The records of the Friends Ambulance Unit are the focus of this blog post, the latest in our series on resources for researching World War I.

Established in the First World War and revived in the second, the Friends Ambulance Unit was an unofficial Quaker organisation, constitutionally independent of the Society of Friends. It both provided an opportunity for active service for Quakers and other pacifists who felt called to play a part, and also, after the introduction of conscription in 1916, came (eventually, and to a limited extent) to be recognised by the Military Service Tribunals as providing an acceptable form of alternative noncombatant service. Its records are held in the Library, along with personal papers, photographs and published accounts of its work.

FAU Section Sanitaire Anglaise 14 at Dunkirk 1916

From the earliest days of the War, many Friends felt called to offer service that would be compatible with the Quaker peace testimony. A call for young Friends to volunteer was published in The Friend of 21 August 1914, and a training camp was established at Jordans, Buckinghamshire in September 1914, where about 60 young Friends assembled to prepare for active service – first-aid to the wounded, stretcher-drill, sanitation and hygiene, and field-cookery as well as physical training. The First Anglo-Belgian Ambulance Unit, later Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU), set out for Dunkirk on 31 October 1914. The Friends Ambulance Unit came to number over a thousand members.

There were two sections – the Foreign Service Section and the Home Service Section. The Foreign Service Section worked on ambulance convoys and ambulance trains with the French and British armies in France and Belgium; provided help to those affected by the typhoid epidemic in Ypres (December 1914 to May 1915); staffed hospitals and hospital ships; provided relief to civilians, helping establish orphanages, water purification and the distribution of milk and clothing.

Measuring spoons and instructions (in French and Flemish) for using chloride of lime to purify water. These were distributed by the FAU in the countryside surrounding Ypres after German bombing cut off the main water supply in November 1914 (Arnold S. Rowntree Papers, Library reference: Temp MSS 977/4)

The Home Service Section dispatched food, petrol and medical supplies, coordinated training at Jordans, and dealt with applicants for service, as well as sending members to staff to hospitals in England. Its General Service Section organised work for conscientious objectors who could not join the FAU for financial or other reasons – in agriculture, forestry, education, construction, surgical appliance and food manufacture, or service with the Friends’ War Victims Relief Committee, the Friends’ Emergency Committee and the Y.M.C.A.

FAU Training Camp group photograph, Oxhey Grange, Hertfordshire, August 1915 (Library reference: Temp MSS 881/PHOT/JOR/41)

What sources does the Library hold on the work of Friends Ambulance Unit during the First World War?

The Library holds a substantial collection of material relating to the Friends Ambulance Unit in World War I – the records of the FAU itself, contemporary and souvenir publications, photographs, personal papers of FAU members, works of art and objects, as well as secondary sources on its work. A selection of sources is given in our subject guide Friends’ service in the First World War available on the Library’s web-pages, and full records for many of them are available on our online catalogue. This blog post aims to highlight some of the most important.

Ambulance Train 16 with members of Friends Ambulance Unit (Library reference: Temp MSS 881/PHOT/ATR/2)

Printed sources on the FAU

The first resort for anyone researching the FAU is the comprehensive official Unit history by Meaburn Tatham and James E. Miles, The Friends’ Ambulance Unit, 1914-1919: a record (1919). There is no subject index, but it includes a list of Unit names at the end.

Lists of members were printed at various dates after the War for reunions and for contact purposes, including joint World War I and World War II lists in 1959 and 1975. For most researchers, the 1919 published list is the most useful: it includes names of FAU members who died in service, and – of particular interest for local research – lists of members with addresses, arranged by English county, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and overseas, plus lists of deceased members.

The Library also holds contemporary publications of the FAU and commemorative anthologies of Unit newsletter material. Here’s a selection:

• Friends Ambulance Unit (1914–1919). Report. 1^st – 4^th (1915–1917)
• Friends’ Ambulance Unit magazine no. 1–6 (1916–1921)
• The swallow: a monthly journal issued by members of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, Uffculme Hospital, Birmingham Vol. 1, no.1 – Vol. 3, no.5 (March 1917 – July 1918)
• The little grey book. Published by former members of FAU Section Sanitaire Anglaise 13 (SSA13). Includes a list of members.
• A train errant: being the experiences of a voluntary unit in France and an anthology from their magazine (1919). Published by former members of No. 16 Ambulance Train. This train was given to the British Red Cross Society in 1915, staffed at first by the Royal Army Medical Corps and later by Friends Ambulance Unit. Includes a list of personnel. Also includes republished extracts from The orderly review, a newsletter first published in 1915, which has not survived in our collections.
• Lines of communication: a souvenir volume, being pages from the train magazines which were published whilst on active service, together with descriptions of ambulance train life (1919). Published by former members of FAU Section Sanitaire Anglaise 17 (SSA17). Includes a map of operations and a list of members.
• The Fourgon: Ambulance Train no. XI, B.E.F. France: souvenir number, January 1919 (1919)
• Two years with the French Army: Section Sanitaire Anglaise 19: an account of the work of a motor ambulance convoy of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, B.R.C.S., 1916-1918 (1919)
• “Old seventeeners”: being members of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit who served on No. 17 Ambulance Train (1919). Includes a complete list with dates of their service on the train and permanent addresses

Extensive news of FAU activities was reported in the British Quaker weekly The Friend; many of these articles are currently being added to our online catalogue.

Two years with the French Army: Section Sanitaire Anglaise 19 (1919)

Friends Ambulance Unit archives

The records of the FAU include Committee minutes, Executive Committee minutes, personnel records, newsletter records and photographs. Personnel records are strongest, with a number of series – most importantly the Personnel record card indexes. The records have been fully catalogued and more details are available here on our online archive catalogue. Here is a list with references (each series reference should be preceded by the collection reference: TEMP MSS 881/)

Minutes:

• C: Committee minutes (1914-1920)
• EC: Executive Committee minutes (1916-1921). 3 volumes

Personnel records:

• PER/CARD/1 AND 2: Personnel record card indexes. Series 1 records members who served in France and Series 2 is the central personnel card index. Both are available on microfilm in the Library – the originals are not usually produced for readers.
• PER/CF: Census forms (application forms) for current serving members.
• PER/CFL: Census forms (application forms) for members who had left FAU.
• PER/CLE: Census forms – clearing file for those in process of leaving.
• PER/REG: Registration forms. In fragile condition.
• PER/INF: Workers trained by FAU working for other organisation.
• PER/ABS/1: Absence record book. Includes information on those rejoining FAU after leaving, 1915-1918; a list of killed and wounded 1915-1918; chronological records of names joining the Unit, 1914-1919. This volume also shows some calculations which may be useful: average service in months (monthly) 1914 onwards, and Unit numerical strength, 1917 onwards.
• PER/LOC: Personnel location diary for the work in France, showing changes of function and job.

Photographs, drawings and other records:

• PHOT: Photograph series. 341 photographs catalogued to item level.
• ALB: Photograph album specifically for Section Sanitaire Anglaise 19.
• DRAW: Drawings. 2 only.
• LET: Letters. 3 only: these are clearly stray items.
• NEWS: “Newsletters”. In fact these are production records and drafts, rather than newsletters (published newsletters and souvenir volumes described above are in the printed collections; their shelfmarks can be found through the online catalogue).
• PLAN: Plan. 1 plan for a proposed FAU hospital.

This is a high quality archive, in relation to what has survived, but it is not as extensive in size as might be expected of a comparable organisation. Minutes, personnel records and visual materials are well preserved and represented, but field records, whether staff or group meeting notes, daily/ weekly/ monthly reports, correspondence with area Headquarters, or Head Office, or files relating to FAU-military relations, are all absent from this collection.

Members’ record cards TEMP MSS 881 PER/CARD/1 and 2) are the most frequently used part of the archive. They have been microfilmed to protect them from damage by handling, and plans are afoot for future digitisation. Some other parts of the collection are fragile and may not, as a rule, be available for production.

Friends Ambulance Unit Dependants Fund Committee was formed to assist relatives and dependants of men serving in the FAU. Its records consist of one volume of minutes (1916-1919) and a volume of Treasurer’s accounts (1916-1919), separate from the FAU archive (Library reference MS Box U1/2).

FAU service card for Lionel Sharples Penrose

Personal papers and other records of FAU work – a selection of unpublished sources

• Scrapbook compiled by Sidney A. Henry (Library reference MS Vol 202)
• Autograph book of FAU members presented to Leslie B. Maxwell (Library reference MS Vol S 284)
• Diaries of John W. Major, 1916-1918 (Library reference Temp MSS 606)
• Account of Laurie Rowntree (Library reference Temp MSS 636)
• Certificate of service for Cyril Kaye (Library reference Temp MSS 774)
• Account of C. R. Dingle (Library reference Temp MSS 846)
• Paul S. Cadbury papers (Library reference Temp MSS 999)
• Rachel E. Wilson papers (Library reference Temp MSS 1000)
• Letters concerning Corder Catchpool and the FAU (Library reference MS Box E2/8)

Other personal accounts have been published or privately printed, often by descendants of FAU members. Find out more by searching our online catalogue by subject Friends Ambulance Unit (1914-1919).

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

FAU SSA14 song book (Alan F. Ardley Papers. Library reference: Temp MSS 452)

The Wartime Statistics Committee was established by Meeting for Sufferings in June 1917, a year after the introduction of conscription, to collect statistics on men of military age. Its records are of value for researchers interested in British Quakers and World War I at a national, local and individual level.

In the years up to the war, the Society of Friends campaigned vigorously for peace and against militarism, as an expression of its continuing peace testimony.  The declaration of war in August 1914 presented a new challenge, as patriotic fervour swept the country and voluntary enlistment soared in response to a mass military recruitment campaign.

Like other young men of military age, young Friends were exposed to intense pressure to enlist, and from March 1916 they were obliged to do so by law. Many objected on grounds of conscience, appearing before their local Military Service Tribunal: some offered themselves for alternative work (such as service with the Friends Ambulance Unit), while others were “absolutists” who refused all service associated with the military (and were frequently imprisoned). Some Friends did enlist, however, as two recently published accounts of Quaker schools and World War I describe (Sidcot in the Great War by Christine Gladwin, and Great ideals: Leighton Park and the First World War by John Allison and Charlotte Smith).

What can the records of the Wartime Statistics Committee tell us about these choices?

Wartime Statistics Committee “Returns of service during wartime” – 1 of the 4 Kalamazoo binders (Library reference YM/MfS/WSTC/R/1-4)

The Wartime Statistics Committee was set up in June 1917 under the convenorship of Edith M. Ellis (1878-1963). Its remit was to obtain and tabulate statistics of members and attenders of military age who were working for, or in connection with, Friends Emergency Committee, Friends War Victims Relief Committee or Friends Ambulance Unit.  In July Meeting for Sufferings decided that “associates” (i.e. non-Quakers closely associated through adult schools, Bible study groups, or similar) should be included, as well as members and attenders.

No minutes of the committee have survived, but we can follow its gradual progress in reports to Meeting for Sufferings. It finally reported[1] on 3 November 1922 that returns had been obtained from all but seven monthly meetings[2]. In most cases the information covered the period up to December 1917, a few going on to March 1918.

Wartime Statistics Committee final report to Meeting for Sufferings, November 1922 (Yearly Meeting Proceedings 1923, p.231-232)

The brief report tells us that an analysis of 1,666 returns for members of the Society of Friends showed, for example, that 40.2% of men of military age applied for, and were granted, exemption as conscientious objectors, and 17.3% on other grounds, while 33.6% enlisted. However, these statistics are far from straight forward, as we found when preparing this blog post. The report refers to figures for members of the Society of Friends – presumably excluding hundreds of returns for attenders and “associates” – but it is not even clear whether all members’ returns were analysed. Tantalisingly, no mention is made of data gathered on occupation, age, pre-war social or religious service, specific wartime occupation (for example, which Quaker organisation, whether combatant or non-combatant military service). The report suggests that this rich data was tabulated, but unfortunately no tables survive. As we discovered though, a file on the “Statistics Scheme” among the records of the Service Committee (Library reference YM/MfS/SER/3/2) does include sample tables and keys to at least some of the codes used on the returns.

While the analysis and final report may be scanty, the returns from which they were compiled do survive, and are of great interest for researchers. These “Returns of service during wartime” (Library reference YM/MfS/WSTC) consist of record sheets for named individuals sent in by monthly meetings, grouped by wider quarterly meetings (QM) into four “Kalamazoo” binders. The arrangement is described on our online archive catalogue, as follows:

YM/MfS/WSTC/R/1
South Australia Two Months Meeting, Bedfordshire QM, Berkshire & Oxon QM, Bristol & Somerset QM, Cumberland QM, Derby, Lincoln & Nottinghamshire QM, Devon & Cornwall QM and Durham QM.

YM/MfS/WSTC/R/2
Essex & Suffolk QM, Kent QM, Lancashire & Cheshire QM, and London & Middlesex QM.

YM/MfS/WSTC/R/3
Norfolk, Cambridge & Huntingdon QM, Sussex, Surrey & Hampshire QM, Warwick, Leicester & Stafford QM.

YM/MfS/WSTC/R/4
Westmorland QM, Yorkshire QM and Scotland General Meeting.

Each monthly meeting’s returns are filed alphabetically by surname, members separate from attenders and associates. The return sheets include sections for personal details, pre-war occupation, pre-war social, religious or public work, employment or service record since the start of the war, and a record of tribunals, courts, decisions and sentences. Click on one of the images below for a closer look.

The returns offer scope for a re-analysis of the national or regional data about the wartime experience of Quakers and those associated with Quaker meetings, and, perhaps more importantly, fascinating biographical data for those researching individuals or local meetings during the war.

[1] Yearly Meeting Proceedings 1923, p.231-232

[2] Witney, Witham, Canterbury & Folkestone, Ratcliff & Barking, Alton, Southampton & Poole, Staffordshire, and Hereford & Radnor

The white feather diaries is an online Quaker storytelling project to mark the centenary of World War I. It offers an insight into overlooked aspects of war: resistance to killing and the relief of suffering.

Going live on Monday 4 August 2014, The white feather diaries follow the lives of five young people who lived a century ago and opposed World War I. Their stories, published periodically over the next three years, take us from the outbreak of war to the introduction of conscription and groundbreaking legislation recognising conscientious objection. Through daily posts and tweets they share their moral dilemmas and difficult decisions.

The period 1914–16 was a time of social, political and religious upheaval. The white feather diaries capture this change through individual journeys. All five diarists featured were, or became, Quakers.

For those wanting to delve further into these fascinating stories, each blog entry includes rich background material about the content of the post or the diarist and their contemporaries.

The white feather diaries blog starts on Monday, and you can get involved now by liking the Facebook page or following the White feather diaries on Twitter.

Research for the project drew on some of the resources held here at the Library, such as the Hilda Clark Papers (Temp MSS 301), Howard Marten’s papers, including White feather: the experience of a pacifist in France and elsewhere (Temp MSS 67/4), the John Brocklesby Papers (Temp MSS 412) and John Hoare: a pacifist’s progress: papers from the First World War, edited by Richard J. Hoare (1996).

It’s sometimes said that the richness of a library’s collection can be judged by the number and variety of its pamphlets. This Library has over a thousand boxes and volumes of pamphlets, which we aim to catalogue individually.

Pamphlets have long been used to popularise political or religious ideas, or as an important campaigning tool, and can be issued speedily in response to unfolding events. Cheap to produce and distribute, they can be printed in much larger numbers than books – yet their physical flimsiness means their chances of survival are often lower. Pamphlets, posters and ephemera are frequently among the rarest items in library collections. When they survive, they can be a rich primary source on the opinions and activities of pressure groups, campaigning bodies and individuals.

The Library holds hundreds of pamphlets produced before, during and immediately after World War I. The collection is not limited to Quaker material, but includes pamphlets of all kinds, both religious and secular[1], on a wide range of peace and war related topics[2]. Among them are a core of 400 plus “War Tracts” collected by Philip Millwood, donated by him to the Adult School Guest House, Guildford in 1921 and arriving at this Library in 1930.

All of the peace pamphlets have been catalogued, as part of our ongoing Retrospective Cataloguing Project, and can be searched using our online catalogue. TIP: For a more effective search use “Advanced search” and select Library catalogue > Books, to search by title, author, organisation, publication year or subject – or use “Expert search” and search in Library catalogue > Books for a wider range of search options, including date range, publisher, language and publication type.

Grants for the 18 month peace project included funds for dis-binding 37 tightly bound volumes of “War tracts” and “Peace pamphlets”, conserving and re-housing the pamphlets in archival quality boxes, for better preservation and ease of use.

[1] Publications of the following organisations are represented:

Alternative Service Guild
American Association for International Conciliation
Anti-Conscription League
British Stop the War Committee
Fabian Society
Fellowship of Reconciliation [active from 1914 -  ]
Friends Peace Committee
Friends Service Committee
Friends War Victims Relief Committee (1914-1919)
Independent Labour Party (Great Britain)
National Council against Conscription
National Council for Civil Liberties
National Peace Council [1908 – 2000]
No Conscription Fellowship [1914- ]
Northern Friends Peace Board
Rationalist Peace Society [1910 – 1920s]
School Peace League
Socialist Quaker Society
Swiss Committee for the Study of the Principles of a Durable Treaty of Peace
Union of Democratic Control [1914- 1960s]
War & Social Order Committee (1915-1928)
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
Workers’ Anti-Militarist Committee
World Peace Foundation [organisation in Boston, Mass., active from 1910]

You might also search these publishers:
Limit Printing and Publishing – owned by George Lansbury
Headley Brothers – a favoured Quaker publishing company
National Labour Press
War and Peace – pacifist journal founded by Norman Angell, October 1913

[2] Some World War I related subject areas covered  by peace pamphlet collection:

Peace, international understanding, arbitration, foreign policy and diplomacy, Hague Conference, peace conferences, militarisation, armaments, disarmament, League of Nations

Military training, Military Service Acts, Australasia Defence Acts, conscription, pacifism, non-violence, conscientious objection, absolute conscientious objection, tribunals, prisons, prison ministers, Defence of the Realm Act (1917), censorship

Christianity and war, Just war, atrocities, women, refugees, relief, food supply

Christian socialism, social justice, League of Nations

Where would you look for news, reflections, debate or comment on World War I events as they unfolded? Contemporary magazines, newsletters and reports are a fruitful resource for researchers studying Quaker thought and activity during the war and its aftermath. This blog post aims to give an overview of periodicals held here relating to relief work of organisations like Friends Ambulance Unit or Friends Emergency & War Victims Relief Committee, as well as those from the peace and anti-conscription movement. We touch on general Quaker magazines of the period too: inevitably, wartime issues are a recurring theme.

Relief work periodicals

Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) produced four annual reports from 1914 to 1917 (Library reference:  Pers U/F7/AMB/1). In 1916 a monthly (later irregular) FAU magazine started up, featuring poetry and creative writing by members of the FAU. The Library has two incomplete sets, between them including the total 6 issues published until 1921 (Library reference: Pers/F7/AMB). After the end of the war, the Friends Ambulance Unit Association magazine ran for six issues between December 1919 and September 1921, aimed at keeping former members of the FAU in contact with one another (Library reference: Pers/F7/AMB).

Friends Ambulance Unit Association Magazine
(Library reference: Pers/F7/AMB)

Various FAU Sections Sanitaires Anglaises printed souvenir magazines, including artwork, verse and short stories, as well as some accounts of work in the field.

• The little grey book (for SSA 13) (Library reference: 066.44 LIT)
• A train errant (for SSA 16) (Library reference: 066.44 TRA)
• Lines of communication (for SSA 17) (Library reference: 066.44 LIN)
• Two years with the French Army…SSA 19 (for SSA 19) (Library reference: 066.44 FRI)

The Swallow: a monthly journal issued by members of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, Uffculme Hospital, Birmingham (Library reference: Pers/F7/AMB) is unique as the only periodical specifically connected to a project in England. Uffculme Hospital helped fit replacement limbs for those injured in military action.

The Swallow: a monthly journal issued by members of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit, Uffculme Hospital, Birmingham, vol. 1, no. 3 (May 1917)
(Library reference: Pers/F7/AMB)

We hold the printed reports of the Friends Emergency Committee for the Assistance of Germans, Austrians & Hungarians in Distress for 1914-1919 (Library reference: Pers/EMER). In 1919 it merged with the Friends War Victims Relief Committee (FWVRC) to form the new Friends Emergency & War Victims Relief Committee (FEWVRC): the reports for these two committees cover the years 1914 to 1923 (Library reference Pers/F7/WAR).

Friends War Victims Relief Committee Report, no. 2 (February – October 1915)
(Library reference Pers/F7/WAR)

A number of short-lived newsletters and journals emanated from Quaker relief work in Europe, as follows (our copies are bound together; Library reference: Pers/B/AMI) -

• L’Ami, published by FWVRC Vol. 1, no. 1 (10^th month, 1915)
• L’Éclaireur de la mission, published by FWVRC at Châlons sur Marne, Vol. 1, nos. 1 and 2 (1917)
• L’Équipe, published by the American Friends Reconstruction Unit, nos. 1-4 (14 August – 4 September 1917)

These were succeeded by a new monthly journal, Reconstruction: journal of the Friends’ relief missions in Europe (April 1918 – May 1920) (Library reference: Pers/B/REC). This in turn was replaced by International service: bulletin of the Society of Friends’ relief missions in Europe, which ran for 35 issues between 1920 and 1923 (Library reference Pers/INT). Reconstruction and International service include field reports and photographs, reports from the London office, personnel movements, occasional obituaries of relief workers, such as Violet Tillard (International service, no. 18, March 1920), as well as art and poetry features. There are articles by prominent Friends such as Anna Ruth Fry, Edith Pye, Corder Catchpool, Carl Heath, Elizabeth Fox Howard and T. Edmund Harvey (the editor of Reconstruction).

Report on relief work in revolutionary Russia, in Reconstruction, vol. 1 no. 9 (December 1918)
(Library reference: Pers/B/REC)

Peace and conscientious objection periodicals

The No-Conscription Fellowship came into existence in the early months of the war, bringing together opponents of military conscription of all stripes. The Tribunal, its newspaper, was published in 182 issues from March 1916 to January 1920 (Library reference for facsimile reprint: Pers/TRIB; Library reference for original edition: SR 051.57. To help preserve the original, readers are expected to use the facsimile reprint whenever possible). We also hold The C.O.’s Hansard: a weekly reprint from the official parliamentary reports (Library reference: Pers/CENT). This too was published by the No-Conscription Fellowship, 1916-1919. As the title suggests, it covers parliamentary debates on issues relating to C.O.s, often focusing on particular cases of interest raised by sympathetic MPs. Other peace periodicals include reports and newsletters from newly formed pacifist organisations such as the Northern Friends Peace Board and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, as well as the National Peace Council (formed 1908). Details can be found on our online catalogue.

Other Quaker periodicals

The Ploughshare, published by the Socialist Quaker Society between 1912 and 1920, ran articles on militarism and conscientious objection during the period (Library reference: Pers/PLOUGH). It was co-edited by Hubert Peet (1886-1951), himself imprisoned as a conscientious objector: The Ploughshare includes coverage of his case. You can read more about The Ploughshare in an earlier blogpost.

Reports on censorship, imprisonment and debates on alternative service, in The Ploughshare (1916) p.226-227
(Library reference: Pers/PLOUGH)

War and the Social Order Committee Circular letter and news sheet, published 1917-1919, reflects Friends’ growing interest in social and political causes of conflict (Library reference: Pers L/WAR). At a local level, The Doncaster link, newsletter of Doncaster Quaker Meeting, includes accounts of relief work Yorkshire Friends were involved in, such as a hostel for German children, along with the work of FAU and FEWVRC (Library reference Pers L/LINK). General Quaker periodicals also carried occasional articles relevant to the war, including Friends quarterly examiner (shelved in the Library reading room) and Workers at home and abroad, the monthly magazine of the Friends Foreign Mission Association and the Home Mission & Extension Committee (Library reference: B/Q5/MON). The Friend, the weekly Quaker magazine (also shelved in the reading room), contains invaluable material for researchers, such as reports of Quaker relief work, regular reports and statistics on conscientious objectors, and correspondence on the war. Most of this material has been catalogued to article level, and can be searched on our growing online catalogue. You can also access The Friend 1914-18 Digital Archive online, as part of an annual or monthly subscription.

Readers of this blog will have noticed that we have been focusing intensively on the centenary of World War I. Alongside the usual wide range of research, one in five visits to the Library this year have been by readers researching World War I topics  – the Quaker peace testimony, conscientious objection to military service, war relief work and the lives of individuals involved. Enquiries to the Library on these subjects have gone up too, not least from Quaker Meetings organising  local events and exhibitions around the country. In particular, there is a demand for images for illustrations and displays, and our colleague Melissa Atkinson has been busy researching the image collections for World War I related material. We asked her for a personal highlight.

With the WWI centenary upon us, the Library has been inundated with enquiries. I have discovered so many interesting visual items that it is hard to single one out. I have chosen to write about a photograph album that has gripped my attention (Library reference TEMP MSS 881/ALB). As with any photo album, a story unfolds after every page and I am captivated by the visual story told by its young creator – (Philip) Alan Burtt (1897-1991) who volunteered with the Section Sanitaire Anglaise 19 (SSA19).

Photograph album of Section Sanitaire Anglaise 19
(Library reference: Temp MSS 881/PHOT/ALB)

The Sections Sanitaires Anglaises, collectively referred to as “the French convoys”, made up the Belgian and northern French section of the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU).  They helped transport wounded soldiers from battlefields to hospitals as British motor ambulance convoys working under the French army. FAU was one of the voluntary Units along with the Order of St. John Ambulance and of course the British and American Red Cross.

This album traces Alan Burtt and his unit’s movements around the towns of Coxyde, Zuydcoote, Nieuport, and Pont D’Oye the coast, the trenches and the combat zone.

Alan Burtt was still at Sidcot School when war broke out, and a keen member of the school photography club. While at Sidcot, he would have heard first-hand accounts of conditions on the continent from the former pupils who came back to talk about their war service, whether in the FAU, doing relief work with civilians, or in the army. Alan Burtt signed up for the FAU in July 1915, and trained at Oxhey Grange, Hertfordshire, before leaving for Dunkirk in January 1916 aged 19.

 He was stationed with SSA19 from October 1916 to July 1917, working as an orderly and driver. He transferred back to England to the FAU agricultural section and worked with the Wensleydale Pure Milk Society (a Northallerton dairy farming cooperative founded in 1905). After about a year, he undertook further relief work with the Italian Ambulance Unit which was administered by the British Red Cross.

Like many other albums, autograph books or scrapbooks in the Library, Alan Burtt’s photograph album is a compilation of material from various sources – his own photographs, photographs taken and exchanged by comrades, and copies from official sources (in this instance, French Army photographs). Nonetheless, this a quite a memento for a desperate time. I find the collection both poignant and fascinating. For me, as a curator, these images reveal an aptitude for photography, and sensitivity to the subject. Even though an amateur photographer, Alan Burtt manages to balance devastating subject matter with poetic landscapes and personal experiences.

For the past nine months our blog has been focusing on printed and archival resources for researching World War I and its aftermath. At last it’s the turn of the Library’s “visual resources” – ever-present in the blog and on our Facebook page, but well worth exploring in greater depth. They encompass a wealth of material, including photographs, art works, prints, postcards, costume and artefacts, valuable both as a historical resource in their own right and as a rich trove of illustrative matter. We are delighted to have been able to source and supply images for a host of displays, books, pamphlets, educational resources and websites marking the centenary of World War I.  

This post provides an overview of the Library’s visual resources for World War I.

Visual resources in the archives of Quaker organisations

 Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU)

Among the records of the Friends Ambulance Unit (1914-1919)  (TEMP MSS 881) are photographs, prints and other visual material in the following series:

• Photograph series. 341 photographs catalogued to item level (TEMP MSS 881/PHOT)
• Photograph album for Section Sanitaire Anglaise 19 (SSA19) (TEMP MSS 881/PHOT/ALB)
• Prints, mostly lithographs (TEMP MSS 881/PRI)
• Drawings (2 only) (TEMP MSS 881/DRAW)
• Plan for a proposed FAU hospital (TEMP MSS 881/PLAN)

Friends Emergency & War Victims Relief Committee (FEWVRC)

The newly catalogued and re-packaged Friends Emergency & War Victims Relief Committee archive includes a very large collection of visual material (YM/MfS/FEWVRC/PICS) documenting Quaker relief work in England, France, Holland, Poland, Russia, Germany and Austria, 1914-1926, in 21 boxes (242 folders, 28 photograph albums and 2 scrapbooks) and 7 small boxes (glass plate negatives). Our online exhibition, World War I: responding with compassion gives a glimpse into the collection.

Unloading barrels of cod liver oil, from FEWVRC Russia Famine album (Library reference YM/MfS/FEWVRC/PICS/7/1/63)

Visual resources in personal collections held by the Library

Some collections of personal papers relating to World War I are rich sources of visual material – drawings, photographs, postcards, scrapbooks, badges and clothing. Some prominent examples are:

• Florence Barrow papers on Russia (TEMP MSS 590) including photographs from Efimovka, Russia, 1917 and Sermaize, France
• Paul S. Cadbury papers (TEMP MSS 999) including Friends Ambulance Unit photographs, postcards, sketches, badges and uniforms
• Rachel E. Wilson papers (TEMP MSS 1000) including photographs, sketch book and medal
• Terence Lane papers (TEMP MSS 585) including prison badge, postcards and concert programmes relating to his imprisonment as a C.O.
• Edward Horner (Library reference 93/ALBUM 31 and 32) – two albums of photographs documenting  FEWVRC  work with refugees in and around Dôle (including the Maison Maternelle at Châlons-sur-Marne) and work on board the hospital ship “Western Australia”).

Page from Edward Horner FEWVRC album – scenes from Maison Maternelle de la Marne (Library reference: 93/AL 31)

Visual resources – World War I works of art and objects

The Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) numbered several artists among its members. Some of their work was used to illustrate the official history, Tatham and Miles, The Friends Ambulance Unit 1914-1919.  

Ambulances at Gizaucourt by Arthur N. Cotterell, in FAU Autograph book (Library reference MS VOL S 284)

R. W. Nevinson (1889-1946), later an official war artist, served with the FAU from October 1914 to January 1915, working as stretcher bearer, driver and orderly. The Library holds a first edition of Modern war: paintings by C.R.W. Nevinson (1917), which includes reproductions of paintings like “La patrie” (one of the Tatham and Miles illustrations above), “Motor ambulance driver”, “The doctor”, and “In the observation ward”.

Ernest Procter (1886-1935), the most well-known of the Quaker artists in the FAU, was stationed at Dunkirk. Though not an official war artist, Procter sketched and painted his experiences. The Imperial War Museum has many more of his World War I paintings and drawings, but we do have a set of ten black & white and colour prints among the FAU archives described above (TEMP MSS 881/PRI/EP) and a sketch, Kitchen Dugout, France 1917 (F081).

Less well known is Donald Wood (1889-1953), a Leeds artist who was stationed with SSA19. For some years the Library has held two panels of a triptych entitled ‘The passersby on a road near La Panne, Belgium, 1916’.  We have the middle panel and the right panel (Library references PIC/F002 and PIC/F183), but the whereabouts of the left panel is unknown. Both these panels have been cleaned, repaired and framed.

Detail of La Panne by Donald Wood (1916) (Library reference F183)

Described on his FAU personnel card as a wallpaper manufacturer, Arthur N. Cotterell (born 1885) is well represented in the collections. Sets of prints of his sketches of FAU SSA13 and the area of France where they were stationed are held in the Paul S. Cadbury Papers (TEMP MSS 999/4/7) and the FAU archives (TEMP MSS 881/PRI/COT and TEMP MSS 881/PRI/SSA13)

A little gem from the manuscript collection is the Autograph book of Friends Ambulance Unit members from 1914 to 1917 (MS VOL S 284) presented to Leslie B Maxwell (1894-1953) on his retirement as officer in command of the FAU at the end of 1917. The book was signed and illustrated by FAU members, with original contributions by Allen Chandler, Arthur N. Cotterell, Sims May and Ernest Procter.

Ernest Procter’s room, France, in FAU Autograph book (Library reference MS VOL S284)

Marne 1914-1919 is a small bronze sculpture by Ethel Pye (1882-1960) located in our Reading Room. Ethel Pye, a sculptor working in bronze and wood, was the youngest of seven siblings. One of her sisters was Edith M. Pye (1876-1965), nurse, midwife and Friends War Victims Relief Committee (FWVRC) worker, who established a maternity hospital for refugees in Châlons-sur-Marne, France (Maison Maternelle de la Marne), during the war. Ethel Pye also went to Châlons-sur-Marne for FWVRC in 1917. She later presented a replica of her sculpture to the Châlons Maison Maternelle de la Marne as a memorial to the remarkable work of the FWVRC.

Objects from World War I and the post-war years can also be important visual resources. These range from medals and certificates awarded to individuals for relief work abroad to embroidered textiles produced by refugee women, or the toys and woodwork made by prisoners of war at Knockaloe Camp, Isle of Man. These objects can be seen from time to time in Library displays and elsewhere (the current display on the work of FEWVRC shows a selection of handicraft from POW camps, such as wooden toys, metal ornaments and embroidery). To find out more, contact the Library.

Metal fox made by POWs at Knockaloe, Isle of Man (Library reference MO52)

Apron and armbands worn by Rachel E Wilson (later Cadbury) while working as a Friends Ambulance Unit VAD in World War I, with photographs. Part of the Rachel E. Wilson Papers (Library reference: TEMP MSS 1000)

Library reading room at Friends House, 1925-1927, by Hubert Lidbetter, architect (Library reference: 93/AL/12)

It’s time to look back over the past 12 months on the Quaker Strongrooms blog and ahead to what 2015 may bring. Our posts were unusually focused on one topic over much of the year, reflecting the importance of marking the World War I centenary from a non-militaristic point of view – so if that’s not your interest, thanks for sticking with us and look out for changes ahead!

 2014 started with a personal response to the records of the India Conciliation Group by our reader Sue Smith of Oxford Quaker Meeting, followed by a look at some unusual (for us) volumes of papers on equine veterinary medicine by Bracy Clark. While we weren’t surprised that other researchers made forays into the ICG papers this year, the appearance of a new novel about the reforming veterinarian Bracy Clark later in the year was an unexpected coincidence.

Bracy Clark, An essay on the bots of horses (1815)

For the rest of the year the blog concentrated exclusively on World War I topics, highlighting some of the resources held by the Library, to support Quaker meetings and others marking the centenary over the coming years. We’ve already seen the fruits of some of this research in a host of events, exhibitions, publications from meetings and individuals around the country, not to mention the White Feather Diaries project.

We kicked off our World War I series with a blog post on Friends Peace Committee (predecessor of our present day Quaker Peace & Social Witness), actively promoting peace and international conciliation since the late 1880s. That was followed by Experiences of conscientious objectors, highlighting some of the unpublished resources held by the Library – prison diaries, letters and The Winchester Whisperer, a clandestine C.O. prison newspaper.

Lionel S. Penrose FAU service card

The longest blog post this year was a whistle-stop tour of resources on the Friends Ambulance Unit, including contemporary publications, archives and members’ diaries – a useful introduction to the work of a Quaker effort already becoming the focus of so many centenary projects. It’s great to be able to announce that the FAU personnel record cards have now been digitised and will very shortly be available to search online. And since the FAU blog post appeared, the records of FAU Motor Stores have been made available and added to our online catalogue.

The Wartime Statistics Committee sounded dry, but like the FAU, its records include a fascinating resource for discovering individual histories – a sheet for every conscription age male Quaker or associate reported to the Committee by meetings around the country, with details of wartime service (peace witness, relief, religious or military). The returns have proved invaluable for researchers, including Cyril Pearce (author of Comrades in conscience) for his C.O. database soon to be made public by the Imperial War Museum.

We looked at contemporary publications too, with posts on peace pamphlets and wartime periodicals. After a personal highlight by our Visual Resources Development Officer focusing on the photograph album of Alan Burtt, a young FAU member just out of Sidcot School, putting his school-time enthusiasm for amateur photography to very different use in war ravaged northern France, we published a broad overview of World War I visual resources held by the Library – immensely important as a source of illustrative material for Friends marking the centenary and as a historical source in their own right.

Ambulances at Gizaucourt. Watercolour by Arthur N. Cotterell (Library ref: MS Vol. S284)

Looking ahead to 2015, expect the blog to return to a wider range of topics. We don’t predict a drop in World War I related enquiries or visits to the Library, but it’s clear that research in other areas continues to flourish. The blog will carry highlights, news and glimpses of work behind the scenes, as well as images to bring it all to life.

Lined up already are reports on our 15 month project to catalogue the large archive of the Friends Emergency & War Victims Relief Committee (an organisation which extended beyond the end of the First World War and into post-revolutionary Russia of the 1920s), highlights from the Hawkins Collection of early Quaker printed works (the latest stage in our retrospective cataloguing project), and a look at recent conservation work made possible by the BeFriend a Book fund.

We hope 2015 will be a peaceful and prosperous year for all and look forward to seeing you then – whether you are visiting the Library in person, contacting us from afar or visiting us online!

A 15 month project to catalogue the archives of the Friends Emergency and War Victims Relief Committee (FEWVRC) has now been completed, making accessible the records of an unprecedented Quaker relief effort during and after World War I. The project, one of many Quaker activities to mark the centenary of World War I, was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. It includes a display of photographs and other items from the collection, available to view in the Library and online.

In line with the Quaker peace testimony, many  Friends refused to bear arms and instead, as part of the Society of Friends’ Christian and humanitarian witness, undertook relief work in war ravaged areas. Soon after the outbreak of World War I, a Friends War Victims Relief Committee (FWVRC) was formed to carry out this work, taking the same name as the committee formerly set up to assist victims of war and famine during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871.

The relief workers faced appalling and often dangerous conditions. During the war, building, medical help and agriculture were three key areas of work undertaken by the FWVRC in France, where entire villages had been razed to the ground by the fighting and thousands of people displaced. Prefabricated buildings were constructed to meet the urgent needs of those in the war zone. By 1916 communes like Sermaize-les-Bains, that had been little more than rubble, were transformed by the construction of houses. In Verdun and the departments of the Meuse and Aisne over 1,300 houses were built, giving homes to 4,500 people.

France – construction of buildings (Library reference YM/MfS/FEWVRC/PICS/8/5/4)

Friends took charge of hospitals, implemented a district nursing scheme, and provided dental and eye care  as part of the medical services they offered. Châlons Maternité Hospital was opened to help pregnant and nursing mothers: during its three years in Quaker hands it cared for 3,789 patients, saw the birth of 981 babies and had an infant mortality rate of less than 5% – an astonishing feat considering the time and conditions.

France – Maternity ward, Châlons Hospital (Library reference YM/MfS/FEWVRC/PICS/8/7/4/4)

Farms in the war zone were decimated  and harvests almost completely lost. Teams with mechanical threshers were sent out to villages each season. As a result, in 1917 alone 900 tonnes  of cereals, which would have otherwise been lost, were threshed in regions receiving Quaker help. A machinery repair service was set up, complete with forges and supplies of spare parts. Veterinary care was provided, livestock, including bees, were reared and given to peasants, and 24,000 fruit trees were distributed among 130 communes.

Meanwhile, in Britain Quakers had concerns about the situation faced by “enemy aliens” interned in prison camps, their families and prisoners of war shipped from Europe. A large German population lived and worked in the country, many of them long term residents. With the declaration of war those who were reservists returned to Germany, while those who remained were interned in prison camps, sometimes leaving dependent families destitute. Stephen Hobhouse raised the matter at Meeting for Sufferings on 7 August 1914 and in December 1914 an Emergency Committee was formed. Despite accusations of “aiding the enemy” and “hun-coddling”, the Emergency Committee gained the patronage of many public figures and was registered under the War Charities Act 1916. Much of its early work was directed at finding homes for stranded people and assisting British women who had married German or Austrian men and lost their British citizenship. Such was the demand, volunteer caseworkers assisted 30,000 Germans in London alone.

Early internees were detained in unsuitable accommodation in appalling conditions. 700 civilians were crowded into a derelict factory in Lancaster. Men were kept in horse boxes on Newbury race-course or lodged in ships at Southend and Portsmouth, without heat, lighting or adequate sanitary facilities. These were eventually replaced with internment camps across Britain. The Emergency Committee’s Camps Sub-Committee was established in November 1914  and given the rare privilege of a general permit to all camps, helping to expose abuses, suggest reforms and hear grievances. James T. Baily, who became an Industrial Adviser, was permitted by War Office regulations to “advise” but not “initiate” schemes for education and industry in the camps. These facilities saved many internees from despair and enabled some to send small sums of money to their families.

Weaving hut, Knockaloe Camp II (Library reference YM/MfS/FEWVRC/PICS/10/4/1)

In post-war Europe relief efforts were continued by the now amalgamated Friends’ Emergency and War Victims Relief Committee (FEWVRC). Russia was one of the recipients of its dedicated efforts. Following the October 1917 revolution, relief work in Russia foundered. The Allied blockade remained in place until 1921, although famine was inevitable . The Foreign Office and the new Soviet government opposed Friends’ return to Russia, but in January 1920 the Foreign Office was persuaded to approve the export of goods for use in children’s hospitals, and Hinman J. Baker entered Russia as one of three International Commissioners to supervise the distribution of foreign relief. By July 1920 several colleagues had followed, and a combined feeding scheme with the British Save the Children Fund managed to supplement the rations of 16,000 Moscow children.

However, relief had only reached accessible places: Anna Haines, accompanying a Russian party to Buzuluk in 1921, found conditions so bad that food supplied by the Friends relief mission was diverted from Moscow to Samara town and district. Along with 30 wagons of government food, a kitchen that could prepare 5,000 ration meals, and a dispensary, Quaker relief work began in the area. As more workers became available they managed to distribute supplies across the wider region. Some journeys took two days; horses, weak from hunger, could hardly pull supplies and typhus was an ever present risk. But eventually there were 900 feeding points in 280 villages. The lack of doctors, nurses or medical supplies meant famine related diseases such as typhus and cholera spread quickly. Despite high numbers falling ill, disease was fought by elementary means such as cleaning and disinfecting houses. Twelve clinics were established and in one medical programme alone nearly 30,000 people received a course of quinine tablets. Feeding and medical schemes like these ensured tens of thousands of Russian people were saved from starvation and disease.

Russia – food train distributing food and clothing (Library reference YM/MfS/FEWVRC/PICS/7/11/1)

Russia – operation crew of health train (Library reference (YM/MfS/FEWVRC/PICS/7/1/61)

The Friends Emergency and War Victims Relief Committee catalogue (YM/MfS/FEWVRC), encompassing the records of the FWVRC, Friends Emergency Committee, and the combined FEWVRC, is now searchable online and a printed copy is available to  browse in the Library reading room. The accompanying display of items from the collection can be seen until April 2015, or see the online version here.

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Tract Volume 563 is a miscellaneous collection of pamphlets dating from the 1670s to the early 20th century, unassumingly bound in blue cloth. But among its contents is a pamphlet that includes the first printing of Magna Carta in America, William Penn’s Excellent priviledge of liberty and property being the birth-right of the free-born subjects of England (1687), a subject of some interest, particularly this year, the 800th anniversary of the original Magna Carta.   One of only three known surviving copies of this work (the other two are in the United States), it has been loaned to the British Library for its forthcoming Magna Carta exhibition, as an illustration of the continuing significance of some of Magna Carta’s core principles far beyond the original mediaeval context. So Tract Volume 563 has made its way down Euston Road, leaving Friends House for the first time since 1926, and will be on display in the exhibition at the British Library from 13 March to 1 September 2015.

Penn, William. Excellent priviledge of liberty and property (1687) p. 22-23

The printer of Penn’s Excellent priviledge of liberty and property was William Bradford (1663-1752), apprentice and son-in-law of Andrew Sowle, printer for London Quakers. Bradford and his wife emigrated to America in 1685, where he set up Pennsylvania’s first printing press (and over the years became embroiled in a series of controversies with Quakers and others over his printing activity – but that’s another story).

Penn, William. Excellent priviledge of liberty and property (1687) – title page

Though you won’t be able to read the original here in the Library until it returns at the end of the Magna Carta exhibition, we do have a facsimile, published in 1897 by the Philobiblon Club of Philadelphia; and a digitised version of that facsimile is also available online. Visit the British Library to see our copy of Penn’s Excellent priviledge of liberty and property on display, join in the series of related events or read more about Magna Carta and its legacy on the website.

We’ve recently finished cataloguing the contents of the Hawkins Collection – a remarkable private library bequeathed by Richard Hawkins (1649?-1735) to Westminster Monthly Meeting. The collection consists of 86 bound volumes containing over 1,200 individual publications – books, pamphlets and folded broadsides – spanning a century from 1612 to 1713. Its ownership was eventually transferred to this Library in 2005, after it had already been on deposit here for many years, arriving in two batches in 1906 and 1933. Every item in the collection has now, for the first time, been fully catalogued as part of the Library’s Retrospective Cataloguing Project and is searchable on our online catalogue.

Westminster Monthly Meeting. The Library endowed by the will of Richard Hawkins, 1734 [n.d.]
(Library reference: Vol. E/118)

Pulton, Ferdinando. A kalender, or table, comprehending the effect of all the statutes that haue beene made and put in print, beginning with Magna Charta (1612)
(Library reference: Hawkins Vol. 82)

The collection as a whole is of particular interest for the study of early Quakerism, because it includes many items from the personal library of George Fox, one of the founders of the Quaker movement. After his death in 1690/1, Fox’s books had been moved to the home of his son-in-law and literary executor, William Mead (ca. 1627-1713. From Mead’s house, many of the volumes went subsequently to Thomas Lower (1633-1720) of Hammersmith, another son-in-law. Richard Hawkins was in turn Lower’s executor. Some of these books Hawkins passed to Hammersmith Meeting (which became part of Westminster Monthly Meeting in 1750), others to the Savoy Meeting. So among the collection Hawkins left to Westminster Quakers there were eventually at least 24 volumes (books, bound pamphlets and broadsides) identified as having once belonged to George Fox.

You can read more about the complex and detailed work done to identify the books from Fox’s library, in this collection and elsewhere, in a series of articles published in the Journal of the Friends Historical Society[1] in the 1930s. Henry J. Cadbury noted a range of identifying marks in 20 of the 60 Hawkins volumes already in Friends House by that time, including fore edge numbering matching the numbers given in the  the Annual catalogue of the papers of George Fox, “G.F.” ownership stamp on front and back boards of volumes 27 and 53, inscription “G F s Book” on flyleaf in 13 of the books examined (matching the hands of similar inscriptions in other volumes previously identified as from Fox’s collection), the familiar “gf” on the title pages of certain anonymous pamphlets, probably in Fox’s own hand, indicating his own authorship. A further four volumes (67, 84, 85, 86) were subsequently identified among the remaining Hawkins books that came to Friends House in 1933.

There’s considerable scope for further research to establish the full picture of the collection’s history and use. How, for example, did Hawkins volume 41 (volume 33 from Fox’s library) come to be given to Westminster Friends by the bibliographer John Whiting (inscribed “John Whiting His Gift To the Savoy Meeting 4^th 11^th Month 1715 Numb 4”)? Could any of the other volumes, many of which have been rebound and cropped, thus losing any fore edge numbering, be identified as from Fox’s library? When and how did volumes at Savoy and Hammersmith come together at Westminster Meeting? When was the collection re-numbered in its present form, and some volumes, but not all, re-bound? And who were the rascals who used the margins and blank end pages of some of the pamphlets for handwriting practice?

One mystery we were able to solve – though it raised a few more questions! Although every other item in the collection was published before 1714, volume 14 contained one pamphlet printed in 1777, over forty years after Richard Hawkins’s death (Some expressions of Ann Lever daughter of Iohn and Mary Lever [i.e. Leaver], of Nottingham, during her last illness - unique to this Library).

The answer lay in a handwritten note by the Quaker bibliographer Morris Birkbeck (1734-1816), whose spidery pencil annotations are unmistakably in evidence in so many Quaker collections. It seems that Birkbeck had spotted a volume he wanted in the Hawkins Collection and swapped it for one of his own (by agreement one hopes). His note punctiliously records the exchange in what sound like advantageous terms: “for Westminster book case. 25 Pamphlets containing 82 Sheets; in return for 18 ditto containing 80 sheets, had by M. Birkbeck, towards his Collection”. But it doesn’t say “Oh, and by the way, I threw in some death-bed sayings of Ann Leaver, recently published”, or, more importantly, what he got in return.

Note by Morris Birkbeck at the front of Hawkins Vol. 14

A further mystery we cannot solve, and throw out to you our readers, in the hope that one of you may be able to shed some light. As a result of the project, we reported three completely new works from the Hawkins Collection to the English Short Title Catalogue, (ESTC), among them a broadside appeal to the King and Counsel against persecution of Quakers, probably published around 1664, in Hawkins volume 32 (formerly number 14 in Fox’s library).

For the King and counsel. In some places they have swept both the houses and fields, and have not left a woman who lay in, so much as a posnet to boyl some milk for her child [London?, 1664?].
(Library reference: Hawkins vol. 32/49)
A posnet is a small metal pot with a handle and three feet used for boiling milk etc. (in case you were wondering…)

[1] Henry J. Cadbury, ‘George Fox’s library again’. Journal of the Friends Historical Society, Vol.30 ( 1933), p. 9-19 following on from earlier articles by John Nickalls (vol. 28, p.2-21) and Henry J. Cadbury (vol. 29, p.63-71)

April 24 is commemorated as the official anniversary of the Armenian genocide, which began in April 1915 with the round-up of Armenian intellectuals, followed by massacres and forced exile of hundreds of thousands of Armenian people from Turkey.

Quakers at the time had long been concerned with the plight of the Armenian people, in part due to the work of individual Friends, and groups of Friends, in the area in preceding years.

The Library’s collections include records of Friends who, in official or unofficial capacities, observed the effects of persecution and massacres of Armenians in the decades leading up to the 1915 genocide or were involved in relief work with refugees, orphans and the dispossessed.

Besides the papers of the official Armenia Committee appointed by Meeting for Sufferings in 1924 (Library reference: YM/MFS/ARC), some of the most enlightening accounts appear in other printed and manuscript collections.

In 1881 Gabriel S. Dobrashian, an Armenian doctor who had married a British Quaker, Gertrude G. Gillett, established a medical mission for Armenians in Constantinople, with the help of a group of British Quakers. Armenians were already suffering persecution at the hands of the authorities, and the mission brought much needed relief. The papers of the Friends Armenian Mission (Library reference: TEMP MSS 997) are not yet fully catalogued, but are accessible to readers and offer a fascinating insight into the situation for Armenians in this period.

The work of the Mission was taken over by Ann Mary Burgess when Dr Dobrashian was forced to flee to England with his family in the 1890s. She steered it over the years into a flourishing philanthropic, educational and industrial mission. By 1922, its position in Constantinople had become untenable and it moved to relative safety in Corfu. The Friends Armenian Mission’s records include some vivid photographs of work there (Library reference: TEMP MSS 977 Photographs), showing refugees working at looms and making traditional Middle Eastern textiles, as in the photograph below.

Refugee man making Persian blanket, Corfu, after 1922. Friends Armenian Mission papers (Library reference TEMP MSS 997 Photographs)

Other photographs shed light on the suffering of the refugees – for example, the note on the back of the picture of the girl below:

“My little orphan whose mother was murdered while this child was sheltering herself in her mothers arms & she in it suffered the loss of one arm, she is a dear girl & does fine needle work. I must send you a piece to see. I thought she had a sister now I hear all her people were killed.”

In 1896, Helen Balkwill Harris (1841-1914), Quaker minister, and her husband, the Cambridge lecturer on palaeography and future director of studies at Woodbrooke J. Rendel Harris, travelled in Asia Minor, researching Syriac and other manuscripts, and at the same time working on behalf of the Friends Armenian Relief Committee set up by Meeting for Sufferings in January that year in response to the massacres of 1894-6.

The Harrises were forbidden to take photographs and were followed and intimidated, but managed to report back in a series of circulars (these and other accounts are among the Friends Armenian Relief Committee records, Library reference MS BOX T2), letters to newspapers and a book. The book, Letters from the scenes of the recent massacre in Armenia by Rendel Harris and Helen B. Harris (1897) (Library reference: 079.190 HAR), gives a detailed account of their work, with photographic illustrations and a map.

Map showing the route of J. Rendel and Helen Harris 1896 . In Letters from Armenia (1897)

Suffering Armenia: public meeting to promote Armenian relief in St Martin’s Town Hall, Charing Cross, on Wednesday evening, May 19th, 1897 [etc.] (Library reference Box 449/33)

This post only touches on some of the material in the Library for researching this topic, but demonstrates the decades’ long interest and involvement of Friends in the plight of the Armenians stretching either side of the anniversary remembered today.

A 15 month project to catalogue the archives of the Friends Emergency and War Victims Relief Committee (FEWVRC) has now been completed, making accessible the records of an unprecedented Quaker relief effort during and after World War I. The project, one of many Quaker activities to mark the centenary of World War I, was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. It includes a display of photographs and other items from the collection, available to view in the Library and online.

In line with the Quaker peace testimony, many  Friends refused to bear arms and instead, as part of the Society of Friends’ Christian and humanitarian witness, undertook relief work in war ravaged areas. Soon after the outbreak of World War I, a Friends War Victims Relief Committee (FWVRC) was formed to carry out this work, taking the same name as the committee formerly set up to assist victims of war and famine during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871.

The relief workers faced appalling and often dangerous conditions. During the war, building, medical help and agriculture were three key areas of work undertaken by the FWVRC in France, where entire villages had been razed to the ground by the fighting and thousands of people displaced. Prefabricated buildings were constructed to meet the urgent needs of those in the war zone. By 1916 communes like Sermaize-les-Bains, that had been little more than rubble, were transformed by the construction of houses. In Verdun and the departments of the Meuse and Aisne over 1,300 houses were built, giving homes to 4,500 people.

France – construction of buildings (Library reference YM/MfS/FEWVRC/PICS/8/5/4)

Friends took charge of hospitals, implemented a district nursing scheme, and provided dental and eye care  as part of the medical services they offered. Châlons Maternité Hospital was opened to help pregnant and nursing mothers: during its three years in Quaker hands it cared for 3,789 patients, saw the birth of 981 babies and had an infant mortality rate of less than 5% – an astonishing feat considering the time and conditions.

France – Maternity ward, Châlons Hospital (Library reference YM/MfS/FEWVRC/PICS/8/7/4/4)

Farms in the war zone were decimated  and harvests almost completely lost. Teams with mechanical threshers were sent out to villages each season. As a result, in 1917 alone 900 tonnes  of cereals, which would have otherwise been lost, were threshed in regions receiving Quaker help. A machinery repair service was set up, complete with forges and supplies of spare parts. Veterinary care was provided, livestock, including bees, were reared and given to peasants, and 24,000 fruit trees were distributed among 130 communes.

Meanwhile, in Britain Quakers had concerns about the situation faced by “enemy aliens” interned in prison camps, their families and prisoners of war shipped from Europe. A large German population lived and worked in the country, many of them long term residents. With the declaration of war those who were reservists returned to Germany, while those who remained were interned in prison camps, sometimes leaving dependent families destitute. Stephen Hobhouse raised the matter at Meeting for Sufferings on 7 August 1914 and in December 1914 an Emergency Committee was formed. Despite accusations of “aiding the enemy” and “hun-coddling”, the Emergency Committee gained the patronage of many public figures and was registered under the War Charities Act 1916. Much of its early work was directed at finding homes for stranded people and assisting British women who had married German or Austrian men and lost their British citizenship. Such was the demand, volunteer caseworkers assisted 30,000 Germans in London alone.

Early internees were detained in unsuitable accommodation in appalling conditions. 700 civilians were crowded into a derelict factory in Lancaster. Men were kept in horse boxes on Newbury race-course or lodged in ships at Southend and Portsmouth, without heat, lighting or adequate sanitary facilities. These were eventually replaced with internment camps across Britain. The Emergency Committee’s Camps Sub-Committee was established in November 1914  and given the rare privilege of a general permit to all camps, helping to expose abuses, suggest reforms and hear grievances. James T. Baily, who became an Industrial Adviser, was permitted by War Office regulations to “advise” but not “initiate” schemes for education and industry in the camps. These facilities saved many internees from despair and enabled some to send small sums of money to their families.

Weaving hut, Knockaloe Camp II (Library reference YM/MfS/FEWVRC/PICS/10/4/1)

In post-war Europe relief efforts were continued by the now amalgamated Friends’ Emergency and War Victims Relief Committee (FEWVRC). Russia was one of the recipients of its dedicated efforts. Following the October 1917 revolution, relief work in Russia foundered. The Allied blockade remained in place until 1921, although famine was inevitable . The Foreign Office and the new Soviet government opposed Friends’ return to Russia, but in January 1920 the Foreign Office was persuaded to approve the export of goods for use in children’s hospitals, and Hinman J. Baker entered Russia as one of three International Commissioners to supervise the distribution of foreign relief. By July 1920 several colleagues had followed, and a combined feeding scheme with the British Save the Children Fund managed to supplement the rations of 16,000 Moscow children.

However, relief had only reached accessible places: Anna Haines, accompanying a Russian party to Buzuluk in 1921, found conditions so bad that food supplied by the Friends relief mission was diverted from Moscow to Samara town and district. Along with 30 wagons of government food, a kitchen that could prepare 5,000 ration meals, and a dispensary, Quaker relief work began in the area. As more workers became available they managed to distribute supplies across the wider region. Some journeys took two days; horses, weak from hunger, could hardly pull supplies and typhus was an ever present risk. But eventually there were 900 feeding points in 280 villages. The lack of doctors, nurses or medical supplies meant famine related diseases such as typhus and cholera spread quickly. Despite high numbers falling ill, disease was fought by elementary means such as cleaning and disinfecting houses. Twelve clinics were established and in one medical programme alone nearly 30,000 people received a course of quinine tablets. Feeding and medical schemes like these ensured tens of thousands of Russian people were saved from starvation and disease.

Russia – food train distributing food and clothing (Library reference YM/MfS/FEWVRC/PICS/7/11/1)

Russia – operation crew of health train (Library reference (YM/MfS/FEWVRC/PICS/7/1/61)

The Friends Emergency and War Victims Relief Committee catalogue (YM/MfS/FEWVRC), encompassing the records of the FWVRC, Friends Emergency Committee, and the combined FEWVRC, is now searchable online and a printed copy is available to  browse in the Library reading room. The accompanying display of items from the collection can be seen until April 2015, or see the online version here.

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Tract Volume 563 is a miscellaneous collection of pamphlets dating from the 1670s to the early 20th century, unassumingly bound in blue cloth. But among its contents is a pamphlet that includes the first printing of Magna Carta in America, William Penn’s Excellent priviledge of liberty and property being the birth-right of the free-born subjects of England (1687), a subject of some interest, particularly this year, the 800th anniversary of the original Magna Carta.   One of only three known surviving copies of this work (the other two are in the United States), it has been loaned to the British Library for its forthcoming Magna Carta exhibition, as an illustration of the continuing significance of some of Magna Carta’s core principles far beyond the original mediaeval context. So Tract Volume 563 has made its way down Euston Road, leaving Friends House for the first time since 1926, and will be on display in the exhibition at the British Library from 13 March to 1 September 2015.

Penn, William. Excellent priviledge of liberty and property (1687) p. 22-23

The printer of Penn’s Excellent priviledge of liberty and property was William Bradford (1663-1752), apprentice and son-in-law of Andrew Sowle, printer for London Quakers. Bradford and his wife emigrated to America in 1685, where he set up Pennsylvania’s first printing press (and over the years became embroiled in a series of controversies with Quakers and others over his printing activity – but that’s another story).

Penn, William. Excellent priviledge of liberty and property (1687) – title page

Though you won’t be able to read the original here in the Library until it returns at the end of the Magna Carta exhibition, we do have a facsimile, published in 1897 by the Philobiblon Club of Philadelphia; and a digitised version of that facsimile is also available online. Visit the British Library to see our copy of Penn’s Excellent priviledge of liberty and property on display, join in the series of related events or read more about Magna Carta and its legacy on the website.

We’ve recently finished cataloguing the contents of the Hawkins Collection – a remarkable private library bequeathed by Richard Hawkins (1649?-1735) to Westminster Monthly Meeting. The collection consists of 86 bound volumes containing over 1,200 individual publications – books, pamphlets and folded broadsides – spanning a century from 1612 to 1713. Its ownership was eventually transferred to this Library in 2005, after it had already been on deposit here for many years, arriving in two batches in 1906 and 1933. Every item in the collection has now, for the first time, been fully catalogued as part of the Library’s Retrospective Cataloguing Project and is searchable on our online catalogue.

Westminster Monthly Meeting. The Library endowed by the will of Richard Hawkins, 1734 [n.d.]
(Library reference: Vol. E/118)

Pulton, Ferdinando. A kalender, or table, comprehending the effect of all the statutes that haue beene made and put in print, beginning with Magna Charta (1612)
(Library reference: Hawkins Vol. 82)

The collection as a whole is of particular interest for the study of early Quakerism, because it includes many items from the personal library of George Fox, one of the founders of the Quaker movement. After his death in 1690/1, Fox’s books had been moved to the home of his son-in-law and literary executor, William Mead (ca. 1627-1713. From Mead’s house, many of the volumes went subsequently to Thomas Lower (1633-1720) of Hammersmith, another son-in-law. Richard Hawkins was in turn Lower’s executor. Some of these books Hawkins passed to Hammersmith Meeting (which became part of Westminster Monthly Meeting in 1750), others to the Savoy Meeting. So among the collection Hawkins left to Westminster Quakers there were eventually at least 24 volumes (books, bound pamphlets and broadsides) identified as having once belonged to George Fox.

You can read more about the complex and detailed work done to identify the books from Fox’s library, in this collection and elsewhere, in a series of articles published in the Journal of the Friends Historical Society[1] in the 1930s. Henry J. Cadbury noted a range of identifying marks in 20 of the 60 Hawkins volumes already in Friends House by that time, including fore edge numbering matching the numbers given in the  the Annual catalogue of the papers of George Fox, “G.F.” ownership stamp on front and back boards of volumes 27 and 53, inscription “G F s Book” on flyleaf in 13 of the books examined (matching the hands of similar inscriptions in other volumes previously identified as from Fox’s collection), the familiar “gf” on the title pages of certain anonymous pamphlets, probably in Fox’s own hand, indicating his own authorship. A further four volumes (67, 84, 85, 86) were subsequently identified among the remaining Hawkins books that came to Friends House in 1933.

There’s considerable scope for further research to establish the full picture of the collection’s history and use. How, for example, did Hawkins volume 41 (volume 33 from Fox’s library) come to be given to Westminster Friends by the bibliographer John Whiting (inscribed “John Whiting His Gift To the Savoy Meeting 4^th 11^th Month 1715 Numb 4”)? Could any of the other volumes, many of which have been rebound and cropped, thus losing any fore edge numbering, be identified as from Fox’s library? When and how did volumes at Savoy and Hammersmith come together at Westminster Meeting? When was the collection re-numbered in its present form, and some volumes, but not all, re-bound? And who were the rascals who used the margins and blank end pages of some of the pamphlets for handwriting practice?

One mystery we were able to solve – though it raised a few more questions! Although every other item in the collection was published before 1714, volume 14 contained one pamphlet printed in 1777, over forty years after Richard Hawkins’s death (Some expressions of Ann Lever daughter of Iohn and Mary Lever [i.e. Leaver], of Nottingham, during her last illness – unique to this Library).

The answer lay in a handwritten note by the Quaker bibliographer Morris Birkbeck (1734-1816), whose spidery pencil annotations are unmistakably in evidence in so many Quaker collections. It seems that Birkbeck had spotted a volume he wanted in the Hawkins Collection and swapped it for one of his own (by agreement one hopes). His note punctiliously records the exchange in what sound like advantageous terms: “for Westminster book case. 25 Pamphlets containing 82 Sheets; in return for 18 ditto containing 80 sheets, had by M. Birkbeck, towards his Collection”. But it doesn’t say “Oh, and by the way, I threw in some death-bed sayings of Ann Leaver, recently published”, or, more importantly, what he got in return.

Note by Morris Birkbeck at the front of Hawkins Vol. 14

A further mystery we cannot solve, and throw out to you our readers, in the hope that one of you may be able to shed some light. As a result of the project, we reported three completely new works from the Hawkins Collection to the English Short Title Catalogue, (ESTC), among them a broadside appeal to the King and Counsel against persecution of Quakers, probably published around 1664, in Hawkins volume 32 (formerly number 14 in Fox’s library).

For the King and counsel. In some places they have swept both the houses and fields, and have not left a woman who lay in, so much as a posnet to boyl some milk for her child [London?, 1664?].
(Library reference: Hawkins vol. 32/49)
A posnet is a small metal pot with a handle and three feet used for boiling milk etc. (in case you were wondering…)

[1] Henry J. Cadbury, ‘George Fox’s library again’. Journal of the Friends Historical Society, Vol.30 ( 1933), p. 9-19 following on from earlier articles by John Nickalls (vol. 28, p.2-21) and Henry J. Cadbury (vol. 29, p.63-71)

April 24 is commemorated as the official anniversary of the Armenian genocide, which began in April 1915 with the round-up of Armenian intellectuals, followed by massacres and forced exile of hundreds of thousands of Armenian people from Turkey.

Quakers at the time had long been concerned with the plight of the Armenian people, in part due to the work of individual Friends, and groups of Friends, in the area in preceding years.

The Library’s collections include records of Friends who, in official or unofficial capacities, observed the effects of persecution and massacres of Armenians in the decades leading up to the 1915 genocide or were involved in relief work with refugees, orphans and the dispossessed.

Besides the papers of the official Armenia Committee appointed by Meeting for Sufferings in 1924 (Library reference: YM/MFS/ARC), some of the most enlightening accounts appear in other printed and manuscript collections.

In 1881 Gabriel S. Dobrashian, an Armenian doctor who had married a British Quaker, Gertrude G. Gillett, established a medical mission for Armenians in Constantinople, with the help of a group of British Quakers. Armenians were already suffering persecution at the hands of the authorities, and the mission brought much needed relief. The papers of the Friends Armenian Mission (Library reference: TEMP MSS 997) are not yet fully catalogued, but are accessible to readers and offer a fascinating insight into the situation for Armenians in this period.

The work of the Mission was taken over by Ann Mary Burgess when Dr Dobrashian was forced to flee to England with his family in the 1890s. She steered it over the years into a flourishing philanthropic, educational and industrial mission. By 1922, its position in Constantinople had become untenable and it moved to relative safety in Corfu. The Friends Armenian Mission’s records include some vivid photographs of work there (Library reference: TEMP MSS 977 Photographs), showing refugees working at looms and making traditional Middle Eastern textiles, as in the photograph below.

Refugee man making Persian blanket, Corfu, after 1922. Friends Armenian Mission papers (Library reference TEMP MSS 997 Photographs)

Other photographs shed light on the suffering of the refugees – for example, the note on the back of the picture of the girl below:

“My little orphan whose mother was murdered while this child was sheltering herself in her mothers arms & she in it suffered the loss of one arm, she is a dear girl & does fine needle work. I must send you a piece to see. I thought she had a sister now I hear all her people were killed.”

In 1896, Helen Balkwill Harris (1841-1914), Quaker minister, and her husband, the Cambridge lecturer on palaeography and future director of studies at Woodbrooke J. Rendel Harris, travelled in Asia Minor, researching Syriac and other manuscripts, and at the same time working on behalf of the Friends Armenian Relief Committee set up by Meeting for Sufferings in January that year in response to the massacres of 1894-6.

The Harrises were forbidden to take photographs and were followed and intimidated, but managed to report back in a series of circulars (these and other accounts are among the Friends Armenian Relief Committee records, Library reference MS BOX T2), letters to newspapers and a book. The book, Letters from the scenes of the recent massacre in Armenia by Rendel Harris and Helen B. Harris (1897) (Library reference: 079.190 HAR), gives a detailed account of their work, with photographic illustrations and a map.

Map showing the route of J. Rendel and Helen Harris 1896 . In Letters from Armenia (1897)

Suffering Armenia: public meeting to promote Armenian relief in St Martin’s Town Hall, Charing Cross, on Wednesday evening, May 19th, 1897 [etc.] (Library reference Box 449/33)

This post only touches on some of the material in the Library for researching this topic, but demonstrates the decades’ long interest and involvement of Friends in the plight of the Armenians stretching either side of the anniversary remembered today.

A few weeks ago we were enthralled to discover that the Library holds what is possibly the sole surviving copy of an early 18th century broadside by a little known woman Friend, Margaret Langdale (1684?-1742). It’s an undated exhortation in Dutch to the inhabitants of various towns in Friesland and North Holland, with no printer’s name or place of printing, signed simply “En uwe waare Vrindin[1] / M. LANGDALE”.

Though it appears in Joseph Smith’s Descriptive catalogue of Friends’ books (1867), we couldn’t find the broadside recorded in any other library catalogue.

Langdale, Margaret. Aan de Inwoonderen van de Steden Leeuwaarden, Harlingen, en Workum in Friesland, en Medenblik in Noord-Holland. Published about 1717 (Library reference: Vol. D/48)

As far as we know, this is the only published writing of Margaret Langdale. Who was she, and what was her connection with the people of Leeuwarden, Harlingen, Workum and Medemblik?

From the Library’s Dictionary of Quaker biography and the Digest registers of births, marriages and burials, we learned that Margaret Langdale was born Margaret Burton around 1684, married Josiah Langdale, of Bridlington Yorkshire, around 1710, and had several children, at least one of whom died in infancy. In 1723 they left England to settle in Pennsylvania, with their two surviving children, Mary and John, but Josiah Langdale died on the voyage. In America, Margaret Langdale remarried, to Samuel Preston of Philadelphia, in 1724, and lived on in America to her death in 1742.

Some Langdale burial entries in the Yorks Quarterly Meeting Digest registers – Margaret and Josiah’s son(s) Josiah and (possibly) Thomas. Note Thomas’s burial in John Richardson’s orchard.

Beside these simple birth, marriage and death facts, we learned that Margaret Burton/Langdale/Preston was a travelling minister. That is, she felt called to travel to disseminate Quaker beliefs and nurture Friends in distant meetings. A large proportion of Quaker travelling ministers from the earliest days were women, often working in pairs, enduring considerable hardship to take their message to meetings around the country and overseas. At a time when women were discouraged from speaking in public this was bravery indeed.[2]

During Josiah’s second visit to America from 1715 to 1716, Margaret Langdale undertook a religious visit to Ireland (and her concern for Irish Friends is one of the subjects of a manuscript letter of hers in the Library – Portfolio 36/94)[3]. Among other visits at this time, she journeyed to the continent around 1717 (sources differ).  She continued her travelling ministry once she was in America, visiting widely – in the short period between 1724 and 1729 alone she visited Long Island, Rhode Island, Nantucket, New Hampshire, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina[4]. Philadelphia Monthly Meeting’s testimony to Samuel Preston, included a paragraph related to Margaret’s ministry which describes her “excellent gift in the ministry” (Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, A collection of memorials (1787), p. 127).

Testimony of Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, appended to a memorial of Samuel Burton. In: A collection of memorials (Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 1787), p. 127

We can narrow down the printing date of the broadside Aan die Inwoonderen to the period 1710 to 1723, while Langdale was her married name. It seems fairly likely that it was written during or after a visit to Friesland and North Holland – probably around 1717 when she travelled to “Germany”. In the text she addresses the inhabitants (and also the “Vermaaner” – the Mennonite preachers) of the areas, exhorting them all to live upright lives, avoiding frivolity, strong drink, tobacco, and any worldly preaching, singing and praying not inspired directly by God’s spirit.

So we succeeded in identifying “M. Langdale”, and discovered that she had indeed travelled to Friesland and North Holland in the ministry, but tantalising questions remain. Who translated it into Dutch? Who printed the broadside? Did Margaret Langdale take copies with her to distribute? Or did Dutch Friends publish it either during or after her visit? Making works like this known through our online catalogue is a first step in helping researchers make links and find answers to such questions!

Over the weekend of Yearly Meeting we had the chance to show the broadside to visiting Dutch Friends, and to Gil Skidmore, the editor of Josiah Langdale 1673-1723: a Quaker spiritual autobiography (1999) – Josiah Langdale’s manuscript account of his spiritual journey to Quakerism (Library reference MS Box 10/10). We also reported it for inclusion in the Netherlands Short Title Catalogue, which records Dutch publications 1540-1800.

Dutch Friends in the Library during Yearly Meeting. Photograph by Trish Carn, courtesy of The Friend

Work on adding to our online catalogue is progressing fast: it now includes practically everything we hold published in the 17th and 18th centuries, most from the 1960s onwards, all our printed peace, anti-slavery and temperance material, and much more. The current phase of the project focuses on adding the remaining 19th and early 20th century books and pamphlets (over 7,600 existing collection items were added to our catalogue last year alone). We’ve been able to provide fuller, more consistent information through collaboration with other organisations, like the English Short Title Catalogue, Haverford and Swarthmore Quaker college libraries in Pennsylvania, Netherlands Short Title Catalogue and Copac.

Users can now search our holdings from anywhere in the world – and though we loved our card catalogue, we’re delighted there’s no longer such a need for you to come in to the Library and riffle through its drawers simply to find out whether or not we hold what you want.

The old catalogue entry for M. Langdale’s broadside – cut and pasted from Smith’s “Descriptive Catalogue”, with gradual accretions

[1] Note the feminine form “Vrindin” indicating that M. Langdale was a woman Friend

[2] You can read an excellent overview of the travelling ministry in Sylvia Stevens’ chapter in the Handbook of Quaker studies, edited by Angell and Dandelion (2013), and about 18th century women travelling ministers in Rebecca Larson’s book, Daughters of Light: Quaker women preaching and prophesying in the colonies and abroad, 1700-1775 (1999).

[3] Thomas Wight and John Rutty, A history of the rise and progress (1751), p.357

[4] Larson, Daughters of Light, p.93-4 and L. S. Hinchman, Early settlers of Nantucket, 2nd ed. (1901), p.319

When our project cataloguer came across a cockade (a type of ribbon rosette for wearing on a hat or pinned to a garment) from 1792 revolutionary France among the A. Ruth Fry papers (TEMP MSS 373), belonging to John Hodgkin (1766-1845), we wondered what involvement Quakers had with the French Revolution. Quite a bit, it turns out, and with cockades themselves in particular!

Tricolour cockade, revolutionary France, 1791, Benjamin Angell papers, (Library reference: TEMP MSS 58/8)

Quakers in France The story of French Quakerism is an interesting one. A group emerged in the Cévennes region of France around the time of the Camisard War (1702-1704), who chose to use nonviolence even in defence from brutal oppression. Known as the Inspirés du Languedoc, they later picked up the name Couflaïres, which in Provençal means ‘inflated by the Spirit’. Couflaïres worshipped in silence and had no appointed ministers, yet had never come into contact with Quakerism. They lived mainly in Congénies, Sommières, Saint Gilles, Fontanès, Aujargues, Calvisson, and Codognan. In 1785 contact was made between British Quakers and this group in France. One of the French group, Jean de Marsillac, was invited to meet British Friends. This visit, and several more, proved fruitful, and in 1788 the first group of British Friends went to visit Congénies. On this occasion, the French group were invited officially to join the Society of Friends. Around the same time, a group of Nantucket Quakers, led by William Rotch, had moved to Dunkirk and joined the French Friends in Congénies. Jeanne Henriette Louis called William Rotch “the most influential figure on Nantucket during the American Revolution”.[1] Rotch had led Nantucket Quakers in nonviolence and neutrality through the War of Independence and the Revolution, but felt they had to leave in search of better fortune, and ended up in Dunkirk. Quakers in revolutionary France An article by Peter Brock on conscientious objection in revolutionary France (Journal of the Friends Historical Society, vol. 57, no. 2, 1995)[2] sheds some light on French Quaker attitudes to the Revolution, and in particular to the levée en masse, a form of conscription for the army of the new French Republic. Brock remarks on the long held respect for Quakerism among the leading thinkers of the French Revolution, who viewed Penn’s experiment in Pennsylvania as an almost utopian ideal for society. He specifically mentions Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville, one of the most prominent Girondin leaders, who had formed a close relationship with French and English Quakers. Indeed a handwritten note accompanying one of the two revolutionary cockades in our collection reads: “Tricolor Cockades. brought by John Hodgkin from Paris in 1792. He himself wore one by advice of Brissot, the Girondist on the occasion of the Federation, in the Champs de Mars” (TEMP MSS 373/B1/5)

John Hodgkin’s tricolour cockade and note in A. Ruth Fry papers (Library reference: TEMP MSS 373 B1/5)

Brissot was in contact with Quakers as an abolitionist; his group, the Société des Amis des Noirs, was inspired by the English Quakers’ anti-slavery activities. He also wrote that Quakers should be invited to revolutionary France, as they had the same aims as the revolutionaries – liberty, equality and brotherhood, albeit desiring to achieve them through different, peaceful means: “We are all striving for the same object, universal fraternity; the Quakers by gentleness, we by resistance.” (Brissot New travels, quoted in Brock, p.169). As war approached, Marsillac, self-appointed spokesman for Friends in France, wanted to deliver a petition to the National Assembly. He consulted Brissot, amongst other Girondists, in putting together a petition that Brissot thought would gain ground with Mirabeau, the new leader of the Assembly. On 10th February 1791, Marsillac, William Rotch, and Benjamin Rotch took the petition to the National Assembly. They entered the packed room, refusing to remove their hats, in Quaker fashion. They also refused to wear the national cockade, despite being pressed to do so and informed that it was a requirement in law. The Assembly warned them that they would not be able to protect them from mob retaliation if they were seen on the streets without the cockades. Can we assume, from the existence of the cockades in our collections, that the English Quakers were not brave enough to follow their example when they travelled in France? The main thrust of the petition was to gain exemption from military service for Quakers, but also an exemption from taking civic oaths, and permission to carry on their own method of recording births, marriages and deaths. They appealed to the Assembly’s avowed religious tolerance and reminded them that Britain and America had already granted similar liberties to Quakers. They made specific mention of Pennsylvania, probably knowing the attitudes of many of the revolutionaries to Penn’s experiment there. While Mirabeau was respectful and admiring of some of the qualities the Quakers represented, his tone was ultimately lacking in understanding:

“The assembly will discuss all your demands in its wisdom, and if I ever meet a quaker, I’ll say to him, My brother, if thou hast a right of being free, thou hast a right to hinder thyself from being made a slave…”

(Address from the Society of Friends, resident in France, to the National Convention, 2nd of 10th month 1791. To which is subjoined the president’s reply. London: Printed for Edmund Fry, 1825 )

Address from the Society of Friends, resident in France, to the National Convention, 2nd of 10th month 1791, (Library reference: Box 33/35).

Mirabeau declared that having won liberty, all French citizens must be prepared to defend that liberty from tyrants. However the Assembly agreed to consider the petition, and the Quaker petitioners were welcomed into various social circles while in Paris to discuss the issues arising. It seems however that no firm decision was taken before the Assembly’s dissolution. Marsillac was in contact with English Quakers and presented a lukewarm verdict on the treatment of the Quakers by the Assembly. It must have been in this uncertain time for Quakers in France  that their English Friends thought it worthwhile to go and show some support. The 1791 Yearly Meeting minute approving a small group of Friends to go over to Dunkirk is brief, and seems aimed at deciding whether the Nantucket Friends at Dunkirk should join the Yearly Meeting in England:

“The said friends are desired to consider whether their junction with any branch of this yearly meeting will be expedient, & if the same shall appear eligible they are authorised to carry the said Junction into effect.” (London Yearly Meeting minutes, 1791 Library ref. YM/M/39)

London Yearly Meeting minutes, 1791 (Library reference: YM/M/39)

London Yearly Meeting minutes, 1791 (Library reference: YM/M/39)

Benjamin Angell was one of the Kent Friends who joined the group appointed by Yearly Meeting and travelled to France. Our collection of his papers (TEMP MSS 58/8) includes one of the cockades, a French passport, and a small travel diary describing their visit. We can presume that, as well as the issue of membership, the matter of the petition to the National Assembly and the wider situation in France must have been discussed by the English and French Friends. Unfortunately Angell’s diary is mainly a factual account of the trip, and more taken up with the town planning of Dunkirk, than conscientious objection and issues of citizenship in the new Republic! It wasn’t until later in 1792 that Marsillac and others wrote of a much worsening situation for French Quakers, including rough treatment for refusal to wear the cockade. Marsillac himself was arrested for not wearing a cockade in public. He writes to an English Friend:

“It has pleased the lord to suffer us to fall under divers tryals, which in our weak state, we have found painful & grievious, the civic oath, the obligation imposed by the National Assembly to mount guard personally & the Arm, & to declare the arms every one had in his Possession, under the pain of being found guilty of treason & punished by Death….I was arrested at Paris because I had not the National Cockade, & signified my reasons for noncompliance, before the Judges of the Peace, & since that, before Petition Mayor of Paris, who had me set at liberty…” (Letter from Jean Marsillac, 10 July 1792, Library ref. MS VOL 314/70)

This letter is from a volume of original manuscripts relating to France held here at the Library, featuring several letters from Jean de Marsillac to English Friends (he drops the aristocratic ‘de’ from his name). We can see then, with the worsening crisis in France and the onset of war, that the Quakers’ petition failed. By 1793, the Dunkirk Quakers had left France for England, after run-ins with the authorities, and in 1795, Marsillac left for America. The whole affair shows an interesting clash of ideologies, with the enlightened basic principles of the French revolutionaries being truly tested by the small band of French Quakers.  It is a small episode in the gradual decay of the spirit of the Revolution by years of inward terror and war with other nations. It also demonstrates a close and supportive relationship between the English Quakers and the odd assortment of American Quakers and French ‘Inspirés’ in France, which is evident in the warm correspondence between Marsillac and English Friends in manuscripts in our collection and in the concern shown by English Friends over the French situation in minutes and epistles. [1] Jeanne Henriette Louis, ‘The Nantucket Quakers’ message as an alternative to Benjamin Franklin’s message to the French Revolution’ in Quaker studies: journal of the Quaker Studies Research Association, vol. 5, no.1 (September 2000), p. 10 [2] Peter Brock, ‘Conscientious objection in revolutionary France’ in Journal of the Friends Historical Society,  vol.57; no.2 ( 1995), p. 166–82

What do silhouettes, the  South Sea journals of Daniel Wheeler, press-cuttings on the General Strike, and a 100 year-old phial of anti-tetanus serum have in common? They’re all to be found in the Library’s main manuscript series, which currently comprises over 1,000 separate and extremely diverse archive collections. And until recently, only a quarter of them were on the online catalogue.

Extracts from Daniel Wheeler’s South Sea Journals for 1834-5 (Library reference Temp MSS 366 vols. 3/1-3)

Anti-tetanus serum phial from Alan F. Ardley papers (Library reference Temp MSS 452/1/11)

Since the launch of the new catalogue, a little over a year ago, we’ve been busy increasing the number of archive and manuscript collections users could find there. Once the project to catalogue the remarkable records of Friends Emergency & War Victims Relief Committee was complete, attention turned to the rich and varied main manuscript series.

We embarked on a 15 month project, to run from January 2015, with the aim of cataloguing the bulk of the remaining manuscripts to collection level, making them searchable by name, and overall description. As the project cataloguer would have to examine each collection individually, this was also a great opportunity to repackage the contents in archival standard storage materials – so we can happily say goodbye to collapsing file boxes and overstuffed folders! The collections span 205 metres of shelving and currently fill 1,366 boxes; an estimated 1,000 new archival boxes and 5,000 acid free folders would be needed for repackaging.

A delivery of new archive boxes in the Library

Now we’re six months through the project, here’s where we’ve got to so far.

We’ve already added nearly 300 new entries to the online catalogue, with brief lists to help researchers retrieve relevant material. 380 archival boxes have been used to replace old brittle and unstable file boxes, and 28 outsized items – rolls, maps, etc. – have been repacked. Visual items that had been removed have been re-united with the collections they came from (for example family photographs of Mary Millior Braithwaite and R. Osmond Catford’s photograph albums of relief work in Poland and Russia 1920-1923).

The collections range in size from single documents (such as the Journal of Anna Louise Evens, relating to mission work in India 1886-1934), or a few folders (such as Theodore Burtt’s papers on Friends Industrial Mission, Pemba 1896-1930), to extensive and complex collections (such as J. J. Green’s copious collection of genealogical research papers, deeds, maps, letters and other documents; or the 22 boxes of Herbert Hodgkin papers – letters, notes, photographs and watercolours, spanning the period 1847-1962, mainly relating to foreign mission work, especially China).

Cross-written letter from Rachel Hodgkin among the large family archive of A. Ruth Fry (Letters from Rachel Howard to Elizabeth Hodgkin and John Hodgkin, 1829-1836. Library reference Temp MSS 373 B1/1)

Reflecting the varied lives and interests of their original owners, the collections include material on Quakers and Quaker work around the world (in Ireland, Norway, France, India, Pemba and Poland, among other places), family archives spanning centuries, and the working papers, correspondence, research notes, and diaries of individual Friends (such as Isaac Sharp, Ann Mary Burgess, Thomas C. Foley, or Stephen Shipley Wilson).

Highlights include the A. Ruth Fry papers, among whose various treasures from branches of the Howard, Hodgkin, Eliot and Fry families are to be found one of the French revolutionary cockades that appeared in our last blogpost, as well as the two smallest books in our collections.

One of two “bijou almanacs” among A. Ruth Fry papers (Library reference Temp MSS 373 M4/6)

Another is box 2 of the Elizabeth Lee papers, whose contents include a volume of celebrity autographs (a form of collecting that took off in the 19th century even among some Friends), among them Robert Browning and Oscar Wilde.

Autograph of Ellen Terry (Autograph volume, Elizabeth Lee papers. Library reference Temp MSS 302/2/2)

Before the arrival of our combined Library and Archive online catalogue, users who wanted to search the Library’s unique holdings of official Quaker records and unpublished papers of Quakers dating back to the 17th century had to rely on the card catalogue and paper finding aids in the reading room. As more and more archive and manuscript collections are added, through projects like this, the online catalogue opens up the collections to users, wherever they may be, and makes them searchable in new and exciting ways.

Anne Knight, photograph by Victor Franck, c.1855 (LSF MS BOX W2)

The Library’s Visual Resources Development Officer, Melissa Atkinson, talks about one enduring image in our collection.

I am fascinated with historical material culture and how it translates into modern society. When a researcher in the Library is interested in any of the visual resources such as a poster, piece of crockery or a photograph, I am keen to see how they reinterpret the material for today’s audiences.

When the United Nations contacted me about a photograph of an elderly woman staring defiantly into the camera, clutching a placard on her knee which states:

By tortured millions
By the Divine Redeemer
Enfranchise Humanity
Bid the Outraged World
BE FREE

I wondered about the extraordinary journey this photograph, and the woman in it, had taken.

Anne Knight

Anne Knight (1786-1862) was born in Chelmsford to a Quaker family. From all accounts she was a formidable advocate of abolition of the slave trade without compensation for the slave owners. She also supported free trade and universal suffrage and campaigned fervently for women’s rights. Her sympathies were also with the European republican movements. By 1830 she was deeply involved in the attempt by Quakers to end slavery and spent much of her time arranging public meetings, distributing leaflets and organising petitions. As a member of the Chelmsford Ladies Anti-Slavery Society, she formed the first organisation for women’s suffrage in Britain, the Sheffield Female Reform Association.

Although the British Slavery Abolition Act came into power in 1834, this did not eradicate the problem globally, and British abolitionists still wanted to exert influence, especially over the situation in the United States. Anne Knight’s 1855 protest demanding the abolition of the slave trade, depicted in the photograph, still resonates with the world today.

New audiences

To mark International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the United Nations in New York had an exhibition entitled ‘Powerful women against slavery” in the UN General Assembly entrance this spring which included this photograph. UN Information Centres globally will have the option to use this ready-made exhibition which includes an online study guide via the website –
http://www.un.org/en/events/slaveryremembranceday/

The 2015 theme is Women and Slavery which celebrates the mental and physical strength of women and the unimaginable abuses they had to endure.

This image of Anne Knight is from her personal archive (LSF MS BOX W2). The photograph was taken at Saint des Vosges circa 1855 by Victor Franck. The original photograph, known as a carte-de-visite (visiting card), measures 64mm × 100mm (2.5 inches x 4 inches). This format of the carte-de-visite was very popular as they were affordable and easily mass produced. Victorian obsession with collecting made these cards into a novelty and they were traded between friends and large Victorian families. Popular figures of the time such as royalty became collectibles which led to the publication and collection of photographs of prominent persons.

The Library of the Society of Friends holds Anne Knight’s personal papers including diaries, correspondence and notes (references MS Box W2, MS Box G2/3, and MS Vol S 486).
One of our readers was inspired by her journey for his architectural creation for the Burgess Stream project in central Chelmsford. You can read about the historical research behind his architectural design work here: http://christophertipping.co.uk/central-chelmsford-anne-knight/

This blogpost is about the life of a photograph and the woman within it. Anne Knight with her incredible influence and universal admiration for human dignity. If Anne Knight was around today she may have mixed emotions about the current state of women’s rights and modern slavery. Knight would have to admit that there has been improvement and progression to raise the world’s attention for universal suffrage but only so far. I think Anne Knight would look you straight in the eye and say we cannot forget the past but there is still a long way to go to improve the future.