Lise Summers
Wednesday, April 9, 2014 – 12:06

A guest blog from George Main, from the National Museum of Australia.

Notes made by Constable Napier in his police journal, 1907.  (WAS 76,cons 430, 1907/1571)

My name is George Main, and I work as a curator at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. In 2011 the Museum opened a new gallery called Landmarks: People and Places around Australia. This gallery explores a broad history of Australia through stories of places and their peoples. In the ‘Grazing the Grasslands’ section, the West Kimberley town of Derby features as one of four places through which stories of Australian pastoralism are told.

The Derby exhibit contains a rich array of objects, from prize cups won by the pioneering Emanuel family for their Shorthorn cattle, to boab ‘nuts’ carved by local Aboriginal man Jack Wherra in the 1960s. Also on display are pages from police journals held by the State Records Office of WA (SROWA), generously on loan to the Museum. These documents offer fascinating insights into the tense and often bloody relationships that existed between Aboriginal groups in the West Kimberley, pastoralists and police.

When pastoralists moved into the west Kimberley region in the 1880s, they occupied the territories of the Nyikina, Warawa, Bunuba, Yungngora and other Aboriginal peoples. Aboriginal men and women resisted pastoral settlement by burning pastures and livestock, making deadly spearheads of glass and iron, and fighting police and pastoralists with guns. Settlers and colonial authorities responded with their own weapons. In a major uprising in 1894, police shot 50 Aboriginal people on west Kimberley stations.

During the decades of conflict, police arrested many Aboriginal men for killing cattle and walked them to Derby for trial. In 1909 alone, the town magistrate convicted 113 Aboriginal men for such crimes. Cattlekillers were sentenced to years of hard labour. Some served their sentences in Derby; others were sent to prisons as far away as Rottnest Island. The pages on loan from SROWA record the long journeys made by policemen as they walked Aboriginal prisoners arrested for cattle killing into Derby for trial.

To learn more about the Landmarks gallery and the Derby exhibit, click here: http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/landmarks/about_landmarks/grazing_the_grasslands

The grave of policeman William Richardson, a victim of the West Kimberley conflict, Derby. Photography by George Main, National Museum of Australia.

From the January, 1941 WQXR Program Guide:

Mr. Ganz is conductor of the Young People’s Chorus of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Society. He is a pioneer in the field of children’s concerts, having directed such concerts for the past eighteen years. The Young People’s Concerts from Town Hall, New York, January 13th and February 17th at 3:45 P.M. will be broadcast by WQXR.

There seems to be in some uninformed circles, the general impression that the musical education of American youth is being neglected. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth. At the moment America offers a unique opportunity for the presentation and appreciation of the better music. Nor is this, as many might be tempted to think, solely because a European war has put an end for the time being to cultural development abroad.

Young people’s and children’s concerts, which for the past eighteen years have flourished in the United States, bringing music of the highest type to hundreds of thousands, indeed millions of the younger generation, are a purely American institution. They were tried for a short time in Switzerland, but the project was abandoned. They were suggested, needed, desired in Paris, but given up for lack of money. Naturally all such institutions abroad are state-supported, and securing the passage of an act of Parliament solely to give children an opportunity to hear fine music seems difficult to negotiate.

I doubt very much if Americans generally realize how much they owe to women’s clubs for the cultural progress of this country. Had there been such organizations abroad I am sure that the musical education of children, particularly in the smaller countries, would have been better safeguarded. For it is the women’s clubs in many cities in the United States that have done much to stimulate interest in good music in the home, club and concert hall and so have given indirect impetus to our most successful experiments in musical education for American youth.

Traveling, as I do, all over the country, I am increasingly impressed, year by year, by the growth of musical interest among the young. Through the great number of high school orchestras and bands the instinct for self expression through music has been reawakened. Our young people are no longer content merely to hear music. They want to perform it themselves.

The wealth of good musical literature adapted to youthful presentation which has been turned out by American composers during the past few years is yet another factor in the increasing musical consciousness of our young people. The ability to write good music in easy style is not only a high form of musical art, but the mastery of this technique by American composers has had tremendous influence in teaching our young people to enjoy performing music, rather than to accept it as an arduous but necessary phase of their cultural education. So that we are now in an encouraging stage of our musical development.

Naturally, I could not write of musical education for young people without reference to children’s and young people’s concerts as an important factor in the general educational program. The late Ernest Schelling, who for so many years conducted these concerts here in New York, created standards of efficiency which should be an inspiration to directors of children’s concerts everywhere. Particularly commendable is the widespread participation of the children in preparations for the concert, such as writing the notes which are published in the program, keeping notebooks dealing with the compositions performed, etc. This actual participation in the concerts gives them far greater value than if the children were merely to come and listen to the music. Moreover such concerts are a factor greatly to be reckoned with in adult education. Many parents who thought themselves non-musical have become musical enthusiasts merely by accompanying the young people of their family.

I am not, of course, in New York all the time, and so cannot listen regularly to the musical programs given by station WQXR, but I have been studying some of its program announcements and am astounded and delighted by the wealth and variety of fine music it offers and infinitely pleased that it gives young people outside the metropolitan area an opportunity to share in the Town Hall concerts of our Young People’s Series. Certainly the owners and managers of a station which presents so much of musical worth are entitled to seats in the grande estrade in Heaven, even though theirs may be smaller chairs than those of the musical immortals. 

New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concert program cover from November 13, 1943 with Rudolph Ganz conducting. (Program scan courtesy of New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives)

One of my favourite things about the NUWT collection is the range of causes members were involved in throughout the first half of the twentieth century.  Obviously the issue of equal pay for women teachers was the driving force of their campaigning, but that didn’t stop them from becoming involved in a range of causes – including the interwar peace movement; the education of girls; the impact of cinema on children; the nationality of married women issue; and women’s suffrage.

If you’re interested in any of the issues that pop up in our NUWT archive or this blog, you’ll probably also be keen to see the new film, currently titled ‘Suffragette’, currently shooting in London.  While filming has primarily been taking place in East London, the film is also set to shoot in the Houses of Parliament at Westminster.  The fact that this is the first commercial film to be given filming prvileges in Parliament says a great deal about the value of sharing this very significant period in history (I cannot even imagine the bad press for Westminster if they had said no to filming scenes for ‘Suffragette’).  The film stars Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter and Meryl Streep as suffragette leader, Emmeline Pankhurst (see photos of Streep in costume as Pankhurst here).

NUWT members laying a wreath at the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst outside the Houses of Parliament c1932.  Doc Ref: UWT/G/2/39

While we don’t necessarily need a star studded film to appreciate the women’s suffrage movement, it is nice to see it being recognised. Also, in the often male dominated film industry, it is pretty great to see such a talented female cast under the direction of Sarah Gavron.

*Also, a huge thanks to our volunteer, Jeremy, for making documents – like the photograph seen above – more accessible.  As part of our HLF project, Jeremy, who has been with us since January, spends Monday afternoons on an NUWT digitisation project.  He scans and organises the NUWT archive collection’s photographs (such as the one above) so that they are preserved and accessible for archive readers, regardless of geographical proximity to the IOE.  Thanks again, Jeremy!*

Tagged: archive, Carey Mulligan, Emmeline Pankhurst, Meryl Streep, NUWT, parliament, suffragette, Westminster

The success of Jen Bervin and Marta Werner’s recently published The Gorgeous Nothings suggests that this might be a good opportunity to say something about another modest yet gorgeous nothing from our collection.

While researching a minor detail of Emily Dickinson’s biography during the summer of 2012, I came across a folder that caught my eye.

When I looked at the contents, I thought, well of course that’s Dickinson’s handwriting. Why doesn’t the folder say so?

As is often the case with Dickinson-related topics, that question led me happily down rabbit holes galore. At this point, a reader might reasonably wonder whether there is any research value to a list of names. I would submit — and hope to show — that there is.

The only published mention of this list that I’m aware of is in Mabel Loomis Todd’s 1931 edition of The Letters of Emily Dickinson. In a footnote on page 23 relating to a letter from Dickinson to her friend Abiah Root(¹), Todd mentions an Amherst Academy list “in writing of this same period” (spring, 1847). Since we have the printer’s copy for Todd’s 1931 edition, I checked it and found this page (²).

Todd seems to have regarded the list as being in Dickinson’s hand, but for some reason, and despite the fact that anything in Dickinson’s hand is of interest, no one picked up on it later and archived the list with Dickinson’s other manuscripts. Instead, it ended up with some secondary documentation, as indicated by the folder title above. Perhaps Todd herself had treated it as a tool for working with Dickinson’s letters rather than as a manuscript, and thus it remained separate from the rest of Dickinson’s writings.

Amherst Academy

As it happened, Dickinson scholar Polly Longsworth visited the Archives shortly after I first looked at the list, and I managed to lure her down the rabbit holes as well. In particular, we asked ourselves, is it in fact Dickinson’s handwriting; what’s the date of the list; what was the purpose of the list; and if it’s an Amherst Academy list, why doesn’t it include the names of certain people who were also students at the school (or were believed to be), such as Dickinson’s friends Abiah Root and Harriet Merrill?

When we had exhausted all the trails we could follow and had several folders of documentation, we were still sort of in the dark (very typical results for Dickinson-related questions, I find), but we’d had a lot of fun investigating the topic.  The upshot?  We do think it’s Dickinson’s handwriting (a list composed for her own purposes, perhaps carried around and added to over a short time); we do think it’s a list of Amherst Academy students and teachers (we checked their names in the extant catalogues), but beyond saying “late 1840s” we don’t know for certain exactly when she wrote it. But what did we learn about the names on — and not on — the list?

I won’t (I promise) go into all the details here, but in brief (my “brief,” not necessarily yours), this modest little manuscript led to a few new points about people in Dickinson’s world.  We now know, for example, that the reason Dickinson’s girlhood friend Harriet Merrill eventually ceased to write entirely was that she was dead. Clearly not a regular letter writer anyway (ED complained about her silence several times), Harriet Merrill left Amherst for Hartford in 1845 to live with relatives (her mother, Cordelia Leonard Merrill, had died in 1836)³ and probably to attend school (perhaps the Hartford Female Seminary). From Hartford, she went to Grand Rapids, Michigan, with her married sister Caroline Granger in or by 1850 (she appears on the 1850 census with her sister’s family). In 1851 Harriet married a dentist named Samuel B. Noble (an event Dickinson would’ve noted in the Hampshire-Franklin Express of May 22), and on September 9, 1853, she died (in childbirth or from consumption, if one had to guess — I’ve not yet found an obituary). Her widower then married her slightly younger sister Frances (why – was there a child?), who also died hardly a year after Harriet.(4) There is no surviving evidence to show that Dickinson knew of Harriet’s death, but it seems very likely that she heard about it through the grapevine, especially since Harriet still had family members in town. This death would have been another on her long and ever-growing list of friends and acquaintances whose deaths hit the poet hard and deepened her interest in “the flood subject.” (5)

Polly Longsworth and I understood too that in his Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson, the usually spot-on Super Detective Jay Leyda conflates two Harriet Merrills, blending information about Dickinson’s friend with information about an unmarried aunt of the same name (rumored to have been murdered by a “strolling Juggler” according to Dickinson – one wonders if she misheard or played on “gigolo,” which is what he sounds like in newspaper accounts of the trial). Thus, in Leyda’s quote from an entry in George Shepard’s diary dated September 7, 1857, in which Shepard refers to “Miss Harriet Merrill” as “pale & thin but pleasant,” Shepard actually means her aunt, although no doubt Dickinson’s friend Harriet, being quite dead, was also pale & thin but probably no longer pleasant. Likewise, the 11-year old Harriet Merrill was probably not the local fair’s “chief cook & bottle washer” (“Miss Merrill”) mentioned in 1841 by Samuel Mack. Looking at the list, then, led to a few clarifications in the records.

“Note to self,” or, “The Rare Pleasure of Finding Jay Leyda in Error” (Photocopy of “Years and Hours,” volume 1, page lxii)

Depending on one’s interests (or obsessions), much more work could be done using this list, such as tracking down biographical details about the people mentioned on it and even, perhaps, investigating whether there is undiscovered correspondence to or from any of them.

For me, this list illustrates how Emily Dickinson works: she provides context for another time and place. Instead of focusing in toward Dickinson, I like to look out from Dickinson. In other words, I use knowledge of Dickinson as a way to widen my sense of her world – her family, her friends, her neighborhood, her town, her state, her New England. She’s an industrious spider at the center of my web, spinning out her context wider and wider. The more I learn, the better I get at the game of Six Degrees of Emily Dickinson. It’s my preferred mode of time travel.

*****************************************************************

All this and footnotes too:

(1) Todd refers to a letter from Dickinson to Abiah Root dated “Sabbath Eve, 1847,” Johnson’s letter #15. Johnson notes that the original manuscript is missing — the text derives from a photostat in Mabel Loomis Todd’s possession. Todd had the original letter and returned it to Abiah Root Strong — or meant to. It may have been lost in the mail, or later separated from the group of letters given by her niece Claribel Smith to Harvard after Abiah’s death (we already know that Claribel gave away at least one piece of Abiah’s correspondence, a letter from Abby Wood to Abiah). In any case, Amherst still possesses the photostat (ED Photostats Box 2, Folder 19). Here are the images from the photostat, scanned and inverted. The hand here is a finished product, as opposed to the more jotted-looking list above.

(2) Todd has at least two errors here, namely Paulina Best — it should be Bent — and Harriet Merrill — it should be Merrick, for Harriet Hodge Merrick (ED misspells Merrick, as well as a few other names). Harriet Merrill’s name doesn’t appear in any Amherst Academy catalogues, although it’s still possible that she was in school during some of the terms for which there were no catalogues.  Harriet Merrick is in several catalogues. While I can see how it could be read as Merrill, an enlarged version of the list suggests that the name is Merrick: compare the “ck” in “Merrick” with that in “Hitchcock” below it.

(3) Dickinson wrote a deliciously snarky letter to brother Austin about Harriet’s father Calvin Merrill’s remarriage in 1851 to Fanny Dickinson-Thompson-Benjamin, saying “Mr. Merrill resides with the recent Mrs Merrill, alias Mrs. Benjamin, more alias, Mrs. Thompson — for the sake of the widowed lady for the third time a bride, I hope her buried Lords are buried very low, for if on some fine evening they should fancy to rise I fear their couple of angers might accompany them, and exercise themselves on grooms who erst were widowers, and widows who are brides.”  (AC ED 568, this transcription from Johnson’s letter 52)

(4)  In his Letters of Emily Dickinson, Thomas Johnson says that Harriet Merrill (the younger) “taught school first at Amherst Academy and later at Pittsfield.”  (Appendix 1, page 950).  Except for a reference to Harriet as a “School Marm” in Dickinson’s August 1845 letter to Abiah Root (when Harriet would be 16), I haven’t discovered where he got that information.  As mentioned in the text above, it’s possible that she was briefly a student at Amherst Academy (there is circumstantial evidence for the idea), but she seems too young to be a teacher there.  I’ve found no evidence yet for a stay in Pittsfield, but the years between 1845 and 1850 are not documented well enough to be sure about her doings.  She could also have gone quite early from Hartford to Grand Rapids to help her sister Caroline, who married Julius Granger in 1843 or 1844 and had her first child in 1844 or 1845.  Harriet’s 1851 marriage announcement  in the Hampshire-Franklin Express refers to her, then living in Grand Rapids, as “formerly of Hartford, Ct.” Harriet Noble is buried in the Fulton Street Cemetery in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

(5) For a sobering sense of how many people Dickinson knew who died of consumption alone (never mind other causes), see Al Habegger’s “Appendix 3″ in his My Wars Are Laid Away in Books.

The success of Jen Bervin and Marta Werner’s recently published The Gorgeous Nothings suggests that this might be a good opportunity to say something about another modest yet gorgeous nothing from our collection.

While researching a minor detail of Emily Dickinson’s biography during the summer of 2012, I came across a folder that caught my eye.

When I looked at the contents, I thought, well of course that’s Dickinson’s handwriting. Why doesn’t the folder say so?

As is often the case with Dickinson-related topics, that question led me happily down rabbit holes galore. At this point, a reader might reasonably wonder whether there is any research value to a list of names. I would submit — and hope to show — that there is.

The only published mention of this list that I’m aware of is in Mabel Loomis Todd’s 1931 edition of The Letters of Emily Dickinson. In a footnote on page 23 relating to a letter from Dickinson to her friend Abiah Root(¹), Todd mentions an Amherst Academy list “in writing of this same period” (spring, 1847). Since we have the printer’s copy for Todd’s 1931 edition, I checked it and found this page (²).

Todd seems to have regarded the list as being in Dickinson’s hand, but for some reason, and despite the fact that anything in Dickinson’s hand is of interest, no one picked up on it later and archived the list with Dickinson’s other manuscripts. Instead, it ended up with some secondary documentation, as indicated by the folder title above. Perhaps Todd herself had treated it as a tool for working with Dickinson’s letters rather than as a manuscript, and thus it remained separate from the rest of Dickinson’s writings.

Amherst Academy

As it happened, Dickinson scholar Polly Longsworth visited the Archives shortly after I first looked at the list, and I managed to lure her down the rabbit holes as well. In particular, we asked ourselves, is it in fact Dickinson’s handwriting; what’s the date of the list; what was the purpose of the list; and if it’s an Amherst Academy list, why doesn’t it include the names of certain people who were also students at the school (or were believed to be), such as Dickinson’s friends Abiah Root and Harriet Merrill?

When we had exhausted all the trails we could follow and had several folders of documentation, we were still sort of in the dark (very typical results for Dickinson-related questions, I find), but we’d had a lot of fun investigating the topic.  The upshot?  We do think it’s Dickinson’s handwriting (a list composed for her own purposes, perhaps carried around and added to over a short time); we do think it’s a list of Amherst Academy students and teachers (we checked their names in the extant catalogues), but beyond saying “late 1840s” we don’t know for certain exactly when she wrote it. But what did we learn about the names on — and not on — the list?

I won’t (I promise) go into all the details here, but in brief (my “brief,” not necessarily yours), this modest little manuscript led to a few new points about people in Dickinson’s world.  We now know, for example, that the reason Dickinson’s girlhood friend Harriet Merrill eventually ceased to write entirely was that she was dead. Clearly not a regular letter writer anyway (ED complained about her silence several times), Harriet Merrill left Amherst for Hartford in 1845 to live with relatives (her mother, Cordelia Leonard Merrill, had died in 1836)³ and probably to attend school (perhaps the Hartford Female Seminary). From Hartford, she went to Grand Rapids, Michigan, with her married sister Caroline Granger in or by 1850 (she appears on the 1850 census with her sister’s family). In 1851 Harriet married a dentist named Samuel B. Noble (an event Dickinson would’ve noted in the Hampshire-Franklin Express of May 22), and on September 9, 1853, she died (in childbirth or from consumption, if one had to guess — I’ve not yet found an obituary). Her widower then married her slightly younger sister Frances (why – was there a child?), who also died hardly a year after Harriet.(4) There is no surviving evidence to show that Dickinson knew of Harriet’s death, but it seems very likely that she heard about it through the grapevine, especially since Harriet still had family members in town. This death would have been another on her long and ever-growing list of friends and acquaintances whose deaths hit the poet hard and deepened her interest in “the flood subject.” (5)

Polly Longsworth and I understood too that in his Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson, the usually spot-on Super Detective Jay Leyda conflates two Harriet Merrills, blending information about Dickinson’s friend with information about an unmarried aunt of the same name (rumored to have been murdered by a “strolling Juggler” according to Dickinson – one wonders if she misheard or played on “gigolo,” which is what he sounds like in newspaper accounts of the trial). Thus, in Leyda’s quote from an entry in George Shepard’s diary dated September 7, 1857, in which Shepard refers to “Miss Harriet Merrill” as “pale & thin but pleasant,” Shepard actually means her aunt, although no doubt Dickinson’s friend Harriet, being quite dead, was also pale & thin but probably no longer pleasant. Likewise, the 11-year old Harriet Merrill was probably not the local fair’s “chief cook & bottle washer” (“Miss Merrill”) mentioned in 1841 by Samuel Mack. Looking at the list, then, led to a few clarifications in the records.

“Note to self,” or, “The Rare Pleasure of Finding Jay Leyda in Error” (Photocopy of “Years and Hours,” volume 1, page lxii)

Depending on one’s interests (or obsessions), much more work could be done using this list, such as tracking down biographical details about the people mentioned on it and even, perhaps, investigating whether there is undiscovered correspondence to or from any of them.

For me, this list illustrates how Emily Dickinson works: she provides context for another time and place. Instead of focusing in toward Dickinson, I like to look out from Dickinson. In other words, I use knowledge of Dickinson as a way to widen my sense of her world – her family, her friends, her neighborhood, her town, her state, her New England. She’s an industrious spider at the center of my web, spinning out her context wider and wider. The more I learn, the better I get at the game of Six Degrees of Emily Dickinson. It’s my preferred mode of time travel.

*****************************************************************

All this and footnotes too:

(1) Todd refers to a letter from Dickinson to Abiah Root dated “Sabbath Eve, 1847,” Johnson’s letter #15. Johnson notes that the original manuscript is missing — the text derives from a photostat in Mabel Loomis Todd’s possession. Todd had the original letter and returned it to Abiah Root Strong — or meant to. It may have been lost in the mail, or later separated from the group of letters given by her niece Claribel Smith to Harvard after Abiah’s death (we already know that Claribel gave away at least one piece of Abiah’s correspondence, a letter from Abby Wood to Abiah). In any case, Amherst still possesses the photostat (ED Photostats Box 2, Folder 19). Here are the images from the photostat, scanned and inverted. The hand here is a finished product, as opposed to the more jotted-looking list above.

(2) Todd has at least two errors here, namely Paulina Best — it should be Bent — and Harriet Merrill — it should be Merrick, for Harriet Hodge Merrick (ED misspells Merrick, as well as a few other names). Harriet Merrill’s name doesn’t appear in any Amherst Academy catalogues, although it’s still possible that she was in school during some of the terms for which there were no catalogues.  Harriet Merrick is in several catalogues. While I can see how it could be read as Merrill, an enlarged version of the list suggests that the name is Merrick: compare the “ck” in “Merrick” with that in “Hitchcock” below it.

(3) Dickinson wrote a deliciously snarky letter to brother Austin about Harriet’s father Calvin Merrill’s remarriage in 1851 to Fanny Dickinson-Thompson-Benjamin, saying “Mr. Merrill resides with the recent Mrs Merrill, alias Mrs. Benjamin, more alias, Mrs. Thompson — for the sake of the widowed lady for the third time a bride, I hope her buried Lords are buried very low, for if on some fine evening they should fancy to rise I fear their couple of angers might accompany them, and exercise themselves on grooms who erst were widowers, and widows who are brides.”  (AC ED 568, this transcription from Johnson’s letter 52)

(4)  In his Letters of Emily Dickinson, Thomas Johnson says that Harriet Merrill (the younger) “taught school first at Amherst Academy and later at Pittsfield.”  (Appendix 1, page 950).  Except for a reference to Harriet as a “School Marm” in Dickinson’s August 1845 letter to Abiah Root (when Harriet would be 16), I haven’t discovered where he got that information.  As mentioned in the text above, it’s possible that she was briefly a student at Amherst Academy (there is circumstantial evidence for the idea), but she seems too young to be a teacher there.  I’ve found no evidence yet for a stay in Pittsfield, but the years between 1845 and 1850 are not documented well enough to be sure about her doings.  She could also have gone quite early from Hartford to Grand Rapids to help her sister Caroline, who married Julius Granger in 1843 or 1844 and had her first child in 1844 or 1845.  Harriet’s 1851 marriage announcement  in the Hampshire-Franklin Express refers to her, then living in Grand Rapids, as “formerly of Hartford, Ct.” Harriet Noble is buried in the Fulton Street Cemetery in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

(5) For a sobering sense of how many people Dickinson knew who died of consumption alone (never mind other causes), see Al Habegger’s “Appendix 3″ in his My Wars Are Laid Away in Books.

Before the Fulton Fish Market moved to the Bronx in 2005, nearly 2,000 men spent their early mornings down on South Street between Fulton and Beekman at one of the oldest and busiest open air markets in the country.

The oral histories recorded for this 1962 radio spot are replete with the “things ain’t what they used to be” rhetorical flourishes of the market old timers.  But their stories also reflect what must have been an incredibly lively scene, a melting pot of haggling, fish twisting, and commerce that seems all but lost in today’s New York City.

Established in 1822, the market grew so large that by 1924, New York City fishmongers were selling 25 percent of the total seafood in the United States. But by the 1960s, Lower Manhattan began to give way to other concerns, namely the increasing real estate value of the area for both commercial and and residential use.

We’ve updated our online search and we think you’ll like the changes in both function and design. Here are some of the main ones.

It’s much faster. The search engine is completely new and the difference in search times is noticeable.

Simple search gives suggestions as you type a search term. This gives you another way to find holdings.

Advanced Search has another filter. Searches can be narrowed to search within one top-level description. Enter the exact name of the fonds or collection.

You don’t have to hit the Search button any more: hitting Enter will start your search.

Results from a Simple Search can be filtered to those with digital objects only. Just hit the link.

Results from a Simple Search can be narrowed using the facets in the sidebar. It provides a glance at properties of all your results. Each facet is a link to just those results.

For power users: date searching has changed significantly. Searching by date and by date range are both different. See About Searching for details.

We’ve updated About Searching to explain the changes. We welcome feedback on everything.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union 25 years ago, the Cold War was declared over. Now, the pundits, policy analysts and TV talking heads say Russia’s annexation of Crimea might be the start of a second Cold War. If that’s the case, we could be in for the kind of fiery rhetoric that characterized the first one, complete with pounding fists and flying insults.

At least it made for good radio. Indeed, the genre is rich in speeches, songs, dramas and official warnings about the atomic-crazed, godless, mind-controlling, and otherwise communistic threats to the American way of life posed by the “evil empire.” And, on the other side, Western leaders who were no better than “Capitalist running dogs that prey on the hearts and minds of the people.”

With the Putin-Obama game of chicken growing ever more tense, we dug into our archives in search of the most memorable aural moments from the first round. Pour yourself a Cold War Cocktail and have a listen.

Iron Curtain Speech: On receiving an honorary degree from Westminister College in Fulton, Missouri,on  March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill delivered his famous speech marking the beginning of the Cold War, citing Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe and the outbreak of Communist insurrections all over the world. Here is an excerpt:

“Subversive Activities“: In this radio drama from the “This Is Our Duty” series sponsored by the American Legion and designed to develop “100% Americanism,” an idealistic young man is politically seduced by a Communist front group organizer. The program was introduced with the theme that “in America today, subversive elements thrive and prosper as never before.”

Attack Warning: This 1950s attack warning was produced for the radio by the Federal Government and civil defense authorities.

Excerpt from President Eisenhower’s address to the American Legion, August 25, 1952: 

Excerpt from Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater’s speech before the Young Americans for Freedom rally, Madison Square Garden, March 7, 1962:

The So-Called Shoe-Banging Speech: At a United Nations General Assembly speech on October 12, 1962, the Soviet premiere banged the podium with his fist and, allegedly, his shoe: 

For more cold war civil defense programming heard over WNYC see the series Plan For Survival.

A 1953 cold war senario. Flickr User James Vaughan

Commencement Season is fast approaching and I am honored to have been selected to deliver the address at North Carolina State University in May.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember who my commencement speaker was or what he or she had to say!

During my years at MIT and Duke, Commencement was always a special day for me.  It put into perspective all of the work during the previous year to ensure that students and faculty had the information resources and support they needed in their coursework and research—a morning to celebrate the launch of another class of educated men and women.

So, I am taking this assignment seriously.  I will certainly be taking FDR’s advice to heart—“Be sincere, be brief, be seated.”

But I need your help.  What advice would you give this graduating class?  What special message would you deliver to undergraduates?  Graduate students? Parents and other family members? Faculty and staff of the university?  Send me your ideas!

Franklin D. Roosevelt having a fireside chat in Washington, DC, 04/28/1935. National Archives Identifier 196760… [ Read all ]

From the April, 1941 WQXR Program Guide:

Mr. Hutcheson is President of the Juilliard School of Music in New York. In addition to being a great pianist and teacher, he is the author of numerous books on music, including the recently published “A Musical Guide to Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung.”

There are many different individual approaches and responses to radio. As head of the Juilliard School of Music I am naturally especially interested in the effect of broadcasts of serious music on students and teachers of music.

At the Juilliard School we have regular listening hours for the students, and often the room, seating about two hundred people, will be two-thirds full. The students bring their scores of symphonies, concertos, or operas, and follow them with intense absorption during the broadcasts. This opportunity to accompany the actual hearing of a score by visual study of it is a real service, for in a darkened opera house or concert hall it is impossible to use a score. 

Of course, many of our students and teachers besides those attending the regular listening hours take advantage of the radio performances in the same way. Any teacher owning a good radio set is importuned by friends and pupils with requests for permission to come and listen to special programs.

I may be pardoned for believing that what happens in the Juilliard School of Music is typical of what ought to happen in every school of music and in every college and university in this country. Fortunately, I have an imposing mass of evidence that this is actually the case, and recently, to my pleasure, I have had repeated occasion to recommend the installation of listening classes for such programs as those offered by WQXR.

There is another way in which radio makes possible the study of music under very desirable conditions. This is the broadcasting of recordings of great symphonies, concertos, etc., played by leading orchestras and artists. Music students are seldom rich, and few can afford to own a library of records. A student who has been assigned a concerto for study often has an ardent desire to hear a performance of it from an authoritative artist. He may have to wait years for such a chance, especially if he does not live in a great music center. And even if he lives in New York City, the price of a ticket may provide a difficult problem. In such broadcasts as these, Station WQXR has been a leader of insight and courage, and fully deserves the praise which is accorded to it daily by musicians of all types.

Let me pass now from the student to the professional aspect of radio as it affects our school. Many of our advanced students and graduates, particularly in our Graduate School, earn their living as radio artists, several having achieved a nationwide reputation. Radio is, therefore, obviously an important and constantly widening outlet for every kind of musical talent. Broadcasting orchestras, sustaining programs for singers and instrumentalists, chamber music, solo appearances with orchestra, incidental music for drama, program-making, accompanying, composing, arranging, conducting, all this work calls not only for trained musicians but also for musicians trained in specialized radio technique. Hence, schools throughout the country in increasing numbers are offering courses and installing departments in script-writing, program-making, announcing, engineering and other aspects of broadcasting.

At the Juilliard School of Music we have so far concentrated on two particular angles of radio, the actual technique and the engineering problems, though we realize that there are others which may be profitably studied. The interest in these courses is keen, particularly among the singers, and the advantage to the student who has a radio appearance to fulfill or an audition to undergo of being able to rehearse in a well-equipped studio is obvious.

It is probable that radio has interfered to some extent with attendance at certain musical events.  Naturally it is easier and cheaper to “tune in” from one’s armchair at home than to make the effort and incur the expense of going to Carnegie Hall for a Sunday afternoon concert of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. But radio has made more than ample amends for this in the carrying of serious music to every hamlet and farmhouse in the country. Radio is the greatest disseminator of music we have and, therefore, must be regarded as a social institution of wide and powerful influence. It is within its power  to guide and uplift public taste and become far more than a mere expression of popular preference in entertainment. Its broadcast purpose is served when it takes its place as the enlightened leader, the molder of the best in social thought and culture. I share the conviction of many musicians and music lovers that WQXR is serving this purpose and taking this place, and in so doing, it establishes the strongest ties with schools of music which have similar aims. We, too, must train leaders of culture, capable of maintaining a national morale which will withstand the strains and shocks of cynical thought and will endure in a brighter and more humane future.

The Institute of Musical Art (the three-story building at the near corner) and the Juilliard Graduate School (far corner) at Claremont Ave., circa 1950. (Photo by Alton Taube and courtesy of The Juilliard School) 

Smaller photo above: Juilliard students Christopher von Beayer and Bette Wishengrade at 130 Claremont Avenue and courtesy of The Julliard School.

With the 2014 First World War Centenary, heritage organisations around the world are delivering exhibitions, programmes and lectures, recognising the 100 years since the outbreak of war.  As the IOE’s archives are predominantly twentieth century, many collections reflect the impact of war on education, children and teachers in the UK and Europe.

The National Union of Women Teachers (NUWT) collection spans 1904 to the early 1960s, with documents reflecting both World Wars, pre & post war England, and the interwar period. It’s within that interwar period that the NUWT collection holds a wealth of material relating to the peace movements which emerged in the wake of the First World War.

Back in January, we delivered workshops on this interwar peace movement to Year 6 classes in Islington. The pupils previously learned about the World Wars, life in Britain in the 1930s, and had recently discussed bias in the news and other sources.  Their teachers were also keen for students to hone their skills of historiography and accurate research. So, we combined archives and the peace movement, with the skills and responsibilities of both historians and reporters, for a few Friday afternoon workshops.

Here is a sampling of what we got up to…

A pamphlet, created by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), addresses the potential dangers of Air Raid Precautions.  c1930.  Document Reference: UWT/D/18/38

When students first saw the cover of the above Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) pamphlet for Educators and Mothers, a few pupils commented on how funny the children looked with their gas masks on.  Students then read the following passage from the booklet…

… in every factory, office and school were people are together, they must be trained to expect war…What are we doing to the minds of a whole generation of children if we surround them with these ever-present… proofs of our expectation of war?

Students were amazing at distinguishing different biases… they acknowledged that WILPF wasn’t a 100% impartial source (citing how irresponsible it would be to not be at all prepared for a future war… as one student commented, ‘peace is great – but we can’t just always hope it’ll all be okay!’), while still being critical of government air raid precautions (‘Is a gas mask REALLY gonna save you if your home is bombed?!‘ questioned one student).

A student takes a read through WILPF’s pamphlet.

After investigating the document, some had a new perspective on the cover image.  One pupil commented, ‘those kids don’t even look like kids…’

We then looked at the peace movement through a specific event – a disarmament demonstration at Royal Albert Hall on 11 July 1931. Students explored the organisations involved in the peace movement, including the NUWT, The League of Nations and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF); debated the reliability of sources and potential biases; and did primary source investigations with leaflets, postcards, memos, letters and petitions.

WILPF Leaflet, Document Reference UWT/D/20/85

Year 6 students work in groups to complete a Primary Source Investigation, analysing a document from the archives.  Here, students investigate a letter addressed to the NUWT, from the League of Nations, asking for their support in educating the public in the peace cause.

Finally, the Year 6s put on their reporter hats and were asked to imagine it’s July, 1931… as junior reporters for The Guardian, their Editor-in-Chief handed them an assignment: write an article to inform readers about an upcoming disarmament demonstration taking place on July 11th.  In groups, they got to work investigating their documents for the who, what, where, when, why and how, and then shared their findings with the class.

When I asked students what they know about the World Wars, hands immediately shot in the air.  The Year 6s had thorough prior knowledge: they knew the causes, trench warfare, munitions production, Winston Churchill, Hitler, the Holocaust. Their responses also reinforced how history curriculum (and history in general) favours the grand narratives of the past: the major events, battles and historical figures. While these histories certainly have their place, there’s something to be said for investigating multiple perspectives – and experiences – when it comes to the past.  Throughout the History Reporters workshops, students were still indirectly learning about the world wars and political and social climate of the time, but were doing so through a perspective of a group of individuals – in this case, predominantly women – whose stories and experiences are perhaps less often shared.

A big thank you to teachers, Anna and Bea, and the Year 6s, for having us into your classrooms (on Friday afternoons, nonetheless)!

~~~~~~~~~~~

Teachers: below you will find an interdisclipinary lesson plan based on the History Reporters workshop.  The resource pack includes National Curriculum core standards; lesson details; archive documents and worksheets.
History Reporters Lesson Plan Key Stage 2-3

Students take a hands-on approach to source-based historical research as they investigate the interwar peace movement.  Topics include bias; how to decide whether a source is reliable or not; and recognising the similarities between the responsibilities of a historian and news reporter.  Students take on the role of journalists as they investigate archives as research for a newspaper article.

Tagged: archives, bias, interwar, league of nations, lesson plan, NUWT, peace movement, women’s international league, world war

Our objects collection houses many of the things you might expect: reunion badges, fraternity pins, endless college mugs and tshirts… but it also contains a wide variety of surprises.
Here are a few for your enjoyment:
(click on the images for more information)

These tiny shoes and bracelets are part of a complete Turkish young girl’s outfit belonging to Laura Bliss, daughter of Edwin Bliss (Class of 1837) who was a missionary to Turkey from 1843 until 1852. Laura was born in 1846 and was six years old when her family left Turkey. She received this costume as a gift sometime before then. What you can’t tell from the images is how very small the shoes are – they range in length from 6 to 7.5 inches – they would likely fit a preschooler.

This pocket size wallet used to belong to one Dr. W. E. Brown, Druggist, of Gilbertville, Mass. The tiny vials inside contain all manner of antiquated pharmaceuticals – opium, bismuth, morphine, ipecac, ergot and digitalis among others.

You may be aware of Amherst’s class cane tradition (and we have a generous selection of canes in the object collection), but have you heard about class pipes? We have a quite a few pipes with Amherst class years proudly emblazoned on them and a variety of others too, including the intriguing “Pipe of peace for the class of 1851″.

Also, eyeglasses and sunglasses, all wildly uncomfortable and fragile looking, and Clyde Fitch’s opera glasses (he was class of 1886 and a famous playwright).

A wide variety of scientific and quasi-scientific tools, including the ever-popular phrenology bust, Professor Ebenezer Snell’s drafting tools, Professor B. K. Emerson’s set of weights and a miniature steam engine given to President Marx.

Let’s not forget the football player doll, OK Society hair bracelet  and Amherst College Fire Brigade helmet shields!

And last, but not at all least, a some fantastic Earl and Countess headgear from the Amherst Family:

Our objects collection houses many of the things you might expect: reunion badges, fraternity pins, endless college mugs and tshirts… but it also contains a wide variety of surprises.
Here are a few for your enjoyment:
(click on the images for more information)

These tiny shoes and bracelets are part of a complete Turkish young girl’s outfit belonging to Laura Bliss, daughter of Edwin Bliss (Class of 1837) who was a missionary to Turkey from 1843 until 1852. Laura was born in 1846 and was six years old when her family left Turkey. She received this costume as a gift sometime before then. What you can’t tell from the images is how very small the shoes are – they range in length from 6 to 7.5 inches – they would likely fit a preschooler.

This pocket size wallet used to belong to one Dr. W. E. Brown, Druggist, of Gilbertville, Mass. The tiny vials inside contain all manner of antiquated pharmaceuticals – opium, bismuth, morphine, ipecac, ergot and digitalis among others.

You may be aware of Amherst’s class cane tradition (and we have a generous selection of canes in the object collection), but have you heard about class pipes? We have a quite a few pipes with Amherst class years proudly emblazoned on them and a variety of others too, including the intriguing “Pipe of peace for the class of 1851″.

Also, eyeglasses and sunglasses, all wildly uncomfortable and fragile looking, and Clyde Fitch’s opera glasses (he was class of 1886 and a famous playwright).

A wide variety of scientific and quasi-scientific tools, including the ever-popular phrenology bust, Professor Ebenezer Snell’s drafting tools, Professor B. K. Emerson’s set of weights and a miniature steam engine given to President Marx.

Let’s not forget the football player doll, OK Society hair bracelet  and Amherst College Fire Brigade helmet shields!

And last, but not at all least, a some fantastic Earl and Countess headgear from the Amherst Family:

The members and staff of the Public Interest Declassification Board attended and participated in many events last week to commemorate Sunshine Week. We thank the public and representatives from civil society and open government advocacy groups, Government agencies, the Congress and all attendees who participated in Sunshine Week activities. The Board wishes to thank the Washington College of Law’s Collaboration on Government Secrecy for hosting its Seventh Annual Freedom of Information Day Celebration at the American University. Board Member Ken Wainstein participated in a panel addressing current national security classification developments, as did John Fitzpatrick, the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office and Executive Secretary of the Board. In case you missed it, you can view the forum here. The large number of participants at this event and at other events reinforces our belief that citizens are interested in actively engaging with Government. Sunshine Week highlights citizen interest in participating in policy discussions and in holding Government accountable for its decisions. We will continue to advocate for national security classification and declassification reform and advocate for policies to improve Government transparency. We heard of the need for appropriate and effective oversight of our Government’s activities, particularly those involving the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the monitoring of intelligence activities by the Congress. At the American University, panelists discussed the implications of FOIA-related legislation, as well as observations and recommendations regarding the policies surrounding the Government’s use of surveillance activity. Ken Wainstein and John Fitzpatrick discussed the challenges of over-classification, recent Government efforts to reduce the scope of classification, and noted the difficulty in changing a long-standing culture of secrecy ingrained in system users.

Robert S. Litt, General Counsel at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, provided a lunchtime address that largely reinforced many of the recommendations we seek in our Transforming the Security Classification System report. Mr. Litt affirmed the Director of National Intelligence’s (DNI) commitment to improving the transparency of the Intelligence Community. He acknowledged the need for the all intelligence agencies to reassess their view on secrecy and strike a better balance between transparency and secrecy so the American people have a clearer understanding of how the work of these agencies keep us safe. He noted the need for sufficient transparency for informed debate and a discussion on the limits of intelligence policies and practices. Most importantly though, Mr. Litt discussed the causes and prevalence of over-classification, noting that in his view, FOIA case officers should ask not only if they can classify and redact information, but whether or not they should when conducting reviews. Although a risk adverse culture persists, Mr. Litt iterated the leadership commitment of the DNI and of senior leaders at intelligence agencies to change this culture to one more open and transparent.

The issue of cultural change discussed during Sunshine Week reinforces the importance of the work of the President’s Security Classification Reform Committee (SCRC). We are pleased that the President adopted our primary recommendation and established this committee. We are also pleased that the President included several of our recommendations as specific action items in his Second National Action Plan for Open Government. As the SCRC begins its work, we will continue to advocate for our recommendations and believe, if adopted, they will improve our nation’s security and improve Government transparency. We look forward to seeing the results of the SCRC and having the Government act on our recommendations.

At the conclusion of Sunshine Week, we reaffirm our commitment to more an open and transparent government. We invite you to continue the discussion about open government and freedom of information by commenting on our recommendations on our blog.

As part of 2014’s Glasgow Film Festival, Documenting Grierson, a film by Laurence Henson, was screened, allowing the audience an all too brief encounter with the ‘father of documentary’ John Grierson. Henson’s film highlights the importance and influence of Grierson’s philosophies and ideologies regarding cinema, social welfare and education during the interwar years in Britain.

John Grierson (ref. Grierson Archive, P 151)

In an excerpt from Henson’s film, Grierson talks passionately about the purpose of documentary as being, “A chance to say something, a chance to teach something, a chance to reveal something, a chance, possibly to inspire, certainly always an opportunity for influence of one kind or another.” Grierson wrote a lengthy manifesto outlining the principles of documentary, discussing the ethical issues and function of filmmaking (ref. Grierson Archive, G2.15.2). Today the artistic and pedagogical significance of documentary filmmaking continues, with The Grierson Trust awarding accolades each year to the most inspiring films. Academically, documentary techniques are rigorously theorised, crucially analysing the distinction between the ‘real’ or non-fiction aspect and the fictitious or ‘wish-fulfillment’ style, as pioneering documentary theorist Bill Nichols suggests.

Opening paragraph from one of Grierson’s influential lectures (ref. Grierson Archive, G2.16.3)

Early on in his career John Grierson decided that producing films would be more advantageous to the cause, especially when negotiating for government funding. He employed like-minded people to execute technical duties such as, camera work and editing. The core production crew consisted of, Harry Watt, Edgar Anstey, Basil Wright and Stuart Legg, a mix of aspiring young filmmakers. Grierson’s tenacity and ability to get things done changed the way we viewed the world and through the Empire Marketing Board film unit, headed by chief commissioner Stephen Tallents, society was presented with information, education and choice – a testament to the power of cinema (ref. Grierson Archive, G4.31.3).

The Documentary Boys (ref. Grierson Archive, GAA 13.3)

Grierson encouraged others with his documentary making views through lectures and publications, sometimes subversively, but always expressing an over-arching importance. He is quoted in The Daily Herald (1935) saying, “I wish the B.B.C., instead of sterilizing its speeches in the cabins of Broadcasting House, would take its microphones out to the people” (ref. Grierson Archive, G3.14.1). A method that Arthur Elton and Edgar Anstey incorporated in their film Housing Problems (1935) – an idea attributed to John’s sister Ruby Grierson, also a filmmaker.

Grierson dealt his contemporaries with equal amounts of contempt and praise. In an article in Cinema Quarterly (1932), he pitted other disciplines against the prestige of documentary – “newsreel is just a speedy snip-snap of some utterly unimportant ceremony”, continuing to say, “[they] avoid…the consideration of any solid material” (ref. Grierson Archive, G2.15.2). However acerbic Grierson’s humor might have sounded, the importance of documentary and for those involved was paramount.

Still from Housing Problems (1935) (ref. Grierson P 41)

The British Documentary Movement went into decline after the Second World War and as a consequence of those who had experienced ‘real’ war, the documentary style became more about technique than content. As the political restructuring of Britain began, Grierson’s production unit splintered and with the introduction of television to the mass audience in 1953, produced a new style of documentary. Grierson et al welcomed this shift and went on to produce a variety of documentaries for the new medium.

(Susannah Ramsay, M. Litt. in Film Studies)