English local records: problems and proposals, 1880–1920

Abstract

The preservation of local records, especially municipal and local ecclesiastical records, became a subject of concern within the historical and antiquarian communities in the later part of the nineteenth century. Numerous suggestions and recommendations, both informal and official, were made about how to address problems associated with the preservation, management and use of these records. Many of the concerns, and the solutions put forward, will be remarkably familiar to current practitioners. Ideas about legislation for local records, national standards and central oversight of repositories, and appropriate training for archivists continue to be discussed, while information security scandals seem the only sure way of arousing general concern about good record-keeping. What are now often regarded as pioneering suggestions for joint services and partnership working were being made in the 1890s, while other ideas – notably regional centres for archives – remain as controversial now as they were when first aired over a century ago. The model of archival provision in the English counties, which emerged after World War II, was not necessarily along the lines proposed or predicted by the well-informed ‘archival stakeholders’ of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Keywords:

• archives
• history
• local records

Notes

^4. Cox, “Replies.” For Cox's life and work, see Hurren, “A Radical Historian's Pursuit of Rural History.”

^1. Cantwell, The Public Record Office, 1838–1958, 33.

^2. Ralph and Hull, “The Development of Local Archive Service in England,” 57. For the Historical Manuscripts Commission, see Ellis, “The Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts.”

^3. Argent, “A Society for the Publication of Church Registers”; McLean, Lodowick, Bower, ‘Hermentrude’, ‘H.W.’, and ‘Vigorn’; “Replies” to “A Society for the Publication of Church Registers”; Cox ‘Argent’, Rylands, Rogers, ‘H.W.’, and ‘T.W.R.’; “Replies”; Jessop, ‘A.W.’, and ‘Vigilians’; “Replies”; Tims and Hamst, “Replies”; and Addy, Robinson, Lodowick and Cottell, “Replies.”

^5. The oldest such English society, the Surtees Society (for Durham and Northumberland), was established in 1834. For a full list of British record societies and the dates of their first publications, see Royal Historical Society, “Guide to Record Societies and Their Publications.”

^6. Turner, Selections from the Records of the City of Oxford; Picton, City of Liverpool: Selections from the Municipal Archives; King and Watts, The Municipal Records of Bath, 1189–1604; and Ferguson and Nanson, Some Municipal Records of the City of Carlisle.

^7. Hearnshaw, Municipal Records, 33.

^8. There is an extensive literature dealing with this phenomenon: see, e.g., Lambert, “The Professionalisation of History in Britain”; Goldstein, “The Organizational Development of the British Historical Profession, 1884–1921”; Heyck, The Transformation of Intellectual Life in Victorian England; Jann, The Art and Science of Victorian History; Kadish, Historians, Economists, and Economic History. For a comprehensive bibliography (to 1994), see Soffer, Discipline and Power, 1870–1930.

^9. Great Britain, Municipal Corporations Act 1882, s.17. It was later claimed that the provision had the side effect of inhibiting the collection of borough records by public libraries where these were, sometimes, otherwise actively pursuing the collection of ‘local records’. See Parry, “The Functions and Possibilities of a Library and Museum Regarding the Collection of Local MSS. and Seals,” 469.

^10. Quoted in Doubleday, “Local Records and the Public Libraries with Special Reference to the Schedules Issued by the Local Records Committee,” 133.

^11. Great Britain, Local Government Act 1888, s.83.

^12. Cantwell, Public Record Office, 328.

^13. Spufford, “The Index Library,” 123.

^14. Phillimore, “Provincial Records” (The Times, October 10, 1888, 4). He dismissed the idea of centralization of records. He returned to the same theme 25 years later (in the context of the still-continuing discussion on the neglect of parish records); there, on the custody of local records generally, he reiterated his earlier views on the need for ‘district record offices’ (Phillimore, “Parish Registers: Practical Suggestions”, The Times, October 2, 1912, 7).

^15. Piecemeal legislation added, potentially, to the PRO's responsibilities. Thus, for example, the 1894 Copyhold Act provided for certain manorial records to be placed in the custody of the Board of Agriculture or the Master of the Rolls after enfranchisement.

^16. This is not to say that the PRO did not offer help where needed: e.g., in 1892, its Superintendent of Workmen A.T. Watson, a skilled repairer, was despatched to York to advise the Corporation following flood damage to records (Cantwell, Public Record Office, 326).

^17. Cantwell, Public Record Office, 328–329, describes the bills of 1891 and 1899. In 1894, Phillimore wrote to The Times with a synopsis of a further draft bill (Phillimore, “Parish Registers”, The Times, January 30, 1894, 14).

^18. York Powell, “École des Chartes,” 37.

^19. “Extraordinary Charge of Fraud” (The Times, September 24, 1898, 11).

^20. Typified as, e.g., “An Antiquarian Romance” (Daily News, September 30, 1898, 24).

^21. Davies was sentenced to three years penal servitude because the judge “could not pass over those forgeries of historic and public documents and the destruction of wills and the forgeries of others”: “Central Criminal Court” (The Times, November 24, 1898, 3).

^23. “The Sentence Passed on Davies” (The Times, November 25, 1898, 7).

^22. Phillimore, “The Shipway Case” (The Times, November 24, 1898, 6).

^24. Nevill, “The Custody of Local Records.” The other volunteers for the delegation were Viscount Dillon, President of the Congress and the Society of Antiquaries; Sir Henry Howorth, MP; Stanley Leighton, MP; Llewellyn Atherley-Jones, MP; G.L. Gomme, FSA; E.A. Fry, FSA and Ralph Nevill, FSA.

^25. Comprising Maxwell Lyte, Mandell Creighton (replaced, after his death, by the Bishop of Winchester), James Bryce, Sir F. Mowatt (Permanent Secretary to the Treasury), Sir C.P. Ilbert (Parliamentary Counsel), Mr S.E. Spring Rice (Principal Clerk, Treasury).

^26. The Times, December 11, 1899, 11: ‘It may be taken for granted …’ [leader]: ‘many of our local and parochial histories are very inadequately written by writers who are often full of zeal… but are ill-fitted for the study of the distant past, in knowing neither what to look for nor where to look for it … To extract history from archives is quite a modern idea, and it is only the trained student who can do it.’

^29. Axon, “Public Records and Public Libraries.”

^30. Axon, “Public Records and Public Libraries,” 146. For the same arguments earlier in the decade, see, e.g., Plomer, “Local Records and Free Public Libraries.”

^27. Hollaender, “Local Authority Archives of Great Britain. X11. Guildhall Library,” 313–314.

^28. Doubleday, “Local Records,” 140.

^31. Axon, “Public Records and Public Libraries.” 146–7.

^33. “It may be taken for granted,” [leader] (The Times, December 11, 1899, 11).

^32. Returns are given in full in Appendices 3 and 4.

^34. Phillimore, [letter] (The Times, July 25, 1900, 15).

^39. Cox, History of a Parish, 118.

^35. Summarized in Shepherd, 28–30.

^36. Committee on Local Records, 1902, Appendices [Cd. 1333], 233.

^37. Committee on Local Records, Appendices, 146.

^38. Committee on Local Records, Appendices, 150.

^40. [The Library Association's 1900 annual meeting] (The Times, September 28, 1900, 2).

^41. Committee on Local Records, Report, 46. On the political motivation for the recommendations: ‘We are on the horns of a dilemma; economy dictates that record offices should be few; local sentiment and the divergent interests of present custodians may desire them to be many. If the latter are to prevail economy must be sacrificed’, Report, 43.

^42. Committee on Local Records, Report, Recommendations, 42–49.

^43. Bill dated 18 March 1903. Introduced by ‘Mr. Bull; supported by Mr. Burns, Sir Thomas Esmonde, Mr. Atherley-Jones, and Sir Albert Rollit’.

^44. See Susan Davies and Julie Mathias, in this issue.

^45. Royal Commission on Public Records, Third Report, Part 1, 1–2.

^46. Royal Commission on Public Records,16, 21.

^47. Royal Commission on Public Records, 2.

^48. Royal Commission on Public Records, 43.

^49. Royal Commission on Public Records, 30.

^50. York Powell, “École des Chartes,” 34–37. Maxwell Lyte, less convincingly, spoke (1893) of the need for an École des Chartes ‘where a course of systematic instruction would be given in the art of deciphering ancient manuscripts and other kindred subjects’. Lyte, [Presidential Address], 363.

^51. For example, Hall, “History and the Science of Archives,” 18: ‘the continental and the English archive systems have scarcely a single condition or a single feature in common, and we are tempted to wonder if this rudimentary fact is generally known. We have no Ministry of Public Instruction, no official body of professors or doctors of history, and no departmental archives providing the chief employment of archivists’.

^52. The formal title of the School varied, but by 1913 it was fixed as the School of Local History and Records.

^53. Information taken from Vice Chancellor's and Council Reports, University of Liverpool, 1903–1913 and an undated pamphlet, Pioneer of British Universities: Work of the Liverpool School of Records: Training Ground for History Students: Municipality and University Co-operate.

^54. Three of the first research appointments in Liverpool's School of Records were female, for example: Miss Platt, Miss Amy Harrison, Miss E.K. McConnel (Vice Chancellor's Reports, 1902 and 1903).

^55. Royal Commission on Public Records, First Report, Part 3, 150. Paley Baildon, FSA, had, inter alia, edited 13 volumes for the Selden and other societies by this date.

^56. Circular letter, copy in TNA PRO 44/3.

^57. TNA PRO 44/3, Hall to Ruth Young, AWCS, 17 February 1915.

^58. “News in Brief” (The Times October 12, 1915, 5). Hall had delivered a public lecture on the topic at the LSE in Oct 1915.

^59. TNA PRO 9/14, Hubert Hall to Treasury, July 1915. An example itinerary of the Commissioners' visits from 27 May to 4 June is at Royal Commission on Public Records, Third Report (1919), Part 2, 45.

^60. Hall, British Archives, 46.

^61. J. Shotwell, “Editor's Preface” in Hall, British Archives, ix.

^62. For the results of the local war records survey to January 1922, see Wretts-Smith, “Local War Records,” 247–258.

^63. Hall, Repertory, vii, 247–258.

^64. Hearnshaw, Municipal Records, 34.

^65. Fowler, The Care of County Muniments, 2–3.

^66. Hall, British Archives, 46; he was probably writing around 1922.

^67. Shepherd, Archives and Archivists, 31.

^68. Fowler, 9 [1927].

^69. See Shepherd, Archives and Archivists, 106–111. Rasmussen, “Endangered Records and the Beginnings of Professionalism,” has recently argued that the rapid post-World War II growth was primarily reactive, a response to the physical threats to archives (salvage drives, destruction and sales abroad).

^70. HM Government, Archives for the 21st Century, Nov. 2009; TNA and MLAC, Archives for the 21st Century in Action, March 2010.

^71. York Powell, “École des Chartes and English Records,” 37.

^72. Action Plan, 4; HM Government, Archives for the 21st Century, 2009, recommendations, 15.

^73. “The Sentence Passed on Davies,” [leader] (The Times, November 25, 1898, 7).