Collection Creatives

by Wes White, Library Development Officer

The Collection Creatives have been meeting every four weeks at Canada Water Library, hearing the stories of objects from the Cuming Collection from our Curator, Judy Aitken. Every month, the group produce poetry and artwork in response to the museum objects and the memories they inspire. Watch this space for a Stay-At-Home special edition of Collection Creatives that you can join in with wherever you are – and here is a glimpse of the group’s work over the last twelve months:

The Lovett Collection is a wealth of superstitious and supposedly magical objects collected by Edward Lovett in the late 19th and early 20th century. You can see many of the objects on the museum’s dedicated pages to Lovett’s Charming World. In May, the Collection Creatives saw some of these objects up close, and the group conjured up their own magicians, poetry and artwork in response.

Peter Le Petit

Helen Lawal

Roland Hallfors

Later in the Summer we met a collection of goddesses! – from the Egyptian Isis, to the Etruscan Leocothea and beyond. We were struck by the way these evocative figurines from all over the world and thousands of years of history complemented each other. The group were inspired to artwork and poetry.

Cecilia Sobogun

Helen Lawal

Farah Al Hashimi

Jean Bates

On our suitably bright day in August our theme was the sun – and the moon. We were struck by a ‘man-in-the-moon’ Christmas decoration with a gaping mouth and an insurance plaque from the Sun Insurance Company, among other intriguing objects introduced by Judy Aitken.

Cecilia Sobogun

Janet Dunning

Then in September as the schools went back, the Collection Creatives saw some artefacts from schools of the past – among them a school bell and an ominous ‘punishment book’. We also reminisced about our own early learning.

Wes Viola

Helen Lawal

Our next session was focused on teeth and tusks. In times past local docks were host to whaling vessels, and Southwark has whales’ teeth in its collection, as well as an elephant’s tooth the size of your head and a street dentist’s cap – a hat festooned with human teeth and supposedly worn to advertise his trade. The group produced art work and writing – we kept coming back to ‘big or small, we all need our teeth…’

Vanessa Bray

Helen Lawal

Alison Clayburn

Cecilia Sobogun

November sees the Illuminate festival in Rotherhithe and Collection Creatives have been part of the programme every year since 2017. This year the theme was ‘Trade’, and we had exclusive access to the old Office Mixing Book from the Peek Frean biscuit factory; full of the original ingredients lists for both well-remembered and long-forgotten treats. One of many curious things about the ingredients listed is the code numbers for different kinds of sugar… this inspired ‘100 Kinds of Sugar’, performed at Illuminate’s Community Show at the end of the festival.

Janet Dunning

Preetha Leela Chockalingam

Wes White

Wes White

Wes White

Wes White

We marked the threshold of the year with a selection of objects associated with thresholds – real and imaginary doors, doorways and keys; including an ancient key to Bermondsey Abbey and an even-more-ancient-than-that fragment of a doorway for spirits from an Egyptian tomb. Many of the group members kept their creative outcomes from this session to themselves – to see the full range of artwork from the Collection Creatives, you have to come along and join in! But we are glad to present this homely portal by Alison Clayburn.

Most recently, the group had a session focused on lost things. In 2013, Walworth Town Hall where the Cuming Museum was housed was damaged by fire. Although the vast majority of objects survived, one that was lost was a figurine of St Anne, the Patron Saint of Lost Things. This inspired ‘A natural selection’ – figurines modelled on an image of the original, and remembering things lost by the museum’s team and audience – by the artist Janetka Platun in 2015. The group saw these models up close and thought about the different kinds of loss that people experience. The responses shared here included a sketch of St Anne by the workshop leader, Wes, and a pair of poems by Jenny Mitchell. You can find out more about Jenny and her work on her own page on her publisher’s website here.

You can join in with Collection Creatives from home in our upcoming Stay-At-Home edition – look out for details on our Twitter feed and in the Stay-At-Home Library.

Collection Creatives

by Wes White, Library Development Officer

The Collection Creatives meet at Canada Water Library every four weeks to hear the stories of objects from the Cuming Collection, brought by our Curator Judy Aitken, and respond creatively! Here are some of our outcomes from earlier in the year.

At the end of 2018 some of the Collection’s toys and games came to the library. We were especially intrigued by a ‘mutton bone doll’ collected by Edward Lovett. Children whose families couldn’t afford shop-bought dolls sometimes dressed up bones instead. They became very attached to them and Lovett approached a number of children before he found one who was willing to trade theirs with him. The girl who gave this doll to Lovett’s collection was offered a new ‘real’ doll in its place – but which was really more ‘real’?

In January we looked at artefacts related to tobacco, alcohol and other narcotics; including a snuff box, clay pipes and drinking vessels. This was a busy session but we only have a couple of pieces of work captured from it – if you were there and have sketches or note from the day, do send them to us to be included here!

February’s theme was jewellery, and the set included an emerald ring said to have been at one time a gift made by Charles I to his Gentleman of the Bedchamber Thomas Herbert, Victorian mourning jewellery, ‘Druidical’ beads marked as ancient (but we’re not sure…) and a necklace from Southern Africa which features a whistle said to charm away thunder.

One of the jewellery pieces was a bronze ring found on the banks of the Thames, and in March we learned all about mudlarking – the riverside equivalent of beachcombing. In modern times this might be thought of as a recreational pursuit (albeit requiring a licence), but back in the 18^th and 19^th centuries children could be found scraping a meagre living from whatever they could find to sell in the mud – in what were dangerous and unpleasant conditions.

And in April, to tie in with April Fools, our featured objects were all jokes and puzzles. The ‘Poisson d’Avril’ – April Fish – is a popular take on this in France. We have our own ‘Poisson d’Avril’ in France, which along with squirt rings, puzzle jugs and magic tricks inspired our Creatives in many different directions.

 

 

Collection Creatives

by Wes White, Library Development Officer

Collection Creatives is a new group meeting once a month at Canada Water Library, in the spirit of the Mystery Object Group.  At each meeting we hear the stories of a group of objects from the Cuming Collection from the Curator, Judy Aitken; with time given to respond creatively to the artifacts in writing, artwork, or however group members are inspired.

Tiger Skull

In our first meeting in September 2018, we focused on the skull of a tiger from the Royal Surrey Zoological Gardens  – as well as an image of a tiger at that zoo, being visited by Queen Victoria.

Egyptian amulets

In October, a selection of ancient Egyptian amulets was brought to the group, and we heard the stories of some of the beliefs associated with them, including the fact that some of them were believed to be the key to a safe passage to the afterlife, while others representing dangerous animals like snakes and hippos were also supposed to confer protection from those animals.

 

Scrimshaw

For the Illuminate Rotherhithe festival in November, we had a special evening session in which we learned about scrimshaw in the collection and the link to whaling hundreds of years ago in the local docks. Scrimshaw is whalebone which was often carved by sailors in quiet times between sightings of their prey. Herman Melville describes scrimshaw in Moby Dick as “Lively sketches of Whales and Whaling scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale teeth or ladies’ busks wrought out of the Right Whale bone and other Scrimshander articles.”

by Preetha Leela Chockalingam

Collection Creatives meets next at Canada Water Library on Tuesday 22 January  2019, where we’ll be learning about some of the objects in the collection related to smoking and drinking! The group, which is free to join, welcomes anyone in the local area seeking creative inspiration, from beginners to professionals. And as you see, if you take part, your work could feature on the Southwark Heritage blog!

Celebrating Vote 100: Suffragists in the Southwark Art Collection

By Curator Judy Aitken

On 6 February 1918 the British Parliament passed the Representation of the People Act by an overwhelming majority of the House of Commons (385 for and 55 against). This Act was one of the major milestones of a long and sometimes violent struggle for representation.

Wealth and class have had an impact for centuries on the right to voice opinion and, in formal democracies, to vote and, indeed, to be elected to represent people. Until the 20^th century your right to vote depended on your social class and your gender.  In 1884 the right to vote was extended from 30% to 60% of all adult men, based on property and other rights.  It brought many more men from poorer backgrounds into the democratic voting pool. But women’s voting rights continued to be severely restricted.

The Municipal Franchise Act of 1869 gave some single women the right to vote in local elections only – and for this they had to qualify by living in a rated property and having paid rates for a year. Married women were specifically barred from voting, as they were considered femmes couvertes. The Local Government Act 1894 confirmed single women ratepayers the right to vote in local elections, and extended it to married women ratepayers, except a husband and wife could not both qualify to vote through residence at a single property. Where both were qualified, the man got the vote.

That is not to say women were not part of the political scene or campaigning social life.  Women actively took part in or drove many social reforms and improvements during the 19^th century and early 20^th century. But the one perhaps most contentious was the women’s right to vote, known as Women’s Suffrage.  The history of this campaign is long and full of both peaceful and forceful action on both sides, from campaigning women, from men supporters of the campaign and from those who resisted the demands. The women, above all, suffered a great deal as a result of harassment, attack, imprisonment and state-sponsored repression, with their treatment in prison little different from outright torture.

The violence lessened during the First World War, as everyone focussed on the war effort and women became more and more involved in occupations and responsibilities on the home front which had previously been only for men.  The war in effect gave women the chance to demonstrate to detractors that women could play a vital role in society beyond domestic life.

The passing of the Representation of the People Act is often seen as a “reward” to women for their contributions during the war.  It was certainly a little surprising given the massive resistance up to 1914.  However many people now think this takes away from the role of the suffragists and the result owed more to their effort and sacrifices than simply to a benevolent gift.

In truth the Act was only one of many needed to bring women into full political involvement.  The 1918 Act gave the vote only to women of property over 30 years old. About 22% of adult women over 30 did not have any property and could not vote.  In contract the Act increased the male vote to all men over the age of 21 (or 19 if the man had been on active service in the armed forces). However compromised the victory was hard won and was a huge step forward.

Southwark had its own organisations and campaigning heroes.  The United Suffrage Women’s Club opened at 92 Borough Road in November 1914 and continued to campaign during the war.  You can read more on this blog written by contributor Johnl.

Southwark’s archive and museum collections have only a small amount of suffrage related material. However, the borough’s art collection, formerly at the South London Gallery and managed by Southwark Council, also has several artworks by significant campaigners for women’s suffrage including Bertha Newcombe and Charlotte Elisabeth Babb.

Bertha Newcombe (1857-1947) attended the Slade School of Art in 1876. It is believed that she was one of the first women artist to train at the school. Following her successful arts training, Newcombe was a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy, Fine Art Society, Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, and Society of Women Artists, among other esteemed exhibiting societies. In 1888 she became a member of the New English Art Club.

The Goatherd by Bertha Newcombe (1857 – 1947)

Newcombe was highly influenced by the artist Stanhope Forbes (1857-1947) and also by other artists associated with the Newlyn School. She was romantically involved with the playwright George Bernard Shaw and painted a series of portrait studies of him in her studio at 1 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, in the spring of 1882.

Newcombe was a strong advocate for women’s rights, in particular their right to suffrage. She became a member of The Society of Women Artists, The Society of Lady Artists and The Artists Suffrage League; a collective of female artists who produced artworks and posters for the ‘Votes for Women’ campaign.

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow by Charlotte Elizabeth Babb (1830 – 1907)

Charlotte Elizabeth Babb (born Peckham 1830, d. 1906) was a female artist and sister to John Staines Babb, a mid nineteenth century decorative painter who is also represented by the Southwark Art Collection. Babb spent much of her career campaigning for equal rights for women, in particular their right to suffrage. In 1859 Babb started campaigning for the admission of female students to the Royal Academy schools and resulted in her own admission in 1861. Babb was among the first female students at the Royal Academy Schools. Throughout her career Babb exhibited widely with arts societies including the Royal Society of British Artists, the British Institution and the Society of Women Artists, among many others. She was a frequent exhibitor at the Dudley Galleries from 1862.

Babb produced oil paintings and watercolours in a typical Pre-Raphaelite mode and with a strong emphasis on female figures and associated subjects (such as the Annunciation and story of Saint Cecilia). Babb was also associated with the decorative Arts and Crafts movement through established figures such as ceramic pioneer William de Morgan. Babb’s fairly accomplished yet loosely Pre-Raphaelite style enabled her to migrate over the more stylised Aesthetic Movement will relative ease. It was within this more decorative art territory where Babb produced large commercial paintings directly onto ceramic tiles (which were made by Minton).

Babb exhibited works at the Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool) Manchester City Art Gallery (1881) and also the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, USA (1893). Her paintings and drawings remain mostly in private collections. The Southwark Art Collection holds the only known publicly owned oil painting by her.

To find out more about the Vote100 commemorations taking place during 2018 visit the Vote100 project pages.

In addition as part of their regular talks series, Southwark Cathedral is having a day of talks devoted to women’s history on Saturday 24 March 2018.

More tales from the Mystery Object Group

by Wes White, Library Development Officer

Canada Water Library’s Mystery Object Group brings together creative individuals for sessions focused on one or more objects from the Cuming Museum, and other artefacts of local historical interest. The aim is to foster creative responses to the featured artefacts, and we share some of the outcomes on this blog.

Rotherhithe Pottery

The most recent group session was our second field trip, this time to the Rotherhithe Picture Research Library at Sands Film Studios. (To see outcomes from our first field trip, to see the press at the Printworks building, see our previous update.)

This field trip was part of November’s ‘Illuminate Rotherhithe’ celebrations. The Picture Library had a display about the 17^th century Rotherhithe Pottery, which operated on the site of the old King Edward III mansion house. This and other potteries along the banks of the Thames often involved people who had moved here from the Netherlands, and they produced ‘English delftware’ using techniques made famous in and around the Dutch town of Delft. Cuming Museum curator Judy Aitken brought a selection of such English delftware found in Southwark.

Water Sprinkler

October included half term week and as a result we welcomed some children into the group to study a replica 16^th century ‘water sprinkler’. We were all fascinated and somewhat bewildered by this device, which would have been used to wet dusty floors for sweeping. Placing or removing a thumb on the hole at the top would instantly stop or release the flow of water – although, as you will see in the writing, it seemed to the group to be a bit ‘over-engineered’. Seemingly these sprinklers were very popular hundreds of years ago, however, so they clearly made sense to our ancestors…

Hops Warehouse Lantern

For many years, and well into the 20^th century, the hops trade was a big part of the economy in Southwark. In September we had some examples of the trappings of the trade, including a sample packet of hops and a large candle holder. This lantern had spikes which would have enabled workers to secure it in the bags of hops – the group’s first impression of the device was that it looked vicious rather than practical, which again has certainly influenced our writing here.

The ‘Veedee Vibrator’

The sexual connotations in the name of this bizarre-looking medical device are misleading. This and contraptions like it were sold in the late 19^th and early 20^th century as a kind of mechanical panacea – purported uses included treatment for rheumatism, gout, insomnia, tumours, constipation, deafness… the list goes on, but you get the idea. The ‘Veedee’ part of the name is thought to be a reference to the famous Latin idiom ‘Veni, Vidi, Vici’ – presumably on the basis it would ‘conquer’ any illness it came across. Tempting while it might be to think that the manufacturers also hoped to hint that the vibrator would also combat venereal disease, the term ‘VD’ in that context only came into usage in 1920, some years after this was on the market.

Tales from the Mystery Object Group

By Wes White, Library Development Officer

Canada Water Library’s Mystery Object Group meets around once a month to explore a different artefact from the borough’s collections or with relevance to the history of the area. The item chosen for each session is a secret until it is unveiled to the group. We encourage members to respond creatively to the items – in writing, artwork, creative photography, or however they might be moved to do so. In this post we are sharing some of the creative work that has been inspired by our mystery object sessions since the group was incepted at the beginning of the year.

Click on an image to see the details.

The Printworks

In June the group went outside of the library on a field trip to the Printworks building. This space is best known currently for hosting dance music and film-inspired events, but it retains an original newspaper press – a huge machine – and we made that our mystery object that month (slightly too big to bring into the library!) Group members sketched, wrote about and photographed the space.

‘All’s Well’

In this session we focused on the Camberwell coat of arms, of which we had a painted wooden carving. We were struck by the heraldic symbolism, particularly the wounded deer on its crest, which is an emblem of St Giles – Camberwell’s patron saint.

Roman Southwark

In March there was a display of the Cuming’s artefacts from Roman Southwark at Morley College, and to complement it at the end of February the museum’s curator Judy Aitken brought us a whole range of original Roman objects to draw and explore.

McAndrew’s Models

In January, we had a selection of models from the Cuming Museum’s handling collection. We don’t know a great deal about the origins of these apparently handmade figures, which seem to depict characters from life in Victorian London. They are marked with the name McAndrew. Among them, group members identified a tailor complete with measuring tape; the self-styled ‘Royal Ratcatcher’ Jack Black; and one of the rats he had caught!

Our next sessions are on Tuesdays at 2 – 4pm on 22 August and 26 September 2017 at Canada Water Library.

To find out about more email wes.white@southwark.gov.uk.

 

 

 

Historic Walworth

Southwark’s historic villages: Walworth

The name Walworth is Saxon in origin and has been recorded at various times as Wealhworth, Wealawyr, and in the Domesday Book, Waleorde. It translates roughly as ‘farm of the Britons.’ The name Newington is thought to have been given more specifically to the area around the church, which stood on Newington Butts, where the road bends to the south-west. The buildings erected around it in the middle ages gradually acquired the name of ‘the New Town’ and the parish as a whole was named St Mary Newington.

The area around this junction is also known as Elephant and Castle. This name comes from the coaching inn that once stood at the crossroads where we now have the roundabout and the Faraday memorial. As with other inns at major transport intersections, such as the Angel and the New Cross, the Elephant and Castle gave its name to a railway station and is now used to refer to the surrounding area more generally.

The Elephant and Castle c.1860

One of the earliest references to the manor of Walworth is its presentation as a gift by Edmund II to a court jester named Hitard in c.1016. Hitard in turn made the lands of Walworth over to the monks of Canterbury Cathedral and to this day certain parts of Walworth are still owned by the Church Commissioners.

Walworth was once famous for producing and selling fresh fruit and vegetables. Much of the area consisted of orchards and gardens where special varieties  such as the Newington Peach were grown. In 1792 James Maddock, florist, of Walworth published The Florists’ Directory; or Treatise on the Culture of Flowers. At about the same time John Abercrombie published a book on flowers which included an account of the then newly introduced chrysanthemum. Walworth was also known far and wide for the Surrey Zoological Gardens, which from 1831 occupied the grounds of the former manor house.

Two particularly remarkable residents of Walworth were Richard Cuming  and his son, Henry Syer Cuming. Between them, during the late 18th and the 19th century, they acquired all kinds of objects from around the world, which became the Cuming Museum.

The Cumings’ original catalogue and Richard Cuming’s childhood collection

The 18th and early 19th centuries brought many changes to Walworth. New bridges over the Thames and improved roads made it easier for richer people to live just outside of London and commute into town every day by carriage. They would have occupied grand Georgian houses like those still standing in Surrey Square. The Elephant and Castle area became a thriving shopping area with its own department store, Tarns,  and many other places to spend money on clothing and cosmetics.

 

Factories, warehouses and railways replaced many houses in the centre of London, which meant that London’s overflowing population spread out into Walworth. As a result, Walworth changed from a small community into a highly populated area. In 1801 there were 14,800 people in Walworth. By 1901 the figure had risen to 122,200, much higher than it is now, which shows how cramped conditions must have been. It is no wonder that in the 1880’s and 90s poverty increased. For the poorest in Walworth this meant being admitted to the Newington Workhouse. In 1896 a seven year old Charlie Chaplin briefly became an inmate there, with his mother, Hannah and half-brother, Sydney.

In response to this legacy of poverty Walworth became the location for some pioneering social work and  services. It boasted the first family planning clinic in the country, while its celebrated health services department in Walworth Road brought all health facilities under one roof for the first time in London and preceded the NHS by ten years. The Clubland youth club, which started in rooms below the Walworth Methodist Church in 1922 provided life changing opportunities for thousands of teenagers in the area and improved public attitudes both to young people and to the less privileged in society.

The first and second World Wars saw Walworth take heavy casualties both civilian, during the London bombing, and in the field. The Elephant and Castle area was so ravaged by bombing that it had to be rebuilt practically from scratch, although the Metropolitan Tabernacle managed to survive the Blitz unharmed. Post-war planning by the London County Council resulted in The Elephant & Castle traffic scheme and the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre, the first covered shopping mall in Europe. Today we are seeing more dramatic changes to the landscape. Whatever the outcome, Walworth will remain an important focal point for Southwark, attracting travellers from all over London and the world.

The Elephant and Castle during redevelopment, 1963

 

Roman Southwark

By Judy Aitken, Curator of the Cuming Museum

For more than 2000 years, Southwark has been a place of settlement, business and trade.  The Romans established a foothold on the south bank of the Thames shortly after establishing their city of Londinium on the north bank from around AD50.

This southern location, around present day Borough High Street, then grew into a major “suburb” feeding the new trade and travel routes to the South coast and thrived under nearly 400 years of Roman rule.  Sites and artefacts have been found all over Roman Southwark helping us to build a picture of this fascinating period.

The Cuming Museum has over 600 items of Romano British archaeology in its collections, some dating from the earliest days of archaeological excavation.  Early digs in Egypt tended to be focussed on excavating treasure for profit, rather than intellectual understanding and most found their way to traders.

Richard Cuming, the founder of the collection, would have purchased or traded for curios from these digs.  Henry Syer Cuming, his son, was much more interested in archaeology as a discipline.  But even so was keen to take items given to him by workmen who were themselves “excavating” London for new roads, embankments, tube tunnels and other developments.  Henry tended towards Roman British finds rather than Ancient Egypt and there are a large number of small, often personal artefacts from all over London.

Unicode

The rest of the Cuming’s archaeology collections come from digs during the 20th century.  Professional archaeologists such as Kathleen Kenyon, who went on to make her name as one of the world’s foremost archaeologists in places such as Jordan, carried out extensive excavation of sites around Borough High Street.  Look out for a blog about her soon!

The Southwark and Lambeth Archaeological Excavation Committee (SLAEC), which continues to this day, also carried out extensive excavations of sites.  Much of the material came to the Cuming Museum as the nearest place of repository.

However, in the late 20th century the main place of repository for archaeological excavation material was the Museum of London.  The Cuming’s collections still contain large amounts of material from Kenyon’s and SLAEC’s digs however, and we are working with Museum of London to review it all.

London Borough of Southwark still supervises major digs in the borough, along with professional archaeology companies such as Pre-Construct and Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) as the north of the borough in particular is rich in archaeological evidence.  Companies who want to build or alter premises have to have an archaeological survey carried out and if there are finds then work can be paused in order for archaeologists to record and preserve the sites and any material.

“Pots and Prayers” is a new free exhibition at Morley College, giving a glimpse of Southwark’s Roman story by showcasing from the collections of the Cuming Museum.

It will run from Wednesday 1 March to Wednesday 19 April 2017 and will be in the college’s main foyer.

Events during the exhibition run include talks, walks around Roman Southwark and creative workshops. Families will be able to make Roman mosaics, try a toga or create a Roman city.

While the exhibition only scratches the surface, you will be able to learn a lot more during Morley’s 10 week Roman London course, starting Wednesday 26 April 2017.

Janus: the Roman god of beginnings, doorways and the New Year

By Wes White, Learning and Engagement Officer for Southwark Libraries and Heritage

On Tuesday 17 January we featured the first ‘Museum on the Move’ at Canada Water Library. Each month we’ll present a themed collection drawn from the Southwark Heritage collections. Original documents and artefacts from the Cuming Museum will be on display, freely available for visitors to see and swap thoughts about in the library, while artworks are shown on a big screen above.

My theme for January was Janus – the Roman god of beginnings, doorways and the New Year; after whom January is named. He is famous as the god with two faces – one looking into the future, and the other on the back of his head peering into the past. Janus might not be an ‘A-lister’ in the Roman pantheon, being less well known than figures with planets named after them like Jupiter, Mars and Venus; but even so he was a significant figure in Roman mythology, and the Cuming collection actually features a number of objects directly related to him. These come in the form of coins bearing his likeness; and even one showing his temple, from the reign of Nero. The story of Janus’ temple tells that its gates stood open when Rome was at war, but closed in times of peace – and they were rarely closed.

Also featured in the display were some press cuttings sourced from Southwark’s Local History Library and Archives about New Year celebrations in years past; particularly from the year 1900. I picked out that year to look at because of the significance of the turn of the century, only to find myself reminded by the Bishop of Rochester that technically the new century would have begun in 1901.

And considering that New Year’s Eve is famously such a busy time for the emergency services, I was also surprised to find a story called ‘Firemen at Play’ describing the Fire service’s own New Year’s Eve party – it finished up, predictably, with some of them having to get changed out of their party gear to tackle a fire…

Because Janus stood at the threshold of the New Year, he was also the god of all kinds of crossing-over points and doorways. This gave me the opportunity to feature some of the Cuming collection’s keys in the display. Those included a surprisingly small and humble key to Marshalsea Prison (which several visitors thought looked just a bit too easy for the pirates and smugglers the prison held to copy), and a far bigger, heavier, 13^th century key to Bermondsey Abbey, which stood until the reign of Henry VIII. The Abbey is widely thought to be the reason that the area is known as ‘The Blue’ – as the colour represented sacredness.

By far the oldest thing on display this month was a fragment of an even older belief system than the Roman myth that Janus was a part of – a fragment of a false doorway from a tomb in Thebes. This and other Egyptian artefacts came to the Cuming collection via the explorer James Burton in the 1830s. So, why would there have been a false doorway in a tomb? It was false only to the living: this was the door that the departed spirit was supposed to step through, into the next world.

The next outing for the ‘Museum on the Move’ will be at Canada Water Library on Tuesday 14 February, 2pm to 4pm, and you might be able to guess the theme from the date! It’s Valentine’s Day – come and check out an exploration of romance down the ages.

Researching the First World War: Searching for military personnel

By Patricia Dark, Archivist at the Southwark Local History Library and Archive

This is the third post in a series exploring ways to find out more about the part your family, school, workplace, or neighbourhood played in the First World War.

Millions of men – and thousands of women – served king and country in uniform during the First World War. Men served in the Army, the Royal Navy, and the Royal Marines. The Great War saw the creation of the Royal Air Force, after the 1 April 1918 merger of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. Women served in non-combatant roles, freeing men for the front. These were either in the auxiliary forces of the Army, Air Force, and Royal Navy, or in the Army, Navy, or Air Force nursing corps.

With the basic information outlined above – full name and birth date and place – you should be able to find a tommy’s campaign medal record. While these records – originally large index cards – are not very detailed, they can often provide a broad outline of your tommy’s service. More importantly, they also provide your tommy’s  service number, which can be very useful to find other records.

The most important of these other records is his or her service record, which may contain details of rank and regiment, promotion, moves between units, evaluations from superiors, next of kin, pension, or medical status. The Silver War Badge, noted in the campaign medal records, was awarded to all military personnel released from service due to war-related injury or sickness; if your tommy received one, pension records may provide more details of service and medical history. Pension records also record details of the families of those killed or missing in action.

Unit records

War is a surprisingly bureaucratic process, and records generated by military units at home or at the front also survive. As well as official reports and forms, units created photographs and even newspapers and magazines! The most common unit record to survive is its official war diary. They collected operational information for the official history of the war – that could also inform command decisions and tactics. They chart the day-to-day life of a unit, and provide a wealth of details about life and death on the front lines. Although these are not personal diaries, they do sometimes refer to individuals, particularly those being considered for a commendation.

Unit war diaries are series WO95 at TNA. By joining Operation War Diary, you can help make unit war diaries accessible by highlighting useful information in 1.5 million pages of digitised records. You may find other records generated by military units in local record offices or regimental museums.

 

 

POW records

If your tommy was reported missing, he or she may have been one of the some 200,000 service personnel who spent time as prisoners of war (POWs). The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) formed the Prisoner of War Bureau in 1914. The Bureau took responsibility for tracking POWs, keeping their relatives updated on their welfare, and keeping communication lines open between POWs and their families in most theatres of the war; it delegated this task to the national Red Cross of neutral Denmark for the Russian Front, while information about prisoners on the Italian Front went directly through the Italian and Austro-Hungarian governments. The ICRC also inspected POW camps and interviewed prisoners to monitor camp conditions.

The ICRC’s Grande Guerre website provides more information on POWs during the First World War – including a searchable database of their records. You may also be able to find more details of POW conditions and of individual POWs at the National Archives, the British Red Cross archive, or a local record office or regimental museum.

Cemeteries, war memorials and Rolls of Honour

The First World War killed on an industrial scale. Society struggled to cope: individual commemoration at home and repatriation were both impossible. Instead, in 1917, the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC) buried the fallen in specially-created war cemeteries near aid stations or the front lines. Rudyard Kipling provided the epitaph “Known Unto God” for those bodies that couldn’t be identified, while memorials to the missing served as a symbolic grave for men whose bodies couldn’t be found. Pilgrimages to these cemeteries quickly became popular with those bereaved who could afford it.

In 1960, the IWGC changed its name to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC); however, it retains its role overseeing war cemeteries and memorials to the missing. On its website, you can search its databases of cemeteries and war memorials and of war dead and missing from Commonwealth countries.

However, many more relatives had to grieve at home rather than a war cemetary; private organisations and local governments created mass memorials in response to this need. Some, like the Cenotaph in Whitehall, were sculptural. Others, known as Rolls of Honour, were lists of those killed; some Rolls were plaques installed in the public areas of buildings, while others took the form of hand-written or printed books. These memorials often give the name, and possibly the service number, rank, and/or unit of casualties.

You can generally find Rolls of Honour in the local record office of the area they cover, or in the archives of the business that created them. Some were published, and may be available in local libraries. It is important to remember, though, during the Great War itself “Roll of Honour” often referred to lists of people (like members of an organisation or employees of a business) who were on active service – not necessarily lists of those who had died.