Finding their Voices

Poster for the 'Finding their Voices' exhibition

As part of the Special for Everyone project to address equality, diversity and inclusion in Special Collections & Archives, Finding their Voices is an exhibition celebrating the many diverse voices present within our collections. 

Many of the voices within Special Collection & Archives have long been visible and heard, yet those from marginalised groups in society have often been obscured. Our Special for Everyone project is actively working to diversify the voices included in our collections and to illuminate the hidden or lesser-heard voices they contain.  We are doing this by taking a fresh look at the sources and, where necessary, reading between the lines to uncover those which are harder to find. 

Finding their Voices is a celebration of some of the people we have encountered through this work. It features people who found and made their own voices heard despite their often-marginalised position, and those whose voices have been more difficult to hear. We are amplifying them here to enable a new generation of researchers to discover them. 

The exhibition contains items from across Special Collections & Archives. Below are some of the exhibition highlights: 

Working-Class Mining Communities 

The lives of people from working-class communities in the past can often be difficult to discern within the official record. However, closer examination and interrogation of sources can help to uncover their history and voices. 

Thomas Hair (c.1810-1875) was a local artist whose illustrations depict the North East’s coal mining industry in the 19th century. His work captures the everyday workings of the industry, with many of the illustrations focussing on collieries, machinery, and river trade. Hair’s work provides visual evidence of the coal mining landscape and reveals the industry’s impact on the built environment. These images can tell us much about the lived experience of miners in this period, giving a ‘voice’ to their lives and the hard-working conditions they faced.   

Black and white illustration of the mining industry
Illustration of the mining industry, by Thomas Hair (19th century), Thomas Hair Archive, TH/1/9 

David Bateman and Shtum: the stutter poems 

Poet David Bateman had a severe stutter as a child and teenager. He had successful speech therapy in 1980, aged 23. Since then, he still has a slight stutter in ordinary life but performs his poetry widely and has won many poetry slams and competitions. He writes poems, stories, scripts and articles. His book Shtum is a frank and personal account of what it is to have a stutter, the process of seeking the right help, and of finding your voice. 

The poems in Shtum were mostly written between 2009 and 2015, but some have their origins in work from as early as 1980. David Bateman had never really considered writing about his stutter until he was prompted to think about how it was woven into his work when asked to participate in a radio documentary about stuttering in 2009. The project led him to return to some previously unpublished work made up of incomplete poems, unrealised ideas and prose diary entries. He felt ready to rework these early pieces and develop many new poems. The result is Shtum: the stutter poems.  

The Pride Movement 

The UK’s first Pride march took place in London on 1st July 1972 with around 2,000 participants. Over 50 years later, London Pride now sees over 1.5 million people marching together to celebrate LGBTQ+ rights. The Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) was established in Lancashire in 1964. Special Collections & Archives holds the archive for CHE’s Tyneside branch, including documents which illuminate the story of the Pride movement since that first march over five decades ago. 

Within the Tyneside CHE Archive, it is possible to look back at Pride marches from across the past five decades. The first Pride march in 1972 took place 5 years after the Sexual Offences Act 1967 was passed, which decriminalised sex between gay men over the age of 21 in England and Wales. However, at the time of the first Pride march, the LGBTQ+ community still faced much discrimination. For example, gay marriage was not legal, and gay and bisexual people were banned from joining the armed forces. As well as campaigning, CHE also provided a social and support network for gay men and lesbians, providing a space for members of the LGBTQ+ community to make their voices heard.  

Black and white photograph of London Pride 1987. A group of people holding a large white banner with the words 'LESBIAN + GAY PRIDE '87' on it
Photograph of London Pride (1987), Tyneside Campaign for Homosexual Equality (Tyneside CHE) Archive, CHE/03/02/01 

Female Friendships 

The everyday lives and voices of women are often not well-documented. Through personal belongings such as books and correspondence, however, it is possible to gain glimpses into the ordinary day-to-day lives of women. We can see the importance of friendship amongst women, and the bonds and relationships they made through their social networks. In historical periods women found themselves in charge of running the household whilst their husbands were away at work. The exhibition highlights items which are testimony to the importance of companionship and mutual support between women and reflect how we can uncover their voices through what they left behind.   

Jane Loraine’s recipe book from the 17th century contains a recipe ‘good for conception’, one ‘to prevent miscaring [miscarrying]’ and one ‘to make teeth white’. These recipes highlight the shared experiences of women and their attempts to help one another, not only with culinary recipes but also with fertility and more general health concerns. Different handwriting styles and recipes are attributed to different women. This indicates that the manuscript had multiple female contributors. Recipes were also often passed between class boundaries, highlighting the communal and collaborative nature of domestic knowledge in the early modern period.    

Page from Jane Loraine's Recipe Book, containing handwritten recipes.
Page from Jane Loraine’s Recipe Book (1684-5), Miscellaneous Manuscripts, Misc. MSS. 5 

Professional Women 

The classic image of women from the past is one of confinement, lack of agency, and a life of drudgery, domestic boredom or excess. In reality, whilst this might have been true for some, there have always been women who defied the expectations of their gender and exploited their talents to support themselves financially. Many gained a degree of respect in their chosen field and enjoyed popular success. Finding their Voices showcase items written and illustrated by women with talents and expertise in areas as diverse as science, art, storytelling, philosophy and pedagogy. Through their writings and illustrations their voices have a lasting impact. 

Elizabeth Blackwell (1707-1758) is one of the women highlighted within the Finding their Voices exhibition. She was the first woman known to have produced a book of botanical work in Britain. Despite having a wealthy background, she was forced to use her skill of botanical drawing to raise money to support herself and release her husband from debtor’s prison. Even more unusually, Elizabeth Blackwell undertook all stages of the illustrative process herself rather than employing specialist engravers and painters. She completed two volumes consisting of about 500 illustrations with accompanying commentary in under two years. The book was intended as a reference work for doctors who needed a thorough knowledge of medicinal plants.  

Illustration of a broad leaved Lavender from A Curious Herbal
Page from A Curious Herbal, by Elizabeth Blackwell (1737), Rare Books, RB 633.88 BLA 

Kamau Brathwaite and the Caribbean Voice 

Barbadian poet, literary critic and historian Kamau Brathwaite (1930–2020) is a significant figure in the Caribbean literary canon, and one of its major voices. His work is noted for its rich and complex examination of the African and indigenous roots of Caribbean culture. He sought to create a distinctively Caribbean form of poetry which would celebrate Caribbean voices and language.   

Kamau Brathwaite was born in Bridgetown, Barbados. Originally named Edward Lawson Brathwaite, he received the name Kamau from the grandmother of the Kenyan writer and academic Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, when on a fellowship at the University of Nairobi in 1971.   

Kamau Brathwaite co-founded the Caribbean Artists Movement, a collaboration of artists which celebrated a new sense of shared Caribbean ‘nationhood’, in 1966. Caribbean identity and culture are central to Kamau Brathwaite’s academic writing as well as his poetry. Brathwaite felt that the traditional meter of the English iambic pentameter (where every line is composed of ten syllables and has five stresses) could not express the breadth and depth of that experience. He instead used African and Caribbean folk and jazz rhythms in his poetry. He combined that with the use of Caribbean dialect and patterns of speech to create a distinctively Caribbean form of poetry, which was written to be performed out loud and heard.  

These items can be found alongside many others within the Finding their Voices exhibition on Level 2 of the Philip Robinson Library from Monday 10th April – June 2023. 

Written by Daisy-Alys Vaughan, student working on the Special for Everyone project.

The legacy of W.F. Kirby: inspiring two placement students

Written by Dalia Aizi, a MA Museum, Gallery and Heritage studies student, whilst on placement in Summer 2019.

Early on in our placements at Special Collections, whilst doing research for a new exhibition, we came across a beautifully illustrated book titled European Butterflies and Moths. Upon seeing the plates and reading the texts, we were inspired to create ‘The Beauty of Science: Seeing Art in the Entomological World’. We decided to create an exhibition which celebrates the artistic aspects of science books, which are often overlooked.  

The life of W.F. Kirby

Born in Leicester in 1844, Kirby found a deep interest for butterflies at a very young age, which continued into his adult life. After his father’s death and the family’s move to Brighton, he became more involved in the entomological world, joining the Brighton and Sussex Entomological Society before he moved to Dublin in 1867. While there, he became an established and famous entomologist after his book, A Synonymic Catalogue of diurnal Lepidoptera was published.

European Butterflies and Moths

In 1882, Kirby finished and published European Butterflies and Moths (19th Century Collection, 19th C. Coll. 595.78 KIR), which gives a comprehensive guide into the world of the Lepidoptera. 137 years later, the book is still easily read even for novice readers such as us, which he writes about in his preface, stating that the book is ’designed to provide entomologists and tourists with a comprehensive illustrated guide to the study of European Macro-Lepidoptera’.

The exhibition ‘The Beauty of Insects: Seeing Art in the Entomological World’ that was created as part of the placement in Newcastle University Special Collections and Archives can be viewed online.

Showing the Way to Wallington – July 2016

Exhibition can be seen on Level 2 Exhibition Space, Philip Robinson Library, until October 2016

The lives of Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan and Molly Trevelyan, as shown through their family photograph and ephemera albums, from the Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan Archive.

‘Showing the Way to Wallington’ gives a unique insight into the family life of Charles Philips Trevelyan and Mary Katherine Bell, who in 1928 made Wallington Hall their home until it was gifted to the nation in 1941. The images and articles showcased in the exhibition covering areas such as Arts, Politics and War, and come from the family photograph albums which Charles and Mary (better-known as Molly), compiled themselves in scrapbook form.

As part of an ongoing project, 39 Volumes are being digitised and converted into an accessible online virtual book format called ‘Turning The Pages’ by Karen Atkinson, our digitisation assistant in Special Collections. This exhibition contains some favourite and striking images along with interesting facts discovered in the course of her work.exhib banner

The panel above is the first of 6 display cabinets and features a preserved ‘perfect, six-bloomed Sweet Pea’, which was pressed between the pages of Volume 10 of the Trevelyan family albums in 1922.

Volume 10 front cover (CPT/PA/9)

Volume 10 front cover (CPT/PA/9)

Here’s how the sweet pea stem looks in the album

Sweet pea stem in the album

Sweet pea stem in the album (CPT/PA/9)

Page 49 of the same Volume (image below) contains a newspaper clipping (see left) dated November 1923 and written about a gathering at the Village Hall in Cambo to honour the outgoing needlework Exhibition Secretary, Mr. Edward Keith, on his retirement. Apart from his other talents such as wood-carving and bee-keeping, Mr. Keith was also a well-respected gardener at Wallington Hall. The article pasted into Volume 10 reads, “His work is excellent and artistic. His sweet peas are famous nationally. The Wallington garden is one of the best in our country.”

Found on page 49 of Volume 10, Newspaper cutting, Mr Edward Keith, November 1923

Sweet peas and the beauty of Wallington are also mentioned in ‘Wallington’ by Sir Charles Trevelyan – Its’ History and Treasures [6th ed.] published in 1950 (Edwin Clarke Local, Clarke 631).

Page 38 in the Out of Doors section in Its History and Treasures:

“In summer the place is gay with flowers. Wallington is famous for its sweet peas, and near the house they often grow in a great profusion of colour.”

Page 39 in The Garden section:

“Below may be found beds of roses, lilies, gladioli, etc, but above all sweet peas, which two generations of Wallington gardeners have made famous.”

Shew’s the Way to Wallington
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The exhibition title was inspired by a border pipe version of a tune called “Shew’s the Way to Wallington”, the manuscript of which is dated 1830, and was written by Robert Elliot Bewick, son of the famous naturalist and engraver Thomas Bewick (1753-1828).

'Shew’s the Way to Wallington, from a manuscript date 1830, written by Robert Elliot Bewick

Below are the words to the song, found on page 3 of TREV/CET/76:

The Songster, found on page 3, TREV/CET/76

The Wallington Songster, found on page 3, TREV/CET/76