Age of Revolution in the Archives

Over the next couple of weeks level one students undertaking the Age of Revolution module on the University’s History Programme will be carrying out a source based exercise which uses material from our collections relating to Dundee in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including maps and an extract from a Dundee Directory. This assessment encourages students to think about primary sources as well as some of the broader issues relating to the impact the industrial revolution had on Dundee, Scotland and the rest of Britain.

In previous years many students undertaking this and similar exercises have come to the archives to enhance their work by making use of the many other sources we have relating to life in Dundee at this time, and we anticipate many of this year’s cohort will visit us again in the next few days. Some of the collections students have made use of in the past include:

MS 11 Baxter Brothers & Co Ltd. The Baxters operated one of Dundee's major textile works. Their extensive archives include many records relating to the business as well as an account of the early days of flax spinning in Dundee written by Charles Mackie, 'an old mill manager'.
MS 17 The Thornton Collection  and MS 105 The Shiell and Small Collection These collections includes material relating to the coming of the railways to Dundee as well as several plans of Dundee and its buildings

MS 102 The Peter Carmichael of Arthurstone Collection. There are many fascinating items to be found in the papers of one of Scotland’s great factory managers and engineers including photographs of Dundee in the nineteenth century, personal correspondence and an excellent autobiographical account of life and trade in the city.

MS 134 Working Class Life in Dundee for Twenty Five Years, 1878-1903  This study by Dr David Lennox includes much material relating to the late eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century as background to its arguments on the main period it covers.

THB 1 The Dundee Royal Infirmary Collection has a wide range of useful information on life in Dundee at this time including reports of the work of the hospital and disease in Dundee, patient admission registers and directors minutes. These records provide insight into a range of subjects including health, immigration and working patterns.

KLoc The Kinnear Local Book Collection has a number of rare histories of Dundee as well as publications produced in this period such as the Dundee Directories,  and the Rev. George Lewis's ‘A course of lectures on the physical, educational and moral statistics of Dundee delivered in the Watt Institution Hall in December 1840’

The archives also have many other collections which contain material relevant to students of the Industrial Revolution as can be seen from our On-line Catalogue (http://134.36.1.31/) and our source lists and subject indexes (http://www.dundee.ac.uk/archives/sourcetop.htm). In addition we hold copies of most of a number of useful texts on the history of Dundee in the industrial period which are available for consultation in the search room. These include:

L. Miskell, C. Whatley & B. Harris (eds) Victorian Dundee Image and Realities 2^nd Edition  (Dundee, 2011)
C. McKean, P. Whatley with K. Baxter Lost Dundee (Edinburgh, 2008)
D. Swinfen, A. Smith and C. Whatley The Life and Times of Dundee (Edinburgh, 1993)
C. McKean, Dundee: An Illustrated Architectural Introduction/Guide (Edinburgh, 1984 & 1993)
C. Mckean, C. Whatley and B Harris (Eds) Dundee 1500-1800 Renaissance Burgh to Enlightenment Town (Dundee, 2009)

Dr Kenneth Baxter 

Age of Revolution in the Archives

Over the next two weeks over 270 level one students undertaking the Age of Revolution module on the University’s History Programme will be carrying out a source based exercise which uses material from our collections relating to Dundee in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including maps, a hospital report and an extract from a Dundee Directory. This assessment encourages students to think about primary sources as well as some of the broader issues relating to the impact the industrial revolution had on Dundee, Scotland and the rest of Britain. In previous years many students undertaking this and similar exercises have come to the archives to enhance their work by making use of the many other sources we have relating to life in Dundee at this time, and we anticipate many of this year’s cohort will visit us over the next fortnight. Some of the collections consulted in the past include:

MS 11 Baxter Brothers & Co Ltd. The Baxters operated one of Dundee's major textile works. Their extensive archives include many records relating to the business as well as an account of the early days of flax spinning in Dundee written by Charles Mackie, 'an old mill manager'.

MS 17/P The Thornton Collection of Manuscripts and Plans This collection includes material relating to the coming of the railways to Dundee as well as several plans of Dundee and its buildings

MS 102 The Peter Carmichael of Arthurstone Collection. There are many fascinating items to be found in the papers of one of Scotland’s great factory managers and engineers including photographs of Dundee in the nineteenth century, personal correspondence and an excellent autobiographical account of life and trade in the city.

MS 134 Working Class Life in Dundee for Twenty Five Years, 1878-1903  This study by Dr David Lennox includes much material relating to the late eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century as background to its arguments on the main period it covers.

THB 1 The Dundee Royal Infirmary Collection has a wide range of useful information on life in Dundee at this time including reports of the work of the hospital and disease in Dundee, patient admission registers and directors minutes

KLoc The Kinnear Local Book Collection has a number of rare histories of Dundee as well as publications produced in this period such as the Dundee Directories,  and the Rev. George Lewis's A course of lectures on the physical, educational and moral statistics of Dundee delivered in the Watt Institution Hall in December 1840

The archives also have many other collections which contain material relevant to students of the Industrial Revolution as can be seen from our On-line Catalogue (http://134.36.1.31/) and our source lists and subject indexes (http://www.dundee.ac.uk/archives/sourcetop.htm). In addition we hold copies of most of a number of useful texts on the history of Dundee in the industrial period which are available for consultation in the search room. These include:

L. Miskell, C. Whatley & B. Harris (eds) Victorian Dundee Image and Realities (East Linton, 1999)
C. McKean, P. Whatley with K. Baxter Lost Dundee (Edinburgh, 2008)
D. Swinfen, A. Smith and C. Whatley The Life and Times of Dundee (Edinburgh, 1993)
C. McKean, Dundee: An Illustrated Architectural Introduction/Guide (Edinburgh, 1984 & 1993)
C. Mckean, C. Whatley and B Harris (Eds) Dundee 1500-1800 Renaissance Burgh to Enlightenment Town (Dundee, 2009)

Dr Kenneth Baxter

Archive Services secure return of important documents to Dundee

While the vast majority our collections have been gifted to us, on occasion we have purchased important items relating to the history of Dundee and the Tayside area. The rise of the internet has seen some important documents, which were thought lost or whose whereabouts were unknown, appear advertised for sale on line. One such example, the Dundee Power Loom Tenters Society Minute Book (MS 65), was mentioned in a blog post last year. http://www.archives-records-artefacts.com/2009/11/dundee-power-loom-tenters-society.html

More recently, Archive Services managed to acquire a series of documents relating to George Murdoch, a prominent Dundonian of the early nineteenth century who held the office of Kirk Treasurer. The items include a burgess ticket awarded to Murdoch in 1822 and a seating plan for a church service for the burgh's trades dating from 1840. This is particularly significant as the plan gives us a good idea of the layout of the interior of a ‘lost’ church. The church in this plan (probably the East Kirk or the Middle Kirk) was one of the victims of a great fire which led to the destruction of most of the mediaeval complex of town churches in 1841.


In early February 2009, archive staff became aware that these documents were individually listed as being for sale on an internet auction site, and promptly contacted the seller who kindly agreed to sell the entire collection to Archive Services. This has ensured that this collection has now returned to its home city and that Dundonians are able to consult this interesting piece of their history.

The George Murdoch and Family Papers (reference MS 277) are open for consultation.

Dr Kenneth Baxter

Archives feature in Contact magazine

There is a feature about staff and student magazines and newspapers in this month's Contact, the University's magazine. The first student publication - College Magazine - was published in 1888 and since then there have been a various titles produced by both students and the University itself. These offer a unique insight into the development of this institution from the point of view of its people. There is a link to a pdf of Contact magazine here:

http://www.dundee.ac.uk/pressoffice/contact/2010/june2010.pdf - our article is on page 27.

D’Arcy 150

For the past 6 weeks level 3 Illustration students from the University's Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design have been working on a D'Arcy Thompson project as part of the celebrations to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth. They've been taking inspiration from D'Arcy's collections in the Zoology Museum and his theories of mathematical biology pioneered in the book On Growth & Form. An exhibition of their work opened last Friday in the Bradshaw Art Space at Duncan of Jordanstone and has been a fantastic success.

My main concern was that they would simply produce lots of nice drawings of animals, but I needn't have worried. The students really engaged with D'Arcy's ideas and produced work in a whole range of media, including printmaking, sculpture, animation, and artist's books. One of the students even did a performance piece at the opening, plugging himself into D'Arcy's brain (which he'd helpfully brought along for the occasion) and answering questions on behalf of the great man.

The exhibition can be seen in Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design until 20 March. It finishes just after the main historical exhibition on D'Arcy's life and work (and in particular his 32 years in Dundee) opens in the Lamb Gallery of the University Tower Building. Accompanying that will be a new publication on D'Arcy and the history of the Zoology Museum, which includes images from the collections held by Museum Services, Archive Services and from the Special Collections at the University of St Andrews Library.

Finally, there's a whole programme of special events to mark D'Arcy's birthday in May including music, talks, poetry readings and even live street theatre. There's lots of information on the events taking place to make the 150th anniversary of D'Arcy Thompson's birth online at www.darcythompson.org or you can become his friend on facebook.

Matthew Jarron, Museum Curator

Archive Staff Recommend: Scraps...

Within our archival collections are scrapbooks that contain mainly newspaper cuttings relating to the University and its predecessor institutions, and these are fairly complete from 1880 to about 1967, when the University of Dundee was established in its own right.

Apart from tracing the development of university education in Dundee and the various political struggles and manoeuvres between Dundee and St Andrews, the scrapbooks provide insights into the relationship between town and gown. The style of writing in the local newspapers sometimes suggests that the students were often a curious and sometimes exotic elite in a predominately working class city.

Many of the cuttings are reports on public lectures and talks given by the College professors and teachers. They sometimes provide verbatim accounts that even note where there was laughter or applause. Nineteenth century graduation ceremonies could be more rowdy than is generally believed – for example in March 1895 even the presiding officials were subject to constant good-natured banter from the students. One particularly poignant moment from this ceremony however was when 19 year old Dundonian Agnes Forbes Blackadder, the University’s first female graduate, was presented with her degree resulting in “particularly vigorous applause” and a spontaneous rendition of a rare verse from the “Gaudeamus” that refers to women.

There are other descriptions, often affectionate, of student events such as charities week. In 1923, for example, there was an article in the Courier about the “Woman Students’ Ambush,” in which it was reported that: "The fair Collegiates literally laid an ambush, and figures arrayed in flowing red gowns and becoming scholastic mortar-boards, darted hither and thither among the market crowd in the High Street...Many a stout and hearty farmer was held up by a gowned damsel, and the mute appeal of the collection box, together with the charms of the collector, were a combination which none could resist."

There was greater threat in the performance of some students who visited Dens Park on the final day of the appeal, and who "with flourishing revolvers reaped all that they could from the spectators." And, rather ominously, "That awesome assembly - the Ku Klux Klan - dressed in their robes of white, made a speciality throughout the day of raiding the tea rooms in the centre of town."

The change in attitudes, fashions and tastes over the decades can be traced in the volumes and in particular the struggle of women to be regarded as academic equals is well documented. This is in spite of the 1895 Agnes Blackadder graduation. A quarter of a century later and a Courier article was still wondering if women should be allowed to become doctors.

The scrapbooks are a rich historical resource that is yet to be full exploited, we find something new every time we look at them. Some are in poor condition and we are hoping to digitise them in the near future to ensure their survival. Readers are welcome to consult the others in our reading room.

Lumière in the Archives

The recent visit by the Scottish Society for the History of Photography to the Archives gave us a chance to showcase our photographic collections. As well as the 130,000 images in the Michael Peto collection described in the previous blog we have thousands of other prints, slides, negatives and plates.

One of the most significant of our holdings is a collection of autochrome stereoscopes taken by Andrew Burn-Murdoch. Burn-Murdoch insisted on using Lumière slides which, viewed through a stereoscopic machine, give a rich 3D effect. The autochrome process he used was unusual and the slide collection is probably the largest in Scotland. Watch out for later blogs describing the process in more detail.

Other items which caught the interest of the SSHoP were a box of beautiful ambrotypes of members of the wealthy Cox family, some 19th century photographs of Polynesia, and the photographic collection of Herbert Torrance a medical missionary in Palestine. Notable in the latter are a series of 7 albums of hand tinted early 20th century scenes from the Holy Land. The vivid nature of the colours can be seen from the reproduction on the right. If anyone has any information about these photographs or the processes used to produce them we would be interested to hear from you.

A day in the life of a Scottish businessman in the early 19th century

Do you want to know who was shopping for what in Dundee in the 1820s? Staff in Archive Services have recently transcribed two diaries written by Thomas Handiside Baxter, a grocer and dry goods merchant in Dundee in the early 1800s. The diaries cover the years 1810-1811 and 1820-1830 and give us a fascinating insight into Scottish life during the early 19th century, particularly from the point of view of a Dundee businessman.

They record a multitude of details including daily weather reports, the best pub for gambling and drinking and the latest political gossip in the local coffee shop. The juxtaposition of tales of daily life and international events can be seen from the following two entries from 1830:

‘to the Inn by Nine where I anticipated a comfortable glass of Todey over some cigars J Geddes had with him but the Blockhead never came in altho I sat anxiously waiting him ¼ past Eleven - he stopped about J Davidsons played cards & staid all night’

‘…in France the Elections having gone against the Government – the King has Issued several Decrees which in fact changes or rather abolishes their Constitution altogether – abolishing the liberty of the Press – dissolving the newly Elected members of the Chamber of Deputies – prohibiting any others from being elected except from Counties and Several other despotic & arbitrary changes which I have not got time yet to understand, but which its said will bring back the old French Despotism – the news only came yesterday & it remains to be seen whether the French people will Submitt to Such Tyranny after having tasted the Sweets of freedom – our Papers are Indignant at Such proceeding even the Courier condems it’.

The photograph, from the mid-19th century, is almost certainly Thomas Baxter and is from the James Rorie collection.