some archival hints

Hi, everyone.

I've been searching for some archival hints since today's class. During Phase Two, most of you realized that the Lilly website currently provides very limited access. Thus, your best bet is to determine the type of source you are searching for and look it up on the massive card catalogue wall and/or to ask the Reading Room attendant to help you identify the type of source you are seeking. If you're feeling a bit tentative at this stage, do not panic--that's all a part of this kind of archival exploration. Explore with a vengeance(!) and remember that you're doing one of the hardest things of all: letting a critical question emerge.

Here is the detailed scope and content note on the exhibition of books related to medicine and surgery. Scroll all the way down to see the full holdings, and you'll notice that only selected images have been uploaded. You'll want to request individual items according to call number. If you are working with Florence Nightingale, these may provide interesting and relevant cultural backdrops via their images and texts, especially helping us to know what arguments formed the basis of medical practice at the time that Nightingale wrote her "Notes."

Also, if you are working on Nightingale and don't know where to focus, you might try the excerpts I identified on the archival project overview and collection list. You do not need to limit yourselves to those passages, but I started there because they seemed to represent the kinds of arguments she made.

For anyone interested in "Beauty's Triumph," Professor Cape provided me with the call number: HQ1201 .B385. It is an illustrated manuscript dated 1751 (about 100 years earlier than Barlee, Mulock-Craik, and the London Lowlife materials) but it was featured as part of an artificial collection created by Professor Cape called "Freethinkers, Reformers, and Suffragettes."

An interesting document to read alongside Mulock-Craik may be Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor: A Cyclopedia of the Condition and Earnings of Those That Will Work, Those Than Cannot Work, and Those That Will Not Work (1861-1862). This is in Box 15 of the BBC MSS portion of the "Cleverdon MSS II" collection.

The London Lowlife collection does have an extensive collection list with an item-by-item description of all 8 boxes and 4 oversized folders. The call number for this collection is DA676. If you're working with the Contagious Diseases Act and/or other 19th century texts, I highly recommend this list. The visual ephemera are so unique! You may be able to request a copy of the list--or request a copy to look at--from the Reading Room attendant. That collection may also house the Pall Mall Gazette
and W. T. Stead's Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon (on childhood prostitution). Stead's document was instrumental to the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act and to the creation of the Criminal Law Amendment Act (raising the age of consent to 16).

If you're working with Annie Besant, feel free to request and look through any of her other leaflets. The call number information is: BL2727 Box 1 Freethought Publishing Co. Items 11-27. It is a nice set of materials, but they are quite fragile and difficult to handle.

If you're working with the Haldeman MSS, there is another folder of materials that might be useful (if it hasn't already been pulled and placed with our collection). The call number information is LMC 1447 (Haldeman, Mrs. S.A., mss), Box 1. There are some news clippings about Sarah Alice Haldeman dated April 18, April 20, and April 27 1916 about her motivation to go into social betterment, about housewives economizing, and about women in banking. There is also an article dated January 4, 1907 on Haldeman's views on money and business, and a small clip called "Women and Banking" dated January 10, 1903. These items will probably have to be requested by date, since the collection list I have doesn't indicate which folder contains them. You might also look to the Haldeman MSS lists and the Mrs. SA Haldeman MSS lists to get a fuller sense of genealogy so you know who is related to whom.

For Gordimer, here is the full guide and online finding aid, as well as a general collection description. I believe in Box 4, Folder 21 marked "Early Writings" there is a kind of diary in which Gordimer kept track of and reviewed all books she had read that year.

As you find things, feel free to share with the rest of us!

-Dr. Graban