Author Archives: ferguswilde

1. Contingency planning and The wartime library

   13th March 2025 12:11 pm Leave a Comment

   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.

    

   By Emma Nelson

2. The Mysteries of the Manchester Alphabet

   12th December 2024 4:05 pm Leave a Comment

   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). The top-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

    

    

    

    

    

3. No Cure for Love: Two Early Modern Apothecaries and Their Books

   26th November 2024 11:54 am Leave a Comment

   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).

   By: Ellen Werner

4. Of Eggs, Shee-Spies and Aphra Behn

   12th November 2024 3:53 pm Leave a Comment

   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, and commercial 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.

   

   Distant View of Antwerp,17th century, Hans Bol. WA1863.149 © Ashmolean Museum.

   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.’

    

   

   Gravestone of Aphra Behn (east cloister)© Dean and Chapter of Westminster.

   Sources

   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.

5. KEEP IT SECRET, KEEP IT SAFE: WAX SEALS AND LETTER-LOCKING

   17th October 2024 4:26 pm 1 Comment

   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, 1^st & 4^th, argent, a griffin segreant gules, within a bordure, sable, bezantée; 2^nd, argent, a chevron between three crampons, gules; 3^rd, 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.

   By Emma Nelson

6. Harmonia Ruralis or an essay towards a Natural History of British Song Birds

   12th July 2024 4:12 pm 1 Comment

   Birds and bindings

   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 for variations 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 ………

   By Patti Collins

7. Tinkler, Tailor, Librarian, Thief

   27th June 2024 11:12 am Leave a Comment

   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.

8. Chetham’s Library Hosts the Transnational Early Modern Book Conference

   21st June 2024 11:27 am Leave a Comment

   On 29th May, Chetham’s Library hosted the second day of the Transnational Early Modern Book Conference. Organised by postgraduate researchers Seren Morgan-Roberts and Ellen Werner, the conference brought together more than thirty researchers from six different countries to explore the ways in which books were objects of transnational exchange between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

   

   Postgraduate researcher Ellen Werner delivering a paper on Lawrence Langley’s Marginalia.

   The first day of the conference had taken place in the University of Manchester’s Oddfellows Hall and had included papers on subjects such as Latin as a language of international exchange and relations between early modern French and English book production. On the second day, the beautiful setting of the Baronial Hall provided the backdrop for a range of talks. The day’s panels focused on topics like religious networks of reading, gendered approaches to reading and publishing, international print production, and, fittingly, libraries as sites of transnational encounter. The day’s keynote lecture about ‘Early Modern Language Manuals in Transnational Perspective’ was given by Dr John Gallagher of the University of Leeds.

   

   John Gallagher’s keynote paper, ‘‘Everywhere, where they learn French’: early modern language manuals in transnational perspectives’.

   In addition, participants also had the opportunity to explore Chetham’s Library on a guided tour and to get a glimpse of the Library’s collection of Renaissance books, which was a beautiful link to the subject of the conference. It was fantastic to see how impressed attendees were by the building and collections and how well the venue lent itself to hosting a conference. The organisers would like to express their heartfelt thanks to the staff at Chetham’s Library, who ensured that everything ran smoothly throughout the day and without whom such an informative and enjoyable conference would not have been possible, as well as to the Northwest Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership (NWCDTP), the Society for Renaissance Studies (SRS) and the University of Manchester’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Arts and Languages (CIDRAL) for their generous funding.

9. Thomas Jones: Chetham’s Greatest Librarian

   14th June 2024 3:10 pm Leave a Comment

   As we continue our journey through the lives of Chetham’s Librarians, one name stands out above all others: that of Thomas Jones, a man with a reasonable claim to the title of ‘Chetham’s greatest librarian’. Born in Margam, Glamorgan in 1810, Jones received his early education at Cowbridge Grammar School; this was one of Wales’ most famous schools, and also a feeder school for Jesus College, Oxford. Unsurprisingly, Jones subsequently attended the college, where he received his bachelor’s degree in 1832. Although he had originally planned to take holy orders after his studies, Jones instead decided to pursue a career in the world of books; in 1842, he compiled a catalogue of Neath Library in Wales, and in March 1845 he was appointed as Chetham’s Librarian following the death of the former librarian, the Reverend Campbell Grey Hulton. Jones was to serve as Chetham’s Librarian until his death in 1875, making him one of the library’s longest-serving librarians – surpassed only by Robert Thyer before him, and Michael Powell after him.

   The librarianship proved to be a role that Jones was particularly well-suited to. The Manchester bibliophile James Crossley – a founder of the Chetham Society (an antiquarian society dedicated to the study of Lancashire and Cheshire history) and its president from 1847-83 – characterised Jones as ‘one who was seemingly designed by nature for the place and whose whole soul was in his work’, while Jones’ obituary described the library as ‘the sphere for which he was excellently adapted’. Diaries kept by Jones reveal the consistency with which he carried out his responsibilities: most days began with dusting and cataloguing (perennial tasks in a library like Chetham’s), and in the afternoons he attended to readers. During his librarianship, Jones was also responsible for more than doubling the library’s holdings, which increased from 18,000 to 38,000 volumes. This was often achieved through Jones’ personal intercession, and the accessions register from this time records books entering the collection through ‘the librarian’. Crossley too played an important role in this expansion, acquiring books for the library, and the two men formed a close working relationship. Later, Crossley would become an honorary librarian after Jones’ death. 

   

   Fig. 1: Thomas Jones’ diary from 1866.

   In addition to increasing the library’s holdings, Jones took great pains to ensure that they were accessible to those who wished to use them. He compiled a Catalogue of the collection of tracts for and against popery (published in and about the reign of James II) in the Manchester library founded by Humphrey Chetham, which was published by the Chetham Society in 1859. Then, he prepared two volumes of catalogues of the library’s general holdings: first, a continuation of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century catalogues produced by Chetham’s Librarians John Radcliffe and William Greswell, which was published in 1862, and then an alphabetical catalogue published the following year. Lastly, he began work on a biography of John Dee (warden of Manchester’s collegiate church from 1596-1608/9) and an edition of some of his letters, under the title A selection of the letters written by Dr Dee with an introduction of collectanea relating to his life and works. This work was still incomplete upon his death and was never published, but Jones’ manuscript copy of it is preserved in our collections, written on the blue paper that he preferred to use. 

   

   Fig. 2: The alcove where Marx and Engels studied in the summer of 1845.

   During Jones’ librarianship, use of the library flourished, and it was soon after he took up the post, in the summer of 1845, that the library received two of its most famous visitors: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. At the time, Engels lived in Manchester and was employed by his father’s firm, which manufactured cotton thread, while Marx lived in London and frequently travelled to Manchester. The two men spent six weeks that summer studying together in an alcove in the Reading Room, a period of intellectual activity that ultimately led to the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848. The original books that they consulted are still held by the library, and can be seen on the shelves by the landing; meanwhile, facsimiles are kept in the alcove where they studied for visitors to peruse. When Marx and Engels visited, it is likely that Jones located these books and brought them to the Reading Room, and they undoubtedly benefited from Jones’ extensive knowledge of the collections which led to his description, in his obituary, as the library’s ‘living index’.

   

   Fig. 3: Obituary of the late Mr Thomas Jones, B.A, F.SA., Librarian of Chetham’s Library, 1875.

   Nevertheless, in his old age, Jones struggled to discharge his duties as librarian. Writing to Marx in 1870 after another visit to Chetham’s Library, Engels remarked that ‘during the last few days I have again spent a good deal of time sitting at the four-sided desk in the alcove where we sat together twenty-four years ago. I am very fond of the place. The stained-glass window ensures that the weather is always fine there. Old Jones, the Librarian, is still alive but he is old and no longer active. I have not seen him on this occasion. Despite his infirmity, Jones would continue as the librarian for another five years until his death, following a short illness, on 29 November 1875. His successor and friend Crossley lamented that ‘I seem to have lost half of myself…I am too much affected to say more.’ He was buried at St Mark’s Church in Cheetham Hill, only a stone’s throw away from where he had spent the majority of his life, and where his dedication to the books and cultivation of the collection undoubtedly shaped Chetham’s Library into what it is today. 

   By Megan Devereux  and Emma Nelson.

10. Robert Thyer: Sophistication and Simplicity

    3rd June 2024 3:04 pm 1 Comment

    Thyer was Chetham’s 9th librarian, its first layman and up to that point its longest serving incumbent; he held the post for over 30 years from 1732 to 1763. He was a Manchester man, the son of a silk weaver, educated at Manchester Grammar School and Brazenose College, Oxford. Thyer’s appointment is recorded in the Feoffees’ minutes but we do not know how he achieved this position at the early age of 23. Then, as now, contacts were important and Thyer was a great cultivator of friends, many of whom were influential.

    

    Robert Thyer Paper Portrait Silhouette, by Dorothy Byrom. Manchester Art Gallery.

    In affectionate letters to his relations later in life, Thyer was at pains to let it be known that he was meeting with the country gentry on intimate terms. He may have been acquainted with George Booth, the 2nd Earl of Warrington at Dunham Massey who sent troops in support of the Jacobites, a cause espoused by Thyer, in 1745. More significantly, Thyer had a family relationship with Booth’s neighbour, Samuel Egerton, grandson of the 2nd Earl of Bridgewater: Thyer’s wife had previously been married to John Leigh, Egerton’s cousin. Egerton succeeded his childless brother as owner of Tatton in 1738 and when his wealthy uncle, Samuel Hill, died, he inherited significant additional estates as well as a fine collection of art and books, many acquired in Italy. Egerton had intriguing links, familial, political, artistic and social, all over England. He became an MP and a leading, if eccentric, figure in Cheshire society. While renovating his ancestral home at Tatton, one of his most important projects was the building of a new library for his uncle’s outstanding collection of books.

    The combination of a family connection, Egerton’s Tory sympathies, and his rare and valuable book collection drew him into friendship with Thyer, who spent many long periods at Tatton after his retirement. A letter from Egerton’s daughter to Thyer pleads for his presence and indicates that he was always a welcome and honoured guest. Egerton was not only good company, but a source of funds for the comparatively poor librarian. Thyer eventually benefited from Egerton’s will, writing to his stepdaughter in 1780 that he was overjoyed that his debts had been forgiven and that he was to receive £200 a year and ‘the 40 pounds a year I have enjoyed from him for some time past’. He adds, ‘This is enough for a Philosopher’ and he assures his stepdaughter that he will not let his riches affect him. He was only to enjoy this modest wealth for a year before he died.

    Thyer’s earlier intimate circle was more literary. He was a close friend of John Byrom, the Manchester poet and inventor of a system of shorthand, known later for the lyrics of the stirring hymn, ‘Christians Awake!’ The French scholar, Henri Talon, in his ‘Selections from the Journals and Papers of John Byrom’ of 1950, paints a vivid picture of the friendship of these two literati. They walked and dined together; Byrom would keep an eye on the library when Thyer needed some time off for exercise or to watch a foot race; they sent effusive greetings to each other’s wives. Byrom’s wife created an affectionate silhouette of Thyer, now in the Manchester Art Gallery.

    Thyer would sometimes emulate Byrom’s light-hearted verse. When his cobbler provided shoes that were too big, Thyer sent them back with an admonitory note:

    How couldest thou get in thy pate.

    A foot like mine, so small, so neat,

    So pretty, if the beaus say true,

    Could ever fill so huge a shoe?

    The reference to that much-satirised mid-18th century phenomenon, the beau, might have been influenced by Byrom’s poem ‘The Dissection of a Beau’s Head’, a grisly description of what might be found on opening up a fashionable dandy, which begins

    We found by our glasses that what at first sight

    Appeared to be brains, was another thing quite,

    continues for several pages to examine intimate body parts which are not what they seem and ends with the promise ‘we’ll reserve the Coquet for another occasion’.  This and other poems were painstakingly copied out by Thyer in a manuscript collection held in the library, indicating that he fully supported Byrom’s scorn for high fashion.

    

    ‘The Dissection of a Beau’s Head’ by John Byrom, in Robert Thyer’s hand. In Chetham’s Library.

    All this friendly simplicity is in contrast to the sophisticated scholarship for which Thyer was renowned. His meticulous manuscript commonplace book of 1743 consists of a series of essays, mostly in Latin but partly in Greek, with titles such as ‘On the Thief upon the Crop and the Case of Deathbed Repentances’ and ‘On the Descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a Dove’. 

    

    A page from Robert Thyer’s Commonplace Book, 1743, in Chetham’s library.

    In further scholarly endeavour, he supplied notes for a new edition of Paradise Lost compiled by Thomas Newton, who described Thyer as ‘a man of great learning and as great humanity.’ He went on to edit ‘The Genuine Remains in Verse and Prose of Samuel Butler,’ much praised, albeit controversially, by Dr Johnson. A new edition of ‘The Remains’ came out in 1827 long after Thyer’s death, which included a copy of the Romney portrait (below). John Hill Burton 40 years later in his ‘Bookhunter’, thinking Thyler had in some way been responsible for this vainglorious inclusion, spoke waspishly of ‘drudging Thyer’s respectable and stupid face.’ It is not clear how Burton formed this opinion, but all the evidence indicates that Thyer, although indeed respectable and perhaps a little ‘drudging’ in terms of his conscientious and scholarly approach to his various projects, was far from stupid.

    Manchester Grammar School remained close to Thyer’s heart and he contributed for many years to their rather solemn and admonitory Christmas celebrations. In the early 1760s, he wrote a verse prologue and two speeches. After his retirement, he produced three lengthy essays for the school. The first, in 1773, was a denunciation of avarice, urging ‘the proper use, not the hoarding’ of riches. It ends with a striking simile. Riches, ‘judiciously scattered’ are like water, ‘which, purified by continual motion, and skilfully conveyed in different rills to ye parts which want it, diffuses plenty and beauty wherever it flows; but, if suffered to stagnate in one place becomes putrid, loathsome and prejudicial to that very land which it was designed to enrich.’

    The second essay, written in 1779, is a diatribe against the use of malicious satire in literature. The end of all wit, he advises, should be humane and benevolent, and should never ‘torture a man for being odd and singular’. The essay ends: ‘He that is malevolent enough to laugh today at his neighbour’s expense, should consider that tomorrow he may be ridiculed at his own; and he will then too late find by experience that the Sensibilities of Men are not to be dallied with and may feelingly say with the Frogs in the Fable – what is sport to you my Lads is Death to us.’

    Finally, in 1780, his advice to pupils was encapsulated in Simplex Munditiis, in which he argued that ‘there is a certain dignity in simplicity which will always please’ and maintained that ‘the simplicity of Nature is the ground and foundation of every real excellence.’ In literature, ‘words are the dress of Thought as Cloaths are of the Body’ and in personal appearance ‘charms borrowed from Art are incapable of attracting…the Admiration and Esteem of the other sex.’ Thyer’s essays seem to illustrate his character perfectly – a man of gentle and kindly humour, humane, fond of fun but somewhat straitlaced, an advocate of a simple and thoughtful life, and an enemy of the fashionable and false – ‘the coxcomb, foppishness, the Friseur and the Rouge Box.’

    Librarians at Chetham’s traditionally trod carefully in matters of politics and religion. Thyer however made no secret of his Tory and Jacobite sympathies. When Charles Stuart arrived in Manchester in November 1745 on a recruiting mission, Hanoverian troops were sent to root out Jacobite sympathisers. A family anecdote relates that Thyer took refuge in Heaton Hall. When the soldiers searched his house in Long Millgate for treasonable papers, his wife showed her spirit by suggesting they should look under the winter’s supply of coal for there they might find her husband as well as the papers they sought. Throughout this period Thyer supported his friend Byrom in local controversies with the Whigs. Particularly bitter was the friends’ condemnation of Josiah Owen, a Presbyterian minister from Rochdale and a voluble and virulent opponent of the Stuart cause, who in 1746 celebrated its eventual defeat with a Sermon entitled, All is well; or the Defeat of the late Rebellion … an exalted and illustrious Blessing. John Byrom retaliated haughtily, referring in An Epistle to a Friend (possibly Thyer) to ‘the low-bred O——ns of the age’, and publishing a scurrilous ballad on The Zealot of Rochdale, under the title Sir Lowbred O .. N, or the Hottentot Knight. Although he joined in the fray at the time, this brand of satire would not have been approved by the older Thyer.

    Thyer married Silence, widow of the well-connected John Leigh, in 1741 when he was 32. She died 12 years later and all that remains of her is her list of the birth dates of her children written in an uncultivated hand and her complicated will constructed in 1751. The couple had no surviving children, but his stepdaughter, Elizabeth Leigh, filled the role of housekeeper when Silence died. After he retired, and when she had become Mrs George Killer, the wife of a hatmaker, he gave the couple use of his house and wrote warm and loving letters to his dear Bessie, signing himself ‘your affectionate Pappa”. He considered her children, Elizabeth, Robert and John, to be his close family. Letters to the younger Elizabeth, whom he called Bet, are full of elaborate compliments and encouragement. He makes frequent reference to her brother Jack, enquiring after his health and sending love. The other brother, Robert, was taken by Thyer to Liverpool when he was 11 to recover his health and enjoy the sea-bathing.  Staying in fashionable Wolstenholme Square, the Manchester Grammar School student ‘[wrote] his Latin every day’ but found time to buy a gift for his elder sister – an expensive sixpenny coconut which disappointingly went bad. Both Robert and John became respected doctors in Manchester and Stockport. Robert was later known for treating the poor without charging for his services.

    

    Last page of Silence Thyer’s will. In Bellot papers, held by John Rylands University Library.

    Although single for many years Thyer was certainly not lonely or reclusive. In his letters to Bessie he reports many tea parties, balls and dinners with a wide range of friends, alludes frequently to the delicacies of the table, and in Liverpool one evening he ‘had the pleasure of a lady’s company to sup and drink a glass of wine with me.’ Earlier, two grammar school boys, John and Richard Arden, lived with him for a period and received tuition. He maintained his interest in horse racing in later life and rather sportingly travelled by boat in 1778 from Altrincham to Manchester when returning home from Tatton. He did, however, regret the passing of time and his inability to grow young again, as he reported to Bessie, despite ‘taking the bitters’ as she had recommended. There are many references to his rheumatism and walking difficulties, his state of health being ‘better or worse according to the weather.’ He reported more cheerfully to Bessie from Liverpool that ‘my bathing agrees extremely well with me and from the most shocking extremity I am, thank God, restored to a more probable way of mending.’ He was always concerned too about the health of others, and especially his step-grandchildren. In a last letter to Bet he wrote ‘I give you no advice about your conduct, which I am sure will be right, but let me advise you to take care of your health.’ Sadly, Bet did in fact die six years later at the age of 24.

    

    One of Thyer’s letters to his stepdaughter in which he shows how important to him was the esteem of his friend Samuel Egerton, and tells a comical story about a drunken boatman. In Bellot Papers, JRUL

    As for Thyer’s work as a librarian, he was always active, compiling the first catalogues, travelling either to buy books in London or to supervise the estates of the foundation in Lancashire and Yorkshire. His successor, Robert Kenyon, ‘enriched the library with a large collection of books pertaining to Natural History, engravings etc’ according to the next librarian, John Radcliffe who took over in 1787. But Radcliffe’s most lavish praise was reserved for Thyer. He explained that two catalogues were compiled during Thyer’s tenure ‘by one who can never be mentioned without praise, to whom Milton is indebted for much light thrown upon his immortal poems…and for almost all of (the library’s) elegant and choice selection of books.’ The two catalogues compiled by Thyer were said to have been created according to the plan of Middleton who advocated the use of alphabetical order together with ‘the indication of the class and place of a book to use as an index so that we may impart to learned men…the publication of a distinguished catalogue (which) confers the greatest benefit to the world of literature, and the greatest assistance in promoting and perfecting literary studies.’

    Thyer’s diligence as librarian was certified by the trustees on his retirement and in the Latin preface to the library catalogue of 1791. He continued to travel, write, and socialise, sometimes at Tatton and sometimes at his house in Long Millgate, until he died on 27 October 1781 aged 72, leaving Chetham’s library a richer and more orderly place of learning. He was buried with some ceremony with his ancestors at Manchester Collegiate Church.

    By Kath Rigby