handwriting Archives - Northumberland Archives

The volunteers got to grips with some fascinating documents this week from an eighteenth century Guild Book entry detailing the carving of the coat of arms by a stonemason who had been working at Alnwick Castle, to a pair of letters written in the same hand but with different signatures, complaining about life in the Berwick Workhouse.

There was one letter that was with the Tweedmouth Parish Records by an anonymous writer who was informing them about ‘a grat Blagard a Margaret Haberon that moment she gittes her the Prish money she goes to a wiske shop and spends it’. He claims that she isn’t caring for her children and wouldn’t be given any money if she had applied to Berwick for assistance.

Some research has been done on poor Margaret and she had rather a sad life. It is thought that her name was actually Hepburn and there are records of three baptisms of children born to William and Margaret Hepburn, David in 1818 in Tweedmouth who died aged 2 1/2 years old, Jane in 1820 also in Tweedmouth, and then after the family moved to Berwick, another David in 1822. Her husband was a cabinet maker who died at the age of 35 in the 1832 Cholera epidemic. This would explain why she was in receipt of Poor Relief from the parish.

The author of the original complaint was in fear of her burning down his house if she found out who had complained about her, obviously she was quite a formidable character! We assume that the letter was written by a man, as although the spelling is erratic it puts over its point forcibly, and the level of education for boys at the time would have been better than that on offer to girls.

So much to find out around one letter!

The other document that we looked at was ‘To Make Sirip of Turnips’ (used to treat ‘Conscumpsion or cough of the Lungs’) which was a mixture of sliced turnips, sugar, Hyssop Water, Aniseed, and liquorish root. I’m not sure if anyone went home to try it!

In the course of looking through some of the manorial sources we are using on the project we see a lot of different types of handwriting. Some are beautifully practiced and elegant, others scribbled and hard to decipher. Examples like the one below from Morpeth in 1659 show how different letters can look to modern eyes, but with time and patience they can be worked out.

This however is the handwriting of educated clerks and court officials. Most of the rest of the population would have been illiterate, so it would be required for them to give a ‘mark’ of some description. For more affluent classes this may be shown by a seal, but in most cases a simple ‘X’ would show they had been present and gave their agreement to the document being signed. However more complicated marks could be devised by an individual to identify themselves. Such identifiers are found in other areas of medieval and post-medieval life. Masons’ marks on stone would identify who had prepared each block, and would often be passed down families, with additions by each generation. Likewise potters would mark the underside of their work to show its provenance in their workshop. Though we have featured the document below previously, this is a good example of a document signed by numerous people with their own marks.

There are several ways these men have chosen their mark. John Roddam (1st line) has taken the ‘R’ from his surname. Conversely Ridley Havelock (4th line) has used the initial ‘R’ from his first name, and the same can be found with ‘T’ for William Taylor (6th line) and Thomas Pattason (8th line). William Ransom (last line) uses a bold ‘W’ of two crossed V’s like witches’ marks, and perhaps Thomas Smith’s (10th line) began as a ‘T’, but was added to. The ‘N’ of Nicholas Ridley (2nd line) is reversed, and William Coulson (12th line) could be an inverted ‘C’, or reflect a horseshoe or other device. The others seem to be choosing marks unrelated to their name, similar to simple marks like the masons’ marks.

We are keeping our eyes peeled for interesting examples like these as we look through the manorial documents we hold, and were excited to share a recent discovery that has given us much discussion and food for thought. In the image below we see a ‘H’ used by Humphrey Heatherington like the previous examples, and John Heatherington’s half-cross is much like that used by John Reay (11th line). A squiggle also represents a mark or signature used by William Marshall. However our favourite is that used by John Riches, a doodle perhaps symbolising a hook, or even a bird.

We would love to be able to work out what it means, if anyone has any suggestions please let us know! In the meantime we will keep looking for other interesting examples.

Learning to read old handwriting at the Berwick Archives (Twixt Thistle & Rose)

Leaving your mark – strange signatures in the court documents