Derek Charman (1922–2016)

Derek Charman, my husband, sometime business partner and long-term professional colleague, died on 13 January 2016. He was 93 and had been suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. In a 60-year career spanning local government, overseas advisory attachments, a major nationalized industry and his own successful consulting practice, Derek was one of the most influential figures in the recordkeeping profession in the second half of the twentieth century. His impact on the development of UK records management, in particular, was immense, demonstrating what could be achieved by applying intelligence, drive and determination to the task.¹

Derek belonged to the second generation of county archivists who, in the period immediately after the Second World War, built on the work of their ‘gifted amateur’ predecessors, developing the main elements to be found in modern pre-computerization record offices. He carried the same organizational energy into his overseas advisory work and later into the corporate sector.

Derek was born on 29 May 1922 at the Barclays Bank House at Hayes in Middlesex, where his father was the bank sub-manager. His mother had also worked for the bank as a manager’s secretary. He was educated at St. Paul’s School, London, to which he won a Foundation Scholarship in 1935. In 1941, he went up to Pembroke College, Oxford on another scholarship to take a ‘War Degree’ in Politics, Philosophy and History. He left in 1942 to join the army and was commissioned in the Royal Armoured Corps as a 2nd Lieutenant. Subsequently, while serving with the East Yorks Yeomanry, he took part in the Normandy landings in June 1944. He ended his military career in occupied Germany as Education Officer in the 47th Royal Dragoon Guards.

After his discharge, Derek returned to Pembroke College in 1946 to read History and was stimulated, he said, by the post-war mix of ex-servicemen and freshmen straight from school. He helped to form the Camden History Society, named after William Camden, the Elizabethan historian, played squash and rugby but disappointingly, given his developing passion for the game, failed to achieve a half Blue in golf.

After graduating in 1948, hoping for an academic career, he worked for a year as a temporary tutor for new undergraduates at Leicester University College. He continued his research, begun at Oxford, into wealth and trade in Leicester in the early sixteenth century, teaching himself palaeography and diplomatic from text books in Leicester Reference Library. The resulting paper was published in the Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological Society in 1949.²

He applied, unsuccessfully, for an assistant lectureship at Leicester. Rejecting both school mastering and banking as careers, it was suggested that he might become an archivist. He spent two weeks working in Leicestershire County Record Office under Dr Charles Thompson, the then County Archivist. At Thompson’s suggestion he applied for a post of assistant archivist at Middlesex Record Office, joining the staff in autumn 1949. During his short time there Derek received a professional baptism by fire, sorting and listing the voluminous, dusty and unsorted records of the Old Bailey, recently transferred to the office.

After only a year at Middlesex, he applied for the post of Archivist for Ipswich and East Suffolk. It was a bold move given his lack of experience but he was offered the job. Because of his youth and inexperience, he was appointed on probation and placed under the tutelage of his predecessor, the redoubtable Lilian J Redstone. He took up his post in October 1950 and was to remain as County Archivist until March 1970.³ The situation at Ipswich was not easy: his two assistant archivists had both completed one of the newly-established archive courses and were unhappy that he had no such qualifications and very little compensatory experience.

The Ipswich Borough and East Suffolk County councils had created a joint records service in 1947. As Miss Redstone’s successor, Derek worked with the two bodies and with the local Diocese to develop and formalize joint arrangements and policies, resulting in a rapid increase in holdings. Records were stored in a number of locations and storage space was short. Scattered facilities made production time-consuming and inefficient and security difficult to ensure. As always, Derek’s approach was positive and outgoing. The Record Office was in an early stage of development and he was anxious to realize its potential. To raise its profile, he spent a good deal of time out of the office promoting the service and arranged exhibitions in various places, including the County Show.

He encouraged better management of records in council departments, including those languishing in their basements. He was anxious to prevent uncontrolled destruction by junior clerks. By 1967, he had appointed a senior assistant archivist to develop the records management service and subsequently obtained funding for a records assistant to support a similar service for departments housed in the new Ipswich Borough Civic Centre. Earlier, in March 1956, he set up a repair section and, afterwards, a successful photographic section.

He took a characteristically energetic approach to ecclesiastical parish records. By August 1952, he had negotiated their centralization at County Hall, the Ipswich Borough Library and the Bury St. Edmunds and West Suffolk Record Office. The Ipswich and East Suffolk Record Office was designated as a Diocesan Record Office. Similarly, in 1956, a new temporary assistant archivist began a survey of the records of civil parishes in line with the requirements of the Local Government Act of 1933. The resulting report (1963) noted that 332 ecclesiastical parishes and 277 civil parishes had been surveyed.⁴ Subsequently, 185 parishes deposited collections. The service adopted a policy of quinquennial surveys and a second cycle of parish visits began in 1968.

He sought out and arranged the deposit of a number of important estate and family collections. A high point of his career, he said, was appearing in 1968 before Lord Denning, then Master of the Rolls, as an expert witness on the disposal of records as part of the sale of the lordships of the manors of Mutford and Lothingland. He reported to the County Records Committee that ‘agreement was reached that the collection of records … should not be broken up … and will remain in the custody of the records office.’

Derek played an important part in the founding of the Suffolk Records Society (1957), and was its first secretary. He was also a council member of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and was on the Executive Committee of the Suffolk Local History Council, formed in 1953, editing ‘The Suffolk Review’, its quarterly bulletin. He also was involved in the early development of The Museum of East Anglian Life, which opened at Stowmarket in 1967.

Like other county archivists at the time, Derek was concerned with the possible reorganization of local government. His memorandum, as part of the Council’s submission to the Royal Commission on Local Government, expressed concern at the possible impact of reorganization on archives and records management.⁵ He argued for strong regional government supported by regional archives services, reducing the total number of local repositories to about 25. The existing archive courses should be modified to incorporate records management.

He left local government to join British Steel in 1970 before changes, which had a wide-ranging but not always beneficial impact on local archive services, were implemented. He left behind a thriving organization. His successor commented that ‘development under the former Archivist, Mr. Derek Charman has been impressive’, underlining ‘the value of his work in the creation and shaping of the record office during his twenty years of service to the joint authorities.’⁶

During his time in Suffolk, Derek was twice seconded to work in Africa. The second visit was to prove particularly influential. In December 1954 he went to Nigeria to advise and assist Dr K. O. Diké, head of the History Department at Ibadan University, on developing the newly-established Public Record Office. Diké, concerned that Derek should understand the country, arranged for him to visit key places. It proved a helpful, if occasionally uncomfortable, introduction to a completely new world. As well as more direct hazards in archives stores, there was a problem of ‘brown decay’ attacking the records. With the help of Dr Langwell of the British Museum, Derek identified the cause as a particular type of mycelium, which local scientists were then able to treat. Derek returned to Suffolk in August 1955, having secured generous staffing levels for the new service.

Derek returned to Africa in 1963, at the time of Kenya’s independence, hoping to set up the new Kenyan National Archives. Taking his family with him, he eventually spent 18 months there. The set-up in Kenya was very different from Nigeria. An ‘archive’ organization had been created in 1956 in the basement of the central government offices in Nairobi, but it operated only as a ‘limbo’ store. There was a misplaced concern over the possible fate of the colonial records under the new regime. The incoming government, however, appreciated the need to know about its history. The efforts of some former Kenyan colonial civil servants and the number of researchers interested in Kenyan history helped to ensure the survival of many records and underlined the need for a national archive.

Derek’s appointment was initially intended to be a rescue operation. He requested a modest staff of 13, including repairers, and steel shelving to replace the existing wooden shelves in order to counter the potential ravages of termites, in particular. But the Kenya Government was unwilling to provide resources for a more sophisticated archives organization than already existed.⁷

Against this background, Derek began to lay the foundations of the National Archives. He visited the various regional and district offices to look at the records held there. He trained those staff he was allowed to recruit to carry on the work he had begun. The urgently-needed repair section did not arrive until the 1980s, but at least he introduced a modified form of records processing, reflecting the then Rhodesian practice. When he returned to England, he left behind an embryonic archives and records management set-up and, a particular achievement, legal instruments underpinning the National Archives: Archives Circular No. 2 of 12 January 1965, preventing unauthorized destruction of public records, and the Public Archives Act, 1965. After his return to England he continued to support the Kenyan Archives by helping to train his Kenyan successor, Nathan Fedha, arranging and supervising his six-month course of study in the UK later in 1965.

His time in Kenya proved a lasting influence on his ideas about records management. He was most anxious to learn more about the National Archives of Rhodesia, where he knew significant developments in records management were taking place. He visited the National Archivist of Zambia, a former UK colleague, who used the same system. Here was, he saw, a universally applicable system for managing all types of records. Its roots lay in the system developed by Emmett Leahy for the US Department of the Navy to handle the massive increase of paperwork during the Second World War. It combined high density, modular storage, with comprehensive records retention schedules, and relied on creating departments to prepare records for transfer. The Rhodesian variant of the system arrived in the UK by way of those who had worked in the National Archives of Rhodesia and its predecessors, such as Len McDonald at Pilkington Brothers and Tony Cole at ICI, and through those, such as Derek and Michael Cook, who had worked in Africa and who recognized its merits.

By 1970 Derek was ready for, and needed, a change. He applied, reluctantly, (he thought the scope was too limited) for the newly-established post of Archivist to the British Steel Corporation (BSC). He was successful, taking up the post in April 1970. During his interview, he had gone some way to persuade the Secretary of the Corporation, who was to be his boss, to buy into his vision of an integrated archives and records management system. Derek had both functional and line responsibility for records and archives management, and a direct Corporation-wide remit that made aiming for a fully integrated service possible.

Cost savings and efficiency were at the heart of his argument for the service. He issued BSC’s first records retention schedule, covering common financial, sales and personnel records. The first Regional Records Centre at Irthlingborough, Northamptonshire, serving Head Office and the East Midlands, opened in 1972. Other centres followed over the years. Regional Archivists, responsible for works and office contacts and service development, led each centre, with Records Officers responsible to them for managing centre operations. Records arrived, listed and boxed and centre staff had only to check the quality of the work before processing and shelving the consignment. Derek had apparently created a ‘brave new world’ at BSC. This encouraged some bright and influential professionals to join him, most notably Carl Newton, then County Archivist of East Sussex (1974), and Peter Emmerson from the National Archives of Rhodesia (1976). His relationship with these talented and independent minded colleagues was not always a smooth one and, inevitably, tensions arose between ‘head office’ and the ‘sharp end.’

Derek was also concerned with the industrial archaeology of steelmaking. His attempts to establish a steel museum at Glengarnock in Ayrshire and in South Wales foundered on local opposition. However, he arranged the making of a number of films about various aspects of steelmaking, and the transfer of items of historic plant to museums and conservation bodies. In Scotland, he supported a survey of historic plant in works and chaired the multidisciplinary Glengarnock Open Hearth project, editing the final published report.

The dream was not to last. By the late 1970s, the full impact of BSC’s massive rationalization programme became clear. When I joined the Corporation in 1972, it employed approximately 250,000 people. When I left in 1982, it had shrunk to about 50,000. Accelerating works and office closures, and the need to handle their surviving records, increased the daily pressure on Records Services. Inevitably Records Services could not escape this contraction. Derek, an innovator, and developer by nature, found the closures, cut-backs and compromises increasingly difficult to handle. He left BSC in December 1980 to set up as a consultant. It was, as the first UK consultancy specializing in archives and records management, a leap into the unknown. His BSC post disappeared and Records Services was eventually reduced, reorganized and decentralized, along with other Head Office functions, in 1982.

His new consulting firm began trading in January 1981, initially from his home in Ipswich. Later that year, he moved to Leicester where he still had family connections. I joined the practice in January 1983, having been made redundant by BSC. He had obtained a contract to select, list and prepare the archives of the General Nursing Council, which was being wound up, for transfer to the Public Record Office. The project lasted a year, and was extended to include some of the Central Midwifery Council archives. Subsequent early contracts related largely to the oil industry, working on standards and retention schedules and preparing and delivering training courses. We eventually moved our office to Northamptonshire in 1988. Other clients included the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority, the Royal College of Physicians, the Grosvenor Estate and the Performing Rights Society. Derek delivered records management courses in Kenya, as well as working in Cyprus and in Libya.

Derek had joined the Society of Local Archivists during his time at Middlesex. Foreshadowing his lifelong interest in records management, he wrote a perceptive article ‘The Archivist and Modern Local Government Records’ in 1954.⁸ He urged investigation of the records produced by local authorities to decide what should be retained. More importantly, the archivist should be involved in the efficient and uniform creation of records, with long-term benefits to the resultant archives. Archivists must convince their authorities to trust them with their modern records.

Otherwise Derek was little involved with the Society of Archivists. However, at the 1961 AGM, addressing the hot topics of salary, grading and status of local government archivists, he urged the Council to create a proper ‘brand image’ for archivists and their work to improve their professional status and to remove some of the taint of ‘quaintness.’⁹ At that meeting, he was elected as one of the two Society representatives on NALGO’s Joint Consultative Committee. This was a continuing concern throughout his career. Salaries in the profession were low. Many of the pioneering archivists had been women, often of independent means, for whom pay was secondary. Derek’s aim was parity with other professionals such as surveyors. This put him at odds with his fellow Society representative who, as an influential librarian working in archives, was conscious of the impact of any grading change on even less well-paid librarians. Derek remained involved with NALGO until the 1966 AGM.

At the same 1961 AGM he stood, unsuccessfully, for election to the Council. However, he successfully proposed the creation of a new Eastern Region of the Society, to be set up from 1 January 1962, as the existing South East Region had become impractically large. He became the Eastern Region’s representative on the Society’s Council, retaining this position until he moved to British Steel in 1970.

Although he had been successful as a traditional archivist, records management provided Derek’s most lasting professional contribution. His advocacy of integrated archives and records management systems coincided with a period of great change in the profession. It was an idea whose time had come. Local government recognized the need for records management early. But each authority tended to develop an individual approach, though it was generally recognized that the ‘Grigg system’ used in central government was not suitable for local government.

The 1968 Cambridge Symposium, to which Derek contributed, was a landmark signalling change, though not as immediately effective as he would have liked. Records management was only just entering the archive courses – Michael Cook began teaching at Liverpool in 1968 – and it needed time to spread to the professional grass roots. Derek was fortunate in arriving at BSC with a clean sheet while BSC was still in a very positive phase, and being able to put the new techniques into practice on a large scale.¹⁰ He also began work on forming a records management group in the Society of Archivists, setting up meetings (and, of course, lunches) at BSC for sympathetic people including Michael Cook (University of Liverpool), Len McDonald (Pilkingtons) and Henry Gillett (BP and then Bank of England).

The RMG was formed in 1976 with Derek as Chairman, a position he held until 1981. The new group was dynamic and successful (and a bit brash) and did not always sit happily in the Society. It organized a series of successful conferences throughout the country, publishing printed proceedings and contributing financially to the Society. Relations between the Group and the Council remained strained. Friction arose, for example, because the RMG’s series of Occasional Publications did not match the style of the Society’s more academic productions.

Derek remained convinced of the need to integrate archives and records management. He set out his views on the implications for archivists in what was to become his most acclaimed and widely published article. It appeared first in ARMA Quarterly in January 1980, and won him ARMA’s Brit Literary Award.¹¹

He was a prime mover in developing the Records Management Society of Great Britain (now the IRMS). The RMG had successfully engaged the profession in records management but many people in the field, who might benefit from professional training and fellowship, did not qualify for Society membership. ARMA had identified this gap in the market and proposed to set up an overseas chapter in the UK in March 1982. In response, Derek and others proposed establishing a British records management association and a constitution was drafted. Derek chaired the inaugural meeting of the RMS on 15 June 1983. He remained as an RMS director until 1985.¹² He retained a continuous connection with RMS and was delighted, years later, to be made an Honorary Member.

Derek was also involved internationally. He had been the Society of Archivists’ delegate to the International Records Management Federation in 1976. Following a break with ARMA, its chief financial contributor, the IRMF became the International Records Management Council (IRMC). Derek served as Vice-President Europe, 1981–1982; second President of the re-constituted IRMC in 1983–1984; Past President in 1985–1986; and Secretary in 1987–1988. The IRMC ran tracks at the International Council on Archives’ Congresses at Bonn in 1984 and Paris in 1988. IRMC itself held international congresses every four years, the first in Manila in 1985 and then in Perth, Australia, in 1989 and Harare, Zimbabwe in 1993. In 1992, Derek and I jointly took on the executive directorship of the IRMC. Sadly, the organization had declined after ARMA’s international expansion affected its finances and its membership. It survived to hold a final successful fourth international congress, with support from the RMS, in Edinburgh in 1998, but there was little interest in keeping it alive.

Despite his long and deep professional involvement, Derek did have other interests, particularly a passion for golf which he had played since a schoolboy. The game later provided him with a new interest. He was commissioned to write the history of the Leicestershire Golf Club for its centenary in 1990.¹³ As a result, he was made a life member of the club. He also wrote a history of the London Iron and Steel Golf Society (LISEGS), of which he had been an active member since the early 1970s, for its 75th Anniversary in 1995, as well as the early part of the centenary history of the Leicestershire and Rutland Golf Union.¹⁴

Describing himself as a lifelong Anglican, Derek’s strong, quiet faith was a continuous thread throughout his life. He was for some years a churchwarden of All Saints Church, Ipswich and, over 20 years, held a number of positions as a member of the parochial church council at St. Mary and All Saints in Holcot, Northamptonshire. He wrote a history of this church in 1986.

Intellectually, he favoured rational thought over emotional reaction. In practice, he was rather volatile but this was modified by his awareness of the need for rationality. Charming, clever, energetic, single (some would say bloody)-minded, sometimes intolerant of those who disagreed with him, Derek was a self-identified maverick, a description with which many of his more traditional colleagues would have agreed. He was a man of strong opinions, often strongly expressed, which did not always endear him to those, inside and outside the profession, with whom he crossed swords from time to time. Nevertheless, he was essentially a kind man whose bark was worse than his bite.

He loved the countryside, enjoying shows and point-to-points, and appreciated horses, though he never rode, and to a lesser extent dogs. He was also a keen birdwatcher, enjoyed gardening and had a lifelong interest in photography. He enjoyed classical music, secular and religious, and regretted never learning to play an instrument. His musical tastes, though, were wide and ranged from listening to Terry Wogan on Radio 2, during his many long car journeys on BSC business, to the Three Choirs Festival at Worcester in later years. He read widely and enjoyed the theatre. He was very sociable, enjoyed entertaining and was an excellent host. He always appreciated good food and wine. BSC colleagues in the regions looked forward to Derek’s visits because it meant, if nothing else, a good lunch at a local hostelry.

Sadly, he developed Alzheimer’s Disease, deteriorating gradually over a number of years. It was hard to watch a brilliant mind being slowly destroyed. But he remained remarkably positive and happily was able to stay at home for the remainder of his life.

Jill Charman (nee Hampson)

Notes

1. My main source has been Derek himself – his recollections, papers, books and articles, our business records and his interview for the Society of Archivists’ 50th Anniversary Oral History project. I would like to thank the following for their help: Derek’s family, especially Cris Holmes, the family’s historian, and Derek’s niece Philippa Britten; Alexandra Aslett, Archivist of St. Paul’s School; Amanda Ingram, Archivist of Pembroke College, Oxford. I am particularly indebted to Kate Chantry, the Suffolk Record Office Manager, for information on Derek’s Suffolk career and for permission to use their photograph c.1962 [Suffolk Record Office: K681/2/80/297]. I am very grateful to Peter Emmerson for his kindness and patience in checking and editing my lengthy text.

2. Charman, D. “Wealth and Trade in Leicester in the Early Sixteenth Century.” Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological Society 25, (1949): 69–97.

3. Sir Hilary Jenkinson acted as professional assessor to the selection panel. He interviewed Derek and years later a Council file titled, opaquely, Miscellaneous 2 surfaced. It contained Sir Hilary’s assessment: ‘Mr. Charman is the sort of man I would consider at the Public Record Office. Consider but not necessarily appoint’.

4. Charman, D., and M. Pamplin. Parish Records Survey: Report of the Survey of the County of East Suffolk and the Archdeaconries of Ipswich and Suffolk in the Diocese of St. Edmundsbury and Ipswich. Ipswich, 1963: reviewed in Journal of the Society of Archivists II, 9, Apr. (1964): 445–446, by Brian Burch.

5. An extended version appeared in the Society’s Journal in 1968: Charman, Derek. “On the Need for a New Local Archives Service for England.” JSA III, 7, Apr. (1968).

6. Ipswich and East Suffolk Record Office Report for 1 April 1970–31 March 1972.

7. Musembi, Musila. Archives Management: The Kenyan Experience. Nairobi: African Book Services, 1985, 64–69.

8. Charman, D. “The Archivist and Modern Local Government Records.” Bulletin of the Society of Local Archivists, 14, Oct. (1954): 2–9.

9. “The Society’s Chronicle: Annual General Meeting.” JSA II, 5, Apr. (1962): 227–231.

10. He publicised the development of the service in Business Archives, 40, Jun. (1974): 17–22 on ‘Records Management in the British Steel Corporation’.

11. Charman, D. “The Expanding Role of the Archivist.” ARMA Records Management Quarterly 14, 1, Jan. (1980): 24–31. The Brit Literary Award was for the best written article appearing in the ARMA Quarterly each year.

12. Charman, D. “The Records Management Society – Retrospects and Prospects.” Records Management Bulletin, 56, Jun. (1993): 4–5.

13. Charman, D. The Leicestershire Golf Club: A Centenary History, 1890–1990. Leicester, 1990.

14. Charman, D., and J. Prentice. A History of the Leicestershire and Rutland Golf Union, 1910–2010. Leicester, 2011.