William Thomas Whiffin revisited (and some football fantasy)

I thought that it might be time to reconsider WTW; my original post seems to have caused some degree of interest in the man (and thanks to all those who were kind enough to comment and apologies for not replying personally to everyone - lack of time is a feeble excuse, I know, but it is true in this case), mainly, I suspect, on account of that surname, although hopefully also because of increasing interest in his skills as a photographer.

Not long ago it occurred to me that I'd never done the simple thing and searched for his name on the catalogue of The National Archives. Sure enough there he is: three entries in the records of the Copyright Office:

COPY 1/494/306:

'Photograph (cabinet) of George Newlands, Queens Park Rangers football team, nearly full face'.

Copyright owner and author of work: William Thomas Whiffin, 770 Harrow Road, Kensal Green, London.
Form completed: 14 February 1906. Registration stamp: 16 February 1906.

COPY 1/501/383: 'Photograph of a football team entitled "The Queen's Park Rangers" taken at Park Royal 8^th Sept 1906'. Copyright owner and author of work: William Thomas Whiffin, 770 Harrow Road, Willesden, London.
Form completed: 25 September 1906. Registration stamp: 27 September 1906.

COPY 1/513/292: 'Photograph of Queen's Park Rangers Football Team with Directors'.

Copyright owner and author of work: William Thomas Whiffin, 770 Harrow Road, Willesden, London.
Form completed: 27 September 1907. Registration stamp: 28 September 1907.

 

I see that the apostrophe in Queen's appears to have been mislaid since the mid-1900s, which is a matter of regret, and why aren't teams prefixed with the definite article anymore: 'The Queen's Park Rangers', 'The Arsenal' 'The Villa', 'The City', etc. has a hearty and wholesome ring to it I think.

 

As far as I can tell, the COPY 1 series does not contain the actual photographs themselves, which is a great shame as I'd like to see them, but you just know from the descriptions alone that COPY 1/501/383 and COPY 1/513/292 are classics of their kind. I picture a team of ill-nourished and wiry men swallowed up by billowing shorts and thick jerseys, plenty of heavily greased centre partings (and the odd moustache), a ball that looks more suited for firing from a cannon than any sporting use, and let's not forget the inevitable fellow wearing a suit and bowler hat. In short, the sort of no-nonsense football team that the local meat pie magnate would have owned. I can even give a list of imaginary names for this fearsome side:

1. Alf Cripps
2. Bert ('bonecruncher') Prodgers
3. Maurice Grimble
4. Herbert Toutt
5. Harry Gubbins
6. Ted Smalls
7. Archie Backhouse
8. Fred Tunstall
9. Walt Goldfinch
10. Charles 'Charlie' Charles
11. Arthur Gumbes (blessed with a cultured left foot)

Keeping the sub's bench warm we have Enoch Honeychurch, and the ashen-faced supremo in the bowler hat? Why Captain E. A. V. Carruthers (ICS, rtd) of course, who for some obscure reason has ended up managing a west London football team. Eat your heart out FIFA! 

But let's return from the slightly odd world of football fantasy 1906-style. In other news, I am pleased to say that a long-running project for a client based in the States has reached its conclusion with the private publication of the family history I researched and wrote for him. I can't claim the credit for the title - Salt Beef and a Side of Bacon (my suggestion was far more prosaic), and plaudits for the eye-catching design and layout are also due to others, but I was pleased with the fact that I researched and wrote the thing virtually from scratch - and it's always a moment of quiet pride to see your own name in print, to reread the occasional well-turned phrase and think, did I really come up with that!

What do Thomas Twining and Daniel Defoe have in common?

I have remarked before about the pleasure of incidental archival finds when trawling records, and I recently caught another couple of gems to add to the bag.

The first item was the registration of the insurance policy taken out by Thomas Twining in July 1715 with the Sun Fire Office to protect his coffee house (where, it appears, he was also living) in Devereux Court just off The Strand; the name Twinings is of first rank importance when it comes to the history of coffee and tea, and it is also a pretty extraordinary fact that 300 years later the Twinings shop still stands on the same site. The second item was the name Daniel Defoe, which I happened across in the Middlesex Sessions list of those eligible to serve as jurors in 1725. The spellings 'Daniel D'ffoe' and 'Stoak Newington' caught my eye (I wonder why 'Stoak' fell out of favour to be replaced by the much less interesting 'Stoke').

But what, if any, is the value of this sort of thing? Well I would suggest that you can squeeze a surprising amount of meaning from ostensibly limited sources and their archival context; and you could argue that being able to do so separates the astute and imaginative historian from the merely pedestrian. So what could be wrung out of my two inconsequential documentary examples? The following list of facts and light-hearted inferences occurred to me, and doubtless people who really do know something about the history of tea/coffee/insurance/business/eighteenth-century legal processes and what not could offer more:

• The act of insuring - then, as now - suggests a cautious and prudent nature; perhaps these were among Thomas Twining's defining personal characteristics.
• To warrant insuring the premises, the coffee house must have been a thriving concern, some nine years after Twining took it over.
• Twining lived above the shop, so to speak - possibly common practice at the time.
• In the policy register we learn that it was called 'Tom's Coffee House'; the popularity of tea had yet to catch on, and of course the expense would keep it out of the reach of most for many years to come.
• The Sun Fire Office policy register is a hefty volume; the business was obviously expanding rapidly in the early eighteenth century.

So that's my five for TT and his insurance policy. For Defoe, I came up with:

• Eligibility for jury service depended on a property qualification: so Defoe must have possessed freehold, copyhold or life tenure somewhere in Stokey to the value of at least £10 per year.
• English spelling had yet to settle down.
• The machinery of local government was working pretty well in this part of England at this time; the Middlesex jury lists are well kept. 
• Defoe may have been starved of good company at this time; few 'gentlemen' are named on the 1725 list, although I noticed that the number of names varied considerably over time - that probably is significant in some way, but I'm not sure what.
• For some reason I had always thought that Defoe had suffered constant money problems and was pursued and hounded throughout his life by his creditors; but perhaps not - if he was known to the local authorities surely his whereabouts would have been known to those he owned money to (who I gather employed some fairly robust methods in getting what was due).

So there we are: five facts, meanings and suggestions from each of these documents - a bit tenuous I know, but good practice.

Cinema and history

Report has it that 12 Years a Slave is compelling - if grim - viewing; it couldn't really be otherwise given the subject matter. I'd be willing to bet that most historical researchers uncover plenty of stories that would - in a better world - undergo the cinematic treatment, but unfortunately most of this material remains largely unknown. I have at least one such story from my own work: in idle moments I entertain thoughts about a biopic of one particular nineteenth-century West Indian figure whose life I have researched and written about. The condensed facts about Henry Loving may be readily stated: born a slave in Antigua in the late eighteenth century; freed by master aged nine; traveller; businessman; newspaper editor and controversialist; political campaigner and abolitionist; and, finally, a notable figure in Antigua local government before a rather tragic death after a long and debilitating illness.

I scoured various archives looking for information about Loving and amassed enough evidence to knock together an entry for him that made it into the New Dictionary of National Biography, but I always felt that the essence of the man remained for the most part elusive, mainly because of the absence of surviving personal papers. I did find the occasional document that caused the personality - or at least my notion of it - to materialise before me, and when it did I found myself mentally constructing whole scenes from the man's life based on what amounted to little more than documentary scraps. One example of this will illustrate what I am talking about: in 1831 Loving was in London pressing the British government to force the white oligarchy which controlled Antigua to concede political and civil rights to what historians describe as the 'free coloured' class. A copy of a letter from the committee that sent Loving to London survives, and in it the writer tactfully notes:

'For us, we can readily conceive, and fully excuse those excited feelings, which naturally prevail with most men, and as we know, in an eminent degree with yourself, when giving vent to the expression of, and descanting upon those odious, undeserved and unjust restrictions which you, in common with the class to which you belong, still continue to be borne down with ...'

So a quick-tempered individual, combative and unlikely to take a backwards step in argument. And based on just these four lines I have manufactured and rehearsed an elaborate scene where Loving addresses a political meeting of his fellows in Antigua: it is a humid night; much wine is taken and toasts to the Crown are proposed (doesn't quite fit with modern leftish sensibilities but tough - that's what they would have done); Loving's turn to speak comes (he follows some fairly leaden performers); he stands and begins, slowly at first but the rhetoric gathers pace; he thumps the lectern for emphasis as the list of grievances rolls on; there are shouts of 'hear him, hear him'; the speech climaxes with veiled threats; the audience roars their approval, and Loving smiles tightly and enjoys his moment ... The reality was doubtless more prosaic, but in the absence of written proof how are we to know; and that is where sensible cinematic licence can step in to fill the gaps. Any takers?

Suffolk antiquities and the London Shard

Prior to a short break in Suffolk just before Christmas I did what I always do before going on holiday in the UK: check the HMC's Guide to Papers of British Antiquaries and Historians to get some sense of how well the history of the county has been studied. My feeling was that Suffolk would have attracted the attention of a considerable number of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars, and I was proved right. There turned out to be a long list of names in the index, many with a sonorous ring to them and all doubtless familiar to modern local historians of the county. No point in listing them all, but the following stood out because of the depth and range of their papers:

• Sir John Cullum (1733-85)
• David Elisha Davy (1769-1851)
• William Stevenson Fitch (1792-1859)
• James Ford (1779-1850)
• Sir Thomas Gage (1781-1820)
• Craven Ord (1755-1832)
• John Gage Rokewode (1786-1842)
• John Wodderspoon (1806-42)

The descriptions of their collections indicates the nature of their interests: endless volumes of 'church', 'parish' and 'manorial' notes; abstracts and extracts from Domesday, charters and other early documents (some perhaps now lost); pedigrees and biographical notices; monumental inscriptions; and topographical notes and sketches. Nothing surprising about any of this - it was what motivated scholars at the time, especially the desire to describe and capture the topographical essence of a place at a certain point in time and before it changed.

And the thought that occurred to me as we were trudging along the beach at Shingle Street in late afternoon weakening light (very M. R. Jamesian that!) concerned the topographical: what did those antiquarians make of the Martello Towers that now squat so defiantly in the landscape along this coast? To my twenty-first century eye they are tremendous structures, utilitarian antiquities to be admired as much as any medieval cathedral. But having lived through the period of the their construction, Davy, Fitch, Gage et al. may have had a very different view (and we'll leave to one side those antiquaries who died much earlier; I think we can guess their views) - in fact it's easy to imagine them turning away in disgust at the desecration of the Suffolk landscape however grave the threat of invasion. What we regard as topographically valuable in terms of the built environment all depends on when we happen to be alive; everyone today thinks that buildings over 75 years old should be conserved at all costs, even if at the time of their construction they were deplored. It's strange to think oneself into the future and speculate on what, for instance, Londoners might think of the Shard; perhaps 200 years from now their spirits will soar at the sight of it, and it will be the subject of preservation orders and what not. Speaking as someone who thinks that there's nothing wrong with it that half a ton of dynamite wouldn't solve I rather doubt it, but you never know - there's no accounting for taste when it comes to these things.

A damaged garden fence and 200 years of St Lucia history ...

I would hope that I am alive to situations where 'history' can almost materialise and make its presence felt: but these rather elevated feelings usually result from visits to historic ruins and buildings, watching great state occasions and so forth, and so I'll risk making a crass generalisation and say that no conversation with any builder I have ever known has produced quite the aforementioned emotional effect. Until now that is, when, following a brief and ostensibly insignificant incident, I started thinking about how some patterns of history can be thrown into sharp focus in very unexpected ways.

So, a prosaic scene: following the recent gales we had our builder around to see about replacing a damaged garden fence; nothing unusual about that, and nothing remarkable either about him breaking off during our conversation to take a call on his mobile - except that the call was conducted in the strangest sounding French I've ever heard. It was really quite startling, but it shouldn't have been: after all, he was born in St Lucia and I do know something of the Anglo-French elements of that island's history, having researched its early nineteenth-century newspaper press for my PhD. But what amazed me is the fact that some 200 years after the British took possession of the island, the variant of the French language spoken there clearly endures and, to judge from my witnessing one half of a very animated conversation, may even be in rude health.

This linguistic survival is a cheering thought in an age when advancing cultural homogeneity seems to be unstoppable; its unexpected appearance in my living room also loosened a lot of half-forgotten memories about my own laborious researches which - among other things - attempted to capture the acute tensions of the abolition period in the island by charting the impact of the St Lucia Gazette under a rather colourful character called George Washington Busteed (father of Richard Busteed, incidentally - a minor figure in American history), who briefly bulked large in the island's history. But how odd that one short telephone conversation can, in its own way, be as illuminating of historical development as any number of painstakingly researched PhDs and scholarly monographs. History! you really can see  - and sometimes hear - it everywhere.

Mehemet Ali: A Muslim Napoleon?

I am always struck by the number of overseas scholars and researchers who can be seen hard at it on any given day at The British Library, The National Archives, and I dare say any of the other great archival repositories and libraries in the UK. Given that we are talking about some of the finest collections anywhere in the world it is no surprise to see these fellow toilers; but assuming that rather than studying British history most of them are using British documents to study the history of their own countries/regions/personalities, the interpretative care and skill that is surely necessary when attempting to reconstruct history in this way has always intrigued and rather daunted me.

I thought about this once again during a holiday in north-east Greece in early September. As well as visiting Graeco-Roman sites such as Philippoi and Amphipolis we made a couple of trips to the town of Kavala, and there enjoyed an hour at the restored house of Mehemet Ali. Unknown to many no doubt, but a fascinating man: there might even be an argument for setting his achievements in the eastern Mediterranean beside his contemporary Napoleon - Ali certainly made significant territorial conquests and he founded the dynasty which ruled Egypt until 1952. So no doubt a man worthy of serious attention from a number of historical angles - Egyptian, Greek, Turkish, French and British. But how to get as complete a picture as possible, and what to do if all that remains are documents written about rather than by him?

It's not quite as bad as that in this case: at least one letter by Ali is extant; at the house in Kavala is a copy of this slight document which apparently relates to affairs in the town - the original is now stored in the Egyptian National Archives where there are presumably other papers, but whether anything more illuminating than administrative records exists is anyone's guess. The key point I am making here - and it is the thing that draws scholars from all over the world to Britain - is that we do have relevant documentary materials in this country, however imperfect they might be.

On seeing the letter at the house I made a mental note to check the catalogues of the BL and TNA to see if I could find anything that would help a would-be biographer of Ali or historian of the region. Sure enough, a cursory search uncovered quite a few things of interest; pick of the bunch for me was a short narrative of the history of Egypt from the expulsion of the French in 1801 to the mid-1820s, augmented by a manuscript life of the Ali, all contained in the first volume (Add MS 34080) of the papers of the Arabic scholar and Egyptologist Edward William Lane at the BL (Add MSS 34080-88; additional papers concerning Egypt by Lane are at the Griffith Institute and the Bodleian). I am well aware that I am on dangerous ground here, but presumably Lane was a credible witness (he made it into the HMC's guide to Papers of British Antiquaries and Historians), and the mere fact that these papers exist at all is something that the historian of nineteenth-century Egypt can be thankful for, but that doesn't solve the problem of how to overcome their inherent weaknesses as historical sources - as I say, a daunting intellectual prospect that I'll leave others to scale.

The lure of a serendipitous find

A crucial requirement for anyone claiming to be a competent archival researcher is the ability to follow the client's brief and ignore the siren distractions of irrelevant documents, however interesting they may look. All very well in theory, but it can be difficult in practice, and most researchers will occasionally stumble across something so unusual and striking that at the very least it will merit a brief marginal note to self.

Coventionally enough I think, I tend to notice things in unlikely places; this stems from the undeniable fact that that there are great seams of historical riches lying where you might not expect to find them: who would think that the scholar of women's labour history, for example, might be interested in any of the Admiralty publications in ADM 275 at The National Archives? The series sounds pretty dry: publications that were issued for internal use only and were intended to provide practical guidance and instruction on the use of facilities, equipment and 'Service methods' generally. Nothing to get too excited about there, and yet in ADM 275/19 (the serial history of technical problems dealt with by various Admiralty departments) there is a report entitled 'Naval Anti-Gas Devices' which features a superb series of photographs of women working at the grim-looking sharp end in a chemical factory in Stamford Hill in north London during WW1. I fought the temptation to dwell on this document as there was the small matter of my client's commission to complete, but I took a note of it and with the centenary of the the outbreak of the Great War rapidly approaching surely someone could make use of these photographs. And if anyone can explain what 'worming' and 'slabbing' means in the arcane context of early twentieth-century industrial chemistry, perhaps they could let me know!