction of a Committee of the Society of Friends appointed to aid in promoting the total abolition of the slave-trade, 1822)
Ref.: Vol. H/161

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Clik here to view.Our latest display in the reading room is something of a salmagundi. We decided to pick out a selection of the items donated to the Library’s visual resources collection over the past twelve months, just to demonstrate the wide range of the collection. We chose the title “A little treasure trove for a Monday” to capture the excitement of unpacking a new accession for the first time – often an unexpected delight. You can see the display until Friday 17 May during Library opening hours, but if you can’t make it, here are some highlights.

The visual resources collection (photographs, including a substantial collection of lantern slides, paintings, drawings, prints, posters, costumes and three dimensional artefacts) complements the Library’s printed and manuscript collections for all sorts of Quaker biographical, historical, local, and architectural research, and for research on Quaker work in Britain and overseas. It includes the Society’s own picture archive as well as items acquired by the Library – altogether a total of roughly 40,000 items.

During the past year there have been some wonderful additions to this growing collection. These acquisitions come from a variety of sources but most have direct Quaker connections, whether Friends, ex-staff members or local meetings. Material is sometimes received as a bequest after the owner’s death or from families sorting out a relative’s personal effects.

Ultimately, people donate Quaker material because they want it to be accessible, and looked after properly, in the right environmental conditions, so it is preserved for future generations.

Silhouettes of the Neave family

The Library holds over 120 silhouettes, dating mainly from the first half of the 19th century. These portraits are of individuals in profile – head and shoulders or full body. Silhouettes can be painted or drawn as a solid shape and are usually black in colour. The Library holds several books about Quaker silhouettes – you can find out more by searching for the subject “silhouettes” on our online catalogue.

This set came from Bournemouth Meeting and is of the Neave Family. They are lovely full-length pen and ink drawings with delicate details in Chinese white ink made by the Quaker artist Samuel Metford of Somerset (1810–1896), signed S. Metford fecit.
Edward Neave (1779–1861) was born in Poole and established himself in Gillingham, Dorset, as a draper. He married twice and had seven children.

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Silhouette of Mary Neave (born Hunt), 1814 (Lib. Ref. LSF Prints and Drawings Acc. 1)

Meeting house postcards

Our comprehensive collection of meeting house images is made up of paintings, drawings, photographs, prints and postcards illustrating the interior and exterior of meeting houses from around the world. It is a unique and frequently used collection. Mass-producing postcards were a cost–effective way of raising funds for building maintenance as well as providing a collectible memento.

This selection of postcards was kindly donated by a family whose mother had acquired them at a house auction.

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Crawshawbooth Meeting House (Lib. Ref. LSF MH)

Dolls and textiles

With 50 dolls and 54 shawls already held by the Library, this gift of a shawl and doll fits perfectly. The doll’s bonnet and shawl are pinned with a delicate glass bird, and her wax head, glass eyes and bisque body indicate she is from the late 19th century. Our dolls range from traditional 19th-century examples to wood carvings made by prisoners of war on the Isle of Man during World War I.

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Quaker doll and shawl (Lib. Ref. LSR MO 729)

Plain dress was one of the distinguishing features of Quakers in the past – and quite a struggle for some to adhere to. While a distinctive form of dress has long gone, simplicity is still an important part of Quakerism. According to Quaker faith & practice, “The heart of Quaker ethics is summed up in the word ‘simplicity’ … Outwardly, simplicity is shunning super­fluities of dress, speech, behaviour and possessions, which tend to obscure our vision of reality” (Quaker faith and practice, 4th edition, 2009, 20.27).

Most Quaker women dressed in monotone colours without adornment. The shawls in our collection are an assortment of fabrics and colours (white, cream, grey, brown, blue and black). They feature simple designs and date from 1815 to the 20th century. This cream shawl is from the early 20th century and is embroidered with white silk thread flowers.

Photographs and slides dominate the visual resources collection, with at least 25,000 photographic prints individually catalogued and in albums, 9,000 35mm slides and 2,000 glass plate lantern slides.

Olive Prescott collection of slides and photographs

The Olive Prescott collection is a personal archive of slides and photographs from her time in Africa working for Friends Service Council (FSC) from 1963 to 1969. Olive Prescott (1931–2011) was a Quaker with a background in social work and publishing. She travelled to Kenya in March 1963 to assist Walter Martin, the FSC representative in Nairobi. As well as helping to run classes at the Mucii Wa Urata rural training centre and the Ofafa community centre, she was involved in the administration of work camps and committees for the Christian Council of Kenya, particularly in relief and refugee work. After several years of political unrest, Kenya and Zanzibar gained independence from colonial rule in December 1963. FSC’s Nairobi office closed in 1965.

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Olive Prescott (Lib. Ref. LSF Photo Acc 1)

Olive was then seconded to East Africa Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends, moving to Kaimosi in 1967 to serve as Literature Secretary. She worked in the bookshop and on the Mufrenzi magazine. She also researched a series of biographies of early African Friends and, before leaving FSC in 1969, wrote a book for people preparing for Quaker membership.

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Woman basketweaving

If you want to find out more about the visual resources collection, or are considering donating visual material, please contact the Library, using the link on the right hand side of this blog page.

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Bound volume II of The Ploughshare (1917)

The Ploughshare was a quarterly, later monthly, journal published by the Socialist Quaker Society (SQS) between 1912 and 1919. It was edited by William Loftus Hare (1868–1943) and Hubert W. Peet, (1886–1951), who was so committed to the journal and its cause that he continued to be involved in its production even when he was imprisoned as a conscientious objector during the First World War from 1916 to 1919.

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Signature of Hubert W. Peet from The Ploughshare, volume II (1916)

In the later 19th and early 20th century, Friends became ever more concerned with issues of social inequality and militarism. It was against this background that the Socialist Quaker Society (SQS) was founded on 2 April 1898 when Mary O’Brien, James Theodore Harris, Thomas Dent (1867–1943), H. G. Dalton and five other Friends met at 27 Yonge Park, London.  The SQS aimed to educate Friends about socialism and promote it as a solution to the problems of the day.

The Ploughshare, as well as being the official journal of the SQS, played an important role as a platform for anti-war sentiments during the First World War. Floyd Dell (1887–1969), editor of the New York Marxist paper Masses, wrote to The Ploughshare describing it as “a beautifully printed, admirably written [and] very impressive paper” (Three Letters. The Ploughshare, volume I, number 6 (1916) p. 196).

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‘At the Sign of the Plough : where current matters are discussed’ section title, The Ploughshare, volume II, number 8 (September 1917), p. 251

The history of The Ploughshare can be divided into three distinct periods. Issues 1 to 12 (1912–1915) were published quarterly with the subtitle, “Organ of the Quaker Socialist Society”. From 1916 it started a new series, published monthly in a larger format, with the subtitle, “A Quaker Organ of Social Reconstruction”. Finally, after the SQS ended its association with The Ploughshare in 1919, it would continue for one more volume as an independent publication (this volume is not held at the Library).

As well as publishing articles by the likes of Stephen Hobhouse, peace activist, prison reformer and religious writer (1881–1961), Alfred Salter, medical practitioner and Labour Party politician (1873–1945), and Horace Bertram Pointing, artist and playwright (1891–1976), The Ploughshare counted Dorothy Richardson, writer (1873–1957), Bertrand Russell, philosopher (1872–1970), and Fenner Brockway, anti–war activist and politician (1888–1988) among its contributors.

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The Castle, a poem by E. H. Visiak, 1917, with woodcut of Ypres Tower, Rye, by Mary Berridge. The Ploughshare, volume II, number 9 (October 1917), p. 255

The journal also included poetry, book reviews, news of other “progressive movements” and lively correspondence under the heading “Let Us Reason Together”. It regularly ran essays on mysticism and religious thought, and Quaker pacifist principles. This perhaps placed it in a unique position among anti–war publications.

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‘Let Us Reason Together’. The Ploughshare, volume II, number 2 (March 1917), p. 33

The series, “The lonely furrow and some who have ploughed” not only includes biographical overviews of prominent Friends such as George Fox (1624–1691), William Penn (1644–1718) and John Woolman (1720–1772), but also  thinkers such as Socrates, Confucius and Erasmus, recent pacifists such as Francis Sheehy Skeffington (1878–1916) and Clifford Allen (1889–1939), and historical figures such as John Ball, the 14th century Lollard priest, and Gerrard Winstanley, Digger (1609–1676). These articles included beautiful illustrations by the likes of Joseph Southall (1861–1944). The journal frequently carried both commissioned and reproduced artwork (particularly woodcuts) from 1916 onwards.

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William J. Holland. John Ball, Pioneer of the Fellowship of Men. The Ploughshare, volume I, number 1 (February 1916), p. 16-17

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L. H. Wedmore. Gerard Winstanley, the Digger. The Ploughshare, volume I, number 2 (March 1916), p. 52-53

The Ploughshare had several women on its advisory council and regularly ran articles on women’s rights (using the term “feminism” in the title of articles on at least two occasions) and had a large number of female contributors. Dorothy M. Richardson, The Reality of Feminism (The Ploughshare, volume II, number 8 (September 1917), pp. 241-246) and Emily Hobhouse, Comforting the Enemy and Coals of Fire (The Ploughshare, volume I, number 11 (December 1916), pp. 339-341) being just two examples.

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Woodcut of Ypres Tower, Rye, by Mary Berridge. The Ploughshare, volume II, number 8 (September 1917), opposite p. 223

The paper addressed issues of the day, such as Irish nationalism. It was sympathetic to the subject of Indian home rule and generally took an internationalist stance. An article from October 1919 took a critical line on the behaviour of Britain and other “great powers” in Iran.

The Ploughshare is a fascinating periodical for those interested in early 20th century Quakerism, Christian socialism and the development of the British socialist and anti-war movements in general.

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Mention ‘Quakers’ to the average football fan and the response is likely to be something to do with Darlington. Darlington FC, founded in 1883, received its nickname because of the importance of Quakerism in the town, and its crest includes a stylised Quaker hat. 

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However, it wasn’t the only football club with Quaker associations. Two years earlier, in March 1881, the Foxes Football Club was founded at the Friends Institute in Bishopsgate. Although based in London,  it too had a Darlington connection: its President for many years was Joseph Whitwell Pease (1828-1903), MP for South Darlington (left).

The Library has two volumes of the Club’s minute books (1881-1908 and 1919-1927. MS VOLS. 276-277), which provide a fascinating insight into the social and sporting life of Friends at the time. The Club didn’t function from 1915 to 1919 because of the First World War.

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Foxes Football Club Minute Book 1881-1908 (MS VOL 276)

At first members of the Club had to be members of the Society of Friends or connected in some way with it. The 14 byelaws agreed in 1881 included rule 12, “that any member making himself obnoxious or refusing to conform to the rules of the club be liable to expulsion”, and rule 14, which decreed that “the Club provide no intoxicants”. Any member who was selected and then didn’t play was fined a shilling. The kit was white flannel shirts and trousers with a red band on each arm between the shoulder and elbow.

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Foxes Football Club Byelaws, 8 April 1881
(MS VOL 276)

To the best of our knowledge, no history of the Club exists. The minute books give a vivid picture of its activities, including details of new members, officers and finances, and fixture lists. From them we learn that in October 1889 the Foxes beat Tottenham at West Green 15-0 (just plain Tottenham, not Tottenham Hotspur although they did play against the latter on several occasions). That year they also beat Kensington Rangers 10-2 in the first round of the London Cup held at Acton and in the previous year they were victorious against Guys Hospital 15-0 at White Hart Lane.

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Foxes Football Club List of Fixtures, 1888-1889
(MS VOL 276)

The Club was clearly seen as an important social meeting place for many young Friends. Its captain in the early days, Septimus Marten, wrote to the Quaker newspaper, The Friend, to encourage young Quakers to become members, and the minute books are dotted with details of social events.

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‘The Foxes Football Club’, The Friend, volume XXIV,
number 288 (1 October 1884) p. 259

In 1888 there were long drawn–­out plans to hold a soirée “which should consist in the main of a farce and a comedy”. The event was to be held at either the Friends Institute or the Devonshire Hotel, with “a considerable interval for social intercourse and the inspection of interesting objects”. The event was postponed for lack of a suitable venue, and debate about what form it should take continued, with one group wanting “a play in two or three acts interspersed with songs etc., if possible preceded by a tea” and another preferring “more of a social opportunity … [consisting of] a conversazione etc”. In October 1893 the Club planned to entertain the Swarthmore team at the Small Hall of the Highbury Athenaeum, but this was too costly and they instead approached the Institute Committee for permission to hold the event at Devonshire House “with a view of putting the Club to as little expense as possible.” One year the minutes record a simple decision not to admit women to the Club, and on another occasion a proposal that ”female talent be admitted” [their underlining] was lost by 12 votes to 14. The Swarthmore team were not the Club’s only Quaker opponents. They also played against many of the Quaker schools, including Ackworth, Bootham, Saffron Walden and Sibford.

The Club featured in the wider press, particularly in London, as well as the pages of The Friend. The Sportsman records their 1901 tour of Belgium, where they played against Liège, Antwerp and Courtrai.

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‘Foxes F. C. Belgium Tour’, The Sportsman, 11 April 1901 (MS VOL 276)

And in 1892 the Evening News and Post reported a fascinating encounter between the Quaker Foxes and the Scots Guards football team:

“The tie between the 1^st Scots Guards and the Foxes ended in a victory for the soldiers by 5-2. This may be a bit of a surprise, but I am told that the Foxes for a number of reasons had to play no less than five of their reserves. In spite of this the score was two all at half time. Then the three half backs of the Foxes were all crippled and the referee allowed a palpably offside goal. I regret to say that the Guards played anything but a gentlemanly match. One of their players who was twice cautioned by the referee for tripping should have been ordered off the field. The referee seems hardly to have known his business. He acknowledged he had made a mistake about allowing one goal. And infringed rule 11 by not appointing neutral linesman in the face of a protest. The Foxes have good grounds for a protest, but as I have had occasion to remark before, they are too good sportsmen for that kind of thing.”

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To mark April Fool’s Day, we’re not going to spin a yarn about Quakers and kilts or how George Fox invented porridge while in jail. Instead, here’s part of the true tale of an 18th century joke book recently added to our online catalogue. It may read like a shaggy dog story, but – believe us – there was plenty more that could have been said.

The Macaroni Jester, being, a select series of original stories – witty repartees – comical and original bulls – entertaining anecdotes &c. … by a gentleman of the world, and never before published to the world. To which are added Brown’s Quaker sermon and grace, was published around 1768 in Philadelphia, probably by Robert Jackson. Jackson was a Scottish printer who had worked in Dublin (where he had heated disputes with fellow printers over his “piratical editions”, and went bankrupt) before emigrating to America and building up a successful printing business publishing all kinds of books, including the first edition of Thomas Paine’s Common sense – a bestseller if ever there was one.

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The Macaroni Jester (ca. 1768)

What, or who, on earth was a Macaroni Jester? Dismiss from your mind that image of a motley fool standing in a steaming pile of pasta, and conjure up an amusing fellow – elegant, sharp and mercilessly satirical. Macaronis were self-identified witty sophisticates, eventually lampooned for excessively foppish fashions and manners, personifications of an 18th century craze that spawned songs, plays and above all cartoons.

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The Macaroni. A Real Character at the Late Masquerade, by Philip Dawe (Printed for John Bowles 1773). Copy in Lewis Walpole Library. Via Wikimedia Commons

Although our small volume includes a ditty on “The Origin of Macaronies”, there’s little else of the Macaroni in it: the word has been used simply as a synonym for humour, satire and above all absurdity.

The jokes in the body of The Macaroni Jester poke fun at many stock figures, among them Quakers, but the real reason for the book’s presence in the Library was probably “Brown’s Quaker sermon and grace”, on the final two leaves (pages 97-100). Ironically, those very pages are missing from our copy (being the vulnerable outer leaves they probably simply became detached long ago). Instead, there are two additions to the original book. Inside the front board is pasted in a small satirical print, entitled The Quakers meeting; inside the back is pasted in a copy of “The Quakers [sic] grace” cut from a different work. Comparison with other copies shows that neither of these additions were part of the book as originally printed.

Our copy of The Macaroni Jester was purchased for 5 shillings from James Tregaskis, the London bookseller, at an unknown date, accessioned in 1933, and rebound in quarter leather.  Did Tregaskis sell the print and “The Quakers grace” along with the deficient copy of The Macaroni Jester, or were they already combined by a previous owner? It’s a mystery, but the interest for our researchers lies in the two pasted-in additions.

The first of these, The Quakers meeting, is an eighteenth century satirical print, showing a group of Quaker men and women in their meeting house. Up in the gallery behind them a speaker is in full flow: their eyes are rolled up to him. In the foreground another open-mouthed figure raises his hands apparently in shock or religious transport. At each side stand shadowy broad-brimmed figures,  looking particularly sinister. The artist has endowed his Quaker subjects with a horrible mixture of religious enthusiasm and absurdity. Another copy of this print is pasted into volume VI of the Gibson Manuscripts (Library reference MS Vol. 339/279).

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The Quakers Meeting. Print pasted inside front board of The Macaroni Jester

As for the “Quakers grace”, the second addition to our book, and its missing companion, “Brown’s Quaker sermon” – far from being the latest witticisms, these were hoary old chestnuts (still, the old ones are the best, or so they say). Their supposed author, Tom Brown “of facetious memory”, famed for his wit and licentious lifestyle, had died in 1704, decades before our Macaroni Jester saw the light of day. Both sermon and grace were included in various posthumous collections of his works from 1708 onwards, apart and together. They were also published together anonymously as Azarias: a sermon held forth in a Quakers meeting, immediately after Aminadab’s vision. With a prayer for rooting out the church and university, and blessing tripe and custard (London, 1710) (not held by the Library, but available online here). The satirical “sermon” addressed to the “dear brethren and loving sisters” at a Quaker meeting, is an absurd sophistical argument based on an amorous encounter between one Azarias of Twittenham and a Quakeress called Ruth. The “grace”, a thanksgiving prayer before a meal, is a satire on Quaker language with heavy gluttonous overtones (“bless this tripe and this loin of veal”), ending in a final bawdy double entendre.

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The Quakers Grace. Pasted into The Macaroni Jester

The crude “Quaker sermon and grace” may or may not have been written by Tom Brown, but Brown certainly didn’t omit the Quakers from his many satirical observations of contemporary London life (for example, see the modern reprint, Amusements serious and comical and other works (1927) – featuring his visit to a Quaker meeting in the company of an imaginary Indian). For Brown, just as for his contemporaries Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, religion was as likely a target for mockery as politics or manners.

We have to confess that the witty repartees and comical and original bulls purveyed by The Macaroni Jester failed to tickle us in the way they might have amused an eighteenth century reader. Nor was there rolling in the aisles after reading the “Quaker sermon and grace”.  Humour does not always translate well between eras and cultures. Nevertheless, viewing another society through a contemporary satirical lens may afford invaluable historical and literary insights for the modern reader.

At all events, whether you’ve played an April fool prank yourself this year, or been the victim of one, we hope you will agree that laughter is an excellent thing, and that humour is, as a former owner of our little book opined, a fine “antidote against melancholy”.

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A former owner’s inscription on the flyleaf of our Macaroni Jester: “A good jest well told is an antidote against melancholly. 3d Oct 1815 [or 1814], Ogilvey”

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Richard Dykes Alexander (1788-1866)
by Samuel Metford
(Pic. Vol. II)

Silhouettes – solid profile images – have long been a popular form of portraiture, though the name itself only dates back a couple of hundred years. The side or profile view of a subject, whether on coins and medals or cut from paper, provides an instantly recognisable likeness. Visitors to the Library in 2011 saw a selection of fine silhouettes from our collections in the reading room display, “The Face of Quakerism”, curated by Joanna Clark, our former picture librarian. In this blogpost we bring some of our silhouettes to a wider audience, and, at the end, instructions on how you can “do it yourself”!

From the late 18^th century, the art of cutting paper profiles became something of a craze. Known as “shades”, “black profiles”, “shadow portraits” or “scissor-types”, the name that caught on was “silhouette” (derived from the austerity measures of the French finance minister, Etienne de Silhouette, whose surname had become synonymous with anything done cheaply). Whether as amateur pastime or professional portraiture, silhouettes were both cheap and immensely popular, dwindling only in popularity after the late 1850s, when photography became more affordable.

Quakers and silhouettes

By 1800 the “scissors art” or cutting of silhouettes was already a popular hobby among Quakers. One of the most prolific and notable of the earlier silhouettists was Thomas Pole (1759-1823), who was born in Philadelphia but practised as a physician in England. A generation later, Samuel Metford of Glastonbury (1810-96) became the first Quaker to practise as a professional silhouette artist.  He too had learned the art when in America on business, and from the 1830s to 1860s he travelled as a “profilist” around Britain, often using the local Quaker meeting as his source of custom. The Library holds quite a few of his elegant silhouette portraits, and his work is highly respected among modern collectors.

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Thomas and Elizabeth Pole by Thomas Pole
(Pic. Vol. II, p. 34)

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Joshua Metford (1755-1833) by Samuel Metford (F.187)

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Elizabeth Heyrick (1769-1931)
(MS VOL 239/237)

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The Sturge Family, ca. 1820. From William R. Hughes, Sophia Sturge: a memoir (London, 1940) (092.4 STU/HUG)

The making of silhouettes – or “scissors art”

The traditional method of creating silhouette portraits is to cut them from lightweight black cardboard, and mount them on a pale (usually white) background. However, silhouettes can also be “hollow cut”, where the figure is cut away from the paper thereby leaving a negative image.  The paper outline is then backed with a contrasting colour of paper or fabric.

The traditional silhouette portrait artist or “profilist” could cut the likeness of a person, freehand, within a few minutes. However, by the 1820s some English profilists favoured the aid of a camera obscura, which casts a shadow of the person on paper, to provide an outline. This life-sized outline served as the artist’s cartoon or draft. The finished miniature silhouette could then be made using a reducing instrument known as a pantograph. Skilled artists would add detail afterwards – pastels might be used to create light and shade, and occasionally scraps of fabric were added to create a realistic bonnet or collar.  Artists would talk of “taking” a silhouette in much the same way that photographers “take” a photograph.

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English Pantograph, 19th century

Silhouette cutting: do it yourself

In the interests of historical research we decided to have a go at making silhouettes ourselves. The results were … interesting!

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If you’d like to try it yourself, here’s how we did it (takes about 15-20 minutes):

Materials

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1 A4 sheet black paper or light card
1 A4 sheet white/cream paper for mounting the silhouette
1 photocopier (there was no pantograph to hand) with A4 paper
2B pencil
Torch or bright lamp
Glue stick
Blu-tack
Embroidery scissors

Instructions

1. Sit or stand the subject sideways next to a smooth wall surface in a dark room. Position the torch or bright lamp 3 or 4 metres away so that the sitter’s shadow falls sharply on the wall. Position the A3 sheet of white paper where shadow falls, and fix it with Blu-tack.

2. Adjust the sitter so that her/his head and neck shadow lies within the area of the paper. At this point, reduce any other light in the room, if you haven’t already. Standing beside the sitter, draw round the shadow as quickly and carefully as possible.

3. Take the drawing on the A3 sheet and photocopy it to reduce the image size onto A4 (or smaller if you like).

4. Lightly glue the outer margins of your A4 photocopy on the reverse, with a blob in the middle of the paper and position it on top of the A4 sheet of black paper or light card. Carefully cut around the profile (through both white and black paper), taking particular care to cut smoothly around the nose, lips and chin.

5. Discard outer pieces, peel off the white paper and voilà, one beautiful silhouette ready for mounting!

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Have you ever kept a scrapbook, jotted things of interest in a notebook, or clipped extracts from webpages? Then you have been “commonplacing”. For centuries, writers, philosophers, theologians, scholars, poets, artists and others have gathered together passages from prose, quotations, proverbs, ideas and memoranda into commonplace books, often organised under headings for ready reference.

Why are these commonplace books so called? The idea of loci communes or “common places” where knowledge could be organised, dates back to classical antiquity. It owes a debt to Aristotelian topoi (topics), and to Cicero, who urged lawyers to collect information on general topics and principles to be recalled as needed.

In mediaeval times, students and scholars were encouraged to keep them as aides-memoires, storing information and organising it methodically for use in their studies. By the 17th century, commonplacing had become a recognised practice taught in universities,  a popular study technique persisting until the early 20th century.

The Library has in its collections commonplace books dating from the 17th to the 20th century. They are treasure troves of knowledge, preserving quotations, letters, prayers, anecdotes, verses, maxims and medicinal recipes. As personal selections, they reveal the interests, personalities and concerns of their compilers. They range in size from small notebooks to larger leather bound volumes, and in type (spiritual, theological, genealogical, artistic, literary, medical and more: often a combination of these). Unlike journals or notebooks, they anthologise the works of other authors, occasionally preserving the only copy of an original text. Matching transcriptions to their original source would be a research project in itself.

The commonplace books of John Catchpool (1777-1847), Sarah Robson (1799-1885) and Lucy Violet Holdsworth (1869-1954) are just three examples of the widely differing commonplace books held by the Library.

Commonplace books of John Catchpool (MS BOX Y3/1-4)

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Title page, John Catchpool’s commonplace book, volume 1, 1777-1797 (MS BOX Y3/1)

The four commonplace books of John Catchpool, Doncaster Quaker, and later baker and corn dealer of Winchmore Hill, London, are primarily theological and include transcriptions of the religious experiences and thoughts of early Friends. Volume one begins with a transcription of The Messiah by Alexander Pope (1688-1744),

“Ye Nymphs of Solyma, begin the Song, To heavenly Themes, sublimer Strains belong. The mossy fountains, and the sylvan Shades, The dreams of Pindus and the Aonian Maids, Delight no more…”

The volumes also contain carefully transcribed poems and visions, “A Poem on the Death of that faithfull and laborious Minister of the Gospel, Benjamin Kidd” and “The Prediction of Christopher Love, Minister at London, who was beheaded on Tower Hill in the Time of Oliver Cromwell, Government of England”; transcriptions of dreams and visions by Friends such as Samuel Fothergill and John Oxley, amongst others; and hymns and songs such as “A hymn composed by Catherine Evans when imprisoned at Malta in the year 1661” and “Religion the highest and happiest End of Man in a petitioning Song to the Divine Being”.

There are also a number of “Reflections” on society. “Reflections occasioned by being at Scarborough Spaw in the Summer of 1768 by Mary Miles” provides a rather vivid picture of Scarborough in the 18th century:

“Being at Scarborough my Mind was affected with various Reflections and Considerations from observing how many both of the Gentry and common people spent their Time in outward amusements, Plays, assemblies, Music and Dress…and divers of the lower Class pursuing Smuggling and other Wickedness, even to the committing two Murders while I was in that place…”

At the back of volume one, there are recipes for lotions and potions to relieve various illnesses, including “A Receipt against the Plague…” and “Receipt for the Tooth ach”.

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“A Receipt against the Plague taken out of the London Magazine for August 1743 Page 405”, John Catchpool’s commonplace book, volume 1, 1777-1797 (MS BOX Y3/1, p. 347)

Commonplace book of Sarah Robson, 1815-1885 (MS BOX R5/5)

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Cover, Sarah Robson’s commonplace book, 1815-1885 (MS BOX R5/5)

Sarah Robson was a founder of the Women’s First-Day School, Huddersfield, and the wife of Isaac Robson (1800-1885), a tea dealer of Liverpool. Her commonplace book is beautifully written. In it she records hymns and poems on the subject of death, including “The affusions of a mother’s [Ann Alexander] heart. Composed while sitting by the precious remains of a beloved child who departed this life at school at Broughton, Lincolnshire, the 18th of 9th month 1810 of typhus fever aged 9 years and 3 months”, and  accounts of religious visits to America:

“Lines composed by A. A., whilst on a religious engagement in America to her sister Mabel; written on a small piece of the bark of the birch tree with this direction: To be presented to Mabel Tuke on the day of her union with John Hipsley to bring into view her absent sister A.A. who had this bark taken from the white birch tree when walking on the banks of Kennebeck River, in the Eastern parts of New England 2nd 5th mo. 1804”.

There are interesting accounts of Friends, for example, “An account of some remarkable visions of John Adams of Yorkshire”. At the end of the volume someone else has written a version of the Golden Rule: “To do unto all men, as we would that they, in similar circumstances, should do unto us constitutes the great principle of virtue” and “The deceitfulness of riches or the cares of this life have choked the seeds of virtue in many a promising youth”.

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“Rule 1st”, Sarah Robson’s commonplace book, 1815-1885 (MS BOX R5/5, reverse p. 1)

Commonplace book of Lucy Violet Holdsworth,  1916-1925 (TEMP MSS 37/3)

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Cuttings and inserts, Lucy Violet Holdsworth’s commonplace book, 1916-1925 (TEMP MSS 37/3)

Lucy Violet Holdsworth, author and Swarthmore lecturer, inscribed her book:

“I should like this book to be offered to the Friends’ Reference Library, after my death, in case they may care to have it. L. Violet Holdsworth September 1925”

It contains transcriptions of early manuscripts, epistles, testimonies and private letters (many held by the Library), which she had made for The Romance of the inward light (1932).

The pages are interspersed with news cuttings and leaflets concerning Quaker meeting houses, letters, articles for The Friend and Quakeriana, and a booklet entitled, “The Arrest of George Fox at Armscote Manor House in the Year 1673”. She made pencil sketches of Derwentwater (September 1931), Wayside Cottage, Cheshire (August 1930), Pendle Hill (6 September 1930), “Fox’s Pulpit”, Sedbergh (8 August 1930) and “St John’s from London”.

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“John Hodgkin under Fox’s pulpit at Fairbank 8.8.30”, Lucy Violet Holdsworth’s commonplace book, 1916-1925 (TEMP MSS 37/3)

Commonplacing is like making a collection of precious gems, or gathering flowers for a garland – a very personal selection of inspiring and fruitful resources. What kind of things would you include in your commonplace book?

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Way back in May 2012, commenting on the blog’s very first post, a reader asked “how about a picture of what the strongrooms look like today?” Perhaps rashly, we promised a peek.

One year on, at last we have some snaps for you – a glimpse into the subterranean vaults where the Society of Friends’ archives, manuscripts, rare books and museum objects are stored. They’re not pretty, but they are cool and solid with a stable temperature and humidity. Formerly four separate rooms, they have now been reorganised into three areas, joined by a long corridor, retaining only two of the original barred metal internal doors. The massive original main door is no longer in use, but is too heavy to remove: it remains as a splendid visual reminder of the value the Society of Friends sets on its historic collections. In recent years modern fire-proof security doors have been installed and the lift shaft from the earlier book hoist incorporated into the strongroom area.

We can’t bring you the real-life atmosphere of the strongrooms – cool, silent (though the rumble of a tube train is occasionally detected), with that unmistakable smell of paper and leather. And they are tricky to photograph since there’s not much space for the long shot. Here though is our offering – a gallery of images from underground.

Note: the gallery is best viewed on the website, so if you’re reading this post in an email, or on a phone, click on the title link at the top of the email to go to the full web version. To view an image at full size in a gallery, click on it;  to close the gallery down again and go back to the blogpost, click the x in the top left hand corner.

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We’re pleased to present a guest blog post from Hannah Ratford, who recently spent two weeks at the Library as part of her archives and records management training.

As part of the M.A. course in Archives and Records Management at University College London, students are required to undertake a two-week cataloguing placement. Having requested that I complete my placement at a religious archive, I was fortunate to have been placed with the Library of the Society of Friends. Upon arrival I was provided with a collection consisting of five boxes and was set the task of arranging, appraising and cataloguing the material inside. I soon discovered that I had been handed an interesting collection consisting of the personal papers of Dorothy Henkel, a member of the Society of Friends.

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Photograph of Dorothy Henkel with the family dog, no date (TEMP MSS 1003/1/1/8)

Dorothy Henkel, daughter of the professional German musician, Karl Henkel, and English mother, Rose Henkel, was born on the 24^th March 1886. Dorothy was raised in London and became fluent in English, French and German languages. The collection contains items relating to Dorothy’s younger years and family life, including notebooks, diaries, poems and letters regarding her parents’ silver anniversary in 1910, which indicate a sense of reminiscence by Dorothy of her youth.

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Poem by Dorothy Henkel, “By the Brook”, 1897 (TEMP MSS 1003/1/4/1)

The collection also includes concert programmes and correspondence relating to World War I Prisoners of War held in Knockaloe Camp on the Isle of Man. They relate to the relief work carried out by Dorothy’s father, who provided prisoners with sheet music. Perhaps inspired by her father’s work, and following the devastation of the War and the loss of her fiancé in the subsequent flu epidemic, Dorothy attended a meeting held in Albert Hall with her parents in 1920 to consider the relief of famine in Germany. Upon enquiring as to how she could help, Dorothy was advised to go to the Quakers. Two days after this instruction she had an interview and was informed that assistance was required in Frankfurt am Main. Dorothy leapt at the opportunity presented to her, as whilst in Frankfurt she would be able to stay with her Aunt Sophie.

From June 1920, Dorothy worked in Frankfurt through the years of German hyperinflation, assisting in a new relief project known as “the Depot” with Friends’ Emergency and War Victims Relief Committee. This project supplied rationed quantities to a selected group at prices lower than those offered by shops. Her relief work alongside the Quakers eventually led her to apply for membership into the Society of Friends. Papers in the collection include her certificate of membership and letters of congratulation from her contemporaries upon her acceptance into the Society in 1925.

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Deutschmarks issued during hyperinflation in Germany, 1922-1923 (TEMP MSS 1003/7)

Following the end of the Depot project, Dorothy continued with her relief work and became involved in a scheme that placed impoverished children with families in Alsace for six weeks hospitality so that they could feel the benefit of better food. During this time, Dorothy began to witness the effects of the Nuremberg Laws on Jewish communities and individuals, and to assist those who were seeking to emigrate to escape persecution. By 1935, Dorothy had returned to London and was involved with Quaker work helping refugees seeking to come to Britain. The collection contains correspondence concerning this work. Around this time, Dorothy was requested by Helen Dixon to assist her in opening a Rest Home, where people who had suffered under the Nazi regime could find rest and refreshment. This home was set up in the Frankfurter Hof in Falkenstein, Taunus, with Dorothy focusing in particular on this work for the use of her memoirs (Dorothy Henkel, Memoirs, Frankfurt am Main, 1983 (092 [Biog.20/4]).

In 1939, Dorothy and her parents returned to Germany to visit family. During this period, World War II broke out, and the family was forced to stay in Germany for the entirety of the war. During this time, both of Dorothy’s parents died within eight weeks of each other. Following the end of the war, Dorothy remained in Germany for a while, eventually travelling back to England in the 1950s. She still travelled regularly to Frankfurt, continuing with her relief work and taking part in a project to support a Neighbourhood Centre in Bockenheim.

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Violin music written by Karl Henkel, 1915 (TEMP MSS 1/3/1)

Dorothy spent her last years in a nursing home in Frankfurt due to an accident. Here, she completed the task of writing her memoirs, the notes of which are included in the collection, before her death in 1983.

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Photographs and concert programmes for prisoners of war camp performances, 1915-1919 (TEMP MSS 1003/2/1-2)

The collection (Temp MSS 1003) is an example of how personal papers can provide a good sense of a person and their life. In this instance, I was presented with a woman who survived both World War I and II, the Great Depression and the Nazi regime, and yet suffered great personal loss with the death of members of her family. Despite the death of loved ones, she continued with her relief work, determined to improve the lives of others who were suffering under oppressive regimes. She was heavily involved in her role as an elder in the Society of Friends, and reflects upon the importance of her Quaker work throughout her memoirs. The collection is a fascinating insight into the life of a woman who dedicated her life to others.

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Oil painting of Dorothy Henkel by Mathilde Battenburg (1878-1936) (Pic F 041). On display in the Library reading room.

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Clik here to view.The third in our series of readers’ stories comes from Esther Sahle who is currently researching early modern Quaker merchants for a PhD at London School of Economics.

I have been asked to write about my experience of using the Library of the Society of Friends. I could give a very short answer to this…it’s great. It’s everything you could wish for as a researcher, a friendly, peaceful place. I’m working towards a PhD about early modern Quaker merchants, and in the three years that I’ve been doing research, I have received more support here than at any other institution. I’ve been visiting the Library regularly and it’s always been a very pleasant experience.

I knew very little about Quakers when I started. Visiting the Library changed this very quickly. It appears to contain copies of everything ever written by and about Quakers, from the 17^th century until today. And it’s so easily accessible. There are friendly and expert staff who appear to know everything about Quaker history. It’s great to be able to ask a librarian about literature on a certain subject and, from off the top of their head, be directed to relevant resources. The cherry on top is that when you need a break from reading, the café at Friends House does excellent cappuccinos.

The Library is a place that provides knowledge and wisdom on everything to do with Quaker history. However, it does much more than that. Quakers formed an important part of society in early modern London. Even though small in numbers, the community played an important part in the social and economic development of the city. The manuscripts held by the Library on the lives and businesses of London Quakers allow the reader to view early modern London through the prism of Quaker experience. I traced the lives and activities of merchants from the late 17^th to 18^th centuries. From the minutes of Quaker meetings, I followed how young Friends moved from other parts of the UK to London, in order to take up apprenticeships with city merchants; how they later got married to women whose families resided in Pennsylvania or Barbados; how they took their young children on daytrips to the countryside; how their careers developed; and how they appeared as officers in their meetings, and after them their places were taken over by their sons and grandsons.

I saw how communities dealt with fraud and theft. An enlightening case is that of George Roberts of Ratcliff Monthly Meeting, who in 1729 lured several respectable citizens into investing in his laboratory in Southwark, where he planned to turn base metals into gold. The investors lost their money and Roberts was disowned for falsely pretending to have skills in alchemy. No comment was made on the fact that alchemy in general might not work.

During my research, I found that I recognized addresses, places and family names, and found that their concerns were similar to ours today. They worried about their families, current affairs, and the challenges of an increasingly materialistic society. They were sometimes bored at work, as indicated by the doodles on the margins of the 17^th century manuscripts. But they also lived in a world in which alchemy was a possibility. This reveals their London, however familiar, simultaneously to be like a foreign country, with a distinct culture, which is hard for us to understand. The manuscripts held at the Library provide us with the opportunity to get as close to this place as possible. The handwriting we read in 2013 consists of ink applied to paper by individuals, 300 years ago. It puts us in touch with them, with the London of 1700. We see the differences, but also the astonishing amount of similarities, between their lives, and ours. Between the London of then, and of today. And thereby, the Library becomes not just a source of academic knowledge, but an immediate access point to our own past and the roots of our own culture and identity.

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While summer and the cricket season are still in full swing, you may enjoy some of these photographs from the records of the Falcon Touring Club, a Quaker cricket team. Dating back to 1902, the club drew its members mainly from those who had attended Quaker schools.

The founders were three young Friends from York – Stephen Priestman, Thomas Twyman and I. Gray Wallis. It occurred to them that a week’s cricket tour would make an enjoyable holiday. Little could they have known that the team would continue to tour until the 1990s, with a special centenary reunion in 2002.

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Clik here to view.The records of the Falcons here in the Library include seven albums of photographs and some press cuttings, covering the period between 1907 and 1932, and seven score books covering the period between 1935 and 1983, with a few gaps.

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Clik here to view.It’s also possible to glean much about the club from the pages of The Friend – which for many years carried an annual report on their activities – and from the magazines produced by the old scholars’ associations of Quaker schools.

So what sort of organisation was it? And did it do more than just play cricket?

Each year the players came together, usually in August, to tour in the Herefordshire and Shropshire areas. The cricket was clearly memorable, but to many of the players it was the friendship and having a good time that was of greatest importance. An advertisement for new players in The Friend was entitled ‘Howzat for a holiday?’ and in 1927 the paper reported the club’s 25th anniversary.

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Clik here to view.The team clearly built up relationships with local Friends and members were keen to renew acquaintances each year – although there was at least one occasion when they were not allowed to return to the same lodgings! The Falcons’ archives include some correspondence on this.

One year the weather was good in Ross on Wye – it was a lovely ground and a good wicket. An elderly Friend, then a widower, spontaneously invited the whole team to lunch, without a word of warning to his housekeeper.

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Clik here to view.But the weather wasn’t always good and this is recorded in the score books, where the description varied from “wonderful” to “bloody awful”. Despite bad weather at Ross on Wye in 1963, the team enjoyed themselves in other ways. Some of them were “beginning to bat like golfers” and “assisted by a large lunch at the Royal Hotel” they were all out for 99. Later that day they had their Annual Dinner at the Axe and Cleaver in Much Birch, six miles south of Hereford.

In 1976 the team was based at The Farm in Shobdon and took an interest in local history, visiting local churches and castles and the historic meeting house at Almeley. They also played snooker, bar billiards and darts!

The records may be of interest to family historians, especially the score records which record players’ names and give a full picture of the games played. The photograph albums contain some local press cuttings which include names, but these cover only part of the years the club was in existence. It would be a relatively easy job to check local papers for the areas during August.

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Not all of the club’s members were Friends, but it was clearly held in high esteem. In 1938 The Friend had this to say:

It is stated on good authority that whilst the team do not claim to be a branch of the Society’s extension work, they have a reputation in the area of the Western Quarterly Meeting where they play, of being “keen, good cricketers, surprisingly punctual and still more surprisingly sober for a touring team”. Perhaps that is why one of their old opponents, a recently retired Test Match selector, told the Captain this year that: “This Quakerism is an excellent thing”

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Linda Murgatroyd of the Quaker Arts Network writes about a selection of images of Quaker worship that she researched for the 2014 Quaker Arts Network calendar, Inspired by worship

My recent researches in the Library for visual representations of Quaker worship have caused me to reflect in new ways about what I know of our Quaker history, and what everyday Quakerism was really like at different times in the past. Looking at pictures of Quaker worship has offered a different lens.

I saw several paintings of Quaker worship in the Library during my visits, few of them well known or widely available. Diversity of style and period was an important criterion in the selection made by the calendar’s curating group (Penny Robbins, Anne McNeil and myself), as well as the quality of the pictures. About half of the pictures we chose were from the Library’s picture collection.  Not all the paintings mentioned in this blog were used in the calendar.

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Quaker Meeting, oil painting by Egbert van Heemskerk (Library ref. Pic F051)

Some of the earliest depictions of Quaker meetings for worship were by Egbert van Heemskerk (1634/5-1704), a Dutchman who painted scenes of ordinary life in the Rembrandt tradition. Heemskerk was not a Quaker, but something drew him to make several oil paintings of meetings for worship, mainly in the last two decades of the 17th century. Several of these are in the Library. These early meetings appear fairly chaotic: they are often in homes or taverns, and people from all social classes are standing or sitting wherever they can. All of them feature a woman standing and speaking – which of course was heretical in the view of most Christians of the day, but signalled Friends’ belief that all people could be in direct communion with God.

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Quakers meeting after Egbert van Heemskerk, engraved by Marcel Lauron, 1690s (Library ref. Pic 88 AXL 70)

Several printmakers made satirical prints based on Heemskerk’s Quaker meeting paintings. They altered details and caricatured faces, adding lewd gestures or satirical verses. The Quaker Arts Network calendar includes an engraving based on Heemskerk by Marcel Lauron (famous for his “Cryes of London” prints). The verse below the image condemns women’s speaking in meeting, referring to “the cackling of the hen” and saying “In publick who can beare a Females tattle, Let me in bed heare my kinde mistress prattle.”

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Gracechurch Street Meeting (Library ref. Pic F072)

The painting of Gracechurch Street Meeting from the 1770s by an unknown artist forms a stark contrast with the earlier Heemskerk. This was a purpose-built meeting house, and by this time meetings were much more formal -  women seated on separate benches from the men, with elders and ministers facing the other Friends. About as many women were elders or ministers as men. All are wearing headgear except the male Friend who has taken his hat off to minister. In the upper galleries are some visitors or attenders, whose dress is rather fancier and in brighter colours than the Quakers – though the Friends wear browns and pinks as well as the grey for which they came to be known. Light from above plays an important part in this picture; perhaps the new skylight planned for the Large Meeting House at Friends House is not such an innovation after all!

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Earith Monthly Meeting, oil painting by Samuel Lucas (Library ref. Pic F066)

Some sixty years passed before the next painting in our calendar was made, this time of a meeting at Earith.  It depicts a pastoral visit to Friends in East Anglia.  The Friend standing to minister is one of the Yearly Meeting committee visitors. Many of the Friends portrayed are identifiable, including the local farmers on the front bench.

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Yearly Meeting 1840, oil painting by Samuel Lucas (Library ref. Pic F035)

Lucas’s painting of London Yearly Meeting (1840) makes an interesting contrast with the depiction of the rural meeting at Earith. In Earith, everyone wears hats (except the person standing to speak), walking sticks and umbrellas abound, and women and men are seated on the same benches - though gathered  at different ends . There are rather more men than women – presumably it would have been harder for women and children to travel the distance to monthly meeting (by horseback or on foot), though a few children are present.  In the Yearly Meeting painting, only men are portrayed, as there were separate women’s and men’s yearly meetings until near the end of the nineteenth century. Dress is more formal than at Earith and about half the men are hatless.

Samuel Lucas (1805-1870), was a member of Hitchin Meeting. A brewer by trade, he was a keen amateur painter in watercolours and oils, exhibiting at the Royal Academy from time to time, and specialising in landscapes later in life. Alice Mary Lucas, Samuel’s wife, was also a keen watercolourist and lifelong painter.

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The Chelsea Meeting, watercolour by Nelson Dawson (Library ref. Pic F128)

Nelson Dawson’s lovely little watercolour of “The Chelsea Meeting” was painted in 1891. It feels to me very like some meetings today. Everyone is seated, men and women together. This painting was of the meeting held at 48 Cheyne Walk, home of Caroline Steven, whose influential book Quaker Strongholds opened the way for a Quakerism that goes beyond Christianity.

Nelson Ethelred Dawson (1859-1941) started life in Lincolnshire and trained as an architect but moved to London to study painting in 1885. He married Edith Robinson, a birthright Friend, and later joined the Society himself. He and Edith went on to become key figures in the Arts and Crafts Movement, specialising in jewellery and metalwork, and Nelson founded the Artificers Guild in 1901. He returned to painting a few years later, exhibiting widely, and was particularly noted for his maritime scenes. His work is represented in a number of museums and galleries around the country.

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Centring down, acrylic by John Perkin (Library ref. Pic F234)

Finally, John Perkin’s painting “Centring Down”, currently hanging above the Library’s enquiry desk, was one of the inspirations for the whole calendar.  John was a keen painter, mainly of landscapes and community scenes. In his last years he made about a dozen paintings of Quakers at worship. John had hoped to exhibit them together at Friends House, but died in 2012 before this was possible.  The calendar includes three of these paintings, illustrating different aspects of Quaker meeting for worship.

Research for this calendar has taught me much and also raised new questions. It suggests that despite Quaker reservations about the arts, some Friends have been serious artists throughout our history. It’s interesting to reflect that despite disapproval in some quarters, it seems to have been acceptable for people to paint pictures of Quaker meetings for worship. It’s hard to know how closely the portrayals  resembled actual meetings, especially as the early paintings are clearly composed and painted in the studio and designed to give particular messages about Quakers.

Making these images was often the artists’ particular ministry and their form of witness. Looked at in a different way, each of these pictures can draw us into stronger connection with Quakers past and present, and can help bring the spirit of worship into our everyday lives.

The Inspired by Worship calendar is on sale from the Quaker Arts Network http://www.quakerarts.net/ as well as from the Quaker Bookshop at Friends House.

Postscript: You can read about the recent conservation of two of the paintings discussed by Linda Murgatroyd in past issues of the Library newsletter: one of the Library’s four Heemskerk paintings  in the Autumn/Winter 2011 issue and the Gracechurch Street Meeting painting in the Spring/Summer 2010 issue of the former Library newsletter.

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Since 2006 the Library has been involved in a collaborative microfilming project with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). The Museum, based in Washington DC, is the most comprehensive institution of its type in the world.

Its primary mission is to advance and disseminate knowledge about the tragedy of the Holocaust, to preserve the memory of those who suffered, and to encourage its visitors to reflect upon the moral and spiritual questions raised by the events of the Holocaust as well as their own responsibilities as citizens of a democracy. The USHMM teaches millions each year about the dangers of unchecked hatred and the need to prevent genocide. It undertakes leadership training, education programmes, exhibitions and commemorations. As a memorial, it works against genocide through its Genocide Prevention Task Force, training foreign policy professionals.

The USHMM also collects archival material relating to the Holocaust from all over the world, and in 2006 it approached the Library of the Society of Friends to request access to British Quaker archive collections. It had already cooperated with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the main American Quaker organisation assisting refugees and war victims, which had provided a considerable quantity of lists, images and data to the Museum, including refugee case files 1933-1958 and records relating to humanitarian work in France.

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Facing the second winter (London: Germany Emergency Committee, November 1934). With attached appeal dated May 1935

Substantial British Quaker work was done from 1933 onwards in relation to Nazi and Fascist Europe. This work included reporting on conditions inside Germany after the Nazi Party gained power in 1933, particularly in relation to political prisoners and their families, providing assistance to the prisoners and families, supporting the small community of German Quakers, assisting Germans, Austrians, Czechs, Poles and others suffering persecution, prosecution, imprisonment or exile for political, racial and religious reasons, and helping refugees and dependants arriving in Britain with employment, sponsorship, training, education, and re-emigration matters. In the UK there were also Quaker efforts for the welfare of those foreign refugees and UK residents who had been detained as “Enemy Aliens” soon after war was declared.

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Refugees knitting at the Germany Emergency Committee workroom, ca. 1939 (Library ref. Box FRS/1992/9 Germany Emergency Committee photographs)

The Library’s collaborative project with USHMM began with a survey of our holdings and an inspection of large numbers of publications, minute books and file series by the USHMM’s British research assistant. This formed the basis of the ongoing microfilm project to produce master negatives (retained by the Library) and positive microfilm copies (sent to the USHMM for use in its library and research facilities). This long-term project has involved Library staff in the careful preparation of materials for microfilming, checking lists against records, page-counting, checking for filing-order and physical condition, as well as preparation of film titles, specific volume or file titles, headers and other markers.

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Refugees at work in the Germany Emergency Committee workroom, ca. 1939 (Library ref. Box FRS/1992/9 Germany Emergency Committee photographs)

So far at least 20 volumes of minute books and pamphlets, and 14 boxes or part-boxes of archives have been microfilmed. There are approximately 9 boxes (4000-5000 images) still to be filmed.

Among series already microfilmed are -

• Friends Committee for Refugees and Aliens (Germany Emergency Committee) minutes, publications, administrative and correspondence files on conditions and individuals in Germany in the 1930s and assistance to refugees, internees and others during World War II.

• Friends Service Council annual reports and internal correspondence files on British Quaker workers’ and local Quakers’ activities in assisting refugees and other victims of Nazism in (and from), China, Austria, France, Germany, Poland, Switzerland and Scandinavia from around 1933 onwards.

• Palestine Watching Committee and Friends Service Council Middle East files material on Palestine and the Middle East, reporting on the pre-war situation there, and undertaking assistance after World War II.

The project will not only make World War II Quaker materials more widely available for public research, but will help to educate people in the prevention of genocide and hatred. The Library looks forward to continuing its work with the USHMM. For more information about the project, please contact the Archivist (library@quaker.org.uk)

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Work to add all the Library’s printed materials to our online catalogue continues, reaching into some less visited corners of the collections. In the angle of the reading room gallery sits a collection of Quaker texts translated into foreign languages for use in the mission field. Among them are various volumes of early 20th century Chinese books and pamphlets translated by one Isaac Mason (1870-1939).

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Tracts translated into Chinese by Isaac Mason (Library ref. Box 177)

Early Quaker works had been translated into Latin, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Polish and even Arabic, for diffusion throughout Europe and the near East. In the 19th century many works began to be translated into Scandinavian languages, and the Society of Friends’ annual epistle appeared in German translated by the Recording Clerk himself. Isaac Mason was responsible for the earliest  transmission of Quaker writings to a Chinese audience: his career as a missionary and translator is a fascinating one.

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Isaac Mason in Sichuan. From: Davidson, Robert J. and Mason, Isaac, Life in West China: described by two residents in the province of Sz-chwan (1905) p. 211

Isaac was born in Holbeck, Leeds, in January 1870 and joined Quakers through his connection with the Great Wilson Street Sunday School and Adult School. He proved “headstrong and difficult”, a thorn in the side of the staff, but, on the point of being expelled, he came under the influence of Caroline Southall in the Adult School and became intensely loyal to her. She and other Leeds Quakers offered their service with the Friends Foreign Missionary Association (FFMA) in China. Mason volunteered too, but was only accepted a year later.

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Esther Mason. In: Friends Foreign Mission Association Annual report (1909)

After a further year of working as an iron moulder in Leeds and studying in his free time, he moved to London, where he started work at the Barnet Grove branch of the Bedford Institute, became engaged to Esther L. Beckwith, and finally went out to join the FFMA in Chungking (Chongqing) in 1894. He and Esther settled in T’ung Ch’wan, Szechwan Province (Tongchuan District, Sichuan) and did pioneer work at She Hong and Suining. Together they passed safely through some turbulent times – local riots,  the anti-missionary Boxer Uprising and the Revolution of 1911 (Xinhai Revolution).

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Isaac Mason. In Friends Foreign Mission Association Annual report (1909)

Isaac Mason or Mei I-seng as he was known in China, mastered the language with unusual quickness. After 22 years in West China, he moved to Shanghai, where his interest in the production of Friends’ literature in Chinese flourished. He translated for the Christian Literature Society of China short lives of Quakers such as William Penn, John Bright, John Howard, Stephen Grellet and parts of John Woolman’s Journal. He also tackled Sir George Newman’s Health of the state, dozens of religious books and pamphlets and helped compile a Chinese dictionary of the Bible. Many of his pamphlets reflect his interest in Islam in China. Among the children’s books are The Swiss family Robinson, and Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare.

Like some other contemporary Christian missionaries Isaac Mason had a particular interest in Chinese Muslims, and he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1921. His election proposal stated that “Mr Mason has spent many years in China, travelled in the interior, investigated Chinese Mahommedanism, is the Secretary of the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, and is in every way eligible for election as a Fellow. He is the author of several books in Chinese and English” (proposed by Zwemer and seconded by Heawood, the RGS Librarian; thanks to the Royal Geographical Society Library for this information).

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Davidson, Robert J. and Mason, Isaac, Life in West China: described by two residents in the province of Sz-chwan (1905). Title page

One of the bonuses of this Library’s retrospective cataloguing project has been the opportunity to provide better catalogue entries for foreign language publications – often poorly identified in the former card catalogue, or simply not catalogued at all.  In adding this small collection of Chinese tracts to our online catalogue we faced considerable linguistic challenges. We did have help though – sometimes the original English titles were printed in English on the reverse of the title page, and occasional manuscript notes on the items themselves were invaluable. A few had explanatory notes from Isaac Mason himself.

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The Library’s copy of War as it is, translated by Isaac Mason, with note by translator and accompanying letter to the Librarian, Norman Penney 23/3/1909

Though cheaply produced, the books and pamphlets are delightfully different from their English equivalents. In many of them, each “leaf” is in fact a single sheet printed on one side only (as was traditional in Chinese book production), to make two “pages” of text with bold black borders, then folded in half to make a double sided page.

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Sheet printed on one side and folded to make double sided page

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Clik here to view.Over the past year the blog has focused on both well used and less known parts of the collections and reported some of the work we do to preserve and make them better known.

We highlighted a few of the commonplace books in the manuscript collections, a rare early 20th century periodical, the records of not one, but two Quaker sporting teams, an 18^th century joke book and some Chinese pamphlets. There was news of two projects relating to 20th century relief work – cataloguing the papers of Quaker Dorothy Henkel and a collaborative microfilming project with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum – as well as the conservation of an outsized tract volume containing a rich trove of anti-slavery campaigning literature. Items from the Library’s picture collection starred in a post about research for the Quaker Arts Network’s 2014 calendar, “Inspired by worship”, and we showed you some of the silhouettes and our own stumbling attempts at “scissors art”.

The blog did also feature some of the wide variety of users of the Library’s collections and services: two of our readers wrote this year about what using the Library has meant for their research (Bill Chadkirk on The Elbow Lane Scandal and Esther Sahle on Eighteenth century London – a foreign country).

The final post of 2013 seems like a good time to celebrate some of the fruits of all this research. Each year there is a great crop of books, chapters, articles, conference papers and theses written by people who have used the Library. Others produce websites, exhibitions, broadcasts, plays and teaching material. And they use images from the collections to illustrate their work. Seeing the broad range of outputs of your research is awe inspiring.

So this is our chance to congratulate and thank you, especially those who present the Library with copies of their work. To all of you – you know who you are – thank you!

Below is just a small selection of works by Library users donated to the Library this year.

Finally, here’s to all our readers and supporters, and to an equally fruitful year to come!

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Clik here to view.The fourth in our series of readers’ stories is from Sue Smith who has recently completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Historical Studies at the University of Oxford. Sue is a member of Oxford Quaker Meeting and co-clerk and resource person for Quaker Peace & Social Witness Turning the Tide programme.

Sue is especially interested in the history and practice of nonviolence, and other conscience driven forms of resistance to authority and power.

It was the little bits of paper that got me.  Often a couple of inches square, hardly more.  Handwritten by Gandhi, to members of the India Conciliation Group (ICG) on their visits to his ashram.  They were so brief, but they made the wonderful mix of humour, tact and utter honesty that was Gandhi’s hallmark come alive. It was as if he was in the room when I read them.  They are in amongst the ICG papers in Friends House Library.

I came across them while researching for a dissertation on what Quakers were doing in India in the 1930s and 1940s. My parents were in the Friends Ambulance Unit in Bengal during the Second World War, and I wanted to know: what contribution, if any, did Quaker work make to Indian independence?

I had never heard of the India Conciliation Group before, but from my research I learned a lot about  other people’s perceptions of what Quakers do out there in the world, then and now.  The ICG attempted to mediate between British political decision-makers and Indian independence leaders. They made personal contact with everyone they knew with political influence, in Parliament, the Cabinet, in other churches, lobby groups, and women’s organisations. ICG members knew and admired Gandhi and were supportive of his work, although sometimes their worries about his methods speak out from the letters they wrote to him. Horace Alexander, the best known figure in the group, and also the head of the FAU for a period, remarked wryly that he had been “out-Quakered by a Hindu”.

I had imagined that Gandhi had always been a popular figure among Quakers – how could he not be?  He was a practitioner of nonviolent methods, the inspiration for pacifists, a key figure in the India independence struggle.

Many British Quakers welcomed him, but others were uneasy about his use of civil disobedience campaigning as a strategy to hasten Indian independence. Was he not provoking violence in the Salt Marches, and other campaigns, and damaging his own cause? Surely conciliation between the British Raj and Indian nationalists would be a better approach?  Quakers are usually supportive of the value of individual pacifism, but, historically, when nonviolent methods have been used to further political ends, many have become uneasy.

Quakers were seen by all sides in this struggle as a good thing, but not all parties quite understood what they were trying to do.  Some politicians at the time found them irritating.  Some Indian independence leaders were infuriated by their attempt to be even-handed. But when Indian independence was finally achieved in 1947 the new leaders of India courted them assiduously, and towering figures like Nehru (himself a proponent of nonviolence) privately acknowledged their influence in the wave of optimism that accompanied the post-war establishment of the United Nations.

My dissertation, Goody-goody fellows? Quakers and the end of empire in India, is held in the Library at Friends House and is also published online as a British Empire at War Research Group Paper (BEAW research paper number 3). You can find out more about the papers of the India Conciliation Group (TEMP MSS 41-52) from the Library.

For more information about  Friends and nonviolence today, see http://www.turning-the-tide.org/, or contact Steve Whiting, TTT Programme Manager  in Quaker Peace and Social Witness Department, at 0207 663 1061

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It’s the Chinese Year of the Horse – not much Quaker material there you might well think. If you were researching horses and equine veterinary practice, our Library would hardly be your first port of call. You might – perhaps – have heard of the trouble the Quaker chocolate families got themselves into by owning a “racing  newspaper” which promoted gambling, or come across remonstrations against the sport of horse racing from Quakers like Thomas Cash (To those inhabitants in and about Wilmslow, who have lately been the cause of great uanity and uuickedness … by horse races, 1799), but you’d not think there would be much else.

However, the Library does have in its collections two surprising volumes containing 36 separate and varied works on horses by Quaker Bracy Clark (1771-1860), accessioned in 1925 but presented many years earlier by the author to Friends’ Tea Room and Library (later the Friends Institute, Devonshire House).

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Volume one of Bracy Clark’s publications on horses, presented to the Friends’ Tea Room and Library – inscription on first title page.
Reference L 076.1 CLA. Copy no. 6788

The individual items in the volumes have recently been added to our on-line catalogue, as part of the retrospective cataloguing project. All told, Bracy Clark wrote around fifty treatises on the history, care, diseases and treatment of horses, published from 1807 to the 1840s.

Bracy Clark (1771-1860) was born to John Clark and Hannah Hitchman of Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire. His father, a Quaker in the leather trade, died when Bracy was just two. He was educated at the school run by the Quaker Thomas Huntley at Burford, then apprenticed to another Quaker, Joseph Tresher, a surgeon, during which time he studied Greek, chemistry and natural history, and even started the first cricket club in Worcester.

He qualified as a veterinary surgeon at the newly established veterinary school in London, as a pupil of the eminent Scottish surgeon John Hunter FRS (1728-1793). During his lifetime Bracy Clark “devoted an enormous amount of time and labour to the subject of the horse’s foot and the horse-shoeing”.

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Clark, Bracy. Recommendation to farriers & shoeing-smiths throughout the United Kingdom. 3rd ed (1837)

He was a member of the Linnæan Society, the Paris Académie des Sciences, the Natural History Society of Berlin and Copenhagen, the Royal Agricultural Society of Stuttgart, and in 1817 was made an honorary member of the Natural History Society of New York. He was one of those many nonconformist contributors to Abraham Rees’s Cyclopaedia (published as a weekly serial between 1802 and 1820), writing on the anatomy of horses, bits, bleeding, blindness, blisters, bots, broken wind, canker, corns, curb and collar (Do all the bad things that go wrong with horses begin with B or C?).

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Clark, Bracy. An essay of the bots of horses, and other animals (1815). Title page and frontispiece

He was very concerned with the health of horses’ hooves, the circulation of blood, how to cure cracked hooves and, particularly, new shoeing techniques. For the latter significant discoveries he was ridiculed by many, including members of the Royal Veterinary College.

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Clark, Bracy. A description of a new horse shoe which expands to the foot invented by Bracy Clark (1827). Front cover

Shortly before his death, his nephew James Hurnard relates, he sold to the Veterinary College of Edinburgh the skeleton of the celebrated, undefeated race-horse Eclipse (“Eclipse first and the rest nowhere”), which he kept in his study. Hurnard went on to write a splendid equine elegy to his uncle – the unsung Hampden of his day:

To Bracy Clark, F.L.S.

Descendent not unworthy of a sire!
The Hampden of the common where he dwelt,
Bracy, this tribute of a deep, heartfelt,
And honest admiration, I desire
To offer to thy name. The world has dealt
Unkindly with thee; and the heart must melt
To see a genius, which could not tire,
Cramped, like the hoof within its iron belt.
But so it is; the dead, whom we admire,
At whose proud tombs past centuries have knelt,
Were, when alive, the men the world could pelt,
And see in chains or banishment expire.
One comfort still remains to gild our earth,
Men cannot crush the consciousness of worth.

What finer tribute to a horse lover?

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The horror of the First World War made such a profound impact that responses to it a century later are still powerful. Historians, journalists and members of the public are engaging in passionate debate about the war and its causes – and their significance for the 21st century world; libraries, museums and cultural institutions are marking the anniversary with a wave of events and exhibitions; local people are exploring the ways in which events of 100 years ago affected their own towns and villages; schools are commemorating former pupils among the war-dead.

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Ambulances, Gizaucourt, December 1917. Watercolour by Arthur Cotterell. In: Autograph book of Friends Ambulance Unit members 1917. Reference: MS VOL S 284

Many Quaker meetings around the country are also marking the centenary – as an opportunity to speak out about remembrance, reconciliation and paths to non-violence. To support them, Witnessing for peace on the centenary of World War I: a resource pack for Quaker Meetings has been produced, available online on the Quakers in Britain World War I centenary webpage at the end of February (also available free in hard copy - request a copy by email: quakercentre@quaker.org.uk, or by post from: WWI Resource Pack, Quaker Centre, Friends House, 173 Euston Road, London NW1 2BJ).

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A twentieth century calamity. Postcard issued by the Peace Committee of the Society of Friends, 1912. Reference: Vol. T/218-219d

Among other things, the pack will include an updated Library guide to Quakers and World War I, listing some of the major printed and archival sources held here on Quakers’ peace witness and service during the war and its aftermath.

Use of the Library’s collections by readers and enquirers researching the period has already soared, as might be expected. After all, we hold the records of centrally organised British Quakers’ work for peace and for the relief of wartime suffering. Our collections include:

• archives of various Yearly Meeting committees that spoke up for peace and      international conciliation and supported the witness of conscientious objectors to military service
• archives of Quaker organisations set up to provide medical care and relief for the      victims of the conflict
• personal papers of individual campaigners, conscientious objectors and relief workers
• contemporary pacifist publications, campaign literature, appeals, reports, published      accounts and histories of the work
• photographic archives of the Friends Ambulance Unit (1914-1919) and the Friends      Emergency & War Victims Relief Committee (1914-1924)
• paintings and sculpture depicting and commemorating Friends involvement

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The first party of Friends ready for service under the War Victims Relief Committee, at Victoria Station. Photograph, FEWVRC archives 1914

As a further aid to researchers, over the coming months this blog will explore some of the Library’s World War I resources in greater detail. Expect to see blog-posts on the Friends Peace Committee, Friends Service Committee and other wartime committees; the archives of the Friends Ambulance Unit (1914-1919); the Friends Emergency & War Victims Relief Committee (1914-1923) cataloguing project funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust; unpublished diaries and other papers of conscientious objectors; printed sources and photographic collections. We will also bring you news about World War I collections fully catalogued for the first time.

Together with the forthcoming launch of a new online archive catalogue this spring, we hope these blog-posts will provide valuable guidance for Library users researching all aspects of Quakers and the first global war.

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The first of our World War I resources blogposts focuses on the Friends Peace Committee, a committee of Meeting for Sufferings (the standing representative body of Quakers in Britain) that had already been in existence for many years before the outbreak of the War.

What was the Friends Peace Committee?

From its formation in the late 1880s, Friends Peace Committee was a vigorous Quaker committee with a strong outward looking character. Through a network of correspondents in Quaker meetings and active involvement with other peace organisations it aimed to establish local and international links with the wider peace movement.

When war was declared in 1914 the Peace Committee was already actively engaged in publishing and distributing peace literature – books, posters, postcards – campaigning against the growth in armaments and the threat of militarism, promoting arbitration, influencing public opinion and petitioning government.  As the literature being distributed shows, Quakers were ready to speak out on social and economic issues – “The armaments of the world… increasingly enrich the war traders and absorb the earnings and energy of the peoples in unproductive labour. They provoke suspicion and distrust and endanger the outbreak of devastating war” (report of Peace Committee for the year 1913-1914, London Yearly Meeting Proceedings, p.116).

The Peace Committee strongly urged Friends to become involved in other peace organisations and activities, locally, nationally and internationally. Its own publications show a perhaps surprising willingness to appeal to its audience in non-denominational, sometimes purely lay, terms.

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Civil liberty or military despotism, postcard issued by the Peace Committee of the Society of Friends, 1913. Library ref.: Vol. T/218-219i

The Peace Committee was concerned to involve young Friends, and its membership was not limited to those already serving on the Meeting for Sufferings. Women had played an important role in the Committee from the beginning, including some indefatigable campaigners, such as Ellen Robinson (1840-1912), and later, during the War, Marian E. Ellis (1878-1952) and Joan Mary Fry (1862-1955).

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What sources does the Library hold on the work of Friends Peace Committee during the First World War?

Peace Committee archives: minutes

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Peace Committee minutes 6 August 1914 ( PE/M5, p.194)

The Library holds the archives of Friends Peace Committee from 1888 to 1965,

when its work was taken over by the new Peace & International Relations Committee. The World War I years are covered by two minute books for the years 1912-1916  and 1916-1921.

In the first year of the War a War Sub-committee was formed, with a membership extending outside the Peace Committee. Its records consist of one minute book recording eight meetings between 2 January and 2 November 1915.

Publication and distribution of peace literature was an important part of the Peace Committee’s activity, and mentioned regularly in its minutes and reports. Its Literature Sub-committee maintained a separate volume of minutes for the years 1912-1915.

Archives of the Peace Committee and its sub-committees during the years of World War I:

• Peace Committee minutes (1912-1916)  (reference PE/M5)
• Peace Committee minutes (1916-1921)  (reference PE/M6)

• Literature Sub-committee minutes (1912-1915)

•  War Sub-committee minutes and papers (1915)

Peace Committee reports

The Peace Committee’s annual reports to Meeting for Sufferings are published in the printed Proceedings of London Yearly Meeting (the annual gathering of British Quakers, now known as Britain Yearly Meeting).

• Report for year 1913-1914              Yearly Meeting Proceedings 1914 p.111-117
• Report for year 1914-1915              Yearly Meeting Proceedings 1915 p.10-16
• Report for year 1915-1916              Yearly Meeting Proceedings 1916 p.17-21
• Report for year 1916-1917              Yearly Meeting Proceedings 1917 p.51-55
• Report for year 1917-1918              Yearly Meeting Proceedings 1918 p. 39-41
• Report for year 1918-1919              Yearly Meeting Proceedings 1919 p. 57-60

The peace testimony, war and the question of service in wartime were obviously dominant concerns for London Yearly Meeting during the war years. The printed Proceedings record minutes on these subjects sent up for consideration by quarterly meetings around the country, as well as minutes and public statements of the Yearly Meeting itself.

Reports of other Quaker committees are also of interest for understanding the role of the Peace Committee: it would be mistaken to see its work in isolation from that of the new committees which sprang up in response to the needs of the times, sharing both members and interests, such as the Service Committee, the War Victims Relief Committee and the Emergency Committee for the Assistance of Germans, Austrians & Hungarians in Distress (the latter two of which eventually merged).  These organisations will be the subject of future blogposts of their own.

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Extract from War Sub-committee minute 3, 2.ix.1915, referring to service of its members on a “multitude of committees”

An index was issued with each year’s printed Yearly Meeting Proceedings, printed at the front of each year.  The Library also holds a cumulative typescript index covering the period 1907-1932 (unpublished; available in the Library reading room).

Peace Committee membership records

Peace Committee was one of the larger central committees, with an expanded membership varying from 35 to 42 during the period of the First World War. Names of individual members were published in the printed annual lists of members of Meeting for Sufferings and its committees. A month by month record of appointments made by Meeting for Sufferings can be found in the minutes of Meeting for Sufferings. The Library has compiled an index of all Friends who served on the Peace Committee, including birth and death dates and dates of service (unpublished; available in the Library reading room).

Suggestions of Friends to serve on Peace Committee or its sub-committees also came from the Committee itself, and the Committee’s minutes are the main source of information about attendance of other Quakers who weren’t actually members of the Committee. For instance, on 6 August 1914, an emergency meeting of Peace Committee “with other interested Friends” was held, with Thomas P. Newman (in the chair), John Armstrong , J. Marshall Sturge,  F. J. Edminson, Herbert Corder, Mary L. Cooke, J. G. Alexander, Stephen Hobhouse, Marian Matthews (Letchworth), Marian Ellis, Harriet Alexander, Theodora Wilson Wilson, Alfred F. Fox, and E. Claude Taylor.

Peace Committee publications

Publications of the Peace Committee between 1914 and 1919 are included on the Library’s online catalogue, including books, pamphlets, circulars and postcards. To find full details, you can search the catalogue by organisation or by publisher, and limit your search by date.

The Peace Committee also produced a series of posters, some of which survive in our picture collection.

Further sources

Horace G. Alexander. “A nearly forgotten chapter in British peace activity – 1915.” Journal of the Friends Historical Society, vol. 55, no.5 ( 1987), p. 139-143. First hand account of the work of the War Sub-Committee by Horace G. Alexander, who served on it as a young man.

Margaret Glover. Images of peace in Britain from the late nineteenth century to the Second World War. PhD thesis, University of Reading, 2002.

Thomas C. Kennedy. British Quakerism 1860-1920: the transformation of a religious community.  Oxford University Press, 2001. Especially chapter 9, “A ghoulish terror of darkness” p.312-387.

Thomas C. Kennedy. “Many Friends do not know where they are.” Quaker theology, no. 11 (2005).  (Available online here).

Paul Laity. The British Peace Movement 1870-1914. Oxford University Press, 2001.  Origins of the Friends Peace Committee (p. 118-123) and the pre-war peace movement (p. 176-215).

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Most of the men who found themselves imprisoned for conscientious objection during World War I were characterised as absolutist objectors. These men were not willing to participate in the war effort to any extent, turning down non-combatant duties and alternative work which would contribute to the war effort. The absolutists primarily consisted of members of the No-Conscription Fellowship, formed by Clifford Allen and Fenner Brockway, members of the Independent Labour Party  and other socialist groups, Quakers and members of other religious bodies such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses – or indeed those who counted themselves as members of more than one of these groups.

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“Set them free”. Postcard, unknown source, undated [1916-1918?]. Part of Rowland Philcox Papers (Library ref. TEMP MSS 197/5)

The Winchester Whisperer, the clandestine prison newspaper written by COs in Winchester Prison, has been getting a lot of attention recently in the media and rightly so – you can read an article about it here.

However, there are other less well known collections which paint a fuller picture of what life was like for imprisoned COs during the war. You can see a list of some of these  collections in our subject guide on Conscientious objectors and the peace movement in Britain 1914-1945, available on our website here: http://www.quaker.org.uk/subject-guides.

To highlight the collections we can look at some common themes which emerge from the material, mainly contemporary correspondence and diaries.

A challenge to the authorities

The absolutists really challenged the government’s enforcement of the Military Service Act and the procedures in local and central tribunals, military courts, and civilian prisons for dealing with these men. This is reflected in the manuscript collections as the men describe their treatment, being passed from pillar to post through the civil and military courts systems, from barracks, to civilian prisons, and to work camps. The initial attitude taken by the authorities is described by Cornelius Barritt (1883-1967):

“In the evening an officer visited me in my cell and asked ‘How long are you going to keep this up, you belong to King and country now and must do as you are told’, to which I answered ‘I shall keep this up as long as strength is given me to do so’” (Cornelius Barritt, Diary while in the hands of the military. Library ref. TEMP MSS 62/MISC/DIA/1)

Barritt was first tried in March 1916, then taken to France where he was brought before Field General Court Martial and sentenced to death on the 10th of June, later commuted to ten years penal servitude. He spent time in Winchester Prison, before being sent to work camps in Dyce and Wakefield. As an absolutist, he refused to participate in the work scheme and was sent back to Maidstone Prison, where he remained until 1919.

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Cornelius Barritt’s ‘soldier’s pay book’ showing his sentence: “Sentenced to death. Sentence commuted to 10 years penal servitude by General Sir D. Haig” (Library ref. TEMP MSS 62/COR/LT/4)

The government seemed to underestimate the power of these men to stick to their principles, and many of the collections describe soldiers, prison guards and judges gradually coming to respect the strength of those principles.

This recognition and ceaseless campaigning on their behalf led to attitudes softening somewhat in some government circles, and much debate in the cabinet over their treatment. Some COs were released in 1917 on medical grounds and certain privileges were granted to them in prisons.

As well as challenging authorities, the COs found it somewhat a challenge to organize a common strategy among them, as their ideas on the forms of objection differed and changed throughout the war. This is well reflected in the letters of Roland Philcox (1877-1965) and Joseph C. S. Elliott (TEMP MSS 197), who were active in the No-Conscription Fellowship and described in detail the range of attitudes of the men they encounter in prison. Philcox shows the uncompromising attitude some of the absolutists adopted:

“These N.C.C. [Non-Combatant Corps] men reported themselves in the ordinary manner, they are quite willing to do work but not killing. They are the shirkers and have let us down, for we stickers out are in a minority.” (Library ref. TEMP MSS 197/1)

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Correspondence from Rowland Philcox during his imprisonment as a conscientious objector, 1916-1918 (Library ref. TEMP MSS 197/1)

A new generation of prison reformers

Another common thread running through the personal accounts of imprisoned COs in World War I is the insight into prison conditions they gain from their time in civilian prisons and how this develops into an interest in prison reform – carrying on a strong Quaker tradition.

Many of them describe in detail the difficulties of solitary confinement, poor sanitation, limited opportunity for conversation with fellow inmates, and – a constant feature in all the accounts – prison food, with Philcox (a vegetarian) even including a handwritten menu for Maidstone Prison! (Library ref. TEMP MSS 197/1)

Elliott, who rarely complains about prison conditions, describes an encounter in Mountjoy Prison to illustrate the attitude of the clerk, but it shows the toll the experience has taken on him physically:

“Just then another clerk said ‘You lost some weight in here!’ So the clerk said sneeringly:- ‘Yes that’s his disobedience; he would not have lost 3 stone if (he) did what he was told.’” (Library ref. TEMP MSS 197/2)

The men were often on punishment diet of bread and water for refusing to undertake tasks they felt conflicted with their beliefs.

The ultimate sacrifice

What emerges most strongly from the accounts and correspondence of these men is the strength of their conviction. They speak passionately and intelligently about their reasons for opposing the war.

Philcox expresses the strength of his conviction eloquently in an early letter when the men are being threatened with the death sentence in France:

“I expect my comrades at liberty are agitated by the news of our probable fate, but I suggest that they do not devote all their efforts to procuring our release. Remember that the ideas of patriotism and militarism are surrounded with the glamour of self-sacrifice which the heroism of innumerable soldiers has cast upon them – sacrifice hallows any cause…When the final hour arrives…the principles of International Fraternity will be placed on an equal footing to the prejudice of patriotism.” (Library ref. TEMP MSS 197/1)

In the papers of Arnold Rowntree MP (1872-1951), there is an extreme example of the hardship endured by C.O.s – a vivid demonstration that the path of the absolutist was not an easy one, taken by cranks and shirkers. The account tells how H. Firth arrived at the Dartmoor work camp malnourished after spending 8 months in Wormwood Scrubs and Maidstone Prisons. The men appealed on his behalf, on seeing his weakened state, but he was immediately put onto heavy quarry work. After one collapse, they moved him on to ‘whitewashing’ which was done through the night, from 7.30pm to 5.30am. He eventually ended up in the camp hospital after another collapse.

The account recalls:

 “He was in a very emaciated condition and complained then and repeatedly of great weakness and thirst….On January the 8th he again applied to the doctor, complaining of the cold, and was met with the usual taunt that it was selfish, and that the soldiers in the trenches had to put up with worse

…

On that day he (the doctor) met Firth’s request for eggs for food with the remark that they were all needed for wounded soldiers. Three eggs arrived the next day when Firth was dead, for he died at 8.55 am on Wednesday morning, February 5th. The previous evening, a friend suggested  that Firth’s wife should be telegraphed for, but the doctor replied that it was quite unnecessary. Death  was due to diabetes .”  (Arnold S. Rowntree Papers, Correspondence with conscientious objectors. Library ref. TEMP MSS 977/2/12)

The brief selection of highlights above just starts to scratch the surface of the amount of material we have which really gets inside the minds of conscientious objectors and makes their prison experiences vivid for today’s researcher.

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Letter written on prison lavatory paper by Rowland Philcox and smuggled out of prison. Part of Rowland Philcox Papers (Library ref. TEMP MSS 197/1)

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