L. P. I’Anson, Lieutenant in the 4th Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment, was killed at St. Julien, near Ypres, on April 25th, 1915.
He was born in 1878 in Saltburn, and attended Bootham between 1893 and 1895. He was a solicitor, and was engaged to be married when he died.
He is included on the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial.
“THE following letter, from “B.E.F., April 10,” bears the initials of a distinguished scholar of Bootham, Fellow of All Souls, Oxford :—
‘I have come to the wars—what I think, in my more dramatic moments, is getting about the only experience my life hadn’t included before. But although I promised myself to write an offensive article in Bootham when I got here, something about this business (I can’t guess what, though it’s certainly not its horribleness) dries me up. I find one doesn’t think here much, because there’s rather a lot of work, but I did for one moment have a strong impression of a theoretical kind. It was when I first saw the corpses of about a hundred unhappy fellows in turbans who were so bewildered when they got here (in the cold and mud at Christmas) that they lost a trench. They lie between our lines and the Germans, and no one can go out to bury them. My impression was that nothing could be important enough for great empires to go to war about it ; but whether that remarkable reversal of my normal views will be what I seriously conclude from it all, I’ll tell you after the war.’
Readers of Bootham are requested not to weary themselves unduly with the consideration of what that all-important word “nothing” does or does not involve.”
From ‘Bootham’ magazine, June 1915.
“It is painful to read that some of the literary activities in the School have been temporarily suspended because of the pressure of time due to ambulance classes; assuredly this could not be avoided, but we know that the School authorities, no less than the rest of us, must regret it. When the ancient universities have a third or less than a third of their normal number of students, when thousands of the most promising minds are perishing, or, more terrible still, being seared and demoralised by the ghastly ordeal imposed upon them, one may naturally look to the schools in every part of the country to encourage those who are least liable to the oppression due to a true perception of the meaning of war to continue the national tradition expressed in the ideal of the gentleman. “Sweetness and light,” the true culture, is needed to-day – needed, perhaps, even more than courage and heroism. The heroism, too, for which, we believe, Bootham will always stand is not merely the courage to withstand the forces of evil, but still more that loftier courage which strives to direct and control the forces of good; and for this the first requisite is surely a true cultivation of the mind and soul. We look forward to a time when not only the winners of the Natural History Exhibition shall gain scientific scholarships at the universities, but when winners of the Le Tall prize, and many who have worked solely for love of art and learning, will win fame in the “gentler” arts. We believe that the literary section of the Bootham Natural History, Literary and Polytechnic Society has a duty in equipping men who will be the true solace of a stricken world.”
From ‘Bootham’ magazine, March 1915. The Annual Report of the Natural History, Literary and Polytechnic Society in the same issue noted that the Senior Essay Society and Senior Reading and Discussion Society had abandoned their meetings during the Autumn Term owing to the pressure of work caused by ambulance classes etc.
See here for an earlier post about Arthur L. Lean.
“Arthur L. Lean (Bootham 1886-1889), who was interned in Ruhleben shortly after the Foreign Notes in the November number of Bootham were penned. Writing from Ruhleben on Good Friday, he says : ” Mr. M. and myself have just been brought back here from the sanatorium at Buckow, where we had completed two months. The country there is very pretty : numerous lakes and wooded hills. A good deal of snow fell at times, and there were keen frosts, so that tobogganing and skating were indulged in. It was delightful to be able to see Con and Phyllis and Olga on two Sundays when they obtained leave from the Berlin police to visit me. The children are all well, but, as is natural, Con seemed rather tired, but keeps her spirits up. The food there was excellent, and I was ordered to be out of doors as much as possible and to take a good deal of exercise. Towards the end of my stay I did a little gentle gardening in the large garden adjoining the Buckow lake. We have both profited much by the change, and during the nine weeks’ stay I gained seven pounds in weight. . . . M. and I have seen the camp military doctor twice, and have promise of permission to leave the camp again and spend four weeks more at another sanatorium. . . . The conditions here have improved during the last two months. The food is better; the German contractor has been relieved of his duties, and the department is run by the camp : English cooks in the kitchen, etc. Football may now be played on the racecourse. The following departments have been organised, each with a chairman, vice-chairman and committee— viz., Finance, Sanitary, Education, Recreation, Health, Watch and Works (Police), Kitchen and Canteen. The military do not seem to be so much in evidence, numerous German newspapers can now be bought in the camp, and absurd rumours about outside and coming events have largely stopped.” Since writing the above I learn that a postcard has just been received from Arthur L. Lean asking for three loaves of bread to be sent out to him weekly. In his earlier letter he said that an occasional pound of tea would be welcome, but that otherwise everything could be obtained on the spot. We do not know whether the present request is due to an inadequate supply of bread, or because the quality supplied is unsuitable for one in poor health, but it is sufficiently disquieting that the request should have to be made.”
From ‘Bootham’ magazine, June 1915
“The Friends’ Ambulance Unit has now completed four months’ work at the front. During the whole time it has continued to work in the same area in Flanders and Northern France; and its headquarters remain still where they were first established at Dunkirk. The original party that went out from England has been more than trebled in size, and there is still no slackening in the demand for men to do the additional work that is continually opening out. Before Christmas the unit’s main achievement was the organisation of a system of seven ambulance stations on the front, which carried among them in a few weeks over ten thousand wounded men, mostly from aid posts just behind the trenches, to hospitaux d’evacuation in the rear. Since Christmas the biggest development of the work has consisted in a large scale attempt to cope with an epidemic of disease among the refugees and civilian population still living in the very front of the fighting zone in Flanders. Besides the work of two hospitals, which have an accommodation of over two hundred beds, various preventive measures have been taken; six thousand five hundred civilians have been inoculated against typhoid ; a pure water supply has been provided in various towns and villages; and now every house in the district is being visited and, if necessary, disinfected. Much of this work is done within range of the German guns. The unit also has two hospitals in Dunkirk, one of which, it is hoped, will vary rapidly expand.”
From ‘Bootham’ magazine, March 1915
In January I did a talk as part of the Thursday lunchtime recital room series. It was entitled ‘Memories from the Archives’ and I talked about a number of memories from Old Scholars. I’ll share the photographs and text from the talk in several parts on the blog. Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
Edward Allen wrote his early recollections down. Unfortunately there’s no date of writing, but it must have been after 1875 as he refers to a house move in that year. Before coming to Bootham he had spent several years in Folkestone, and compares his experiences.
“I went to Bootham and my stay of 4 years there was fairly uneventful. I found the tone of the school very different from what I was used to, and on one occasion when I was tempted to act according to the lights of Folkestone, one of my schoolfellows said “Thou mustn’t do that, the other lads will look down on thee” so I learned to do better.” He also talks about his natural history activities: “I was keen on butterflies and shells and shared with Albert Alexander the winning collection of 1855, obtaining a watercolour paint box for my prize, which I still have.” The Natural History Society had been formed in 1834 and was an important part of school activities.
“Some of us had almost forgotten that there ever was such a thing as a bath—those of us, at least, who are beyond the region of its influence. It is a pleasure, therefore, to be reminded of that great achievement in the verses which we publish on another page. They were written in those other days of long ago when the bath was uppermost in our minds; they were of necessity omitted from the last number, because that other matter had taken hold of our minds, and the bath was forgotten, as belonging to the former era; but let us remember that every war has an end ; that no war ought to absorb us to the exclusion of every other matter ; and that the bath will still be a treasure of our School when the war is ancient history, and when we are able to look forward without the deadly oppression of the present encircling us like a nauseous London fog.”
From ‘Bootham’ magazine, March 1915. The school swimming baths had been opened in June 1914.
“In case anyone should suppose from this that we, from the editorial chair, regard the effects of the war on others, as well as ourselves, with something akin to tolerant cynicism, we would draw attention to the amount of really excellent work that is being done. Halfpenny newspapers may talk about shirkers, and misguided women may distribute white feathers, but for our own part we are genuinely amazed at the way in which everyone, from the greatest to the least, has shouldered the burden, each one taking upon himself that which appeared to him most necessary to be borne. At the moment we would like to draw special attention to the work of the Emergency Committee for the Assistance of Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians in Distress (convened by the Religious Society of Friends to aid innocent “Alien Enemies” in Great Britain rendered destitute by the war). It is not easy to find ways for reconstructing human society whilst war is still waging, but there can be no doubt at all that this Committee, which is assisted by several Old Scholars, is counteracting, as far as its scope and its means permit, the spirit of race hatred which has grown so terribly in the last six months. Even those who believe that every member of the German and Austrian Empires comes into the world with a double dose of original sin, if there really are such, must perceive the necessity of showing such benighted people that there is a sense of pity even in Englishmen; moreover, one direct result of the work of this committee has been the starting of a reciprocal committee to guard the distressed men and women of our own country in Germany and Austria-Hungary. But it is not for these reasons alone that we would commend the work; if it did not benefit any Englishman in the eyes of any German it would still be a work of purest Christ-like pity. The vast majority of those whose claims are considered are far less responsible for the present condition than you, O reader ! and than ourselves. Are they all to suffer, the guiltless with the guilty? And are we, then, so guiltless that we are their lawful judges? This, no less than many other things that our fellow Old Scholars are doing in these days, some of them working in secret, so that none of us know it, is a true work of love and of reconciliation. This is the way of hope.”
From ‘Bootham’ magazine, March 1915
We are glad to be able to publish the following letter from Edmund Walker to our beloved Secretary :— “I thought you might be interested to know that at least one copy of BOOTHAM has found its way into the trenches. My brother sent mine on to me here, and I have just spent a very pleasant hour in my ‘dug-out ‘ reading it. It was very interesting to read about the fellows who are working out here in the Ambulance Unit, also the list of other old Bootham boys out here. We have been in the firing line about six weeks, and, although they seem very quiet along the line, we have had plenty of thrills [censored]. It takes some time to get accustomed to the feeling that you can’t show your head without two or three bullets whizzing past it. We have also had a baptism of shells. We had one burst in a room with about thirty men in. It missed me by about two yards.”
From ‘Bootham’ magazine, March 1915
Last week I attended the UKAD Forum at The National Archives in London. The title of the forum was ‘Born Digital Realities’. It was reassuring to find that lots of organisations are all looking for solutions to similar issues around getting digital material, cataloging and providing access. Below are my notes, in case others working in archives can take anything useful from them.
Building The National Archives ‘Discovery’: born digital realities (The National Archives)
1. Building processes to appraise, catalogue and make digital material accessible
a. How do we manage sensitivity review at scale – e.g. identifying material that needs to remain closed for data protection reasons?
b. What metadata is required?
c. Do we need lots and lots of levels when arranging, or is usability enhanced by flattening the hierarchy to an extent and retaining the provenance trail by showing the file structure in the description?
d. The National Archives are describing everything to item level. Is there a way of doing this on a lower level of resources?
e. How can I ensure that where material is accessible to the public, it is searchable and easy to use? How can I incorporate the searching of digital material text into catalogue searches on my catalogue?
Archivist and Donor –deposit and transfer (Christopher Hilton, Wellcome Library and Simon Wilson, Hull History Centre)
2. Question of ‘who owns the stuff’!
a. Issue of donors also giving copies to other institutions
b. Need for clarity about intellectual property rights
3. Fears by donors about whether information can end up online when they weren’t expecting it – need for clarity and trust over the process, how access works, how it can be limited.
4. Useful to find a few supportive people/groups to use as a pilot
5. It’s helpful if the methods of getting digital material from organisations have a mimimal impact on how the organisation works, otherwise no one will get round to it!
Archivist and User: access and reuse (Fran Baker and Caroline Martin, University of Manchester Library)
6. Dealing with email collections – library tried this with one organisation they were already getting material from.
7. University of Manchester Library sampled their ‘designated community’ to look at access, e.g. asking whether researchers wanted traditional finding aids. The ability to search and filter was important.
8. Are there alternative ways of displaying information, particularly large quantities of data, and creating ways for researchers to find what they need and to see connections – visualisations, network graphs etc – see Stamford projects (MUSE and ePADD)?
Lightning Thoughts
9. Challenge of getting balance right so that search results are not swamped by digital material results, in effect hiding paper material.
10. How do you decide whether to collect something in paper or digital format? What is deemed the definitive version by the creator? Having a digital version may increase what can be done with the item later on, or at least make it easier.
Syncronising born-digital metadata (Christopher Hilton, Wellcome Library and Christopher Fryer, Parliamentary Archives)
11. Both organisations linked catalogue software to their DCMS.
12. Additional catalogue fields were created (file path, date created, date last modified, preservica ref, file type, URL). Extra fields were added on a pragmatic basis.
13. Issue of how to describe extent in a way that is useful to the end user – just including number of kb may not be all that useful!
14. Try to set up workflows first, and automate where possible. Investing the time initially will help later.
15. May be useful to include something in the notes to indicate to users where a description has been automatically generated.
16. Should you change file names to something more helpful to the end user, and where do you record the original file name?
17. Aim is to integrate digital and paper collection information, so that the end user interacts with the same system for everything, regardless of format.
Spotlight on the Digital (Karen Colbron, JISC)
18. Digitised collections are often hard to find.
19. Users are typically looking for item level.
20. JISC report – ‘Improving discoverability of digitised collections…’
21. Avoid silos
22. JISC guide – ‘Make your digital resources easier to discover’.
Final Thoughts
23. The record keeping system is a whole – it is possible to rework how elements fit together within that system, and we should be thinking critically about what we do.
My Planned Actions
• Join UKAD community
• Look at process of cataloguing digital material – do I need to create extra fields, how might users search for material, how can I make the process more efficient? Is it feasible to catalogue to item level, at least with very basic information?
• Read JISC reports on making digitised collections easier to discover
