Early last year, we celebrated the appointment of Julianne Simpson, as Chetham’s new Librarian, with an exhibition entitled ‘Chetham’s Librarians: Lives and Legacies’.
As part of the research for this exhibition, I had the wonderful opportunity to delve into some of the past librarians’ diaries that we have in our collections. Most of these are quite dry, and relate strictly to business: reader appointments, shelving numbers and committee meetings. They were hard to extract any personality from the pages, to enlighten us as to the Librarian’s character. However, the diaries from the late 1940s are an entirely different matter.
As the second world war was coming to an end, the decision was made to re-open Chetham’s and prepare to take in reader appointments again. After years of the Library being boarded up to protect the windows, and furniture and paintings being stored in safer locations, the position of Librarian was offered to Miss Hilda Lofthouse in 1944.
Left: Hilda Lofthouse and cat. Right: Pauline Leech, photographed at Bletchley Park.
At the time of her acceptance, Hilda was in her early 30s and working for the foreign office, and so her position was postponed until after the war had ended. Not long after that, it was decided that Hilda would require some much-needed help to get the Library back in working order, and the perfect candidate applied for Assistant Librarian…
Miss Pauline Leech had been working as a code breaker at Bletchley Park throughout the war, and despite her father’s attempts to persuade her to stay on at Bletchley after the war, Pauline was determined to train as a Librarian.
The first page of the 1947 diary
Our first Librarian’s Log book by Hilda and Pauline (and intermittently Kathleen Monk) begins in 1947, and is continued in annual diaries right through to 1975. Despite the notice written on the first page, the diaries did indeed become part of the Library’s archives after Pauline’s death in 1994. I, for one, am very thankful they were!
Each entry, whether short or long, gives us a wonderful snapshot into their everyday life in the Library. The arduous task they had, in cleaning and organising the Library after the hostilities, must have been exhausting. We know from Library Committee meeting notes from the time, that the windows of the medieval building had been boarded up to protect the building from broken glass, and the threat of gas to the staff during the war. However, this had meant that the building and its collection lacked sufficient ventilation during these years, and a great deal of care for the collection was needed after the Library was re-opened.
However, it looks as though the women enjoyed the challenge, and they kept a tally of their achievements at the top of each page; rooms cleared, collections catalogued, shelves re-organised. There was only one real threat to their work… the Readers!
‘Fri 7 Feb[Heresy from a librarian-aspirant: That libraries are definitely better places without readers than with]’ – Diary entry from 1947.
The irony of a Librarian not wishing to have readers is not lost on us, however the constant interruptions of visitors and scholars must have been more strenuous than usual, as a few of Pauline’s entries describe readers having to read by candlelight due to the gasworks being damaged, or the taps freezing over from the lack of heating available! Anyone who has worked at Chetham’s over winter, will be very familiar with the cold and drafty cloisters, and the idea of not having access to water for cups of tea and hot water bottles, makes one shudder at the thought!
In addition to these disruptions, was the work taking place in the building, on clearing out the fire-damaged Governor’s rooms, and repairing the roof, which had been damaged during the blitz in December 1941. In many of Hilda and Pauline’s entries, they mention the noise of the workmen and of the dust they traipsed in around the building, however it was more often than not, the cleaner, Mary, who was doing the complaining.
‘Saying of the day Mary: (dropping teapot and milk-jug upon the step) “These men will have me MOTH-EATEN before they have finished!” In fact Mary was in an unbrookable mood altogether.’ – Diary entry from Tuesday 24th Feb 1948
I have to say, the entries containing anecdotes about Mary, have become my favourite passages to read. One particular favourite of mine is from Saturday 26th April 1947, where Pauline writes about how ‘Mary was in a strongly reminiscent mood as she dusted us this morning. We heard 2 of the generations of rats that had lived and died in the Library and school – and since Mary saw their skeletons lying mouldering on the bookshelf tops, she has never been able to eat rabbits!’.
Other entries mention regular visitors to the Library, Feoffees (trustees), long-term readers, and colleagues working at John Rylands or Central Library. Some of these names we recognise from meeting notes, or letters of business exchanged, but through these diaries, we hear a little bit more about their personalities.
For instance, they hint at not getting along with the Feoffees all too well, except for Col. Riddick, who appears to be a favourite of theirs.
‘A handsome gift received today, by the Librarian and her assistant – viz. One large egg each from one of the Feoffee, Col. Riddick!’ and ‘ A day of ‘excitements’. Col. Riddick with a basket of daffodils discovered floating about the building – and generously handing out the daffodils.’
I can’t speak for the rest of the Library staff, but I, for one, would love some someone to float about the Library handing out daffodils and freshly laid eggs! It would certainly make a change from the excitement of freshly laid mousetraps.
One thing I can say about Hilda and Pauline’s diaries, is that no matter what is going on outside the medieval walls of Chetham’s Library, nothing really changes within.
We still have problems with the heating, the electrics, the leaking roof, we’re very familiar with the spiders and mice that make this building their home, and we’re always dusting, dusting, dusting! There’s something quite warm and familiar about that fact, that in the 370 years Chetham’s Library has been open to the public, that the staff have been facing the same trials and tribulations all these years, and in order to work here, you must possess a good sense of humour!
Caption on reverse: ‘HL + PL on Chetham’s Library roof. Victoria St. and Railway Offices in background. “Goldie” from Reading Room. 5.8.1969’
By Siân-Louise Mason, Visitor Services Coordinator at Chetham’s Library
On Friday 4 November 1938, the Library Committee of Chetham’s Library assembled – perhaps in the Reading Room – as Chetham’s Librarian prepared to address them. The weather in Manchester that day was mild and slightly rainy, but across Europe, storm clouds were gathering. During the 1920s and 30s, a rising tide of fascism had engulfed Italy, Spain and Germany as three dictators – Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco and Adolf Hitler – came to power in their respective countries. Allied appeasement of their regimes in the 1930s masked British re-armament, and by the end of the decade, there was a growing sense that matters were coming to a head. In October 1938, as another war seemed inevitable, the British Government sent out notices to the country’s major cultural institutions, instructing them to develop plans to be followed in the event of hostilities breaking out.
The minute-book of the Library Committee, open on the entry for 4 November 1938 (Chetham’s Library, C/Lib/Min/3).
Chetham’s Library was one such institution, and its librarian, Charles Phillips, had received this notice on 7 October 1938. Since his appointment in 1920, Phillips had spent almost twenty years immersed in the day-to-day work of the library, which consisted largely of cataloguing and indexing various collections of deeds and paintings. He had also taught classes in bibliography at the University of Manchester, delivered lectures on a wide range of themes to local societies, and contributed to radio broadcasts (the drafts of these lectures survive in the Phillips Collection in Chetham’s Library). The beginning of Phillips’ librarianship was therefore relatively peaceful, but it would be a mistake to assume that he was consequently ill-suited to running a wartime library; when the notice to prepare for hostilities arrived on Phillips’ desk, he immediately sprang into action, writing to other libraries to ask about their plans
The first of his correspondents was Strickland Gibson, Sub-Librarian at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, with whom Phillips perhaps had a prior acquaintance. Gibson had been a Library Assistant at the Bodleian between 1895 and 1912, and Phillips was appointed an Under-Assistant there in 1899, before joining the Extra Staff in 1903; it seems likely that the two men met around that time and continued their acquaintance, since the Phillips Collection contains, in addition to the drafts of Phillips’ lectures, an offprint of a lecture entitled ‘The Keepers of the Archives of the University of Oxford’, delivered by Gibson on 7 March 1928. The next two correspondents were far more local. One was Charles Nowell, who, after a career in various libraries, assumed the role of Chief Librarian at Manchester Central Library in 1932. The other was Dr Moses Tyson, who was Keeper of Western Manuscripts at the John Rylands Library from 1927 until his appointment as Librarian at the University of Manchester in 1935. Phillips was presumably well-acquainted with Tyson, given his lectures in bibliography at the university, and unlike the other librarians consulted, Tyson called on Phillips at Chetham’s Library in person. Phillips’ final correspondent was Frederick Wellstood, Librarian at Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon, and the nature of the relationship between these two men – easily the most unexpected of the four – is not yet known.
Typed extracts from a letter from Strictland Gibson, Bodleian sub-librarian (Chetham’s Library, C/Lib/Misc/28).
Based on these librarians’ responses, Phillips formulated his recommendations for the library’s wartime precautions, noting that ‘damage by air raid would be occasioned in three ways’. The first threat was that posed by high-explosive bombs. Phillips expressed the hope that the thick walls of the medieval college buildings would be able to withstand the blast of nearby bombs, while sandbags might protect the fragile windows. He nevertheless noted that a direct hit would penetrate the building, echoing a general consensus summed up by Gibson’s sobering statement: ‘as regards high explosive bombs, nothing can help us’. The second danger was gas, which Phillips noted was more hazardous to the library’s staff than to the building or collections, since it was neither corrosive nor incendiary. He therefore suggested closing and sealing the library’s windows to prevent gas from entering the library; in the event, the library’s windows were boarded up, preventing their breaking and the entrance of gas at the same time. The final threat was that of fire spreading from incendiary bombs. Phillips noted that, while the force of an incendiary bomb was minimal, one might still penetrate the medieval slate tiles of the library’s roof. To reduce the damage that this would cause, he proposed the installation of a steel net above the library’s corridors to catch the bombs, an approach suggested by Wellstood. He also recommended the placement of buckets of sand in the library, in addition to the firefighting equipment usually kept there, since tightly-packed books do not burn quickly and the use of water on them was ‘in no way to be recommended’. At the same time, he noted the inevitable risk that fire posed to the wooden presses, floors and roof beams.
Phillips’ suggestions to the Library Committee (Chetham’s Library, C/Lib/Misc/28).
Finally, Phillips advanced some suggestions for the safeguarding of the collections. He proposed that the ‘more precious book rarities, both manuscript and printed’, together with the catalogues and records of the library essential to its daily running, could be moved to the Muniment Room. This was ‘the Bodley plan’ that Gibson had outlined in his letter (‘adequate protection of a very limited number of exceptionally precious books’ in the Underground Bookstore, now the Gladstone Link), while the use of the Muniment Room had been recommended Nowell during his visit: it was practically fireproof, had thick walls and a paved floor, and only a small window. Phillips suggested covering this window, and the floor above this room, with sandbags. There is no echo in Phillips’ proposals of the recommendations by Gibson and Nowell concerning the removal of the rest of the collection to other sites, but in the event, some of the library’s books were sent to the Central Library, some of its furniture to Tatton Park, and sixteen paintings (including that of Humphrey Chetham) to the basement of the Whitworth Art Gallery.
On 3 September 1939, Britain declared war on Germany. The following day, the library closed to visitors and readers, but re-opened to readers following a meeting of the Library Committee on 13 October. The library continued to operate in this limited capacity for most of the war, and its business largely carried on as usual: readers consulted the collections, new books were purchased, and discussions were held around the library’s acquisition of the Gorton Chest (a plan that would not be realised until the chest’s permanent loan to the library in 1984, and its eventual purchase in 2001). The spectre of war was ever-present, however, and the validity of Phillips’ concerns were proven by the devastating ‘Christmas Blitz’ of December 1940, in which Manchester Cathedral was badly damaged by a direct hit, and the library suffered some damage. It was reported on the radio and in the news that the library had been destroyed, and Luxmoore Newcombe, the Librarian at the National Central Library, wrote to Phillips to offer whatever assistance he could supply. A few days later, Phillips replied that the damage was ‘not nearly as bad as one would imagine’, and that ‘the House-Governor’s quarters are totally destroyed by fire; one dormitory is burnt out; but my Library is intact’. In another letter, he related that ‘all the windows were shattered, the panelling blown away from the walls, the roof broken in a number of places, books hurled from their shelves, a good deal of damage from water and dirt, [and] fifty volumes spoiled in their bindings’, but that no pages had been lost, and that none of the collections stored in the Muniment Room were damaged in any way. The good sense of Phillips’ precautions had been proven.
Damage to the library’s roof as a result of bombing during the ‘Christmas Blitz’ (Chetham’s Library, no shelfmark).
In July 1943, the library closed again, this time following Phillips’ death. The Library Committee decided that no action would be taken to appoint a new librarian until after the war, and in the meantime, they turned to Nowell for guidance. Following an inspection of the library, Nowell made several suggestions to the Library Committee on 30 September. One of these was the installation of a sign outside the library, advising that the library was now closed and directing would-be readers to apply to Nowell at the Central Library. Another was a thorough regime of book-cleaning, since the collections had gathered dust during the war, and Nowell loaned some of the staff from Central Library to assist with this. The task of cleaning continued well into the late 1940s, following the appointment of Hilda Lofthouse as Chetham’s Librarian. Hilda’s time as librarian was no less interesting than Phillips’, and the curious reader can discover more about her in an upcoming blog post; this post celebrates the librarian who took steps to protect our library during one of its greatest moments of crisis.
Browsing through some of the library’s blogs recently, I came across one from May 2016 which featured a new acquisition of an old book – Roger Oldham’s Manchester Alphabet, published in 1906. The blog described how the book had been bought to ‘fill a gap’ in the collection, which had been spotted by the librarian when, in 2015, the library acquired a copy of the New Manchester Alphabet. The New Alphabet was a collaboration between students on the creative writing and illustration courses at Manchester Metropolitan University, edited by poet Jean Sprackland, which had been inspired by a copy of Roger Oldham’s book in the university’s Special Collections library.
I had first encountered images from the Alphabet a few years ago, on the Manchester Art Gallery website. I was researching representations of mill girls in the gallery’s collections and found an image which seemed to be an illustration from a children’s book. ‘A is for Ancoats’ features a little girl, draped in a red shawl and wearing clogs, standing with another small child in what is obviously a very rainy Victorian Manchester, complete with a background of red brick mills and chimneys.
Image 2: A is for Ancoats, copyright Manchester Art Gallery.
The image was from what is described on the website as ‘a complete set of hand-tinted printer’s proofs for the book [by Roger Oldham], coloured by the artist himself…’ I was enchanted by the witty verses and mischievous images featuring local landmarks. It seemed obvious that these were aimed at both children and their parents. Once I realised that Chetham’s had a copy of the original book, I went to the library stacks to retrieve it. However, I was surprised and rather disappointed to find that the illustrations, although delightful, were all black and white drawings, with no colour images at all.
Image 3: A is for Ancoats B&W Chetham’s Library copy.
A little research revealed that Roger had been an architect and, from Manchester Victorian Society’s Biographical Dictionary of the Architects of Greater Manchester, I discovered that he had practised in Manchester and had lived in Sale. Sale Library is home to Trafford Local Studies and I found that they had a collection of material relating to Roger, including a significant number of hand coloured images for the Alphabet. The Oldham family had moved from Lincoln to Sale in 1874 when he was 3 years old. His father is described on the 1881 census as a ‘Manchester Goods merchant’ and at this time the household included his wife, six sons, one daughter and 3 servants.
Roger’s early school days were at Mr Lloyd’s school also known as the Manchester Grammar School Preparatory School on Poplar Grove in Sale; he then attended Manchester Grammar School. His friend I.H.Swallow later wrote that ‘the impression which Roger made on his schoolfellows was that of high spirits combined with cleverness.’ His memories of MGS were clearly happy – the October 1906 edition of ‘Ulula’, the magazine of MGS, informs its readers that: ‘The amusing “ Manchester A B C ,” which was published some weeks ago by the firm of John Heywood, is the work of an Old Mancunian, Mr. Roger Oldham, who has kindly consented to allow the picture accompanying the letter O to appear on a souvenir Postcard, which will be on sale at the Receiver’s office shortly. The Proceeds will be devoted to the Hugh Oldham Lads’ Club.’ Hugh Oldham had founded Manchester Grammar School in the sixteenth century, and Roger’s family believed that he was an ancestor.
Image 4: O is for Owl from Ulula.
In 1891 the Census records Roger as ‘Architects Articled Pupil.’ He had been articled to the Manchester architect Charles Henry Heathcote who also happened to live in Sale. From the age of sixteen and then, from January 1893 to February 1896, he studied architecture at the Royal Academy Schools in London. By 1901 the Census records him as an architect, 30 years old, with an office in Brazenose Street but still living in the family home at Washway Road in Sale. He formed a partnership with David Bird in 1910. It seems that much of his work was for smaller local projects and private homes as very few examples of his work are recorded. The partnership was responsible for the new bell tower for St Paul’s parish church in Sale and also a new physics room and toilet block for Roger’s old school on Poplar Grove.
In 1904 Roger married Dorothy Scorer in Lincoln. He was a committed Christian and was actively involved with his local church – first St Pauls in Sale and then at St Albans Church in Broadheath, where he and Dorothy seem to have settled after their marriage. They had no children but he helped with Sunday School and with young people’s activities at both churches. His ‘art stall’ was apparently a ‘well known‘ feature of many bazaars and ‘Sales of Work’ at St Pauls!
The December 1972 edition of the ‘North Cheshire Family Historian’ includes an article written by Joan Bower called ‘Roger Oldham, Artist of Sale.’ Her neighbour, James Bramley Pye, had worked as a clerk in Roger’s Brasenose Street office and recalled that ‘One of his main interests was art and his office was also his studio where he turned out many drawings such as those that illustrated Picturesque Cheshire…’ Indeed Roger’s obituary records that in 1913 ‘he held an exhibition of ‘typical examples of his work’ at his studio in Temple Chambers, Brasenose Street.
Image 5: Picturesque Cheshire.
Mrs Bower had also made contact with Roger’s niece who told her that he and his brother Spencer, the young woman’s father, had loved to write and draw and had between them created two books of Rhymed Alphabets … Roger’s was a Manchester Alphabet and Spencer’s a Sale and Ashton-on-Mersey Alphabet. A copy of the Sale Alphabet is held in Trafford Archives; however, it isn’t illustrated.
Roger was a passionate believer in the importance of art for all . After his death his wife, together with his close friend I.H. Swallow, published a collection of his writings called The Art of Englishmen. The title is taken from a lecture which Roger gave to the Manchester Society of Architects in November 1914. His wife records that he was an enthusiastic and popular public speaker to students, to the ‘Manchester Corporation’, to architectural and literary societies, and to working men’s associations. Most of his lectures consisted of a detailed account, illustrated by lantern slides and drawings on the blackboard of ‘the history and associations and meaning of some local building or the life and work of some local artist…. ‘
Dorothy’s introduction tells us that ‘He held that Art is not a thing apart, a matter of schools and academies alone, but that it is, or should be, part of the real life of the people, and that for those who will only look there is often beauty in what seems to be commonplace and trivial’
These beliefs clearly inform his delightful Alphabet book:
M is for Manchester- the book
Roger’s representations of wet, foggy Manchester and its landmarks, people and buildings are often humorous, but always affectionate. He shows us the dark sooty mill buildings in ‘A is for Ancoats’ and the murky river in ‘I is for Irwell’ but also the leafy suburbs of Heaton Park, Chorlton and Bowdon. The city’s architecture is, unsurprisingly, accurately observed – the towering Royal Exchange, the elegant interiors of the art gallery and the town hall. Roger also enjoys what we might describe today as ‘cartoon violence.’ In ‘M is for Motor Car’ horses buck and rear and people dangle from windows as a new fangled car billows smoke. In ‘T is for Tram’ bodies fly through the air due to overcrowded vehicles or are trampled underfoot in the rush hour in ‘X is for Exodus’.
Although he suggests the reality of poverty, from the pawn shop in A is for Ancoats, to the shawl-wrapped women checking cabbages in the market at Shudehill, his images of Manchester people show warmth and humour. Children are always getting into mischief – climbing on the bridge over the Irwell, wandering across the path of the elephant in Belle Vue zoo. There are also a number of jokes based on his local knowledge. There had been ongoing problems with the commission for the Town Hall frescoes (started in 1879 but not finished until 1893). Thetop-hatted gents, clearly Manchester dignitaries, in deep conversation in F is for Fresco, take no notice of the artist or his work. The image is of Ford Madox Brown and is based on a very distinctive self portrait which Roger must have known. It was originally painted for Brown’s lawyer, Theodore Watts Dunton, and owned for many years by Dunton’s widow, although it is now in America.
Image 6a: F is for Fresco.
Image 6b: F is for Fresco.
There is also a joke for the erudite adult reader in ‘Q for de Quincey’. The boy is engrossed in ‘Arabian Nights’ whilst a book by Mrs Barbauld lies discarded on the ground. Anna Laetitia Barbauld had been a ‘blue stocking’ poet, critic and author of children’s literature – a character in an early nineteenth-century novel by Sarah Burney actually remarks, ‘… you know fairy-tales are forbidden pleasures in all modern school-rooms. Mrs. Barbauld….and a hundred others, have written good books for children, which have thrown poor Mother Goose, and the Arabian Nights, quite out of favour, at least, with papas and mamas..’
Image 7: Q is for De Quincey copyright Manchester Art Gallery.
Penny plain or Twopence Coloured?
In addition to the images owned by Manchester Art Gallery and described as ‘a complete set of hand-tinted printer’s proofs for the book by Roger Oldham, coloured by the artist himself’, Trafford Local Studies also have two boxes of miscellaneous material relating to Roger and his work, including two sets of coloured, card-framed images for the Alphabet. A number of the alphabet images are not in good condition, and some are missing so it is difficult to compare them with those on the gallery website which seem much lighter and brighter. Some of the Trafford images have received conservation treatment, but the cost is high. Manchester Art Gallery were fortunate in being able to fund extensive conservation on their set.
Image 8: S for Shudehill, copyright Trafford Local Studies.
However, the really curious aspect to this is that despite the website notes accompanying the Manchester Art Gallery images, I have found no evidence at all that a coloured version of the book was ever published. Chetham’s copy of the ‘Manchester Alphabet’ has black and white drawings. The catalogue entry for the John Rylands Library copy states that it was printed by George Falkner & Sons, London & Manchester and published by George Heywood Ltd in 1906. It is described as having 55 pages and ‘b&w ills.’ The British Library copy also has b&w illustrations.
Hannah Williamson, Curator in Fine Art at Manchester Art Gallery, suggests that a coloured edition of this kind of small, locally themed book would have been a very expensive and unlikely publishing venture and speculates that perhaps Roger was simply provided with surplus paper copies of the unbound images.Perhaps the reason for the missing images from the Trafford sets is that Roger coloured them and gave them as gifts to friends (adults or children) or perhaps he sold them to raise money at his ‘church art stalls’. As mentioned earlier, we know that he had ‘O is for Owl’ postcards printed to sell for the MGS Hugh Oldham Charity.
My recent visit to Manchester Art Gallery revealed some intriguing additional information in a folder relating to the Alphabet. An enquiry had been received in 1982 from a gentleman whose mother, a resident of Sale, had left him three ‘pictures’ which she told him had been given to her by the artist. His descriptions indicate that they were X, M and G, although he doesn’t mention whether they were coloured. Sandra Martin, then Assistant Keeper of the Rutherston Collection, replied and mentioned that ‘several of Roger’s drawings both buildings and humorous were published as postcards….’
Then in 2012, a letter was received by the gallery from someone who had bought at auction four hand-coloured Manchester Alphabet images on postcards. One of them, ‘I is for Irwell’, had the verse handwritten on the back and was signed ‘Roger Oldham’. Roger died in 1916 at the age of 45 – he had apparently been unwell for some time. He is buried in Brooklands cemetery and there is also a plaque to his memory on the wall of St Albans church, Broadheath which says ‘This tablet is given by his wife Dorothy and the congregation in gratitude for his useful and happy life.’ In 1917 Dorothy, assisted by some of Roger’s close friends, published a memoir celebrating his life called The Art of Englishmen which includes the text of several of his talks and lectures and an affectionate biographical note. His friend I.H. Swallow records that ‘His capacity for interesting others in the things in which he was himself interested was, in fact, very remarkable’ and that ‘in his company nothing seemed ordinary.’
Copies of ‘A Manchester Alphabet’ are now rare and desirable, selling for several hundred pounds at auction. One imagines that Roger would be delighted but very amused.
By Patti Collins
With thanks to the team at Trafford Local Studies, to Peter Johnson of St Albans Church and to Hannah Williamson at Manchester Art Gallery
Chetham’s Library has no lack of books with famous former owners: there is a copy of Plato’s works owned by the early modern playwright Ben Jonson (see our post on this subject as part of our ‘101 Treasure’s of Chetham’s’ series), a book owned by Elizabeth Gaskell and, of course, the five books annotated by Dr John Dee, scholar and alchemist and warden of Manchester college from 1595 to 1605. The collection even includes books owned by royalty: Matthias Corvinus King of Hungary, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I all owned books that are now in Chetham’s Library. However, less illustrious readers also left their traces, and many of the volumes in the library tell stories of the lives of readers from past centuries. One such example are the books owned by Robert Syddall and John Hartley, two apothecaries living in Manchester in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Not much is known about Syddall and Hartley beyond the evidence they left in their books. The parish registers of Manchester Cathedral show that Syddall was born in the 1570s, married in the early years of the seventeenth century, had a son (also named Robert) and died in 1645, survived by his widow Ellen. An inventory of Robert Syddall’s possessions compiled after his death reveals that he kept equipment necessary for the making of remedies, such as stills and an alembic, in his house, suggesting that he pursued his profession from home rather than from a shop. John Hartley is even more elusive: the parish registers only show that he had three daughters, one of whom survived to adulthood, and that he died in 1667. It is not clear whether Syddall and Hartley knew each other, but it seems likely, given that they were active in the same profession at the same time in what was a relatively small town in the seventeenth century. Thirty books owned by these two apothecaries are now in the collection in Chetham’s Library. Of these, thirteen have ownership inscriptions by both Syddall and Hartley, suggesting that they perhaps came into Hartley’s possession after Syddall’s death.
Image 1: Signatures of Robert Syddall and John Hartley in Champier’s Speculum Galeni (BYROM 2.I.3.69)
Ten have inscriptions by Syddall but not Hartley and seven by Hartley but not Syddall. One further volume that belonged to Syddall is now in the British Library (BL Add MS 62127). The books came to Chetham’s Library as part of the Byrom Collection, donated in 1870 by a descendant of the Manchester poet and scholar John Byrom (1692-1763). It is not entirely clear how Byrom acquired the books or who owned them between Hartley’s death and Byrom’s acquisition, but it is probable that they stayed together as a collection from the seventeenth century onwards.
With few exceptions, they are works relating to medicine and adjacent subjects like botany, and they show both a keen interest in the literature of their profession on the part of Syddall and Hartley and their links with a wider network of readers, including other medical professionals like Thomas Cogan, an Oxford-educated physician who was the master of Manchester grammar school between 1583 and 1597. The large majority of the books, most in Latin, were printed in Europe. Since books were often initially sold unbound, their bindings also reveal something of their story: they range from high-quality decorated calf bindings to cheaper limp vellum bindings and originate from different countries on the Continent as well as England, demonstrating that even in the seventeenth century, readers in Manchester had access to scholarship and scientific literature from continental Europe.
Image 2: Blind-stamped sixteenth-century full calf binding on Champier’s Speculum Galeni (Byrom 2.I.3.69).
Image 3: Limp binding on Actuarius’ De urinis libri septem (Byrom 3.E.6.69).
Image 4: Pressed poppy in Ambroise Paré’s Opera chirurgica (Byrom 2.I.6.13).
The traces Syddall and Hartley left in their books give us tantalising glimpses of their (reading) lives. Some of the books include pressed plants, possibly used in the making of remedies. One of the books has a hole burned through a page: it is easy to imagine it getting damaged in an apothecary’s workshop. Most interesting, however, are Syddall’s and Hartley’s annotations. They reveal two medical professionals at work, testing and amending medicinal recipes and occasionally creating new remedies of their own. We see Syddall, for instance, adding the words ‘ut probavi’ (‘as I have tried out’) on one occasion, and making comments like the suggestion that a remedy needs more honey to sweeten it. Syddall also added, on a blank page in one of his books, a remedy against an illness he calls ‘pestis’. This could be a general term for any kind of illness, but it could also more specifically mean the plague, of which Manchester experienced a devastating outbreak in 1605, while Syddall was active as an apothecary.
Image 5: Syddall’s annotation ‘ut probavi’ (‘as I have tried out’) in Wecker’s Antidotarium (Byrom 2.K.4.39).
Image 6: Syddall’s remedy against ‘pestis’ in Wecker’s Antidotarium (Byrom 2.K.4.39).
Some of the books also reveal the apothecaries’ interests beyond medicine: Syddall’s books include, for instance, an Italian grammar. Some annotations, too, are unrelated to professional matters: on an image of Aristotle on the title page of his Logic, a reader, possibly Hartley, has written the words ‘long beard’. The books also include a laundry list, in addition to quotations from poetry, ingredient lists and many other kinds of annotations: they are a fascinating look into the working and reading habits of two apothecaries who lived four centuries ago. Finally, they also reveal what Syddall saw as the limits of his art: to one of his medical works, Syddall has added a quotation from the Roman poet Ovid, which translates to ‘love can be cured by no herbs’ – even industrious readers like Syddall and Hartley, it seems, did not find cures for every ill.
Image 7: The words ‘long beard’ added by a reader to a woodcut of Aristotle in his Logic (Byrom 2.K.4.17).
Image 8: Quotations from Mantuanus and Ovid in Fuchs’ Methodus seu ratio compendiaria (Byrom 2.K.2.31).
On 19 November 1994 seven jackpot winners received around £800,000 each in the first National Lottery draw. In its first year £267m of lottery money went to “good causes” – arts, heritage, millennium and sport, and £154m went to charity. Since then around £49 billion has been given away to over 690,000 projects. As part of the 30th anniversary celebrations we are looking back to a project that was an absolute gamechanger for Chetham’s Library.
In June 1995 an appeal was announced with the intention of raising more than a million pounds to ensure the survival of the Library. In a short time over £200,000 was received towards the target and there was lots of interest in the media on the Library’s problems and plans for the future. These funds were especially valuable in demonstrating the widespread support for the Library to the Heritage Lottery Fund and providing the partnership funds which are essential to a successful lottery bid.
A photograph of Librarian Michael Powell, taken in 1995 during the fundraising appeal
The Heritage Lottery Fund awarded a grant of £1.8 million to the Library in January 1996. The majority of the grant, £1.4 million, was added to our endowment fund in order to ensure the Library’s financial sustainability for future generations. The remainder, together with funds from the appeal, went towards a series of capital projects – essential restoration of the historic book presses, a new reading room and collection storage rooms on the ground floor, cataloguing and conservation of the collections.
The most significant part of the project was work on the historic first floor of the Library. In particular the condition of the presses (book cases) was of most concern with several starting to lean alarmingly. These oak presses were designed specifically for the Library in the 1650s and constructed by a team of joiners headed by Richard Martinscroft. We still hold the original accounts for the work in our archive. In the 1740s the height of the presses was increased and new shelves added at lower level. Later in the century the height was increased again by the addition of three new shelves to the present height of 10ft. The additional weight of several shelves of books created a problem that only became critical after two hundred years.
Most of the work was carried out by just two joiners, Steve Slater and Dave Evans of Fourways Joinery of Preston. Each press was dismantled piece by piece and the shelves taken away to a workshop on site where they were repaired and the joints strengthened. In the Priests Wing the floor was also reinforced with specially cut stainless-steel plates inserted into the supporting beams. Wherever possible, the original wood was retained and all new strengthening pieces are hidden from view. For visitors now the first floor appears to be completely unaltered for the last two hundred years ever since the additional shelves were added and the gates between the presses installed. A true testament to the skill and craftmanship of the work.
During the building work, a makeshift bridge for staff to get to their office!
Everything back in its rightful place
One mysterious legacy from the project was the discovery of a stone head. We assume that he was part of the medieval building, saved by earlier workmen and hidden away.
Our mysterious stone head, now on display in the Library
We remain deeply grateful to the Heritage Lottery Trustees for their magnificent support and all those lottery players over the last thirty years who have helped to ensure that Chetham’s Library can survive and thrive for many more centuries.
Following on from our last blog, here is an example of spycraft from the 17th century.
To put a Schedule, or lytle wryting into an Egge, lay an Egge certaine days in strong vinegar, until it be soft, and wryteyour name or what you lyst in a lytle peece of paper, and folde the paper as harde together as you can: then with a Raser, cut the sayd Egge in the toppe finely, and advisedly; through the which, putt the lytle paper into the Egge cyrcumspectedly, and then put the Egge into cold water, and immediately the shell wyle be harde as it was before. A proper secrete.
Hiding messages in eggs, creating invisible ink from artichoke juice, smuggling notes in their skirts, cracking codes; these were all in a day’s work for more than sixty female spies in overlapping networks in 17th-century England. Monarchs and governments employing spies to safeguard their regimes saw that women had certain advantages in the game. They were generally excluded from politics and considered at the time to be too irrational and undependable to be agents, which is exactly why they were perfect for the job. They did not arouse suspicion, were not searched when travelling and, presumably, were patient enough to hide little notes in eggs and ingenious enough to make use of such arcane subterfuge.
So why was the ancient art or science of spying so crucial in the mid to late 17th century? The restoration of Charles II to the throne of England in 1660 did not mean stability was magically restored after twenty years of political turbulence. Rumours of republican conspiracies were rife, there were problems with the community of parliamentarian exiles in the Netherlands, andcommercial and naval rivalry had already resulted in war with the Dutch. To survive and prosper, the new regime found it necessary to deploy spies and informers to penetrate and betray any potential plots and gain secret knowledge of foreign affairs. Despite his cheerful deportment, Charles II, the Merry Monarch, was a worried man.
Charles II dancing at a Ball at Court, c 1660. Hieronymus Janssens (Flemish, 1624-93). Berkshire: Windsor Castle, RCIN 400525. Source: Royal Collection Trust
This particular espionage tale starts in Surinam, an English plantation colony utilizing slavery for sugar cultivation, much coveted by the Dutch. Even in such distant colonies, people of suspicion were under surveillance. One of these was Robert Scott, son of a regicide, who played a double game in an uprising before the Restoration and had known ties to England’s number one enemy. Also there, according to her (not altogether reliable) memoirs, was Aphra, a young woman going under the name of Astrea, who was eventually expelled by the Deputy Governor, possibly because she was suspected of being a royalist spy. Somewhere between this expulsion and 1665, Aphra married a shadowy, probably German, figure by the name of Behn, who promptly disappeared from the records.
In 1666, the first record of Mrs Aphra Behn appears, she was to become a celebrated playwright, poet, translator, and one of the first English women to earn a living by writing and became a literary role model for later generations of female authors. Virginia Wolf famously wrote of her: ‘All women together ought to let flowers fall upon (her) tomb…for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.’ Much of Behn’s work is easily available today in modern editions, but Chethams Library holds some rare first edition fragments – two translations, a prologue to a play by John Fletcher, and her own prologue to her late, probably unpublished, play ‘Like Father Like Son or The Mistaken Brothers.’
Aphra Behn’s Prologue to her play ‘Like Father Like Son,’1682, in Chetham’s Library.
But to get back to the spy story, Aphra records in her memoirs that she had an audience with Charles II after her return to England. Such a meeting seems unlikely for the daughter of (allegedly) a barber and a wet nurse, unless either she had taken his fancy, or, more probably, unless she was an agent with news to report. It may be that by this time she had already made inroads in the world of theatre and politics and that her services were recruited by Thomas Killigrew, the dramatist heading up the King’s Company and secretly working in intelligence for the King. However she was recruited, by July 1666, during the darkest point of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, she finally enters recorded history as the subject of a document issued by the office of the Secretary of State, Lord Arlington, entitled ‘Memorials for Mrs Affora’ and giving her a 14-point list of instructions. And so she embarked on a short, frustrating, dangerous and ultimately unprofitable career as a spy: Agent 160, Code Name Astrea.
By this time Robert Scott had left Surinam, was lying low in Holland and was suspected of working for the Dutch. Aphra was charged with finding him and then ‘to know whether Mr Scott has any resolution to become a convert and to serve his KING and COUNTRY. To use all secrecy imaginable.’ She was to extract information on how many ships the Dutch had, how many had been lost in a recent skirmish, whether and when they would ally with the French, what the private Dutch East India Company fleet was doing and the whereabouts of other merchant ships. Additionally, she was to discover anything at all about Dutch spies operating in England, whether the English exiles in Holland would invade and if so where they would land. Any information was to be relayed in code to Arlington. The code was not complex: 160 for herself with the cover name Astrea, 159 for Scott, whose cover name was Celladon, 26 for Amsterdam and so on. We can assume that Aphra had some kind of cover story and there is evidence that she was accompanied by a MrPiers, a merchant sailor.
In return for such intelligence, acting as a double agent, Scott was to be offered both money and a pardon for his earlier misdemeanours against the new regime. Arriving in Antwerp in Flanders, rather than hostile Holland, Aphra wrote to Scott asking for a meeting. Surprisingly, he agreed immediately, perhaps because he already knew her from their days in Surinam or perhaps because he was tempted by the offer of money. She does not seem to have been pleased to see him. ‘I was forced to get a coach and go a day’s journey with him to have an opportunity to speak with him, …’ but she felt she had been successful: ‘After I had used all arguments to him that were fit for me, he became so extremely willing to undertake your service.’ She, naively as it turned out, felt she had gained his trust: ‘I really believe [his] intent is very real and will be very diligent in the way of doing you all the service in the world for the future.’
The National Archives holds 19 of Aphra’s spying letters sent to London from Antwerp. We learn that Scott did write several letters with snippets of information but it seems Aphra copied out the first few to send to Arlington’s office, and kept the originals, claiming that Scott was afraid to have his own handwriting recognised if the letters were intercepted. Some scholars believe she rewrote the letters to make the intelligence sound more important than it really was, with the occasional comment on what English policy should be. Others have suggested that the letters were the early attempts of a budding fiction writer and they contained half-truths based on her own eavesdropping, reading of newspapers and imagination. In any case, Scott refused to divulge more unless he was paid and his pardon assured, and unless she came to Amsterdam, which was safer for him, but highly dangerous for Aphra – she ‘dare as well be hanged as to go’, particularly as the English had just burnt some of the Dutch fleet in its own harbour and anti-English feeling was raging.
The Four Days’ Battle, 1-4 June 1666. Abraham Stock. Wikipedia.
In the next few months, this spying life became increasingly uncomfortable and dangerous for Aphra. She had unwisely shared her credentials with a failed English spy, Thomas Corney, who had earlier been betrayed by Scott to the Dutch government, imprisoned and tortured, dropped from Arlington’s payroll, and was seeking his revenge by undermining the ‘shee spy’, as he called Aphra. Both he and she were somehow able to access each other’s correspondence and he insulted her to everyone he knew. He suggested Scott and Aphra were lovers conspiring to swindle Arlington and that the whole mission was hopeless. Back in London letters were arriving from both Corney and Aphra, each claiming that the other was indiscreet, and both begging for money.
Indeed, whatever Aphra’s shortcomings as a spy, she needed money to live, and instruction to continue to ensure Scott’s trust. ‘I have sent several times to Mr Hallsall,’ she wrote, ‘but I can get no word of answer…I have by this post sent him things from Celladon who is the readiest man alive to serve his majesty… without any encouragement than barely my word.’ Her frustration is palpable. ‘I confess I carried no more … but 50 pounds and I have not only spent all that upon mere eating and drinking but in borrowing of money to accomplish my desires of seeing and speaking with the man. I am as much more in debt having pawned my very rings.’
As the months passed she feared she had lost the trust of Scott due to Corney’s intervention, and she needed money to pay her debts and return to England. She wrote to Arlington himself: ‘Therefore my humble petition to your lordship is that I may have a final answer of what I am to do, and not let me be disgraced and ruined in a strange place where I have none to pity or help me.’ There was no immediate answer. Eventually Scott, always under surveillance by both sides, was arrested by the Dutch (after which he disappears from the record), and the mission was clearly at an end. At last, Aphra received enough money to pay her immediate debts and return to London in May 1667.
Even after she returned, she had debts to pay, a warrant was issued for her arrest, and she was forced to ask her former employers for help. No amount of pleading could induce the English government, now on the verge of bankruptcy, to give her more. Hearing nothing, she petitioned the King. Thereafter her name as an agent disappears from the records, either because the petition worked or because she served her time in a debtors’ prison, but within a few years she had built a reputation as a writer, still using her pastoral pseudonym of Astrea, and her plays were wildly popular on the stages of Restoration London.
Aphra was just one of many women who, for reasons of pride, financial gain, ambition, love or adventure, undertook roles as secret agents for their King and country, at great risk and cost to themselves. In her case, at least part of the motivation appears to have been a genuine devotion to the Stuart cause. Despite her shoddy treatment in the King’s service, she revered Charles II, and subsequently supported his brother James II, dedicating a play to him even after he had been exiled. Just before she died, she declined an invitation to write a welcoming poem for the new monarchs, William and Mary. Had she lived she would have been an enthusiastic advocate of the Jacobite cause and would no doubt have deployed her now powerful pen in its service.
Aphra Behn’s talent had not been dampened by her dispiriting experience as a secret agent; her exuberant works in poetry and prose, sometimes serious and lyrical, sometimes bawdy and erotic, speak of power, politics and religion, women’s rights, colonial oppression and slavery. Some of her plays were so popular that they were on stage in London every season for decades after her death. Although she had not been clever enough to survive in a wartime spy network, she later personified that highly valued 17th attribute – ‘Wit.’ Her memorial in Westminster Abbey regrets: ‘Here lies a proof that Wit can never be/Defence enough against Mortality.’
Nadine Akkerman, ‘Invisible Agents: Women and Espionage in 17th Century Britain’
Janet Todd, ‘Aphra Behn: a Secret Life’
National Archives project, ‘Aphra Behn: Memoirs of a Shee Spy. Katy Mair, Elaine Hobby
By: Kath Rigby.
NB In July 2024 the Guardian promised ‘joy at the celebratons of Aphra Behn: a Netflix film, statue and a newly discovered first edition. These have yet to materialise.
As anyone who has visited recently will know, Chetham’s Library played host this summer to a remarkable assembly of furniture: the original marriage bed of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, a copy of it produced by the prolific Victorian forger George Shaw, and several other pieces of furniture produced by him and passed off as original Tudor pieces. The story of the marriage bed’s rediscovery and its connection to Chetham’s Library is a thrilling one, and it has been a pleasure sharing it with so many of you through tours and evening lectures during its time here. Now that the furniture has been safely packed away, however, our thoughts have turned to the new exhibition that has taken its place in the library, which focuses on the fascinating hidden history of ciphers and codebreaking.
For as long as written communication has existed, people have had to contend with the fact that others might try to intercept and read their missives, and have consequently gone to great lengths to prevent this. Codes and ciphers have long been employed to encrypt the contents of letters, preventing anyone who did not have the key from reading them. Several books in our collections deal with precisely this topic, providing instruction on how to create substitution ciphers that replaced the letters of the alphabet with other letters or symbols. Such ciphers eventually developed into modern cryptography, including the Enigma Code that was employed by Germany during the Second World War. In fact, one of our past Assistant Librarians, Pauline Leech, worked as a codebreaker in Hut 6 at Bletchley Park, where Enigma was cracked, before she came to the library!
Wax seals on letters in our collections (Chetham’s Library, E.1.4/5, A8, 14, 21 and C13).
Another way of keeping the contents of a letter safe was to ensure that nobody could open it without it being obvious that they had done so. Since ancient times, wax seals were used to close letters; each seal was unique to its owner, so an intact seal signified both that the letter was genuine, and that the letter’s contents had remained private. The Romans used rings engraved with images, sometimes carved into gemstones called ‘intaglios’, to make their impressions in the wax. During the medieval period, these intaglios were sometimes reused and set into rings that bore legends attesting to the secrecy of their messages: examples include ‘clausa secreta tego’ (‘I cover closed secrets’), ‘frange, lege, lecta tege’ (‘break, read, cover what is read’) and ‘tecta lege, lecta tege’ (‘read what is covered, cover what is read’). The use of seals persisted well into the early modern and modern periods, and several letters in our collections still bear the traces of the seals that once kept them secure.
The Chetham seal matrix (Chetham’s Library, no shelfmark).
A particularly exciting item in our collections, and one that was only acquired recently (through the generous assistance of the Friends of the Nation’s Libraries), is a seal matrix with three faces. The matrix was therefore capable of making three different impressions in the wax, depending on which face was used. At the moment, we don’t know much about who originally owned this matrix, but it clearly has a connection with either Humphrey Chetham or the library that he founded, since the Chetham achievement of arms is found on one of its three faces: the crest (a demi-griffin gules charged with a cross double-crossed, or) above the eschuton (quarterly, 1st & 4th, argent, a griffin segreant gules, within a bordure, sable, bezantée; 2nd, argent, a chevron between three crampons, gules; 3rd, gules, a cross double-crossed, or; over all charged with a crescent for difference). On the second face, the Chetham griffin crest – the symbol still used by the library to this day – is displayed on its own. On the third face, an as-yet-unidentified classical head appears in profile.
Nevertheless, letters closed by wax seals weren’t as secure as might be imagined. Using a heated knife, someone determined to read a letter’s contents could have lifted its seal intact before reapplying it with an extra dab of wax, leaving next to no trace that it had ever been opened. As a result, during the early modern period – when easily-foldable paper replaced stiff parchment as the most commonly-used writing support – people started to come up with more and more inventive folding techniques that added yet another layer of security to letters. Some, such as the ‘tuck and seal’, were relatively simple, while others, such as the ‘spiral lock’, were incredibly complicated and, as a result, incredibly secure. The former is known to have been used by Elizabeth I’s chief adviser William Cecil, and the latter by Elizabeth herself, so it is entirely possible that John Dee received letters locked in this way while he was the warden of Manchester’s collegiate church between 1595 and 1608/9. In fact, all letters sent before the invention of the envelope in 1840 were closed by folding them in some way, since the early postal service charged by weight rather than size; folding letters enabled senders to avoid using a second sheet of paper as an envelope, which would have doubled the price!
Modern reproductions of locked letters.
Common to both wax seals and letter-locking is the fact these were highly personal ways of securing correspondence. The poet John Donne, whose literary works we have in our collections, even developed his own unique letter-lock, which perhaps provided an extra layer of security! Other encryption techniques were less personal, however, and we’ll be taking a look at those in future blog posts relating to our new exhibition. We’ll also be exploring Pauline Leech’s experiences of Bletchley Park and the library through her diaries, also in our collections. We hope you’ll enjoy coming with us on this journey into the hidden history of correspondence! To find out more about the fascinating practice of letter-locking, you can visit the Letterlocking project page here.
Visitors to Manchester have the rare opportunity to see the original marriage bed made for Henry VII (the first Tudor King) and Elizabeth of York, as well as an infamous forgery, this summer.
This new exhibition, A Royal Tudor Bed and a Northern Rogue, will be hosted at Chetham’s Library from 15 August – 11 September.
The original four-poster bed was made in 1485 for Henry and Elizabeth who married the following year. Their marriage united two conflicting families, the Yorkists and the Lancastrians, who had been at war for 30 years. Henry recognised the importance of taking a Yorkist bride, to strengthen his claim to the throne and to weaken any other Yorkist’s claim.
The bed is a hugely important piece of history as it marks the end of the War of the Roses and the beginnings of the Tudor dynasty, and its headboard is dense with symbols of unity, redemption, fertility, and new beginnings.
George Shaw (1810–76), a ‘rogue’ from Saddleworth, was fascinated by medieval architecture and he created mock Tudor and Elizabethan furniture for the Duke of Northumberland, the Earls of Bradford and Derby, the Towneleys and Bagshawes, and Chetham’s Library. A lectern in Manchester Cathedral is also by George Shaw. Shaw created a replica of the Tudor marriage bed, which will be on display as part of this new exhibition.
Peter Lindfield, Historian and Cardiff University Lecturer, said: “The original Tudor bed tells an incredible story of royalty, war, politics, and marriage in the 1400s; but Shaw’s copy tells an equally riveting tale of forgery, as well as 19th century politics and business. At its peak, Shaw’s Uppermill workshop employed more than one hundred people. I can’t wait for people in Manchester to experience the exhibit.”
Ian Coulson, from The Langley Collection and who discovered the bed, said: “I suspected the bed had late 15th – early 16th century origins after observing the shrinkage, infestation, oxidation and complex history of loss and repair that the bed had suffered. What followed was several years of multi-disciplinary investigation that revealed the identity as the long-lost marriage bed of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. It’s an incredible piece of history that I hope many people will enjoy.”
The exhibition will be available to see as part of Chetham’s Library’s regular tours from Thursday 15 August – Wednesday 11 September. The tour includes the opportunity to explore the rest of our unique Library, the oldest in the UK, and see more of George Shaw’s furniture.
There will also be a series of free talks exploring the exhibition running through August and September. Find out more and book your tickets at the links below:
More than twenty years ago, in the dark and dusty underground reference stacks of Manchester Central Library, I first came across the two volumes of James Bolton’s illustrated book, Harmonia Ruralis. I was completely enchanted by his coloured images of British songbirds, their eggs, nests and habitat. The books were very fragile – the leather-covered spines and marbled boards had parted company and were held together with cotton tape but the pages were embossed with the 1851 stamp of Manchester Free Library. 1851 was the year in which Manchester became one of the first British cities to open a rates-supported library under the Public Libraries Act of 1850 and Bolton’s book had been selected as part of its first reference collection.
Image 1 – Manchester Central Library Copy
Many years later I joined Chetham’s library as a volunteer and was delighted to discover that the library also owned a copy of Harmonia Ruralis. There are- no provenance details but it was acquired after 1868 and has been rebound before any of the current staff were in post, but probably within the last twenty or thirty years. The book was among the first to feature in the online ‘101 Treasures of Chethams Library’.
Image 2 – Chetham’s Library Copy
I recently decided to look more closely at the copies of Bolton’s book in Central Library and in Chethams and was intrigued to note significant differences in the hand coloured illustrations in the books. A check on ‘Library Hub Discover’ (the JISC database recording the catalogues of 203 UK and Irish academic, national & specialist library catalogues) revealed only 11 copies of Bolton’s book, three of which are held in Manchester – at Chethams Library, Manchester Central Library and the John Ryland’s Library at the University of Manchester.
A visit to the John Ryland’s library revealed that their copy of Harmonia Ruralis, in gold embellished crimson leather, was part of the 43,000 items in the Spencer Collection of books acquired by Henriqueta Rylands in 1892 and the coloured illustrations in this copy differed from both the Central Library and Chetham’s copies.
Image 3 – John Rylands Library Copy
Faithfully drawn, engraved and coloured after Nature.
James Bolton was a Northerner, from Halifax, where he lived all his life. He was originally a weaver (as recorded on his marriage certificate) but reinvented himself as a naturalist, artist and author. His older brother Thomas was also a naturalist and the two young men became part of a community which included scientists, collectors and wealthy and aristocratic men and women. Access to these groups was often through the supply of specimens for private collections – eggs, nests and bird ‘skins’ for taxidermy and also live birds which could be kept in ornamental cages.
Bolton states on the title page of his book Harmonia Ruralis that it is: ‘An Essay towards a Natural History of British Songbirds…illustrated with Figures the of Life, of the Birds, Male and Female in their most natural attitudes; their Nests and Eggs, Food, favourite Plants, Shrubs, Trees, &c.&c Faithfully drawn, engraved and coloured after Nature, By the Author on Forty Copper Plates’.
Image 4 – Harmonia Ruralis Title Page (Central Library Copy)
Harmonia Ruralis was Bolton’s third book, his first was on fungi and the second, Filices Britannicae…… on ferns. He had written about his methods in the introduction to the book on ferns: ‘The drawing and etching of the figures are performed wholely by my own hands, from a close and careful inspection of the plants. The employing of an engraver would have been attended with a considerable and certain expense; and as the reimbursement was very uncertain, I chose to undertake it myself, though I had never before practised the art of etching, that I might hazard only the loss of so much of my own time. The truth of the drawing in all figures may be relied on, and the definitions are faithful. For the execution of the plates in the engraving part, and for the stile (sic) in writing, I can make no other apology than of throwing myself on the humanity of my friends and the public. Halifax, August 16th, 1785.’
Turdus Musicus: the Song Thrush or Throstle
Despite Bolton’s claim that he had personally ‘drawn, engraved and coloured’ each and every image, it is obvious that there is a great deal of variation in the colouring, as these images of a thrush, taken from the three Manchester books, demonstrate. Note particularly the colour and brush patterns of the land upon which the bird is standing and the shades and shapes of the markings on his body.
Image 5 – Chethams Thrush
Image 6 – Central Library Thrush
Image 6 – John Rylands Thrush
As I explored the three Manchester copies of Harmonia Ruralis I became increasingly curious about how the book had actually been made and I decided to approach Graham Moss of Incline Press to ask for his advice and insights. Graham is not only a practising printer but an expert on the history of printing and a very good friend to Chethams Library.
Graham commented that, as this was Bolton’s third book, he would have been familiar with the printing and publishing process. Before embarking on the printing of Harmonia Ruralis, he would have issued a pre-publication Prospectus, through his chosen booksellers, which advertised the book and potentially enabled customers to place an advance order. Graham also explained that at this period books were not ‘Edition Bound’ by the printer (in this case George Nicholson of Manchester) or the publisher (Bolton).
John Feather in his Dictionary of Book History, describes how the pages of text and illustrations would have been printed and then sold by the publisher to the bookseller ‘loose’ or in a simple trade binding. The customer could then have the pages trimmed and select a binding of their choice. Curiously the Chethams copy has untrimmed pages. Both the Chetham’s and John Rylands copies have volumes one (1794) and two (1796) bound together but the Central Library copy is in two separate volumes. Graham notes that the style, layout and motifs differ slightly between the two volumes, although both use Caslon which was a somewhat old-fashioned typeface but typical of a ‘provincial’ printer like George Nicholson.
The system for colouring the printed pages was what Graham describes as a ‘cottage industry’ probably organised by the printer and usually undertaken by young girls, and possibly their mothers, working in their homes. They would have needed a clean, well-lit space to work in and somewhere to hang the prints to dry. Bolton would have produced accurate coloured ‘model’ images which were distributed to them.
The reasons forvariations in colour could have been due to differences in the amount of water used to mix the paint, and perhaps in the light conditions where the work was undertaken. The skill of the individual artists must also have contributed to the quality of the finished images. The copy at John Ryland’s is overall of a noticeably better quality than the other two in both colouring and brushwork. Is it possible that George John (1758-1834) 2nd Earl Spencer or his agent was able to select the best images or commission a specific artist? Graham suggests that the celebrated bibliographer Thomas Dibdin, who advised the Earl on his book collection and managed and catalogued his library, may have had a hand in this.
The British Ladies…..
Bolton’s dedication is both charming and slightly mysterious: ‘To the British Ladies, to Naturalists and to all such as admire the Beauty or Melody of the Feathered Warblers’. It is highly likely that he is referring to two particular ladies – the Duchess of Portland and Anna Blackburne of Orford Hall near Warrington in Lancashire. However, that is another story ………
For as long as there have been libraries, there have been people willing to steal from them; and as a result, book-owners have always taken measures to prevent theft. From the ancient world into the medieval period, book curses were added to books by their owners, usually invoking divine retribution against would-be thieves. Medieval librarians added ownership inscriptions to institutional books to discourage the same thieves, and, when that didn’t work, they chained the books up so that readers had to consult them at desks. This practice continued into the early-modern period, and when Chetham’s Library was founded in 1653, it followed contemporary trends and chained its books to the shelves. Later, when the chains were removed, gates were added between the presses to keep visitors and readers out, and ex libris bookplates were added to the books to indicate their ownership, again reflecting broader trends in library history.
Even despite these precautions, though, theft continued to pose a threat to historic collections, a fact demonstrated by the story of one Chetham’s Librarian. His name was John Edward Tinkler. He was born in 1864, the son of a clergyman from Stamford in Lincolnshire, and sometime around 1882, he became Assistant Librarian at Chetham’s Library. It was here that he seemingly gained his first experience of working with rare books. He held his initial post for three years and was then appointed Chetham’s Librarian, a post he held for two more years. At least in some respects, Tinkler seems to have discharged his duties adequately. In the preface to The fellows of the collegiate church of Manchester (1891), Frank Renaud thanked Tinkler for his assistance; a few years earlier, John Radcliffe had thanked him in the preface to the first volume of his edition of the parish registers of St Chad in Yorkshire (1887). In that volume’s list of subscribers, Radcliffe named Tinkler as librarian; when the second volume was published in 1892, however, Walter Thurlow Browne had replaced him.
Fig 1: Tinkler named as Chetham’s Librarian in John Radcliffe’s The Parish Registers of St Chad, Saddleworth, vol. 1 (1887).
The reason for Tinkler’s departure was his dismissal by the feoffees on account of his unsatisfactory conduct. Two years after he had taken up the librarianship, Tinkler was caught using Chetham’s stationery to conduct suspicious dealings with rare books dealers in Berlin, Munich and New York, buying and selling books and pocketing the profits. When they dismissed him, the feoffees covered the liabilities that he had incurred out of a sense of duty, and – perhaps in an attempt to keep him as far away as possible – they helped set him up as a fruit-grower in California. Nevertheless, five years later, Tinkler was back; he gave the feoffees two hundred pounds to cover part of his debt and requested and received permission to consult the collections again. This proved to be a mistake, however, when a Book of Hours bearing the autograph of the Manchester poet John Byrom went missing.When he next visited the library, Tinkler was challenged by Browne and promptly fled. Inexplicably, no proceedings were taken against Tinkler, and the book was not recovered.
Fig 2: Byrom’s autograph in another Chetham’s Library Manuscript (shelfmark).
Tinkler nevertheless found himself before the London sessions in 1904, accused of stealing books; he was convicted and sentenced to fifteen months in prison. While there, he was convinced by his fellow inmates to steal yet more rare books, this time from the library of Peterborough Cathedral, which was then undergoing restoration. At the time, the library was kept in a room above the porch on the west front, and Tinkler managed to gain access to it multiple times; he later boasted that he had a skeleton key that would open any church door in England. He sold the books he stole from the library to rare book dealers in England and America; when his buyers enquired where he obtained the books, he would tell them that he had bought them from an old library in Kent,or else from a gentleman in London. Tinker approached the London bookdealers through an accomplice, Arthur William Champion; Tinkler told Champion that he had debts that prevented him from approaching the London dealers himself. The two men regularly met in pubs to discuss the business, and Tinkler mentioned his trips to America to sell books.
Fig 3: Peterborough Cathedral’s front porch, with the former library above.
Eventually, in 1909, the thefts came to the attention of Peterborough Cathedral’s dean, Arnold Page, when he noticed a loose leaf from one of the cathedral’s books on the library floor. He realised that books were missing, and reported the theft to the police; when the library’s contents were checked against its catalogue, it was discovered that 215 rare books and pamphlets had been stolen, mostly valuable Americana. A list of the missing books was printed and quietly circulated among the involved parties, and in December 1910, a warrant for Tinkler’s arrest was issued. It was not until 6 February 1912 that the police caught up with Champion, and through him, Tinkler: Detective Inspector Vermer accompanied Champion to a pub where he was to meet Tinkler, and informed him of the warrant against him. At first, Tinkler was nonchalant: he declared that he had never been to Peterborough,but that he would assist the police as best he could.He was nevertheless charged with the theft of the books; on 22 April he appeared for trial at the Peterborough sessions, where he was found guilty by the jury and sentenced to three years’ penal servitude.
After Tinkler’s arrest, around fifty of the stolen books were identified as Peterborough books through their distinctive eighteenth-century inscriptions and shelfmarks, which Tinkler had unsuccessfully attempted to erase with chemicals. Some of the stolen books were traced to America; it was discovered that one had been sold to the American financier and collector J. P. Morgan (whose son founded the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York) for a four-figure sum – at least £95,000 today – and another had been sold to another collector for a similar value. Such impressive sums underline Tinkler’s excellent knowledge of rare books and the book trade, without which he could not have been as successful as he was. Two quotes from Tinkler’s trial encapsulate the dichotomy he represented: he was, at once, ‘the quintessence of cunning and the incarnation of a book thief’, and ‘one of the greatest experts in old and rare books living’. Tinkler’s story is perhaps the most ignominious of any Chetham’s Librarian but it is tempting to wonder what he might have achieved if he had kept on the straight and narrow so many years before at Chetham’s Library.
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