Untold lives blog

On 30 December 1776 the Sherborne Mercury carried an advertisement for ‘a proper New-Years Gift for every Maid Servant’.  Employers were encouraged to buy Madam Johnson’s Present: Or, Every Young Woman’s Companion, in useful and universal Knowledge.

Advert for Madam Johnson's Present - Sherborne Mercury 30 December 1776 (British Newspaper Archive)

Madam Johnson’s Present was first published in 1753 and had reached its seventh edition by 1776.  The compiler kept the price low ‘out of her benevolence’ (1s 6d in 1776), and the book was said to contain twice as many pages as were usually sold for that amount.

Contents page for the fourth edition of Madam Johnson's Present 1770

The companion claimed to be the ‘Completest Book of the Kind ever published’.  It opened with a preface reflecting on the duties of servants, who should ‘take into their serious Consideration that low State of Life in which Providence has placed them, and the several little menial Offices, which they must, and ought without Reluctance, to perform’.  Servants should be grateful to their superiors who employed them, and be ‘very Industrious, Faithful, and Honest in every Trust reposed in them’.

Madam Johnson's Present - the duties of servants

This was followed by a ten-page ‘Short Dissertation on the Benefits of Learning, and a well-directed Female Education’.

Then came these sections:
• Spelling, reading, writing and arithmetic – this covered the alphabet; diphthongs and triphthongs; syllables; punctuation; writing with a pen; sample letters on different subjects; addition; subtraction; multiplication; division; time; measures for wine, beer, ale, dry goods, cloth and land; weights.

Madam Johnson's Present - 'The Young Woman's Guide to the Knowledge of her Mother Tongue'

• ‘The Compleat Market Woman' - instructions for ‘the judicious choice of all kinds of provisions’ including meat, poultry and game; butter, cheese and eggs; fish and seafood.

• A cook’s guide to ‘dressing’ provisions – roasting, boiling, and frying; cooking vegetables, with a warning about over-boiling greens which destroys their beauty and sweetness.

Madam Johnson's Present - instructions about greens

• A cook’s guide to pickling and potting, pastry and confectionery - making puddings, pies, tarts, gravies, soups (including egg soup), and sausages; baking cakes, gingerbread, macaroons, buns, and wigs (a type of teacake); making cheesecakes, creams, jellies, and syllabubs.

Madam Johnson's Present - how to make an egg soup

• An estimate of the expenditure of a family on the middling station of life – man, wife, four children, and one maidservant.

Madam Johnson's Present - An estimate of the expenditure of a family on the middling station of life – man, wife, four children, and one maidservant.

• The Art and Terms of Carving Fish, Fowl, and Flesh e.g. ‘Disfigure that Peacock’, ‘Splat that Pike’.

Madam Johnson's Present - terms for carving meat poultry game and fish

• A bill of fare for every month of the year for dinner, supper, and special occasions.
• An instructor for the correct spelling of words used in marketing, cookery, pickling, preserving etc.
• Plain and necessary general directions to maidservants - practical advice for the daily duties of housemaids, kitchenmaids, laundrymaids, and chambermaids, instructions on how to kill rats, bugs, and fleas, and clear flies and gnats; how to protect poultry from foxes and weasels; and a remedy for toothache and and ‘Scurvey in the Gums’ which involved a butcher’s skewer and gunpowder.

Madam Johnson's Present - treatment for toothache and scurvy in the gums

• Useful tables of information, including one for the most ‘familiar’ names of men and women. I was not expecting some of those listed for men – Sigismund, Caesar, Dunstan, Urban.

Madam Johnson's Present - most familiar names of men and women

Happy New Year! Time to celebrate with a bowl of egg soup and a wig.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

On 27 December 1833 the Morning Post reported a spate of thefts in London.  Thieves had been targeting food being delivered for Christmas dinners – joints of meat, fish, turkeys, hares and pheasants.

Butcher's boy from London Characters drawn by Horace William Petherick, Image courtesy of Bishopsgate Institute.

These ‘market scamps’ noted houses had taken in a delivery and then, with a tray on their shoulder, knocked at the door.  They told the servant that an inferior cut had been left in error and that they would substitute the correct sort in a few minutes.  The servant, glad that the mistake had been detected, nearly always handed over the meat.  The thieves then quickly sold it to a new customer.

A family in Bishopsgate Street had been robbed of turkey and a piece of beef by a man looking like a butcher.  One man, who had pawned his watch to give his children an extra treat on Christmas Day, had the joint stolen and so had to make do with a couple of sheep’s heads.

However, Mr Willoughby of Bishopsgate Street had read about the scam in the newspapers.  When a man knocked at his door and told his servant that the wrong beef had been delivered, Willoughby seized him and handed him over to a law officer.

The prisoner gave his name as James Smith.  He was remanded in custody so that those who had been robbed of their Christmas dinners could come to ’look at him’.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further Reading:
British Newspaper Archive – also available via Findmypast

Enjoy puzzles?  Try researching women hand bookbinders in the early 1900s!  ‘Lady binders’ was a hot topic in newspapers, but they tended to work for a restricted period, their careers cut short by various events including marriage (which usually involved a change of surname) and the social and economic upheavals of the First World War.

In careers articles and exhibition reviews, women binders are often referred to as ‘Miss’ plus surname.  Miss M. Marshall, the binder of Library’s newly acquired copy of William Morris's Poems (1908) has proved difficult to research, but we can reveal her identity.

Gold tooled green goatskin binding by M. Marshall on William Morris, Poems, 1908 (shelf mark to be assigned).

In an electoral register for London’s Holborn 1907-1908, a Maud Marshall is shown as joint occupier of a shop at 6 Denmark Street with Edith Gedye, who was a bookbinder.  Maud’s residential address is given as 18 Blomfield Street, Paddington. Through this address, Maud Marshall the bookbinder can be linked to her siblings Mary Crawford Marshall and Angus McPherson Marshall who were living there at the time of the 1911 census.  Mary was born in Yokohama, Japan.  In 1911, bookbinder Maud Marshall was living in Claygate, Surrey, and her place of birth was Japan.

Emily Maud Marshall was born on 12 January 1869 in Yokohama, the daughter of merchant William Marshall and his wife Clementina Strachan née McLean.  Her father died suddenly at Yokohama on 4 September 1873 and the family returned to England.  Clementina died in 1900.

Based in London during the first decade of the 20th century, Maud Marshall worked as a bookbinder in collaboration with Edith Gedye.  Their binding styles were influenced by William Morris and T. J. Cobden-Sanderson's Arts and Crafts movement (as were many contemporary hand binders) but it is not known who taught them.  The pair exhibited their bindings at Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society shows in 1903 and 1906.  From 1904 to 1907, the book seller Bain helped them sell their work.  Newspaper articles indicate that they submitted their bindings to many amateur and professional competitions, and they regularly received first prizes, certificates and honorable mentions.

Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society - catalogue of the seventh exhibition, the New Gallery, 121 Regent St. 1903. Images from Internet Archive. Digitised book from the collections of the Archive of Art and Design, Victoria and Albert Museum, uploaded by V&A staff.

Maud Marshall contributed a piece on bookbinding to The Fingerpost. A guide to the professions and occupations of educated women first published in 1906.  She wrote: ‘Of the many careers opened of late years to women, bookbinding is perhaps the one most attractive in point of interest, combining as it does physical, mental and artistic effort.  Whether it is a lucrative career must depend entirely upon the individual’.

A career in artistic bookbinding could certainly be an uphill struggle for women, as emphasised in this article from The Queen.

The Queen 28 May 1910 p.42 British Newspaper Archive

Gedye and Marshall offered lessons in bookbinding.  This not only provided an increased income stream for the business but also gave experience to those not otherwise able to learn the craft (notably women who were not usually eligible for apprenticeships).  They also devised a way of obtaining patronage from country house owners by offering to bind together family correspondence and supplying albums to be used for visitors’ books.

Country Life 19 December 1903 lxiv British Newspaper Archive

In 1910 the pair begun to work independently, with Edith moving to Bristol.  Maud continued to rent business premises in London, but in the 1921 census she is listed in Ware, Hertfordshire, ‘not occupied for a living’.  She died in Aldingbourne, Sussex, on 25 March 1940.

Lower turn-in with signature of M. Marshall.

P J M Marks, Curator, Bookbindings
Margaret Makepeace, Lead Curator East India Company Records

Further reading:
Marianne Tidcombe, Women Bookbinders 1880-1920, 1996
The Fingerpost: A Guide to the Professions and Occupations of Educated Women, with Information as to Necessary Training (London: Central Employment Bureau for Women and Students, 1906.)
See also British Library C.188.a.412. In an early twentieth century English brown goat skin binding tooled in gold and onlaid. Signed: M & G 1905 [i.e. Miss Marshall and Edith J. Gedye]
British Newspaper Archive

Samuel Hough first appears in the records of the East India Company as Master Attendant of Marine at Bombay in the 1730s.  The Marine fleet guarded British shipping on the west coast of India mainly from attack by local pirates but also from other nations at time of war.  His position gave him standing in the community and he must have been a brave officer, as shown by an event in 1748 when he was in command of the Bombay, at anchor at Rajapore.  Some of his crew had been impressed, but on 1 March the remainder mutinied and broke open the arms-chest.  Hough managed to reason with the men, promising safe passage back to England at the first opportunity and after seven hours he took back control.  His promise was honoured by the Government who needed crew to man ships on the return to England at this time of war with France.

An aquatint of a view of Bombay Harbour from the pier up to the Bunder Battery including part of the fort or Citadel. From James Wales, Bombay Views: Twelve Views Of The Island Of Bombay And Its Vicinity Taken In The Years 1791 And 1792. British Library shelfmark X 436. Images Online

Shortly after this, on 19 May 1748, Captain Samuel Hough married Mrs Judith Sclater, a widow with two small daughters.  They had two more daughters (Louisa and Ann) before Judith died in January 1752.  At the end of that year Samuel took all four little girls back to England on the Streatham, disembarking on 7 June 1753.

On 16 March 1754 Samuel Hough married Martha Crichton at St Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury.  She came from a family well established in the East India Company and within a few weeks she sailed off to Bombay.  Her husband captained their voyage on the Hardwicke which was to remain in Bombay as part of the Marine.

They had been joined on the Streatham by Laurence Sulivan and his family, also returning home.  The two men had been friends and business associates and this arrangement continued to their mutual advantage. Back in Bombay Hough acted as an agent holding powers of attorney on behalf of his clients and could provide ways of remitting Indian funds through confidants among his fellow captains, to be deposited with Sulivan in London, on their behalf.

Appointment of Samuel Hough as Superintendent of the Bombay Marine - IOR/E/4/996 p.69 General Letter from Court of Directors to Bombay 5 April 1754

Samuel Hough was appointed Superintendent of the Bombay Marine, the highest ranking officer below the Council members.  It is clear he was greatly respected and his opinion was valued by the Council.  By 1759 he had become one of the Council members but he returned to England on the Harcourt, arriving back on 18 May 1761.  By this time his family had grown - Louisa and Ann were joined by a baby brother William and a sister Elizabeth.

Entry from the journal of the ship Streatham Wednesday 29 November 1752 - IOR/L/MAR/B/605H

Back in London Hough continued his involvement with the East India Company by investing in and managing ships.  He was the second signature on the charterparty agreements for five ships in the 1761/2 season with four more voyages for 1762/3.

Samuel died on 5 September 1764 at Bath.  In his will he left bequests to his three daughters and his son William but also named a ‘natural son Samuel Hough, now a mate on the Latham Indiaman’.  Samuel junior went on to become a sea captain with the East India Company, married in September 1777 but died a year later.

CC-BY
Georgina Green
Independent researcher

Creative Commons Attribution licence

In October I had the pleasure of attending the Connecting Threads: Fashioning Madras in India and the Caribbean Symposium at the V&A Museum.  This event focused on exploring the cultural and textile history of 18th-century Madras textiles, their production in South India, and their interwoven link with the Caribbean.

Madras Handkerchief made by Sooboo Chetty, c.1855. V&A, 4968(IS)

The Connecting Threads project is a collaboration among various specialists, aiming to amplify the voices and contributions of Indian weavers and African Caribbean consumers who have adopted Madras as part of their heritage, shifting the narrative away from colonial and Western markets.  The project’s accompanying website, Connecting Threads, supports this initiative.  With born-digital scholarship, the project aims to democratise research, reach a wider audience, and address Open Access data issues by making their resources freely available globally.  They also hope to influence the development of AI knowledge about Madras textiles, promoting a less Eurocentric view of its visual history.

The Programme
The programme featured 14 speakers from various backgrounds and specialisms, including curators, professors, historians, craftspeople, artists, and business owners.  Throughout the day, we viewed microscope-enhanced images of 18th-century and modern Madras handkerchiefs, analysed by the research team and a Chennai master weaver.  There were lectures on their production and how different caste groups, sexes, and religions may have worn them.  For example, Muslim groups were noted in inscriptions from 1538 for their specific weaving techniques (source: Uthra Rajagopal, scholar and curator).  There was some discussion into trade by the English East India Company and other European traders, and the appropriation of designs to be reproduced in Britain.

A Company painting titled ‘A Weaver and his wife’, c.1800. V&A, AL.8940N

Caribbean experts and scholars gave excellent talks and demonstrations on the trade and cultural use of Madras, particularly by enslaved or low-income groups.  The usage is complex, but the talks generally emphasized Madras’s positive context—its power in Caribbean island identity and, amusingly, the historical use of head wraps as flirtatious signifiers of availability.

Exquisite handmade dolls were displayed to the attendees, a real example of the integrated nature of Madras in Caribbean culture.  These dolls, currently held at the Bristol Museum, were made in the 1780s by Rebecca Ahmuty Snagg, a domestic enslaved woman in Grenada who died a free woman.  They were likely crafted for the children of the family that bought Rebecca, and they feature Madras head coverings, emulating the real-life articles worn by black Caribbean women at the time.

One of three of the Rebecca Ahmuty Snagg dolls, currently held at the Bristol Museum Collections - photograph by author

The conference was an insightful addition in the ongoing initiative to decolonise and diversify our collections.  This line of research is gaining momentum, with frequent discussions at the British Library on how to rethink our catalogues to promote a more diverse and inclusive narrative.

Maddy Clark
India Office Records

Further information about the Connecting Threads project can be found on their resource website and the V&A website.
Connecting Threads
Connecting Threads: Fashioning Madras in India and the Caribbean

A recent acquisition to the India Office Private Papers has now been catalogued and is available for researchers to view in the British Library’s Asian and African Studies reading room.  The collection consists of the papers of Leo Cayley Robertson (1891-1964), Barrister, Indian Civil Service 1938-1947, District and Sessions Judge, Burma 1945-1947.

Extract from Map of Western Yunnan - Survey of India 1927 Mss Eur F771/1 f.125

Leo Robertson was born on 19 June 1891.  His family had a long association with Burma; his great grandfather was a master mariner who traded from Moulmein and Rangoon, and his father was an engineer with the Burma Public Works Department.  Leo was educated at St Joseph’s College in Darjeeling, then in France and London, and finally at Queen’s College, Cambridge graduating in Moral and Mental Science in 1912.  He then studied metaphysics, before embarking on a career in law.  Leo returned to Burma in 1920, joining the Board of Philosophical Studies at the University of Rangoon.  He also began practising at the Bar in the High Court at Rangoon. 

Letter of recommendation on behalf of Leo Robertson addressed to Walter Booth-Graveley, Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma,13 October 1933 Mss Eur F771/1 f.116

In 1938, Leo joined the Indian Civil Service in Burma, working in the Chief Secretary’s Office and in the Civil Affairs Service, before being appointed a District and Session Judge.  Leo retired from the ICS in 1947 and returned to England.  He died in 1964.

Letter from Chief Secretary's Office Maymyo about Robertson's proposed trek, 22 March 1935 Mss Eur F771/1 f.117

In 1935, Leo made a trek through the Chinese province of Yunnan accompanied by his uncle Andrew Hazlewood, and the collection contains his file of papers on the trip.  This contains his original handwritten diary, with notes and correspondence related to gaining permission to travel in the area.  They left Rangoon on 1 April 1935, and travelled to Bhamo where they collected two riding ponies and ten mules to carry their camp equipment and provisions for the trip.  Their trek then took them through Western Yunnan to Tengyueh and Yongchang, crossing back into Burma at Malipa.  They stayed for three days as guests of Mr Stark-Toller, British Consul at Tengyueh, and at times needed a Chinese military escort who were engaged in suppressing banditry.  On arrival at Tetang, the headquarters of the local Administration, they were given a public reception and the whole town turned out to meet them.  Leo described his appearance as ‘disgracefully unkempt and travel-stained and having grown a rakish-looking beard during the journey, might well have been taken for a brigand of sorts’.

Extract from Leo Robertson's Burma diary 12 April 1942 Mss Eur F771/2 f.22

In 1942, Japanese forces invaded Burma and rapidly swept through the country.  Leo kept a diary during this period, and a typescript copy survives.  It covers the events from 15 February to 9 May, including Robertson's evacuation from Burma.  The collection also includes three letters by Andrew Hazlewood during January 1942 from Rangoon where he was employed as an Insurance Assessor, in which he gives news of other family members being evacuated from Burma and describes the deteriorating situation in Rangoon owing to increased air raid alerts warning of Japanese bombing of the city.

In the 1950s, Leo worked on a profile of Frank Kingdom-Ward (1885-1958), botanist, explorer and plant collector, for The Observer.  The collection contains some papers related to this including a draft of the profile, along with notes and correspondence, and a copy of an article by Kingdom-Ward 'Caught in the Assam-Tibet Earthquake' in National Geographic Magazine (1952).

John O’Brien
India Office Records

Further Reading: Papers of Leo Cayley Robertson (1891-1964), Barrister, Indian Civil Service 1938-1947, District and Sessions Judge, Burma 1945-1947, Mss Eur F771 – a paper catalogue of the contents is available to consult in the Asian and African Studies Reading Room at the British Library.

In the foyer of the staff entrance to the St Pancras site of the British Library is a memorial tablet commemorating 142 librarians who died during the First World War.  It was unveiled at the British Museum 100 years ago this month.

Memorial tablet at the British Library commemorating 142 librarians who died during the First World War

The memorial to ‘the British librarians fallen in the War’ was commissioned by the Library Association in 1923 and consists of a framed set of five oak panels with incised and gilded lettering.  It was made by Messrs Harry Hems & Sons of Exeter and was originally placed in the corridor leading to the main reading room of the British Museum.

The Library Association had started gathering information on British and Empire librarians who died on active service during the war itself.  A roll of honour was published as a supplement to the Library Association Record in March 1923, its preamble hoping that the printed roll would be superseded by another one, ‘necessarily briefer, but more monumental, in some appropriate public space’.  The contract with Harry Hems & Sons for the new memorial was awarded in early 1924.

‘Librarians’ Memorial’ - Newspaper article from the Western Morning News, 28 April 1924, p. 5. British Newspaper Archive

A week or so before it was unveiled at the British Museum, the Librarians’ Memorial was the subject of a short article published in the Shields Daily News.  The local interest concerned the two members of staff from the public libraries at South Shields and Tynemouth who were commemorated on the memorial: 270013 Sergeant Reginald Maurice Daniel of the Northumberland Hussars; and Second Lieutenant Richard Harold Urwin Potts of the 1/2nd Battalion, Duke of Wellington’s West Riding Regiment.

‘Librarians’ Memorial’ - Newspaper article from the Shields Daily News, 9 October 1924, p. 2. British Newspaper Archive

The memorial was unveiled on 24 October 1924 by Sir Frederic George Kenyon, Director and Principal Librarian of the British Museum.  A short account of the ceremony was published in the Shields Daily News a few days afterwards.

‘Librarians Memorial: unveiling ceremony at the British Museum’ - Newspaper article from the Shields Daily News, 27 October 1924, p. 5. British Newspaper Archive

More names were added to the memorial after its unveiling, bringing the total number commemorated to 142.  Of these, 130 (ca. 92.5%) had previously worked for organisations based in the UK, nine in Australia, two in South Africa, and one in Ireland.

The Librarians' Memorial remained at the British Museum until 1998, when it was moved to the new St Pancras site of the British Library.  It remains a prominent feature there in the foyer of the staff entrance on Midland Road.

Michael Day
Digital Preservation Research and Services Lead

Further reading:
Graham Jefcoate, 'Roll of honour: the Librarians’ War Memorial and professional identity', Library History, Vol. 12, No. 1, 1996, pp. 171-182 (£)
Lynn Young, 'Valete fratres - Librarians and the First World War', Untold lives blog (13 November 2011) 
'The Librarians' Roll of Honour', Library Association Record, March 1923, supplement.

Launched on 22 October 2014, the Qatar Digital Library (QDL) was developed as part of a longstanding partnership between the Qatar Foundation, the Qatar National Library, and the British Library.  The partnership includes the digitisation of a wide range of material from the British Library’s collections, aimed at improving understanding of the modern history of the Gulf, Arabic cultural heritage, and the Islamic world.

Following on from part 1 , members of the team of experts working on the QDL reflect on memorable material that they and former colleagues have encountered in the last decade.

• Preserving original order in George Curzon’s Persia and the Persian Question – Mss Eur F111/33

Annotated pages in George Curzon’s personal copy of his 1892 book, Persia and the Persian Question – Mss Eur F111/33 ff. 74v-75r. Image digitised by the BLQFP

George Curzon’s personal copy of his two-volume tome stands out for the interesting challenges it posed during conservation and cataloguing.  Rather unexpectedly, it contained dozens of assorted papers between its pages, including received correspondence, newspaper cuttings, various journal and magazine articles, and a few handwritten notes by Curzon.  The question for the conservation and cataloguing teams was how to preserve the inserted papers’ original order while ensuring their long-term preservation and indeed that of the book itself.  The solution was to number the pages of the book and the inserted items with the latter still in place, forming a single foliation sequence.  Now, when viewed on the QDL, the inserted items remain in their original order, between the pages of the two volumes (though some, e.g. certain newspaper cuttings, do not appear online for copyright reasons).  Physically, however, the inserted items are now preserved in a separate file.

• Discovering the unexpected – IOR/R/15/1/355 

A British wartime propaganda poster, dated c. 1941-42 – IOR/R/15/1/355, f. 42v

Cataloguing can be very serendipitous, as unassuming files can reveal the unexpected.  Such was the case with this financial file, containing two rare Arabic-language propaganda posters, which the British Government produced during the Second World War.  The posters only survived because of a wartime paper shortage, which led to financial accounts of the Bahraini Government being typed on their reverse.

• Personal reflections on life in the Gulf during the last years of Empire – Mss Eur F226/2, Mss Eur F226/7, Mss Eur F226/10, Mss Eur F226/13, Mss Eur F226/22, Mss Eur F226/23, Mss Eur F226/26, Mss Eur F226/28, Mss Eur F226/30, and Mss Eur F226/34

Excerpt from John ‘Jack’ Bazalgette’s 1984 memoir – Mss Eur F226/2, f. 152r. © Estate of John Bazalgette

These ten memoirs belonging to former British officials of the Indian Political Service provide a unique insight into one generation’s experiences of living and working in the Gulf during the last years of British India, as discussed at length in three blogs and in this QDL expert article.

• Muzah bint Ahmad Al Bu Sa‘id: the protector of Muscat – IOR/F/4/1435/56726

Heading to a letter written by Muzah bint Ahmad Al Bu Sa‘id, to the Governor of Bombay, dated 8 April 1832 – IOR/F/4/1435/56726, f. 235v

As in many archival collections, women are under-represented in the records, and those who do feature are largely misrepresented.  For these reasons, this item is particularly notable, since it contains a letter to the Governor of Bombay from Muzah bint Ahmad Al Bu Sa‘id, who, in the absence of her nephew the Imam of Muscat, took charge and defended his territories.

IOR Cataloguing Team, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership