A big welcome from Special Collections at the Philip Robinson Library, archives and rare books in the heart of the Newcastle University campus.
What will you be looking at in three years time?!
The first day of one of the most well-known battles of the Great War, the Battle of the Somme, saw tremendous losses for the allied forces. The 1st July, 1916 is documented as the day when the highest number of casualties in Britain’s military history took place. This day gravely affected the Tyneside Irish and the Tyneside Scottish battalions of the Northumberland Fusiliers, who suffered some of the highest casualties, amounting to around 8,000 in total.
During my second year of my History and Archaeology course at Newcastle University, I applied for a research scheme that the university runs which takes place over the summer vacation before the final year of daunting dissertations. Students have to come up with their own project idea in which they are to research independently over a period of either 6 or 8 weeks.
Due to the centenary of the First World War, in which commemorations began in 2014, I wanted to make my own contribution to the fallen that Britain will be remembering over the next three years. Therefore, my supervisor Dr. Jane Webster and I, came up with the idea of contributing to the ‘University’s at War’ project which looks into the soldiers that are commemorated on the Armstrong War Memorial. On the memorial there are 222 names. This in itself is a mammoth task to complete detailed research on each individual in 7 weeks; therefore I have narrowed my work down to focus on those who fought for the Northumberland Fusiliers, amounting to 67 men.
The day I began my research, my second supervisor, Ian Johnson (an archivist in Newcastle University’s Special Collections and one of the founders of the ‘Universities at War’ project) showed me which materials I would be using to complete my research. These included archives such as the Durham University Journals, Roll of Service and the vast scope of the census records, military records and medal rolls which the Ancestry website provides.
Probably the most exciting archive material I looked at was the Durham University Journal. It wasn’t so much the articles in the journal that was interesting, but the advertisements for things such as medical equipment (with Durham University having its own medical school). The adverts were for shops and stores on well-known streets in Newcastle, such as Northumberland Street and Blackett Street. It made me go back in time and imagine what our bustling Geordie city centre would have looked like 100 years ago, with the vast array of marvellous merchandise for sale; a world away from what we see today.
William Nixon – (136) – Image 1 – Source Durham University Gazette, Vol II, 1912-1929
When it came to exploring the individuals of the Northumberland Fusiliers from Durham and our very own University (formerly part of Durham University and known as Armstrong College) I found that there were a total of five men who all died on the same day, the 1st July, 1916. These individuals were John Macfarlan Charlton (whose only sibling died only six days before he did), Henry Sibbit, Arthur Cecil Young, Patrick Austin Murray and William Nixon. When I searched the date of the 1st July 1916, I found that it was the very first day of one of the most famous battles of the War, the Battle of the Somme. Further reading highlighted to me that this was one of, if not the most devastating days in Britain’s history, in terms of the casualties sustained in battle.
Percival William Murray
Regarding the stories of our University’s fallen comrades, John Macfarlan Charlton is the only man where there are specific details about his death. On his 25th birthday, John was killed by a bullet through the head while leading his company near La Boiselle, France. We also know that William Nixon was killed during the first wave of the attacks on the 1st, but unfortunately all we know for the remaining three men is they were killed in action on this disastrous day.
Thank you to our ‘Universities at War’ Volunteer Rosie Setford for this piece of reseasrch.
Universities at War – The Newcastle University Digital Memory Book
The 1st July marks the 100 anniversary of first day of the Battle of the Somme. Lasting from the 1 July to the 18 November 1916 it was the largest battle of the First World War on the Western Front. More than one million men were wounded or killed.
Here we remember John Charlton who died on the 1st day of the Somme, and his brother Hugh who was also killed in action in the same year. Both brothers were former students of Armstrong College (later to become part of the University of Newcastle).
John Macfarlan Charlton and Hugh Vaughn Charlton
Captain John Macfarlan Charlton was killed on July 1st 1916, on the 1st of July, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. He was 25 years old. Seven days earlier is elder brother Hugh had also been killed in action.
John Macfarlan Charlton. Image kindly provided by Alice Barrigan and available at northyorkshirehistory.blogspot.co.uk
Both brothers were talented ornithologists and artists and after their death the magazine British Birds published a heartfelt obituary for both brothers, writing that:
“The writer deeply deplores their untimely death, a feeling that is shared by all who knew them, and lovers of natural history will regret that ornithology has lost two students of great promise.”
Their father John was an artist and renowned painter of rural life and many of his paintings are still held by galleries in the local area. Both sons went on to develop their own artistic careers and also to share their father’s love of the natural world. At the outbreak of World War One John Charlton Snr he completed two paintings recording the early days of the war, French Artillery Crossing the Flooded Aisne (1915 – owned by Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne) and Retreat from the Marne (1915 – owned by Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead). Shortly after his sons’ deaths however, on the 10th November 1917, he himself died at the age of 68. “He felt the loss of his two sons profoundly,” read his obituary in The Graphic.
French Artillery Crossing the Flooded Aisne and Saving the Guns,
John Charlton (Snr), 1915, Laing Art Gallery Collection
John was a Captain in the Northumberland Fusiliers, 21st Battalion (2nd Tyneside Scottish), enlisting on 11th November 1914. Hugh meanwhile received his commission in August 1915 as Second Lieutenant in the Northumberland Fusiliers, 7th Battalion and entered France on 13th March 1916. Hugh was killed in action on 24th June 1916 aged 32 in West-Vlaanderen, Heuvelland, Belgium. He was struck by a bomb from a trench mortar near Whychaate. Seven days later, John was killed in action, on his 25th Birthday.
Family Memorial
Thank you to our ‘Universities at War’ volunteer Sam Mitchell for researching the Charlton brothers for this project.
Universities at War – The Newcastle University Digital Memory Book
Newcastle University are offering over £1million in PhD funding through the Research Excellence Academy scheme for students to start a full-time PhD in autumn 2016. The University’s Children’s Literature Unit would particularly welcome applications for this funding to study our children’s literature collections.
Newcastle University’s Research Excellence Academy PhD Studentships
Each studentship covers tuition fees and living expenses for the three years of your PhD studies. There are two schemes available:
Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences: This scheme covers a number of academic subjects, including English Literature. This funding would particularly suit cross-disciplinary research proposals. The deadline for applications is 30th April 2016. See: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/postgraduate/funding/sources/allstudents/hrea16.html
School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics: There are a number of studentships available and your main supervisor will be based within the School of English. The department are also offering extra support to international applicants. The deadline for applications is 5pm on 16th May 2016. See: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/elll/study/postgraduate/funding/reastudentshipslitandcw.htm
Our Children’s Literature Collections
Our children’s literature collections hold great potential for academic research. As well as the Booktrust collection of contemporary children’s books, we hold a number of Special Collections children’s literature.
Britnell Collection A collection of late 19th and early 20th Century children’s literature, focusing on literacy, language, and moral instruction.
Burnett Collection A collection of children’s books and annuals published in the early to mid-20th century. Includes Timothy’s Quest (1900) and Girl’s Fun Annual (1952).
Butler Collection Includes 18th century pamphlets, books by the likes of Daniel Defoe and J.M. Barrie and titles illustrated by Randolph Caldecott.
Davin Collection Contemporary editions of popular children’s literature largely from the early 20th Century. Also includes catalogues and critical responses to children’s literature.
Chorley Collection Children’s literature chiefly from the 19th century. Includes Kate Greenaway’s Almanack for 1884, R. M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island and the work of Randolph Caldecott.
Meade Collection Around 180 books by L.T. Meade which were published between 1878 and 2003. Titles include: The Autocrat of the Nursery, Kitty O’Donovan and The Scamp Family.
If you are considering applying for either of Newcastle University’s Research Excellence Academy studentship opportunities in children’s literature, please contact Dr. Lucy Pearson, lucy.pearson@newcastle.ac.uk / +44 (0) 191 208 3894.
To find out more about our holdings please refer to the Collections Guide. To discover how you can consult materials see Using our collections.
Research Tip # 1: Primary → Secondary → Primary
OK so this is slightly against normal advice, which is to start with your secondary sources before you move to your primary sources, but I promise I have a reason! You don’t have an unlimited amount of time to complete this dissertation … there is some danger in deciding on a very specific topic and trying to find evidence to prove a specific point: you may draw conclusions that are not supported by the sources, or miss more important or interesting information, and perhaps most importantly waste a lot of time looking for something very specific which simply does not exist, or which does exist but which can only be accessed in person in Australia, not that convenient…
So:
Research Tip # 2: Finding Rare Books
Our rare book collections here at Newcastle University have been entered onto the library catalogue, so that can often be the best way to start your topic search. Subject search terms work as they would for modern books, and then refining your search using ‘date of publication’ or ‘location’ (“Special Collections”) will get you to those rare and unique, old or limited print run titles. To locate rare books beyond the Newcastle region, the best place to start is the Copac website, where you can search the rare book catalogues of 90 specialist research libraries in the UK.
Research Tip # 3 Finding Archives
Archives are business records, diaries, letters, email threads, photographs, research notes, government publications, annual reports, web pages… They are not published books and they are not stored and catalogued in the same way that books are. All those great tricks for finding books, which you have got really good at over the last few years, will not necessarily help you to find archive records. Don’t panic! You just need to learn some new tricks.
Subject searches sometimes work, but not always. Why? Imagine someone’s diaries. They might have written about your topic once, on the 3rd of April, a long and fascinating account perhaps, but it is unlikely that anyone has subject indexed every single page of every single diary. So how will you find this precious page?
Well what do you know? Imagine you are interested in an event held in Newcastle and you are interested in the public response and reaction.
So that’s the general idea, don’t rely on search terms, think things like:
And if you are new to this type of search process, remember that the staff in Special Collections are happy to give advice.
Good luck and here are some collections held here at Newcastle University to get you thinking.
This is #3 of the ‘Making the Archive Public‘ series, where we are showcasing examples from this project, using the rich archive and rare book collections on offer to researchers in the North East.
Women’s Work: Oral Histories of the Women’s Institute
Visit: http://winortheast.omeka.net/
This website was created by Jess Kadow and Shelby Derbyshire as part of the Making the Archives Public: Digital Skills, Research and Public Engagement project at Newcastle University.
The Women’s Work project is a collaboration organised between Newcastle University, the Northumberland Federation of Women’s Institutes and The Northumberland Archives. The project consisted of recording and archiving the oral histories of the North-Eastern WI community, particularly its oldest members, as a means of preserving the tradition and heritage of the Women’s Institute.
The diversity of each woman’s experience with the WI, the changes they have witnessed, the friendships they have made and the activities they have participated in have given this project a great level of depth. This exhibition hopes to showcase its best elements.
This is #2 of the ‘Making the Archive Public’ series, where we are showcasing examples from this project, using the rich archive and rare book collections on offer to researchers in the North East.
The Execution of James Maben
An eighteenth-century execution: Industry and Idleness, Plate XI, ‘The Idle ‘Prentice Executed at Tyburn’, William Hogarth (1747).
Visit: http://executionofjamesmaben.omeka.net/about
This project, by Robyn Orr, uses a digitised version of the eighteenth-century pamphlet, A True copy of the papers written by James Maben, held in the Newcastle City Library Special Collections. The themes that are discussed are Newcastle in the Eighteenth Century, Coins and Counterfeiting, and Prisons and Executions.
The pamphlet demonstrates that a single piece of archival material can be used to create a wider narrative (the front page and page 2 from the digitised pamphlet is shown below).
Front page
Page 2
Making the Archives Public was a UTLSEC Innovation Fund (University Teaching, Learning and Student Experience Committee) project in 2014/15. Devised by Dr Ruth Connolly and Dr Stacy Gillis from the School of English with further expertise and access provided by our own Special Collections, Queen’s University Belfast, and local heritage partners, it incorporated traditional curation and digitisation with web based visualisations. As an introduction to some of the concepts behind Digital Humanities, these online exhibitions served to widen the understanding and availability of physical documented heritage to the public.
In this blog series, we will be showcasing examples from this project, using the rich archive and rare book collections on offer to researchers in the North East.
Here is the #1 in this ‘Making the Archive Public‘ series:
Visit: http://corbettsbookshop.omeka.net/
This site, created by Claire Boreham, allows users to browse the shelves of a seventeenth-century bookshop.
William Corbett was a bookseller in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the seventeenth century. When he died in 1626, an inventory of his shop was made, listing over a thousand books, mentioning around two hundred of them by name. This is an incredible insight into what books the Newcastle public were buying and reading in the early years of printing, such as Bibles and theological books (an example is shown in the image below).
William Corbett’s will and the inventory of his house and shop are held in Durham University Special Collections and the exhibition also includes rare and unique material from Newcastle University Special Collections, Newcastle City Library, and Queen’s University Belfast Special Collections.
Christopher Barker, “The Bible, that is, the Holy Scriptures, contained in the Old and New Testament,” William Corbett’s Bookshop
Idea #15 Noah’s Ark: The only surviving mystery play of the Newcastle cycle
Subjects: Culture / Theatre / Theology / History
Date Range of Material
This edition published in 1922
Size of Collection
1 volume
Collection Reference Code
RB822.1 NOA
How To Order Items From This Collection
# This item is held within the Rare Books collection (Ref Code RB).
# You can place your order by linking to our request form. The reference code and title will be ‘RB822.1 NOA Noah’s Ark: The only surviving mystery play of the Newcastle cycle’.
Rare Books Finding Aid
A complete list of all items held within the Rare Books collection is available via the Library Catalogue
Handy Links
Guide to finding and using Archives and Rare Books
More Archives and Special Collections for Arts and Cultures students
More Archives and Special Collections for English Literature, Language and Linguistics students
More Archives and Special Collections for History, Classics and Archaeology students
Idea #14 The Bosanquet Archive
Subjects: Social History / Politics
GB186/HBB Trunk 3
The Bosanquet Archive consists of archive material relating to Bernard Bosanquet, the idealist philosopher (1848-1923), and to his wife, Helen Bosanquet, née Dendy (1860-1926), a member of the 1909 Poor Law Commission.
Material relating to Bernard Bosanquet comprises correspondence, research notes, drafts and manuscripts of publications, as well as offprints from journals and other publications by Bernard Bosanquet himself.
Material relating to Helen Bosanquet includes notes and correspondence for her memoir of Bernard Bosanquet, offprints from publications, correspondence relating to Helen Bosanquet’s family and relating to public work, journals of travel, drawings, literary notebooks, photographs, engagement diaries and some undated miscellaneous material. A particular highlight is Helen Bosanquet’s notebook which contains diary notes on Poor Law Commission meetings attended by her in 1909.
Date Range of Material
1865 – 1934
Size of Collection
4 linear metres
Collection Reference Code
GB186/HBB
How To Order Items From This Collection
# First, use the finding aid below to search through a list of the individual items we have within this collection.
# If you find an item you would like to consult in the Special Collections reading room, simply make a note of the reference number and title of the item(s) you are interested in (for example GB186/HBB/ Trunk II A Letters from HB to her mother 1902-1918).
# You can then place your order by linking to our request form.
Finding Aid
The catalogue for the Bosanquet Archive is available via pdf download.
Handy Links
Guide to finding and using Archives and Rare Books
More Archives and Special Collections for History, Classics and Archaeology students