public history

A week ago I went along to Senate House’s annual History Day extravaganza: a workshop with talks about doing history, with representatives from archives offering advice on how they can help do history.

As a fresh-faced PGR and new historian, this was the first event of its kind I’d ever attended. I very much enjoyed the day, chatting to representatives from archives all over the country about their particular holdings and what could be beneficial for my own research. Consequently, I hope to make some trips to Kew in the new year to examine the Home Office material held in the National Archives, as well as the upcoming Radicals exhibition at Senate House.

The main focus of the event, however, were the three panels. Led by historians, archivists, and librarians, the talks on the practicalities of doing history were both engaging and accessible. Coming from a background of Linguistics and English Literature, I feel as though I’m going undercover when attending history events – although the material I use is centuries old and thus, by necessity, ‘historical’, when it comes to some history methodology I feel like a child trying on her mum’s shoes and finding that they’re far too big.

In this light, the first panel on ‘Public History’ with Dr. Alix Green (University of Essex) and Dr. Susannah Lipscomb (New College of the Humanities) was a wonderful discussion on what it means to be a historian of the public and to give historical work public meaning. Green borrowed John Tosh’s definition of the term as “history with a public purpose” and as a “public resource,” and drew upon her background in policy to call for closer collaboration between politicians and historians. Signing a petition, writing for the Guardian or the Conversation is all well and good, she noted, but called for a more direct impact of historical training to contribute to teams of experienced people to help solve policy issues with public concerns in mind, a ‘collective policy’ being the end goal.

Lipscomb continued in a similar vein, turning to the cultural impact of historians’ work. She contrasted the increasing fragmentation and specialisation of ‘professional history’ with the widening output of popular history including books, radio programmes, and television dramas and documentaries that indicate an upsurge of public interest. Lipscomb, who has previously presented several successful history documentaries for the BBC, noted that “a 45 minute television programme has only 30 pages of script” and that these stories are often limited to ‘big name’ figures such as royals and wars, heavily condensing historical debate in order to create a linear narrative perceived to be more engaging to audiences.

While historians have anxieties about ‘dumbing down’ complex analysis, she concluded with Dr. Green that historical research is of no use if it is not shared, both arguing for the historian to accept their place as negotiator between archives and the public.

p03wfpls — Period dramas, such as the BBC’s *Versailles*, are a great way to engage the public with the past. For many, these adapted fictions are their only source of information on the topic. Image copyright BBC.

Libraries Vs. Archives

Panel two engaged more closely with the remainder of the day, pitting archivists Victoria Northwood (Hon. Sec. British Records Association) and Isobel Hunter (The National Archives) against librarians Dr Richard Espley (Senate House Library) and Lesley Ruthven (Goldsmiths) to defend the merits of their relative institutions – and how they can be used together in future research.

Tugging on the heartstrings, archivists Northwood and Hunter argued that archives are totally unique in both their combination of holdings and the materiality of each object, “waiting to be discovered” due to the notorious backlogs of cataloguing plaguing the industry. Hunter noted the emotional power of the archive too – that of bringing researchers to tears when stumbling upon an important artefact. Noting the real-wordliness of archives, Hunter cited the fall of the Berlin Wall as a striking example of the importance of documentation: newly freed East Berliners began to destroy the GDR’s offices in glee, before realising the necessity of the documents as evidence for bringing their injustices to account.

Comparatively, librarian Espley fought this by noting that libraries are also unique, as each collection is ‘curated’ by the librarian, and that these collections are the eventual the homes of work based on discoveries made in archives, or “promiscuously democratic” repositories of learning. Ruthven followed this by noting the range of libraries and their respective workloads, from helping young children to learn to read and share to special collections libraries that enable access to local history and “straddle the exclusivity between archives and libraries” through establishing a theme, citing the example of the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths. This unity, Ruthven argues, brings people together differently to an archive. Although an archive can unite people from across time and space via an object, libraries enable reading groups and discussion, and shared experiences – including the discussions of BME women artists at the Women’s Art Library through a student-organised reading group.

20150721_151703 — Graffiti on the east side of the Berlin Wall, taken on holiday last July. An archive in itself!

All panellists agreed upon the importance of libraries and archives used in conjunction, and the importance of widening access to all of these collections, following on from the previous panel’s conclusion that historical work must be an open and collective effort. Hunter noted the role of commercial partners in bringing this access to the forefront, through funding digitization projects that enable worldwide access to texts and objects, and Northwood noting the continual work of historians, as each publication of findings represents one individual’s take: “archives are open to interpretation and reinterpretation.” She noted some of the more individual findings and uses from archives, having discovered an extremely dead rat in a desk drawer on her first private archival job, and Hunger shared one output of the extremely varied M&S archive, most recently used to inspire a new design collection by fashionista Alexa Chung.

Closing Thoughts

While I have no regrets in going, and very much enjoyed the day, it still left me with some doubts and questions. Still feeling somewhat of a pretend historian, I would have enjoyed a little about employability: if historical training is so richly varied and transferable, what can I apply it to? How does one apply to work on a BBC programme or offer findings to improve public policy? If we are to eliminate the perception that there are no jobs for arts and humanities graduates, can we not start leading by example and bringing historians to the public eye? (For the record, I have been told four times in two months that there are no jobs in academia. I am aware of this.) Talking about the various ins and outs and defences of libraries and archives is all well and good to a public audience, but for current postgraduate students who have opted to attend an event to find resources for research, it felt a little wasted. While I enjoyed the day, it has made me wonder where it’s all leading to.

I was able to attend this event thanks to small award funding from WRoCAH.

Ever since the year 1810 the Yorkshire and Lancashire people have been peacefully struggling for Universal Suffrage. […] You have no idea of the intensity of radical opinions here – you have an index from the numerous public house signs – full length portraits of [Henry] Hunt – holding in his hand scrawls containing the words Universal Suffrage, Annual Parliament, and the ballot. Paine and Cobbett also figure occasionally.^[1]-Henry Vincent in a letter to his brother, 1838.

Pub politics is by no means a recent phenomena. While over the last year Leeds has seen various demos ending in pubs, their band rooms frequent haunts for student societies, the act of politicising the public house has a long and rich history. Previous scholars, including Brian Harrison in his seminal Drink and the Victorians, explored how the public house was indeed the heart of the community long before the nineteenth century and a source of safe water and drink in urban areas, while AnneMarie McAllister is currently producing some very interesting and relevant work on the peaks and troughs of temperance movements in Britain. That said, when I came to research representations of the pub in the literature of the Chartist movement, I was grasping for (ahem) straws.

Katrina Navickas’ recent book (and accompanying web project) explores the tradition and contestation of Radical politics in the public house: noting that the public house was both the centre of local communities and often the only public space available for large meetings, as “public’ buildings in the inclusive sense of the term had hardly existed in northern English towns before the 1840s,” with many civil, commercial, and residential buildings and areas effectively ‘privatised’ by the ruling elite.^{^[2]} Indeed, she notes that Bradford magistrates would deliberate over trials in the pub until the Bradford courthouse was completed in 1834. [2]

Much in the same way that the pub is the home of casual chatter and student activism today, at the turn of the eighteenth century, “radical meetings in pubs drew from the same culture of self-help and autodidact activities that were common in such venues,” including circulating libraries for books and local newspapers.^{^[3]}Further to this, the pub occupies a liminal space between public and private; open to all, but its physically small size meant that meetings could be prioritised to only interested parties, away from eavesdroppers. While pubs were, and continue to be, very much community-defined, and not all pubs would be open to all, within working class communities during the early Victorian period it provided a space to express anti-establishment views without fear of persecution.

NPG D20838; Henry Hunt by Unknown artist — Engraving of Henry Hunt c.1830 (c) National Portrait Gallery

Today I will discuss the practicality of the pub with regards to the Chartist movement, and in particular what this meant within Leeds. Chartist leader and teetotaller Henry Vincent, in his letter above, notes that the north of England is unashamedly progressive in its politics, having campaigned for equal suffrage since the early 19th century, but also that the public house was central to this campaign. Emblematic figures of suffrage such as Chartist leader Henry Hunt (above), as well as progressive philosophers Thomas Paine and radical MP William Cobbett, literally take on the status of icons to represent the ‘house[s] of the public’ within Yorkshire.^{^[4]}These icons furthermore emphasise the power of literacy, noting the scrolls inscribed with the demands of the Charter, giving some indication of the intellectual activities taking place within the pub. During the early part of the Chartist movement, the pub was seen as a most practical place, and the ‘numerous’ pubs Vincent speaks of are no accident. In 1830 a peculiar piece of legislation entitled the Beer Act passed, which “allowed anyone to sell beer (but not wines or spirits) on the mere payment of an excise fee of two guineas,” in an attempt to curb the infamous ‘gin problem’ characterising poor industrial areas at the time.^{^[5]}While the Beer Act was unsuccessful in solving the gin problem, it did almost double the number of pubs opening before 1838. Warmer and drier than many Yorkshire residents’ cramped and damp residences, the pub was also a more statistically viable meeting place: with just under 200 heads per pub by 1838.

Figure 1

	Estimate population of Britain (rounded) ^[6]	Estimate no. of pubs and beer-shops (rounded)^[7]	Estimate ratio of heads per pub in Britain.
1830	16,150,000	45,000	358
1838	17,800,000	90,500	196

While teetotallers couldn’t argue with the prevalence of pubs, price did prove to be a contentious issue. Many meeting rooms were hired free of charge for Chartist meetings, with the levy of a ‘wet rent,’ at the cost of a drink per person, fronted by the individual attendees.[8] At only a few pence for a mug of ale, this was considerably cheaper than hiring a civic hall but did lead to some debates about the proper use of disposable income, especially as wages fell and food prices rose during the 1840s. That said, it was a small price to pay for the physical and emotional warmth that this public space offered to its inhabitants at the time.

Many organised societies took advantage of these practical advantages too, whether explicitly political or not. Friendly societies provided benefits to their subscription paying members as a working class solution to middle class life insurance policies, including sick pay for members, and funeral expenses and pensions for the dependents of deceased members. Meetings of these organisations would be reported in newspapers like the Northern Star, emphasising the closeness and fraternity of the group in their invitation notices. In June 1838 the Leeds United Order of Oddfellows report the opening of a new lodge at the Woodman Inn, Leylands, which “promises fair to be a strong and powerful society,” and “beg distinctly to state that the order recognises no difference between Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Gentile. […] They take good men of all denominations, and so far as they can judge refuse bad ones.”^[11] For the LUOO, the pub represents a secular centre for cultivating friendships without prejudice, where men can be united by their shared oath and find further welcome in aligning themselves with the pro-suffrage standpoint of the newspaper in which their reports appear to the world.

The use of the public house as a meeting space declined during the 1840s for a myriad of reasons, a link between the idea of ‘responsible economy’ of saving one’s precious wages for food, in addition to the necessity of performing respectability to the middle class legislators by shaking off the reputation of being dirty and drunk. This pattern holds true for Leeds, and we can see the expansion of the Chartists into commercial spaces including the ‘Chartist Room’ in the newly built Kirkgate Market. Katrina Navickas’ Protest Histories project contains a well-curated database of all radical meeting spaces in Leeds at this time, and I have taken her data and adapted it to show central Leeds during the period 1830-1850.

For a historical night out in Leeds, look no further! Spaces such as the Angel Inn remain functioning pubs, and remarkably much of Leeds City Centre has retained its original Victorian architecture. ‘Ginnels’ in the town centre including Angel Inn Yard and the narrow street of Central Road have merely been improved rather than redeveloped, and provide a great sense of spacial awareness and city planning experienced by the Chartists. The lasting legacy of pubs such as Whitelock’s and the Angel is cause for further historical speculation: how did these pubs remain, and in what ways did they retain their radical allegiances since the Chartists? Their steadfastness is especially interesting considering the drop off in usage of pubs over the 1840s, coinciding with the formation of one of the longest-running Temperance organisations, the Band of Hope, founded in 1847.[12]

Figure 2

Data adapted from above, obtained from Navickas (2015).

Whatever political issue ails you, take a leaf from the Chartists – get out and talk about it.

For more information about suggested routes, accessibility, or more detail about specific Chartist meetings, get in touch.

This post is a reworked version of part of my completed MA Dissertation (2016) and variations have been presented at conferences at Edinburgh University (2015) and Chartism Day (2016).

^[1] Henry Vincent, “Dear Brother….” (Manchester, 26th August 1838), VIN, Labour History Archive.

[2] Katrina Navickas, Protest And The Politics Of Space And Place 1789-1848.(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016).

[3] Ibid. p. 35.

[4] If you are interested in getting an idea of these pub signs, busts of these figures exist in the Leeds University Special Collections.

[5] John Greenaway, Drink and British Politics Since 1830: A Study In Policy Making (Palgrave: Macmillan, 1994) p. 19.

[6]Adapted from B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) p. 11.

[7] Adapted from James Neale, ‘British Drinking From 19th Century To The Present’ (2009).

[8] Lillian Lewis-Shiman, Crusade Against Drink in Victorian England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988) p.32.

^[9]Greenaway (1994) p. 8.(2009).

^[10] Northern Star, “[Leeds] Leeds United Order of Odd Fellows”, 9th June 1838, p. 4. British Library 19th Century Newspapers Online. Web. [Accessed 14th March 2016]

^[11] “Protest And The Politics Of Space And Place | Northern England, 1789-1848. A Book & More By Katrina Navickas”, Protesthistory.org.uk, 2015 <http://protesthistory.org.uk/places-maps/leeds>

In her database, Navickas also cites the source of each meeting point she has obtained – many of these are contemporary newspapers such as the Northern Star and Leeds Mercury.

[12] Margaret Barrow, “Band Of Hope”, Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History: An International Encyclopedia, Volume 1 (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2003), p. 86.

Mastering the Victorian

Tag: public history

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Public History