Untold lives blog

The British Library holds several early photograph albums compiled by the Dillwyn Llewelyn and Story-Maskelyne families (Photo 1246).  The broader collection includes eight albums containing photographs, two sketchbooks, watercolour drawings, seven journals, letters and a four-part memoir.  This collection showcases Thereza Dillwyn Llewelyn (later Story-Maskelyne) as one of the first female photographers during a period of discovery and experimentation in early photography.

Thereza Llewelyn and dickies, 1854. salted paper print from collodion negative. Photographer: John Dillwyn Llewelyn. © British Library, Photo 1246/1(11).

Thereza was the eldest child of John Dillwyn Llewelyn (1810-82), photographer and botanist, and Emma Thomasina Talbot (d. 1881), born on 3 May 1834 into a wealthy Welsh family with a strong interest in various scientific fields, including photography.

‘My earliest recollections connected with it carry me back to somewhere about 1841…, when as a child - I sat for my portrait taken by my Father … no one living at Penllergare could help being interested in what was of absorbing interest to my Father & Mother and I must have heard many conversations on the subject when letters to my Mother from her Cousin Henry Fox Talbot arrived.’ [Add MS 89120/10]

It was uncommon for women to practice photography during this period.  Thereza would assist her father with his photographic experiments, but her photographic albums and journals show that she was a photographer in her own right.  On her 22nd birthday (3 May 1856), she received a journal and a camera. ‘I saw Papa make 2 stereoscopes, with the new stereoscopic camera that he gave me for my birthday present - I intend to work hard with it, so as to get some pictures worthy of it.' [Add MS 89120/4]

Her journals describe her various photographic activities and highlight the prints in her photo albums.  The albums frequently contain the work of more than one individual, as nearly every family member and their friends were involved in photography.

‘September 6th - After lunch Emma dressed up as a gipsy, and Willy made a capital hut, and represented a wild looking gipsy man looking out, whilst Emma seated on a basket turned topsy-turvy told Caroline’s fortune.  Papa photographed the scene which was very picturesque & pretty, & I made a photo stereoscope thereof.’ [Add MS 89120/5]

Gipsies, 1856. salted paper print from stereoscopic collodion negative. Photographer: Thereza Story-Maskelyne. © British Library, Photo 1246/1(32).

Thereza had other scientific interests, including astronomy and botany, for which she used photography to record her findings.

Delesseria sanguinea or Sea Beech [Botanical Specimen], c. 1854. Negative paper contact Photographer: Thereza Story-Maskelyne. © British Library, Photo 1246/2(27).

Her father built an Equatorial Observatory for her in the early 1850s.  The Observatory made it possible for them to take photos of the moon.  In her memoirs, she mentions that her father ‘made a photo of the moon, and as moon light requires much slow exposure it was my business to keep the Telescope moving steadily as there [was]no clockwork action.’  She states, ‘That was one of the first [photographs] ever made of the moon’. [Add MS 89120/9]

Moon c. 1857. salted paper print. Photographer: John Dillwyn Llewelyn and Thereza Story-Maskelyne. © British Library, Photo 1246/1(49).

Her last entry in her journals was in August 1857, and next year, on 29 June 1858, she married (Mervyn Herbert) Nevil Story Maskelyne, a mineralogist and an associate of both her father and Fox Talbot.  Her interests may have taken a back seat to marriage and family.  Still, photography remained part of her life, as she took photographs of her family and travels.

[Portrait of Nevil Story-Maskelyne with Mary and William Arnold-Forster, 1890]. Albumen print. Photographer: Thereza Story-Maskelyne. © British Library, Photo 1246/7(12).

This collection is a beautiful insight into one of the earliest female photographers.

Susan M. Harris
Cataloguer of Photographs

Further Reading:
Dillwyn Llewelyn/Story-Maskelyne photographic collection, Photo 1246
The Papers of Thereza Story-Maskelyne (1834-1926), Add MS 89120
Noel Cahanan, The Photographer of Penllergare: a life of John Dillwyn Llewelyn 1810-1882 (2013)
Richard Morris, Penllergare A Victorian Paradise (1999)
V. Morton, Oxford Rebels: the life and friends of Nevil Story Maskelyne, 1823–1911 (1987)

The cataloguing and research of this collection (Photo 1246) is part of the British Library’s Unlocking Hidden Collections initiative, with the aim to open collections and make them more accessible to researchers and the public. Readers wishing to consult this collection should write to [email protected] and arrange an appointment in the British Library’s Print Room (Asia and Africa Reading Room).

David Fitzpatrick marks Local and Community History Month by exploring the history and features of his home town, drawing from notable histories and guides found within the British Library’s collection.

Introduction to Bridgnorth (Salop), “Queen of the Severn”, The Official Guide, 1937. Image used with the permission of Bridgnorth Library.

The Shropshire market town of Bridgnorth lies nestled in the Severn Valley.  It is, as one visitor’s guide notes, ‘a town of unique distinction’, in that it consists of two parts. High Town sits high above the Severn on a large bluff of red sandstone.  From there multiple sets of steps and a funicular railway – the oldest and steepest of its kind in England – descend into Low Town, which straddles the river.

The town has a medieval castle, now in ruins, having been bombarded, captured and ‘slighted’ in 1646 by the Parliamentarians.  The largest surviving fragment is its Norman keep, which leans at a more acute angle than Pisa’s tower.

View of the Castle Ruins and the Church of St Mary Magdalene, from Bridgnorth (Salop), “Queen of the Severn”, The Official Guide, 1937. Image used with the permission of Bridgnorth Library.

Once a busy river port, by the 20th century Bridgnorth had become, as Laurie Lee noted, ‘a pleasant slumberous town’, and remains so.  Inexplicably, the German Luftwaffe dropped twelve bombs on the town on 29 August 1940, destroying several homes and killing two people.  (Incidentally, Adolf Hitler allegedly earmarked Bridgnorth as a potential base in the event of a successful Nazi invasion of Britain.)

Today Bridgnorth is perhaps best known as the northern terminus of the Severn Valley Railway.  The original line opened in 1862, but the town’s relationship with steam locomotives goes even further back.  The famous Catch Me Who Can was built in a Low Town foundry and in 1808 became the first steam locomotive in the world to haul fare-paying passengers on a site just south of Euston Road.

View of Bridgnorth railway station, with a train to Hampton Loade, on the opening day of the Severn Valley Railway, 23 May 1970. The leaning Castle Ruins are visible in the background. Copyright Ben Brooksbank, licensed for reuse by Geograph under a Creative Commons Licence.

Bridgnorth is home to numerous historic buildings, such as Bishop Percy’s House.  Built in 1580, it is one of very few from that period to survive the fire that engulfed High Town during the Civil War fighting in 1646.  The house was later the birthplace of Bishop Thomas Percy, sometime owner of the Percy Folio (now in the British Library), which he used to compile his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.  Other notable buildings include the Town Hall (formerly a 17th-century tithe barn), St Leonard’s Church (built with local sandstone), and the Church of St Mary Magdalene (designed by Thomas Telford).

View of Bridgnorth High Street and Town Hall, from The Tourist’s Guide to Bridgnorth, 1875. Image used with the permission of Bridgnorth Library.

Arguably the town’s most striking landmarks lie on its outskirts.  Two prominent sandstone outcrops sit high along the valley’s eastern ridge, offering excellent vantage points from which to view High Town and the hills beyond.  The higher of the two, Queen’s Parlour, appears at the very top of the valley.  The other, known rather more matter-of-factly as High Rock, juts out incongruously from thick woodland high above the river, looking as though it has been lifted from some remote part of California.

View from Castle Hill, with High Rock visible in the distance. From Bridgnorth (Salop), “Queen of the Severn”, The Official Guide, 1937. Image used with the permission of Bridgnorth Library.

Both are remarkable sights when viewed from Castle Walk, a promenade on the edge of High Town.  Perhaps Charles I had them in mind when describing the walk as the finest in his dominions.

David Fitzpatrick
Content Specialist, Archivist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further reading:
George Bellett, The Antiquities of Bridgnorth; With Some Historical Notices of the Town and Castle (Bridgnorth: W. J. Rowley; London: Longmans & Co, 1856): 
The Tourist’s Guide to Bridgnorth, Being a Complete Handbook to Places of Interest in and Around Bridgnorth (Bridgnorth: Evans, Edkins, and McMichael; Madeley: J. Randall, 1875)
Elizabeth P. Morrall, A Popular Illustrated Guide and Handbook to Bridgnorth and its Environs etc. (Bridgnorth: Deighton & Smith, 1891)
Bridgnorth (Salop), “Queen of the Severn”, The Official Guide (Cheltenham and London: Ed. J. Burrow & Co. Ltd., 1937)

Bridgnorth: A Town of Unique Distinction – Part 2

The Institution for Promoting the Natural History of India was established by Governor-General Richard Wellesley at Barrackpore outside Calcutta in 1801.  The aim was to increase Western scientific knowledge of the fauna of India, which Wellesley viewed as being ‘altogether unknown to the naturalists of Europe, or [which] have been imperfectly and inaccurately described’.  The Institution was supervised initially by Dr Francis Buchanan (later Buchanan Hamilton), an East India Company surgeon and accomplished naturalist, and then by William Lloyd Gibbons, an assistant at the Calcutta Orphan School and member of the Bengal Asiatic Society.  Animals and birds were collected and sent to Barrackpore for scientific study, the process of which included making descriptive notes and commissioning drawings, often from Indian artists.  The Institution itself was short-lived, receiving little advocacy or financial support from the East India Company.  Barrackpore Menagerie survived as a public attraction until 1878, when the animals and birds were transferred to Alipore, to what later became Calcutta Zoo.

Moore & Horsfield catalogue entry for Falco tinninculus

Copies of many of the notes and drawings produced at Barrackpore are held at the British Library.  Some were deposited directly with the East India Company by Buchanan Hamilton, others sent to London by Gibbons, and still others ended up at East India House via intermediaries such as Nathanial Wallich and Dr John Fleming.  Drawings, notes, and physical specimens were housed as part of the India Museum, and many were worked on by Thomas Horsfield and Frederick Moore for their Catalogue of the birds in the Museum of the Honourable East India Company (London, 1854-58).

Mss Eur Mack Misc 167. 6. Notes on ‘Falco tinnunculus’ (Common Kestrel)

Mss Eur Mack Misc 167. 91. Notes on ‘Ardea purpurea' (Purple Heron)

Two volumes of scientific notes made at Barrackpore Menagerie are in India Office Records and Private Papers, the first of which (Mss Eur D541) deals exclusively with birds.  The notes were unbound, (or possibly dis-bound), which made it easier to consult the scientific writings alongside the drawings for identification purposes.  Unfortunately, this did historically make it easier for items to stray, so when the notes were eventually bound, nine of the descriptions – nos. 1-7 and 90-92 – were lacking.  Thankfully, the descriptions were numbered and with some research we have recently identified a small collection of bird descriptions relating to five birds of prey and two herons in the Colin Mackenzie Miscellaneous collection as being seven of the Buchanan Hamilton/Gibbons descriptions.

NHD2/191 Common Kestrel. ‘Falco tinnunculus’. Watercolour by Mahangu Lal, 1805-07.

Our Visual Arts Department holds the drawings, and they are exquisitely detailed.  They were drawn and painted by Indian artists such as Guru Dayal, Haludar, Mahangu Lal and Bishnu Prasad.  East India Company librarians and curators in the 19th century gave each of the natural history drawings in their care a running number in red ink.  The drawings that relate to birds of Barrackpore, as described in Mss Eur D541, are NHD2/186-284, otherwise known as the G & B (Gibbons & Buchanan) Collection.  Additional bird, mammal, and reptile drawings by Buchanan Hamilton are found in NHD3/311-536, the Buchanan Collection, and these relate to descriptions held in the second volume of notes from the Barrackpore Menagerie (Mss Eur D94).

NHD2/276 Purple Heron. ‘Ardea purpurea’. Watercolour by Guru Dayal, 1805-07.

The British Library’s newly opened exhibition Animals: Art, Science and Sound includes an important volume of watercolours of Gangetic fish, commissioned by Buchanan Hamilton and made by the artist Haludar.  These were published in An Account of the Fishes found in the river Ganges and its branches, etc. (Edinburgh, 1822), which remains a seminal work on Indian fish species.

Lesley Shapland
Cataloguer, India Office Records

Further reading:
India Office Records and Private Papers - Dr Francis Buchanan Hamilton papers, including Journals of his Deputation from Bengal to Ava [Burma], 1795-1798; Observations on Nepal, 1802; Natural history observations and drawings made at the Barrackpore Menagerie; Notes, descriptions and natural history illustrations in preparation for Fishes of the Ganges; Catalogue of Dried Plants presented to the East India Company Museum; Reports, statistics, drawings and vocabularies produced during the Survey of Bengal (1807-1814). These have various references, including Mss Eur C12-14; Mss Eur D70-98; Mss Eur E68-73; Mss Eur G10-25.
Mss Eur D541: Description of Birds and Animals in the Barrackpore Menagerie, Volume I
Mss Eur D94: Description of Birds and Animals in the Barrackpore Menagerie, Volume II
Mss Eur D487: Description by Dr F Hamilton (formerly Buchanan) of Birds, Quadrupeds and Tortoises
Mss Eur D562/21: Lists of Drawings Birds & Quadrupeds, 1817-1820
NHD2/186-284: The 'G & B' (Gibbons & Buchanan) Collection. Ninety-nine drawings in laid down in an album of birds from India and the East Indies, in a collection formed under the supervision of Francis Buchanan (afterwards Buchanan-Hamilton) and William Lloyd-Gibbons
NHD3/311-536: Two hundred and twenty-six drawings in watercolour and pencil depicting 169 birds (151 separate drawings and 18 duplicates), 38 mammals and 19 reptilia from India and the East Indies
Thomas Horsfield and Frederic Moore, A catalogue of the birds in the Museum of the Hon. East-India Company (London, 1854-58)
Mildred Archer, Natural History Drawings in the India Office Library (London, 1962)
Sally Walker ‘Zoological Gardens of India’, Chapter 8 in Zoo and aquarium history: ancient animal collections to zoological gardens by Vernon N Kisling, Jr. (ed) (Boca Raton, Florida : CRC Press, 2001)
Salim Ali ‘Bird Study in India: Its History and its Important’, India International Centre Quarterly, Vol 6., No. 2 (April 1927), pp.127-139

Following on from Walker’s Manly Exercises, we bring you, by the same author, Exercises for Ladies; calculated to preserve and improve beauty, and to prevent and correct personal defects, inseparable from constrained or careless habits: founded on physiological principles.  This book was first published in 1836.

Donald Walker claimed that few young women were exempt from some degree of deformity which always increased with age.  These deformities were caused by the women performing nearly every act of their lives in a one-sided manner.  Prevention required an equal and similar use of the other side of the body.

Bad positions leading to a crooked spine

The book was divided into several sections.

Physiological Principles – the structure of the body, the vertebral column, the chest.

Functions of the body connected with exercise – locomotion, nutritive, thinking.  The effects of excessive exercise – exhaustion of the cerebral and spinal nervous system, and premature ageing of appearance.

Debility caused by constraint – whalebone stays causing debility and wrong positions.: ‘The little girl, in the attempt to render her thin and genteel, speedily becomes hump-backed’.  If boys are straight in figure without the aid of whalebone stays, why shouldn’t girls be the same?

Wrong and right positions in writing

Wrong positions which resulted from debility and from the employment of muscles unfavourably situated – standing, sitting, writing, drawing, guitar-playing, harp-playing, riding, lying in bed, all the acts of common life.

Guitar-playing – wrong and right positions

Playing the harp – wrong and right positions

Standing – if standing for a long time, the tendency to balance on one leg throws out the hip and distorts the spine.
Sitting – by always sitting on the same side of the window or fire, persons lean to one side, and this has the effect of raising one shoulder.

Injuries done by wrong positions to locomotive organs and functions, vital organs and functions, mental organs and functions.Utility of exercises to locomotive, nutritive, and thinking systems.

Exercises – active (the body is moved and agitated by its own powers); passive (the body is moved without any effort of its own); mixed.

Position of figure – standing (‘females, in particular, find the standing position very fatiguing’ because of the size of their pelvis), walking, dancing.

Exercises for the arms (rod, dumb-bells, Indian sceptre, clubs). Walker describes Indian sceptre exercises practised in the Army with clubs.

Indian sceptre exercises

Exercises for the limbs (balance step, walking at different speeds, running and leaping).

Walking – the quick pace

Running and leaping – ‘Owing to the excessive shocks which both of these exercises communicate, neither of them are congenial to women’.  So Walker moved quickly on to exercises for the feet.

Dancing – Ladies were to dance in a very different manner from gentlemen – ‘lithesome and graceful motions’.  Every lady was to desist from dancing as soon as she felt any difficulty breathing –‘oppression and overheating render the most beautiful dancer an object of ridicule or of pity’.

Gesture.

Deportment – how to curtsey.

The curtsey

Games – ‘Le Diable Boiteux’ (which exercised shoulders), 'La Grace' (catching hoops on sticks), skipping rope, shuttlecock and battledore, bow and arrow.

Geary’s Exercise Stays

Walker recommended exercise stays invented by Mrs Nicholas Geary of 61 St James’s Street.  He said that these stays were absolutely essential for all exercises of the arms, especially the Indian exercises for which they were constructed.  Their pressure on every part of the chest was slight as the very elastic shoulder straps were longer and fixed lower than usual, and they also played freely in the lateral direction under a transverse band at the back.

Advertisement for Mrs Nicholas Geary’s stays from Morning Herald (London) 3 October 1836 British Newspaper Archive

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
Donald Walker, Exercises for Ladies 

At Hallowe’en, we’d like to introduce you to Mr Trick and Mrs Treat.  Both feature in several articles in the British Newspaper Archive.

The Weston-super-Mare Gazette of 21 April 1849 reported that Mr Trick and his family were amongst 90 or so people from north Somerset villages emigrating to the USA.

Weston-super-Mare Gazette 21 April 1849 British Newspaper Archive

William Trick was a baker living in the village of Banwell with his wife Ann and two children.  Trick was a member of the Banwell Total Abstinence Society and regularly addressed meetings during the 1840s.  He belonged to the Banwell Wesleyan Missionary Society and spoke on the subject of ‘missions to the heathen’ at a meeting held in the local chapel in November 1846.

‘The Emigrant’s Last Sight of Home’ by Richard Redgrave (1858).  Image Photo © Tate Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported) 

The Tricks sailed from Liverpool in steerage on the steamer Sarah Sands on 29 March 1849.  A broken piston rod in the engine meant that the ship had to make a great part of the voyage under sail.  The delay caused anxiety in New York but over 200 passengers and a valuable cargo eventually arrived safely on 1 May.

William, with his wife, daughter and son, travelled onwards to Dubuque County, Iowa, with others from Somerset, such as the Dyers.  The area had been settled by Europeans in the late 1830s, and in the 1850s became known as Dyersville.  William acquired 40 acres of land and also worked as a Methodist preacher, playing a large part in the building of the local church.  In 1855 he was granted naturalization.

According to the 1906 Atlas of Dubuque County, the marriage of William’s daughter Annie to Malcolm Baxter in 1852 was the first in the community.  Annie died in April 1856 aged just 27.

William Trick junior became a hardware merchant who served as mayor of Dyersville.

William Trick senior died on 27 October 1873 aged 78 after a busy life of public service.  He was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery Dyersville where his daughter Annie and wife Ann already lay.

Let’s move on to Mrs Treat.

The Edinburgh Evening News of 19 February 1875 published an article entitled ‘Another Animal-Eating Plant’ about Mrs Treat and her carnivorous vegetables.  Very appropriate for Hallowe’en!

‘Another Animal-Eating Plant’ - Edinburgh Evening News 19 February 1875 British Newspaper Archive

Mary Lua Adelia Treat was born in 1830 in New York, the daughter of Methodist minister Isaac Davis and his wife Eliza.  In 1839 the family moved to Ohio.  Mary was married in 1863 to Joseph Burrell Treat, a doctor who also wrote and gave lectures on a variety of subjects including women’s rights and abolition.  The Treats moved in 1869 to Vineland, a model town and community in New Jersey founded by Charles K Landis.

‘A Lady and her Spiders’ – Shields Daily Gazette 28 August 1879  British Newspaper Archive

Mary Treat was a self-trained naturalist with a particular interest in insects and carnivorous plants.  Having made scientific investigations with her husband, she continued to research and publish on her own after the couple separated and Joseph went to live in New York.  He died in 1878 at the age of 55 and was buried at Siloam Cemetery in Vineland.

After the separation, Mary supported herself by writing scientific magazine articles as well as books including Chapters on Ants (1879) Injurious insects of the farm and garden (1882); and Home Studies in Nature (1885).  She corresponded with Charles Darwin and had plant and insect species named after her.

Geometric web of a garden spider from Home Studies in Nature (1885)

Mary Treat died in 1923 aged 92 at Pembroke, New York State, after a fall.  She too is buried in Siloam Cemetery in Vineland.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
British Newspaper Archive  - also available via Findmypast
Findmypast and Ancestry for the passenger list of steamer Sarah Sands; land transactions; naturalization records; UK and US census records; birth, marriage and burial records.
Atlas of Dubuque County 1906 
Injurious insects of the farm and garden
Chapters on Ants
Home Studies in Nature
Tina Gianquitto, ‘Of Spiders, Ants, and Carnivorous Plants – Domesticity and Darwin in Mary Treat’s Home Studies in Nature’, in Annie Merrill Ingram, Ian Marshall, Daniel J. Philippon, and Adam W. Sweeting (eds) Coming into Contact – Explorations in Ecocritical Theory and Practice (University of Georgia Press, 2007)

What links chatbots with balancing cats? The Human-Computer Learning Foundation (HCLF) was founded in 1994, by computer scientist Donald Michie; psychologist Jean Hayes Michie; and television producer Rupert Macnee (son of Patrick Macnee, star of the 1960s TV show The Avengers). The HCLF was a charitable trust created for the purposes of furthering for the public benefit 'the awareness, understanding, and use of human-computer learning and artificial intelligence'.

Donald Michie and Jean Hayes (Add MS 88958/5/4), reproduced with permission of the estate of Donald Michie

The HCLF defined human-computer learning to mean "that the human and computer partners both learn from each other as they go along, exchanging partly formed concepts while each assisting the other to bring nascent ideas and conceptualisation to levels difficult for either to attain alone".

The administrative papers of the HCLF were collected over the life of the organisation by Rupert Macnee, and donated to the British Library in 2020. Rupert served as secretary for the HCLF from its inception. The archive includes registration and legal documents, correspondence, accounts, meeting minutes and articles. Many are printed on the back of documents relating to Macnee's work as a television producer.

Letter regarding the charitable status of the proposed HCLF, Add MS 89496/2. Reproduced with permission of Rupert Macnee and the estate of Donald Michie.

The HCLF felt that technology and the internet's rapid development was causing people to be left behind, creating a gap in skills required to obtain jobs. The papers trace how the HCLF began developing downloadable computer games designed to build the user's perceptual and motor skills, whilst simultaneously developing the knowledge base available to the computer. One of these games involved a pole-balancing 'polecat'. An idea to try and incorporate the popular Japanese manga and cartoon chat character Doraemon to boost sales in Japan was suggested, but after actually seeing the character's appearance they deemed his design to be too round for their requirements. Some skills could be learnt using a voice instruction system developed by the HCLF, known as "Automated Voice-Over Training". Macnee provided the test voice for the system, likening it to Obi-Wan Kenobi tutoring Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. They discussed the idea of partnering with Disney or Warner Brothers to create a version for children.

Developing the 'polecat' game with a view to incorporating the character Doraemon, Add MS 89496/3. Reproduced with permission of the estate of Donald Michie.

The archive also reveals how the HCLF developed a 'chatbot' computer program called Sophie, similar to Massachusetts Institute of Technology's ELIZA program from 1964. Sophie was presented as a casual member of staff working for the HCLF. Visitors could 'chat' to her on the HCLF website, but after a certain amount of interaction the visitor would be told that Sophie had to get back to work. As an alternative they could pay and subscribe to her Conversation Club, where they could chat for as long as they wanted. Sophie was programmed to analyse the questions she was asked and provide suitable answers. 'She' would learn from each interaction. A fictitious profile and backstory was created for Sophie, including a family, which had some amusing results. Her brother John worked for 'Woofie Bits dog-food manufacturers', and her sister Julia's religion was listed as 'nature-worship,  vegetarian'.

Details from the biographical profiles for 'Sophie Martin' and family members, Deposit 10206. Reproduced with permission of the estate of Donald Michie.

Tragically, Donald Michie was killed in a car crash in 2007, and the HCLF was disbanded shortly afterwards. The study, development and use of artificial intelligence for language learning, however, has continued.

Jonathan Schofield
Manuscripts cataloguer

Donald Michie at the British Library
The Donald Michie papers at the British Library is comprised of three separate tranches of material, gifted to the library in 2004 and 2008. They consist of correspondence, notes, notebooks, offprints and photographs, and are available to users through the Explore Archives and Manuscripts catalogue, under references Add MS 88958, Add MS 88975 and Add MS 89072.

The archive of the Human-Computer Learning Foundation can be found at Add MS 89496. For copies of agreements relating to the HCLF please see Add MS 89072/2/3.

A recent donation to the India Office Private Papers is an ensign’s commission granted to Anthony Merry who joined the East India Company as an army cadet in 1798.

Commission as ensign granted to Anthony Merry – India Office Private Papers Mss Eur F759

Anthony Merry was baptised at Great Warley in Essex on 2 September 1783, the younger son of Anthony Merry and Margaret (née Hornby).  When Anthony senior died in 1785, his will confirmed the marriage settlement made with Margaret together with a further £200.  The settlement appears to have included the manor of Hayleys in Epping.  Anthony did not mention his children.  The bulk of the remaining estate went to his sister Elizabeth Pinnell and other relations.

Margaret Merry re-married twice.  In 1786 she wed widower William Dowson of Chamberlain’s Wharf Southwark, and their son William was born the following year.  Dowson died in 1791, leaving Margaret £100 and the use during her lifetime of Millfield House in Highgate.

In 1795 Margaret married another widower Henry Coxwell, a chemist and druggist in Fleet Street London.  They had a son Charles in 1795 and a daughter Elizabeth in 1797.  Coxwell was a member of the Committee of Chemistry at the Society for the Promotion of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, and the inventor of concrete lemon.

Invention of concrete lemon by Henry Coxwell - Bath Chronicle 7 March 1799 British Newspaper Archive

Concrete lemon was crystallized lemon juice, ‘the pure acid part of the fruit in a solid and dry form, resembling in appearance white sugar candy’.  Coxwell signed each package sold as a guarantee of its authenticity.

Handbill advertising Coxwell's concrete lemon - British Library General Reference Collection Cup.21.g.24/5

The crystals were said to be ‘convenient and elegant’, dissolving instantly in cold water, and cheaper than fresh lemons or lemon juice.  They could be used to make punch, lemonade, or sauces.  Ships of the Royal Navy and East India Company were supplied with Coxwell’s concrete lemon to help guard sailors against scurvy.

Thomas Trotter, Medicina Nautica; an Essay on the diseases of Seamen vol III (London, 1803), p.76

Henry Coxwell died at Millfield House in 1832, ‘deeply and deservedly lamented by all who had the pleasure of his acquaintance’.  His library was sold three years later.  This included a collection of modern medical books together with others on a variety of subjects – travel, plant, insects, literature, philosophy, politics.

Advert for the sale of Henry Coxwell's library - Sun (London) 19 October 1835 British Newspaper Archive

Anthony Merry died before his stepfather, in 1831.  His career in the Madras Army had been very brief.  In February 1801 Lieutenant Merry was stationed at Seringapatam with the 1st Battalion, 2nd Regiment Native Infantry.  He wrote to  his commanding officer, Major Thomas Riddell, expressing his wish to resign the Company’s service and to proceed to Europe at the first opportunity.  Major General Brathwaite recommended that this request be granted, given Merry’s general character and conduct.  Merry was permitted to resign and told to go immediately to Madras and be ready to embark for Europe.

After his return to England, Anthony Merry served as an officer in regiments of the Royal Militia.  He married Elizabeth Strivens in 1805 and settled in Kentish Town in north London.  It appears the couple had four children: Margaret, Robert, Eliza (died in infancy), and William Henry.  Anthony’s East India Company commission was carefully preserved and passed down the family before being gifted to the British Library.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
Commission as ensign granted to Anthony Merry – India Office Private Papers Mss Eur F759.
Baptism of Anthony Merry – India Office Records IOR/L/MIL/9/108 f. 466.
Papers in Madras Military Proceedings 1801 about Anthony Merry’s resignation - India Office Records IOR/P/254/70 pp.1788-1791, 1794-1795.
Will of Anthony Merry 1785 – The National Archives PROB 11/1127/339.
Will of Anthony Merry 1813 - The National Archives PROB 11/1785/332.
Will of Anthony Merry 1835 - The National Archives PROB 11/1849/369.
Will of Sukey Merry 1840 - The National Archives PROB 11/1921/375.

In late 1837, an eager fifteen-year-old named Ibrāhīm ibn Khalīl ibn Yūsuf al-Najjār al-Dayrānī travelled from his home in a mountainside town outside Beirut in order to study medicine in Cairo.'Principal square in Grand Cairo, with Murad Bey's palace' by Luigi Mayer, from Thomas Milton, Views in Egypt, Palestine, and other parts of the Ottoman Empire (London,1840) British Library shelfmark 762.h.2.(1), Images Online

His journey took place against the backdrop of rapid modernisation in the Middle East, with local rulers increasingly bringing in technical, military, administrative and scientific practices and expertise from Europe.  In medicine, Muhammad Ali Pasha (1769-1849), the Ottoman governor of Egypt, imported from 1825 European doctors, particularly French, to administer to the health of Muhammad Ali’s growing army, develop medical institutions along Western lines, and train locals in Western medicine.

Dr Antoine Bertélémy Clot (1793-1868) or ‘Clot Bey’, as he was nicknamed, accompanied Muhammad Ali’s occupation of Greater Syria (1832-40).  Clot Bey was instrumental in the selection of Ibrāhīm as one of the five first Lebanese students to embark on a Western medical education at the school in Cairo that he had founded in 1827.

Ibrāhīm was a product of European expansionism in the Middle East: his grandfather was reportedly a Corsican carpenter who had arrived in the Levant with Napoleon’s invading forces in 1799.  Unusually, we know about his personal experiences thanks to his memoir Miṣbāḥ al-Sārī wa-Nuzhat al-Qārīʾ (Lamp for the Traveller and Diversion for the Reader), which he self-published 20 years later.

Title page, Miṣbāḥ al-Sārī wa-Nuzhat al-Qārīʾ, printed Beirut, 1272 hijrī (1855-56) 

Without detailing his education, Ibrāhīm mentions his yearning for medical knowledge from a young age, which could not be satisfied locally.  Clearly, the extraordinary wealth of medical, pharmaceutical, and surgical learning previously compiled by Arabic-speaking physicians was not what he had in mind.

The memoir discusses Ibrāhīm’s arrival in Cairo, the medical school at Qasr al-ʿAynī, and the content of the four-year medical course.  Beginning with chemistry, general anatomy, and pharmacology, the 500 students – mostly from rural Egypt and destined for careers with the army – progressed to minor surgery, botany, pathology, pharmacology, major surgery and specialist anatomy.  Students accompanied their teachers on hospital ward rounds and observed autopsies, which Ibrāhīm confesses that he loathed.  This emphasis on human dissection was one major difference between a traditional Arabic medical training and the education Ibrahim was receiving; to alleviate Muslim concerns, the school claimed that the cadavers used were those of Jews and Christians.

'Panorama of Constantinople' from A Series of Eight Views, forming a Panorama of the City of Constantinople and its Environs, taken from the Town of Galata (1813) British Library shelfmark Maps K.Top.113.75.f  Images Online

After graduating in 1842, Ibrāhīm travelled to Constantinople (Istanbul).  Having cured – he claims – a patient whom his host’s personal physician could not, he was introduced to the chief doctor of Istanbul and enrolled at the Royal Medical School.  For four years, he attended lectures, saw patients, and learnt Turkish and French in order to access modern textbooks.  This culminated in a gruelling public examination presided over by the young Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecit I (r. 1839-61).

Portrait of Sultan Abdülmecit I by David Wilkie (1785-1841), 1840. Image courtesy of Royal Collection Trust

After qualifying fully aged 22, Ibrāhīm spent three years travelling in Europe, before returning to Lebanon as chief medical officer at the Ottoman army barracks in Beirut.  Straddling the manuscript and print eras in the Levant, Ibrāhīm authored books, including one manuscript recently made available on the Qatar Digital Library (British Library Or. 12152).  This pharmaceutical inventory, apparently in his hand, expresses an intellectual position encompassing both traditional Arabic pharmacological and botanical knowledge, and use of Latin- and Greek-derived terminology and chemical compounds discovered by Western physicians.

Page from Kitāb anīs al-jalīs fī kull ḥadīth nafīs, by Ibrāhīm ibn Khalīl al-Najjār, ca 1845-64 (f. 8v)

Title page from Kitāb anīs al-jalīs fī kull ḥadīth nafīs, by Ibrāhīm ibn Khalīl al-Najjār, ca 1845-64 (f. 1r). The author is described as ‘One of the doctors of the Royal [Medical] School in Asitane [Istanbul], and the foremost doctor to the Sultanic [Ottoman] armies in Beirut’.

Embodying the modernising efforts of 19th-century Ottoman rule, Ibrāhīm al-Dayrani was one of the first doctors to be trained in the Western medical methods and concepts that have become universal.  He died in 1864, aged just 42.

Jenny Norton-Wright
Arabic Scientific Manuscripts Curator, British Library / Qatar Foundation Partnership