General

My role at Northumberland Archives is two-fold as I work as a Cataloguing Assistant and as an Archives Assistant.  Add the split of working from home and working on site into the mix and it means that my working week is incredibly varied, interesting and there are never two days the same.  To give you an insight into the type of work that gets done, this is what I got up to a couple of weeks ago. 

The Cataloguing Assistant role is workload from one of the Archivists, while working from home it is predominately catalogue based.  This can be adding some of the thousands of records typed up during lock-down to the catalogue, editing existing collections on the catalogue to make them more user-friendly at the front end or adding information that helps colleagues in the back-end system and also attaching photographs to the online records (this in particular I cannot do without the assistance of members of the digitisation team who scan the images first).  Some of the collections added last week include copies of local verses including “Bellingham Show” by W. Bell; documents relating to Shoreston Hall; family photos from Acklington/Guyzance; school permanent files; deeds relating to Berwick-upon-Tweed; boxing brothers the O’Keefe’s; plans from Newcastle and Gateshead Waterworks and papers on the promotion of industrial development in the County.

I also get the opportunity to undertake research for social media and blogs; some topics I am asked to look into and others arise when I come across something interesting and, being curious, I want to know more.  The most recent one I wrote was a short article after watching the episode of the Antiques Roadshow filmed at Woodhorn Museum. 

When on site, the working day depends on whether we are open to the public (we are on Wednesdays and Thursdays for pre-booked sessions).  Working in the searchroom involves opening up; making sure PCs, Reading Room and microfilm readers are all switched on.  Names of researchers are checked against the booking system so we know who is booked in and for what, and pre-ordered documents are put out on desks. Researchers can request a further two items on the day, so when this happens, references are checked to find the correct location (strong room number, shelving unit and shelf number) and the document is retrieved. During half-term there were more people about than usual so we also had people come to the door asking for general advice on our service and also asking to register as a user and obtain an Archives Card.  We close at lunchtime, so we clean work stations, return documents to the strong rooms and the new one’s are retrieved for the afternoon session.   

On a Friday when the searchroom is closed, I work through some of the listing I have been asked to do, most recently this has included some photographic slides of the Corbridge area and marriage registers received following the change to procedures last year.  Since re-opening we have been taking in deposits, on a Friday I will often help the Archivist with this; assisting the depositors bring items inside, re-packaging and boxing items so that they can be given a location in the strongrooms before they are listed, for more straightforward items I can assist with the listing or the paperwork for the accession.  The last couple of Fridays’ I was asked instead to prepare documents for a group session that was being held.  Retrieving in excess of 30 documents certainly is an afternoon’s work; lifting boxes, going up and down the step ladders meant by the end of my working week I definitely felt that I’d had a workout! 

Dorothy Jacqueline Hope-Wallace, known as Jacqueline, was born in May 1909 in Kensington, London.  Featherstone Castle near Haltwhistle was inherited by her great-grandfather James Hope, from his uncle Lord Wallace in 1837; shortly afterwards he changed the family surname to Hope-Wallace.  At the time of Jacqueline’s birth, the Castle was occupied by her uncle, James Hope-Wallace who was killed during World War One.  Her father Charles Nugent Hope-Wallace was a civil servant; he influenced his daughter’s decision to enter the Civil Service after studying history at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.  Graduating in 1931 it was a somewhat difficult to find employment, and despite initial reservations, believing that civil service seemed ‘boring’, Jacqueline signed up and remained a civil servant for forty-years. 

Jacqueline’s career was a notable one; starting in the Ministry of Labour, moving to the National Assistance Board, during which time she was awarded a CBE in the New Year’s Honours list of 1958, and finally onto the Ministry of Housing and Local Government as under-secretary in 1965.  The press of the time reported that she was the first female to reach that rank, however, Jacqueline later recalled in a 2009 interview for ‘Civil Service Network’ that there were women who were permanent secretaries at the time, and the reporting of this ‘fact’ had upset her.  Jacqueline did seem to enjoy often being the only woman in meetings; rather than the situation being daunting, it gave her ‘a little bit of self-esteem’.  Jacqueline retired from the Civil Service in 1969, although she continued to contribute to Boards, such as Corby Development Corporation, until 1980. 

Away from the Civil Service her life was very different; she lived with her younger brother Philip, a journalist and music critic, who often featured in the Guardian newspaper, and historian Dame C.V.  Wedgwood. 

Cicely Veronica Wedgwood, known as Veronica, was a prominent historian, she wrote under the initials C.V. to hide her gender.  She was born in Northumberland in July 1910; her baptism record held at Northumberland Archives shows that she was baptised on 18^th August 1910 at Bywell St. Peter church, and records her parents living at Hindley House (which may also have been known as Hindley Hall), near Stocksfield at the time.   Her father Sir Ralph Lewis Wedgwood was a railway manager, her mother Iris Veronica Wedgwood (nee Pawson) was a travel writer, a copy of her book ‘Northumberland and Durham’ published in 1932 can be found in a number of Northumberland libraries.  Veronica was the great-great-great grand-daughter of the potter Josiah Wedgwood, for whom many the surname is best known. 

Veronica’s books written in a style that made them accessible to those who were not academics, which made her popular and well-respected.   Her subjects were generally seventeenth-century England; her first publication was “Stafford”, a biography of Thomas Wentworth, the Earl of Stafford when she was aged 25.  In addition to her publications, she was also a lecturer, broadcaster and involved in a number of societies and organisations including being the first female trustee of the National Gallery.  She was awarded the CBE in 1956; the DBE in 1968 and Order of Merit in 1969, the last of these honours she termed as ‘excessive’. 

It was at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford that the two ladies met; both studying history, both linked to Northumberland (Jacqueline more tenuously than Veronica), both having musical families.  The composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was the cousin of Veronica’s father; Veronica edited and wrote an introduction to Philip Hope-Wallace’s book ‘Words and Music’.  After graduating from university, the two ladies shared a house, appearing on the Electoral Roll for 1937 and 1939 at an address in Camden.  The 1939 Register records them both in Wimbledon in the home of Charles and Mabel Hope-Wallace, Jacqueline’s parents; Jacqueline a Civil Servant, the same as her father, and Veronica an author and translator (the Register incorrectly records Veronica’s surname as ‘Vedgwood’).  After the Second World War the ladies move to Marylebone sharing a property with Jacqueline’s brother Philip; the ladies later moved to Sussex where they lived until Veronica’s death.  The living arrangements does suggest that there may have been some family awareness and acceptance of the nature of the relationship from at least members of the Hope-Wallace family, especially Jacqueline’s brother Philip. 

How ‘out’ their relationship was in public during their lifetimes is difficult to gauge; it was not acknowledged in the majority of the obituaries following Veronica’s death.  The ‘Aberdeen Press and Journal’ reported on 11^th March 1997 that “Leading historian C. V. Wedgwood has died after a short illness, aged 86.  She lived in London and Sussex with long-term friend Jacqueline Hope-Wallace”.    Veronica had suffered with Alzheimer’s disease, the woman with undoubtedly a brilliant mind had very sadly lost the ability to read and speak towards the end of her life.   The ‘British Academy’ published a feature about her life the following year which Jacqueline contributed to.  The article indicates that Veronica shared a house with the Hope-Wallace siblings, remaining close to Jacqueline after her brother passed away: “after Philip’s death in 1979 Jaqueline [spelling in text] remained her companion for the rest of her life”; in reference to Veronica’s deteriorating health, “The devoted care that Jaqueline Hope-Wallace gave her all through those silent years in beyond her friend’s praise”.  A 2016 publication about the life of historian Steven Runciman (a fellow-Northumbrian born historian) remarks that “Steven rarely felt much kinship with lesbian intellectuals even of Wedgwood’s grand respectable, classically minded calibre”.  The differing language used in these two pieces, published almost 20 years apart, perhaps demonstrate the shifting acceptance of the nature of relationships between women or perhaps the earlier publication reflects the language that Jacqueline herself felt comfortable with at the time.  Jacqueline passed away in 2011 at the grand old age of 102; she would have been aware of huge changes in how society viewed female partnerships during her lifetime and particularly in the years following the death of Veronica.  In the 2009, Jacqueline had been able to describe the relationship in her own words; succinct but very much demonstrating togetherness: “for nearly seventy years I shared a life with a well-known historian called Dame Veronica Wedgwood”. 

References

Parish Register of Bywell St Peter, 1858-1930 accessed via Reading Room

https://www.civilservant.org.uk/women-jacqueline_hope-wallace.html

https://www.thepeerage.com

www.ancestrylibraryedition.co.uk

https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

Extract from “Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman” by Minoo Dinshaw (2016) accessed via www.books.google.co.uk

http://publications.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/pubs/proc/files/97p521.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Last year I started cataloguing the County Lunatic Asylum records which are part of our Quarter Session collection. I soon discovered that the material contained numerous handwritten and printed reports. These were mainly annual reports written by the Medical Superintendent of the asylum, the Committee of Visitors and the Commissioners in Lunacy. The latter two wrote reports after carrying out inspections of the institution. A first, I thought these would make very dry reading but soon found that they offered a wealth of information about life in the asylum and the types of challenges they faced. 

A report from the Committee of Visitors for the year 1866 revealed some interesting information about a short cholera outbreak in the asylum that year. It named four patients who contracted the disease and died. The word attacked refers to the time they were diagnosed. 

Patient Name	Attacked	Died
George Trueman	28 October at 9am	29 October at 3am
Margaret Daglish	2 November at 5am	2 November at 6.35pm
Mary Ann Hall	3 November at 9am	4 November at 12.30am
Ralph Havis	4 November at 1am	4 November at 7.45pm

The Committee of Visitors reported that luckily there were no other cases but sadly they had the disagreeable duty to perform of investigating the outbreak. It is noted that the death of Ralph Havis ended in the resignation of the Assistant Medical Officer, Mr Hughes. On the 24 November 1866, The Morpeth Herald reported that medical staff in the asylum were being investigated on alleged charges of neglect. They stated that an inmate in the institution had died of cholera and was not attended by a doctor until after he had passed away.  

At the time of the outbreak, Richard Wilson was the Medical Superintendent. His annual report for the year 1866 mentions the sudden outbreak of cholera which occurred towards the close of the year. He claims that the crowded state of the asylum caused much anxiety as there were no suitable detached buildings for the immediate isolation and treatment of infected patients. He respectfully suggests to the Committee of Visitors that they could consider building a small, detached building where sick patients could be comfortably and suitably tended as well as isolated from the other inmates in the case of extreme fever or epidemic outbreak. 

Unfortunately, Mr Wilson was unsuccessful. The Commissioners in Lunacy visited the asylum on 27 February 1867 and their report stated that they were strongly of the opinion that it was not desirable to construct places for the sick away from the immediate vicinity of the medical officers. They suggested that it would be preferable to make some additions to the rooms that had been formed out of the old asylum bathrooms which had been used during the prevalence of cholera the previous year. 

In the Medical Superintendent’s report for 1898, it is noted that the deaths from phthisis (tuberculosis) continue to be excessive in number. The Superintendent of the asylum is now Mr T. W. McDowall. In his report he points out that there is still a great need for a detached hospital for the early separation and treatment of infectious diseases. He states that the north of England is at the present time threatened with an epidemic of smallpox and at any time this loathsome and dangerous disease could be introduced into the asylum population.  

By 1901, the Committee of Visitors appear to be taking things more seriously as their report refers to the urgency of building an isolation hospital. This it appears was partly in response to concerns raised by the Coroner of North Northumberland in a letter to the Committee.  

Alnwick, 5^th March, 1901 

Dear Sir, 

I held two inquests, one on Saturday last and one yesterday, at the County Lunatic Asylum, Morpeth, on the bodies of pauper lunatics, both of whose deaths were attributable to erysipelas [infectious disease of the skin] following upon slight wounds accidently received. In enquiring yesterday into the means of isolation for infectious diseases (and it is well known that erysipelas is a highly infectious disease), it appears that both paupers had been in one ward, and that there is no infectious ward at the asylum for the isolation of infectious cases.  

The jury added a rider to their verdict in the case yesterday as follows: –  

“The jury desire to record that they have learned from the evidence with surprise that there is no infectious hospital, or means of isolating infectious cases, at the asylum, and they consider such defect should be immediately remedied.” 

I sincerely trust that your committee will immediately take the matter into very serious consideration, especially so, as it was given in evidence yesterday that the subject had been more than once brought to their attention, both by the Superintendent Medical Officer and by the Lunacy Commissioners. 

Yours, &c., 

Chas. Percy, Coroner. 

The report from the Committee of Visitors for the year ending 31 March 1902, states that plans for an isolation hospital have been forwarded to the Secretary of State and the Lunacy Commissioners. Plans had originally been drawn up to accommodate ten patients, but the Commissioners recommended that this should be changed to six patients to reduce costs.  

In his report for the year ending 31 March 1902, Medical Superintendent Mr McDowall, mentions five deaths due to typhoid. His frustration is evident, and he isn’t afraid to note that the want of an isolation hospital has always been a serious defect in the arrangements of the asylum. He states that it is now more than twenty years since he directed attention to this matter and it is only quite recently that a decision was made to provide a small hospital where cases of infectious diseases could be removed and thus diminish the risk of contagion.