Monday 27 March 2017

Made in Hull: Women in the Pursuit of Perfection

To celebrate the end of Women's History Month 2017 and the City of Culture’s Women of the World Festival, we thought we would take a look at the lives of some of our unsung women, all of whom we have records on at the History Centre if you want to find out more. Winifred Holtby, wrote an article for the Yorkshire Post in October 1929 entitled, Women in the pursuit of perfection [L WH/2/2.25/05/10B]. In it she separated women into two groups: those who are satisfied with their lot and are happy to compromise; and those who strive for something better, for perfection. Holtby, along with the rest of the women in this blog, falls into the second category. These are women that deserve to be celebrated for their contribution to the life of the City and those within it. 

Ann Watson
On her death, Mrs Ann Watson provided for the creation of a trust, The Ann Watson Trust, under the terms of her will, dated 27th October 1720. We know little of Ann's life or family, except that she was married to the Reverend Abraham Watson, lived in Hedon and had four children. Three of her children, Hedon, Abraham, and a daughter married to Mr Alexander Hall, all died in her lifetime. Her fourth child, Isaac survived her and was the rector of South Ferriby. Her bequest provided for the accommodation and relief of poor women in need who were members of the Church of England. Preference was given to widows or unmarried daughters of clergymen of the Church of England. She also made provision to help those in need to gain an education. Through careful management her bequest has helped those less fortunate than herself for three centuries. Today, the objectives of the Charity remain fundamentally the same. They include providing for the advancement of education through the promotion of education amongst persons under 25 who are residents of the East Riding of Yorkshire or who attend a school in that area. You can find out more about Ann Watson and her legacy by exploring the trust's records [C DSAW].

Map showing the extent of the Trust's land ownership, 1770 [C DSAW/3/2]

Mrs Christiana Rose
Christiana Rose was a woman who forged her own way in a man’s world. In 1833 she inherited a business that would become known as Rose, Downs & Thompson Ltd. It was originally established in 1777 by John Todd as the Old Foundry in a location that would later become known as Canon Street. The business specialised in making windmill parts and casting canon and ship fittings. It also benefited from the lucrative seed crushing industry which required presses and windmills to operate. On the retirement of Mr Todd in 1824, the business passed to Christiana's father, Duncan Campbell. Christiana had a large hand in continuing the business and expanded it to such an extent that, between 1861 and 1863, the Old Foundry had built and installed over one hundred double presses, all of which bore the name C Rose. She died in December 1871 having steered the business through a transitional period which would see it become one of the leading exporters of oil mill machinery. To find out more, have a look at the records of Rose, Downs & Thompson [C DBR]. 

Photograph of female workers in the workshop, c.1920 [C DBR/2037]

Ada Hartley
Born in 1896 to Charles and Caroline Hartley, Ada was a woman who was to dedicate her life to the teaching profession and the children in her care. At the age of 17 she attended Hessle Church of England School as a student teacher. She would return to the school in 1928 as a teacher, and would remain there, working her way up the ranks to Headmistress in 1938, until her retirement in 1961. Outside of her teaching work, Ada served the community in other ways. By 1925 she had joined the Kingston Nursing Division of St. John’s Ambulance Association. She served in No. 6 District, the Hull Corps. In 1931 she was appointed a Lady Ambulance Officer and became a lady ambulance driver later the same year. As WWII approached, Ada attended courses in Chemical Warfare and became an instructor in anti-gas measures, before being appointed as a Lady Divisional Superintendent in June 1941. After the war she received The Order of St. John of Jerusalem in recognition of devoted service to the cause of humanity. Ada remained unmarried after the war, a fate many women experienced following the death of a generation of young men did not come home from the war. She died in 1980 having dedicated her whole life to helping others. You can find out more about Ada and her life in records at the History Centre [C DIMH].

Ada (1st on left) with The St John's Ambulence [C DIMH/1/4/1]

There are many more stories waiting to be told, many more exceptional Hull women to discover, here at the History Centre through our online catalogue. Mary Murdoch (1864-1916), Suffragist and Hull’s first female doctor [L.610]; Winifred Holtby (1898-1935), author, critic, journalist and political activist [L WH,  L.823]; Stevie Smith (1902-1971), poet and author [U DP/156, U DP/197, L. 821 (SMI)]; Amy Johnson (1903-1941), aviatrix and the first female to fly to Australia [L.920 (JOH), L DIAJ]; Lilian Bilocca (1929-1988), activist [L. Newspapers, L. Books]; Jean Hartley (1933-2011), founder of Marvell Press, Philip Larkin’s publisher [U DJE].

Carol Tanner, Collections Manager Hull City Archives

Wednesday 22 March 2017

Archive Service Accreditation

It has been announced today that the Hull History Centre has been awarded Archive Service Accreditation by The National Archives.

What is the Archives Accreditation scheme?
Accredited Archive Services ensure the long-term collection, preservation and accessibility of our archive heritage. Archives Accreditation is the UK quality standard which recognises good performance in all areas of archive service delivery. Achieving accredited status demonstrates that Hull History Centre has met clearly defined national standards relating to management and resourcing; the care of its unique collections and what the service offers to its entire range of users.

To complete its application staff at the Centre have spent a year reviewing and updating all of its policies on fundraising, volunteers, social media, access, learning and outreach aswell as collections management.

The Accreditation Panel which made the award, following a visit to the Centre earlier this year, commended the achievements of the Centre “in delivering a very positive service offering strong outreach and innovation, particularly in cataloguing and digital preservation. The constituent archives have embraced the opportunities of co-location to provide a positive experience for their users.”

What next?
an attendee at a recent History Maker
session with a decorated helmet and shield
 
We now have a framework to review and update all of this work in the next few years but it has given us the confidence that we are on the right track. We will continue to offer a range of services to meet our different users needs – including our popular History Makers craft and Lego activities for families, History Bakers where staff put their baking skills to the test with old recipes in the archives through to our recent Reading Old Writing workshops.

We will continue to seek external funding to allow us to do more, as evident through securing a National Cataloguing Grant to work on the records of the Humber Ports of the British Transport Docks Board which later became Associated British Ports. 

This year we are heavily involved in supporting a range of projects as the city celebrate UK City of Culture and hosting a wide variety of exhibitions including one on Hull in the Civil War later this summer.

One of the biggest challenges faced by the sector today is preserving digital content like word files or email often requiring data to be safely transferred from old formats – like the floppy disk. This area of work is key to ensure that future generations are able to access information in the archives for academic research or personal curiosity. 

Tuesday 14 March 2017

Made in Hull: A Poetic City

Recently, I was delving into issues of the University of Hull’s student paper, ‘Torch’, as part of my work [RefNo. U SUH]. Reading through a volume covering the period of the Second World War, I was intrigued to find that issues often contain poetry submissions from students. Many of these submissions were clearly inspired by our city, and this gave me an idea for a blog.

As it is UNESCO World Poetry Day on the 21st March, I thought you might like to take a look at some past images of Hull through the medium of student poetry. So this fortnight’s Culture of Culture blog will have limited input from me in order that you may take in some interesting perspectives on Hull written by people who have been inspired by the city.

Professor Hardy invented the Continuous Plankton Recorder whilst Professor of Zoology at Hull. This poem was presumably written by one of his students and captures one reaction to research being undertaken in the city during the 1940s.


During the Second World War, Hull was heavily bombed, possibly the worst hit city, along with Coventry, outside of London. This poem evokes the experience of living in Hull during the heavy bomb raids of the 1940s.


At the end of the Second World War, Hull was a ruined city, with bombed out buildings and 1000s of people having to be rehoused. This poem conjures a picture of what it must have been like to walk around the city in the aftermath of the war.


And finally, poem that may be inspired by Paragon Station, a building that would have been used by students coming and going between home and studies. Quite literally, a 'lighter' note to end on, with a depiction of a city looking forward with hope for the future.


If you have enjoyed any other these, why not come and visit us? You will find plenty more student poems in the 'Torch' volumes we hold here at the History Centre.

Claire, Assistant Archivist (HUA)

Thursday 9 March 2017

NDSA Levels of digital preservation

Here at the Hull History Centre, we have been reviewing the NDSA levels of digital preservation. This was something we had meant to do for a while. Last summer we volunteered to feed our experiences back to the Archives Accreditation team which is looking at using this element in the future.  

The levels are a framework created by the National Digital Stewardship Alliance as a guide for institutions that are managing digital material. The framework breaks up the many various and sometimes confusing aspects of digital preservation into five easily understood functional areas: Storage, Integrity, Security, Metadata and File Formats. These areas can be graded into four levels of increasing preservation security, creating a visual reference grid that can be used as a checklist. 

Two extra areas that have been proposed are Access (proposed by the Library of the University of California) and Physical Formats (by the United States Geological Survey). In creating a grid for the Hull University Archives we decided to include these two proposed areas.

This is our starting grid, with the two extra areas and a few minor tweaks around virus checking

Completing the self-assessment
To undertake the self-assessment we simply looked at each area, starting with level 1 and quickly determined whether we had met the requirement completely (green), partially (yellow) or not at all (red). We deliberately sought not to dwell on each element and erred on the side of caution.
This is our final grid, lots of red but some aspects/elements are already in-place

Using the framework
The framework is a self-assessment tool which can help you plan your digital preservation journey.  Don't worry - most of the Level 4 requirements in each area are intended to be hard to reach but is intended to serve as a long-term target to aspire to. At Hull our long-term target is to become a trusted digital repository.

Some elements will conflict with institutional policy - for example the storage area recommends having three separate copies of your data in different locations obviously has resource implications. 

The best way we found to approach the NDSA levels is to focus on meeting the basic requirements, understand the level of preservation that can achieve with the current resources and work up to levels 3 and 4 step-by-step. At the end of the day, every archive has different goals for their digital preservation plans and understanding how to achieve them is an ongoing learning process. Having conducted the exercise this year - we now need to make it an integrated element into our work-programme and review progress in 12 months time!

We decided to implement the two proposed areas but we did not a few issues. It can be argued that Physical Media is already featured under the Storage area albeit in not such an explicit way.  It can be argued (indeed was often argued) that the Access area of the framework fits outside of the main digital preservation strategy. One reason to include Access is that it ensures this element remains a visible and explicit part of the planning process - and of course is the reason why we are preserving the stuff in the first place. Whilst we didn't always agree - the discussions were very interesting in that it made us think about the detail and the big picture.

Conclusion
Whatever form the NDSA levels of digital preservation end up taking in the future, the ability to be able to see at-a-glance how an institution is faring in its digital preservation efforts, and what should be the next set of goals, is an incredibly useful tool. It breaks down the sometimes confusing terms and stages of digital preservation into smaller points that are more easily manageable, making it much easier for institutions to begin implementing their own digital archives.

Francisco & Tom
Transforming Archives trainees