Category Archives: students

Archival Provenance Project: Emily’s finds

              My name is Emily, and I’m the second of the two archive interns that are currently working on the Dc and Dk collections. I’m a part-time Masters student in the History, Classics and Archaeology department, and I’m just finishing up the first year of the Late Antique, Byzantine, and Islamic Studies course, which is an interdisciplinary degree. As you might imagine, that covers quite an eclectic range of subjects, and I have a variety of different research interests coming from a History and Literature background. During my degree, I spend quite a lot of time in the History and Divinity schools, so this internship was especially appealing as it’s allowing me to put my (limited) Latin skills into practice!

Emily working on the Dc sequence in the CRC Reading Room.

              I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Edinburgh, so I’d previously used the Centre for Research Collections to look at some books related to Machiavelli and the Lothian Health Archives, but I hadn’t conducted any individual research there myself. I did have a session there in recent weeks independent from my internship as part of a seminar on Islamic esotericism, so I got to look at some of the CRC Arabic and Persian collections, which proved to be absolutely fascinating. They actually have an edition of the Quran that would fit into the palm of my hand – it’s best not to think too hard about the logistics of creating something like that – years of work and immense eye strain, no doubt. I’ve also spent a little time in various archives around Edinburgh, including the Royal College of Physicians on Queen Street, so I was fairly familiar with reading rooms beforehand.

              We’re now four months into the project, and we’ve just last week completed the Dc collection, which proved to be a fascinating look into the history of Edinburgh and of the University itself. Coming from a Literature background, I’ve been especially enamoured with some of the more famous names to be featured in the Dc collection, including Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert Burns, and William Wordsworth. Many of the volumes we looked at include sheafs of letters, files, and correspondence, some of which were from some of the more famous names of the day. I’m sure Maddie can attest to me spending ages poring over various letters and such that I’ve stumbled across.

     

Some interesting letters and poems by Burns, Shelley and Wordsworth respectively.

              Thus far into the internship, Maddie and I have come across some fascinating books, including books on alchemy, science, and the history of the University, and my interest was piqued by the sheer amount of books in the collection that were written in Icelandic. However many you’re thinking, I can guarantee that there were more, including a saga on Nordic kingship. Exactly how the University accumulated so many Icelandic books is a mystery that I’m still working on, but it’s a fascinating discovery. I also stumbled across a version of Julian of Norwich’s ‘Revelations of Divine Love’ dating to approximately the seventeenth century, a woman whose life I find particularly interesting – an East Anglian anchorite and English mystic dating to the fifteenth century. Tucked away in the collection there was also a letter regarding the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots to the French dauphin, which was, in all likelihood, contemporary. And as someone who has a particular interest in the history of medicine, I also found some interesting paraphernalia relating to the invention of anaesthesia, including a photo of the first child to be born whilst their mother was anaesthetised during the birth.

              I always like stumbling across photos tucked in the volumes, especially in collections of letters, as I feel like it gives a sense of the person who wrote them. In one collection of letters, there was a photo of an old soldier and aristocrat, alongside other personal effects donated by his family (including an invitation to the Duke of Wellington’s funeral and Queen Victoria’s coronation!). Another volume was written by a student here in the early twentieth century, and included photographs of his regiment – all of whom were fellow students at the University as well. As such, it really gives a sense of who created these volumes and what was important to them – in this case, he wanted to commemorate his friends and brothers.

              Photos and illustrations have been particularly prominent within this collection, whether it’s scribbled doodles in old textbooks (not so different from more modern student notes) to scientific diagrams illustrating different theorems. I’ve found a variety of different illustrations within the Dc collections, ranging from quick scribbles to beautifully detailed fly-leaf illustrations – so detailed, in fact, that it took me a while to figure out that it wasn’t printed.

Hand-drawn or printed? Hand-drawn, it turns out.

              With the prevalence of scientific notes in the collection, many of the volumes also featured detailed illustrations which were used to explain various biological, chemical, and physical concepts. Many of these works were by the more famous scientific names associated with the University – and at the very least, names that a visitor to the King’s Campus would be familiar with, such as Joseph Black and Colin Maclaurin. A particular favourite of mine was a volume on metaphysics that had moveable parts to help explain different concepts.

Three different scientific diagrams, all with moveable parts.

              One thing that these particular collections have in abundance is minute books from various clubs and societies associated with the University. Although seemingly slightly tedious, Dk.1.4 proved an especially interesting find, as someone had taken the time to illustrate the minutes. One such event that was recorded was an impromptu sledding session down Carlton Hill, where one of the party ended up in the University infirmary shortly afterwards.

Sledding down Carlton Hill. An age-old saga.

Minute book illustrations.

              And as a final note, there was an especially interesting aspect to these sorts of illustrations in the collection – the use of colour! Some of the volumes in particular felt like they’d been coloured in only yesterday – despite being at least three hundred years old. How they managed to keep it looking so pigmented is beyond me – and in any case, I’m sure it would be of interest to the art students.

This volume dates to 1771, if you can believe it!

              We’ve got a little over a month of the project left, and I’m excited to see what we’ll discover in the Dk collection. One thing’s for sure – it’ll be incredibly interesting!

 

Archival Provenance Project: a glimpse into the university’s history through some of its oldest manuscripts

              My name is Madeleine Reynolds, a fourth year PhD candidate in History of Art. I am fortunate to be one of two successful applicants for the position of Archival Provenance Intern with the Heritage Collections, University of Edinburgh. My own research considers early modern manuscript culture, translation and transcription, the materiality of text and image, collection histories, ideas of collaborative authorship, and the concept of self-design, explored through material culture methodologies. Throughout my PhD, I have visited many reading rooms, from the specialist collections rooms at the British Library and the Bodleian’s Weston Library, to the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge and the Warburg Institute. Working first-hand with historical material has been crucial to the development of my work, and I was eager to spend time ‘behind-the-scenes.’ This internship was attractive to me because of the more familiar aspects – like the reading room environment and object handling – but it also presented an opportunity to expand my understanding of manuscript production and book histories, develop my provenance and palaeography skills, and understand the function of archival cataloguing fields as finding aids through my own enhancement of metadata.

Madeleine (foreground) and Emily (background) in the reading room.

              The aim of the project is to create a comprehensive resource list concerning the library’s oldest manuscripts, which contain material from the 16th– 20th centuries, in particular pre-20th century lecture notes, documents, and correspondence of or relating to university alumni and staff, as well as historical figures like Charles Darwin, Frédéric Chopin, and Mary Queen of Scots (to name a few). An old hand-list (dating from 1934 or before) was provided for the shelf-marks under consideration, and, using an Excel spreadsheet with pre-set archival fields, provenance research is being used to uncover details such as authorship/creator or previous ownership, how the volume came to be part the university’s collections, and extra-contextual information, like how the manuscript or its author/creator/owner is relevant to the university’s history.

A collection of black notebooks containing transcribed lecture notes from 1881-1883. The lectures were given by various University staff on subjects such as natural philosophy, moral ethics, rhetoric, and English literature and were transcribed by different students.

A great #shelfie featuring gold-tooling, banded spines, vellum bindings.

              In addition to enhancing the biographical details of relevant actors in the history of the university, the research into this ‘collection’ of manuscripts provides a deeper understanding of the interests, priorities, and concerns – political, religious, intellectual, etcetera –  of a particular society, or group, depending on the time period or place an individual object can be traced to. Inversely, thinking about what or who is not reflected in this subset of the archive is as informative as what material is present – unsurprisingly, a majority of this material is by men of a certain education and class. Though I would like to think of an archive as an impartial tool for historical research, I have to remind myself that decisions were made by certain individuals concerning what material was valuable or important (whatever that means!) to keep, or seek out, or preserve, and what might have been disregarded, or turned away.

              While there is a growing list of what I, and my project partner, Emily, refer to as ‘Objects of Interest’ (read as: objects we could happily spend all day inspecting), there are some which stand out, either for their content – some concern historical events pertaining to the university or Scotland more generally – or their form.

Dc.4.12 ‘Chronicle of Scotland’, front cover; Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh.

Dc.4.12 ‘Chronicle of Scotland’, ‘Mar 24 1603’; Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh.

              This manuscript (above), ‘Chronicle of Scotland from 330 B.C. to 1722 A.D’, is notable for its slightly legible handwriting (a rarity) and its subject matter – the featured page recounts the death of Elizabeth I, James VI and I’s arrival in London, and later down the page, his crowning at Westminster. Mostly, its odd shape – narrow, yet chunky – is what was particularly eye catching. To quote an unnamed member of the research services staff: ‘Imagine getting whacked over the head with this thing!’

              Of interest to the history of the university is this thin, red volume (below) containing an account written by William Playfair concerning the construction of some university buildings and the costs at this time (1817-1822). This page covers his outgoings – see his payment for the making of the ‘plaster models of Corinthian capitals for Eastern front of College Museum’ and his payment for the ‘Masonwork of Natural Histy Museum – College Buildings.’

Dc.3.73 Abstract of Journal of William Playfair, binding, cover; Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh.

Dc.3.73 Abstract of Journal of William Playfair, expenditures; Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh.

              Of course, you cannot understand the scope of the history of the University of Edinburgh without considering its ‘battles’ – by this, I mean the ‘Wars of the Quadrangle’, otherwise known as the Edinburgh Snowball Riot of 1838, a two-day battle between Edinburgh students and local residents which was eventually ended by police intervention. This manuscript is a first-hand account from Robert Scot Skirving, one of the five students, of the 30 plus that were arrested, to be put on trial.

Dc.1.87 Account of the snowball riot; Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh.

              Finally, this object (below), from the first day of research is particularly fascinating – a box, disguised as a book, used to hold deeds granting the university with six bursaries for students of the humanities, from 1674-1678. The grantor is Hector Foord, a graduate of the university. The box is made from a brown, leather-bound book, that was once held shut with a metal clasp. The pages, cut into, are a marbled, swirling pattern of rich blue, red, green, and gold. The cover is stamped in gold lettering, with a gold embossed University library crest. There are delicate gold thistles pressed into the banded spine. Upon opening the manuscript, it contains two parchment deeds, and two vellum deeds, the latter of which are too stiff to open. You can see still Foord’s signature on one of them, and the parchment deeds are extremely specific about the requirements that must be met for a student to be granted money.

Dc.1.22 Deeds by Mr. H Foord, cover; Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh.

Dc.1.22 Deeds by Mr. H Foord, inside of ‘box’ with all four deeds; Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh.

              The project has only just concluded its second month and we are lucky that it has been extended a month beyond the initial contract. Despite how much material we have covered so far, we are looking forward to discovering more interesting objects, and continuing to enhance our resource list. Stay tuned!

Volunteering at the CRC: Charlotte’s experience

Today we’re introducing Charlotte Holmes, a postgraduate student who is doing some volunteer work under the supervision of archivist Aline Brodin. Her main task is to catalogue and box-list two very different collections from our archives, the Archive of Illustrators Richard and Alison Douglas Tod (Coll-2029) and the Archive of productions of Varsity Vanities and various dramatic groups (Coll-1581). Volunteering with the CRC is a great way to gain some new skills and some practical experience while working with our heritage collections. Charlotte tells us about her background and her work in our reading room:

Hi everyone! My name is Charlotte, and I am a final-year PhD student in History. My thesis is entitled “Domestic Medicine in Early Modern Scotland, c. 1650 – c. 1750”. Before this course, I spent a few years in the “real world” after my undergraduate and masters at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and the University of Edinburgh respectively. My undergraduate degree was in History and French, concentrating on Western Europe and Africa, while my masters was in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. I am interested generally in the history of Scotland, medicine, and gender.

Charlotte working in our reading room.

My position with the Centre for Research Collections is as a Box-Listing Volunteer. As it says on the tin, I have been listing what is in the boxes for two collections: the Richard and Alison Tod fonds and the Varsity Vanities fonds. Richard and Alison Tod were Scottish children’s book illustrators throughout the 20th century and the Varsity Vanities fonds contain photographs and programmes from Edinburgh University student theatre productions from the mid-20th century. Most of my role involves thinking about what researchers need to know about items in the collections: are the photographs or artwork in black and white or colour? Can we determine the year in which the item was created? Then, I enter this data into ArchivesSpace with other archival descriptors such as the call number.

A student acting in a Varsity Vanities play, 1940s (Coll-1581)

Varsity Vanities programme, 1940s (Coll-1581)

I took this position because I wanted to learn some basic archiving practices. As a researcher, I only look at the published side of the catalogue and I wanted to learn how it worked from the back end. I have certainly learned how much is involved in cataloguing items: it was challenging at first to fight my instincts to analyse them and to remain as objective as possible. But there were pieces in both collections that involved some subjectivity and further research. For example, there were racial depictions that are now commonly understood to be harmful to sections of society. So, I got to stretch my research muscles as well as exercise some subjectivity within the archiving process. It made me remember that there is a very human side to archival objectivity.

Booklet by Alison Tod entitled “Bunnikin’s Adventures”, with original illustrations, 1935 (Coll-2029/2/3/1)

Booklet by Richard or Alison Tod entitled “Fairyland Tales: Googoo’s Gamp”, 1939 (Coll-2029/2/1)

What I am leaving with from my time at the CRC is an incredibly positive learning experience. Everyone that works there, including and perhaps especially the front of house staff, are helpful and supportive. My supervisor, Aline is extremely patient and explains everything well and thoroughly. When I’m in, she makes a point to come say hi. I also have a regular table in the Reading Room, which is infinitely funny to me because of course my regular table wouldn’t be at a coffee shop or pub, but in a nerdy environment! Anyway, if you are interested at all in archives and history, I would highly recommend volunteering for the CRC. It’s worth climbing the six flights of stairs, I promise!

If you are interested in volunteering with us, you can find all the relevant information, including how to be added to our mailing list, on this page: Volunteers and Interns | The University of Edinburgh  

‘Not a Varsity Bird’: William Soutar’s Student Years

100 years ago this week, one of Scotland’s best-loved poets became a student of Edinburgh University. On 13 October 1919, the 21-year-old William Soutar added his name to the university’s Matriculation Album as a first-year student of English Literature.

Extract from Matriculation Album (EUA IN1/ADS/STA/2)

Like many young men of his generation, Soutar’s student years were delayed by war service. On leaving school in 1916, he joined the Royal Navy and spent two years with the North Atlantic Fleet. By the time he was demobbed in November 1918, he was already suffering from as yet undiagnosed ankylosing spondylitis, a rare and exceptionally crippling form of arthritis, which would lead to almost complete paralysis by 1930 and contribute to Soutar’s early death in 1943. Following a month in hospital, Soutar recovered sufficiently to come to Edinburgh in spring 1919 with the initial intention of studying medicine. Soutar appears to have attended classes without matriculating but found the anatomical specimens so ‘gruesome’ that he abandoned medicine after a fortnight, resolving to switch to honours English after the summer vacation. He found time, however, to contribute a poem to the 21 May edition of The Student, ‘Orpheus’, a lushly Romantic piece heavy with echoes of Keats and Shelley.

Extract from ‘The Student’, 21 May 1919

Soutar did not enjoy a distinguished university career. The first two years of his honours English course passed smoothly enough. He enjoyed Professor Herbert Grierson’s lectures on the English classics, particularly appreciating Chaucer, Wordsworth, and Donne. He read widely, ranging far beyond the curriculum, and as his taste developed, was moved to destroy most of his own teenage production. He wrote prolifically, devoting three months of his first academic years to a long poem ‘Hestia, or the Spirit of Peace’ in a vain effort to win the university’s Poetry Prize. Although he continued to suffer from stiffness of the joints, he was still sufficiently vigorous to sit as a model for his friend James Finlayson’s painting of the warrior-hero Beowulf.

At the beginning of his third year, Soutar was dismayed to discover how prominent a role Anglo-Saxon would play in the Junior Honours curriculum. Finding linguistic studies ‘musty stuff’, he contributed a letter-article to The Student of 21 November, arguing that Anglo-Saxon should be optional. Although it offered a ‘large field to the specialist’, Anglo-Saxon contributed little to the average student’s knowledge and appreciation of the literature of his country’. It occupied far too many of the undergraduate’s studying hours which ‘ought to be given to the far more significant study of the great masters of English literature’.

Extract from ‘The Student’, 21 November 1921

Soutar reluctantly attended third-year Anglo-Saxon lectures but stepped up his campaign against the subject in his Senior Honours year. He was granted an interview with Professor Grierson on 23 October 1922, but failed to convert him to his cause. At his parents’ insistence, Soutar dropped his public opposition to Anglo-Saxon, but ceased attending classes, having been assured that he would still be permitted to sit his honours exam. Although Soutar increasingly devoted his evening hours to cinema-going and card-playing, his final year was nonetheless of vital importance for his development as a poet. His first volume, Gleanings of an Undergraduate, was published in his native Perth on 9 February 1923. Meanwhile, influenced by Hugh MacDiarmid, whom he had met during the 1922 summer vacation, he extended his knowledge of Scots verse beyond Burns to the medieval makars. His work began to appear in the MacDiarmid-edited journals Northern Numbers and The Scottish Chapbook, which spearheaded what came to be known as Scottish Literary Renaissance.

Title page of William Soutar’s first published volume, inscribed by the author (probably to art critic John Tonge) (JA 3537)

At the end of the spring term of 1923, Soutar fared disastrously in a preliminary exam on Shakespeare. When Professor Grierson subsequently remarked in a lecture that an honours course was not really for ‘Minor Poets, Geniuses or Journalists’, Soutar suspected that he was the target. Soutar’s final examinations were held on 15 and 19 June, and at the end of the month he learned that he had ‘scraped through’ with a third-class degree. Looking back, he suspected that aversion to Anglo-Saxon was not the sole reason for his low marks. In his exclusive passion for poetry, he had refused to read any of prescribed. It is also true that his medical condition, provisionally diagnosed as ‘rheumatics’, had worsened during his final year of study and may well have affected his academic performance. Soutar remained philosophical, reflecting: ‘I’m afraid I’m not a ‘Varsity bird’—one is apt to get cobwebs on one’s wings’.

Soutar graduated from Edinburgh University on 12 July 1923. Over the following months, his illness worsened, frustrating his hopes of becoming a journalist for The Scotsman. He began teacher training in October 1924 but had to return to Perth to begin treatment for his finally diagnosed ankylosing spondylitis. From then on, he was confined to his parents’ house, from which he would published a stream of slim volumes containing some of the finest Scots verse of the 20th-century. The best-known perhaps are the ‘bairn-rhymes’, or Scots children’s verse, collected in Seeds in the Wind. Soutar famously remarked that ‘if the Doric is to come back alive, it will come first on a cock-horse’.

For Edinburgh University’s collection of William Soutar manuscripts, see: Papers of Willam Soutar (Coll-796)

All quotations from: Alexander Scott, Still life: William Soutar, 1898-1943 (London: Chambers, 1958)

Paul Barnaby
Acquisition and Literary Collections Curator

Cataloguing the correspondence of Thomas Nelson & Sons

Last January, our intern Isabella started a 10-week placement at the CRC, as part of her MSc in Book History and Material Culture. Using our online system ArchivesSpace, she is cataloguing part of the records of Thomas Nelsons & Sons Ltd., a British publishing firm founded in Edinburgh in 1798. So far, she has been dealing with correspondence, advertising material, and printed material relating to publishing, all dating from the end of the 19th century. Here are some of her most interesting finds:

1. W. H. Allen & Co. Copy

1. W. H. Allen & Co.: Pictured above is a beautiful embossing from the stationary of W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd., a London based bookseller and publisher. The company were ‘publishers to the India office’ as can be noted on the seal. The coordination of a lion and a unicorn most likely represents the company’s work across Scotland and England.

2. There are three letters from one Mrs. Allan enquiring about the potential for her 15 year old son to take up an apprenticeship with Nelson & Sons. She describes her son as being a naturally gifted illustrator and when the company takes a bit long to reply she sends further letters describing how she and her son are ‘wearing of waiting’ for a response. Though the company eventually accepted samples of the young Mr. Allan’s work, he was not offered an apprentice position.

3. Lady Aberdeen Insignia

3. Lady Aberdeen Insignia: Pictured above is the signet of Lady Ishbel Aberdeen who wrote to the offices of Nelson & Sons on September 14th 1896, sending several copies of Canadian literary reports and magazines as well as personal letters inquiring as to whether the company would wish to send any penny or bargain literature they may have the copyrights for to Canada as she believes the country is in desperate need of ‘good, cheap literature.’ She speaks about her children’s magazine “Wee Willie Winkie” named after the Scottish fairy tale as well as the National Council of Women of Canada (NCWC). Lady Aberdeen was the founder of the NCWC, an advocate for the creation of the Victorian Order of Nurses as well as a well-known supporter of the Canadian suffrage movement. The signet is a blue embossed crown containing her initials wrapped together with a vine-esque tie (information on Lady Aberdeen acquired via the Canadian Encyclopaedia).

4. Frank Mahony (1)

4. Frank Mahony (2)

4. Frank Mahony (3)

4. Frank Mahony (4)

4. Frank Mahony (5)

4. Frank Mahony (6)

4. Frank Mahony: Pictured above are six printed illustrations from illustrator Frank P. Mahony. Mahony was an artist from Melbourne Australia whose work was used in the construction of the ‘New South Wales Reader’ a larger and heavily documented project undertaken by Nelson & Sons transcontinentally in congress with several agencies in Australia including leather workers, booksellers, and authors. As can be seen, the copies of the illustrations have been warped from years of being curled into a scroll-esque form at the centre of a group of letters and cost projections for the ‘New South Wales Reader.’ In order to examine each paper with minimal damage, two glass weights are placed at the edges of the copy pictures to examine them as a whole without compromising the form the paper has taken over years of storage.

5. Oxford University Press

5. Oxford University Press: This letter addressed to Nelson & Sons is a copy of a letter from the University Press of Oxford requesting manuscript materials for the Presbyterian Hymnal with Tunes, a project which was spearheaded by Reverend James Anderson of Toronto. The initial correspondence regarding the publication of the Presbyterian Hymnal between Reverend Anderson and George Brown of Nelson & Sons deals mostly in obtaining or paying license for the use of tunes from other previously published hymnals. The various letters sent between the two men gives a glimpse into the nature of musical copyright laws and penalties in 1896 both in Canada, where the Reverend Anderson was based and in Scotland where Nelson & Sons offices were. The publication of the hymnal went on to be so successful that the University Press of Oxford requested to take up the publication of the piece as well.

6. Schwebius signature

6. Schwebius letter: Much of the cataloguing done for this archive requires some previous exposure to palaeography, or the study of dated handwriting. However, sometimes in deciphering particularly unclear script a second opinion or cross referencing is required to confirm the context of a letter in order to properly interpret the piece. For this letter, the name Schwebius, though written twice, was not entirely apparent in its spelling. The content of the letter referred to the sale of a foundry and various machines from a leatherworker in New York. The cataloguer referred to a digitized directory from the library of Hoboken, New York which not only lists the recipient of this letter, a George Schwebius, but mentions details of his business which were substantiated by the letter from the Nelson Archive. Corroborating information across archives and databases allowed not only for the correct spelling of the sender’s name to be identified but gave further insight into the transactions between the sender and Nelson & Sons.

7. George Brown’s signature

7. George Brown’s Signature: In 1896 Nelson & Sons decided to invest several substantial sums which were guaranteed by an American investment firm. Their correspondence with the American firm was directed to a Mr. Stewart Tods and concerned the investment of two separate sums of more than 10,000 dollars each. The letter, though entirely concerned with business, reflects the genial nature of professional signatures from the time. Here George Brown, a manager at Nelson & Sons, signs ‘Believe me, Yours Faithfully’. Though the letter concerns references to significant sums of money and is a reflection of a transaction, the signature is incredibly genial and far more affectionate than would be used in the same manner of business today.

8. Nelson & Sons employed a vast number of employees who all were integral to discovering, creating, and marketing literature. From travel writers to leather testers, Nelson & Sons often employed numerous professionals to vet their literature including Jane Macgregor and Jane Borthwick. Though each women worked with the company under other supervisions at various periods, Jane Borthwick was a translator of German hymns as well as a writer of English hymns, a collection of letters in this archive reveals that these two women were also engaged as test readers for the manuscripts sent to the company. Many of the letters sent by Borthwick and Macgregor reference literature they have been sent which contains female protagonists, from which it could be inferred that Nelson & Sons were recruiting female employees for female driven literature.

The Thomas Nelson collection (Coll-25) on our online catalogue: https://archives.collections.ed.ac.uk/repositories/2/resources/85801

James Miranda Steuart Barry and the Crimean War

We recently became aware of a single letter from James Miranda Barry, written just before departure for Sebastopol shortly after its capture by the ‘allies’ in 1855. We acquired it in 1977.

Margaret Bulkley was born in Ireland: a bright, precocious child, she moved to London, with her mother in 1805 and there had access to General Francisco de Miranda’s library with ‘treatises such as might be considered to form a tolerably complete Medical Library for a private gentleman’. As her father had been declared bankrupt, she had no hope of a good marriage so it was decided she should go to university but this was not an option for a woman.

Taking the name of James Barry (after an uncle), Barry went to study medicine, at Edinburgh University, one of the most demanding and rigorous courses in Britain. Barry graduated with a MD thesis dedicated to patrons, General Francisco de Miranda and David Steuart Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan (1742-1829). Then, even more extraordinary, after further training, Barry joined the army and travelled throughout the British Empire. There is no definitive version of Barry’s adopted name.

Read more about Barry on Our History

We knew about Barry’s matriculation and graduation records and MD thesis.  This letter, while recorded in our sheaf index to manuscripts, had not yet made its way into our online catalogue and was stumbled upon while looking for something else.  It makes interesting reading.

(Update: More recent scholarship has raised other perspectives in terms of Barry’s sex and gender.  The above has therefore been edited to remove references to gendered pronouns, other than for Barry’s childhood)

All in a name (nearly)

A notice from 1827 reveals certain privileges that were available if:

  • Your name was STEWART
  • Your surname was SIMPSON
  • You were a Highlander acquainted with the Gaelic language

These seem to be the only criteria on offer in terms of access to bursaries. Cash-strapped students could also, with favourable recommendation from their parish Minister, be awarded Gratis Tickets.

Notice of Regulations of the Faculty of Arts, 1827

Notice of Regulations of the Faculty of Arts, 1827

Andrew Brown (1763-1834), who issued this notice and was Dean of Faculty, was born at Biggar, in 1763. He was educated at Glasgow University then he entered the Church and was ordained minister of the Scottish Church in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1787. Brown returned to Scotland in 1795 and held charges in Lochmaben and at New Greyfriars and Old St. Giles’ in Edinburgh.

In 1801 he became Regius Professor of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres at Edinburgh University, a post first offered to Sir Walter Scott who turned it down. His appointment proved to be a disaster however, for he was more interested in North American history than in literature and during his term of office the subject he was appointed to teach declined. He made no literary contribution and as a lecturer he was uninspired. He died in 1834.

Understanding Student Records

We area about to begin a series of blog posts aimed at helping our users become aware of what information exists in different types of student records, how this changed over time and how the different records series relate to each other.

Understanding the records makes it easier to find all the relevant information and how to make best use of time when conducting research. The first post will relate to matriculation records and the three related records series which have recorded this over time.