We are pleased to announce that the Wellcome Trust have awarded a second grant to Northumberland Archives to continue the amazing work they have done through the Stannington Sanatorium Project.
The ‘Stannington: From Sanatorium to General Hospital: Opening Up Three Decades of Paediatric Care’ Project has been awarded £49,100. This money will allow us to digitise the main series of case files from the Stannington Sanatorium collection covering the period 1944-1966. These files comprise 100 linear feet of records – that’s a whopping 122,000 pieces of paper to be digitised! We will redact the key documents in each file – the patient progress notes, x-ray card and discharge sheet and append the redacted copies to the catalogue entry. The files span the life of Stannington from it being a tuberculosis sanatorium funded by the Poor Children’s Holiday Association (now Children Northeast), including the introduction of the National Health Service, (1947) to its final conversion to a general children’s hospital (1953), which it remained until its closure in 1984, opening up three decades of paediatric care.
The Stannington Sanatorium Project ran from August 2014-July 2015 and allowed the full cataloguing and part-digitisation of the records from Stannington Sanatorium. However, the digitisation element of the project was primarily focussed upon the original and microfiche radiographs that made up a sizeable portion of the collection and only the early case files up to 1943 were digitised at this stage. This grant will fund the digitisation of the remainder of the individual patient files included in the Stannington Collection and will fund full re-packaging of the original files in conservation grade materials.
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Through this project we will utilise digitisation as a preservation tool thereby minimising further handling and potential damage to patient files through the creation of a digital surrogate which can be viewed electronically. In turn the project will increase accessibility to the collection via the redaction and web-mounting of the files. It will benefit members of the academic community who have shown a vast interest in the previous project and wish to access the files as a teaching resource or for their own research. This new digital content will be added to Northumberland Archives electronic catalogue where the c.20,000 images created in the first project can now be viewed.
The project will commence in November 2015 and will run for 12 months. Two new members of staff will be employed, one full time the other part time, to undertake this arduous task and they will endeavour to blog about their progress from November onwards so make sure you keep a look out for new postings!
Although it may appear on first examination to be inflicting a hardship on some people to close the merchants’ shops at six o’clock in the evening still it has to be borne in mind that we are living in very abnormal times. It is a time when sacrifices have to be made, and the man or woman who exhibits any hesitancy in adapting himself or herself to the special and exceptional times manifest a want of true consideration to help their country in the hour of its direct necessity. The highest and supreme sacrifice has been paid by many a family during the terrible times we have passed through. The closing of business establishments a few hours earlier is a small matter in comparison therewith, and if it is to safeguard the lives of the community and frustrate the cowardly intentions of an unseen enemy nothing should stand in the way of adopting the most stringent and exacting precautions. There is no reason why a shopkeeper should not be able to close early if the public determine to assist in this direction. If the public resolved to discontinue patronising a particular shop they would very effectively close that shop altogether.
Early 1900s photograph of Marygate, Berwick-upon-Tweed. Berwick Record Office, BRO 1636-3-16
The early closing of business premises, therefore, depends wholly on the public being alive and educated to the fact. And as the early closing does not effect locally till the 1st October there is ample time for all customers to realise the fact, as well as for the various merchants taking adequate steps to meet the inauguration of the new hours. The easiest way to meet the new situation is either for the customer to send in a list of his orders early, or else for the merchant to call at the customers’ residences and take a note of these. On Saturday evening there should be no hardship inflicted, for all will surely manage to purchase there weekend provisions before nine o’clock. Indeed, at the Town Hall meeting, there were no real solid arguments adduced against closing earlier, and as soon as the public can thoroughly comprehend the hours the new method should be found to work quite smoothly in a small borough such as Berwick. No merchant need be afraid of losing his customers, as these will quickly respond to the altered circumstances, and they will not desert patronising a particular shop where they think they have an inducement to buy. Although there was a small minority against the motion which became the finding of the meeting it was very gratifying to observe how whole-heartedly they fell in with the majority. Unanimity means success, and all that is now required is that the various merchants should take full advantage of the reasonable interval before 1st October in reminding all their customers of the changed hours to suit the exceptional needs of the country’s peril.
BERWICK PETTY SESSIONS
Friday
Before Captain Norman, R.N., and J.McNab, Esq
Hanselling of Spittal Lock-Up- A large crowd gathered in the precincts of Spittal’s new Police Station on Thursday afternoon. The occasion was not the opening ceremony of the imposing building by the civic fathers but merely the new cells receiving their first occupant. The crowd again gathered on Friday morning with a view to seeing the delinquent take her departure to the more commodious quarters of Berwick Police Court. However the curious ones were disappointed for the prisoner was taken out by the back door while the crowd waited patiently at the front door. Following upon the foregoing events Mary Johnson, married woman Lanark, was charged with being drunk and disorderly near the Forge, Spittal, at three p.m. on Thursday afternoon. Defendant pleaded guilty, Sergt. McRobb said that upon receiving a complaint he proceeded to the Forge and on the grass
A half crown coin (2s 6d), the sum of which Mary Johnson from Lanark was fined.
near there found defendant lying in a drunken condition. Defendant had been creating a disturbance and on witness attempting to lift her to her feet she drew forth her hat pins from her hat, and by this action exposed witness to the hatpin peril by attempting to thrust the aforesaid pin into his leg. Foiled in this defendant refused to walk to the lock-up but witness obtained a trap and she was driven there in state. In defence defendant said she had met someone home from the Front. The Chief Constable said defendant had 2s 6d in her possession. Captain Norman-We will relieve you of that half crown with the alternative of seven days imprisonment. The Chief Constable said defendant was the first to be locked up at the new police station at Spittal.
Berwick Advertiser, 27 August 1915 Playhouse advert.
BELFORD CENTENARIAN
MRS ISABELLA LEARMOUTH OF ROSS
A happy event was celebrated at Ross, Belford, on the 5th August, when Mrs Isabella Learmouth, wife of the late George Learmouth, North Sunderland, attained her 100th birthday. Mrs Learmouth, who is the daughter of the late Mr Robert Geggie, is in good health, retains all her faculties and at present is always busily engaged knitting socks and comforts for the troops. On the morning of her birthday she received many letters of congratulations and birthday cards from the following- Rev. J and Mrs Miller, Belford; Mr J. and Misses Blenkinsop, Ross; Miss Arthur, Chathill; Mr David Black, Berwick; Miss P. Aynsley, Blyth; Mr Adam Jefferson, Spittal; Mrs Margaret Clark, Beal; Mrs Hunter, Ross; Misses Ross, Grange Mill; Mr John English, Bedlington; Miss M. Davison, Ross; Miss A. Heffen, Ross; Mr James Hoje,(sic) Ross; Mr George Hope, Ross; Miss M.G.Clark, Newcastle; Mr and Mrs W. Learmouth, Gosforth; Co-operative Society, Ltd, Wooler; Mrs Young, Ross; Miss I. Learmouth, Ross; Mrs Gibson, Bltyh; Mr J. Mole, Belford.
To mark the occasion a birthday cake was made and presented to Mrs Learmouth by Mrs Graham and family, Belford. Mrs Learmouth also sent a birthday cake to her grandson at the front, Lance Corporal George English, 7th N.F., to celebrate the event with his comrades in the trenches. It will be the wish of all that Mrs Learmouth may be long spared to enjoy the quiet eventide of life.
In the 1911 Census, Isabella is living with Alexander Hope, her son-in law at New Shoreston in Bamburgh. According to the Census, she was born at Ayton in Berwickshire.
A correspondent, writing in the “Northern Echo” on the paragraph which recently appeared in our columns regarding a roach jumping out of the river into a salmon fisher’s cobble near Horncliffe House, points out- The spot where the roach was thus “caught” unawares is quite an ideal one for that fish. The waters are still and deep, with an abundance of weeds, trees and bushes on the edge of the river. The tidal water will contain very little, if any, salt in it at Horncliffe,as the Tweed does not flow much above there, and it may only be a little brackish at the top of the tide, and will soon run out when the tide sets in. Besides, the writer has had some of his best creels of yellow freshwater trout at
The Roach by Eleazar Albin 1690-1742 – English naturalist and watercolourist illustrator.
Horncliffe, and a mile below at the Union Chain Suspension Bridge at Scotch New Water Ford. Free trout fishing may be indulged in on the Tweed as far as two miles below the Chain Bridge at West Ord ford. So if trout can live so far down in the tidal waters why not roach. Indeed, I have seen large yellow trout caught in the nets as far down as Berwick Bridge, about a mile from the sea. Large numbers of roach have been netted in recent years at Twizel, near the mouth of the Till, where it enters the Tweed. The roach is a poor mean fish so far as eating goes, but he is handsome and strong, also he will afford the angler capital sport when he rises at the fly which he commonly does about the months of August and September, both boldly and freely. Roach are very prolific. In the ovarium of an ordinary sized roach were counted no less than 25,000 eggs. Fishery Boards are waging a strong crusade against the roach, for wherever they take up their abode trout fishing suffers and the streams are depleted to an alarming extent. Therefore during the summer months, on the Tweed, thousands have been destroyed. The Tees also has been netted regularly during recent years by the water bailiffs for the destruction of roach, dace, chub, and many other useless “coarse” fish.
SCREMERSTON
SUNDAY SCHOOL EXCURSION
Though public excursions of pleasure seem generally out of place in face of the cares and anxieties of the time it is no less generally felt that where possible the usual arrangements for the pleasure of the little ones should be carried through. It was, therefore, resolved that the children attending the Scremerston Church Sunday School should have their usual summer trip, and this was held on Saturday last. A thunderstorm and heavy rain delayed the starting of the trip for three-quarters of an hour, during which time the children took shelter in the Church, but soon after a start was made the rain cleared off and for the rest of the day the weather conditions were all that could be desired. The party travelled in carts kindly lent by Messrs T. and J. Jobling, and the Scremerston Coal Company,
The sand dunes on Goswick Beach where the children from Scremerston went on their Sunday School trip – Stuart Meek – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
to Goswick fishery kindly place at their disposal by Mr M.C. Robertson, who had also erected swings for the pleasure of the youngsters. Various games were indulged in until tea time when an abundant supply of cakes and tea formed an important feature in the afternoon’s proceedings. After tea a small memento of the occasion was presented to each child by two young ladies in national costumes, Miss E. M. Lightfoot, whose white dress was trimmed with red roses, and draped with a Union Jack representing England; while Miss A. M. Stokes wore the actual fete day costume of a French fisher girl. On the call of the Vicar, hearty cheers for the Allied Nations were raised by the interested children. Before starting for home Mr Thompson, who has for some years taken an active part in the work of the Sunday school, called upon the children to express in the usual way their thanks to the Vicar and Mrs Lightfoot for so successfully arranging and carrying through the day’s enjoyment, to the representatives of the Allied Nations for distributing the toys and otherwise assisting at the treat, to Mrs Thompson and Miss E. Mowitt for the preparation of the tea, and to Mr and Mrs Robertson for their permission to visit the Fishery and their general interest and help in the afternoon’s proceedings. A packet of sweets for consumption on the journey between Scremerston and Goswick was most kindly presented to each child by Mr and Mrs W.J. Blackett. After an afternoon of very general enjoyment the children reached home safely and happily a little after eight o’clock.
Berwick Advertiser 20 August 1915. Birds Custard Advert
NATIONAL REGISTRATION IN BERWICK
Influx of Visitors Complicate Matters
The task of numbering the people in the Borough of Berwick under the National Registration Act was carried out on Sunday last, and already a considerable quantity of the forms have been duly collected by the band of ladies and gentlemen who so willingly devoted their services gratuitously to the task. It was expected that the whole of the papers in the Borough would be collected by Wednesday. The arrangements made under the superintendence of Mr James Gibson, acting Town Clerk, have worked smoothly and well. The enumerators in a number of cases had difficulties to overcome in securing a proper and intelligently filled up form, and in several instances had to lend personal assistance to obtain the various details. During the week-end, too, there was a large influx of visitors into the town, and this had the effect of complicating and rendering more arduous the duties of the enumerators. The second and no less important duty of classifying and arranging the details of the Register has yet to be undertaken, but already Mr Gibson has set about the bare preliminaries of this. The enumerators who have distributed and collected the forms will take part in the work, and Mr Gibson is waiting to see what other ladies and gentlemen will come forward to lend a hand in the duties. The forms have to be arranged into 46 occupational groups for males and 30 for females, while there are also nine age groups, each sub-divided, stating whether the lady is unmarried, married, or a widow.With the completion of the collections of the forms the first step will be to separate visitors from a distance who were resident in the Borough last Sunday, and dispatch the forms to the various districts where the visitors have their permanent residences. With the completion of the details each registered person receives a certificate certifying that he or she has been duly registered, along with their code number. Special buff forms have to be filled up for those males or females who are skilled workers. These are retained until instructions are received as to how they are to be dealt with. A pink coloured form has also to be prepared of those males whose ages are from 18 to 40, and have not completed their 41st birthday, these being for the special use of recruiting authorities.
Mr Gibson will deal with the preliminary work in the Town Clerk’s Office, but when the more strenuous and important part comes to be undertaken he will have his staff accommodated in the ante room at the entrance to the Town hall, where more adequate room will be found. The Registrar General expresses the hope that the whole of the details will be completed by Saturday, 4th September.
