The Writers' Club [for Women] (1892-fl.1920) was founded in 1892 by the journalist Frances Low at 10 Norfolk Street, near Fleet Street, London. It claimed to be unique in being the only club devoted to women of one profession. Entry, which was limited to 300, was based on evidence of literary or journalistic work. Entrance fee was one guinea for town members and the same amount for the annual subscription. Many well -known authors were members and a quiet room was reserved for writing. The suite included a writing room, dining room, kitchen, cloakroom and two reception rooms. 'At Homes' were held every Friday afternoon when guests (including men) could be invited to tea. No residential accommodation was provided and silence was enforced in the Writing Room. In the early 1900s a group of members, dissatisfied with the Club's lack of physical amenities, broke away under the leadership of Constance Smedley, to form the Lyceum Club. The Writers' Club was still in existence in the 1920s.
Agnes Maude Royden (1876-1956) was born on 23 Nov 1876, the youngest daughter of the ship-owning Conservative MP from Liverpool, Sir Thomas Bland Royden (later first baronet of Frankby Hall, Cheshire). She was educated first at Cheltenham Ladies College, then at Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford from 1896-1899, where she met Kathleen Courtney and Ida O'Malley. She obtained a second-class degree in modern history.
After graduating she spent three years working with the Victoria Women's Settlement in Liverpool. In these years around 1900 Royden's political views moved away from her family's Conservatism until she joined the Labour Party after the First World War. In 1905 Royden undertook parish work in South Luffenham for the Reverend William Hudson Shaw, whom she had met at Oxford. She became friends with him and his second wife Effie. They remained close friends, Royden marrying Shaw after Effie's death. The marriage took place just two months before Shaw's death in 1944. Shaw enabled Royden to lecture in the Oxford University Extension Delegacy Scheme, for which he also lectured. Royden was one of the first female lecturers for the Scheme. In 1908 Royden became a regular speaker for the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). She was appointed to its executive committee in 1911, edited its newspaper 'The Common Cause' between 1913-1914 and wrote 5 pamphlets for them. From 1910, she supported the Tax Resistance League and was the first Chair of the Church League for Women's Suffrage. From 1911 was a member of the executive committee of the London Society for Women's Suffrage (LSWS). By 1912 she was giving well over 250 speeches a year and ran 'Speakers classes' for NUWSS and LSWS. In 1913 she was also appointed president of the Chester Women's Suffrage Society, vice president of the Oxford Women Students' Suffrage Society. 1912 was an important year for the future of the women's movement. It was in this year that the Labour Party made support for female suffrage part of its policy for the first time. When, that same year, the NUWSS launched the Election Fighting Fund policy, which promised support to any party officially supporting suffrage in an election where the candidate was challenging an anti-suffrage Liberal, the effect was to effectively support the Labour Party. The women's suffrage campaign had long been associated with the Liberal Party and had always been non-party, welcoming the left and right wing into its numbers. After this step, however, some members, such as Eleanor Rathbone, left the organisation in opposition to this step. Royden, however, supported the move and was one of the speakers at the joint meeting of the NUWSS and the Labour Party held in the Albert Hall in Feb 1914. Later in 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War, Royden found herself in conflict with many in the NUWSS, which under the leadership of Millicent Fawcett, had thrown itself enthusiastically into support for work to support the war effort. At the end of 1914 she became the secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation with other Christian Pacifists. In Feb 1915 she resigned as editor of 'Common Cause' and gave up her place on the executive council. She had intended to attend the women's peace congress in the Hague in 1915 that year but was unable to do so when travel via the North Sea was forbidden. None the less, when the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom was established there, she became the vice-president. Despite this, even outside of the NUWSS, she campaigned for the vote for women through the National Council for Adult Suffrage and when a limited franchise was granted in 1918, she was asked to address the celebratory meeting organised by the older group at the Queen's Hall. In the post-war period, her main interests were concerned with the role of women in the Church. Between 1917-1920 Royden became an assistant preacher to Dr Fort Newton at the City Temple. Though a committed Anglican, as a woman she was not normally permitted to preach in the Church of England. In 1920 she was granted an interdenominational pulpit at the Kensington Town Hall through the Fellowship Services. This position was soon transferred to the Guildhouse in Eccleston Square and she continued to preach socially radical sermons from there for some years, on issues such as unemployment, peace and marriage. Percy Dearmer and Martin Shaw assisted her. In turn Royden continued to assist Hudson Shaw in his parish St Botolph's Bishopsgate in the City of London, including a controversial appearance to preach in a service on Good Friday 30 Mar 1923.
In 1922 Royden was invited to stand as a Labour candidate for the Wirral constituency but declined for the sake of her work in the church. Royden made several preaching tours across the world from the 1920s to the 1940s and undertook large-scale article writing: She visited America in 1911, 1923, 1928, and 1941-1942. The 1928 visit was part of a world tour that included Australia, New Zealand and China. Whilst in 1928 and 1934-1935 she visited India with Dame Margery Corbett Ashby and met Ghandi. Royden continued her work for peace, through her 'Peace Army' proposals of 1923 and her support of the League of Nations. People such as Rev 'Dick' Shepherd and Herbert Gray in turn supported Royden. Royden resigned from the Guildhall post in 1936 to concentrate her efforts in this area until 1939. In 1939, however, Royden renounced pacifism believing Nazism to be a greater evil than war. In 1944 she married Hudson Shaw. After 1945, she was mainly occupied by writing and radio broadcasts on religion. Her last book was A Threefold Cord 1947 an autobiographical work. Royden died at her home in London on the 30 Jul 1956.
Betty Heathfield (1927-2006) was born into a mining family in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. She attended Chesterfield Girls' School and won a university scholarship, which she did not take up for financial reasons. Instead she left school at sixteen to work as a secretary in a local engineering company and became interested in left-wing politics, joining the Young Communist League. In 1953 she married Peter Heathfield, a miner who became the general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers. She was active in her own right in labour politics in Chesterfield, as a member of the Co-Operative Women's Guild, and a founding member of the Derbyshire Women's Action Group. She became one of the spokeswomen and leading members of the national Women Against Pit Closures organisation during the miners' strike of 1984-1985. Alongside Anne Scargill she led the support campaign for miners' families - organising financial aid, holidays for children, and touring the USA and Canada to raise support for British mining communities. She also took part in an oral history and writing project to document the experiences of women during the action. After the end of the strike, Heathfield studied for a politics degree at Lancaster University. She was also involved in a Women's Co-operative Guild Age Exchange Theatre Company project on the history of the Guild. After suffering from Alzheimer's disease she died on 16 Feb 2006.
Georgina Agnes Brackenbury (1865-1949) studied at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1888-1900. She was a member of both the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and the Women's Social and Political Union. She was arrested in Feb 1908, after taking part in a raid on the House of Commons and was sentenced to six weeks in Holloway Prison. After her release, she continued in militant suffrage activities and was imprisoned for a month in 1912 for smashing windows. She was the daughter of Hilda Brackenbury (1832-1918) and sister of Mary Brackenbury (1866-1946), who were both also involved in militant suffrage activity.
Miss Elizabeth Dowse (fl 1824-1828) set off in Sep 1826 to spend a winter at Nice with a friend sent there for the 'recovery of her health'. She appears to have travelled with a Mrs Athersole and the latter's niece, Miss Nevill. While presumably based in the South of France for two years, Miss Dowse travelled at various times in Switzerland and Italy. On 21 Sep 1828, the steam packet George IV brought her 'once more to old England'. The following day she states that she was 'at home at my father's after an absence of four years'. She must have been living in France 1824-1828.
See the biography for Rathbone; Eleanor Florence (1872-1946); social reformer
Eleanor Florence Rathbone (1872-1946) was born in 1872, the daughter of the Liberal MP for Liverpool William S Rathbone and his second wife Emily Lyle. The young woman was educated first at Kensington High School, London and then Somerville College, Oxford. After graduating, she returned to Liverpool as a worker for the local Central Relief Centre where she was able to examine social and industrial conditions in the area. This ultimately resulted in the publication of a report on the results of a special inquiry into the conditions of labour at the Liverpool Docks in 1903. When women became eligible to stand for election she became the first woman to be elected to Liverpool City Council and represented the Granby Ward as an independent councillor from 1909-1934. During that time she wrote an number of articles and papers on social questions including 'How The Casual Labourer Lives; A Report of The Liverpool Joint Research Committee on the Domestic Condition and Expenditure of Families of Certain Liverpool Labourers' (1909). She also published 'Women's Need of the Vote; a Practical Illustration' in 1911 and a series of articles for 'Common Cause' including 'The Problem of Women's Wages' (1911) and 'Widows under the Poor Law (1913) which argued for state funded pensions for widows. As these showed, her work on social issues was constantly bound up with the question of women's social and political status. In 1898 she had become the secretary of the Liverpool Society for Women's Suffrage and later chair of the West Lancashire, West Cheshire and North West Wales Federation. Additionally, she became a member of the executive committee of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies from 1900. However, in 1913, the NUWSS launched the Election Fighting Fund policy, which promised support to any party officially supporting suffrage in an election where the candidate was challenging an anti-suffrage Liberal, the effect was to effectively support the Labour Party. Rathbone was opposed to this measure and resigned from the executive committee in 1914. However, she did support the war work done by the group between 1914 and 1918, taking over the Liverpool branch of the Soldiers and Sailors Family Association, acting as an administrative arm of the War Office and dealing with the payment of separation allowances to wives. Influenced by this, she helped form the Family Endowment Committee in 1918, which campaigned for women to be paid an allowance to alleviate their economic dependence on husbands. When the NUWSS broadened its aims after the grant of the vote to women over thirty and changed its name to the National Union of Societies of Equal Citizenship, Rathbone was elected the new organisation's first president (1919-1929). However, at this time there was no consensus within the movement regarding the appropriate response to new 'protective' legislation, which limited only women's working hours with the aim of 'protecting' them against industrial exploitation. An ideological split occurred at this time between those in NUSEC who, on the one hand, supported Rathbone and ideas such as an 'Endowment of Motherhood' which was intended to give women their financial independence and those, on the other, who adopted a more strictly equalist position. A number of members broke away to form equalist organisations such as the Open Door Council and the Six Point Group. However, Rathbone remained at the head of NUSEC and her views, outlined in works such as 'Utopia Calling: A Plea for Family Allowances' (1920) and shown in her work for the Children's Minimum (later Nutrition) Council, would go on to have an impact on the eventual form of the welfare state set up after the Second World War. In 1922 she stood for election as an independent candidate for East Toxteth division Liverpool but was defeated. Instead it was as an independent candidate for the Combined English Universities' seat that Rathbone was finally elected to parliament in 1929, a post she held until her death in 1946. In the House of Commons, she remained active in working for equal treatment for women in public and private life. She strongly opposed changes to the Unemployment Insurance Act that appeared to disadvantage women as well as campaigning against the Nationality of Married Women Act. Additionally, she was almost alone in the Commons in that decade in denouncing the potential danger from Germany and the Nazi Party after 1933. Rathbone was also deeply involved in the campaign for Indian women's suffrage throughout her parliamentary career; this included an interest in their legal and social status, their education and especially efforts to make illegal the practice of child marriage. Rathbone obtained an MA and LLD (Doctor of Laws) at Liverpool as well as an Honorary MA at Durham and an Honorary DCL (Doctor of Civil Law) at Oxford, she was also a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. Rathbone remained an MP until her sudden death on 2 Jan 1946.
The Society of Women Musicians was founded in London in 1911 by the singer Gertrude Eaton, the composer Katharine Eggar and the musicologist Marion M. Scott. It aimed to provide a focal point for women composers and performers to meet and enjoy the benefits of mutual cooperation. The 37 women at the inaugural meeting included musicians such as Ethel Barns, Rebecca Clarke, Agnes Larkcom, Anne Mukle and her sister, May Mukle, and Liza Lehmann, who became the society's first president. Later presidents included Cécile Chaminade, Fanny Davies, Rosa Newmarch, Myra Hess, Astra Desmond and Elizabeth Poston. Early members included Florence Marshall, Maude Valérie White and Ethel Smyth, who was honorary vice-president from 1925 to 1944. Among subsequent honorary vice-presidents were Nadia Boulanger, Imogen Holst, Elisabeth Lutyens, Elizabeth Maconchy and Fanny Waterman. By the end of its first year the society had formed a choir and a library, given several private concerts and a public concert of members' works (which included the première of the first two movements of Smyth's String Quartet in E minor), hosted a variety of lectures, held a composers' conference and attracted 152 female members and 20 male associates, including Thomas Dunhill and W W Cobbett, who donated the Cobbett Free Library of Chamber Music to the Society in 1918. By 1913 the Society had also formed an orchestra.In the 61 years of its existence, the society campaigned vigorously for the rights of women musicians, especially as members of professional symphony orchestras, and awarded prizes to composers and performers, as well as continuing to organize concerts and meetings. In 1972, the year after its Diamond Jubilee had been celebrated at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the organization disbanded.
The position of Vice Director of the RCM was established in 1978, and was frequently used alongside the offices of Registrar and/or Director of Studies. The post is presently called Deputy Director.
The Associated Board (AB) of the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) and the Royal College of Music (RCM) was established in 1889 following a proposal by Alexander McKenzie, the Principal of the RAM, to establish a joint body to conduct examinations in practical and theoretical musical subjects and publish music and pedagogical materials. In addition to the Principal of the RAM and the Director of the RCM, each institution appointed five other members under the chairmanship of Lord Charles Bruce. The Hon Secretary of the RCM became its Honorary Treasurer, and the Registrar of the RCM became Secretary of the AB. The Board became the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music followed the accession of the Royal Northern College of Music and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama to the Board. The degree of Graduate of the Royal Schools of Music (GRSM) was introduced in 1930.
Alfons Barb was born in Vienna. He supported himself working as a goldsmith whilst studying at the University of Vienna and received his doctorate aged 25. He then worked as a museum director for several years until the Anschluss, when he was dismissed under the new racial laws. He moved to England with his young family in 1939 where, after time spent interned as an enemy alien and eight years working as a factory tool fitter, he eventually resumed an academic career. Barb joined the Warburg Institute in 1949 as Assistant Librarian and subsequently served as Librarian (1956-1966). He was an Honorary Fellow of the Institute from 1968 until his death in 1979. He was also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Numismatic Society, and received the Austrian Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst in 1968.
Evelyn Mary Jamison was born in Lancashire, 1877 and raised there and in London. As a young woman she attended art school in Paris before going up to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Awarded a research fellowship by Somerville College, Oxford, she spent several years in Rome and Naples. Returning to Oxford, she became Librarian and Bursar (1907-1917) Assistant Tutor (1917-1921) and Tutor and Vice-Principal (1921-1937) at Lady Margaret Hall; she was also a University Lecturer in History (1928-1935). Jamison retired to London aged 60 to concentrate on her edition of the Catalogus Baronum (Baronial Catalogue). She continued to carry out historical research until her death in 1972.
Aby Moritz Warburg was born in Hamburg, 1866 to a wealthy banking family; instead of entering the family business, he devoted himself to the academic study of art, European civilization and the classical tradition; studied in Bonn, Munich, and in Strasbourg, focusing on archeology and art history; worked in Florence producing studies on single works of art and their wealthy patrons; spent time on the Hopi Indians conducting an ethnological study, 1896; founded the Kultur-wissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (KBW), to serve both as a private collection and as a resource for public education, 1921; visited the United States to document the Native Americans and their mystic traditions using photographs and text; hospitalized, 1921-1924; worked at the KBW, 1924-1929; died 1929.
Aby Moritz Warburg was born in Hamburg, 1866 to a wealthy banking family; instead of entering the family business, he devoted himself to the academic study of art, European civilisation and the classical tradition; studied in Bonn, Munich, and in Strasbourg, focusing on archeology and art history; worked in Florence producing studies on single works of art and their wealthy patrons; spent time on the Hopi Indians conducting an ethnological study, 1896; founded the Kultur-wissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (KBW), to serve both as a private collection and as a resource for public education, 1921; visited the United States to document the Native Americans and their mystic traditions using photographs and text; hospitalised,1921-1924; worked at the KBW, 1924-1929; died 1929.
The Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg grew out of the personal library of Aby Warburg. In 1921, with the help of Fritz Saxl, the library became a research institution in cultural history, and a centre for lectures and publications, affiliated to the University of Hamburg. After Warburg's death in 1929, the further development of the Institute was guided by Saxl. In 1934, under the shadow of Nazism, the institute was relocated from Hamburg to London. It was installed in Thames House in 1934, moving to the Imperial Institute Buildings, South Kensington, in 1937. In 1944 it became associated with the University of London, and in 1994 it became a founding institute of the University of London's School of Advanced Study.
Otto Kurz was born in Vienna, 1908 and studied Art History at the University there. He was a Research Assistant at the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg in Hamburg and the Warburg Institute in London (1933-1943), and subsequently Assistant Librarian (1943-1949) and Librarian (1949-1965) of the Institute, before becoming the Institute's Professor of the History of Classical Tradition (1966-1975). He was also a visting scholar at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem (1964) and Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University (1970-1971). He married Hilde Schüller in 1937. Died 1975.
Roger Aubrey Baskerville Mynors was born, 1903; educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford, of which he became a fellow in 1926; held chairs in Latin at Cambridge (1944-1953) and Oxford (1953-1970); research centred on Latin manuscripts, which he viewed in the context of European cultural history. He became a fellow of the British Academy in 1944 and was knighted in 1963.
In 1899 a large number of wallpaper firms came together under the umbrella title of Wallpaper Manufacturers' (WPM) and subsequently some of their products were sold under the trademarkCrown'. The archive therefore consists largely of wallpaper pattern books by a variety of manufacturers, collected as part of the group's working records.
Anthony Crossland, in his notable 1965 Woolwich speech, laid out the Government's vision for a binary system of Higher Education within the UK: i.e. universities and polytechnics, where the latter would concentrate on high-level vocational skills. He claimed that, whilst it is always sensible to build on what already exists if rapid expansion is to be achieved within limited resources, it is also important to offer an alternative channel to H.E. that is distinct from the established University system in a number of ways:
Distinct in traditions that have been inherited from its precursors in the non-university sector
Distinct in its adaptability and responsiveness to social change
Distinct organisationally
Distinct in the kind of students that it attracts
The City of London Polytechnic was formed in 1970 from an amalgamation of the City of London College, the Sir John Cass College and the Navigation College at Tower Hill and it was one of the first of the London-based polytechnics to be so designated. It was initially organised into 4 Schools:
The Sir John Cass School of Science and Technology
The Sir John Cass School of Art
The School of Navigation
The School of Business Studies
In 1972 it became one of the first institutions in the country approved to run a modular degree. In 1977 it took responsibility for the running of the Fawcett Library (subsequently renamed the Women's Library), the oldest established women's library in the UK. It merged with the London College of Furniture in 1990. In 1992 the Polytechnic was granted university status - and, with that, its own degree-awarding powers - by the Further and Higher Education Act of that year and was renamed London Guildhall University.
The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI) is the world's longest-established scholarly association dedicated to the furtherance of anthropology (the study of humankind) in its broadest and most inclusive sense. The present Institute was formed when the Ethnological Society of London and the Anthropological Society of London merged in 1871 to form the Anthropological Institute. Royal status was granted in 1907.
The Royal Anthropological Institute, which dates from 1843, has gathered various papers and collections over time; unpublished papers, not directly part of the Institute's own history, form the Manuscript Collection; for papers relating to the history and activities of the Institute see the 'Archives' collection.
Born, 1848; educated: Tipperary Grammar School; Trinity College, Dublin; Indian Civil Service, 1871-1895; Collector and Magistrate at various times of the districts of Saharanpur, Gorakhpur, Mirzapur in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh; wrote prolifically on India, particularly on Ethnology, Anthropology and Folklore; died, 1923.
Alfred Lionel Lewis was a chartered accountant; joined the Anthropological Society of London (ASL), 1866; specialised in the study of stone monuments; member of the Council of the ASL, 1869; member of the Association, 1869; elected to the Association's General Committee; member of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI)
on its formation, 1871; Honorary Secretary of the London Anthropological Society, 1873-1875; rejoined the RAI, 1875; RAI Council member, 1976; RAI treasurer, 1886-1903; RAI Vice President, 1905-1908; died 1920.
Born, 1854; educated at Rugby; read law and qualified as a solicitor, but never practised; voyage in the Pacific, 1879-1881, where he visited Fiji, Tonga and Samoa and collected a large number of artefacts - he thus became interested in ethnography; worked as a supernumerary in the Ethnological Collections of the British Museum; second Pacific voyage, 1895; died, 1930.
Publications:
An Album of the Weapons, Tools, Ornaments, Articles of Dress of the Natives of the Pacific Islands, Drawn and Described from examples in public and private collections in England
Born Adolphe Brewster Brewster, 1855; Commissioner of Colo (Tholo), North and East Provinces, Fiji, [c1884]; he later changed his name to Adolphe Brewster Joske. He retired to England and died in 1937. The Brewster family were noted for their pioneering work in establishing the sugar industry in Fiji, including the importation of machinery for Fiji's first sugar mill.
Publications: The Hill Tribes of Fiji: A Record of Forty Years (Seeley, Service & co., 1922)
Born in New York,1907; graduated BA from Columbia University, New York, 1934; PhD, 1938; university teacher; president of the American Ethnological Society; undertook fieldwork in north-western India; moved to Britain, 1952; married H. Farrant Akehurst; honorary secretary of the Royal Anthropological Institute in London, 1956; taught part-time in the Anthropology Department of the London School of Economics; died, 1961.
Publications: The Puyallup-Nisqually (1940)
Archaeology of the Columbia-Fraser Region (1950)
Born, 1867; educated in engineering at Mason Science College; served as Transport Superintendent at the coast of Mombasa for the Imperial British East Africa Company, 1890-1893; served the Foreign Service in Kenya, 1894-1921; undertook a general tour of the whole of the Central African Lake Region, 1895-1896; established a British administration in Mumias, 1895; first European to circumambulate Mt Elgon, 1896; oversaw a number of punitive expeditions, 1894-1908; Provincial Commissioner of Kavirondo Region (later called Nyanza Province) and sub-commissioner of Ukamba Province (stationed in Nairobi), c1909; retired from the Foreign Service, 1921; died 1947.
Aliston Blyth went on an expedition in Papua New Guinea with Mr Lyons in search of Drexler and Bell, 1920. Nothing further is known about him.
Born 1868; Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1913-1945; Baronet, 1931; his company owned land in the Gran Chaco region of western Paraguay; member of the Committee of the British South American Missionary Society; died 1934.
Unknown
Born 1846; educated, Christ's College, Cambridge; Assistant Commissioner of Kachar, India, 1876; Deputy Commissioner of the Garo Hills, India, 1877; Political Officer of the Naga Hills, India; died 1879.
Mary Edith Durham, artist, anthropologist and traveller, born in London on 8 December 1863; educated at Bedford College, 1878-1882; became an artist, and trained at the Royal Academy Schools. Following illness and at nearly forty years old she travelled to the Balkans and worked as a political missionary. She travelled to the Balkans annually, 1900-1914. When uprisings occurred, in 1903 and 1909, she provided medical aid and food. Following the end of the Second World War, Durham was offered a permanent home in Albania by the Albanian Government. She refused, choosing to remain independent and settled in London writing books and articles. She died in London on 15 November 1944.
Mary Edith Durham born in London on 8 December 1863; educated at Bedford College, 1878-1882; became an artist, and trained at the Royal Academy Schools. Following illness and at nearly forty years old she travelled to the Balkans and worked as a political missionary. She first visited the area in 1900 in search of health and was an anthropologist as well as a gifted artist. She travelled to the Balkans annually from 1900 to 1914. When uprisings occurred, in 1903 and 1909, she provided medical aid and food. Durham was offered a permanent home in Albania by the Albanian Government but refused, choosing to remain independent and settled in London writing books and articles. She died in London on 15 November 1944.
Victor Leopold Ehrenberg: born Altona, Germany, 1891; studied Architecture at Stuttgart (1911-1912) and Classics and Ancient History at Gottingen (1912-1914), Berlin (1914) and Tubingen, (1919-1920); served in German Army on Western Front, 1914-1918, awarded Iron Cross, 2nd Class, 1914; Dr. phil, 1920; Privatdozent, University of Frankfurt, 1922; Nichtbeamter ausserordentlicher Professor, University of Frankfurt, 1928; Professor of Ancient History, German University, Prague, 1929-1939; emigrated to Britain, 1939, awarded grant by the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning; Classics Master, Carlisle Grammar School, 1941; Lecturer in Ancient History and Greek, King's College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (University of Durham), 1941-1945; Senior Classics Master, Bootham School, York, 1945-1946; Lecturer, later Reader in Ancient History, Bedford College, University of London, 1946-1957; died 1976. Married 1919, Eva Sommer, 2 sons [Sir Geoffrey Rudolph Elton and Prof Lewis Elton]
Major Publications: Die Rechtsidee im fruhen Griechentum, Leipzig, 1921; Ost und West, Brunn, 1935; Alexander and the Greeks, Oxford, 1938; The People of Aristophanes, Oxford 1943; Aspects of the Ancient World, Oxford 1945; Sophocles and Pericles, Oxford, 1954; The Greek State, Oxford 1960; From Solon to Socrates: Greek History and Civilisation during the Sixth and Fifth Centuries BC, London, 1967; numerous articles, book reviews and obituaries.
Robert Wood: born Riverstown Castle, Co. Meath, Ireland, c 1717; travelled extensively in Europe and the Middle East, 1738-1755; under-secretary to William Pitt, 1756; elected MP, 1761; elected member of the Society of Dilettanti, 1763; died 1771. Publications: The Ruins of Palmyra, London, 1753 and The Ruins of Baalbek, 1757.
James Dawkins: born Jamaica, eldest son of Henry Dawkins of Laverstoke, Hampshire; educated at St John's College, Oxford; succeeded to his father's estates, 1744; travelled extensively in Europe and the Middle East, 1742-1751; MP, 1754; died Jamaica, 1757.
John Bouverie: born c 1722, son of Sir Christopher Des Bouveries of London; educated at New College, Oxford; made 3 visits to Italy between 1741 and 1751, and assembed a considerable collection of prints, drawings, engravings, cameos and medals; died at Guzel Hissar, Turkey, 1750, and buried at Smyrna.
Giovanni Battista Borra (1712-1786) was an artist, architect, landscape designer and draughtsman.
The Beaumont Animals' Hospital of the Royal Veterinary College (RVC)was opened in 1933 in Camden as a small animal practice for undergraduate teaching. Building work had started the previous year in 1932. £25,000 came from the will of a wealthy Yorkshire lady - Mrs Sarah Martin Grove-Grady, the daughter of J Beaumont of Huddersfield and the rest of the money (£225,000) was raised, much of it in copper coins given by local people. The hospital was kept open during the Second World War when the rest of the College was evacuated. The small animal referral and equine work moved to the RVC Potters Bar site in 1958. The Beaumont remained in Camden as the RVC's general practice.
The Priory Medical Society was founded in 1890, the first Chairman was Dr Thomas Morton. It was a local medical society with 15 members, all medical practitioners working in the Hampstead area, some members held consultant posts at Hampstead General Hospital and the Children's Hospital, Hampstead. The Society met fortnightly between October and April at members' homes. Each member was required to present a paper, or cases or pathological specimens in each session. The Society's activities were suspended in October 1939, it is not known if it was reformed after the war.
Mary Frances Lucas was born in 1885, the daughter of G J Lucas. She was educated at Eversley, Folkestone and the London (Royal Free Hospital) School of Medicine for Women, graduating MB, BS 1911 and DSc 1938. She was appointed Lecturer in Embryology and Senior Demonstrator in Anatomy at the School in 1914; and became Reader and Head of Department in 1919. She was Professor of Anatomy from 1924-1951; Vice-Dean 1926-1929; Acting Dean 1939-1943; and President from 1957 until her death. She was appointed Emeritus Professor of the University of London, 1951; President of the Medical Women's Federation, 1946-1948 and President of the Anatomical Society, 1949-1951. She married Richard Keene, in 1916 and adopted the surname Lucas Keene in 1917. She died in 1977.
Publications: Practical Anatomy, (1932) Anatomy for Dental Students, (1934);
The British National Committee (BNC) was established to provide for British representation at the International Congresses of Historical Sciences. The first Congress was held in Paris, 1900, followed by Rome, 1903, Berlin 1908. In 1913, the BNC organised the Congress in London, the only International Congress held in Britain.
In 1923, following a conference on historical sciences in Brussels, 1923, the International Committee of Historical Sciences (ICHS) was formed. It was officially chartered in 1926 in Geneva.
The members of the BNC are nominated from accredited constituent bodies which include professional societies and associations representing a range of general and specialist historical interests in Britain (not including Northern Ireland). The Committee is also supported by the majority of British universities (or their History departments) through annual subscriptions, though the universities are not directly represented on the Committee.
The BNC constitution has been amended at various time to take account of the changing structure of the profession. In 1972 the BNC became a committee of the British Academy (The national academy for humanities and social sciences), and in 1980, a number of recently formed societies were added to its constituent membership.
International Committee of Historical Sciences holds an International Congress, meeting every five years in a different city of the world. The BNC, representing historians in Britain, is entitled to send one voting and one non-voting representative to the General Assembly of the Congress which meets immediately before and after each Congress, and on one occasion between Congresses.
Organisation of bilateral conferences with historians in other countries is another task of the BNC. Since the 1950s, these have taken place regularly at two to three year intervals, taking place alternately in Britain and in a partner country.
After 1993, the BNC ceased to be a committee of the British Academy From the 1960s to the 1990s, the BNC secretariat was located at the Institute of Historical Research, London. In 1993, the administration of the BNC was transferred to the Royal Historical Society by the retiring director of the Institute of Historical Research.
Ernest Mitchell, the son of a synagogue cantor from Breslau, Silesia, was rescued by the Red Army and came to England via a Displaced Persons Camp in 1948. His father, Ernst Schampanier is the subject of the document regarding the appointment of a cantor at Breslau synagogue. Edith Rosenthal is his daughter, who died in England in 1972. Suzie Rosenthal, the subject for the application of a commemorative bench for victims of the 'Patria' disaster, is her daughter.
Malvin Warschauer was born in 1871 the son of a timber merchant in a small village in Kanth, near Breslau, Silesia (now Wroclaw, Poland). He was a student at Berlin University from 1890 where he studied oriental languages, Arabic and Syrian and philosophy and became a member, then later president, of the Academic Union for Jewish History and Literature. He also studied at the College of Jewish Learning at Unter den Linden where most of the students were from Eastern Europe, Austria and Hungary. It was during this time that he became a life-long friend of Leo Baeck.
He was an early Zionist and often met with opposition from his rabbinical colleagues over his ideas on the subject. He married Recha Blum in 1904 and had children in 1905 and 1907 respectively. Having been a temporary preacher at the new synagogue in Luetzowstrasse, he became a rabbi in 1906. In 1911 he took over as head of the College of Jewish Learning. He later became the Rabbi of Oranienburgerstrasse. The children having already emigrated to England earlier in the decade, Malvin Warschauer was himself forced to flee and arrived at Croydon airport in January 1939.
His years in England were spent officiating as a guest rabbi, involving himself in work with the considerable refugee community in and around Guildford and writing his memoirs. He died on 27 January 1955.
Little is known about the Neumann family; this German Jewish family was forced into exile in the late 1930s.
Joseph Langland, was born in 1917; educated at University of Iowa gaining a bachelor's degree, 1940 and a master's degree, 1941; was a soldier in the US Army in World War Two, stationed close to Buchenwald shortly after its liberation. He became a poet and published poems including two about Buchenwald and one about Hiroshima. Langland died in 2007.
Anita Lasker was born into a professional Jewish family, one of three sisters (Marianne and Renate). Her father was a lawyer; her mother a fine violinist. They suffered discrimination from 1933 but as their father had fought at the front in the First World War, gaining an Iron Cross, the family felt some degree of immunity. Marianne, the eldest sister, fled to England in 1941. In April 1942, Anita's parents were taken away and are believed to have died at Isbica, near Lublin, in Poland. Having been initially arrested in Breslau for aiding the escape of French forced labourers, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was later able to survive Auschwitz by playing the cello in the Auschwitz prisoners' orchestra. Towards the end of the war the sisters were transferred to Bergen Belsen where they remained for up to a year after liberation. During this time Anita was a witness at the Lüneburg trial where camp guards and Kapos were tried for their war crimes.
Edgar Dreyfus was a banker, following in the tradition of the Dreyfus family, which had a history of involvement in the banking and shipping industries. The Dreyfus house in Paris was one of the first to be occupied by the Gestapo when the Germans occupied the city in 1940. The family, comprising father and mother, Edgar and Yvonne, and their two daughters, Viviane and Christiane, fled to the south of France, staying in Perpignan, Marseille and Cannes.
When the Italians capitulated in 1943 the family went into hiding in Pau and later walked to Spain. They were accompanied by a cousin, Manon Levenvach, who had managed to escape deportation by jumping from a train. She stayed with the Dreyfus family in Spain for the remainder of the war.
Dr Max Dienemann, was born in Posen in 1875; studied at the Jewish theological seminary and the university in Breslau and became Rabbi at Ratibor in Upper Silesia (1903-1919). He then went to Offenbach, where he officiated as Rabbi of the Jewish community from 1920 until shortly before he was compelled to emigrate from Germany in 1939. He is described as being one of the spiritual leaders of the liberal movement in German Judaism and played an active part in uniting the liberal rabbis. Dienemann died in Tel Aviv in 1939.
The collection consists of letters between Frieda Morris' grandmother and father in Poland and her brother and uncle in London. 'M Shire' was Frieda Morris' father's uncle, a staunch Zionist, who attended the first ever Zionist Congress and named his first son Theodor Herzl. Frieda's father came to Great Britain in 1902, and eventually with the help of his uncle Mendel Myer, brought over the rest of the family.
The Youth Aliyah, a branch of the Zionist Movement, was founded with the intention of rescuing Jewish children and young people from hardship. It started its activities in Germany on the eve of the Nazis' rise to power and saved many children who had to leave their families or were orphaned by the Holocaust. It extended its work to include other countries when the need arose, and particularly after the establishment of the State of Israel, looked after many young people entrusted to its care by new immigrant parents already in the country.
Jonni Hirsch was a Jewish 'Mischling', a term used during the Third Reich for a person deemed to have partial Jewish ancestry. He and certain members on the Jewish side family were from Kiel. These papers are evidence of the way in which the lives of Jews in a German city became ever more difficult as a consequence of growing antisemitism. The Hirsch family was an old established Jewish family emanating from Denmark. Jonni Hirsch's grandfather, Wolf Hirsch, was president of the local Jewish community and instrumental in the building of a Kiel synagogue. Jonni Hirsch was imprisoned on 12 November 1938, 2 days after Kristallnacht, and described as a Jew. Little is know about the family after 1938, however in 1957 Jonni Hirsch lived in Kiel and it is believed that his earlier home in Fischerstr was bombed during the war.
Little information exists regarding the administrative history of this collection, although there is a note at the beginning of the list which states that it is by no means comprehensive and that it was created from names discovered in an unidentified card index, the facts of whose deaths were corroborated. The note also states that it was far more difficult to find the names of those doctors who committed suicide or were murdered in the early years of the Nazi era.
The Hebrew Committee of National Liberation was launched in May 1944. Its origins were in the Emergency Committee to save the Jewish People of Europe, which itself had been formed at an Emergency Conference in July 1943. The founder was Hillel Kook (Peter Bergson). The new committee's aims were to continue to agitate for the rescue of Jews in Europe and to struggle against the British in Palestine. It aspired to be something of an alternative to the Jewish Agency.
Reichsführer SS was a special SS rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945. Reichsführer SS was a title from 1925 to 1933 and, after 1934, became the highest rank of the German Schutzstaffel (SS). Reichsführer SS was both a title and a rank. The title of Reichsführer was first created in 1926 by Joseph Berchtold. Berchtold's predecessor, Julius Schreck, never referred to himself as Reichsführer but the title was retroactively applied to him in later years. In 1929, Heinrich Himmler became Reichsführer-SS and referred to himself by his title instead of his regular SS rank. This set the precedent for the Commanding General of the SS to be called Reichsführer-SS. In 1934, Himmler's title became an actual rank after the Night of the Long Knives and from that point on, Reichsführer-SS became the highest rank of the SS and was considered the equivalent of a Generalfeldmarschall in the German Army.