The Dave Cunliffe Archive held at the John Rylands Library is currently uncatalogued but holds approximately 5000 radical 1960s and 70s British and US periodicals including the second edition of Hustler. A fortnightly Black community newspaper first published in May 1968, it was initially edited by Courtney Tulloch from the Mangrove restaurant in Notting Hill. A small, flimsy journal of only eight roughly lithographed pages, it’s an important document because it features relatively rare coverage of the racism suffered by immigrants to the UK written by people who would become significant figures in the British Black Power movement. Frank Crichlow’s Mangrove effectively operated as a Black community centre and became the de facto office of the Notting Hill Carnival and it was also at the centre of a ground-breaking trial so a blog contextualising Hustler seems like a pertinent way to celebrate Black History Month.

Tulloch emigrated from Jamaica to join his family in Britain, arriving in Nottingham where he was mentored by author and activist Ray Gosling who was also friends with Cunliffe (which might explain why Hustler is in the archive). As a founder of the London Free School, contributor to alternative newspapers OZ and International Times (IT), teacher and initiator of black community work, Tulloch is also important because he connects the early British counterculture and Black Power movements. Sailing from Trinidad in 1953, Crichlow had some success with his band the Starlight Four using the profits to open the El Rio Café in Westbourne Park in the late 1950s. The nightspot attracted a lively mixed crowd which included Jimi Hendrix, author Colin MacInnes, the historian C L R James and the actor Diana Rigg and is probably most famous as the nightspot where Christine Keeler met her boyfriend ‘Lucky’ Gordon. Arriving from Trinidad in 1963 it was practically the first place a young Darcus Howe headed on reaching London, the club already being well-known in the Caribbean. Moving to the more upmarket Mangrove in 1968, Crichlow employed Howe and encouraged Tulloch to begin Hustler using the restaurant as its base.

Hustler is a mixture of local news and articles broadening the reader’s understanding of the worldwide Black Power movement within the historical perspective of the struggle against racism. There are reports of a police raid on the Belsize Club, community housing issues, an employment colour bar and racist violence in London and Wolverhampton. Alongside these are a review of a Black Power night at New York’s Fillmore East concert hall, the views of Black American poet and activist LeRoi Jones/ Amiri Baraka, the story of Jamaican slave Kitty Hilton, a preview of Michael X’s autobiography and a report on the leader of the National Socialist Party. Hustler also uses some aspects of the traditional press by including an astrological column, adverts for clothes and record shops, a crossword (albeit one with a Black Power theme) and the traditional sexist 1960s cartoon strip – Modesty Blaise with a voodoo slant. Interestingly the only contributor’s name appearing in this issue is that of Bruce Douglas-Mann, a white solicitor giving housing advice who would later become a Labour MP who often used his parliamentary platform to raise the plight of refugees. Later issues of Hustler (there’s a set in the George Padmore Institute – some visible online) include Darcus Howe’s by-line, writing under his actual name Radford.

In the US the Black Power movement grew out of civil rights activism whose figurehead Dr Martin Luther King Jr advocated peaceful civil disobedience to effect change across southern states and gain equal rights under the law. Originating in Oakland, California the radical US Black Panther Party was initially organised by Marxists Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in reaction to police brutality and as a means for black communities to organise their own autonomous welfare, education and security. Born in Trinidad and one of the original Freedom Riders who challenged bus segregation in the Deep South, Stokely Carmichael (who later took the African name Kwame Ture) was a significant figure within the Black Power movement and became the Honorary Prime Minister of the Panthers. When anti-psychiatrist R D Laing organised the Dialectics of Liberation conference at Camden’s Roundhouse it was Carmichael who flew to London to speak.

There had been attempts to politically organise within Britain’s African and Caribbean diaspora since the 1950s but it was Carmichael’s July 1967 Roundhouse speech which sparked them into action. An intellectual with the ability to deliver provocative, inspiring oratory he was feared by the British authorities, Special Branch warning Carmichael on his arrival not to outstay his welcome and he was banned from returning to the country after the conference by Home Secretary Roy Jenkins. Carmichael engaged with audiences of all backgrounds by using deeply considered logic and tonal changes to bring listeners closer at key points. The Nigerian born novelist, playwright and activist Obi B. Egbuna in his book Destroy This Temple: The Voice of Black Power in Britain (William Morrow & Co., 1971) describes the talk as the moment the movement coalesced while Howe (a childhood friend of Carmichael) was inspired to organise a fight-back against police racism and brutality in West London.

Although the political approach varied widely between different factions of the British Black Power movement, the overriding principle was that black people had the right to defend themselves, using force if necessary, and that they should challenge the idea that they were inferior to whites. In June 1967 Egbuna helped found and was elected the leader of the United Coloured People’s Association which, in response to Carmichael’s speech, expelled its white members and adopted the ideology of Black Power. After splits Egbuna established the British Black Panthers with the poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, activist Olive Morris and, according to some sources, Darcus Howe. However, research by the academics Robin Bunce and Paul Field claims that Howe formed his own group The Black Eagles after returning from the May 1968 Paris uprising, rather than joining the Panthers. The Eagles set out to ‘police the police’, members following patrols to ensure that no laws were broken and that black people were not harassed on the street. When two members were arrested and allegedly beaten up by officers Howe used Hustler and IT to report the events but the patrols ended soon after.

A few months after forming the Panthers Egbuna was charged with conspiring to incite the murder of police officers, Altheia Jones-LeCointe assuming the leadership. Bunce and Field’s research shows through archival evidence that Egbuna’s arrest was part of a concerted attempt by the authorities to halt the progress of the Black Power movement, Egbuna given a suspended sentence of three years. Originally from Trinidad, Jones-LeCointe was studying for a Biochemistry PhD at the University of London when she became active in feminist and Black Power politics. As a teacher she visited schools to talk about racism and recruited many new Panthers through public speaking engagements. Jones-LeCointe put women’s rights at the centre of the Black Power movement, challenging sexism within the organisation, educating members and putting in place measures against the exploitation or abuse of female recruits.

The other major figure in the British Black Power movement was Michael X. Michael de Freitas moved to the UK from Trinidad in 1957 and became an enforcer for notorious slum landlord Peter Rachman. Rachman sub-divided numerous Notting Hill properties and filled them with recent migrants from the West Indies who were often desperate for housing due to racist property owners (‘no blacks, no Irish, no dogs’ being a common sign in boarding-house windows at the time). Well-connected, he briefly had a record store on Ledbury Road with Scottish writer Alex Trocchi selling avant-garde jazz and, ridding himself of his slave name, Michael X became involved with various London countercultural groups including the London Free School with Tulloch. Under the name Abdul Malik, he founded the short-lived Racial Adjustment Action Society and a Black Power commune in Holloway Road but he was accused by other activists of violence and criminality and was shunned by many of those in the movement. Returning to the West Indies Malik was later found guilty of murder and hanged in 1975.

Subject to numerous raids ostensibly to search for drugs (although none were found), the Mangrove was under almost continuous police surveillance. Crichlow believed that the harassment was because the authorities didn’t like to see a successful black businessman with a white spouse who supported the Black Power movement, officers focusing their ire on the Mangrove in response. In protest at law enforcement behaviour, activists organised a march to the local police station during which fights broke out and several demonstrators (including Howe, Crichlow and Panthers Jones-LeCointe and Barbara Beese) were arrested and charged with incitement to riot.

Although he didn’t qualify, Howe had trained as a barrister and he attended and closely studied Egbuna’s trial in which he elected for a traditional defence with a white legal team. Howe’s demand that the ‘Mangrove 9’ be tried by a jury of their peers (i.e. an all-black jury), based on similar moves by US Panthers and on rights set out in the Magna Carta, was refused by the judge. In turn Howe and Jones-LeCointe defended themselves, dismissing 63 jurors in a successful bid to have some black representation on the jury. In a trial lasting 55 days much of the defence focused on evidence of police racism and brutality towards the black community which resulted in all the defendants being cleared of the main charge. The case is significant because it was the first judicial acknowledgement of Metropolitan Police racism which gained national media coverage and inspired others to take on the establishment in order to challenge prejudice.

So although a short-lived community newspaper with a small circulation Hustler illustrates how members of the Windrush generation battled prejudice on their arrival in Britain and a key moment in a legal fight to gain recognition of the inherent racism within British institutions, a campaign which continues today. Howe, Crichlow and Tulloch all became significant figures in the black rights movement: Howe, a combative media commentator who highlighted and fought against racism, became the editor of Race Today, a magazine representing British black politics. Chairman of the Notting Hill Carnival, Howe organised a large demonstration protesting against the handling of the New Cross Fire investigation, a disaster in which 13 black teenagers died. Crichlow began the Mangrove Community Association in response to the trial, establishing a youth group and advice service and he was also an important part of the Carnival. Charged with drug offences in 1979 for which he was found not guilty and again in 1988 in a raid which effectively ended the Mangrove (and that again found no drugs), Crichlow successfully sued the Met in 1992 and was awarded damages of £50,000. Tulloch helped co-ordinate Defense – a black legal advice project – and the People’s Centre which connected activists with the community, becoming a lecturer on youth and community work at Goldsmiths College, the first black academic in that school.

Sources/Resources

WWW.ourmigrationstory.org.uk

The George Padmore Institute

Obi B. Egbuna: Destroy This Temple: The Voice of Black Power in Britain (William Morrow & Co., 1971)

Robin Bunce and Paul Field: Darcus Howe: A Political Biography (Bloomsbury, 2015)

Mangrove Nine documentary film:

The Guardian newspaper obituaries of Frank Crichlow, Darcus Howe and Courtney Tulloch

The French Revolution collection at the John Rylands Library contains an excellent range of printed material published in France between the start of the French Revolution of 1789 and the fall of the 1871 Paris Commune. There are particular strengths in newspapers and periodicals from the first revolutionary decade, and nineteenth-century histories and memoirs dealing with the various Revolutionary, Napoleonic and Restoration eras. Much of the collection was originally part of the enormous private library of the Earls of Crawford, the ‘Bibliotheca Lindesiana’. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the 26th Earl enthusiastically directed a series of large purchases at auction to build up the collection, which his son then transferred to the JRL during the first half of the twentieth century (in the form of a gift and a ‘semi-permanent’ loan). In the late 1980s, the loan collection, including most of the French Revolutionary manuscripts, was withdrawn by the Crawford family and is now available for study at the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. However, all the other items (forming the majority of the original collection) are still at the library, and this collection remains a rich resource for the study of France and her revolutionary traditions.

This new collection on Manchester Digital Collections originated in a project funded by the John Rylands Research Institute, directed by Professor Bertrand Taithe with research by Dr Alexander Fairfax-Cholmeley. You can find further results of the research project on the blog site Printed Revolutions: Writing, Printing and Reading Revolutions in France, 1789-1871.

The project focussed on a collection of over 10,000 proclamations and broadsides, now categorised as the European Proclamations and Broadsides Collection as they in fact span a period from c1530 to 1890 and cover much of the European continent. An inventory of the collection is available here. This document also contains more detail on the selection of items in this digital collection.

The  digitisation  project  was  built  around  the  identification  of  core  themes from within the relevant parts of EPAB, with the intention of creating a digital resource that brings together a broad range of interrelated sources for the benefit of researchers, students and the general public. While it is true that the resulting digital collection only covers a small percentage of the physical holdings, its great advantage is that it makes a diverse range of material readily accessible for comparative study. The result is  a  unique  resource,  both  in  terms  of  the  individual  items  available  and  the  range  of subjects they cover.

The earliest from the collection is a luxury copy of Louis XVI’s speech opening the 1789 Estates-General printed on silk. Its royal symbols were subsequently defaced – most likely after the King’s overthrow on 10 August 1792.

One striking image celebrates the revolutionary figure of the sans-culotte depicted as a field worker dressed in blue and red, sowing seed and holding a scythe. He stands on farmland in which crowned heads sit among the growing crops.

The collection covers the period from 1789 to 1815 with three supplementary items from 1848 including this coloured broadside from Metz reporting key events from the February Revolution in Paris.

Special thanks to Dr Alexander Fairfax-Cholmeley for his work on the original project

In November 1969 the touring Springboks rugby union team visited Manchester inspiring two very different but interconnected anti-racism protests which this blog celebrates as part of Black History Month. One involved the mobilisation of thousands of activists by the Anti-Apartheid Movement protesting against the racist policies of the South African government and the other was a demonstration by six members of a Black Power group reminding the British people that racism exists much closer to home.

In 1969 the University of Manchester Library Secretary Mark Cowling instigated an initiative gathering posters, flyers and newsletters handed out on campus. Hundreds of documents were collected over the next seven years forming the Student Ephemera Collection held at the ARC (University Archives and Records Centre). A veritable treasure trove, it contains dozens of adverts for music concerts, theatre performances and film showings, hundreds of student social group flyers and numerous political notices. It contains information about a UMIST Black Power meeting and the Manchester leg of the ‘Stop the Tour’ campaign, an attempt to prevent the South African rugby and cricket tours of 1969/70 in order to highlight the racist policies of the country’s government. This short blog uses material from the archive to show how Manchester students and locals united to mount a large-scale protest against racism in a country thousands of miles away while recognising the significance of a small but powerful demonstration highlighting endemic racism in the city’s institutions.

In 1948 the South African National Party came to power and introduced a policy of racial segregation labelled ‘apartheid’ (Afrikans for apartness) which ensured that the white minority had power over the majority black population. Discriminatory laws ended any democratic say for black people and meant that races were graded according to their colour – white being first, then Asian, what they described as ‘coloured’ next and then black Africans last. This racial stratification enforced by a right-wing militarised police state meant that relationships between people of different races became illegal and that many facilities and public places became ‘whites only’. Despite widespread condemnation of apartheid, criticism through the United Nations, economic sanctions from many countries and a growing internal opposition movement the South African government maintained the policy over the next few decades.

In the 1950s the African National Congress, South African Communist Party and the Pan-Africanist Congress organised demonstrations and largely peaceful acts of non-cooperation against apartheid. The brutality of the police in closing down the protests and, in particular, the Sharpeville massacre when officers opened fire on unarmed demonstrators, killing 69 people, radicalised opposition tactics – the ANC and PAC forming armed wings in response. By the 1960s, an era when the world generally became more liberal and racism was condemned by most governments, the political situation in the Cape became a global cause picked-up by an increasing number of campaigners. In South Africa sport and in particular rugby and cricket were extremely popular with the white population who saw Afrikaners’ sporting ability as evidence of racial dominance (much as the Nazis had in Germany). The opportunity to test their prowess against other nations on the field of play was thus very important to white South Africans and activists thought that preventing these matches might make the government re-consider apartheid where sanctions and global censure seemed to make little difference.

A number of South Africans who found apartheid intolerable migrated to Britain while others were exiled to the UK, forced out by threats of imprisonment, violence and torture from state security forces. In combination with British allies (of all political hues) the Anti-Apartheid Movement formed, initially asking people to boycott South African goods in the hope of putting pressure on its government to change course. Campaigners uniting with those in Africa and Asia forced South Africa out of the Commonwealth in 1961 and in the following year the United Nations passed a resolution advocating trade sanctions and an arms embargo against the country (although the US and British governments refused to take part). The AAM hoped that the 1964 election of the Harold Wilson Labour administration would bring about sanctions but Wilson refused on the grounds that they would hit South Africa’s poorest black population the hardest. British university lecturers supported an academic boycott when banning orders were issued against two progressive professors who spoke out against apartheid in South Africa.

All South African sport was segregated by race and when the AAM presented evidence of racism to the International Olympic Committee it suspended the country from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and a team from the Cape would not compete again at the games until 1992. However the colonial ties, particularly with the predominantly white countries of Britain, Australia and New Zealand, at that time the major powers within cricket and rugby, meant that tours by and to those nations continued despite increasing protests through the 1960s. The scheduled 1968/69 cricket tour of the Cape, when England initially omitted the mixed race Basil D’Oliveira from the side under pressure from SA prime minister B J Vorster, led to much anger. When D’Oliveira was re-instated to the squad due to another player’s injury, Vorster accused the selectors of bowing to political pressure and the tour was cancelled. In 1969/70 rugby and cricket tours of the UK were planned amidst mounting protests from the AAM to cancel, Peter Hain and Gordon Brown amongst those threatening action by demonstrators if the visits went ahead.

The ‘Stop the 70 Tour’ campaign led to protests when the Springboks arrived in late-1969, pitch invasions taking place at several venues where only a large police presence enabled the matches to be completed. On the 26^th of November the South Africans were scheduled to play a Combined North West Counties rugby union team at the White City Stadium in Manchester, a greyhound and speedway track in Old Trafford. It is the planning for this demonstration and complaints about police action at the event which make up a large part of the early material in the Student Ephemera Collection. The archive illustrates that the protests were supported by virtually all the different student groups across the political spectrum – alongside the more obvious leftist factions (Communist, Trotskyist, Socialist etc.) members of the Liberal students, Catholic Society and the University of Manchester Conservative Society all publicised the demonstration.

On the day before the match the Very Reverend Alfred Jowett, Dean of Manchester Cathedral, took a service to ask for racial harmony amidst rising tension; violence had flared at a tour match in Swansea when stewards physically attacked demonstrators trying to invade the pitch. When the service began three men and three women wearing traditional Black Panther uniform (berets, leather jackets and shades) marched into the cathedral and much to the surprise of the congregation gave the raised arm salute and chanted: “Power to the people. Power to the Black People.” One then read out a message from the Universal Coloured People’s Association demanding decent housing and a better environment, an end to racist education and unemployment for Black people in Manchester. They commended and supported the anti-apartheid protest planned for the following day: “But we recognise that the same international power structure oppresses the black people in this country too. Therefore our protest is directed not only against racialism in South Africa, but racialism in Britain, and specifically in Manchester.” Although not widely covered in the media the next day’s Guardian carried a detailed report (from which these quotes are taken) alongside a photograph of the six Black Power activists stood with arms raised in salute next to the Dean in the pulpit.

Judging by some of the archived material the intention of the students was to hold a good natured, peaceful protest – amongst items collected is a lyric sheet satirising bawdy rugby songs for demonstrators to sing at the match and a large A3 size ‘Piss Off Springboks’ poster which was presumably displayed in the windows of student houses and halls of residence. Estimates of protest numbers range around 7-8,000 people including a large contingent of Liverpool students alongside those from Manchester. There seems to have been an element of naivety about what the demonstration would entail. Accounts from a 2019 Witness Seminar held at the Working Class Movement Library recalls how more hardened activists who had experienced policing at the anti-Vietnam War Grosvenor Square demonstration the year before were expecting trouble and had prepared for that eventuality. They had a detailed plan of what those protestors who entered the stadium would do in various eventualities and had allocated a group of tough union men as a frontline against police snatch squads to try to prevent demonstrators from getting hurt. The snatch squad included members of the police rugby team and an account from a UMIST rugby player at the demonstration recalls how physical the confrontations became. He also remembers playing the police in a match not long after when members of each side recognised each other and scores were settled in the scrum.

A large law enforcement presence outside White City prevented attempts to blockade the stadium where a big crowd of 50,000 spectators gathered. Police horses were used against protestors on the streets of Trafford with many resulting injuries while the trend for slip-on shoes was used by officers, the pavements lined with dozens of pairs removed during searches and arrests. A two page document in the Student Ephemera Collection lists (mostly minor) injuries suffered by activists alongside numerous arrests of those merely making their way towards the stadium and who were mostly released without charge after the match – leading to accusations that their human rights were violated. The demonstration attracted widespread media coverage which inevitably focused on clashes between the police and protestors. Despite failing to prevent the match the amount of publicity generated by the Stop the Tour campaign ensured that the South African cricket tests planned for the following summer were cancelled and that none would follow until the end of apartheid. The Springboks would go on to visit New Zealand (amidst even bigger and more violent protests) but the AMM was largely successful in its aim of isolating South African sport (despite a few rebel cricket tours).

Once the sporting boycott had been achieved the AMM continued to lobby for economic sanctions. Material later in the archive shows how students protested against the university’s South African investments as part of that campaign and the fight to end apartheid remained a political focus until it was eventually dismantled in the 1990s. The British Black Power movement was relatively short-lived, largely dying out in the early 1970s.  It did though begin the slow process of highlighting that many of society’s institutions need to recognise racism and that radical change is necessary in order to end that discrimination – still very much an ongoing fight, of course. In the immediate aftermath of the match the different student groups returned to arguing with each other (the Conservative Society blaming the left for violence during the demo), but the Student Ephemera Collection shows that November 1969 was a moment when Manchester united against racism, sending a positive message which still reverberates today.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to historian Geoff Brown (currently researching a history of British anti-fascism from below) and to Evan Smith (author of No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech published by Routledge) for their assistance with this blog. Thanks also to University of Manchester archivist Lianne Smith for her helpful feedback.

Sources/Resources

Anti-Apartheid Archives:

https://www.aamarchives.org

The Guardian: Black Power group interrupts service 26^th November 1969 – article written by Baden Hickman with photograph by Bob Smithies

Not Just Peterloo: Remembering the Anti-Apartheid Protest Against the Springboks, Manchester, 26^th November 1969. Witness seminar 3^rd October 2019 held at the Working Class Movement Library, Salford. Published as a chapter within Socialist History Journal 15/11/2019 PP 46-65.

The Student Ephemera Collection is held at the University of Manchester Main Library Archives and Records Centre

Learie Nicholas Constantine (1901–1971) was a West Indian cricketer, lawyer, politician and the UK’s first black peer. In 1944 Constantine took legal action against a London hotel that refused him access due to the colour of his skin. It was a landmark case and a key step towards the creation of the Race Relations Act of 1965. Constantine made history as both a sporting hero and a campaigner for racial equality. This Black History Month blog takes a look at his sporting and political life, drawing inspiration from materials held at the University of Manchester Special Collections including the Brockbank Cricket Collection.

The grandson of slaves, Learie Constantine was born in Diego Martin, Trinidad in 1901. His father was a foreman on a sugar plantation and a member of the West Indies cricket team. Learie’s childhood was immersed in the game. At the age of 22 he was asked to join the West Indian side to tour England. He made a fantastic impression and he showed remarkable aptitude as both bowler and batsman. In 1928 he became the first West Indian to perform the ‘double’ of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in a season. After such a performance he was hot property. By 1929 he was engaged by Nelson, a Lancashire club, and continued as a League professional until 1948.

Life in the close-knit community of a Lancashire cotton town must have been difficult for the Constantine family, particularly for Learie’s wife Norma. Everyone recognised her as the black cricketer’s wife and, during their early years in Nelson, she was stared at whenever she went shopping. When the Constantine’s were home, children from the local school would jump up at the windows to peep at them. Learie felt that curiosity was the major factor in how they were treated and that rudeness was a cloak for ignorance. Nevertheless, by the end of their first summer in Lancashire, Learie was ready to return to the West Indies and it was his wife Norma who persuaded him to stay and make a home there. After a shaky start they lived in Nelson in the same house, Number 3 Meredith Street, for over 20 years, making life-long friends and becoming part of the community.

Learie was ambitious and, while still a professional cricketer, he began to study the law by correspondence course and, in 1939, was taken into the family solicitor’s office of Alec Birtwell, a fellow Nelson cricketer. Had the war not intervened he would have become articled to this firm and started his new career in the law. Instead he would serve as a Welfare Officer for the Ministry of Labour, based in Liverpool, helping Jamaican technicians find accommodation and mediating work disputes and any racial problems that might flare up as they settled into their new home.

During the Second World War large numbers of servicemen and women from across the Commonwealth travelled thousands of miles to Britain to help the war effort. These included RAF pilots from the Caribbean, lumberjacks from Honduras working in terrible, bleak conditions in Scottish forests, and Jamaican technicians who worked in munition factories in and around Merseyside. These new arrivals would need support. Learie Constantine’s long experience of living in England, and his understanding of the prejudices and difficulties that these Commonwealth citizens would face, made him an ideal candidate for this role.

‘West Indies Calling’ was commissioned by the Ministry of Information and the film aired in 1944. It featured a group of West Indians, led by Una Marson and Learie Constantine, at Broadcasting House in London describing how people from the Caribbean were supporting the war effort. The film introduced some of these war workers including Ulric Cross, an RAF Bomber from Trinidad. As the opening words demonstrate, the film celebrated diversity and cooperation across nations.

The film stresses racial harmony as people from across the world came together to fight fascism. The truth was less simple. Commonwealth men and women faced discrimination and prejudice and this worsened as America joined the war in December 1941. The arrival of 3 million American servicemen imported into Britain racial practices widespread in the American South. The Southern States had ‘Jim Crow’ laws which enforced racial segregation. Around 130,000 African-Americans crossed the Atlantic with their white country men — these servicemen were segregated and subjected to the same discrimination they experienced at home.

Under pressure from American military officials some British pubs and hotels began introducing ‘colour bars’ in which black customers were refused admission. It was in this context that Learie Constantine and his family found their four-night room booking at the Imperial Hotel, London, would not be honoured. In late July 1943 Constantine was in London to play a charity cricket match at Lord’s. He had been told by the hotel, at the time of booking, that his colour would not be an issue. But on arrival he was told that he, his wife and their daughter could only stay for one night as their presence would offend the white American servicemen who were also staying there.

Arnold Watson, a colleague from the Ministry of Labour, tried to intervene, stressing that Constantine was a British subject and that he worked for the government. But to no avail. The manager at the Imperial Hotel refused to budge and the family found another hotel. The experience deeply affected Constantine because his family were involved and because he was revolted that he could be lauded as world-class cricketer and yet still be demeaned as a man. How could it be right that a cricketer who would shortly represent the British Empire and Commonwealth at Lord’s be subject to such degrading treatment? There was an outpouring of sympathy for Constantine including a cartoon by David Lowe which attacked the Imperial Hotel for making a mockery of the Commonwealth vision of a ‘family of free and equal peoples’.

In September 1943 Learie’s case was raised in Parliament and by this point he had decided to take legal action. Although there was no law against racial discrimination in Britain at the time, Constantine argued that the hotel had breached its contract with him. After a two day hearing the judge, after praising the way Constantine had handled the situation, found in Constantine’s favour. The court case was widely reported in the newspapers and Learie was supported by the general public and the government. It was the first court case to bring racial discrimination to wider attention and it established a precedent that black people could bring legal cases to challenge racism. The Imperial Hotel case is widely seen as a key milestone along the path to the Race Relations Act of 1965.

Learie Constantine continued to campaign for racial equality and did much to counter prejudice and improve community relations. In 1954 he wrote ‘Colour Bar,’ an important book which discussed his own experiences of racism and the state of race relations in Britain before tracing worldwide racial oppression. Learie would be knighted in June 1962 and he was given the freedom of the town of Nelson around this time too. His connections with that modest Lancashire town were cemented further when, in 1969, Learie Constantine was made the UK’s first black peer taking the title ‘Baron Constantine, of Maraval in Trinidad and of Nelson in the County Palatine of Lancaster’.

Further information

All the books in the Brockbank Cricket Collection can be found in in Library Search. For extensive collections on race relations please visit the website of the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre at The University of Manchester. This library and archive tells the story of race, diversity and multiculturalism in Manchester, the UK and America. It incorporates oral histories, local studies and archives focusing on local Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) community history, as well as significant national collections, such as papers of the Commission for Racial Equality and the Institute of Race Relations.

Information for this blog was drawn from Gerald Howat’s book Learie Constantine (1975) and Learie Constantine’s book Colour Bar (1954). For more details on Learie Constantine’s war work and the many nationalities that fought with the Allied forces in the war, see Wendy Webster Mixing It: Diversity in World War Two Britain (2018).

By Annie Dickinson, Visitor Engagement Assistant

The 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre last August saw commemorative events held across Manchester, including an exhibition here at the Rylands. As well as remembering the eighteen people that lost their lives in the massacre, these events celebrated those that fought for democracy and freedom from poverty during the early nineteenth century. These kinds of histories often tend to focus on the struggles of the white working class, but that is not to say that black involvement in working-class movements did not exist.

The case of Robert Wedderburn, a black activist, abolitionist, and Unitarian preacher, who for thirty years was at the heart of London’s working-class radical community, demonstrates that nineteenth-century working-class movements were in fact multicultural. Though not present at Peterloo himself, having been in prison at the time, in the weeks that followed Wedderburn condemned the actions of the magistrates and yeomanry as murder. His story shows that there was common ground between those fighting for the rights of impoverished workers in Britain and those fighting for the liberty of enslaved peoples in the West Indies. For Wedderburn, these causes were two sides of the same coin.

Born in Jamaica to an enslaved West African mother and a Scottish slave owner father, Wedderburn – who had been freed by his father aged two – left Jamaica at sixteen, serving in the Royal Navy before eventually settling in England during the 1770s. He found work as a tailor and, despite the desperate poverty in which he lived, was able to educate himself, rising to become one of the country’s leading radicals. In 1819 Wedderburn opened his own Unitarian chapel in a converted hayloft in Soho, from which he organised debates and meetings, advertised as “lectures every Sabbath day on Theology, Morality, Natural Philosophy and Politics by a self-taught West Indian”.

The most prolific black writer in Britain during the early nineteenth century, Wedderburn published numerous books, pamphlets and polemics. He used the cruelty he had witnessed as a child – seeing both his mother and grandmother flogged by white men, for example – to create powerful personal testimonies in the fight against slavery. Yet he also spoke and wrote on diverse topics including the need for religious tolerance, the Church’s complicity in slavery, and communistic principles such as common ownership of land.

Wedderburn’s radicalism went further than that of both reformers like Henry Hunt and Robert Owen, and abolitionists like William Wilberforce. He proposed that simultaneous revolution in Britain and the West Indies was the only way to put an end to the twin horrors of poverty and slavery. At a meeting at his chapel on 9 August 1819, only a week before Peterloo, Wedderburn raised the question, “Has a slave an inherent right to slay his Master, who refuses him his liberty?” The gathered crowd voted overwhelmingly in favour. Yet this question could apply to the working class in Britain as much as to West Indian slaves; for Wedderburn, the slave owner and the mill owner were equally tyrannical oppressors.

Inevitably, Wedderburn attracted the attention of the authorities, and in February 1820 he was tried and convicted for blasphemy and sedition. Amongst other things, this so-called blasphemy included pointing out inconsistencies within the Bible and describing Jesus Christ as “a genuine radical reformer”, who stood up for the poor and oppressed. Wedderburn had the record of his trial published, and a copy survives in the Rylands Special Collections.

Unable to afford a lawyer, Wedderburn gave his own defence, which is recorded verbatim in the published Trial. Rather than denying that which he is accused of, he instead presents an eloquent and persuasive argument for religious tolerance and freedom of opinion. He even refers to “a conspiracy against the poor, to keep them in ignorance and superstition”, citing the hypocrisy of a situation in which the rich and well educated are able to read contemporary philosophy that points out Biblical inconsistencies and voices doubt, yet for him to do the same thing for poor and uneducated people is considered a crime. Wedderburn ends his defence with the powerful statement that if found guilty he will be “happier in the dungeon to which you may consign me, than my persecutors, on their beds of down”.

“I shall be far happier in the dungeon to which you may consign me, than my persecutors, on their beds of down.”

Robert Wedderburn, ‘Trial for Blasphemy’

The published Trial document situates Wedderburn within the network of radicals and revolutionary thinkers associated with the Peterloo Massacre. The volume was edited by George Cannon (under the pseudonym “Erasmus Perkins”), and sold by a “Mrs Carlile”. George Cannon also edited a radical periodical associated with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose “Masque of Anarchy” was written in the wake of Peterloo. “Mrs Carlile” is Jane Carlile, the wife of Richard Carlile, who had been due to speak at the Peterloo meeting, and was imprisoned for publishing an eyewitness account of the massacre, condemned by the authorities as anti-government material. The Rylands copy of Wedderburn’s Trial is bound in the same volume as “The Political House that Jack Built”, a popular satire by William Hone and the caricaturist George Cruikshank, which condemns the corruption and authoritarianism of the British political elite.

Despite the judge’s acknowledgement that Wedderburn’s defence was “exceedingly well drawn up”, Wedderburn was, predictably, found guilty, and sentenced to two years in prison, leaving his wife and six children unprovided for. This is typical of a life in which Wedderburn often found himself at the mercy of the political establishment due to his progressive and unorthodox views, as well as his race.

By Angel Cossigny, Visitor Engagement Assistant

Frederick Douglass: a brave, courageous, tenacious and powerful man used his skills as an orator, author, publisher and lecturer to uphold his values. He was part of the abolitionist movement and the suffragists. His talents led him to become a trusted adviser to Abraham Lincoln, U.S Marshal, Recorder of Deeds.

Frederick was born into a life of enslavement in Maryland in 1818, suffering much cruelty and torture during his young life. One of his enslaver’s wives, Sophia Auld, taught him the alphabet before her husband banned her from continuing. Some people considered it ‘unlawful’ to teach enslaved people how to read. Frederick worked hard to learn how to read. Going hungry, he gave neighbourhood boys his food in exchange for them helping him to read and write. When he was around 12 or 13 years old, Douglass managed to buy The Columbian Orator, which was a popular schoolbook during that time. It ‘helped him to gain an understanding and appreciation of the power of the spoken and written word, as two of the most effective means by which to bring about permanent, positive change.’[1]

In early September 1838, he succeeded in his second escape attempt. (His first attempt led to recapture after his enslavers became suspicious and they were betrayed. N.B Any enslaved person could be tortured to find out if they knew anything of an escape plan.) He borrowed a freedman’s protection certificate from a friend and wore a sailor disguise sewn by his first wife, Anna Murray. Anna helped to fund his escape and later joined him in the north where they raised a family. Murray was an abolitionist and a member of the Underground Railway, whose story is inspiring in its own right.

Frederick began attending abolitionist meetings when he could, despite the dangerous repercussions, such as recapture. Douglass stood up when asked to speak at the first Anti-Slavery Convention in Nantucket. He is remembered for the powerful, emotive delivery of his speeches. In fact, after his first speech he got a job as full-time lecturer for William Lloyd Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society. Garrison was the speaker who followed Douglass’s speech that day and they would soon become friends.

Douglass travelled to Great Britain, touring the country giving speeches helping the abolitionist cause. He filled venues with people eager to hear him speak. After 21 months he decided to return to the United States to continue to fight for the people still enslaved. He knew he could face recapture and that there would be greater risk to his life, but he felt he could do more good there. Abolitionist friends helped raise funds so that he could start up a printing press on his return. He set to work tenaciously building up an anti-slavery newspaper called The North Star, in Rochester, New York. It was named after directions given to people running away from slavery to reach the northern states or Canada: ‘Follow the North Star’. Despite much opposition to his decision to create The North Star, Douglass is said to have responded, ‘I still see before me a life of toil and trials…, but, justice must be done, the truth must be told…I will not be silent.’[2]

Douglass wrote three autobiographies and a short story called ‘The Heroic Slave’. His first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, was published in 1845 and was a treatise on abolition. Below is a quote from his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855):

It is not without a feeling of pride, dear reader that I present you with this book. The son of a self-emancipated bond-woman, I feel joy in introducing to you my brother, who has rent his own bonds, and who, in his every relation—as a public man, as a husband and as a father—is such as does honor to the land which gave him birth. I shall place this book in the hands of the only child spared me, bidding him to strive and emulate its noble example. You may do likewise.

My Bondage And My Freedom, by Frederick Douglass

In his third autobiography, The Life & Times of Frederick Douglass, written nearly 20 years after the emancipation of enslaved people, he was able to give a more detailed account of his life during enslavement and his escape from slavery. His previous autobiographies were less detailed to protect himself and his family from any violent backlash.

One of the people he helped was Henry Box Brown, who posted himself to Philadelphia. In the image below we see Douglass holding a crowbar as Henry Box Brown climbs out of a wooden delivery crate. He and his wife Anna housed people escaping slavery as part of the Underground Railroad Movement.

‘The Heroic Slave’ story was included in a collection titled Autographs for Freedom, compiled by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Frederick was inspired by the story of Madison Washington, an enslaved cook on the ship Creole. In November 1841, Washington led a rebellion on board with 19 enslaved people. They successfully took control of the ship, which was on its way from Virginia to New Orleans, and ordered it sailed to Nassau in the Bahamas. The Bahamas was a British colony and only two years earlier Britain had abolished slavery. 135 people from the Creole gained their freedom and it was the largest and most successful rebellion of enslaved people in the history of United States.

Frederick also fought for women’s rights and was a suffragist. Following the death of Anna Murray, he met his second wife, Helen Pitts, a fellow suffragist and abolitionist. He attended the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. In a speech delivered on 15 November 1867, Douglass said: ‘Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex.’[3]

Frederick Douglass continued to fight for human rights until his death in 1895.

[1] FrederickDouglass.org

[2] Frederick Douglass, William S. McFeely Biography

[3] Frederick Douglass, Women’s Rights Convention 1867

Today’s post is by Caroline Hall and Ruqaiyah Naqshbandi from the Visitor Engagement Team. They are both avid readers, great Googlers and (we hope) okay writers.  

Over the past few weeks this blog has shared stories from our collection that celebrate achievements of people of African and Caribbean heritage. As Black History Month comes to a close, we want to do more than mark Black History for a month and then forget until next year. As co-authors of this blog, we’re sharing books we discovered by Black writers while trying to educate ourselves and broaden our knowledge. From literary trailblazers to award-winning writers we’ve got eight amazing writers to share with you. We hope that you are inspired to read at least one of our suggestions and come along on this journey with us. 

Let’s start our recommendations with two writers published by Carcanet. The Library holds the physical and digital archives of Carcanet Press, an independent poetry publisher based here in Manchester. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, we were unable to open our exhibition celebrating 50 years of Carcanet but we’re pleased to share some items from the Carcanet Archive with you here.  

Lorna Goodison

Lorna Goodison is a Jamaican born poet who taught art before starting her career as a writer. Initially she kept her writing a secret and published her poetry anonymously in the local newspaper. In an interview with the Guardian, she said, “I’m a poet, but I didn’t choose poetry—it chose me … it’s a dominating, intrusive tyrant. It’s something I have to do—a wicked force.” She has received critical acclaim and in 2017, she was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica. Her writing is full of rich imagery that draws on her family and life in Jamaica. 

Her poem ‘I Am Becoming My Mother’ resonated with us. We are certain that every woman has uttered this phrase at one point in her life. The repeated line of ‘fingers smelling always of onions’ reminds us of our own way of passing on memories, stories and love.  

Fred D’ Aguiar

Fred D’ Aguiar is a Guyanese-British poet, author and playwright. His writing reflects the multitude of identities and cultures he experienced moving between Britain and Guyana and then around the US, saying “home is always elsewhere”. A sense of dislocation runs through his writing, in particular the complex legacy of slavery and colonialism. We’ve selected ‘Excise’ from The Rose of Toulouse. The opening line reflects themes of transformation and evolution in the poem. 

Below are more Black writers that you will find either in our Special Collections, in the University of Manchester Main Library or in your local bookshop. 

Jessie Redmond Fauset

Editor, poet, essayist, novelist and educator, Jessie Redmond Fauset’s work was at the forefront of African-American literature in the 1920s. Her work pushed boundaries by depicting the true life of Black people and the discrimination they faced. As an editor, she encouraged Black writers to include their experiences and culture into their work.  

We’d never heard of Jessie before researching this blog. We recommend her books Comedy, American Style, Plum Bun and The Chinaberry Tree.  

Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas is one of France’s most famous authors and playwrights. His tales of adventure in The Three Musketeers and the story of revenge in The Count of Monte Cristo have been translated into over 100 languages and made into over 200 films. His father was the son of a French nobleman and enslaved woman of African descent and Dumas’s experience as a mixed-race man influenced his writing. His life was turbulent with money issues and a party lifestyle causing him to move around Europe to avoid creditors.   

Get swept away by one of Dumas’s plays, novels or works of non-fiction.  

George Lamming

George Lamming is a critically acclaimed author, writer and professor. His debut novel, In the Castle of My Skin, is an autobiographical account of life in 1930s and 1940s Barbados. Touching on subjects of race, colonialism and migration, the book was well received and today Lamming is celebrated for his importance within Caribbean literature. 

Pick up a copy of In the Castle of My Skin and let Lamming’s words guide you. 

Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley was the first African-American author to publish a book of poetry. Born in West Africa in 1753, she was captured and sold into slavery. Unusually, she was taught to read and write by the family who enslaved her and wrote her first poem at the age of thirteen. Wheatley came to Britain in 1773 to publish an anthology of work, as American publishing houses had refused her writing. The same year her book Poems on Various Subjects was published and received widespread acclaim. Abolitionists used Wheatley’s poetry as evidence of the intellectual abilities of enslaved people. Extracts of her poems ‘Hymn to the Evening’ and ‘Thoughts on Imagination’ were included in The Bow in the Cloud, an anthology intended as literary emancipation propaganda. 

Bernardine Evaristo

Bernardine Evaristo is the first Black woman to win the Booker Prize. She is an advocate for diversity in publishing and is working to make it more inclusive. Her book Girl, Woman, Other is a contemporary look into the lives of women from a diverse range of backgrounds. She tackles relationships, sexuality and gender identity as well as politics and class.  

Read Girl, Woman and Other or check out her interviews, which are powerful and compelling. 

Octavia E. Butler

As avid fans of fantasy and science fiction novels, we wanted to include Octavia E. Butler. The sci-fi genre is often overlooked but Butler’s work has received many accolades. When asked why she chose science fiction she said, “There are no closed doors, no walls… you can look at, examine, play with anything.’’ In her novels, she delves into feminist, race and climate change issues, writing about people and the different ways of being human. 

Her book Kindred focuses on time travelling, something Caroline (the co-author of this blog) loves. It tells the story of an aspiring black writer from 1970s L.A. who is transported back in time to a 19th-century plantation to save a young boy’s life. Each time she is transported back and saves his life, she experiences part of the horrors of enslavement. Caroline loved the book so much she recommended it to friends, including Ruqaiyah (the co-author of this blog) who is patiently waiting for her copy to arrive in the post. 

If you want to explore more sci-fi stories ‘The Manchester Review’, published by the University of Manchester Centre for New Writing, presents works of African Speculative Fiction in a recent edition: http://www.themanchesterreview.co.uk/?p=8001 

This is a personal recommendation list from both of us. There are so many writers of African and Caribbean heritage that we haven’t included because we didn’t want this blog to be too long. A few more recommendations are Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Zora Neale Hurston, Andrea Levy and Nikki Giovanni.  

 We hope you are inspired to try reading a new genre or discover a new author. We would love you to tell us who you will read from the list. Or do you have any recommendations we should read to continue our journey? 

As a Visitor Engagement Assistant at the John Rylands Library, one of the most important and enjoyable parts of my role is welcoming visitors into the Library and engaging them in conversations about the building. The Library was created by Enriqueta Rylands as a gift to the city of Manchester, and we are lucky enough to receive a large number of visitors every year, from both the local area and further afield. Yet while we strive to be as welcoming as possible, recent events have inspired me to reflect on the inclusivity of the John Rylands Library as a physical space.  

The psychological term “threshold fear” has been applied to museums and other cultural spaces to describe the anxiety felt by potential visitors which can become a barrier that prevents them from enjoying, or even entering the space. This anxiety can be produced by physical barriers such as a lack of disabled access, but also by more subtle factors, such as the design of the architecture and what it means to the individual. Somebody who has grown up going to museums and heritage sites, for example, will automatically feel more welcome and more comfortable in those spaces than somebody to whom they are unfamiliar. The three most underrepresented groups amongst visitors to museums and galleries are people of colour, disabled people, and people from less affluent backgrounds; these are the groups most likely to be affected by threshold fear.

The architecture of the historic section of the Rylands building, and the grandeur and wealth of the Historic Reading Room in particular, has the potential to produce threshold fear, especially amongst visitors from the marginalised groups mentioned. As an organisation that prides itself on its accessibility, we need to acknowledge that our spaces are not as neutral as we might think, and that some people will feel more comfortable and at home in those spaces than others.

The toppling of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston by Black Lives Matter protestors in Bristol this June demonstrated that, like spaces, statues – the visual representations of the stories that a society chooses to celebrate and commemorate – are never neutral, but powerful and political symbols. The Library’s Historic Reading Room is full of statues: figures from throughout the history of Western knowledge are positioned above each study alcove, and are also depicted in the stained-glass windows at either end of the room. Philosophers, writers, painters, scientists, theologians and printers are all represented in the space. Yet bar one (a statue of the Library’s founder Enriqueta Rylands), all of the figures portrayed are white men. This lack of diversity risks adding to the threshold fear that visitors to the Rylands from marginalised groups might experience.

To be clear, I don’t mean to suggest that the statues in the Historic Reading Room, which include William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and Johannes Gutenberg, amongst many others, do not deserve to be there. The individuals depicted were chosen by Enriqueta Rylands with assistance from the Baptist minister Samuel Gosnell Green, who in a letter stated that the statues represent ‘distinct phases and eras in the history of human thought’.

Given that the Library opened in the late Victorian period, the fact that Enriqueta’s choices were entirely white and male is not surprising; they reveal a lot about the nineteenth century Western canon in a period that subscribed to the notion that history is driven by the impact of a few ‘Great Men’. They also tell us about Enriqueta’s own values and priorities (the high number of Protestant theologians included speaks to her nonconformist faith, for example) and her desire to provide Manchester with a library to rival the university libraries of Oxford and Cambridge. The fact that Enriqueta herself was of Cuban heritage, born to a family of plantation owners, adds a complex further dimension to this story which has been discussed in detail in other blogs in this series.

It would be wrong to simply dismiss the statues and stained-glass figures as being of their time, however. Their presence is not neutral or invisible, but constructs the John Rylands Library as a white, male, privileged space.  In order to be as inclusive as we can be, it is vital that as an organisation and as individuals we recognise this, and consider what it means for our visitors. We should acknowledge that there are visitors that might be excluded by the Library’s spaces: made to feel anxious or unrepresented, as a result of the white male bias within the Library.

One way in which we might begin to negotiate this bias is by thinking carefully about the stories that we tell about the building, and trying to diversify those stories. Rather than focusing only on John and Enriqueta Rylands, on the architect Basil Champneys, and on the men depicted in the statues and stained-glass, are there untold and forgotten stories that could be uncovered? Who were the working-class craftsmen, stonemasons and engineers that actually built the Library, for example, and what are their stories? Who were the original users of the space? Who occupied the space before the Library was built? It seems clear to me that we need to work harder to uncover these hidden stories.

Another question that we could consider is who are the historic individuals excluded by the ‘Great Men’ version of history on display in the Reading Room? Whose contributions to knowledge, culture, and the arts are ignored as a result of their gender, skin colour, sexuality, or social class, for example? If the Historic Reading Room was created today, which figures would we choose to include as statues, and what values, beliefs and prejudices would they reveal about us and our time? In the second part of this blog post I will share the Visitor Engagement Team’s ‘alternative Historic Reading Room’: people that we think deserve commemorating with a statue if the Reading Room were to be designed today.

From as far back as I can remember I’ve been obsessed with horror, monsters and halloween. I remember excitedly visiting the local VHS (yes I remember that far) rental shop and standing in front of the wall of giant boxes, with melted faces, severed hands, witches and demons on their covers. Of course the constant harassment of my mother did one day pay off, and she returned from work with a copy of Nightmare on Elm Street 2. I vividly remember loading into the player, and getting about 10 minutes through before I turned the TV off and couldn’t watch any more. Cowering under the covers watching Hellraiser late on Channel 4 with the volume way down, up until that hideous, deathly scream that still gives me the willies when I watch it today. The macabre has influenced and inspired me throughout my life and my taste in art, music, cinema and books.

I’ve been a photographer at The Rylands now for going on 14 years now. The really special thing I find about the role is getting to work with items from across the entire library collections. My job has changed greatly since I first began on very specific projects, and now I have the opportunity to work with some of the most fascinating material from across the entire library. 

But of course having such vast amounts of material there’s going to be some special items that pique my interest more than others. The collections continue to fascinate me in the same way horror enthralled me from childhood, even going so far as having tattoos inspired by manuscripts in the library.

When the opportunity arose to curate a collection for Manchester Digital Collections, I jumped at the chance to curate Magic, Monsters and Macabre, bringing together the more esoteric and peculiar items I’ve come across during my time at the Rylands. 

The Library holds some 250,000 printed volumes, and well over a million manuscripts and archival items that covers the breadth of human culture and language. Scattered throughout these collections are items that stand out as being unusual, unexpected and mysterious…..

ITALIAN MS 63

Italian MS 63 is a small, unassuming manuscript, from the 18th Century. It contains 54 images of what may be called ‘marvels’ or ‘monsters’. Other depictions range from people who appear to have a recognisable medical condition, such as Orazio Gonzales who famously suffered from Hypertrichosis, a condition that would lead to sufferers being dubbed ‘Wolf Man’. Other far more outlandish images include fantastic bodies merging human and animal characteristics, and monstrous animal births. 

GERMAN MS 3

German MS 3, ‘Sammlung Alchymistischer Schriften’ a wonderfully illustrated 18th Century collection of philosophical and alchemical writings. The manuscript has some incredible hand drawn illustrations, with strange beasts, some quite bizarre looking scenes and alchemical symbology throughout.

GENIZAH FRAGMENTS

The Genizah collection is where my journey at the Library first began. A genizah is basically is a storage area in a Jewish synagogue designated for the storage of worn-out Hebrew-language books and papers on religious topics prior to proper cemetery burial. It’s a vast collection, and only a small amount of material from the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Egypt. The material dates back through centuries and contains many fragments of mystical nature, including spells, incantations and amulets to ward off evil and offer protection.

DOPPLEGANGERS

This photograph album of ‘doppelgangers and spectres’ dates from the early 1900’s. The prints show examples of Victorian photographic trickery, and are quite clever in their undertaking.  I imagine people at the time would have obviously been quite shocked and enthralled with this type of image as photography was still in its infancy. 

TEETH CLAMP AND SHRAPNEL

As well as the many books and manuscripts, there are also lots of weird little items in the collections too. These two unassuming bits of metal could be over looked until you read the donation notes;

“Material relating to my father, who served with the West Yorkshire Regiment. He sustained shrapnel injuries and was hospitalised. Part of the shrapnel was removed (enclosed), but some was too near the brain and left. In time it shifted and affected his mental stability. He was eventually placed in a mental asylum in 1919, where he died in 1927. The clamped teeth were used on him while he was in hospital.”

I put this collection together as there wasn’t a resource that brought these incredible items together in one place. Most digital collections have a very specific academic interest, and with Magic, Monsters and Macabre, I hope to bring the collections to a new audience and inspire more people like I have been.

We are just scratching the surface of the bizarre and mysterious works that are held in the library, this collection will continue to grow, who knows what there is still left be unearthed with the library’s walls…..

Happy Halloween!

In 2011, I visited the National Archives in Washington DC and in the exhibition space, a copy of the Magna Carta was on display. The interpretation outlined the way in which it had influenced the United States Constitution, and the laws of the American colonies. For probably the first time, I was on the receiving end of viewing the history of my country from the perspective of another. Despite knowing that the Magna Carta had been acquired legitimately, a small voice in my head said ‘it’s not yours…give it back.’

I’m painfully aware that I cannot speak about the experience of the loss of items of enormous cultural significance to invasion or colonisation, or the prevailing equality issues within special collections and their finding aids with much personal experience. As curators, it is however our responsibility to educate ourselves, to listen to the views of the people who are affected by them, and to transform this knowledge into meaningful action. A part of this action is shaping the narrative we use to talk about records which document these issues without perpetuating the inequalities that they describe.

What are content warnings?

A content warning is, in itself, as simple as it sounds. A warning, placed at the front of a collection or catalogue to warn users that it contains sensitive content that they may find upsetting. They’re not a new concept, we have long accepted them for films, social media and exhibitions. In the world of Special Collections, much of the discussions on content warnings have focused upon their application to records which show evidence of oppression based on race and ethnicity.

Earlier this year, I wrote UoM Special Collections first content warning for the Bow in the Cloud manuscripts from the Rawson/Wilson Anti-Slavery Papers, which date from the early 19^th century. The manuscripts have been digitised, and are available online for the first time, reaching a far larger audience. When I examined the collection, I found evidence of racial discrimination in both the language used and the views expressed. This is what I produced:

Bow in the Cloud content warning

‘As a historical resource, this collection reflects the racial prejudices of the era in which it was created, and some items include language and imagery which is offensive, oppressive and may cause upset. The use of this language is not condoned by The University of Manchester, but we are committed to providing access to this material as evidence of the inequalities and attitudes of the time period.’

Why do we need them?

In the UK, it is fair to say that at the moment, content warnings aren’t applied to Special Collections and Archives in any meaningful or prevalent manner. Perhaps because what we’re telling you is pretty obvious. Historical records will reflect the time period in which they were created in their attitudes to race, gender, class, sexual orientation, disability, and as evidence of the violence and oppression members of these communities experienced.

But here’s the issue, that oppression and discrimination is still with us. And the psychological tail of colonialism still reverberates through the descendants of these communities.

It is part of our role as curators to bear witness to the affective power of these records, and the impact they have upon the people whose experiences they reflect.

Problem 1 – Collections

The content and language found within our collections are reaching wider audiences through the present drive for digitisation and online access. It is now more likely that a casual viewer might stumble upon them by accident and unprepared. Some of the force of this issue can be negated by marking up offensive language, and by providing adequate content warnings.

Problem 2 – Finding Aids

Our catalogues and box lists do not effectively describe these collections, and problematic material is both unacknowledged and difficult to find. Catalogues created in the past can themselves also contain offensive language, and be in need of correction and additional interpretation. Participatory description, which is carried out in conjunction with the relevant communities or crowd sourced can go some way to redressing this issue.

So, would we ever restrict access to these records?

Absolutely not, there is no suggestion of censoring these records, the intention is to highlight these narratives in our collections and make them easier to find. Archival best practice recommends that descriptions can be supplemented, with a markup of inverted commas applied to problematic language in collection descriptions and catalogues, in addition to accurate terminology and content warnings. Additional keywords and tags can be added to assist in the location of relevant material. There is no suggestion at all that we should participate in figurative whitewashing.

Issues

There are of course plenty of issues to consider. Who decides what language and which collections need amendments or content warnings? We have plenty of evidence that the language that is considered offensive is going to morph and change over time. As my colleagues at the AIU Race Relations Centre have said, the first step should be, wherever possible, to ask the collection donors what language and terminology they prefer.

Conclusion

It is my hope that as work on Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity has become part of our directorate’s operational plan, time will be allocated to the consideration and application of content warnings to our collections and finding aids. It’s a large and difficult piece of work, and will need to be prioritised if it is going to succeed.

If you feel content warnings are unnecessary or they don’t speak to you, then, in the immortal words of Nathan Sentance, they’re not for you. Perhaps this work brings about strong reactions in curators and collection users in the UK because we are unused to not being at the centre of the narrative. Regardless, we all have a responsibility to give this the consideration it deserves.

Primary Sources

Joseph, Etienne, Decolonising the Archive, APAC Symposia Series 2020.

Sentance, Nathan, Who Drives the Conversation? DCDC Conference 2018.

Chilcott, A., 2019. Towards protocols for describing racially offensive language in UK public archives. Archival Science, 19(4), pp.359-376.

In the first part of this blog I discussed the lack of diversity on display within the Historic Reading Room at the John Rylands Library, and the impact that this might have on visitors to our building from underrepresented and marginalised groups. With the exception of a statue of the Library’s founder Enriqueta Rylands, all of the many statues and stained-glass figures that line the walls of the Reading Room depict white men: figures from the Western history of knowledge, such as Plato, Shakespeare and Newton.

Reflecting on this lack of diversity got me thinking about who else I’d like to see represented in statue form in the Historic Reading Room. Which influential and inspiring people from throughout history would deserve a place if we were to create an alternative, more diverse, version of the Reading Room? Rather than just share my own ideas, I decided to ask my colleagues on the Visitor Engagement Team for contributions. Together, we came up with a list of inspirational individuals that we would love to see as statues in an alternative Reading Room.

1. Mary Anning (1799-1847), chosen by Angel Cossigny

Mary Anning was a working-class woman who learned about fossils from her father as a child.  She had an inquisitive mind and was very tenacious, often risking her own safety for a find. This led her to discover many firsts in the world of palaeontology: some of these fossils can now be found in the Natural History Museum. She became known for her finds along the Jurassic coast.  Through her own sense of curiosity she taught herself about anatomy through observation, reconstructing her finds and borrowing scientific papers.  Although she wasn’t given the credit she deserved, or allowed to become a member of the Geological Society, many palaeontologists consulted with her as an expert in her field.

2. Amy Ashwood Garvey (1897-1969), chosen by Lee Wolstenholme

Born in Jamaica in 1897, Amy travelled the world campaigning as an African nationalist, anti-colonial and feminist activist. She was also an astute businesswoman, serving for a number of years as a director of the Black Star Line Steamship Company and founding the Negro World newspaper with her former husband and fellow African nationalist Marcus Garvey. Amy attended the 5th Pan-African Congress held in Manchester in October 1945 and was one of only two women to speak at the event. She helped lead the way at this defining moment in history, arguing strongly for the right of African, Asian and other colonised nations to become free and independent. 

3. Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673), chosen by Annie Dickinson

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, was a philosopher, poet, playwright, novelist and scientist active during the seventeenth century. As a female author in a time when women were expected to be obedient wives and mothers, Cavendish was nicknamed ‘Mad Madge’ and dismissed as eccentric, both by her contemporaries and for years after her death. Nowadays, the importance of her contributions to literature, science and philosophy has been recognised: her work on naturalism and materialism anticipates modern philosophy, and her trailblazing novel The Blazing World is regarded as the first ever work of science-fiction.

4. Malorie Blackman (1962-current), chosen by Caroline Hall

Author and former Children’s Laureate, her Noughts and Crosses novel series, about an interracial couple in an alternative history in which native African people had colonised Europe, is revolutionary in its simple, but acutely satirical, depiction of racism in modern British society.

5. Josephine Butler (1828- 1906), chosen by Caroline Hall

A social reformer who campaigned for women’s suffrage and better education opportunities for women. Her most famous campaign was to repeal the Contagious Disease Acts, which allowed police to force women thought to be prostitutes into a medical examination, and then incarcerate them against their will, in an attempt to control the spread of venereal diseases. Some of the prostitutes were as young as 12. Her efforts led to the Acts being repealed in 1886, and she continued campaigning for the end of human trafficking that forced women and children into prostitution.

6. Ian Dury (1942-2000), chosen by Emily Tan

Ian Dury was an English singer-songwriter, actor and artist. As lead singer of Ian Dury & the Blockheads, he rose to fame in the late 1970s during the punk and new wave era. With clever and humorous lyrics their songs included ‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick’ and ‘Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3.’ Dury’s most personal and controversial song was a solo project released in 1981. ‘Spasticus Autisticus’ was written as a protest against the International Year of Disabled Persons. Dury drew on his own experience as a disabled person to write lyrics that were deliberately provocative. The song became an anthem for the disabled community and it was performed at the opening ceremony for the 2012 Summer Paralympic Games.

I learned about Dury’s life through working on an exhibition of pop-music inspired work by artist Peter Blake. Blake taught Dury at art school and they formed a life-long friendship. Blake’s portraits of Dury featured in the exhibition as well as Dury’s real-life rhythm stick. Ian Dury died in 2000 leaving a creative legacy through his work that is still inspiring people today.

7. Katherine Johnson (1918-2020), chosen by Gemma Henderson

Katherine Johnson’s ground breaking spirit, not only as an exceptional mathematician but as a woman of colour paved the way for women in science. Her contributions to the NASA Mercury and Apollo space missions which saw astronauts orbit earth and safely land on the Moon were, until recently, overlooked. But she has now quite rightly been hailed as a pioneer, not only in her field but as a woman who defied the expectations of the society she lived in, both in gender and race. When I hear Neil Armstrong’s quotation about a small step for man I can’t help but think of the giant leap for woman that Katherine represents.

8. Wangarĩ Maathai (1940-2011), chosen by Angel Cossigny

Wangarĩ Maathai was a social, environmental and political activist from Kenya, and a Nobel Prize winner. She formed the Green Belt Movement in 1977. It was an environmental organisation that focused on planting trees, environmental conservation, and women’s rights. Maathai encouraged Kenyan women to plant tree nurseries in their communities, searching nearby forests for seeds from trees native to the area.  This made it a low-cost initiative which would empower women and help improve the environment by increasing biodiversity.

9. Mary Prince (1788-1833), chosen by Lee Wolstenholme

Mary was born enslaved on the island of Bermuda in 1788 and spent her whole life resisting mistreatment at the hands of those who held power over her. She finally managed to break free after she was taken to England as a servant in 1828. She then joined forces with the anti-slavery movement, who published her memoirs “The History of Mary Prince” in 1831. This was the first book about a black woman’s life ever published in Britain and it sold out three printings in the first year. Her vivid first-hand account of an enslaved person’s experience galvanised the abolitionist cause. It reminds us how effective black abolitionist campaigners were in the fight for freedom.   

10. Sylvia Pankhurst (1882-1960), chosen by Lee Wolstenholme

Sylvia Pankhurst helped to launch the Women’s Social and Political Union in Manchester with her sister Christabel and their mother Emmeline. As a talented artist, having studied at the Manchester School of Art, she applied her skills devising the Suffragette logo and various leaflets, banners, and posters. Sylvia bravely threw herself into the battle to win the vote for women and was arrested and forced fed on a number of occasions. I was lucky enough to meet Sylvia Pankhurst’s son Richard in 2003 during a commemorative event at Sylvia’s old place of study, Manchester High School For Girls. It was exciting to hear such a personal recollection and first-hand account of her campaigning life, that stretched far beyond the limits of her mother Emmeline’s fight to win the vote for wealthy, educated women. Sylvia would still be radical by today’s standards – striving for universal equality and justice for all, no matter what background, nationality, colour or creed. 

11. Alan Turing (1912-1954), chosen by Lee Brooks

A meagre few lines cannot do justice to Alan Turing’s accomplishments and career. Turing made a key contribution to the Second World War, leading a team at Bletchley Park that broke encoded German naval messages. After the war, he worked at the Victoria University of Manchester and was influential in the early development of the computer, including working on the Manchester Mark 1, one of the earliest stored-program computers. Despite his critical influence on the Allied war effort, Turing was persecuted by the British state for his sexuality and was forced to choose between imprisonment or hormonal treatment in 1952. Tragically, Turing committed suicide in 1954, with his war-changing contributions known only to a few. Known as the ‘Father of Computer Science’, his achievements are still keenly felt in the twenty-first century.  

What do you think of our choices? Who would you like to see commemorated as a statue in our alternative Reading Room? Let us know in the comments section below!

A selection of 18th- and 19th-century broadside ballads and slip-songs is now available on Manchester Digital Collections.

Broadside ballads are descriptive or narrative verses or songs, each printed on one side of a single sheet of low-quality paper. The John Rylands Library holds a fascinating and diverse collection of ballads as part of its Street Literature Collection.  Street Literature, as the name suggests, was popular literature, including ballads and chapbooks, which was sold on the street, at markets and fairs, or house-to-house in the countryside, by itinerant hawkers or chapmen.  Typically priced at a halfpenny to a penny, ballads were mass-produced, cheap and easily accessible to ordinary people. However, on account of their flimsy, ephemeral nature, only a small percentage of those produced still survive today.  This collection includes both individual examples, and sheets which have been preserved in albums by ballad collectors.

This ballad, which tells the traditional tale of two children lost in the woods, was collected by the Bateman family of Middleton Hall, Middleton-by-Youlgreave, near Bakewell in Derbyshire.  The Bateman’s album, which contains over 200 ballad sheets, was later acquired by the folksong collector, Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924).

In addition to traditional ballads by unknown authors, which have been passed down through a combination of oral and print transmission, the collection includes a range of popular, contemporary songs. While some ballads originate in the theatre or music hall, and others are written by established authors, the majority were penned by prolific but obscure ballad writers, such as John Morgan of Anne Street, Westminster. Morgan has been identified as the author of this comic song on miracle cures:

Attribution is often difficult, as authors’ names rarely appear on the ballad sheets. Likewise, the majority of ballads are undated, and many lack any imprint at all. Dates can sometimes be surmised from the operating dates of printers, or from internal evidence. Occasionally, a printer can be identified by the numbering of a sheet, or by the use of specific woodcuts or ornaments. This ballad, which includes a woodcut, commonly termed ‘the prancing dandy’, is known to be printed by John Harkness (1814-98) of Preston, Lancashire. It is thought that Harkness may have omitted his imprint to make the sheet more attractive to the London market.

Although London was the centre for ballad publishing, the collection includes a number of provincial imprints. Some of these also have a local theme. ‘Owdum Weddin’, written in Lancashire dialect by the Manchester songwriter, Alexander Wilson (d. 1846) tells of a visit to Chetham’s Library to view its Cabinet of Curiosities.

While some ballads relate to particular places, or to historical events, either local or national, the majority cover universal themes such as relationships, poverty or mortality. As can be seen, publishers often decorated their sheets with crude woodcuts from their stock, but these were often incongruous with the text.  While no musical notation was included, a popular tune, e.g. ‘Yankee Doodle’, might be suggested. Many ballads take the form of ‘slip’ songs, printed in a single column.

To aid identification of ballads in the collection, the Roud number has been supplied where known. This digital collection will be added to as part of the Library’s continuing digitisation programme.

By Elizabeth Gow, Special Collections Manuscript Curator and Archivist. The Rylands Reflects series explores the history of the John Rylands Library, our collections, and our current practice as heritage professionals in the context of racism, colonisation and representation of marginalised groups. This is the fourth post of an ongoing series.

In ‘Whiter than White’ I considered the Cuban childhood of Enriqueta Rylands, the founder of the John Rylands Library. This post considers how Enriqueta’s father and his British compatriots were complicit in the oppression of enslaved people in Cuba.

Enriqueta’s father, Stephen Cattley Tennant (1800-1848), was born and brought up in Leeds, England. After finishing his schooling (probably at Leeds Grammar) he went to Liverpool to join the shipping business established by his father and brother. In 1823, the year John Rylands began business in Manchester, Stephen left Liverpool to establish a branch of the family firm in Havana, Cuba, then under Spanish Colonial rule. Over the next two decades, Stephen travelled extensively, especially between Havana, Charleston (capital of the American slave trade) and New York. The company’s ships transported sugar and sweetmeats between Havana and Liverpool, and almost certainly transported other goods produced by enslaved labourers, such as timber, cotton and tobacco. However, it was not only by trading in Cuban goods that White Britons profited from and perpetuated systems of slavery.

While the British have often seen themselves as leading the suppression of the ‘slave trade’, it was arguably their occupation of Havana in 1762 that precipitated the growth of slavery in Cuba. By 1817, trade in slaves – though not slavery itself – was illegal across most of the Caribbean. However, people trafficking continued, feeding the domestic slave trade in the United States of America and clandestine trading across the region. Despite legislation, or perhaps even because of it, the exploitation of enslaved people became more financially profitable than ever. When Stephen arrived in Cuba, the sugar plantation system and the system of slavery on which it depended were expanding rapidly.

Stephen lived in Havana, a bustling port city populated by free and enslaved Africans and their descendants (classified by the colonial authorities into racial categories), white ‘Creoles’ (usually Spanish Cubans) and Spanish natives, as well as foreigners such as himself. Stephen moved in artistic and liberal circles, living on the street where the Philharmonic Society met. He was a sponsor of the Revista Bimestre Cubana, a progressive anti-slavery periodical. However, this liberal outlook did not stop his involvement in the exploitation of enslaved Africans through trade in produce. Nor did any anti-slavery sentiment stand in the way of his marriage in 1840 to Juana Camila Dalcour (1818-1855). Juana had inherited a share in a sugar plantation and refinery near Matanzas, where Enriqueta was born three years later.

Despite his association with the Cuban creole elite, Stephen remained part of a network of British subjects. Some of these, including William Henry Forbes (his mother-in-law’s cousin), had moved to Cuba from the British West Indies to avoid anti-slavery legislation. They forcibly transported men, women and children who should have been freed in 1838 when slavery was abolished in the British Empire. Others campaigned against slavery, motivated by both ethical and economic concerns. One of Stephen’s acquaintances, David Turnbull (1793?-1851), was a key figure in the abolitionist movement. He took up the case of James Thompson, a free British subject of African descent who had been kidnapped from the Bahamas and sold into slavery in Cuba. In 1841 Turnbull invited ‘the leading English residents’ in Havana to meet Thompson. ‘Mr. Tennant’ expressed ‘sympathy’ but did nothing to help, in case his own interests might be damaged. The text extract below is a rare piece of evidence documenting Stephen and his compatriots in Cuba:

Increasing tensions pitted the Spanish authorities and white Creole elite against slaves and British ‘agitators’. Turnbull was expelled from Cuba and was later accused of leading the ‘conspiracy’ which led to the 1843 uprisings (see Whiter than White). Thompson eventually escaped to Jamaica. Stephen died in November 1848 in a railway accident on the outskirts of London. There has been some suggestion of foul play, that he was perhaps targeted for conspiring against the Spanish authorities in Cuba. But I have seen no evidence that he had been involved in agitation for either anti-slavery or independence. Enriqueta left Havana with her mother in 1850, but family connections continued to tie her to Cuba. Her father had chosen as his executor Robert Morison (1791-1873), another British merchant in Havana. Like Stephen, Robert had expressed ‘sympathy’ for James Thompson but refused to meet him. The year Robert died, his son married Enriqueta’s youngest sister, in a ceremony witnessed by Enriqueta Tennant and John Rylands. The founder of the John Rylands Library may have left Havana when she was seven, but I’m not sure that Cuba ever left her.

Find out more

Davies, Catherine, ‘Stephen Cattley Tennant, 1800-48’, Bulletin of John Rylands University Library Manchester, 85.2 (2003), 115–120.

Curry-Machado, Jonathan, ‘How Cuba Burned with the Ghosts of British Slavery: Race, Abolition and the Escalera’, Slavery and Abolition, 25.1 (2004), 71–93.

Schneider, Elena, ‘African Slavery and Spanish Empire’, Journal of Early American History, 5.1 (2015), 3–29.

Franklin, Sarah L., Women and Slavery in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Cuba (University of Rochester Press, 2012).

Llorca-Jaña, Manuel, ‘Turnbull, David (1793?–1851), Journalist and Slavery Abolitionist’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2009).

Murray, David R., Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain and the Abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade (Cambridge University Press, 2002).

By Clio Flaherty and Max Maxfield

Clio Flaherty and Max Maxfield, University of Manchester MA placement students, join us for their final guest post on the Wood Street Mission

During this year we’ve been participating in a placement at the John Rylands Library as part of our studies at the University of Manchester. In this role we’ve integrated a series of historical materials into the library’s existing Wood Street Mission Archive and had the opportunity to really get to grips with the history of this local charity. Thankfully, as lockdown restrictions were lifted, we were able to continue with our work in August and we conclude our enjoyable time in the placement with a look at one of the Wood Street Mission’s oldest traditions, its festive activities.

From the earliest days of the Wood Street Mission a broad range of Christmas services have been delivered. In the 1870s the charity began its tradition of hosting Christmas day breakfasts, organising festive hymn services and offering shelter to homeless children. However, the charity’s flagship programme in this period was the toy distribution project that saw hundreds of children line-up along Wood Street on Boxing Day to receive a gift. A member of the management team (usually dressed as Santa Claus) would offer the children a toy and an orange, both of which were considered by working-class families at the time to be luxury items. 

These distribution events were frequently attended by city dignitaries and often caught the attention of local journalists and the Manchester public. Recognising the public interest in their Christmas activities, staff at the charity promptly made the toy scheme the main event of their seasonal promotional campaigns in the late nineteenth century. Subsequently, the festive programme (and the Boxing-Day toy event especially) became a key means through which the Wood Street Mission engaged with local media, raised awareness of the charity’s general activities and expanded their circle of committed supporters. 

The charity continued to utilise the Christmas programme as a promotional opportunity well into the first half of the twentieth century as the scale of the toy scheme expanded at an astonishing rate. From 1945 to 1955 the number of toys that were distributed at Christmas rose from 1800 to 4000. However, despite efforts to maintain media coverage of the event, several prominent local newspapers refused to continue their support. For instance, in a meeting with the charity’s management committee in the late-1940s, representatives from The Manchester Guardian refused to expand their coverage of the event, whilst the paper effectively abandoned all of its coverage of the charity’s toy distribution scheme by the mid-1950s. Further complications arose in this period as demand for toys dropped dramatically, possibly due to the success of the welfare state and rising working-class prosperity.

Despite these issues, the Wood Street Mission recognised that the toy distribution remained an important tradition and continued with the scheme during the 1960s, albeit in a new form. The appointment of Arnold Yates in 1962 sparked a reshuffle of Christmas activities as the new superintendent attempted to modernise the charity and reconnect it with the local community. For instance, the ‘outdated’ and ‘impersonal’ Boxing Day queueing system (as it was described by the committee) was ended in 1964 and replaced by a new scheme in which toys were given privately to parents a week before Christmas Day in the charity’s main building. These reforms altered a tradition that had begun almost a hundred years earlier and gave parents the joy of giving a gift to their children themselves. 

This format of the toy scheme has survived right up to the present day and demand for gifts has risen sharply in the last thirty years. Since the early 1990s, the number of toys distributed by the charity has trebled, with 11,500 Christmas presents being delivered in 2018/19. However, following the appointment of manager Des Lynch in 2017, the Christmas programme offered by the charity has changed somewhat. The staff no longer assemble gift-bags as parents now themselves pick out presents for their children from the Wood Street Mission’s extensive collection of toys (most of which are now brand new rather than second-hand).

It is clear that the work of the Wood Street Mission during the festive period has been adapted through time to meet the needs of the local community. This year is no different as support for struggling families in Manchester and Salford during the pandemic is now more important than ever. Thankfully, the Great Northern Warehouse has stepped in to ensure that the charity has the resources and space required to enable the Christmas appeal to go ahead in the midst of the ongoing Covid crisis.

If you wish to support the Wood Street Mission this Christmas please follow the link below. 

The Visual Collections Department are pleased to announce the exciting acquisition of Richard Davis’ Images of Hulme 1980 – 90.  Many of these photographs have been on display recently in an exhibition at Refuge, Oxford Road, Manchester, in conjunction with the British Culture Archive. Details and descriptions of these images can now be found on Library Search and the photographs are available to see in our Reading Room via appointment.

This collection has expanded our growing portfolio of social documentary photography based within the North West and Richard’s prints will be joining those of acclaimed photographer Martin Parr and Mark Warner on our shelves.  Like Parr, Richard was initially drawn to Manchester as a student, where, as had Parr and Warner, he studied photography at Manchester Metropolitan University, (formerly Manchester Polytechnic), arriving in September 1988. During his studies he lived in the notorious area of Hulme, renowned for its brutalist architecture and as an area of social deprivation.

Hulme had been described to the student Richard as ‘A dangerous, lawless place to be avoided’[i] and it was the gung-ho attitude of youth that led to him living there and creating this remarkable collection of photographs.  They detail the socially and politically charged times of 1980s inner city Manchester and captured the mood and spirit of life on the fringes of Thatcher’s Britain[ii].   Richard recalls:

“Little did I know at the time this place would play a massive role and shape my life for many years to come. I took to Hulme straight away, how could you not – it was just so damn photogenic and so very different from anywhere I’d seen before. A lot of it was derelict, whilst what was occupied tended to consist of a diverse mix of artists, musicians, ex-students & the unemployed – the kind of people mainstream society seemed to reject”.[iii]

The photographs reflect this in their diverse range of subject matter – these include stark images of the Crescents, (an area of deck-access blocks of flats) and walkways, the street furniture and vehicles, which all now serve as an historical record of the changing landscape.  The Crescents were knocked down during the 1990s.

 The photographs record the changing demographic of Hulme’s community in a series of captivating portraits; there was mention of a ‘Hume look’ as more young Mancunian bohemians moved into the area.  By the 80s Hulme had an art house cinema, The Aaben (VPH.229.33 & 34) and a nightclub, The PSV, (VPH.229.31 & 32), which was the site that launched a club night by Factory Records’ Alan Erasmus and Tony Wilson. The area provided a catalysis for a new wave of musicians, artists, comedians and poets, which also coincided with the advent of Madchester.  [Madchester was a musical and cultural scene that developed in Manchester in the late 1980s].

We’re thrilled to have this stunning collection of images.  They are a wonderful addition to the Visual Collections and have interest for academic researchers and also have great appeal to our wider Manchester community.  Any enquiries about the collection can be directed to the curator at anne.anderton@manchester.ac.uk

With thanks to Richard Davis for the images and for all his help in the cataloguing process.

All images copyright of Richard Davis.

[i] https://britishculturearchive.co.uk/richard-davis/

[ii] https://britishculturearchive.co.uk/richard-davis/

[iii] https://britishculturearchive.co.uk/richard-davis/

It’s been seven months since the first 2D to 3D blog post, made whilst working from home due to the Covid 19 pandemic. Since August, the Imaging Team have had access to the collections and photography studio, on a limited basis. We have successfully managed to maintain our priority digitisation projects, undertake crucial new digitisation projects to support online learning using Special Collections material, and gradually resume our Imaging Service. We have found that our recent endeavours into photogrammetry have been well received, and we have received requests to produce 3D models of collection items for teaching purposes.

Papyrus to Print

This first request was for 3D models of facimile bindings and collection material, and was made in support of the new Papyrus to Print digital collection that concentrates on material used for teaching on the MA in Medieval and Early Modern Studies. The models are to be later attached to each online record in Manchester Digital Collections.

The first examples under our new photogrammetry workflows were of facimile bindings produced by our colleagues Mark Furness and Laura Caradonna in the Collection Care team.

Our first attempt at a 3D model shows the sewing of a Gothic-style bookbinding. This was processed several times with various sequences of images. None of which we could get to render fully from every side. In the end we decided that this version best represented the conservator’s demonstration of the sewing structure. This model was imaged using the turntable method for photogrammetry, with the item placed on its fore-edge. Unfortunately, in this model it is not possible to see the full item. So, room for improvement.

The sewing in a Gothic style bookbinding by The John Rylands Library on Sketchfab

This second example is of a facimile of Greek Papyrus 28. This time it proved difficult to get the upper and lower sections to merge as one, so we had to manually manipulate the sections to align as a complete object. Not ideal but it worked although with some image noise at the edges. The slightest shift or movement in the shape of the object when turning it to image the other side proves problematic, no matter how careful one is in its repositioning.

Greek Papyrus 28 by The John Rylands Library on Sketchfab

After imaging these two facimiles, we re-assessed our workflow before starting on a collection item, as we felt that our results could be improved. Thankfully, later models did indeed show further improvements although every now and again there would be one that didn’t quite work out as planned.

The model of Latin MS 48 is the most succesful to date.

Latin MS 48 by The John Rylands Library on Sketchfab

We have included some surface/material textures in Skecthfab to highlight metalwork and the glossiness of the binding of Latin MS 48. Here is an example of the material texture file. The black areas act as a Mask and the lighter areas are acted upon by the settings applied.

For Latin MS 182 we included a test of the Annotation tool in Sketchfab. This can include text, audio, video and weblinks. We included textual information about the materiality of the item. The annotations can be turned on and off by the viewer.

Latin MS 182 by The John Rylands Library on Sketchfab

These models have also been used by Conservator Mark Furness in support of his successful ICON Accreditation.

“… it all points to collaboration and reflecting on what I’ve learnt in my time here. The sketchfab 3D models, for me, allow you to get a sense of the book and its structure that straight on photos lack. Digitisation shots always show the content but not necessarily the character, the irregularities, unique features and general life of a book as it’s sat, slumped and evolved. Also it allows you to spin the book around and look at books at angles that would make me blanche otherwise… M.F.”

Following the first 2D to 3D blog post we received a message from Adam Kellie, an Imaging Specialist at Harvard University Library. They had been impressed with the Daguerrotype model we had produced of Catherine Hannah Dunkerley from our collections and wished to know more about its production.

It was from our intial discussions over the Daguerreotpye model, and trying to replicate the effect at Harvard that we found that Skecthfab had disabled some of the feature settings that we first used in the model. The workflow we had written only months before was now out of date, and we had to find a new way of achieving the same results. This is always a frustration with ever changing software and techniques. It took a day of rethinking but now the new version is as good as, if not better than the first.

Daguerreotype of Catherine Hannah Dunkerley (2) by The John Rylands Library on Sketchfab

This has led to a fruitful collaboration between Adam and ourselves. We are on a very similar footing in regards to our photogrammetry set up and service. We have exchanged ideas and workflows and it is refreshing to collaborate with others so early on in establishing these new (to us) imaging methods.

We continue to be amazed by the content being produced by Institutions and individuals on Skectchfab. A recent model by Sebastian Sosnowski from Poland, inspired us to attempt this model using Adobe Photoshop, Blender and Sketchfab material tools.

The images are from a book of plans and elevations of The John Rylands Library by architect Basil Champneys. Seven images, masked in Photoshop, and then applied to Planes in Blender to replicate the structure of the building. Then the Skecthfab material Opacity tool was used to render this result. It may not be precise or accurate but the effect is exactly what we hoped to achieve. Blender has proven to be a a very useful tool that we will be looking to learn more about in the New Year.

The John Rylands Library – Blueprint Model by The John Rylands Library on Sketchfab

The list of features and skills needed to further our photogrammetry continues to grow. On return to work after the Christmas break we will be looking at scale and measurability, improving accuracy and detail, UV mapping and materials.

We will continue to develop photogrammetry within the Imaging Team and are keen to hear from all members of staff including researchers, academics and curators about how this imaging method may be of use to them, and any projects or material they may have in mind for further investigation. We are also aware of the potential for Augmented and Virtual Reality of our collections in regard to future exhibitions and the visitor experience at The John Rylands Library.

Watch this space!

Written by Jane Donaldson.

Recently, the University Conference Centre got in touch with the John Rylands Library. They had in their possession some Christmas Cards signed by C. P. Scott, the Manchester Guardian Editor, and as they were no longer to be displayed, would we like them to go with the Guardian Archives?

Cue much excitement as we eagerly awaited the cards.

We opened them up.  There were a couple of generic cards, and a few with artists’ impressions of the Guardian Offices and sculptures. 

From the early 1970s. All signed by C. P. Scott.

C. P. Scott died in 1932.

So what was the story? Where were they from? 

A note accompanying the cards stated that the donor had received them from her father, who had met C. P. Scott during the time that he was running a successful business in Manchester. But why were cards being received in the 1970s from a C. P. Scott?  After Scott’s death in 1932, the paper was jointly owned by his children, John and Ted Scott.  Ted died less than 4 months later in a drowning accident and the paper was passed over to the editor, William Percival Crozier.

In the period that the cards were sent, the editor was Alastair Hetherington.  He was in post from 1956 until 1975.

In all six cards sent over the years, the signatures were signed in the same way, apart from one which was signed ‘Charles Prescott’.  Although the signatures look to be from the same hand, with the loops and slant all similar, when checked with Guardian Archive correspondence, the signature is very different to C. P. Scott’s actual signature. 

A visit to the local studies centre to look at Goad Maps which show individual buildings, may give us a name to the business mentioned by the donor, as we know the area the business was in, but many questions remain.  All the cards were official Guardian cards but who was sending the cards?  Who was signing the cards?  Did the person receiving them think they were from C. P. Scott?  We may never know but it certainly was a surprise and very mysterious. If you can help us solve this little conundrum, please get in touch.

In 2021 the Library will celebrate The Guardian’s 200^th anniversary with an exhibition featuring items from the Manchester Guardian Archive. Keep an eye on our website for further details.

This is the second in a series of blogs outlining my research on Jeff Nuttall with a particular (but not exclusive) focus on his archive at the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester. By no means definitive, there are some gaps and unanswered questions about his activities so I welcome any comments or additional information that might help to build a more complete story. Although this is not an academic text there’s a full list of resources at the end alongside a working catalogue of Nuttall publications and of periodicals in which he appeared. Again, any help in adding to the lists would be much appreciated. You can contact me by commenting at the end of the blog or via email (bruce.wilkinson@manchester.ac.uk).

We left Jeff Nuttall at the end of the first blog dramatically burning all his previous artworks and vowing that he would: ‘stop producing art that dulls the sensibilities’. According to Nuttall’s book Bomb Culture (1968) he’d created ‘a hundred or so big paintings, seven novels and a number of sculptures’ which had all been rejected by art and literary institutions. Nuttall saw the way forward as bypassing mainstream galleries and publishers to produce and disseminate his own work to a wider audience without the refracting lens of commercialism, freeing his art from the boundaries of conventional taste and censorship. He continued to work with the group of artists who had connected through Peter Currell-Brown’s July 1962 letter in Peace News who were collaborating on an interactive installation they hoped to construct in the crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields church in central London.

Nuttall’s next few years would be remarkably productive across several different artistic fields but it is difficult to separate these activities from the influence of the Scottish author Alexander Trocchi and the Situationists. Spending the early 1950s in Paris where he wrote pornography under the pseudonym Frances Lengel, Trocchi edited Merlin literary magazine (which broadened the recognition of Samuel Beckett), joined the Letterists and then the Situationists and developed a heroin addiction which he enthusiastically maintained for the rest of his life. His 1954 novel Young Adam was hailed as innovative by Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs with an amoral lead character and a narrative which plays with time and space. Trocchi migrated to the US later that decade where he became involved with the Beat scene. His second novel Cain’s Book featured explicit renderings of sex and addiction and although well-received in America it was banned in some parts of Britain and sparked an obscenity trial for publisher John Calder. Charged with supplying drugs to a minor, Trocchi escaped punishment by the US authorities, smuggled across the border into Canada by friends and then returning to Britain where he settled in London.

A reaction to the avant-garde movements of Surrealism and Dada, Lettrisme was initially a text-based concept developed in 1940s Paris by the Hungarian Isidore Isou. Its ideas grew to encompass all art forms including ‘actions’ such as the invasion of a televised Easter Mass at Notre Dame Cathedral during which the group declared that ‘god is dead’. Guy Debord joined in the early 1950s but quickly split becoming the Letterist International. At a 1957 conference an alliance of European groups formed the Situationist International which combined radical art theories with anti-authoritarian Marxism (some describe as anarcho-syndicalist). Debord saw late-twentieth century consumerism as destroying people’s ability to truly experience life and set about creating texts, actions and moments in order to shock the individual awake to the dangers of capitalism. Although Situationism was constructed with intellectual rigour it also contained elements of subversive playfulness, a Dadaist tone not without humour which made it particularly attractive to those seeking a new revolutionary post-socialist idealism after the Soviets crushed the Prague and Budapest uprisings.

Although influential, Situationism remained relatively obscure until its ideas brought together student activists and trade unionists almost bringing down the French government in May 1968. The Angry Brigade, a British group formed in reaction to the Paris events bombed the Spanish Embassy in London and attempted to blow up the Post Office Tower. At their trial the prosecution focused on the accused’s Situationist leanings which along with publications like Heatwave and the activities of the King Mob group gave Situationism caché within the British counterculture. Those ideas were later used and popularised by Malcolm McLaren’s promotion of the New York Dolls and Sex Pistols; through Tony Wilson’s management of Factory Records and in the provocative actions of the KLF’s Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, bringing Situationism to the attention of the mainstream media.

As a didactic art tutor Nuttall may have been aware of the Situationists in the late-1950s or learnt about them through Gustav Metzger and the other radical artists and authors he met campaigning for nuclear disarmament or perhaps via Resistance, the magazine connected with the Committee of 100 which contained traces of Situationist theory. The other possibility is that his knowledge came entirely via Trocchi who retained his membership of the Situationist International until, like most other participants, he was eventually expelled by Debord for anti-revolutionary misdemeanours. It appears that Nuttall didn’t see Trocchi’s ‘A Revolutionary Proposal: Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds’ when it was initially published in New Saltire Review in 1962 or as ‘Technique du coupe du Monde’ within Internationale Situationniste issue 8 in January 1963 (later appearing in Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Journal number 2). We know this because in Bomb Culture he recalls receiving (seemingly for the first time) the English language version of the ‘Manifesto Situationiste’ through the post in early summer 1964 as part of a package from Trocchi who had started mailing out details of what he called ‘Project Sigma’:

…with the world at the edge of extinction,…the cultural revolution must seize the grids of expression and the powerhouses of the mind. Intelligence must become self-conscious, release its own power [and] dare to exercise it. History will not overthrow governments; it will outflank them. The cultural revolt is the necessary underpinning, the passionate substructure of a new order of things…

Nuttall replied by return of post, asking: ‘What do you want me to do?’ It was the spark that he was searching for and which would ignite a frenzy of global networking. Some 1960s commentators (e.g. Barry Miles) are dismissive both of Trocchi and Sigma claiming that it was merely a distraction from the fact that Trocchi’s drug intake meant that he was no longer able to write. Although Sigma did fail to ignite a cultural revolution, it sparked several disparate elements of the 1960s British underground to network, the Sigma Portfolios (some printed by Nuttall) bringing together key individuals many of whom had operated in isolation since the latter part of the previous decade.

Nuttall created sculptures or assemblages, disturbingly lifelike often sexualised effigies made from a variety of materials including lingerie and even human skin and hair. These were sometimes left in public spaces contained within suitcases, found to the shock of unsuspecting passers-by – one turning-up in a left luggage locker at a London train station while others were used as part of Group H exhibitions. Alongside the provocation of this unsettling art Nuttall intended humour both via the aesthetics of his constructions but also through the ‘performance’ that the reaction of the finders would create. The employment of innocent members of the public as an element within the art meant that the human response to his work effectively replaced the conventional canvas.

Although ‘happening’ quickly became a clichéd term for a gathering of beatniks or hippies, it was originally coined by the artist Allan Kaprow to convey the transformative power of an often improvised artistic action or moment. In 1963 the American Jim Haynes set up the experimental Traverse Theatre in the Scottish capital which encouraged freeform performance and in August he co-organised the Edinburgh International Drama Conference which featured debates about and the performance of happenings. The concept caused a schism between the traditional theatre world and the more radical, with The Scotsman journalist Magnus Magnusson describing the divisions it caused as a positive process of artistic renewal. Nuttall was in attendance and, inspired by what he’d seen alongside the influence of New York’s Living Theatre and theorist Antonin Artaud, he quickly engaged with the process and put on happenings at Better Books just off Charing Cross Road. In December 1964 Ken Dewey and Charles Marowitz, two of the originators of the concept gave a talk about it while Nuttall, Heather Richardson, Bruce Lacey and Keith Musgrove staged a ‘happening about happenings’ in the shop.

Although Nuttall had been in Salzburg at the time it may well be that he read reports of the Edinburgh Writers’ Conference in 1962 at which Trocchi made quite a stir,  arguing with the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid who denounced Trocchi as ‘cosmopolitan scum’ and who was called ‘a fossil’ in return. More importantly Burroughs attended the event (staying in the same digs as Trocchi) where he explained the cut-up technique to a large audience of over 2,500 writers. Beyond the process Burroughs also expounded on his belief that cut-ups create a passage beyond the temporal and that his experiments had in fact downed a passenger jet. When combined with the paganism Nuttall saw through his renewed pantheistic vision, the occultism of cut-ups would have a profound impact on his creativity, offering him new channels through which to explore his metier.

At that point in the early 1960s there was a huge explosion of little magazines spurred by the desire to distribute innovative poetic forms largely ignored by a conservative British literary media and aided by newly available and relatively cheap printing technology. We know from correspondence in his archive at the John Rylands Library that Nuttall had connected with key experimental poets and publishers within the British Poetry Revival which included Cavan McCarthy, dom sylvester houédard, Dave Cunliffe, Lee Harwood, Jim Burns and Michael Horowitz whose New Departures had been running since 1959. The little magazine scene had quickly developed a network distributing publications particularly via readings in the pubs and clubs of Industrial England and Scotland. Importantly these connections also stretched across the Atlantic, engaging a cross-fertilisation of literary experimentalism and radical ideals that would help ferment the US and British countercultures.

Nuttall continued to work with the Writers Forum press contributing verse, illustrations and cover designs to several early editions. Teaching with Bob Cobbing at Alder Secondary Modern they had free access to a duplicator and ran-off WF publications in their lunch hour or after school. The vicar at St Martin-in-the-Fields turned down the installation planned for the crypt as ‘unsuitable’ for his church. During the delay in finding an alternative venue Nuttall sought new ways in which the group might express its ideas and the free publishing offered by the school gave it a new outlet (described here in Bomb Culture):

I turned out My Own Mag: a Super-Absorbant Periodical [sic] in November 1963, as an example of the sort of thing we might do. My intention was to make a paper exhibition in words, pages, spaces, holes, edges, and images which drew people in and forced a violent involvement with the unalterable facts. The message was: if you want to exist you must accept the flesh and the moment. Here they are. The magazine…used nausea and flagrant scatology as a violent means of presentation. I wanted to make the fundamental condition of living unavoidable by nausea.

Nuttall again stresses the importance that maintaining his independence offered; removing the need to worry about editorial censorship or sales gave him the freedom to take the journal in whichever direction he liked:

I circulated the first mag to twenty or so people who I thought might be interested. Better Books took the rest and sold them at a penny each. I determined then, and kept to it, that I would run the project as I had painted and played jazz, within the capacity of my earnings as a teacher, utterly independently, ultimately printing, editing, assembling, drawing, writing largely, and distributing the thing myself, always at a deliberate loss so as not to form a dependence of the smallest kind.

This is important because in interviews I conducted with poets and small press publishers several stressed the same point. They often worked other jobs not necessarily because they had to (although many did) but primarily in order that they weren’t reliant on turning a profit from their verse or journals. This freed them to experiment with their poetry or in selecting material for their magazines. For the same reason many did not apply for funding or Arts Council grants in order that they could maintain total artistic independence and control.

Although its mix of art, prose and verse was different to many of the small press publications then sprouting-up around the UK (which primarily focused on poetry) Nuttall used its network to distribute My Own Mag sending the first issue to the key figures of Finnish poet Anselm Hollow and the journalist/activist Ray Gosling. A simple and rather brief affair, issue 1 featured suggestive ink drawings and cartoons by Nuttall alongside verse by Keith Musgrove. There are some photographs of My Own Mag covers accompanying this blog and you can see good quality scans of each page of every issue alongside bibliographic research and related essays at the excellent Reality Studio website via the link below:

A copy of the first issue was also sent to Burroughs, at that point living in Tangiers where he continued to work with cut-ups, a method that he had picked-up from Brion Gysin. Burroughs created many experiments using the technique but found it difficult to locate a publisher able to put them out due to cut-ups’ unusual page layout and the sheer volume of the material he was producing so the arrival of Nuttall’s publication was nicely timed. In fact at that point the little magazines were often Burroughs’ only means of distributing his writing (Tina Morris and Dave Cunliffe’s Poetmeat and New Departures both featuring extracts from Naked Lunch) and the American now saw an outlet for his cut-ups.

Still only four pages long, December’s second MOM, ‘an odour fill periodical’, featured the first of what would be a series of cut-ups by Burroughs alongside verse by Anselm Hollo and more Nuttall drawings and cartoons. Although Burroughs’ work doesn’t appear in every issue, it is at its heart, his experiments radiating outwards encouraging other contributors (including Nuttall) to engage with the technique. There’s something subversive and a little disturbing about what’s seeping from its pages, Nuttall’s drawings and his use of found objects, stains, cuts and burns reflecting the occultism which drove Gysin and Burroughs towards the cut-up/fold-in praxis. By issue 4 it has stickered, cut and burnt pages and a complex four column Burroughs cut-up which developed into a sub-paper entitled ‘Moving Times’. One of Trocchi’s ideas was to paste-up pages of Moving Times on the walls of Tube stations and Nuttall’s archive contains correspondence from Beba Lavrin outlining London Transport’s reaction to the concept.

In January 1964 Burroughs travelled to London to record an interview for a TV documentary and he met Nuttall in a pub for a few drinks and then visited a local café for a fry-up. Although very different people from alien backgrounds the pair got along, Burroughs seeing My Own Mag as a pragmatic choice of outlet for his writing. There’s some detailed descriptions of the Burroughs My Own Mag cut-ups in one of my previous blogs viewable here:

In interviews I conducted with Cunliffe I was told that he and Morris had been offered some of Burroughs’ cut-ups to publish within Poetmeat due to the sheer volume Nuttall was receiving but which they’d turned down for lack of space. Tina has no recollection of this and denied that she would have refused them as they would have undoubtedly boosted sales. However correspondence in the Nuttall archive does confirm that they were offered ‘William Burroughs Time/Space experiments’ and that Cunliffe did refuse but asked for Burroughs’ address in order to collaborate on other projects. Interestingly this is the only letter in the archive which Morris didn’t countersign so perhaps she was never told about the proposal.

The intriguing question is whether Nuttall offered the cut-ups to other small presses and, if he did, to whom and with what result? Several little magazines including Residu edited by Daniel Richter and Edinburgh University’s Cleft feature Burroughs cut-ups from that period. There is correspondence between Nuttall and Richter in the John Rylands Library archive and, although the letters don’t make it entirely clear, it is worth noting that Residu features work by Burroughs, Nuttall and Trocchi so this seems strong evidence that the Residu cut-ups came via Nuttall.

There was some disagreement about how many issues of MOM were published and in what order, Ray Gosling and author/rare book dealer Iain Sinclair both attempting to catalogue the sequence. This was finally resolved by the collector Jed Birmingham who used the storyline of Nuttall’s Perfume Jack cartoon, the narrative of which runs through the issues assisting with its chronology. Although it probably seems unusual not to number or date a periodical, within the little magazine scene it was common on the basis that issues would quickly be seen as out of date if given a month of publication on the cover. Having spent many hours cataloguing the BB Books press publications, I can testify as to how frustrating this is from an archival perspective. However, scan through the hundreds of journals within the bibliographic listings of British Poetry Magazines 1914-2000 (2006) and you quickly become aware of many quirky numbering systems and how publication dates were often not printed on volumes.

The Nuttall Papers at John Rylands contain a good deal of the original material used in MOM with related correspondence and it also holds work submitted but not featured in the publication. It includes unused verse, prose and art by Douglas Blazek, Burroughs, John Latham, Charles Marowitz, Claude Pélieu, Mary Beach, Charles Plymell and Karl Weissner from the US, Europe and around the UK illustrating the growing size of Nuttall’s artistic network. Although its circulation was tiny within those numbers it reached many of the most influential figures of the burgeoning counterculture who then amplified its message far beyond the publication’s initial reach. Nuttall also used the magazine to spread ideas, encouraging others to become involved by re-printing Currell-Brown’s letter asking for more collaborators and advertising the Sigma Portfolio – boosting important contacts in the days long before the internet and when most Britons didn’t even have a telephone or TV.

At the behest of Trocchi, Nuttall organised a meeting in July 1964 to facilitate work on Sigma, archive correspondence confirming that he contacted a range of possible venues which included a large pottery studio in Hertfordshire. Braziers Park, a country house still operating as an Intentional Community in rural Oxfordshire (which now hosts the Supernormal Festival) founded by Marianne Faithfull’s mother Baroness Erisso, Eva von Sacher-Masoch, eventually became the venue on the 2^nd-5^th July. The event had ‘disaster’ written all over it from the moment Nuttall sent out invites to a mixture of experimental artists and members of R D Laing’s anti-psychiatry group who would shortly become the Philadelphia Association. Half the attendees were using powerful drugs while others drank heavily in order to cope with the creeping madness of the situation. Things came to a head when John Latham carried out one of his SKOOB experiments destroying a priceless 400 year old book. Latham also shot Super 8 film of the weekend, clips from which you can view here:

The Alexander Trocchi archive at Washington University, St Louis, has a page of Tactical Notes for the meeting along with a great deal of Sigma material and correspondence with Nuttall.

In a letter dated 13^th October 1964 in the Eric Mottram Archive at King’s College London, Nuttall talks about leaving London for Norwich. He was already tiring of the pace of life in the capital which probably shouldn’t be a surprise considering how he combined numerous artistic endeavours with a full-time teaching position and raising a young family. Perhaps this is the first sign that he was already becoming disillusioned with the counterculture and was tired of organising a network of artists.

In collaboration with the artists Nuttall had connected with via Peter Currell-Brown’s Peace News letter they each designed their own sections of the interactive installation they had planned for the crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields church. After much delay an application to display it at the Whitechapel Gallery was completely ignored. A fire in the basement of Better Books (by now managed by Cobbing) opened up a new space which would eventually become the venue for the sTigma installation and which I’ll explore in the next blog.

In an interview conducted by Richard ‘Dick’ Wilcocks with Priscilla Beecham shortly before her death (a copy held in the John Rylands archive) she had seen Nuttall at several CND marches but she first met him properly at the Peanuts Club, a poetry and music venue based in the Kings Arms in Bishopsgate which Wilcocks helped to organise. Although she was then Wilcocks’ girlfriend, Beecham quickly became both Nuttall’s lover and his artistic collaborator and, as we shall see, she would have a major influence on both his art and life in the coming years.

Special Thanks to:

Angela Bartie, Doug Field, Jay Jeff Jones, Janette Martin, Jim Pennington, Jess Smith, Gillian Whiteley, Richard Wilcocks.

Sources/Resources

Jeff Nuttall Papers held at the John Rylands Library Special Collections

Dave Cunliffe Archive held at the John Rylands Library Special Collections

Eric Mottram Archive at King’s College London

Alexander Trocchi Archive at Washington University, St Louis, USA

Reality Studios website

Jeff-nuttall.co.uk which contains much of Gillian Whiteley’s brilliant research for a Mid-Pennine Arts Jeff Nuttall retrospective exhibition

GREEN, J., 1998. All Dressed Up – The Sixties and the Counterculture. London: Pimlico

GREEN, J., 1988. Days in the Life: Voices from the English Underground 1961-1971. London: Random House

HOME, S., 1991. The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents from Lettrisme to Class War. Stirling: AK Press

HOME, S., 1996. What is Situationism? A Reader. Stirling: AK Press

KESHVANI, R., 2019. Better Books/ Better Bookz: Art, Anarchy, Apostasy – Counter-Culture and the New Avant-Garde. London: Koenig Books

MAYER, P., (ED). 2004. Bob Cobbing & Writers Forum. London: Writers Forum

MILES, B., 2014. William S Burroughs: A Life. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson

MILLER, D., & PRICE, R., 2006.  British Poetry Magazines 1914-2000. London: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press

NUTTALL, J., 1968. Bomb Culture. London:  MacGibbon & Kee

NUTTALL, J., 2019. Bomb Culture. London: Strange Attractor Press

RADCLIFFE, C., 2018. Don’t Start Me Talkin’: Subculture, Situationism and the Sixties. London: Bread & Circuses Publishing

WHITELEY, G., 2011. Sewing the ‘subversive thread of imagination’: Jeff Nuttall, Bomb Culture and the radical potential of effect. The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture. Vol 4 (2). P.109-133.

Jeff Nuttall Publications List

1963: The Limbless Virtuoso with Keith Musgrave – Writers Forum Poets 1

1963: The Massacre of the Innocents – Poems by Bob Cobbing & John Rowan –                  Cover design by JN – WFP 2

1963: Tombstones – Poems by Derek Roberts & Michael McGrinder WFP3 – JN cover design

1963: We Just Wanted to Tell You -Poems David Ball & Anselm Hollo JN cov design

1963: The Change – By Allen Ginsberg, WFP5 JN cover design

1963: My Own Mag: Issue 1 – November 1963

1963: My Own Mag: 2 – December 1963

1964: The Human Dress – Poems by Lois Hieger – JN cover design

1964: Rock Pot: JN edits poetry from Class 4C Alder Secondary Modern in Barnet

1964: Barnet Poets – Barnet schools anthology JN cover design (Arts Tog) WFP10

1964: My Own Mag: 3 – February 1964

1964: My Own Mag: 4 – March 1964

1964: My Own Mag: 5 – May 1964

1964: My Own Mag: 6 – July 1964

1964: My Own Mag: 7 – July 1964

1964: My Own Mag: 8 – August 1964

1964: My Own Mag: 9 – November 1964

1964: My Own Mag: 10 – December 1964

1965: My Own Mag: 11 – February 1965

1965: My Own Mag: 12 – May 1965

1965: Poems I Want to Forget published by Turret Books

1965: The Cage – photomontage album includes work by JN, Evelyn Reifen, Vassos Demetriou, Don Priston, Tomazos, Trace, R Wilcocks

1965: My Own Mag: 13 – August 1965

1965: Son of Rock Pot More poetry from Class 4C edited by JN

1965: The Ten Plagues by John Rowan illustrated & design by JN  – WFP 12

1965: My Own Mag: 14 – December 1965

1966: My Own Mag: 15 – April 1966

1966: Pieces of Poetry – published by WF as WFP 17

1966: Group H – Publication accompanying Group H exhibition at Drian Galleries edited by Cobbing – JN & 16 GH members prepared a page each

1966: My Own Mag: 16 – May 1966

1966: Come Back Sweet Prince: A Novelette WFP 21

1966: My Own Mag: 17 – September 1966

1967: Turret Poets Read – Booklet accompanying a reading by Turret poets including JN, Christopher Logue, Edward Lucie-Smith etc.

1967: Swift Scripts, Notes and After Effects – Claude Pelieu – JN cover des WFP22

1967: The Case of Isabel and the Bleeding Foetus published by Turret Books

1967: Songs Sacred and Secular – self published? – no date included

1968: Oscar Christ and the Immaculate Conception – WFP23

1968: Pamphlet One – Writers Forum Pamphlets no1 – JN et al

1968: Mr Watkins Got Drunk and Had to be Carried Home: WFP24

1968: All Gods Must Learn to Kill: Published by Analecta Press, Edited by Douglas Blazek includes JN, Robert Crumb, d a levy etc.

1968: Journals published by Unicorn

1968: Snow – Anthology pub by X Press editor Paul Buck includes JN, Harold Norse, Brian Patten, Penelope Shuttle etc.

1968: Bomb Culture published by MacGibbon & Kee

1968: The Eighteen-Fifteen Murders by JN et al (Date unsure) pub by The Wild Pigeon Press Norwich (in Eric Mottram archive)

1969: Penguin Modern Poets 12: JN with Alan Jackson and William Wantling

1969: And Five – WF anthology edited by Cobbing & Rowan includes JN

1969: Love Poems anthology includes JN pub by Restiff Press

1969: Counter Culture – Anthology Ed by Joseph Berke pub by Peter Owen

1969: Pig published by Fulcrum

1969: George: Son of My Own Mag – Issue 1 November 1969

1969: George: Son of My Own Mag – 2 December 1969

1970: George: Son of My Own Mag – 3 January 1970

1970: George: Son of My Own Mag – 4 Easter 1970

1970: George: Son of My Own Mag – 5 Easter 1970

1970: George: Son of My Own Mag – 6 ? 1970

1970: George: Son of My Own Mag – 7 September 1970

1970: Poems 1962-1969 published by Fulcrum

1970: For Bill Butler – Anthology in support of Butler tried for obscenity published by Wallrich Books including JN, Roger McGough, Tom Raworth etc.

1970: Inside the Whale by Eric Mottram – illustrations & cover design by JN WFQ7

1970: Anatomy of Pop – edited by Tony Cash including contributions from JN, Peter Cole, Meirion Bowen, Ray Connolly, Richard Mabey & Richard Gilbert pub by BBC Broadcasting accompanying series first broadcast BBC1 10^th Jan 1971

1970: Tramps edited by JN and Ulli McCarthy pub by Prison Clothes Press

1971: (?) Zusammen ed by JN and Ulli McCarthy published by Prison Clothes Press

1971: Erire by Ulli McCarthy with JN illustrations pub Prison Clothes Press

1971: 25 Writings from Leeds Polytechnic edited by JN pub by Art & Design Press

1971: (?) Forwards! – A Phantom Captain Book edited Neil Hornick includes JN

1971: Mondstrip: Neue Englische Prosa pub by März Verlag anthology inc JN

1971: The Wolverhampton Wanderer – Poetry by Michael Horovitz pub by Latimer includes artwork by JN, David Hockney, John Furnival etc.

1971: In Dark Mill Shadows: An Anthology of Bailrigg Poems – pub by Continuum edited by Graham Taylor including JN, Adrian Mitchell, Adrian Henri etc.

1972: Foxes’ Lair – published by Aloes Books

1973: All Bull: The National Servicemen – edited by BS Johnson published by Allison & Busby and including JN, Alan Sillitoe and David Hockney

1973: Bone Songs – Ulli McCarthy – WF4’s 3 – Illustrations & cover by JN

1973: WF100 – Anthology edited by Cobbing & Rowan including JN

1974: Open Door – Anthology ed by Christopher Reed pub by Symposium incl JN

1974: Bob Cobbing & Writers Forum– Book accompanying Ceolfrith Press WF exhibition in Sunderland edited by Peter Mayer including Cobbing, JN etc.

1974: Wolves at the Door by Mike Dobbie illustrated by JN & Nick James

1975: Krak published by Jack Press

1975: The House Party published by Basilike Toronto

1975: You Always Remember the First Time – edited by BS Johnson & Giles Gordon published by Quartet Books and including JN

1975: Fatty Feedemall’s Secret Self: A Dream published by Jack Press

1975: Snipes Spinster published by Calder & Boyers

1975: Man not Man published by Unicorn Books

1975: The Anatomy of My Father’s Corpse published by Basilike Toronto

1976: Victims JN & Tony Jackson pub by WF Press

1976: Sun Barbs published by Poet & Peasant Books 19/05/76

1976: Poetry, Sculpture and Performance Arts at Lumb Bank 27^th Jul – 1^st Aug with JN, Roland Miller & Shirley Cameron – publication to accompany

1976: Objects published by Trigram

1977: Common Factors, Vulgar Factions with Rodick Carmichael published by Routledge & Kegan Paul

1977: Beowulf: Parallel Text by John Porter (JN illustrator) pub by Pirate Press

1978: Footfalls includes JN, Samuel Beckett, John Grillo & AF Cotterill pub by Faber

1978: The Gold Hole – novel published Quartet Books

1978: The Patriarchs: an early summer landscape – Arc Publishing

1978: King Twist: a portrait of Frank Randle published by Routledge & Kegan Paul

1978: What Happened to Jackson? Published by Aloes Books

1979: Sculptures published by Aloes Books

1979: Performance Art Memoirs Volume 1 published by Calder

1979: Arc Publications Calendar feat visual poetry by JN & others

1979: 14^th July JN’s Guardian poetry review column begins

1980: Performance Art Memoirs Volume 2 published by Calder

1980: The Usual Stringency published by Arc

1980: Scrapyard – published byPrison Clothes Press

1980: Grape Notes, Apple Music published by Rivelin

1981: The Kilpeck Anthology edited by Glenn Storhaug including JN (and many others) pub by Five Seasons Press Madley Herefordshire

1981: 5×5 includes JN, Glen Baxter, Ian Breakwell, Ivor Cutler & Anthony Earnshaw published by Trigram

1981: Dance in your Own Language by Kevin Crum – unknown publisher JN possibly contributing artwork

1982: Arc Publications Calendar feat visual poetry by JN & others

1982: The Final Academy – William Burroughs celebration includes JN, John Giorno, Terry Wilson etc.

1982: Fifth Last Song – By Carol Ann Duffy – Headland Publications: JN amongst several illustrators also inc. Adrian Henri

1983: Muscle published by Rivelin

1984: Violent Silence: Celebrating Georges Bataille – Booklet accompanying event Illustrated by JN

1985: Two Tails by Tony Jackson illustrated by JN

1985: Knuckleduster Funnies Issue 1 Summer 1985 edited by JN (AKA Lydia Hesse) and Robert Bank

1985: Knuckleduster Funnies 2 – date uncertain

1986: Knuckleduster Funnies 3 – date uncertain

1986: Knuckleduster Funnies 4 Easter 1986 *Most sources maintain that there were only 4 issues but there are references to Issue 5 on the internet

1987 Visual Alchemy JN with Bohuslav Barlow pub by Babylon Todmorden

1987: Mad with Music published by WF Press

1988 JN guest edits Tak Tak Tak 3 published in Nottingham

1988: The Pleasures of Necessity published by Arrowspire Colne

1989: Michael Horovitz: Bop Paintings, Collages, Picture-Poems 1962-1971 to accompany exhibition – JN & John McEwen (eds?)

1989: The Bald Soprano: A Portrait of Lol Coxhill published by Tak Tak Tak

1989: Scenes and Dubs published by WF Press

1991: Mother Country/ Fatherland anthology published by Tak Tak Tak includes JN, Geraldine Monk, Mike Horovitz, Nick Toczek etc.

1992: Verbi Visi Voco – Writers Forum 500 edited by Cobbing & Bill Griffiths inc JN

1994: 22 Poems published by RWC

1994: The World One Day Cup Winner includes JN et al Images publishing

1997: Sub Voicive Poetry #11 WFP with Lawrence Upton

1998: Estate – JN intro in Catalogue to Ian Hinchcliffe retrospective Oct-Nov 98

1999: Karen McCracken Was a Very Dynamic Child – no publisher or date included

2000: Marketing Revolt – unknown publisher or date (became Art & the Degradation)

2000: for Bob Cobbing: A Celebration – Anthology pub by Mainstream Poetry Pamphlets includes JN, Maggie O’Sullivan, Sean Bonney etc.

2001: Art and the Degradation of Awareness published by Calder

2002: Weasel published by Jack Press

2002: Helga De Luxe published by Jack Press

2002: Jeff Nuttall’s Work (possibly ‘Two Nice Legs’) WF Press

2002: Supper Moves Unlight (possibly Sunlight) WF Press

2003: Selected Poems published by Salt

2003: Poor Malcolm published by Jack Press

2003: The Arachnophile published by Jack Press

2004: Jeff Nuttall’s Wake on Paper – anthology pub by New Departures

2004: Jeff Nuttall: A Celebration – edited by Robert Bank & Tony Ward pub by Arc

2004: Jeff Nuttall’s Selected Poems and Wolf Tongue by Barry MacSweeney edited by Peter Finch published by Poetry Wales Press

2014: Bob Pub – Anthology accompanying Bob Cobbing exhibition published by Chelsea Space and including Cobbing, JN, Lol Coxhill etc.

2014: Concerning Concrete Poetry – Edited by Cobbing includes JN et al published by Slimvolume

2016: An Aesthetic of Obscenity published Verbivoracious Press

2016: Broken Frontier: Anthology – Collection of comic/cartoon artists published by Wave Blue World and including JN (?)

2018: The Edge of Necessary: An Anthology of Welsh Innovative Poetry 1966-2018 ed by John Goodby & Lyndon Davies – incl JN as Welsh resident (Aquifer pub?)

UNDATED: Klownz published by Arc

Jeff Nuttall List of periodicals contributed to

Alembic: 5,

Amarinth: 2,

Amazing Grace: 5,

And: 3 (as ‘Peter Church’), 4, 5, 6,

Angel Exhaust: 4

Ambit: 26, 40, 48, 58, 60, 79, 80, 88, 105, 119, 121, 123, 126, 139

Black Country Meat Chronicle: 17,

Blue Pig: 7,

Chanticleer:

City Lights Journal: 3,

Contact: 1,

Contrasts: 8,

Cosmos: 1, 2, 3,

The Curiously Strong: 4,

Curtains: And Matching Curtains Too!, Velvet Curtains, A Range of Curtains, Split Curtains,

Cyclops:

Disinherited: 3,

Editor Anonymous: 3, 4,

Evergreen Review: Vol 9 No 38,

Extremes:

Fix: 1,

Gambit: 16, 31,

Good Elf: 5/6,

Greedy Shark: 1,

The Guardian: 12/05/76: JN reviews the film ‘Scum’, 13/05/76: JN reviews Terry O’Malley concert. Bubble-Pack Culture 12/01/80, Control Calling 02/08/80, (Poetry in Print column: 14/07/79, 11/08/79, 06/10/79, 10/11/79, 15/12/79, 19/01/80, 09/02/80, 08/03/80, 26/04/80, 24/05/80, 21/06/80, 12/07/80, 23/08/80, 18/10/80, 29/11/80, 24/01/81, 21/02/81, 21/03/81, 09/05/81, 18/07/81), Obituary of Asa Benveniste 23/04/90,

Guerrilla: Vol 2 No 2,

The Human Handkerchief:

Iconolâtre: 11, 20,

Illustration: 50 Winter 2016/17,

Independent: Rotten Reason to Resign from the Poetry Society by JN & A Tunnicliffe 16/02/92, Letting it All Hang Out 12/08/95, Hating Iago 14/10/95, Suspicious of Beauty 16/12/95, Entrancements on the Local Bus 02/03/96, Too Much Honey for Tea 04/05/96, Tactics of Disarray 20/07/96,

Inherited: 1,

International Times (IT): 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 16, 24, 25, 49,

Klactoveedsedsteen: 4, 23,

The Little Word Machine: 4/5,

Long Hair: 1,

Mar: 1,

The Moon: 2,

Mugshots: 4

Murid:

New Departures: 7/8, 10/11, 13,

New Yorkshire Writing: 3, 6,

Not Poetry: 3,

Olé: 6, 7,

PALPI (Poetry and Little Press Info.): 1, 6, 7,

Pennine: 8/4

The Performance Magazine: 2 Aug-Sep 1979,

Poet & Peasant: 6,

Poetry Review: Autumn 1971, Vol 61 No 4, Vol 62 Nos 3 & 4

Radical Poetics: 1 Spring 1997,

Rayday: 2,

Residu: 2,

RWC: 21/22 1994,

San Francisco Book Review: 22,

San Francisco Earthquake: 2, 5

Saturday Morning: 1,

Sixpack: 1, 3/4,

Spectacular Diseases: 2,

Square One: 1,

Strange Faeces: 4, 8,

Streetword: 1/2,

Styng: 

Subvoicive Poetry: 9, 11,

Tak Tak Tak: 2,

Talus: 1, 9/10

Transatlantic Review: 17, 21,

Words:

Workshop: 10,

Yam: 1,

Zip: 3,

Researched and written by Bruce Wilkinson and Dave Goulding

Donated to the John Rylands Library Special Collections in September 2019, the Ernest Wilson Papers consist of original manuscripts and include the notations for several operas, concertos and numerous big-band dance tunes which span his long music industry career. Wilson is probably best-known for his period performing with and co-writing for the Victor Silvester Orchestra during a time when dancehalls were one of the predominant forms of entertainment. Although he spent most of his life resident in London (where much of the work was) Wilson was extremely proud of his Manchester roots and so it is very fitting that this important musical archive now resides in the heart of the city.

Born Salford in October 1910 he was brought up in Heaton Street, Higher Broughton then an extremely cosmopolitan district of Manchester. Wilson had piano lessons as a child but was largely a self-taught musician, learning to play by ear and using books from the library to develop composition skills. By the age of 15 he was dance-class pianist at Finnigans Ballroom in nearby Cheetham Hill, a venue already steeped in dance history as the place where the Military Two Step was developed by founder James Finnigan and his daughter Ethel. Finnigans also connects Wilson with those other great local songwriters Morrissey and Marr; The Headmaster Ritual from The Smiths’ Meat is Murder album not coincidentally containing the lyric:

He does the Military Two Step/ Down the nape of my neck

Moving to London in the depression of the late-1920s when jobs were scarce, Wilson sought employment in the Tin Pan Alley of Soho’s Denmark Street, the base of many British music publishers, looking for engagements with orchestras playing dance music in the capital’s numerous hotels, ballrooms and nightspots. His first work was as pianist with Jan Ralfini & his Band whom you can see in this footage playing with the comedian Tommy Trinder (sadly without Ernest Wilson):

https://www.britishpathe.com/video/tommy-trinder-introduces-jan-ralfini

In the early 1930s Wilson played with the Bert Ambrose Blue Lyers at the Dorchester and Embassy hotels, the ‘Famous Ambrose’ reputedly paid a then enormous annual sum of £10,000 for concerts and his orchestra regularly featured on national radio. When Ambrose later moved to the US he was offered huge amounts of money to try to lure him back to the UK due to his band’s drawing power. According to the British Dance Band Discography (which comprehensively lists studio sessions) in 1932 Wilson recorded with band leader Arthur Lally and the Durium Dance Band – the in-house orchestra of Durium Records which cheaply produced quick covers of new dance tunes for a mass audience. He recorded with Sydney Lipton and his Grosvenor House Dance Orchestra in 1942 and he often accompanied violinist Oscar Grasso for engagements at the Tricity Restaurant in The Strand. Wilson also played on three records with swing band The Jackdaws with Miff Ferrie and it might be this kind of jazz engagement which led to him being occasionally credited as Ernest ‘Slim’ Wilson. George Frederick ‘Miff’ Ferrie is better known as a Scottish writer, producer and agent who was rather infamous as Tommy Cooper’s manager – the British Comedy Guide noting that in a Cooper documentary ‘you won’t find anyone with a good word to say about [Ferrie]’.

Wilson played with many of the leading ensembles of the time including Joe Loss, Maurice Winnick and by the late Thirties he was one of two pianists in the well-known Victor Silvester Orchestra. With Silvester he regularly appeared on the wireless and at some of the most prestigious London venues including the Hammersmith Palais and the Astoria and he was in the recording studio on an almost monthly basis where he also contributed his composition skills. According to listings in the Radio Times, alongside numerous broadcasts with the Blue Lyers and Silvester he also appeared regularly accompanying other musicians and singers. A staunch supporter of the Musician’s Union, one presumes that Wilson ensured that all his fellow players were card-carrying members before they could take part in each session. The union campaigned to retain live bands in dancehalls when the use of records began to impinge on their bookings and it also created the Musical Performers Protection Association to guard against the unauthorised reproduction of songs.

Wilson played on up to three radio broadcasts each day during the early days of the Second World War and then served with the RAF stationed at Melksham, Hull and then briefly in Iceland, an allied base later in the conflict. Wilson has numerous co-writing credits with Silvester including El Conquistador, Goodnight Waltz (1949):

Marianne (1949):

One of his best-known songs is the very popular dance tune ‘The Golden Tango’ (1954):

Wilson arranged the Samba Voila Voila later recorded by Edmundo Ross in 1951:

Wilson developed a reputation as one of the best sight-readers in the business with the ability to quickly pick up and interpret a tune – a crucial skill when recordings were often unavailable and bands needed to be up-to-date to compete with the latest songs in a fast-moving genre. One connected sideline was the re-recording of film scores then sold much more cheaply than the original disc. Able to quickly pick up and almost instantaneously interpret a tune just by listening to a soundtrack, Wilson could score the music and get it down on an album within just a few days – a great skill to have in a period long before YouTube made most tunes instantly available.

Although Wilson isn’t mentioned in Silvester’s autobiography, the band leader became increasingly reliant on the pianist’s arrangement skills. Often very busy he sometimes moved between several gigs each day which wasn’t always easy because he didn’t drive. His son Anthony Wilson recalls how, running late due to a delayed bus, his father rushed into the Norbury Hotel, dashed onto the stage and began playing only to be asked who he was by a fellow musician – he was meant to be performing at another venue around the corner.

Alongside dance tunes he composed several light operas, musicals and symphonies including King Charles the First, the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Postings, about the war contribution of Polish fighter pilots. Entering a musical competition to celebrate the coronation, Wilson was invited to play ‘The Queen Elizabeth Waltz’ for the princesses at Buckingham Palace, which you can hear performed by Mantovani and his Orchestra:

Wilson also produced ‘Pink Carnations for My Lady’ about the Queen of Holland. He was part of Silvester’s band until the 1960s when its appearances on the ballroom show Come Dancing increased its fame but Wilson wanted to make his own mark out of the shadow of large orchestras. In an unusual move for that time he created the Silver Dollar label in the early 1960s producing his own music and putting out several popular EPs and albums. Later in the decade Wilson accompanied famous comedians playing summer season shows; they included Arthur Askey, Dicky Henderson, Beryl Reid and the impressionist Mike Yarwood, playing at the upmarket Gleneagles Hotel in the Winter.

Wilson worked as solo pianist and musical arranger for concert violinist and orchestra leader Sidney Sax performing on his weekly BBC radio broadcasts. (Sax is probably best known as co-founder of the National Philharmonic Orchestra.) He also played the piano on cruises, particularly well-received on board Russian liner the Mikhail Lermontov whose captain often asked him to play his own compositions and dine at his table. Always busy, a stroke sadly diminished his ability to play and compose music in the 1980s but Wilson left a legacy of popular dance tunes, many 78s now collector’s items but increasingly uploaded, available and enjoyed on websites and social media groups at a time when ballroom dancing is once again very popular.

With thanks to archivist Jess Smith, Anthony Wilson and the members of Facebook group The Golden Age of British Dance Bands.

I am pleased to announce the acquisition of a new collection of papers relating to artist, poet, writer and musician Jeff Nuttall. The collection was donated to us by Paul Davies, founder of former indie publishing house Basilike, who published Nuttall’s works House Party and The Anatomy of My Father’s Corpse in 1975. Davies carried out all of the typesetting for the publications, and is himself a fiction writer. He was also clear that he wished to respect Nuttall’s wishes that his papers should be housed in public collections.

In 1978, whilst Davies was staying with Nuttall and his wife, Nuttall handed over a series of annotated typescripts, intended as the basis of a new book. As his publishing house was in difficulties, Davies initially tried to return the papers, and when this proved difficult, they were eventually mislaid in a move to Canada, and were only recently rediscovered. Davies and Nuttall also had a book of art and poetry in the pipeline when the press folded, entitled ‘Flowers’.

The collection includes 36 essays, articles, radio pieces, addresses and reviews by Nuttall, annotated in his signature black marker pen, in addition to a small collection of correspondence and photographs. Davies has also kindly donated one of the few surviving copies of his 1985 quarto reprint of The Anatomy of My Father’s Corpse, which was never made available for purchase.   

In the course of donating the Nuttall papers, Davies decided to create a facsimile of his lost 1985 edition of The Anatomy of My Father’s Corpse, which he considers to be Nuttall’s finest prose writing. The facsimile was republished and can be accessed online via Kindle. The proceeds of this publication have been generously offered to the Rylands, and will be used to fund work on preserving and cataloguing the papers of Jeff Nuttall.

More information on Davies’s work can be found on his website. Additional material relating to Davies’s work with Nuttall is located in the archive of his publishing house, housed at the University of Alberta Library.

The new Kindle edition of The Anatomy of My Father’s Corpse is available for purchase here.

We are delighted that this significant collection has found a home at the Rylands, and it will form a valuable addition to our holdings on Jeff Nuttall.