Cover of The Original clock almanack, 1903

John Hartley, born in 1839 in Halifax, was a prolific author of stories and poems in Yorkshire dialect.  His work is funny, sardonic, exuberant, often sentimental, often grotesque, realistic about the tough lives of West Riding people.  He often shared and exaggerated events in his own life through his alter ego, Sammywell (Samuel) Grimes, and Sammywell’s sharp-tongued wife, Mally (based on Hartley’s second wife Sophia Ann).  Sammywell’s comic misadventures, like his creator’s, took him to America, London, Blackpool, Paris and the Lakes.

The Clock Almanack is probably Hartley’s best known work.  He edited it from 186x with gaps for travel until his death in 1915, though the title continued to be published until the 1950s.  In tiny type on poor quality paper, produced in great numbers (80,000 sold per year at its peak), this title was part of a unique cultural phenomenon: the explosion of dialect almanacs aimed at the vast new reading public among the working people of the West Riding.

John Hartley

Here’s a little taste of John Hartley’s style, from Mally’s Kursmiss Party:

Mally has laid on a magnificent spread for her Christmas party guests:

“Ther wor bowls full o’potted mait, an’ sandwiches, an’ curran cakes, an’ funeral bisket, presarves, an’ aw dooan’t knaw what else, but ther wor enough to puzzle onny body which to start on fust.  Ov cooarse, ther wor a sup o’ gooid teah, flavoured wi’ a drop o’ Jamaka creeam (It wodn’t do to leave th’creeam aght) …”

The guests enjoy the feast so much “aw think they must ha’ been savin thersen for a wick an’ come as hollow as a lot o’ drums”.   Unfortunately Sammy gets the Jamaica cream rum for the women’s cups of tea mixed up with Tincture of rhubarb, with, needless to say, unpleasant consequences for all concerned.

It’s a very simple story, but it’s transformed by Hartley’s sheer enthusiasm for the wonderful food, his lively portrayal of the guests’ greed, the vivid language, plenty of sharp dialogue, plus a surreal cake, shaped like Solomon’s temple with Solomon himself standing in front.  The guests eat the whole temple except “th’ front door step.  Then they grummeled because ther worn’t a cellar kitchen”.  Then they eat poor Solomon, “until ther wor nowt left but th’ hams”.

Interested in Yorkshire dialect?  Special Collections is rich in Yorkshire dialect works: the Waddington-Feather book collection includes copies of the Almanack and several other works by John Hartley, and there is also plenty in the Mitchell, Priestley and Riley book collections.   Several works by Hartley are online at Project Gutenberg.

(With thanks to John Waddington-Feather’s The Best of John Hartley, in which the above story is handily reprinted, and Notes on the West Riding Dialect Almanacs by B.T. Dyson in Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society 1975).

Front cover of The Scope and Dilemmas of Peace Studies, lecture by Adam Curle

This little book, The Scope and Dilemmas of Peace Studies, reproduces the inaugural lecture given in 1974 by Professor Adam Curle, the first Professor of Peace Studies at Bradford University.  We already saw how Peace Studies at Bradford began thanks to the efforts of a group of Quakers.  Himself a Quaker, Adam Curle came to Bradford as a distinguished academic with a long career of mediation and reconciliation in conflict zones.

The lecture offers an invaluable structured introduction to the ideas underlying the growing discipline of peace studies and to Professor Curle’s own intellectual journey.

Adam Curle in 1973

Born in 1916, he studied anthropology at Oxford then served in the British Army during the Second World War.  He worked at the Tavistock Institute, followed by appointments as Lecturer in Social Psychology at Oxford, Chair in Education and Psychology at Exeter University, consultant on education policy in Pakistan, and Professor of Education at the University of Ghana. He set up the Harvard Center for Studies in Education and Development in 1962.

Professor Curle explained in the lecture how during his time “directly involved in mediation efforts in wars in Africa and Asia”, he realised that negotiation alone was not enough.  The negotiator might “ease a particular situation, but the circumstances, the rivalries, the oppression, the scarcity of resources – which had given rise to it – remained”.   He also observed that injustice and inequality even in the absence of actual war could not be seen as peaceful conditions given their effects on people’s lives.

From which he concluded that peace studies should be about more than “preventing or terminating wars” and should not promote social arrangements which led to injustice.  He believed that those working in the discipline should identify and analyse relationships between people, groups or nations and then “use this information in order to devise means of changing unpeaceful into peaceful relationships”.  This link between theory and practice ties the subject into the University’s distinctive mission and has continued ever since.

Adam Curle with Peace Studies group, 1976

Adam Curle retired from Bradford in 1978 but continued to work as a peace-maker.   He died in 2006.  Special Collections at the University holds his archive, containing published and unpublished writings, and a collection of the many books he wrote on peace-making and peace education.  Find out more about his life and the significance of his work in the Guardian obituary by his colleague and friend Tom Woodhouse.

University of Bradford 40th birthday cake, October 2006.

2006 was the University of Bradford’s 40th birthday, celebrated at events over the summer and autumn, notably a party in Richmond Atrium in October and the Big Bradford Weekend in June.  Special Collections staff shared the wealth of history in the University Archive, creating exhibitions such as Give Invention Light, featured below.  I was particularly reminded of the 40th because we are now planning some really special things for the 50th anniversary: in 2016!

University of Bradford 40th birthday balloons, Atrium, October 2006

These photographs also illustrate something people don’t realise about archives.    Archives are not just books and documents made of paper or parchment.  Communication is now dominated by digital: to be useful in the future, archive collecting needs to reflect this.  Digital objects may be new versions of existing physical objects, as are most of the other images in this exhibition.  They may come to us on CDs, DVDs, memory sticks, floppy disks (remember those?), hard drives etc etc.   Many now, like the photographs in this story, are “born-digital” and stay that way.  And think of how much now happens in “the cloud”: on email, facebook, twitter and other social media, not to mention this blog.

Give Invention Light, exhibition of University history shown in Atrium October 2006

While digital objects are much easier to copy and share and much lighter on physical space, there are many challenges in looking after them properly.  Above all, decisions need to be taken earlier in their lives: to name them and store them in ways that make them useful in the future.  Paper materials can usually sit happily for 20 years or more before making their way to an archive: unless very unlucky with poor conditions, they will still be readable.  20-year old digital files finding their way to an archive for the first time will be much more challenging!  These images are only six years old, but are only useful now because we took action to keep them as soon as they were taken.

Alumni and friends enjoying show at Big Bradford Weekend, June 2006

I wonder how we will record the 50th anniversary?  Or the 100th?

Find out more about digital archives and get good advice from this blog post by our colleagues at West Yorkshire Archives Service: Computer discs aren’t archives are they?   Those who want something a little more technical, check out the JISC beginners’ guide to digital preservation or Don’t Panic! from the West Yorkshire Archives Service.

Main Building of Bradford Institute of Technology under construction, February 1962 (archive ref UNI B01)

BIT was created in 1956 as a College of Advanced Technology, hiving off higher education from the College; in 1966 the Royal Charter made it a University. BIT’s short life was dominated by the need to find space for expansion: growing numbers of staff and students and better facilities for research and teaching at this higher level.  The Main Building was part of the solution.  Eventually the Institute and the local council decided to expand the campus into the surrounding back streets, rather than move to a greenfield site as had been suggested.

Empty houses awaiting demolition, Main Building of Bradford Institute of Technology in background, February 1963 (archive ref UNI B02)

As we see here, this required the demolition of many houses, with painful impact on the many people who had to move.

Main Building completed, September 1964 (archive ref UNI B10)

Main Building took four years to complete, beginning in May 1960, and was formally opened by Prime Minister and first Chancellor of the University Harold Wilson in June 1965.  Now known as Richmond Building, it has housed University administration, many academic departments and student facilities, and is probably the most visible and recognisable University building even today.

Chancellor Harold Wilson at the microphone during opening of Main Building, June 1965 (archive ref UNI PHW4)

(The title is taken from a quotation in Robert McKinlay’s The University of Bradford: origins and development).

Published by Facet in 2011, the Handbook was written to help librarians, archivists and others working with collections like our Objects.  it covers everything from keeping them safe to raising funds for them.  More info on the Handbook’s own website.

Burnt document from the Hannam Committee of 100 Archive (Cwl HC)

As this image I hope shows, the paper of which this document is made is extremely thin and poor quality, as well as being badly burnt around the edges.  Many of the documents in this collection, a small archive of the Committee of 100 given to the Commonweal Collection by Derry Hannam, are in a similar condition.  This makes the documents difficult to handle without causing further damage; some files are closed for this reason.

The Committee of 100, founded on the initiative of Ralph Schoenman and Bertrand Russell in October 1960, called for a mass movement of civil disobedience against British government policy on nuclear weapons.  It can be seen as a successor to the Direct Action Committee, which applied nonviolent direct action techniques to this issue though never on such a scale.  The notes on this paper describe preparations for a court case involving leading members:  Pat Pottle, Bruce Reid, Michael Ashburner, Andrew Murray, Des Lock and Len Smith were charged with obstruction and incitement to others to take part in a demonstration.

Detail of a Committee of 100 promotional leaflet (Cwl AS3)

This archive was catalogued as part of the Paxcat Project which used a grant from the National Cataloguing Grants Scheme to bring our peace campaign archives to life.  Project Archivist Helen Roberts blogged about the burnt documents, showing how the project had to take account of the physical nature of the objects concerned.  When Helen wrote her piece, we did not know the story of the fire damage.  To our delight, both Derry Hannam and Michael Ashburner added comments to the blog, so we learned the story for the first time and it is recorded for the future.  The original blog and the comments can be found on the PaxCat Project site.  Find out more about the Hannam Archive, the Committee and related collections on the Archives Hub entry, also written by Helen.

(Thanks to the Scheme, the commenters, and Helen herself, whose writings I have re-used heavily in this post).

Cover of Journey Down a Rainbow

The couple wanted to explore the impact of technology on society.  A visit to the South-West United States would allow them to contrast the people of the pueblos in New Mexico, who still preserved “much of their ancient culture … living more or less as they always did” , with Texans, “the latest men”, living in the most technologically advanced society which represented “a pattern to which all our urban Western civilisation is beginning to conform”.

The Priestleys travelled together to Kansas City, then went their separate ways, he to Dallas, she to Alberquerque.  Jacquetta explored the remaining pueblo society of New Mexico, Priestley to the booming Texas of Cold War, oil, and mass markets.   The book reproduces their letters, with chapters alternating between their experiences.

Jacquetta had the better time: her strong visual sense delighted in pottery and weaving, her love of the deep past responded to the power of the cave sites and ritual dancing.  J.B. did not find his trip as congenial.  However, it did draw out some of his most significant writing of the 1950s, as he described what he called Admass i.e. consumer society: materialism driven by mass communications, advertising and salesmanship, at its most obvious in the places he visited.  Jacquetta too contrasted the frenzy of unnecessary shopping in New York with the moving experience in a museum of seeing beautiful woven patterns created from dog hairs by a prehistoric woman, “living as humbly as a badger”.

The Priestleys during the 1950s (archive ref: HAW 18/5/17)

The couple were joyfully reunited in Santa Fe, where they shared their adventures: “We talked and talked, had a drink or two and talked, prepared dinner and talked, ate the dinner and talked.  Afterwards we went out to feel the icy breath of night on our cheeks, to see the huge glitter of stars …”   Journey remains one of their most interesting works, full of thought-provoking ideas even more relevant to 21st century societies,  and is a perfect introduction to each of them as writers.

Detail of front cover of Hullo Villars!

The Revue was first held in 1914 in imitation of fashionable ragtime reviews, and revived 1920-1931.   The writer Maurice B. Reckitt played a key role, writing lyrics and performing on the piano; his brother Geoffrey was the main singer.  Each souvenir includes an introduction or retrospect by Maurice Reckitt, with lots of detail about the personalities involved, plus the programmes and most of the lyrics from each revue.

Detail of front cover of Encore Villars!

The lyrics usually praise Villars, the fun of ski-ing, skating and other winter sports, and the pretty girls to be met there, parodying popular songs and alluding to local ski runs and St Bernard dogs.   There are plenty of bad puns and dubious rhymes: the combination of banana (a handy ski snack) and local area Taveyannaz (Taveyanne) appears several times.  The downsides of the holidays – embarrassing falls, flu (best treated with gin and tonic), and problems with trains – also feature.   Although it would be wonderful to have photographs too, the souvenirs do offer a lovely insight into the ski-ing life of the past.

Reckitt's bookplate, from his copy of Encore Villars!

The trio of Villars souvenirs came to us with the Peart-Binns Christian Socialist Archive: a collection of research material gathered by Yorkshire writer, John Peart-Binns, for his book Maurice B. Reckitt: a life.  Two include Reckitt’s own bookplate, the third is inscribed (illegibly!) by him.   Reckitt is best known for his ideas and writing about the relationship between Church and Society.   It is pleasant to record also that, alongside his love of revues, Reckitt was enthusiastic about ballroom dancing and above all croquet.  His Archive is held by University of Sussex Special Collections.

The first happened in 1903: an annual social evening, featuring musical selections, dancing and sleight of hand tricks plus, tantalisingly, “&c &c”.  This single sheet has survived because it was bound with the student magazine The Collegian.

The other is  an Entertainment of Convalescent Soldiers in 1916.  We have the complete programme, so we can reconstruct the day: see the middle pages and the back cover on our flickr stream.

The Entertainment combined promotion of the cutting edge technological facilities at the College and jolly treats.  There were visits to the newish departments we saw earlier on and demonstrations of the production and properties of “liquid air” i.e. air which has been cooled until it is liquid.  The demos showed the “effect of great cold on common objects: flowers, beefsteak, rubber, whisky, grapes, egg, mercury and metals”.  There was also a humourist, a ventriloquist, a cinematograph, and plenty of music.

We’ll be looking at more recent student activities in several of next year’s Objects, so please do come back and see us then.  We would like to wish all our readers a very Merry Christmas and a fantastic 2012!