This is a poster version of the exhibition People don’t know about them…, which was on display in the Marjorie Robinson Library Rooms, Newcastle University, 28th October 2016 – 15th January 2017. The exhibition was the result of a collaborative oral history project based in Newcastle University Libraries.
Many thanks to the creators of the original exhibition, Sam Wagner and Rosemary Nicholson.
Exhibition Open! “People don’t know about them…”
Ground Floor – Marjorie Robinson Library Rooms
28th October 2016 – 15th January 2017
“And then 1914, obviously the First World War is declared and she came back to England, and she’d been working as a surgeon. She offered her services to the War Office and the War Office accepted her and said yes and then she got her kit together and turned up at Victoria Station in London to join her group to go out to France to the military hospital out in France and the doctor in charge said I’m not having a woman. I’m not taking her.“
Rosemary Nicholson
The Universities at War project is a volunteer project based in the Special Collections Department at the Philip Robinson Library. Its aim is to tell the stories of the staff and students of Newcastle University who fought in the First World War.
In 2015 Sam Wagner, an archaeology student in her final year of study at Newcastle University, joined the Universities at War project as part of her Career Development Module. For her final project, Sam chose to conduct an oral history interview, and that is where our story starts …
Ruth Nicholson, Rosemary Nicholson and Sam Wagner
Rosemary Nicholson had previously contacted the Universities at War project to tell us about her husband’s aunt, Ruth Nicholson. Ruth was a Newcastle University medical graduate who worked under the direction of the French Red Cross throughout the First World War, as a surgeon in a military hospital in France.
A female medical graduate?
A military hospital staffed entirely by women?
And why the French Red Cross?
Sam’s exhibition is the result of her own historical research and interviews with Rosemary – capturing her memories of family stories about Ruth, as told through Ruth’s sister, Alison, who was still alive when Rosemary married into the family.
Panel on the Royaumont women in the Scottish Diaspora Tapestry, stitched by Andrea Cooley.
“ I felt she never got the credit she should have had, or the recognition she should have had, or Alison. People don’t know about them, I mean I write to everybody. I heard the programme on Women’s Hour about the women’s hospital in London and I rang right in to them saying, you know, What about Royaumont?! It was a matter of pride! ”
Rosemary Nicholson
Royaumont Hospital, image kindly provided by the Imperial War Museum.
All images in the exhibition have been kindly provided by the Nicholson family or other priviate owners, for the purposes of exhibition only.
The exhibition took place in the Marjorie Robinson Library Rooms, Newcastle University, 28th October 2016 – 15th January 2017.
An online version of this exhibition can be seen here.
A poster version of the exhibition can be seen here.
Title page from the ‘Authentic account of a visit to the haunted house at Willington near Newcastle-upon-Tyne’ (W159.9612252 RIC), published 1842
“I have about 30 witnesses to various things which cannot be satisfactorily accounted for, on any other principle than spiritual agency” pg. 6.
When mysterious circumstances occur out of the corner of your eye, where unknown noises are heard and items disappear from shelves and reappear on another. Lurking in the Special Collections and Archives stores is a wealth of material that tells of haunted castles, superstitions, witchcraft, mythical tales and ghost stories. Some of the material is often frightening, others delightful, intriguing and often sinister. Whether stories of the supernatural are viewed with scepticism or disbelief, there is often a curiosity and interest in occurrences of this nature.
The story that is about to be told is therefore left to the reader to draw their own conclusion on the subject. Retrieved from a cold, dark corner of the Robert White Collection is the pamphlet; an ‘Authentic account of a visit to the haunted house at Willington‘ (W159.9612252 RIC) published in 1842.
Image of The Haunted Mill in Willington in 1887, taken from ‘The Monthly Chronicle of North-Country Lore and Legend, 1887’ (Edwin Clarke Local Collection 2066)
Willington Mill near Wallsend in North Tyneside was owned by two Quaker cousins, George Unthank and Joseph Procter, and was the first steam-powered mill in the North East. During the 19th century it gained reputation as being haunted; said to be swamped by spectres, which included the ghost of a woman called Kitty who died during a terrible accident that occurred there. However, from about 1840, it is the haunting of the adjoining house that was occupied by Joseph Procter and his family that attracted the greatest amount of public notice. Bizarre noises, haunting apparitions and poltergeist activity shrouded the house and there were different attempts to solve the mystery. Perhaps the most famous endeavour was that of a young surgeon called Mr. E. Drury.
On the 3rd July, Drury arrived at the house to spend a night with his companion, Mr. Thomas Hudson (a chemist of South Shields). The house was locked up and every corner was searched and examined. Drury and Hudson were satisfied that there was no one else in the house apart from themselves, Mr Procter and the servant.
What followed has been recorded in the account; a noise was heard at approx. 11:50pm, a few minutes afterwards both Drury and Hudson heard a noise as if footsetaps were walking across the floor. A few minutes after, a knocking noise was heard followed immediately by a hollow cough from which the apparition proceeded from. The following events are further described in a letter from Mr. Drury dated Sunderland, July 13 1840, addressed to Mr. Procter;
“I took up a note which I had accidentally dropped, and began to read it; after which I took out my watch to ascertain the time, and found that it wanted ten minutes to one. In taking my eyes from the watch they became riveted upon a closet door, which I distinctly saw open, and also saw the figure of a female, attired in greyish garments, with the head inclined downwards, and one hand pressed upon the chest as if in pain, and the other, viz., the right hand, extended towards the floor, with the index finger pointing downwards. It advanced with an apparently cautious step across the floor towards me; immediately as it approached my friend, who was slumbering, its right hand extended towards him. I then rushed at it, giving at the time, as Mr. Procter states, a most awful yell; but, instead of grasping it, I fell upon my friend – and I recollected nothing distinctly for nearly three hours afterwards. I have since learnt that I was carried downstairs in an agony of fear and terror” pg. 7.
Further activity following this account was recorded This included a case of an apparition seen in the window of the house from the outside by four witnesses (a lady with connections to the Procter family, a man employed by the mill, his wife and daughter). This account is detailed below:
Extract taken from pg. 8 of the ‘Authentic account of a visit to the haunted house at Willington near Newcastle-upon-Tyne’ (W159.9612252 RIC), published 1842
In 1847, the Procter family vacated the house after 11 years. After the Procters had moved, local residents continued to experience hauntings. By 1890 the mill was closed and converted into a warehouse and the house was divided into apartments. The house was later torn down and for many years after there were still reportings of paranormal activity from workers at the mill.
If you are interested in coming into the reading room to see this pamphlet and others from the collection…
# This item is held in the Robert White Collection (Ref Code W159.9612252 RIC).
# You can place your order by linking to our request form. The reference code and title will be ‘W159.9612252 RIC – Authentic account of a visit to the haunted house at Willington’.
The title page from Wilson’s An Account of the Province of Carolina (ROB139)
‘I have here… described a pleasant and fertile country, abounding in health and pleasure, and with all things necessary for the sustenance of mankind, and wherein I think I have written nothing but truth, sure I am I have inserted no wilful falsehood…’. p.17
In 1663, King Charles II issued a charter granting an extensive expanse of land on the American continent to eight of his political allies, the Lords Proprietors. The territory, the ‘Province of Carolina’, sat between the English colony of Virginia and the Spanish territory of Florida. The first years of settlement were disappointing, but the colony slowly grew, including the settling of Charles Town in 1670. However, the colony continued to face significant difficulties, in particular the lack of new settlers and the failure of the colony to return a profit.
In an attempt to solve these problems, the Lords Proprietors launched a significant promotional campaign in 1682. A major part of this campaign was the commission and publication of promotional tracts that described Carolina and advertised the colony to potential emigrants. One such pamphlet was Samuel Wilson’s An Account of the Province of Carolina in America, published in 1682. Wilson’s account is full of the promise that Carolina offered to those willing to venture there.
Wilson was actually Secretary to the Lords Proprietors, and said that he had written his account ‘as a duty incumbent upon me’, to counter a lack of knowledge of Carolina amongst prospective settlers. However, he was keen to stress his impartiality to readers, claiming that he had ‘most strictly kept to the rules of truth, there not being anything that I have written… which I cannot prove by letters from thence now in my possession, and by living witnesses now in England’. (p.3)
Wilson was keen to show readers that voyaging to Carolina provided an opportunity for the lower sorts to improve their station in life. Wilson claimed that ‘many persons who went to Carolina servants, being industrious since they came out of their times with their masters, have gotten good stocks of cattle, and servants of their own… are now worth several hundreds of pounds, and live in a very plentiful condition’. (pp.7-8). Here we see Carolina portrayed as a land of opportunity, in language similar to the ‘American Dream’ in centuries to come.
A list of commodities traded and sold in the colony, from James Glen’s A Description of Carolina, 1761 (ROB135)
The pamphlet also made some interesting observations (and bold claims) about the environment of Carolina. According to Wilson, the very air of Carolina gave ‘a strong appetite and quick digestion, nor is it withal suitable effects, men finding themselves apparently more lightsome, more prone, and more able to youthful exercises, than in England’. He also claimed that ‘an ox is raised at almost as little expense in Carolina, as a hen is in England’. (p.13)
Wilson argued that the mild winters in the colony meant that ‘the December and January of Ashley River, I suppose to be of the same temperature with the latter end of March, and beginning of April in England’. (p.9) The mild winters also had benefits for those of his countrymen who aspired to be slaveholders, with Wilson claiming that ‘Negroes, by reason of the mildness of the winter thrive and stand much better, than in any of the more northern colonies, and require less clothes, which is a great charge saved’. (p.14) South Carolina went on to have one of the highest slave populations of the British colonies in North America, and later became one of the largest slave-owning states in the U.S.
For those readers who had been persuaded by his account, Wilson advised that ‘the passage of a man or woman to Carolina is five pound, ships are going thither all times of the year’. For those that perhaps needed a little more persuasion or had any questions, they only had to head to the Carolina Coffee House in London, where ‘some of the Lords Proprietors, or myself, will be every Tuesday at 11 of the clock’ (p.19).
Although it is unknown how many people Wilson’s pamphlet in itself inspired to emigrate to Carolina, the promotional campaign of 1682 was a success, resulting in over 500 new settlers to the colony in the next few years. Although accounts like Wilson’s may have over exaggerated the benefits and played down the dangers, these texts played a key role in explaining why so many men and women made the decision to become colonists in the New World.
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If you are interested in reading more about the settlement of Carolina, and descriptions of the colony throughout the colonial period, we have several items here in our collections: