Anti-German manifestos, cigarettes vouchers and a little girl called Gill: 3 objects found in PhD theses

When I was studying for my Masters dissertation, I kept finding dried flowers in between the pages of books I was borrowing from the library. Now, we all know that drying flowers in between books, especially library books, is a bad idea.  If the flower is particularly big, the books will struggle to close properly and the colours of the petals, through the release of moisture, will transfer on the page.  But despite all of it, I was happy to find daisies and freesias while revising, and I kept most of them. Now, I am still happy when I find objects in collection items, some of which have not been opened for almost 100 years. I have realised that all sort of things find their way in theses.  I removed cigarettes buds found in 1910s book on bronchitis, read letters and I have seen that photographs, cigar vouchers and 1970s train tickets all seem to have been used as bookmarks or place orders and never have been removed from the pages of theses. Sometimes the objects and documents found in these theses seem to be related to the creation of the volumes themselves. For example, we found receipts and quotes from 20th-century Scottish bookbinders, library notes and interlibrary loans request slips. But sometimes what we have found is more original and not necessarily related to the content or the creation of the physical item.

Here are three examples of objects that found their way in between the pages of PhD theses.

The Anti-German Union pamphlet found in a 1916’s thesis

The ‘Anti-German Union’ pamphlet
Found in a 1916 medical thesis titled The treatment of tuberculosis this pamphlet relates to racist propaganda rather than medical knowledge. The leaflet promotes ethnocentric ideas of ‘Britishness’ presenting German workers, economic trade with Germany as a threat.

 “The Anti-German Union has been formed to unite British-born men and women, without respect to party, class or creed, with the following aims and objects:

  1. To foster national ideals and to keep alive the patriotic spirit of the people
  2. To defend British freedom, rights and privileges from German invasion
  3. To defend British Industry and British labour against German competition.”

The pamphlet also includes a membership/registration form which was left blank. It was produced at the same time as the thesis was (around 1916). The AGU Later renamed ‘British Empire Union’ was an organisation instigating anti-German sentiment and was part of a bigger movement that grew after WW1 and the developing of Germany as an international power. The union promoted the expulsion of German immigrants and the obstructing of German trade.

It is not clear whether the examiner or the author itself accidentally left the pamphlet in the thesis, but at least we know that that the registration form was left blank.  I was particularly fascinated by this object because it has no relation to the content of the thesis and there is a limited amount of similar documents on the same subject in digital image repositories. It is also a statement to a very specific time in history; the document could have only been written in 1915 or 1916, and it testifies the change in aims and perspective of an organisation.

Five Embassy Cigarettes Vouchers Objects found in theses, not only provide evidence for the political atmosphere that alumni were immersed in, but they also show a change in consumerist culture and advertising.  One of my favourite discovery is ‘Five Embassy Vouchers’.
Not so common these days, cigarettes vouchers were given to smokers as a reward for their loyalty. This was a win/win situation: consumers could trade this vouchers in a store for their favourite cigarettes while companies found a way of retaining their customers.

Embassy is a cigarette brand first sold in 1914 by Imperial Tobacco. Originally branded ‘Strand’ it gained popularity in the 1960s as a coupon brand.

Five Embassy Vouchers (1960s)

 

Gill, 1966
The most common objects found loose in between the pages of theses are, after library slips, photographs. Some of these pictures are labelled, usually portraying graduating students; others remain a mystery.
One that we could find more information about is ‘Gill, 1966’.  This picture fell from a 1970s duplicate copy of a thesis. We are unclear which thesis she originally came from as she fell when we picked up a couple of theses from our delivery. The volume it came in (as it is a duplicate) has been certainly destroyed now, but the picture remains a unique object, one  portraying Gill in 1966, a little girl we know nothing about.

Gill, 1966

The Development Of Avant-Garde Art And Ideas 1905-1924

The film above is a review of the artworks referenced in the first three volumes of a four volume Ph.D. thesis by Ivor Davies from 1974:

Certain Aspects Of Art Theory In Russia From 1905 To 1924 In Their Relationship To The Development Of Avant-Garde Art And Ideas In The West

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Blood Cells and Blizzards in Antarctica

When I picked up a thesis entitled ‘Eosinphils and Stress’ I did not expect to read Simpson19590040sentences like the following; ‘The word “Antarctic” has always been associated with cold, death marches, crushed ships, crevasses and so on’.  This demurely bound 1959 thesis by HW Simpson is a fascinating gem. It is part medical thesis, part travel journal,
describing the stresses and daily routines of people living at an Antarctic research base in 1958. Simpson’s aim was to study how the stress of living and working in Antarctica effects eosinophils, a type of white blood cell.

The thesis contains fascinating images of him taking blood samples in a tent, sledge journeys across snowy landscapes, and the living quarters of the researchers. Simpson Simpson19590130notes certain events that caused a peak in stress, including how one man was lost in a blizzard for eight hours and another drifted out to sea when his boat ran out of petrol, only to be saved by a ship’s helicopter 25 miles off shore. Simpson also studies stress caused by more mundane activities. The men took turns cooking and he describes how ‘It will be readily understood that to be cook for 8-10 men and do one’s main job can be a consideSimpson19590041rable strain. Not only must the cook bake bread but he must also help with the washing up and at the end of his week scrub out the kitchen’. This observation is accompanied by a graph entitled ‘The stress of cooking’, which surprisingly seems to rival the stress of the prospect of a cold and icy death in the midst of a blizzard.

Simpson’s theses encompasses the excitement and adventure of living in Antarctica, but also the mundane realities of what that life necessarily entailed; living in cramped conditions, cooking and cleaning, boredom and lack of society at large. It is a good example of how diverse the theses collection is. A medical thesis such as this one could also be useful to a historian, a sociologist, a scientist or someone interested in travel writing, and there are examples like this one throughout the collection.   The thesis will be uploaded with the first batch later this month, accessible through Edinburgh Research Archive and also via a link from this page.

Aoife O’Leary McNeice, Project Digitisation Assistant

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