Finding their Voices

Posted on 24 April, 2023 by nspeccoll

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 19^th 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 (19^th 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 17^th 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 10^th April – June 2023.

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

In Blackberry Time – June 2020

Posted on 24 June, 2020 by nspeccoll

Page from annotated typescript for theatre production 'In Blackberry Time' — Page from annotated typescript for theatre production ‘*In Blackberry Time*‘, 1985 (Chaplin (Michael) Archive, MC/4/1/1/3/1)

In Blackberry Time was produced collaboratively by Alan Plater and Michael Chaplin. The play is based on Sid Chaplin’s book of short stories that go by the same name. Sid started to write the autobiographical book before his death in January 1986. His son, Michael Chaplin, and wife, Rene Chaplin, edited and published the book on his behalf posthumously with Bloodaxe Books in 1987.

As we can see from this first page draft of the play, the narrator establishes himself as a son of a coal miner who ‘writes what I please, always writing out of daily contact with people’. Sid was highly regarded for his depictions of North East mining and working-class communities drawing upon his experiences growing up in the coal mining community of County Durham and of work in the pit. Sid began working in the mines from the age of sixteen before moving away to be a writer for the National Coal Board’s publication Coal.

With his vivid portrayals of life in region Sid was an inspiration to many North East writers. In the 1960s he became a mentor figure to the playwright Alan Plater. When Plater was approached by Max Roberts, the Creative Director of Live Theatre, to write a North-East play, Plater was drawn to Sid’s work. In a meeting with Michael it was decided that they would together adapt the latest of Sid’s work into a play. This extract from a typescript of In Blackberry Time was written in 1987, the same year that Sid’s final and posthumous book was published.

The play was staged at Live Theatre in 1987 and starred actors Val MacLane and David Whitaker.

In these audio interviews you can hear Michael Chaplin’s account of his collaboration with Alan Plater. In the interview Michael claims that In Blackberry Time began his career as a writer. He has written some 30 plays for Radio 4 including the series ‘Two Pipe Problems’ and ‘The Ferryhill Philosophers’ and various single plays like ‘The Song Thief’. His work for television includes the series ‘Grafters’, ‘Dalziel and Pascoe’ and ‘Monarch of the Glen’ and films like ‘Just Henry’.

The production of In Blackberry Time was also the beginning of a long relationship with Live Theatre. Michael wrote another two plays for the theatre, ‘You Couldn’t Make It Up’ (with Tom Chaplin) about the travails of being a Newcastle United fan, and ‘A Walk-On Part’, based on the diaries of ex-Labour MP Chris Mullin.

You can find the Archives of Michael Chaplin and Sid Chaplin here at Newcastle University Special Collections and Archives. You can also find material in our Live Theatre Archive including Max Robert’s copies of draft script for In Blackberry Time and production photographs.

The Sopwith Diaries

Posted on 16 August, 2018 by nspeccoll

Newcastle University Library Special Collections and Archive hold the Thomas Sopwith Diaries covering the period 1828-1879.

Thomas Sopwith (1803-1879), as well as being a successful engineer who contributed extensively to the Victorian railway and mining industries, Thomas Sopwith was the author of a set of diaries that now live in the Special Collections archives.

Born in Newcastle in 1803, Sopwith discovered his love of writing as a teenager, and from the age of 18 kept a careful account of his every move in a series of pocket-sized hardback diaries. With only a few breaks, at times when he was really busy, he continued to write for the next 58 years, creating 168 volumes in total.

Sopwith was passionate about his work, and his dairies are a fastidious account of his meetings, projects and professional engagements. From 1845 to 1871 he was the chief agent of Allenheads lead mines in Durham and felt it would be imprudent to discuss the finer points of his role, reserving his diaries for more personal news.

Before his move to Allenheads, however, he worked as a kind of engineer-about-town, surveying railways, giving evidence in mining enquiries and touring the country with his renowned 3D models of the Forest of Dean coalfields. And documenting it all in often absurd levels of detail in his diaries.

One of the most striking things about the diaries is the sheer number of prominent Victorian figures who make an appearance. Sopwith was good friends with William Armstrong and George and Robert Stephenson and must have known nearly all the major names in science and engineering at the time. One week he might be staying with the Brunel family, the next he’d be dining with the King of Belgium, before travelling round the Norwegian fjords with Robert Stephenson. Sopwith was full of praise for almost everyone he knew and was a man who really valued his friendships.

Page from Sopwith’s diary dated April 1828 (Thomas Sopwith Diaries, TS/1/1)

When he wasn’t hobnobbing with the great and the good, Sopwith spent time at home with his large family. Married three times and widowed twice, Sopwith had eight children (two died in infancy) and doted on them all. His wayward eldest son Jacob caused him a great deal of worry and – spoiler alert – the diaries contain a fair few deaths, often prompting pages of reflection by Sopwith on religion and fate.

Many of his descendants went on to prominent careers themselves; one daughter married an MP, one grandson became the Archdeacon of Canterbury and another was an aircraft designer whose son was a racing car driver.

The diaries are littered with pencil and watercolour sketches and Sopwith often pasted in newspaper cuttings or even a menu from a banquet he attended in Belgium. The handwriting is immaculate and Sopwith’s use of symbols for days of the week, abbreviations and explanatory diagrams shows his love of efficiency.

Page from diary dated 24th April 1828, depicting a watercolour sketch of Abbotsford (Thomas Sopwith Diaries, TS/1/1)

Sopwith’s diaries also give a charming account of middle-class life in Victorian Newcastle. Sopwith was a frequent guest at Mr Donkin’s dinner parties in Jesmond and in the 1840s lived in a house he had had built on St Mary’s Place, nowadays part of Lloyds Bank. He maintained an interest in his family’s furniture-making business and was most indignant to discover that a railway viaduct was to be built right next to his workshop on Painter Heugh, blocking the natural light – a rare case of opposition to the railways.

Pedantic to the extreme, Sopwith’s exacting nature seeps through the pages of his diary in a surprisingly charming manner. From the intricate contents pages and indexes of the volumes themselves to his use of a telescope to make sure the children at Allenheads school turned up on time, Sopwith was nothing if not meticulous.

Index to the notebooks from no.1-no.33, 1829-1842 (Thomas Sopwith Diaries, TS/1/1)

Why did Sopwith keep such detailed diaries? He seems to have really enjoyed the process of recording and reflecting on his daily activities, and frequently mentions his joy in re-reading old passages and remembering old friends.

The diaries are so detailed that it’s hard not to get sucked in to the soap opera of Sopwith’s life. The sometimes dry accounts of his engineering work and academic interests – one diary includes a 13 page report from a lecture on fattening cattle – is always balanced with anecdotes from his family life or his fussy musings on the state of modern society.

Reading the whole set of diaries might be a tall order, but dipping into a volume or two opens up a window onto one of Victorian Newcastle’s most notable figures.

Written by special guest, Mark Sleightholm

‘The Scenery of our Native North- The Collieries’: The Art and Legacy of Thomas Hair – February 2016

Posted on 4 March, 2016 by nspeccoll

‘The characteristic appearance of no district in the world is more strikingly marked than is that of the North of England, the peculiar features of which are its collieries and their necessary adjuncts. The face of the country is thickly studded with the engine -houses and coal-heaps attached to respective pits… The fields and roads are crossed are crossed and intersected in every direction by the “waggon-ways” connecting the pits with their respective places of shipment… The margins of our noble rivers are fringed with the staiths and machinery, often constructed on a gigantic scale, necessary for effecting for effecting the shipment of the jetty treasure… The sea itself is blackened with our fleets of colliers, bearing the precious source of warmth and comfort to distant districts and countries, and thus diffusing wealth and happiness around…’.

Part of the opening remarks of M. Ross’ ‘Preliminary Essay on Coal and the Coal Trade’, in T.H. Hair’s A Series of Views of the Collieries in the Counties of Northumberland and Durham (1844). The quote from the title comes from the same.

Old Pit, Burdon Main, by Thomas Hair. Date unknown.

The art of Thomas Hair provides a valuable and unique visual record of the region’s mining history. Although the landscape remains scarred by the industry, and other physical remnants of the pits have survived, much more has been lost due to the process of industrialisation and the passage of time. Hair’s work affords us a contemporary view of the pits that shaped our communities and the lives of those dependant on them.

Little is known about Hair’s life. He was born in Newcastle upon Tyne around 1810, and his working life began when he trained with local engraver and lithographer Mark Lambert. Hair moved to London at some time in the late 1830s, and exhibited his work at the Suffolk Street Gallery from 1838, and several times at the Royal Academy during the 1840s. Although based in London, Hair maintained a strong affinity with the North East and continued to produce work inspired by the region during his time in the capital.

Percy Pit, Percy Main Colliery, by Thomas Hair. Date unknown.

Hair travelled the ‘Great Northern Coalfield’ of Durham and Northumberland during the early nineteenth century, sketching and painting many of the different scenes of mining life. The paintings were then taken back to his studio, where they could be turned into etched engravings, either by Hair himself or another engraver he was associated with. Much of his work relating to the coalfield was published in Sketches of the Coal Mines in Northumberland and Durham; A Series of Views of the Collieries in the Counties of Northumberland and Durham, in 1844. Frank Atkinson, who wrote the ‘Preface’ to the 1969 edition of Hair’s Sketches and Views, has commented on the technical accuracy of Hair’s depictions, as well as his ability to pick up the small details that capture the essence of the scene.

The B Pit, Fawdon Colliery, 1848, by Thomas Hair.

If a criticism can be made of Hair’s work, it is that it does not reflect the struggles and ‘everyday life’ of the miners and their communities. As Hair scholar Douglas Glendinning has noted, although miners are often pictured outside in Hair’s panoramic views of the pits, few of his depictions show the hazardous working conditions and danger involved in coal mining. However, Glendinning emphasises that many other artists also ignored the grim reality of the Industrial Revolution in order for their art to sell. Hair should therefore not be judged on this, and his work appreciated for the scenes it does portray.

Crane for Loading the Rollies, by Thomas Hair. Date unknown. This is one of the few illustrations by Hair that shows the subterranean conditions of the pit.

Although Hair had already published his artwork in Scenes and Views, his illustrations were pirated by William Fordyce, who had produced his own survey on the region’s mining industry. Fordyce’s Coal and Iron, published in 1860, used Hair’s work extensively with no credit given to the artist. Some of the illustrations were also altered to make them accurately reflect technological advances in the industry since Hair’s time. This is most obviously seen in Fordyce’s Bottom of Pit Shaft, which is a clearly altered version of Hair’s Bottom of the Shaft, Walbottle Colliery.

Bottom of the Shaft, Walbottle Colliery, 1844, by Thomas Hair.

Bottom of Pit Shaft, from Fordyce’s Coal and Iron, 1860. Note the addition of a cage on the left hand side, which replaced the corves in Hair’s original. Most prominent is the removal of the rollies and their replacement with the wheeled tubs carrying coal.

Hair died in Newcastle on 11 August 1875, and was buried in an unmarked grave in All Saints Cemetery. Although we know little about the artist himself, his art gives us an invaluable insight into the ‘The Scenery of our Native North’.

The Hair Prints- Special Collections. The prints have been digitised and can be viewed on our Collections Captured portal.

The above images have been digitised from the Hair Prints and are currently uncatalogued. Please contact lib-specenq@ncl.ac.uk for further details.

Further Reading

T.H. Hair and M. Ross, Sketches of the Coal Mines in Northumberland and Durham (1839)- Special Collections Rare Books (RB 622.09428 HAI )

T.H. Hair and M. Ross (with an introduction by Frank Atkinson), Sketches of the Coal Mines in Northumberland and Durham; A Series of Views of the Collieries in the Counties of Northumberland and Durham (1969)- Special Collections Edwin Clarke Local (Clarke 1999)

William Fordyce, Coal and Iron (1860)- Special Collections Robert White (W622.33 FOR Folio)

Douglas Glendinning, The Art of Mining; Thomas Hair’s Watercolours of the Great Northern Coalfield (Newcastle: Tyne Bridge Publishing, 2000)- Robinson Library 709.42HAI (Gle)

Sir Humphrey Davy’s Harmful Emissions – November 2015

Posted on 30 November, 2015 by nspeccoll

Scientific Researches! – New Discoveries in Pneumaticks! – or – an Experimental Lecture on the Powers of Air, 1851 (Gillray Prints, JG/2/11R)

Engraving of Sir Humphry Davy from The life of Sir Humphry Davy, 1831 (19th Century Collection, 19th C. Coll. 530.9 PAR)

In one of his more robust parodies, this print from our collections by satirist James Gillray (1757 – 1815) is aimed at the spectacle and frivolity of scientific discovery in Georgian culture. The depiction of a public experiment is aimed at the Royal Institution (chartered two years before in 1800), which attempted to render complex scientific ideas comprehensible, but also provide an element of theatre. The accusation is that the latter often took precedence, devaluing breakthroughs at best and providing merely infantile parlour tricks at worst.

Amongst the recognisable figures, at the centre brandishing a pair of bellows is a young Sir Humphrey Davy (1778 – 1829) – chemist and inventor. Davy’s public experiments with nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, at the Pneumatic Institution in Bristol (hence the print’s title), led him to a post at the Royal Institution in 1801. Davy famously failed to grasp the significance of the gas as an anaesthetic except for minor surgery, treating it instead as a curio and conversation piece. Indeed, his often public experiments on himself led to a personal addiction and a reputation latched onto by commentators like Gillray.

Luckily, Davy’s legacy was much more significant. He was perhaps the first professional man of science and helped pave the way for many more like him, but this was not without further scrutiny and controversy. This included the eponymous Davy lamp, invented 200 years ago this month. By 1815, Davy had been knighted for his services to chemistry, including ‘discovering’ and naming potassium and iodine. By that point a scientist of international renown, he was called upon to solve a problem with a strong local connection.

In 1812, Felling Colliery was the site of an explosion caused by pockets of flammable gas referred to as ‘firedamp’ being ignited by the open flames of the miners’ lamps. Although not an isolated incident, this loss of 92 lives was a crystallised the need for greater safety precautions. Davy was personally asked by the Revd Robert Gray of Bishopwearmouth to investigate. As well as proving firedamp was in fact methane, Davy worked feverishly with his assistant and future pioneer Michael Faraday from October to December 1815 to produce a basic lamp with a wire gauze chimney to enclose naked flames. The holes let light pass through, but the metal of the gauze absorbed the heat and prevented the methane burning inside the lamp.

Engraving of George Stephenson from George Stephenson : the locomotive and the railway, 1881 (19th Century Collection, 19th C. Coll. 620.92 STE-1)

Following successful tests at Hebburn Colliery in early 1916, the lamp went into production. It proved to be Davy’s decisive triumph. He was awarded the Royal Society’s Rumford medal, and in 1820 became the President of that society, elevating his scientific field in the process.

However, the uniqueness of his invention was disputed. Davy refused to patent his lamp, and in doing so exposed himself to rival claimants, chiefly the then unknown engineer George Stephenson. Stephenson had been working on his own similar design at the nearby Killingworth Colliery north of Newcastle at around the same time through an arguably more scientific ‘trial and error’ approach. What followed was a public war of words with Davy rejecting Stephenson’s claims and winning out largely by virtue of his reputation.

Despite this, on 1^st November 1917, Stephenson presented evidence to a committee of his peers in Newcastle, claiming his invention was at least contemporary to Davy’s. In this report, available in our Rare Books Collection (image shown below), both miners and members of the Literary and Philosophical Society give testimonies on witnessing the other lamp being developed and tested as early as August 1915. One Robert Summerside, an Overman in Killingworth Colliery, went as far as saying ‘Stephenson’s light produces a much better light than Sir Humphrey Davy’s’.

Title Page from Report upon the claims of Mr. George Stephenson, relative to the invention of his safety lamp, 1817 (Rare Books, RB622.47 REP-1)

At the meeting, it was decided that Stephenson was entitled to a public reward, but perhaps more importantly, his name was cleared in scientific and entrepreneurial circles. This allowed him to become one of the most important figures to the Industrial Revolution as Father of the Railways. It is also thought by some that his lamp, termed the Geordie Lamp after him by those that used it in the North Eastern coal fields, was the source of the term ‘Geordie’, as a shorthand for the people of Newcastle.

The committee concluded as follows:

Under the influence of these impressions the friends of Mr Stephenson will no longer dwell upon those intemperate and uncandid insinuations, respecting the clandestine acquirement of the principle in question, which have so lately been given to the world in the name and apparently under the authority of Sir Humphrey Davy, but which they are thoroughly convinced can never have obtained the deliberate concurrence of that enlightened philosopher.

Below are 2 plates depicting the rival lamps; Davy’s on the right and Stephenson’s on the left.

Engraving of George Stephenson's safety lamp from Report upon the claims of Mr. George Stephenson, relative to the invention of his safety lamp, 1817 (Rare Books, RB622.47 REP)

Illustration of Sir Humphrey Davy’s safety lamp from Practical hints on the application of wire-gauze to lamps : for preventing explosions in coal mines, 1816 (Rare Books, RB942.8 TYN(VI)2)

Engraving of George Stephenson’s safety lamp from Report upon the claims of Mr. George Stephenson, relative to the invention of his safety lamp, 1817 (Rare Books, RB622.47 REP)