Discovering a Slice of London Life

After last month’s archive stocktake, I’ve returned to my ongoing cataloguing project. Today I’ll tell you about a terrific discovery I made on the repository shelves.

Matt inspects the record books in the BPMA Search Room.

This is a set of four record books. Three are from the 1930s, while the fourth covers 1941-1956. They’re not labelled with ownership details but, after studying the contents and cross-referencing with other archives in our collections, I believe they originated from the South West (SW) London District Office, which was in Victoria Street at that time.

The books were used to keep records on the sub-post offices in the SW London District. As you may already know, there are two main kinds of post offices in Britain: crown offices directly managed by the Post Office, and sub-post offices operated by independent businesspeople under contract from the Post Office.

The books are divided into many sections, headed with each sub-post office’s address. The three 1930s volumes cover the entire District between them, while the 1940s volume is a partial continuation. Confusingly, the contents aren’t all arranged alphabetically!

Selected addresses from the record books. Clockwise from top left: 15 Gloucester Road, later number 17 (POST 22/385); 226 Wandsworth Road (POST 22/387); Victoria Station (POST 22/388); 56 Brixton Road (POST 22/386). Centre: Harrods (POST 22/385).

What makes these books a treasure is the staggering amount of detail. There are notes of customer complaints, audit records, specifics of equipment installed, and particulars of disciplinary cases. Every note is dated. This is what you’d expect from the central supervision of agents carrying out work for the General Post Office. But there’s so much more.

Sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses often performed postal work alongside another business. The volumes record precise details of any interruptions in postal work. The main motivation was to monitor revenue, but the notes also reflect SW London’s changing streets. The record below is a good example:

Record of post office at 412 Brixton Road being damaged by a bomb on 16 April 1941. (POST 22/388)

This note states that the 412 Brixton Road office was damaged by a bomb on 16 April 1941, and reopened at new premises in the local Bon Marché store. There are also records of crimes at sub-post offices, often including dates when staff were absent to attend the ensuing identity parades and police court sessions. Take a look at the note below:

Report of a foiled break-in. (POST 22/388)

This brief report of a foiled break-in is notable for giving the full name of the lady who was living above the office! We can glimpse here the locality that the office served. Often the addresses of customers who complained are also recorded.

Finally, there’s genealogical information. Dated records were kept of sickness absence and compassionate leave taken by sub-postmasters and sub-post mistresses. Whenever an office transferred to a new sub-postmaster, the exact handover date and the departing sub-postmaster’s new home address were recorded. There are also family stories:

Note recording the date and time of the death of the Streatham Hill sub-postmaster’s death. (POST 22/386)

This note records the date (and time!) of the Streatham Hill sub-postmaster’s death. His son was acting sub-postmaster for a few months, then his widow took over the business. All these records were kept for purely business reasons, but the research uses are so much wider than that.

Hopefully, similar records for other areas will be discovered. As I catalogued the record books, I wrote a searchable index of all the sub-offices listed in the notes, with their respective sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses. This will appear on our online catalogue in the coming months.

Museum Store audit: objects, boxes and pink tape

As many of our readers may already know, our large object Museum Store in Essex holds many fascinating items in the BPMA’s collection, including items such as pillar boxes, telephone kiosks and vehicles. Over the past 6 months or so I have been working out at our store carrying out an audit of the collections, focussing mostly on those stored on the mobile shelving.

The BPMA Museum Store in Debden

The audit of the material held at the store is a necessary exercise and a vital part of good collections management. As part of the audit, I have been systematically cross-checking items on the shelves with the listings on the BPMA’s collections database, checking that the recorded details and locations are correct.

Sarah unwrapping a Post Bus ticket machine for auditing and carefully re-packing the ticket machine ready for re-boxing

At the same time I have been assessing the storage and packing of each item, replacing any packing materials which are no longer suitable (often due to age, which can mean they are no longer effectively protecting the object from the external environment). This can be a time-consuming task but planning for the long-term, sympathetic storage of an object means that the collection  can be kept stable and in the best condition for future audiences and researchers  to access and enjoy in years to come.

As you might imagine, the auditing and repacking project is no small undertaking so a methodical approach is essential – which is handy, because I’m rather fond of a good process! In summary, each box is given a unique ‘Mus’ number (printed on green labels) and following completion of the repacking , the database records for each object in that box are updated to include this new box reference. This allows a list to be produced of all the items found in a particular box, a copy of which is included with the contents. To provide a good visual marker, each box (or indeed large item) is tied with pink cotton tape to indicate that it has been audited and repacked.  If anyone had told me at the start of the project that I would find the sight of rows of shelves filled with pink tape heartening, I wouldn’t have believed them – but it’s true!

A view from inside the mobile shelving, showing shelves containing audited objects with lots of lovely pink tape….

It is not possible for me to talk about the store audit without a special mention for two wonderful BPMA volunteers, Don and Barry who both give their time to assist with the project and have been invaluable, not least because they are a bit taller – I am rather vertically challenged – and can therefore help me reach the higher shelves! With our combined efforts we have recently reached our latest milestone of over 100 audited shelves.

‘And here’s some I did earlier…’ Audited items neatly packed and tied (with even more pink tape) ready to return to the racking.

Another very enjoyable element of the project is that during the audit I have been able to gather information on items being considered for display at the new postal museum at Calthorpe House which has been great – and provides an excellent excuse to follow up on research for an intriguing item.

There is still a lot of work to do as part of the audit, but much has been achieved in six months and the increasing number of shelves, stacked with boxes tied with pink tape continues to bring a smile to my face on a rainy Monday!

If you are interested in getting involved with this or similar work please contact Sarah Jenkins on sarah.jenkins@postalheritage.org.uk or call 020 8502 2673.

Sarah Jenkins – Curatorial Assistant

Archive Stock Take 2012

This week begins our two week Archive Stock Take 2012. This annual spring-clean is a chance to carry out tasks that we wouldn’t otherwise have the time or space for. This is something many archives carry out and is a great way of making sure everything is where it is supposed to be!

The BPMA Search Room is closed since 14 May until 25 May 2012 during our annual stock take

This year our focus is very much on the  BPMA’s planned move to Calthorpe House.  As you can imagine there is a lot of work that needs to be done before an archive is moved, the work we do in this Stock Take will help us get there.

In the Archive Repository: Loose registered files in the process of being boxed up.

To this end, many of this year’s stock take tasks are geared towards these aims. For example we’ll be removing duplicate material from the collections where this exists, we’re boxing loose files so that they are well protected for moving, we’ll be sending records to the BT Archives, we’re carrying out an audit of specific parts of our collections and we’re doing a spot of office filing.

Confidential waste in the search room ready to be taken away.

All these tasks and more will be taking place over this week and next and we’ll be keeping you up to date here through a series of blog entries, a few members of the team will details of their specific tasks and how they’re getting on.

Adam Hillhouse , Archivist

Reaching milestones in our documentation and cataloguing work

At the end of February, we reached some significant milestones in the documentation work carried out on our museum and archive collections.

Stamp Artwork design for the Olympic Games 1948, submitted by G. Knipe of Harrison & Sons Oct. 1947. (POST 150/GVI/11/018) It was one of the five designs selected by the Council of Industrial Design and was held as a reserve for the 2 1/2d stamp. In preparing essays Harrisons were to be told "to make sure that the features of the jumper ... cannot be recognised."

The first milestone reached was the completion of an audit of material contained within the museum collection. What this means is that we have entry and location data for every object inherited by BPMA when it was formed in 2004 and for every object subsequently deposited with us. This includes objects held in our Freeling House repository and in our stores in Debden and at Christie’s.

Documentation of collections is a core part of any museum’s activity. Without details such as provenance, custodial history, physical condition and the terms and conditions relating to deposit, a museum cannot be assured of its responsibility and rights to preserve, display, digitise or even dispose (should the item not meet the museum’s collecting policy) of objects in its custody. Furthermore, precise information about an object’s location in our repository and stores means that we can carry out collections review work more efficiently and better prepare for our forthcoming move from our site here at Freeling House to the new postal museum.

This has been a significant amount of work and has taken seven years to complete. Very few museums have achieved a full audit of their holdings and it means that we can now concentrate our efforts in reviewing object collections, creating descriptive catalogues for the online catalogue and also plan our digitisation programmes accordingly. The completion of this work is due to the hard work and discipline of our museum cataloguers past and present, and we congratulate them all for doing such a great job!

Stamp Artwork, Olympic Games 1948, submitted on 29 July 1948 (POST 150/GVI/11/037)

The second milestone is that we’ve passed the 100,000 mark of records available to view on our online catalogue. We now have 100,703 records published. Our most recently published records include:
• King George VI London Olympic Games 1948 stamp artwork
• Uniforms
• Handstamps
• Posters
• Photographic stills from Post Office films, c.1969-1986
Finally, at the beginning of each year, we also open files that have been closed for 30 years. You can read in the blog by my colleague Gavin McGuffie how we process these. This year, we’ve opened approximately 100 files and the descriptions of these can be viewed via our online catalogue here.

Martin Devereux – Acting Catalogue Manager

New records released on our online catalogue

Thankfully, our recent problems with the online catalogue appear to be resolved. We apologise for the inconvenience you may have suffered in recent weeks.

The online catalogue service began switching itself off when we upgraded the catalogue system software. We noticed that our web server was having problems with the new software almost immediately. Although we did test the system before we installed it on our web server, a bug in the system did not become apparent until the online catalogue interface began asking for data from the system database. We’ve now reverted to a stable version of the system so hopefully we will not have any more unplanned interruptions to the online catalogue service.

On a more positive note, we can reveal that 4752 records have been added to the online catalogue and these are now available to the public. These include:

POST 91: Buildings, Furniture and Fittings – over 3000 descriptions of plans, blueprints, photographs, illustrations and documents relating to Post Office sites and installations across the United Kingdom between c.1780 and 2002. We’ve digitised a small number of these records and we hope to attach these to their descriptions in the following months.

King Edward Building - two keyboard operators at Single Position Letter Sorting Machine (SPLSM), November 1971 (POST 118/6024)

POST 118: Post Office Photograph Library – 450 descriptions of photographs from 1967-1999. These images form part of a series of photographs compiled by library staff during the course of their work. They include many colour medium-format photographs of sorting offices, technical photographs of equipment and postmen and women on delivery. These records often include digital images of the photographs themselves. Further records from this series will be released in the future.

From the museum collection we have added an additional 450 detailed descriptions of textile and uniform, many of which include photographs of the uniforms. Other significant releases from the museum collection include an additional 114 prints and drawings, and a further 210 handstamps.

Coat Jacket - British Postal Agency (Tangier), c. 1950 (2011-0338)

From our philatelic collections, King George VI Overprints are now available, including postage due label overprints. This collection of definitives, commemoratives, high value definitive stamps and postage due label registration sheets include overprints relating to the official use of these stamps in various territories under British control, including the Gulf and former Italian colonies in Africa, occupied by British troops during Word War II.

KGVI 6d purple, overprinted 'B.M.A. TRIPOLITANIA 12 M.A.L.', registration sheet, perforated (POST 150/KGVI/O/BRA/ICL/0008)

Holding particular political and historical significance today, registration sheets overprinted for ‘British Military Administration’ and ‘British Administration’ in ‘Tripolitania’, a historic region in the former province of Libya are included in the collection. These stamps provide a reminder of British domination of this former Italian colony, both in terms of its military administration and also on a civilian basis. Tripolitania included Tripoli in the old system and these registration sheets document the fact that Britain actually set up the combined state of Libya. The British backed King Idris to become Emir of Tripolitania who also proclaimed an independent Emirate of Cyrenaica in 1949.

Various postal agencies in the Gulf used British overprinted stamps after 1948, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Muscat and Qatar.

- Martin Devereux, Acting Catalogue Manager

Search our online catalogue at www.postalheritage.org.uk/catalogue.

We want your views

Do you like what we’re doing on our website, online catalogue, podcast, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and this blog? Is there something you’d like us to do online in the future?

We’re conducting an online survey of our audiences which will help us improve our services. Those who complete the survey will go into the draw to win a voucher from Amazon worth £50.

Man writing at desk (POST 118/5388)

Take the survey at www.postalheritage.org.uk/survey. The survey closes 19 September 2011.

Stamp Registration or “Imprimatur” sheets in the BPMA Collections

One of the most important parts of the philatelic collections of the BPMA is the series of registration sheets of stamps from the Penny Black to the present day. All are public records and part of the Royal Mail Archive. These sheets are in the process of being catalogued and made available online. However, the size of the sheets is such that they cannot at the moment be scanned so images available are rather restricted. Anyone wishing to view the original sheets must make an appointment with the Curator, Philately. The following is a summary of what is
available to customers at present.

Queen Victoria (1840-c.1870)

All Victorian registration sheets (sometimes called “imprimatur” sheets by collectors) are imperforate, are catalogued and details can be seen on our online catalogue. There are no scans of any part of the original sheets. Included in this are, of course, all sheets of Penny Blacks in the collection (10 in total, though not every plate is represented) and all sheets of Twopenny Blues from the 1841 and 1858 types. No registration sheets exist for plates 1 and 2 of the original Twopenny Blue. Also included are those Penny Red sheets from 1841 onwards which exist (from plate 12 onwards – 206 in total) and the new series of Penny Reds from 1855 (a total of 106, but excluding plate 77) There are also a very small number of other values.

During the 19th century examples were officially cut from these sheets by the Inland Revenue for official purposes, so none of them is complete. Details of which stamps are missing are given in the catalogue.

Although none of these sheets is scanned we do have high quality, same-size, black and white photographs of all of the above which are available for purchase for private study. Each photograph costs £31.50 (including VAT). A “Request for Reprographic Services” form needs to be completed and signed by the applicant. As external developing studios are used and a minimum batch for processing is required, if the photograph requested is not in stock then there may be a delay of three or four weeks before completion of the order. However, payment is not required until the order is sent for processing.

If you would be interested in this service please contact the Administrator on paul.stevenson@postalheritage.org.uk or telephone 020 7239 2577.

Queen Victoria (1870-1901)

All other Victorian registration sheets are catalogued and
details can be seen in the online catalogue. However, none have been photographed and the illustrations in the catalogue are not taken from the actual sheets. Rather they come from the Phillips Collection, as with the earlier sheets. These sheets are also imperforate. There are also a few sheets of overprints on Victorian GB stamps for use by some British government departments (termed “Departmental Overprints”). All such overprinted sheets were already perforated.

King Edward VII (1901-1910)

With the registration sheets of King Edward VII the online catalogue shows a small scanned section or part of the actual sheets. These include special formats for booklets for the first time as well as Departmental overprints, and overprints on British stamps for use in the Levant, Bechuanaland and Morocco Agencies. None of the sheets is available photographed or scanned.

King George V (1910-1936) & King Edward VIII (1936)

Again, all registration sheets are catalogued and details can be found in the online catalogue together with a scan of a small part of each sheet (click here for King George V and here for King Edward VIII). Included are sheets for booklets, rolls, commemoratives and all overprints for overseas territories including Morocco Agencies, Nauru and the Levant. The last are all perforated while the former are imperforate.

George V registration sheet

Also catalogued, with a small part illustrated, are a large number of black plate proof sheets from the Royal Mint, as well as the registration sheets for postage due labels.

The gravure sheets of King Edward VIII, together with all varieties of sheet format for booklets and rolls, and all overseas overprints are also available online, again with a small part of each sheet illustrated.

Later Sheets

Work is continuing on the cataloguing of later registration sheets of the reigns of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II. These will appear progressively in the online catalogue.

Find out more about our collection of Stamps and Postal History on our website.

Our new website launches

Our new website is now live at www.postalheritage.org.uk. The new website, designed by Mind Unit, boasts a new, more attractive design, and improved presentation of text and images. Content from the old website has been revised, and there are a number of new webpages to discover.

Image Galleries

Many pages on the new website include galleries which offer large display of images. Look out for pages which have square images at the bottom.

Click on any square image to see that image pop-out and appear in full.

Scrolling through image galleries is easy. Move your mouse over the image to reveal the PREV and NEXT buttons. Click these buttons to see the previous or next image in the gallery.

The Collections & Catalogue section of the website boasts a number of pages featuring image galleries. Philatelists and postal historians can view unique stamp artwork and postal markings from our collection in the Stamps & Philately section.

Many of our Online Exhibitions (find these in the Exhibitions & Events section of the website) make use of image galleries too. The Designs on Delivery online exhibition displays a number of GPO posters from 1930-1960 in this way.

British Postal History

A number of articles about aspects of our collection are available in the British Postal History section (under the History & Learning heading). Written by our archivists, curators, cataloguers and expert volunteers, these articles cover topics as diverse as Stamp Design, Internal Postage & Parcel Rates, The Great Train Robbery and Uniforms.

The Uniforms article includes a separate image gallery displaying a variety of illustrations, photographs, coats and hats from our collection.

Online Catalogue

As before, you can still search our Catalogue online. With over 95,000 records available there’s bound to be something of interest. Click the Online Catalogue button on the Collections & Catalogue page to start searching.

The Collections & Catalogue section also allows you to browse a number of topic areas and view selected examples from our collections.

Share the Website

Want to share something you’ve seen on the new BPMA website? Click on the “Forward To A Friend” button (in the menu on the right) to e-mail the page to a contact, or share the page with friends on Facebook, Twitter or Buzz using the buttons at the bottom of the page.

Future Development

Web technology changes rapidly – and your expectations do too! We’d like to hear your thoughts on how we can make the BPMA website even better.

At the bottom of each page on our website you will find a link to our Site Feedback Form. This easy-to-use form allows you to send your comments to us at any time.

Finally, we’d like to thank those of you who participated in our user testing programme. We received some extremely helpful feedback which will guide the website’s future development.

Help test our new website

For more than a year we have been working on plans to redevelop our website. Following a tender process which concluded last July we hired Mind Unit, a company with more than 10 years experience in designing websites and developing applications for creative organisations.

Mock-up of new BPMA website homepage

Throughout the process of building the new website we have tried to keep the needs of users in mind. To make sure we’ve got it right, we’re looking for volunteers to help us test the new website before it goes live in March.

Volunteer testers will be asked to use the new website and give their feedback, either as part of a group testing session in London or via the web from their home computer.

Anyone in the world of any age or ability can take part – you don’t even have to have heard of the BPMA – although we are particularly keen to recruit the following:

• Philatelists and postal historians
• Journalists
• Teachers and educators
• People employed in the museums and archives sector
• Those with a general interest in history, art, design and/or culture
• Family historians and genealogists

As a thank you, all volunteer testers will go into the draw to win one of two £50 Amazon gift vouchers.

If you would like to take part in our new website testing programme, please register you interest by e-mailing blog@postalheritage.org.uk.

King George V Registration Sheets

by Stuart Aitken, Collections Assistant

The entire collection of King George V registration sheets is now fully accessible on our online catalogue. Registration sheets, often imperforate, exist as the very first prints taken from the printing plate for each stamp in sheet form. The collection consists of 1,027 sheets in total.

The reign of King George V (6th May 1910 – 20th January 1936) marked one of the most fascinating eras of British postage stamps; a period of change, progression and vast improvements with stamp production. The King himself was a proud philatelist so it is no great surprise that such diversity and experimentation occurred during this time.

2½d Downey Head 1911

The first King George V stamps, the ½d and 1d Downey Head, released on the 22nd June 1911 to coincide with the King’s coronation, immediately faced a storm of criticism as it was the first time a three-quarter profile of the monarch had been used (up to this stage all Great Britain issues had previously used a side-on profile). It was also argued that the use of a typographed image from a photograph had not been hugely successful. Consequently the Downey Head was replaced in August 1912 by the designs of Bertram Mackennal, which saw a return to the profile head. Since the Downey issues, all Great Britain stamps have used a profile head design.

½d Photogravure 1935

In 1934 a new design for definitive issues was introduced which was printed using the Photogravure process. Utilising high-speed production and at a lower cost, these stamps underwent subtle resizing and modifications over the years to allow improvements. Information such as this can be found in the description field of each catalogue entry, along with a scanned section of each sheet.

1d British Empire Exhibition 1924

The first British commemorative stamps were also issued during the reign of King George V to mark the 1924/25 Empire Exhibition at Wembley, featuring a Lion in a striking stance. Following this issue other commemorative issues were subsequently produced to mark the 1929 London Postal Union Congress and the 1935 Silver Jubilee of the King.

Also included in the collection are registration sheets of the high value Seahorse issues, the first ever postage due stamps, colour trials, black proof sheets and official governmental overprints relating to their official use in various British territories outside the UK.

Each catalogue entry in the collection is detailed, comprehensible and provides a great research tool and insight into this unique collection of British registration sheets.