We were delighted to be joined last week by Year 10 student Sami for a week of work experience in Special Collections. Below Sami shares some of his impressions and reflections on the experience. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Sami for his excellent work and wish him every success for the future.
The Hypatia Collection of books and journals by and about women, which Sami helped to stocktake
On Monday, the first day of my Year 10 Work Experience placement here in the University of Exeter’s Special Collections, I was greeted by my supervisor for the week and one of the archivists, Annie. She took me on a brief tour of the old library before showing me the office, where I would be doing the main activities for the week. Annie then introduced me to the very friendly Special Collections staff where I immediately knew that this would be a very welcoming and calm environment. I was then given a timetable and Annie explained the different activities that I would be doing throughout the week. After getting know what I would be doing during my time here, Annie took me on a basic tour of the campus and showed me where the cafes and other stores are located as well as areas where you can sit down and have lunch. I then had a fifteen minute break before Annie explained to me what archives and collections actually are, and how to handle them in a way so that they are not damaged. This was the first hands-on training I had received and I found it to be very interesting and informative. After my lunch break, I had a chat with Annie about her role here at Special Collections and what she does and I had a chance to ask her some questions about it. After having a chat with Annie, she introduced me to the main tasks that I would be working on, stocktaking the Hypatia Collection and repackaging architectural plans from the University Archive. I did these tasks until 3:30pm before having a chat with Caroline, the Head of Heritage Collections about her role to finish off the day.
On Tuesday, I started off the day by having a chat with Hollie, an Archivist, about her role and how/why she decided to become an Archivist which was quite nice to talk about. This was then followed by some repackaging and stocktaking until 11:30pm. For the next hour until my lunch break, I was given a tour of the Forum Library and the forum which I found to be very interesting and one of my favourite parts of the week as the Library and the Forum have some amazing features which make them brilliant for students who want a nice place to study at and fascinated me. After lunch break, I had a chat with Sarah-Jayne, one of the Special Collections Team Leaders, and she gave me a fun task of reshelving and retrieving items in the strongroom which was slightly challenging! I then did some stocktaking and repackaging until the end of the day.
University Archive, EUL UA/P/3c: Presentation of honorary degree to Viv Richards
On Wednesday, from 10am until around 12pm, I prepared a social media post for “Throwback Thursday”. The post that I created used a photograph from the University Archive of Antiguan Cricketer Viv Richards receiving his honorary degree from the University of Exeter in 1986. I found this activity very enjoyable as I am familiar with posting on social media. After creating the social media post, I had a short break before my lunch break. Once my lunch break had finished, I did some repackaging and stocktaking for around thirty minutes before the Digital Humanities Lab tour which was one of my highlights of the week as I got to have a small glow-in-the-dark ghost 3D printed! It was amazing to see the all of the cool, advanced technology they have in the Digital Humanities Lab which made it enjoyable. As soon as the tour had finished, my working day had to come to an end.
On Thursday, for the first twenty minutes, I posted the Throwback Thursday on the Library’s Instagram page and it was really nice to see how well it was received and liked by multiple people. After that, I had a nice chat with Jamie, the archivist for the Middle East Collections, about his role and the DAME (Digital Archive of the Middle East) project which he works on. This was followed by a marketing meeting between the Library and Special Collections which I found to be quite informative as it was a first time experience for me and gave me an insight on how staff prepare the university for the coming year and how to make it the best it can be for new and returning students. After my lunch break, I had a tour of the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum with Chris, a Museum Assistant, which I found extremely interesting as I love history and film and the tour combined both of those together. After my tour of the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, I had a chat with Angela, one of the Special Collections Team Leaders, about her role and how she keeps the temperature and humidity in the strongrooms at a level where the archives are least harmed before finishing off the day.
Collage of images from the University of Exeter Special Collections
Finally, on Friday, I did some stocktaking and repackaging before having a chat with Aino, one of the Special Collections Assistants, about how she frequently needs to check that the strongrooms are free of insects which may damage the archives and the insect traps which are put in place. It was then lunch break, and after lunch, Jamie showed me how he digitises books and puts them onto the DAME website to make them easily accessible for people all over the world and in particular, students. This was really nice as he even let me help him with the process!
Overall, my time here at Special Collections was a very memorable one and I would like to recommend doing your work experience here as it is a very fun, interesting and enjoyable.
Cataloguing Archivist Hollie Piff puts her cooking skills to the test and explores the Domestic section of the Hypatia Collection, using the scribbles and scrawls of past owners to identify favourite recipes.
At the University of Exeter Special Collections we carefully monitor readers in the Reading Room; no food or drink is allowed, and marking the rare books and archives with pencil or pen is strictly forbidden. The Reading Room is clean, as are the hands of readers (we hope), and all that breaks the silence of the space is the quiet swishing of turning pages.
The archive and rare books material, despite its orderly cataloguing and rehousing in acid-free folders, has often led a more chaotic former life. Cookbooks, in particular, serve as windows into the daily lives of the people who owned them, often including annotations, corrections, and clippings from newspapers or magazines. Sometimes, singed corners and food stains mark favourite dishes, and handwritten recipes on yellowed paper demonstrate the exchange of food and tradition between friends and family.
On rolling shelves in Special Collections stand thousands of books from theHypatia collection of journals, books, pamphlets, and periodicals by and about women. I am particularly interested in the domestic science section, which is peppered with cookbooks from the 19th and 20th centuries with enticing titles such as Good cookery!, New ways of using custard, and Have herrings: in all these delicious ways.
These books are fantastic records of changing tastes and trends over the last two hundred years, but can they really tell us what ordinary people cooked and ate day-to-day?
Ken Albala explains that, as examples of “prescriptive literature”, “cookbooks are rarely if ever accurate descriptions of what people actually ate at any given time and place” (‘Cookbooks as Historical Documents’). But, he adds, “comments, corrections to a recipe, or additions are positive evidence that someone interacted directly with the text and actually cooked the recipe” (Albala). The Hypatia cookbooks contain scribbles, names, handwritten recipes and other marks in pen and pencil, and by studying these marks of ownership and authorship, we can understand how people interacted with their cookbooks, what they cooked, ate, and fed their families.
Gleanings from Gloucestershire Housewives
Gleanings from Gloucestershire Housewives, Hypatia DOM/GLO
Gleanings from Gloucestershire Housewives was initially collated and published by the Gloucestershire Federation of Women’s Institutes in 1927. The book contains recipes from W.I.s across Gloucestershire, from Badminton Eggs in Cirencester to Almond Jumbles in Almondsbury, which paint a rich picture of the tastes and customs of local women. Our copy from 1935 is well worn, with a threadbare green cover darkened by mysterious stains.
An inscription in neat cursive on the front page names the owner of the book: A. East, from Mitcheldean, Gloucestershire. Despite not leaving her full name, this simple mark of ownership, Janet Theophano suggests, is “an act of autobiographical writing,” an attempt by women to write themselves into the historical record and leave evidence of their work behind (Eat My Words 122). The writing in Gleanings from Gloucestershire Housewives does far more than leave evidence of “work”, its pages are full of creativity, learning and – most importantly – fun, and we have Veda to thank for that.
The preface and foreword, showing A. East and Veda’s inscriptions.
Veda, who I can only assume was the young daughter or granddaughter of A. East, dominates the pages of this cookbook with her doodles, scribbles, and writing practice. In pencil and colourful chalk, Veda practices writing her name (“VEDAVEDAVEDA”), draws vibrant abstract landscapes, and captures the likenesses of her friends and family. The intended purpose of the book does not deter Veda, in fact, the interactivity of the cookbook form invites personalisation, and its “ordinariness” captures snapshots of daily life in a rather less self-conscious way than a diary or scrapbook might.
An example of Veda’s colourful artwork.
There are many handwriting styles in the book, which either suggests that Veda had several siblings or, as I like to imagine, she used Gleanings from Gloucestershire Housewives as an inadvertent diary over several years. Veda’s insertions start as ham-fisted scribbles but slowly develop into identifiable letters, pictures of houses, and eventually legible words and sentences; on page 96 she writes in unsteady cursive, “you are my sun shine”.
Veda was, we assume, watching her mother prepare food and, while doing so, learnt to read, write, and cook. In the hands of Veda, Gleanings from Gloucestershire Housewives has become a work of autobiography, and now, nearly one hundred years later, we can connect with the playful evidence of its use.
But surely, the best way to connect with cooks of the past isn’t to read, but to cook! (And, most importantly, to eat.)
Ready, steady…
It seems from other cookbooks in the collection that a neat pencil tick beside the title of a recipe marks it out as a success: a personal favourite, perhaps, or an experiment that went surprisingly well. It is difficult to establish whether Veda’s scribbles mark recipes out as personal favourites or as dishes she wishes to scrub from her mother’s repertoire, so I had to get creative when choosing a recipe to cook up myself.
A winding, wiggling arrow on page 128 points to a recipe for ‘Cocoanut Biscuits’ from Winterbourne Abbotts W.I. group. The recipe seemed simple enough and was certainly more appealing than ‘Jellied Salad’, so I bought the ingredients, enlisted the help of my own Veda (aka my fiancé) and got cooking.
The ‘wiggling arrow’ on page 128 and the recipe for Cocoanut Biscuits.
When I say I “bought the ingredients”, what I really mean to say is that I saw a full jar of desiccated coconut in the kitchen cupboard and naively assumed, since that was the most unique ingredient of the bunch, that I would certainly have enough of everything else. Of course I was wrong, but I didn’t know that quite yet.
While I cast myself as the ever-capable Mrs. East in this scenario, the roles were reversed quite quickly when it came to sieving flour. The recipe called for us to just “add the flour”, so in the true historical spirit of the recipe (read laziness) I decided there was no need to sieve. Perhaps there was no need, but my sensible sous chef sieved nonetheless.
Next, we added the butter. All of the butter. Every last scraping of butter from the butter dish, and still we fell short. Nothing a few glugs of vegetable oil couldn’t fix! We combined the flour, butter, and oil with our fingers before mixing in the desiccated coconut. Incredibly I had the perfect amount, and it was at this point that I believed my luck had turned. The recipe then called for 4 oz. of caster sugar and one beaten egg. Eggs were not a problem, so I beat one in a separate bowl and added it to the mixture. Unfortunately, the sugar wasn’t quite as simple.
At the back of the cupboard, squirrelled away behind an absurd selection of flours, I found a third of a miniature bag of golden caster sugar. We had clearly learnt nothing about imperial measurements, so we were shocked when the numbers on the electric scale ticked up to a grand total of 1.5 oz. We needed 4 oz. of sugar and, despite my fiancé’s absurd recommendations, I refused to substitute in dark brown sugar. After a quick dash to the local shop for a tiny bag of caster sugar (which set me back a whole £2.40) we were back on track.
We mixed everything together until it formed a “stiff paste,” and then attempted to roll the dough out thinly. Unfortunately, it was quite warm in the kitchen so the dough was sticking and tearing as we rolled it out. We decided to put it on a baking tray and, after playing some fridge Tetris, let it cool for around fifteen minutes.
Once chilled, we cut the biscuits out using the rim of an old sun-dried tomato jar (thoroughly cleaned) and arranged them on a greaseproof paper-lined baking tray before popping them in the oven at around 150-160C for 15 minutes.
Our finished biscuits!
When the time was up, we retrieved our biscuits from the oven and left them (impatiently) to cool. As I took my first bite I realised quite suddenly that these ‘Cocoanut Biscuits’ were in fact Nice biscuits, a personal favourite of the Special Collections team. They were lovely and coconutty, not overly sweet, and had a satisfying snap. I brought some of the biscuits into the office to share with colleagues and they seemed to go down well—despite a few colleagues choking on desiccated coconut.
Conclusion
Although the splatters, stains, annotations and inserts in the Hypatia books aren’t mentioned in the library catalogue, I believe they are vital to accessing the stories of the women who owned these books. These pages are testament to their likes and their dislikes, their creativity and curiosity, the lives of their families, and the growth of their children; squirrelled away amongst recipes for sausage rolls and fruit cake. By reading these books, and cooking well-loved recipes, we can reconnect with the past and (more often than not) enjoy a delicious sweet treat in the name of research!
To learn more about the Hypatia Collection, explore our website!
Works Referenced
Albala, Ken, ‘Cookbooks as Historical Documents’, in Jeffrey M. Pilcher (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Food History, Oxford Handbooks (2012; online edn, Oxford Academic, 21 Nov. 2012), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199729937.013.0013, accessed 17 Mar. 2025.
Theophano, Janet. Eat My Words : Reading Women’s Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote. Palgrave, 2002.
The 01 June 2025 marked the 50th anniversary of the death of Leslie John Lloyd, former University Librarian from 1946 to 1972.
John Lloyd joined the University College of the South West (a predecessor institution of the University of Exeter) in 1930 as an Assistant Lecturer in English, progressing to a Lecturer in English in 1937. During the Second World War, Lloyd attained the rank of Captain, and acted as the Commanding Office of the S.T.O. (Senior Training Corps), a military unit mainly formed of academic staff and male students, which later became part of the Home Guard and was involved in the defence of Exeter.
While searching in the University Archive for traces of John Lloyd, we came across a typescript document entitled ‘A Note on the College in Wartime, by L. J. Lloyd, MA, Librarian’, written for publication in the Exeter University College Club Bulletin in March 1947. It offers fascinating insight into the experiences of university staff and students during the Second World War, mentioning not only the students and staff involved in military service, but also secret scientific work, food production at the college, the significant contributions of women, the Exeter Blitz, and students that were evacuated from London. At the end of this blog post, we have included a digitised copy of Lloyd’s article (the original is very faded), which so vividly and sensitively captures this difficult time in the university’s history.
EUL UA/DRO/113: Photograph of the S.T.C. during the Second World War. John Lloyd is seated in the front row, fifth from left. (Copyright: Henry Wykes, Portrait Painter and Photographer)
In 1946, John Lloyd became the University Librarian of the University College of the South West, a position which he held until his retirement in 1972. During this period, he witnessed great changes at the university, including the founding of the University of Exeter through the Royal Charter granted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1955. During his tenure, John Lloyd also saw the student population rise from 646 students in 1946 to 3,541 students in 1972 – and, for similar years, the number of books in the University Library rise from around 70,000 to 280,000! (Source: University Calendars)
EUL MS 310 add. 1: Photograph of John Lloyd (second from left) during the visit of Queen Elizabeth II in May 1956. (Copyright: Western Morning News)
According to John Lloyd, a University Library:
“…should aim to be the cultural focus and centre of the whole University, a place in which every reasonable need of the student can be met, whether this be scientific, literary, artistic or – I was going to say practical – since a treatise on spin bowling or the chess tactics of Capablanca would I suppose take their comprehensive provision for the good life…My point is that students should be given the widest possible opportunities of developing whatever interests or talents they may have; and the library can, and should, go a very long way towards their provision. These are vital formative years; and it is our business to see to it that a stimulus is present at every turn.”
In addition to his role at the University of Exeter, Lloyd was also the Cathedral Librarian at Exeter Cathedral (see a blog post by Emma Laws, Exeter Cathedral Librarian, for more information); a published author; an avid book collector; an active supporter of the Civic Society and of the Friends of the Cathedral; a violinist who played the lead in the orchestra of the Exeter Choral and Orchestral Society for many years; and the founder of the Erratics Cricket Club, the University of Exeter staff cricket team.
John Lloyd died on 01 June 1975, at the age of 68. In an address given at the memorial service held in the Mary Harris Memorial Chapel at the University, his friend Frank Barlow (Professor of History at the University of Exeter) described him as ‘one of the nicest men I have ever known. He was kind, extremely generous, most hospitable, and with a great talent for friendship’ (Source: Exeter University 796.358 FIS – The Erratics: Fifty Not Out).
Lloyd’s generosity was shown even after death in the bequeathing of his collection of 130 rare books to the University Library under the auspices of his wife, Vera Lloyd (née Woodbridge). Today, this collection forms one of the rare book collections looked after in the University Library’s Special Collections. The Lloyd Collection comprises a variety of rare books, mainly dating between the 18th and 19th century, of which many are illustrated or have fine bindings. The collection includes a first issue of Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ (Westminster: Constable, 1897), with its lurid yellow cover. All the rare books in the Lloyd Collection are listed under the call number ‘Lloyd’ here on the Library Catalogue.
As with all of our collections, items from the Lloyd Collection and the University Archive are available for everyone to access in our Reading Room for research, interest or enjoyment. In this spirit, we hope we are continuing with John Lloyd’s ethos of enabling students, staff and visitors to the university to access the ‘widest possible opportunities of developing whatever interests or talents they may have’.
With grateful thanks to John Marshall, nephew of John Lloyd, for bringing the 50th anniversary of the death of John Lloyd to our attention, and for kindly providing some of the information used in this blog post.
‘A Note on the College in Wartime, by L. J. Lloyd, MA, Librarian’, written for publication in the Exeter University College Club Bulletin in March 1947
EUL MS 493/add.1 A photograph of Mark Beeson (1975)
Mark Beeson (1954-2022) was born in Powell River, Canada, to Christopher and Jane Beeson. Mark spent most of his childhood on a farm on Dartmoor, boarding at Highfield School and Winchester College before moving to Oxford to initially study Classics at Magdalen College, before changing to Human Sciences. Mark’s correspondence during his time at university reveals a sense of disconnection with Oxford and a longing for the landscape of Dartmoor.
In 1979, his archaeological survey of Widecombe-in-the-Moor was published in collaboration with Michael Masterman for the Devon Sites and Monuments Register. A year later, Mark’s poem ‘The Walk’ won a prize in the Arvon Foundation’s first international poetry competition, with Ted Hughes commenting that “both Seamus [Heaney] and myself were very taken by it”. Also in 1980, Mark married Alison Hastie, with whom he had two children: Luke and Teffan.
A prolific writer, poet, and playwright from a young age, Mark’s first community play, ‘The Badgers’, was performed in 1980 and followed two archaeologists as they navigated a badgers’ sett. The play explored the government’s policy of badger culling and its impact on Dartmoor and the environment. It would be the first of many community plays written by Mark and performed by MED Theatre during his 30-year tenure as Artistic Director.
In 1981, after working for years to receive external funding, Mark travelled to the Zomba Plateau in Malawi to complete a self-funded study of the blue monkeys native to the area, under the supervision of primatologist Vernon Reynolds. Mark’s detailed diaries, and his verse novel ‘The Blue Monkeys of Zomba Plateau,’ beautifully describe the landscape of Malawi, detailing the day-to-day tasks completed by Mark on the mountain, his observations, and even his shopping lists.
EUL MS 488/DAR/14/3 A handmade parody magazine made by Mark Beeson while studying blue monkeys in Malawi.
In 1986, Mark’s research on the blue monkeys was awarded an MPhil in primate ecology from the University of Exeter, and he was later elected to the Linnean Society. Inspired by the family structures of blue monkeys, Mark founded Manaton and East Dartmoor Theatre (later named MED Theatre), a rural community theatre company, in 1989. Mark’s contribution to Dartmoor theatre was recognised in 2002 when he received the Dartmoor Society Award.
Mark drew inspiration from a multitude of subjects, and his plays were often inspired by the mythology and landscape of Dartmoor. With stories about badger culling, bees, salmon, swallows, and even the tragic tale of Donald Crowhurst, Mark’s plays are exciting, creative, and often comedic. Several of the plays were adapted or written for radio and produced by BBC Radio 4, including Hound of the Cabells, The Primates (1984), The Therapists (1986), and The Swallows (1989).
Mark also founded The Dart magazine with Alison Hastie and local friends. The magazine began production in 1981 and continued until 2001, publishing articles on subjects such as nuclear disarmament, environmental concerns, local traditions and trades, and other community issues.
The Mark Beeson collection (EUL MS 488) consists of 66 boxes of archival material divided into five sections: personal material, literary papers, primatology, Widecombe-in-the-Moor Archaeological Survey, Dartmoor, and MED Theatre. We also hold a collection of letters from Mark Beeson to his good friend Gerard McBurney (EUL MS 493).
The breadth and diversity of the collection makes it rich for researchers interested in subjects such as theatre studies, the history of Devon and Dartmoor, folklore, primatology and scientific research, and sociology. Mark’s correspondence, writing, press cuttings and other papers place him within a community of environmentalists, activists, and artists, and showcases the alternative cultures of Devon and Cornwall in the 1970s and 80s.
Thank you to Luke and Teffan Beeson for permission to publish the images included in this blog.
Although Exeter is not renowned for its African collections, there is some valuable material here. Our Middle East archives and AWDU collections include extensive material from Egypt and Sudan, with a range of items from other North African countries including Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. As a member of SCOLMA, the UK Libraries and Archives Group on Africa, Exeter also specialises in material on Ghana, and the ‘Ghana Collection’ housed in the Old Library, has thousands of books, official documents, microfilms and pamphlets. However, we also have a unique and fascinating archive in Special Collections that documents the work of Jean Trevor with Hausa girls and young women in northern Nigeria.
Jean Trevor (1931-75)
Jean Trevor in the Nigeria plateau region
Jean Felicity Cole was born in Bodmin, Cornwall, on 20 April 1931. After completing school she studied for a sociology degree at LSE before going out to teach in northern Nigeria in 1953. Over the next few years she taught in different schools in northern Nigeria, mostly in the Hausa language which is spoken by millions of people in this part of the country, as well as in other countries such as Ghana and Cameroon. In Nigeria, it was spoken by the closely-related Hausa and Fulani tribes, and having learned the language, Jean was able not only to teach but also to converse with local families and develop a deeper understanding of their social lives and aspirations
For the first two years or so she was based in a Girls’ School in Sokoto, also known as ‘the City of Shaihu and Bello.’ This is a reference to the founder of the Sokoto Caliphate, Shehu Usman dan Fodio (1754-1817), and his son Muhammadu Bello (1781-1837) who succeeded him as Second Caliph.
In Jean’s time, the Caliphate was ruled by Siddiq Abubakar III (1903-88), a direct descendant of Dan Fodio. He became 17th Sultan of Sokoto in 1938 and reigned for fifty years, until his death in 1988. George VI awarded him a KBE in 1944, and after Nigeria attained independence in 1960, he was made a Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON) by the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 1964. He was a supporter and government colleague of Sir Ahmadu Bello GCON KBE (1910-66), who was also descended from Dan Fodio. A photograph of him appears in the newspaper cutting above.
Ahmadu Bello University – where Jean later did her PhD – was founded in 1961, bringing together the School of Arabic Studies in Kano with the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, and the Agricultural Research Institute (both of which were at Samaru) along with the Institute of Administration at Zaria, and the Veterinary Research Institute at Vom. The new university was based at Zaria, some 400 km SE of Sokoto.
Issue of ABU’s Institute of Education Bulletin containing Jean’s article ‘A Cultural Interpreter’ about Modibbo Sodangi, an elderly woman who had recently died, having been responsible for teaching girls ‘tarbiyya’ (moral character) in Sokoto from 1938 until a few years before her death. Jean and Sodangi first met in 1953.
Marriage and Family Life
While in Nigeria she met Arthur Henry Tudor Trevor (1920-2003), son of the former Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, Lt. Col. Arthur P. Trevor ICS (1872-1930), who was then working in agricultural development. They married on Christmas Eve 1957 in Maiduguri, capital of Borno State, in NE Nigeria.
Much of her time over the next few years was spent raising her two sons, David (born in 1958) and his younger brother Tom (born in 1962). While they returned for some of the time to their house on the Hartland peninsula in North Devon, the Trevors remained in Nigeria and there are numerous family photographs of the young boys playing in the gardens and countryside.
Tudor Trevor was involved in theatre and media production as part of his role as an agricultural development officer, and between 1958 and 1961 Jean worked with him in creating educational films and radio broadcasts in Hausa. Between 1964 and 1967 she taught African teachers at the University of Exeter and was appointed to the editorial team of the Commonwealth Teachers Magazine. A single issue is in the archive and provides some interesting impressions of England and Devon as recounted by teachers from countries such as Tanzania, British Guiana, Malawi and Jamaica.
The Development of Jean’s PhD
Jean’s experience of living and teaching in Nigeria for fourteen years, enriched by the conversations she had had in Hausa, had given her plenty of time to reflect upon the role of education in the lives of her pupils and their families. At some point her growing knowledge of the local community, combined with her evolving understanding of teaching practices and educational theory, combined to suggest to her the idea of researching these themes in a more formal study.
It is important to realise that her PhD was not undertaken as one single funded project, but was built around a series of short grants from different institutions, each of whom expected different things from her. Initially, her plan had been to write a fairly straightforward analysis of attitudes to female education, based on interviews with the schoolgirls, their families, local community figures and Islamic teachers, plus her own observations. After discussions with Gillmore Lee, Professor of Psychology at Leicester University, and Professor Robert LeVine of the University of Chicago, she was persuaded to follow their advice and switch to using formal quantitative methods to interpret her interview data. This involved devising questionnaires to which the questions could be assigned numerical values, that were then translated into code form, which could be recorded on punched cards.
Some of Jean Trevor’s punched data cardsNumerical values used to analyse data as recorded on the punched cards
This work was carried out in challenging circumstances, with much of her grant money being spent on car repairs as she tried to drive around the countryside interviewing young Hausa women (see photo below!). Initially funded by a Commonwealth Postgraduate Research Scholarship, she then obtained – through the help of Professor LeVine – a Research Fellowship within the Child Development Centre at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria in 1968. The University of Chicago money stopped at the end of December 1969 due to the US Department of Education cutting its grant (at the time of writing, this sounds very topical!) but further support from the Carnegie Foundation and the Ford Foundation allowed her to pursue her research under the auspices of the Department of Community Medicine at ABU. The Overseas Development Administration (ODA) offered Jean an Educational Development Award of £2,500 p.a. to cover the period between September 1971 and March 1972, but she then had to apply to the Population Council for another grant, for which she stated that her thesis title was ‘Effects of schooling in Moslem women’s attitudes to family size, child rearing practices and family planning in North West Nigeria’, emphasising its relevance for population studies. The University of Exeter then appointed her an Investigator in the Department of Education (Population Council Research Project) for six months from January 1973 to help her write up her thesis.
Academic Theories and Scholarly Circles
A name that appears regularly in Jean’s notes is that of Sir Frederick Lugard (1858-1945), a colonial administrator who was closely involved in the country’s affairs in the early 20th century. After working with the Royal Niger Company, he was appointed High Commissioner of the newly created Protectorate of Northern Nigeria in 1900, Governor of both the Southern and Northern Protectorates in 1912, and in 1914 became the first Governor-General of Nigeria, created through the unification of the two protectorates. While his policies included suppressing Fulani resistance to British rule – he organised the military campaign against the Emir of Kano, capturing Kano in 1903, as well as the Sultan of Sokoto Muhammadu Attahiru I, who was killed in battle in 1903 – Lugard was also intensely interested in education. He established a new Education Ordinance and Education Code for Nigeria in 1916 and his book The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (1923) lays out in detail his theories about the place of education in colonial administration, stressing its value as a tool for development.
However, the close link between education and colonisation was deeply problematic in post-1960 independent Nigeria, given that Lugard regarded Africans as racially inferior to Europeans and his educational policy was explicitly utilitarian, aimed at producing loyal subjects who served their local community for the greater good, rather than seeing education as something of value to an individual in its own right. There was also an imbalance between the north and the south, both in terms of education and political strength, which contributed to the later divisions and secessions that arose during the second half of the century.
A prize-giving ceremony at an agricultural fair
As Jean’s research focused on attitudes towards education and its purpose, she needed to engage with the ideas and legacy of Lugard, as well as those of contemporary sociologists, anthropologists and others. She collaborated a few times with the late Jerome H. Barkow (1944-2024), a professor at Dalhouse University in Nova Scotia who had spent many years studying the Hausa in Nigeria and Niger; Jean helped with a conference paper and there are several letters between them in the archive. Jerry wrote to her about another academic: ‘I find him quite old-fashioned theoretically, very much vulnerable to contemporary criticism of much African anthropology as frankly colonial’ and Jean’s papers reveal that she did not always see eye to eye with the views and conduct of senior figures working in her field.
The nature of her work meant she was in contact with a wide number of academics and professionals, in Nigeria, the UK and the USA, including anthropologist Sylvia Leith Ross (1884-1980) who settled in Nigeria in 1907 and founded girls’ schools in both Lagos and Kano, Dr Ishaya Sha’aibu Audu, Vice-Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University and former physician to Bello himself, Professor Umaru Shehu of the ABU Institute of Health, Professor Richard D’Aeth of the University of Exeter’s School of Education, as well as prominent scholars such as Professor Mervyn Hiskett (1920-94) and anthropologist Professor Michael G. Smith (1921-93). There are also numerous letters from Hausa women, young girls, local teachers and the wives of important figures around Sokoto and Kano.
Islamic Aspects: from Jama’atu Nasril Islam to Boko Haram
Despite the uncertainties and trials of her PhD research, Jean often gave thought to finding employment once she had finished her PhD, and in 1973 she was invited by the Jama’atu Nasril Islam (Society for the Progress of Islam) to apply for the post of Principal of the Moslem Ladies College in Kaduna – an offer she declined, as she wanted to concentrate on completing her thesis. This was, however, recognition of the respect with which she and her work were regarded in the local Islamic community.
Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) was established in Kaduna in 1962 by Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto, as an umbrella organisation for the promotion of Islam, following advice from the Grand Khadi of Northern Nigeria, Alhaji Abubakar Gummi.
While Jean’s research focused on the social and cultural attitudes towards female education – such as whether girls who were expected to marry at a young age believed schooling would benefit them – this was intrinsically related to Islamic views on the value of knowledge, the role of women, and the differences between Quranic schools and western theories of education. Many of Jean’s notes related to Islam, including records of conversations she had with girls’ families, but she also undertook an interview with Alhaji Abubakar el Nafaty, Secretary of Jama’a Nasril Islam in December 1968, and another interview about education with the Grand Khadi, Alhaji Abubakar Gummi, the following May. Accounts of these interviews are in the archive, plus her description of a visit to the main Islamic school at Sokoto in February 1969, as well as a copy of monthly magazine Haske: The Light of Islam No.17 (1970) and various religious texts in both Hausa and Arabic.
Islamic attitudes towards western education in Nigeria have, of course, come under intense scrutiny in recent years since the rise of the militant group known as ‘Boko Haram’, which is often (mis-)translated as ‘Western education is forbidden.’ The group was founded in 2002 and its actual name in Arabic is Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihād, with the Hausa phrase ‘Boko Haram’ better translated as a prohibition of ‘westernization’ or ‘western civilization.’ The educational aspect is, however, a key element of the influence that the group so fiercely opposes, and their brutal campaign has seen the killing of tens of thousands of Nigerians, including many children, as well as the infamous kidnapping of almost 300 schoolgirls from a school in Chibok in NE Nigeria.
Much has been written about ‘Boko Haram’ in recent years, but the scale of violence and terror associated with the group’s campaign has not created a climate that supports much nuanced analysis. It is therefore interesting to find frank yet subtle discussions amongst Jean’s papers, such as her interview with the Emir of Gwanda in February 1969, in which he explained distinctions between attitudes to female education in Gwanda compared to Sokoto, and told her ‘Your boko can be as good at addini [religion] as a traditionally trained girl.’
She and Abubakar el Nafaty even discussed the theology of Teilhard du Chardin, exploring different understandings of the relationship between science and religion. In her conversation with the Grand Khadi, they talked in more detail about boko makaranta [western education] and his view that ‘Criticism of Boko is due to the false division of religion and secular life. This is a mistake – in Islam everything is a unity.’ In addition to these interviews, Jean recorded the views and stories of the wives of local professors and teachers, recalling their own experiences of education decades earlier, sometimes by European missionaries, and how the British colonial rule of Nigeria had changed how the people lived.
Photograph of a mass baptism in a river, possibly part of the Christian revival in the early 1970s
The papers, photographs, correspondence and other documents in the Jean Trevor archive provide insights into different aspects of Nigerian life at this period, including developments in both secondary and higher education, agricultural methods, Islamic movements, colonialism and the British relations with African countries at the end of the empire, as well as community health, textiles and costume, marriage customs and popular culture.
Northern Region Marketing Board materials
The Northern Region Marketing Board was the new name in 1954 for what had previously been the Nigerian Groundnut Marketing Board. We have material on the groundnut industry in Nigeria within the archive of the Imperial Institute (EUL MS 61):
The archive catalogue for EUL MS 79 can be browsed here.
To mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Jean Trevor this year, an event is being held at the University of Exeter on 2 July that will include a presentation from a visiting Nigerian scholar – more details will follow shortly.
Some writings by Jean Trevor:
‘A Cultural Interpreter’, Bulletin of the Institute of Education, Ahmadu Bello University Vol.6, No.1 (May 1969) pp.9-12
‘A preliminary report on the demographic aspects of a study of family change in traditional Moslem Fulani/Hausa urban centres – Sokoto’ [unpublished typescript]
‘Family change in Sokoto: a traditional Moslem Fulani/Hausa city’ in J.C. Caldwell et al (eds.), Population growth and socio economic change in West Africa (Columbia University Press, 1974)
‘Traditional Values and the Traditional Position of Women in Sokoto City’ [unpublished typescript]
‘The Education of Moslem Hausa Women of Sokoto, N.W. Nigeria’ [unpublished typescript]
‘Moslem women: what did our school do for them?’, (manuscript)
‘Moslem school girls: did our school help or hinder them?’ [unpublished typescript, January 1974]
Student volunteer and PhD student Charlie Clark‘s new exhibition of items from the University of Exeter’s Special Collections explores the relationship between magic and civil law, from the 16th century to present day. You can find the exhibition in the display case on Level 0 of the Forum Library on Streatham Campus.
Introduction
Much has already been said about the persecution of so-called ‘witches’ in early-modern Europe. Between 1542 and 1736, the introduction and enforcement of the Witchcraft Act in England and Wales meant that the civil arm of the law was responsible for prosecuting individuals suspected of its practice. The accused, disproportionately women, were blamed for causing a range of undesirable circumstances, including illness and death, at Satan’s behest.
However, the story does not end with the repeal of the Witchcraft Act in 1736. Self-proclaimed ’witches’, or individuals practising ‘witchcraft’ or ’sorcery’, first sought legal recognition and protection in the UK in the twentieth century. Consequently, practitioners reclaiming such terminology continue to engage with one another, with the latter often appealing to the memory of the witch trials to assert their rights. Meanwhile, witchcraft trials continue to take place in the contemporary world. People still alive today have been the focus of accusations, ordeals, and subsequent punishments for their perceived guilt.
This new exhibition of items from the University of Exeter’s Special Collections seeks to raise awareness of the continued relationship between magic and civil law. It first explores early-modern witch trials in England, focusing on the Bideford witch trials that took place in Exeter and the introduction of legal protections for self-proclaimed ‘witches’. The exhibition will conclude with an examination of witchcraft trials in twentieth-century Socotra, demonstrating that such accusations continue to impact communities today.
Witchcraft in Early-Modern England
Discussions concerning witch-hunting in early-modern England should begin with the introduction of the Witchcraft Act in 1542. This law, and its successors (1563, 1604), made civil authorities rather than ecclesiastical ones responsible for the extermination of heretics employing “witchcrafts enchauntmentes or sorceries” (An Act against Conjurations, Witchcrafts, Sorcery and Inchantments; Great Britain Parliament House of Commons, vol. 1). Thus, anyone suspected of using witchcraft to procure knowledge or wealth, or to harm others, would be executed. This was ratified by King James I in 1604 (Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, vol. 4), reemphasising the need to expunge Christian society of witches, who were understood to act at the behest of the Devil. Indeed, King James possessed a keen interest in witchcraft, authoring the Daemonologia (not displayed in this exhibition, but available via the University of Exeter’s Special Collections).
Such perceptions of the capabilities of and dangers posed by witches, as well as the desire for civil authorities to handle such cases, were codified by the Malleus Maleficarum, “The Hammer of the Witches”, which greatly influenced the later introduction of the Witchcraft Act (Gent, 1982 – Edmund pamphlet 942.359/B40 GEN). Written and published by Heinrich Kramer in Speyer in 1486, the text is divided into three sections. The first is concerned with proving that the heresy of witchcraft exists; the second discusses the powers possessed by witches; and the third describes the ‘appropriate’ procedure for prosecution. Hearsay and other non-verifiable sources of evidence were enough to justify the accusation and arrest of suspects, who tended to be women who occupied socially ambiguous or marginalised positions, such as widows and midwives. The guilt of the accused would be assumed; if the woman maintained her innocence, a confession would be forced by torture “so that the truth will be had from [her] mouth and [she] will no longer offend the ears of the judges” (trans. Mackay, 2015). If the accused did not confess, they would be told that a confession would spare them the death penalty. The Malleus confirms that this was a lie, as it enjoins civil authorities to prescribe death to all those suspected of practising witchcraft, proclaiming “extermination to heretics” (trans. Mackay, 2015). The manuscript on display (Baring-Gould Library 0495) was copied in 1588. Its faded cover and fragile binding, as well as its late production date, bear witness to the popularity and longevity of beliefs surrounding witchcraft during this period.
Prior to the publication of the Malleus, there are few records that describe the prosecution of witches. A surge in the number of trials and prosecutions follow its publication, further demonstrating its widespread impact. Indeed, accusations, trials and death sentences across England typically followed the pattern laid out by the Malleus Maleficarum. One such trial occurred in Devon in 1682, commemorated on a plaque in Heavitree. Gent (1982, Edmund pamphlet 942.359/B40 GEN) recounts how Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles and Susanna Edwards were arrested and tried for witchcraft following sensationalised accusations that they had caused illnesses and death, possessed “carnal knowledge” of the Devil, and could perform supernatural acts including shapeshifting. The trial was held at the Exeter Assizes amid much publicity. As the Malleus prescribed, hearsay and public animosity comprised much of the evidence against the accused, and they were manipulated into giving confessions. They were found guilty on the 14th of August and hung eleven days later.
The final execution of a so-called ‘witch’ occurred in 1712, with the victim later royally pardoned (Gent, 1982, Edmund pamphlet 942.359/B40 GEN). The Witchcraft Act was finally repealed in 1736 (Great Britain Parliament House of Commons, vol. 24), marking the end of the witch-hunt craze in England. However, the relationship between ‘witchcraft’ and secular law did not conclude here; rather, it continued further into modernity.
Contemporary Witchcraft: England
An increasing number of individuals, typically adherents of paganism and related faiths, self-identify as witches and practitioners of witchcraft. As a result, several groups have formed to promote and defend the legal recognition and protection of their members. Whilst it’s unclear how many of today’s witches identify with persecuted individuals in early-modern England, proponents of pagan rights continue to cite historic trials and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights when advocating for their rights (and rites!) (EUL MS 105/29). Their success sharply contrasts the fervor of the witch hunts a mere three centuries prior.
One such group is the Pagan Front – now known as the Pagan Federation – which was formally established in 1971. Their manifesto, written in 1970, outlines their beliefs and aims. Confidently self-identifying as ‘witches’, the Front acknowledges that, while “past persecution and intolerance” may hinder their public acceptance, “Witches and other Pagans are people, too, and have the same human and civil rights as anyone else” (EUL MS 105/29, emphasis added). Thus, a primary concern of theirs has been to enjoin civil law to protect witches and practitioners of witchcraft.
Indeed, self-identified witches began to use their newfound legal protections to their benefit. An open letter to the Secretary of State for Home Affairs, dated the 20th of March 1970, detailed a defamation case against the press (EUL MS 105/29). The Pagan Front referred to false claims that a Wiccan had lured a teenager into witchcraft to seduce her; this accusation had resulted in the destruction of private property belonging to pagans. The letter implied that the Witchcraft Act and its consequences continued to loom over the pagan community – referring to the “repeal of the anachronistic Witchcraft Act”, the letter implores the addressee to understand that the witchcraft practised by modern pagans is not harmful, despite the claims of the Malleus and related texts.
The result of the case described above is unclear. However, the twenty-first century has witnessed a significant progression in the rights of self-proclaimed witches. The 2010 Equality Act protects people of any (or no) faith, including pagans, from discrimination, harassment and victimisation (Legislation.gov.uk). This has resulted in legal cases that would have been unimaginable in early-modern England. Notably, a witch called Karen Holland claimed that she was unfairly dismissed from her job for attending a Halloween festival. The court ruled that the dismissal was indefensible based on religious discrimination and awarded her £15,241.28 (‘Holland v Angel Supermarket Ltd and Anor’, 2013). While it may be the case that witches continue to face discrimination, the law is now on their side.
Contemporary Witchcraft: Socotra
Unlike the English witch hunts, the prosecution of so-called ‘witches’ in Socotra endures in living memory. ‘Witches’ – exclusively women – were tried and excommunicated by law in Socotra, an island currently under Yemeni jurisdiction, until the end of the Sultanate period in 1967 (Peutz, 2009). Accounts detail trials by ordeal and subsequent banishments, which have had an enduring impact on the accused and their families.
John Carter, in his writings on Omani witchcraft (EUL MS 476/1/7), recounts the typical legal proceedings following an accusation of witchcraft in the 1950s. Every year, between fifteen to twenty women would be sent to Hadibo, the capital of Socotra, to be put on trial. If the accused maintained her innocence, the Sultan, who oversaw the law courts, would recommend a trial by ordeal, carried out by a well-reputed Muslim. The accused would be tied up with rocks, taken out to sea and dunked at a depth of fifteen feet. If she hit the seabed three times, she was considered innocent. If she floated back to shore, she was deemed guilty and forced onto the next departing vessel to be exiled. Her children couldn’t go with her. Carter witnessed one such trial of three women in 1955. One admitted her guilt prior to the ordeal, whilst the others were found guilty. All three women were excommunicated, and thus cut off from their families.
The consequences of these trials reverberate even today, sometimes in unexpected ways. Peutz (2009) spoke to both a woman excommunicated on account of her perceived practise of sorcery, and her family back in Socotra. She, like many other banished women, did not openly discuss the reasons for her exile. She continues to support the Socotran economy by sending home monetary gifts, some of which have been used to build important structures including mosques. Meanwhile, her family do discuss the reasons for her banishment – which, at first glance, is unexpected. The Socotran government and populace outwardly treat their “traditional” but “erroneous” beliefs in witchcraft and sorcery (as cited in Peutz, 2009) with palpable embarrassment, referring to the relevant period as the “regime of ignorance” (Peutz, 2009). Despite this, though no longer punishable by law, rumours of its practice still circulate amongst locals. There is no legal protection for anyone who may choose to self-identify as such.
Conclusion
This exhibition has sought to raise awareness of the continued relationship between witchcraft and civil law – not only in Europe, where the history of witch-hunts is well known, but elsewhere in the world. As we have seen, English witches appeal to past persecutions to advocate for their civil rights, which has resulted in the introduction of legal protections. Meanwhile, although witch trials are no longer legal in Socotra, the victims of accusations and their families continue to live with the consequences of persecution and now-defunct laws that targeted so-called ‘witches’. Thus, laws regarding witches and witchcraft continue to impact communities in the contemporary world.
Mackay, Christopher S. (trans.). 2009. The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, 1st ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
As this week is Student Volunteering Week, we are celebrating our amazing student volunteers: Charlie, Ted, Esme and Mitch!
Volunteers make an invaluable contribution towards Special Collections, enabling us to extend the work that can be done by our team, and making our collections more accessible for people to use and enjoy. Volunteering is unpaid, but can offer a wide range of benefits to those who generously volunteer their time with us, including the opportunity to get hands-on with unique collections, to develop new skills and knowledge, and to gain valuable experience which can improve employability.
For the academic year 2024-2025, Special Collections has been delighted to welcome four student volunteers to our team: two Exhibitions Volunteers and two Collections Care Volunteers. The Exhibitions Volunteers have been working with a member of Special Collections staff to plan and co-curate an exhibition of Special Collections materials. The Collections Care Volunteers have been working with a member of Special Collections staff to repackage archive materials into new housing suitable for long-term preservation.
Charlie, Ted, Esme and Mitch have kindly agreed to share some of their experiences of volunteering with Special Collections below. The Special Collections team would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their fantastic work, enthusiasm and dedication.
Since October, I have been fortunate enough to work as an Exhibitions Volunteer with the University’s Special Collections. The role involved many happy afternoons sifting through archival materials in the Ronald Duncan Reading Room, selecting several to display and discuss in an upcoming exhibition on magic and law in the Forum Library. The Special Collections house a number of extraordinarily significant items relating to the history of magic, including a personal favourite; a 1588 copy of the Malleus Maleficarum (Baring-Gould Library 0495), a foundational text for the witch-hunt craze in Europe and North America. Copied 102 years after its initial publication, the worn binding bears witness to the respect afforded to the text – and, therefore, is a sharp reminder of the devastating consequences of its contents. Indeed, engaging with the material aspects of manuscripts and learning what this communicates about the owner, the environment, or the cultural significance of the object and others like it has been my favourite experience. It makes history tangible, so learning how to handle archival material has been invaluable. It has also been exciting to use one manuscript to learn about another, connecting the dots between the available items to create a complete historical picture to present. The Malleus, for example, can somehow be mentioned alongside a pamphlet concerning the Bideford witch trials, almost 400 years its junior! In short, creating an exhibition for the Special Collections has been great fun and a massive privilege, and I’m excited to present my findings.
Ted (Exhibitions Volunteer):
Items from the Jack Clemo literary and personal papers (EUL MS 68)
As a Special Collections Exhibitions Volunteer, I am currently creating an exhibition regarding the life of Jack Clemo (1916-1994), utilising the archives’ considerable collection of: letters and diaries, as well as deeply sentimental objects such as love letters and dog fluff. A religious poet, Clemo remains highly praised for visionary writing on mysticism that was noted for its visceral realism. Set within the backdrop of Cornwall’s clay mining pits, Clemo invoked a “clear, fiery vision” and was referred to by A.L. Rowse as the “progeny… of Thomas Hardy”. This realism and clarity of vision are even more remarkable when considering that Clemo was completely deaf and blind for the vast majority of his adult life; although he was quick to point out that he became blind after the release of his early works. Exploring the Clemo archive within Special Collections offers a remarkable insight into the life of a firebrand poet with a fierce spiritual vision, who was able to write with grounded realism even after his senses had been lost.
Esme (Collections Care Volunteer):
I have loved my experience working as a Collections Care volunteer at the university’s Special Collections. This role has given me a great opportunity to see behind-the-scenes of how an archive operates and the intricacies of managing rare and unique materials. One project I have particularly enjoyed was cleaning and repackaging Alfred William Clapham’s postcard collection, which contained over 2300 postcards of notable landmarks and buildings across Britain. In the process of repackaging, I was also able to read correspondence from as early as 1903, and I enjoyed the detective work of finding the locations of landmarks that Clapham hadn’t been able to locate pre-internet. I was also able to help with the catalogue information for this collection, improving accuracy through counting the postcards and noting dates where they were available. My most recent project has been listing items that were recently collected from the St Luke’s Library, and it has been fascinating to read student periodicals from the 1970s-1990s and gauge their opinions on student life. These items will join the University Archive.
Working in the archives has also allowed me to explore other materials for my own interests, such as Francis James Child’s collection of English and Scottish Ballads, which I enjoyed writing a blog post about. I have also been able to make use of archive resources for my degree, and viewing primary sources in the Special Collections has been invaluable to extending my understanding of material and print cultures and the importance of archives. I would thoroughly recommend volunteering in the Special Collections to anyone interested in these materials, as you get to work with a lovely group of people and gain knowledge about so many different aspects of the work that goes into maintaining these resources.
Mitch (Collections Care Volunteer):
It’s not often that you can approach the curtain of your university programme and peek behind the fabric of journals, articles, and academic excess. The production of knowledge can seem so glossy that you might forget that it must come from somewhere, with brilliant people working tirelessly to categorise, organise, and research the raw materials required for its shine. The University of Exeter’s Special Collections team gave me just that opportunity, and I doubt I’ll ever look at my set-readings in quite the same way.
I applied for the volunteering position because I wanted experience. What experience, exactly? Well, I didn’t quite mind. When studying in the Humanities, job prospects are always in doubt, and so hands get grabby when it comes to opportunities. Of course, I expected the volunteering would give me some experience in archiving, but I hardly knew what that meant. An archive recalls arcane, moss-covered temples with devout robe-wearing scholars meticulously sorting a mine of knowledge, and I’ve largely found that despite a notable lack of moss and robes, that’s not altogether false!
My time with Special Collections has been spent growing familiar with the archive’s wealth of facilities, resources, and rituals. Under the supervision of James, I have developed the skills to handle a range of manuscripts and rare books, repackaging them, and marking them up for storage. My time with James has involved working on the Middle East Collections, becoming not only familiar with the processes of handling and repackaging, but the collection itself. Every step of the way, James talked me through the contexts of manuscripts, and the lives of their predecessors, working to break the sterility of work through an engagement with the cultural artefacts as they passed through my hands.
The Jean Trevor archive has been one of particular interest for me. The opportunity to understand her documents through the context of her life and legacy, and all the while gaining access to her research on rural Nigerian populations and their lived experiences, has been intellectually enriching. Her connection to the University of Exeter was especially attractive, inviting the sense that I was engaging in a localised academic community, albeit in a small way. It has been a pleasure to repackage and sort her notes and research.
Finally, I would recommend the volunteering programme to anyone looking to enrich their engagement with the academy and knowledge studies. The Special Collections archive offers their volunteers the opportunity to see knowledge-production in action, while gaining valuable skills in handling and repackaging fascinating material. Not only that, but I believe the work has clarified potential career choices for me and birthed a wealth of new perspectives on the Culture and Heritage sector. Thank you to both Annie and James for your ongoing support.
Special Collections runs a small volunteering programme, which currently accepts up to four volunteers for time-limited projects (usually three to six months). The volunteering programme is open to university students and staff, as well as members of the public.New volunteering opportunities in Special Collections are advertised at the beginning of the Autumn Term (see University term dates), with any additional spaces being advertised as they become available.Find out more on our Volunteering webpage.
This week marks the birthdays of two traditional song scholars with names familiar to anyone interested in folk music, Sabine Baring-Gould and Francis James Child. While volunteering in the University of Exeter’s Special Collections, I was delighted to discover that we had Baring-Gould’s own copies of Child’s The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, and so for this occasion it only seemed right to highlight the correspondence and collaboration between the two.
Child’s 10-volume series is regarded as one of the most important works in traditional song and ballad scholarship, and in the course of exploring the 305 ‘Child Ballads’ he details many song variants, found in both printed forms such as broadsides, and in those from the oral tradition that have been shared with him by song collectors. Baring-Gould was an avid collector himself across Devon and Cornwall, and his work Songs and Ballads of the West was published between 1889-91. Around this time, there is evidence of correspondence between the two, with Baring-Gould offering Child South West variants and additions to songs he included in earlier volumes. In the preface to the seventh volume, Child writes that “The Rev. S. Baring-Gould has done me the great favour of furnishing me with copies of traditional ballads and songs taken down by him in the West of England,” and he similarly offers Baring-Gould “very cordial thanks” in his eighth volume, which is where the majority of Baring-Gould’s contributions feature.
Perhaps his most significant contribution is that of the ballad “Henry Martyn,” which Baring-Gould, in a letter from the 6th June 1890, remarks “is doubtless Andrew Barton,” Child ballad number 167. While Child remarks that “Henry Martyn” “must have sprung from the ashes of Andrew Barton” (393) he nonetheless includes it in his collection, where it is Child number 250. Baring-Gould’s version becomes Child’s ‘A’ variant of the text, and Child makes use of two versions which Baring-Gould collected, from Matthew Baker of Lew Down, Devon, and Roger Luxton of Halwell, North Devon.
As well as the addition of a new ballad, Child also includes a section of “Additions and Corrections” at the end of this eighth volume, and many of Baring-Gould’s contributions can be found here, drawing directly from traditional singers of the South West. For Child number 78, “The Unquiet Grave,” Baring-Gould writes to Child in 1892 with a version he collected featuring “two stanzas in it new to me,” and Child illustrates these variants, writing, “The Rev. S. Baring-Gould has recovered several copies of ‘The Unquiet Grave’ in the West Country. It will be observed that the variations in this ballad do not take a wide range. The verses are not always sung in the same order; there is not story enough to keep them in place” (474).
As well as including variants of songs collected from traditional singers, Baring-Gould also shares other folk customs with Child. For “The Elfin Knight,” Child adds a note in his “Additions and Corrections” to include Baring-Gould’s description of a practice “from the North of Cornwall, near Camelford … now quite discontinued,” where the song is used “as a sort of game in farm-houses” (439). These examples demonstrate the impact that Baring-Gould’s work had on Child’s scholarship, allowing traditional singers of the South West to contribute to this seminal work.
If you are interested in exploring these items further, the full 10 volumes of the Child Ballads are held by the University of Exeter’s Special Collections, and you can find details on the library catalogue here.
We were delighted to be joined last week by Year 12 student Noah for a week of work experience in Special Collections. Below Noah shares some of his impressions and reflections on the experience. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Noah for his excellent work and wish him every success for the future.
On the first day of my work experience placement here I was greeted by Annie, one of the Archivists, and introduced to the very friendly Special Collections staff. Instantly the environment was welcoming and I knew I would have a wonderful week. I was given a tour around the building and shown the strongrooms where there were incredible old books of all different shapes and sizes. I was also given basic handling training which was incredibly informative and the hands-on experience was incredibly entertaining. At the end of the day I was able to relax and work on the box list of old copies of the student newspaper Exeposé in the University Archive, where I was also able to read about student life in the 1990’s including interesting and hilarious events or even political issues and protests.
Early copies of the student newspaper ‘Exeposé’
On Tuesday I was introduced to Digital Humanities where me and another work experience student had the opportunity to have little octopuses 3D printed. We were also able to take professional images of an old book that they were digitalising to put online where we were able to experience what it was like to use real equipment. In the afternoon I was able to meet Lisa, a Special Collections Assistant, who showed me the behind the scenes of their catalogues and their list of bugs they’ve caught to keep the strongrooms clean and safe for the archives. Then with the Special Collections Team Leader, Sarah-Jayne, who I met on Monday, I was able to have some practice in retrieving archives for an upcoming event where I was able to learn the organisation process in the archives which I found incredibly informative and fun and was one of my favourite activities because while retrieving the items I was also able to look at them myself and see the incredible detail of artwork and old bookbindings.
Chris Brooks Collection
On Wednesday I was given a tour of the Forum Library and was able to briefly meet the friendly staff and get an idea of what it would be like to work there and I was even given some cake. In the afternoon I got to speak to another lovely member of staff, the interim Head of Heritage Collections called Caroline, and hear about her work here which was very interesting and gave me an idea of what it would be like to possibly work in this line of work in the future.
On Thursday I was able to sit in on a marketing meeting with the Library and Special Collections which was informative in giving me an insight into the friendly connections of staff and how they prepare for the new year. Then in the afternoon I was given a tour around the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum by the Assistant Curator Matt, which I found extremely interesting and I loved seeing the displays curated by graduates, the funny collector items and also the educational displays on representations of race in film historically and even recently with Moonlight (2017) being in the display amongst other interesting historical examples of how people of colour had been represented in times of bigotry. I was also able to see old ways of producing film with light and shadows and even old cameras and boxes old film would be stored in.
Cinematographe Lumiere: 69247 From the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum
On my final day, Friday, I was able to continue working on listing Exeposé in the reading room where I read may interesting things even about Luke Pollard the Labour MP for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport, who I had previously seen when he came to my school to talk to us about politics. I found him to be very lovely and was excited to see what he had gotten up to during his university years. I also read about previous Israel boycotts that had taken place in the university which caught my attention due to the more recent media coverage and protests on campus. I was then able to begin writing this blog post before meeting the Special Collections Team Leader Angela, who told me about her role and we even shared a lovely conversation about politics and my politics A-Level.
Collage of images from the University of Exeter Special Collections
Overall, this week has been filled with information which was all interesting and fun to learn about it was not at all boring and I was rarely sat at a desk doing anything uninteresting. Everyone I met was lovely and its a very inviting environment with everyone being funny, chatty and polite. The hands on work made me consider archiving as a possible future career path and even the work on the computer was interesting and I looked forward to reading more Exeposé every morning as I walked from the train station. It was a lovely and informative week and I would recommend this work experience to anyone who may be considering this as an option or is not sure and would like to test the waters.
With less than a week to go before the general election, cataloguing archivist Hollie Piff decided to search through our collections for material with an electoral theme.
The University’s Special Collections are vast and cover a broad range of topics, so it’s unsurprising that general elections popped up more than once when searching the catalogue.
A.L. Rowse
The first collection that caught my eye, and inspired a new exhibition in the Forum Library, were the Papers of A.L. Rowse (EUL MS 113). A.L. Rowse was an historian, poet, diarist, biographer, and critic, born in Tregonissey near St. Austell, Cornwall. He won a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, gaining a first-class honours degree in history in 1925 when he was also elected Fellow of All Souls, Oxford. It was during this period that he established many of the social contacts with academic, political, and literary circles that he maintained for the rest of his life. Rowse was a prolific letter writer, so his collection contains hundreds of letters from politicians, artists, writers, and other notable people, including correspondence from Prime Ministers.
Correspondence from Winston Churchill reveals a friendship between the two men, and many of Churchill’s letters praise Rowse’s writing. Rowse wrote two books about Churchill and his family, and supported Churchill in the publication of his own book, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, in 1956. Rowse was invited to celebrate the publication of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, and the seating plan shows him placed at the head table with Churchill. The guests were served salmon and roast beef, followed by a crinoline lady cake for dessert. Other notable guests included Sir Allen Lane, co-founder of Penguin Books, and Eartha Kitt, singer of ‘Santa Baby’.
Books written by A.L. Rowse, including The Early and Later Churchills
Unfortunately, not all the letters were quite so celebratory. A letter from Denis Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher’s husband, to Rowse on the 19th of November 1990 reveals a weariness at 10 Downing Street. “Over 30 years of vicarious politics,” Thatcher writes, “I have learnt that it is harsh and often thankless” (EUL MS 113/3/1/T). This letter came five days after a Conservative Party leadership election was called by Michael Heseltine, which perhaps explains Denis Thatcher’s suggestion that “the combination of the ambitious and the disaffected changes the course of history, more often than not for the worse” (EUL MS 113/3/1/T). The very next day Margaret Thatcher would fail to win the first ballot outright, and would announce her resignation on the 22nd of November 1990.
Syon Abbey
Rather unexpectedly, general elections also feature in the Syon Abbey collection (EUL MS 389). Syon Abbey was a monastery of the Bridgettine Order, founded at Twickenham in 1415. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century, the community split into groups to continue their religious practice; some groups stayed in England while others travelled abroad. In 1861 the community returned to England, settling in Devon from 1925 until 2011 when the monastery was closed.
In 1951, the nuns applied to the Bishop of Plymouth to be allowed to leave the abbey to vote in the general election. The bishop’s office wrote to the abbess to say that as the “election [was] of a very serious nature,” they should “write to the Apostolic Delegate” for special permission (EUL MS 389/ECC/1/9). Permission was eventually granted by William Godfrey, papal representative to England and later Archbishop of Westminster, and the nuns were allowed to vote.
The 1951 general election was “of a very serious nature” because it was called 20 months after the 1950 general election. The result was tight and, while the Labour Party won the most votes, the first-past-the-post system meant that the Conservative Party, with Winston Churchill as leader, took power in Westminster with a majority of only 17 seats.
Items from the Syon Abbey Collection (EUL MS 389)
Cecil Harmsworth
The Cecil Harmsworth (1869-1948) papers (EUL MS 435) provide an insight into the day-to-day life of an MP in the early 20th century. Harmsworth was a Liberal politician, born in London and educated at Trinity College Dublin. His political career began in 1899 when he ran unsuccessfully as the Liberal candidate for Mid Worcestershire, and later as the Liberal candidate for North East Lanarkshire in 1901. Harmsworth’s luck changed in 1906 when he became the Liberal MP for Droitwich, and his defeat in the 1910 general election eventually led to his extended tenure as MP for Luton from 1911-1922. Harmsworth also served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Home Department under Lloyd George, and as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and was appointed to the House of Lords in 1939.
The collection is particularly rich in autobiographical writing, with personal and travel diaries from 1900-1948. The diaries contain personal and professional observations and notes, including references to domestic and foreign policy, and inserted press cuttings, letters, and cards. Both World Wars are represented, including an entry on Monday 23rd April 1945 declaring the end of the black out “after five long years” (EUL MS 435/1/1).
Harmsworth also created a scrapbook to document his time in the House of Commons. The scrapbook is fragile and incomplete, but it contains copies of letters from H.H. Asquith, dinner menus, press cuttings, and addresses to Parliament.
EUL MS 435/2/14 – Scrapbook of items relating to the House of Commons, 1906-1922
Don’t forget to vote next Thursday (4th July), and make sure to bring a form of voter ID!
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