“A Good Deal of Spade Work” – The RCVS Archives Project

In June this year, RCVS Knowledge were thrilled to announce that the Alborada Trust had provided funding for a five year project to catalogue, preserve and digitise the Historic Collection and Archive of the Royal College. Now, five months later, it is time to update you with the progress that has been made so far!

One of the first steps of the project was to employ a qualified Archivist, to oversee the execution of the project, including the cataloguing, recruitment of a digitisation assistant, and development of the digital platform which will provide greater access to the collections.

That Archivist is me!

Lorna, Archivist at RCVS Knowledge

Lorna, Archivist at RCVS Knowledge

I’m Lorna Cahill, and I started working here at RCVS Knowledge six weeks ago. Previously I have worked in the Archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, the Natural History Museum, and Royal Holloway, University of London. I have lots of experience working with material from the 19th century, particularly relating to science and education. So this post is a perfect fit! I am incredibly excited to delve deep into these fascinating collections, and to draw out some of the stories and characters and share them with the public. I hope to regularly update this blog, and the @RCVSKnowledge Twitter feed, with interesting bits and bobs I find along the way. So keep an eye out for those.

Archivist's Desk at RCVS Knowledge

This is where you will find me for the next five years!

So what have I been up to for the past six weeks – and what’s the next step of the project?

Happily for me, my main task thus far is exploring the collection. I need to get an idea of what the collections contain, the context around the material, who the people are that created the papers, and how best to look after them. It didn’t take me long to realise that I would first need boxes. Lots and lots of Archive boxes.

Archive Boxes

Tower of empty Archive boxes ready to house collections

First I took a sample of papers by Connie Ford MRCVS (1912-1998), who worked for the Veterinary Investigation Service for nearly 30 years. She was a specialist in cattle fertility, and I very soon got used to reading a lot about bull testicles and cow abortions (archives work is not always so glamorous!). The research carried out by Ford seems incredibly thorough and there is a great deal of data for me to sift through. However, sometimes it can be rather touching, such as this list of cow abortions. Poor Betty, Shirley and Joyce.

Ford Cow Abortions

Research data from the papers of Connie Ford

The collection I will be focussing on for the near future is that of Major General Sir Frederick Smith MRCVS (1857-1929). Smith served with the Army Veterinary Service during the Second Boer War, and was eventually appointed Director General in 1907. He wrote several veterinary manuals and histories of the veterinary profession, and carried out extensive research. I have just looked through nearly 20 years of correspondence between Smith and Fred Bullock, Secretary of RCVS, which has revealed to me a great deal about Smith’s character. I even found Smith’s prediction, in 1920, that one day I would come along to curate his papers:

Excerpt from Letter from Smith to Fred Bullock, 8 Jan 1920

“I am leaving all my books, papers, notes &c to the College with one or two exceptions. If I live long enough I will index the papers & notes still in M.S, they may save some man a good deal of spade work.”

It has taken 95 years, but finally someone is giving them all the attention they deserve. However, he couldn’t predict that it would be a woman!

Smith’s handwriting is a little challenging to read, so I certainly do have my work cut out for me. But I look forward to spending the next few months with Fred Smith, and helping everyone else get to know him better too.

Lorna

RCVS Archives Project: Next steps

As you will have gathered from the previous blog by our Archivist Lorna, the Archives Project here at RCVS Knowledge is well under way. Whilst Lorna is currently getting to grips with the collections (and Fred Smith’s handwriting) I have been recruited to work on the digital side of things.

IMG_1607a

My name is Adele and since the beginning of January I’ve been working on the project as Archive and Digitisation Assistant. My role is to carry out the digitisation of priority documents within the archive and historical book collection, this includes preparing the material with preservation and repackaging measures, creating the high resolution digital images, writing descriptions and relevant metadata for the scans and uploading them onto an online digital archive. Around this I will also be assisting Lorna with promotion of the project through social media, displays and outreach activities such as talks. Once awareness of our collections grows and the enquiries come flying in I look forward delving into the collections to answer some of these too.

Previously I’ve worked as Archive Trainee at Rambert Dance Company and as the Archive and Special Collections Assistant at University of the Arts, London. Though I’ve worked with digital images within archive collections before- as well as taking on ad hoc digitisation- this project is on a whole new scale for me. I’m so excited to get our online digital archive up and running, it’s great to work in a project with such defined goals and to join at this early stage allowing me to be part of the decision making process. There are certainly many decisions to be made!

The first aspect of my role I looked into was the scanning itself. The library had already purchased a professional high resolution scanner so I was able to get straight on with comparing different settings. We want these scans to be of high quality and available in years to come so we chose to scan into TIFF format as this is uncompressed; it means it is excellent quality and 100% of the data captured during scanning is retained. For our printed text based images we want to our users to be able to search the text within them, from a TIFF file we are able to create a PDF document that we can perform optical character recognition on in order for this to be possible. We were also concerned with how easy it would be to read our images on a screen. After some in house-testing, it was decided that scanning images in greyscale provided more contrast. As the real value in our historical books and journals is the information within them, we made a decision to scan this type of material in greyscale. For images and archive material we will likely be scanning in colour to better represent the unique material context of these documents.

Veterinarian greyscale 75

The Veterinarian scanned in greyscale. Easy to read and a much more efficient file size to store.

Smith letter colour 75

Letter to Frederick Smith. If this were scanned in greyscale would we see that the annotations were made at separate times?

[Edit: These images have been compressed and resized, and do not reflect the quality of the images to be displayed in the digital archive.]

Of course once I had decided how I was going to scan the material, I needed to know what to scan. A priority list has been made by Clare our Head of Library and Information Services in agreement with our funders The Alborada Trust. This was based on demand, what is already accessible online elsewhere and predicted research value. As Lorna is currently in the process of cataloguing the first archive collection, it made the most sense for me to start with our historical book and journal collection and so I am currently working on scanning volumes of The Veterinarian. The Veterinarian, published from 1828 to 1902, was one of the first veterinary journals to be launched and we hold a complete run of the periodical bound by volume. I’m currently digitising the third volume and I can see why it has been chosen as a priority- there are some really interesting case studies and comments on the profession at that time.

The Veterinarian shelves (2)

Volumes of The Veterinarian 1828-1902

Now we have some digitised pages to work with, Lorna and I are trialling some Digital Asset Management systems for the most important part of the process – making the images accessible to you online. We hope to be able to give you an update on this soon.

If you are interested in our collections then follow the hashtag #vetarchives on our twitter account @RCVSKnowledge for some updates, fun discoveries and more.

If you have any questions for the Archives Project team, please email us archives@rcvsknowledge.org

-Adele-

Cataloguing Fred Smith Part 1: Asking questions

What are they

Annotation by Fred Smith in a notebook

Now that over seven months have passed since I started this project – it is time for another update!

Most of my time so far has involved looking closely at all of the archive material relating to Major General Sir Frederick Smith, which is the first stage of cataloguing the collection. I needed to look through all 49 boxes of the papers so that I could get a broad idea of the type of content, the recurring themes, and any existing structure in the collection.

Files in cupboard

The Smith papers had been kept in loose piles in several cupboards here at the RCVS

I created a spreadsheet to record this information, one file at a time, making notes to summarise the contents. This early stage of recording information is very important, as I will rely on this spreadsheet to help me make decisions about how to organise the files, as it would be impractical to get all the actual files out at once to compare them.

The decisions I needed to make relate to the following questions: what does this material record? Why did Smith create this? What aspects of Smith’s life and work does this relate to? When did Smith create this? Does it relate to the items before and after it? Do these items belong together, according to Smith’s original order, or did he mean to keep them separate?

Spreadsheet

Screen cap of my spreadsheet of data

Whilst I recorded the answers to these questions, I needed to try and think like Smith and also think like a potential researcher using these collections. It is impossible for me to inhabit the mind of a long dead Army veterinarian, and it is impossible for me to predict the specific research interests of every future archive user. Therefore I needed to ensure I was two things – conscientious and consistent.

Being conscientious means I accurately record the condition and situation in which I found the material.  There are ‘clues’ that Smith left for me: changes in his handwriting; evidence of papers that were stapled or glued together, but separated over time. However, I must not automatically assume material is connected. Sometimes I made note that two items might be connected, but it is impossible to be sure. If I wrongly grouped things together, a researcher may infer a shared context between the items. For example, a photograph of a battlefield stored between a letter from an ex-comrade of Smith’s, and undated manuscript notes about the Boer War. It is either possible that the photograph was sent to Smith by his friend, or that he used the photograph to inform his notes. Or neither. Or both! I cannot know, but if I maintain the photograph’s proximity to the other documents, a future researcher can make that decision for themselves. Similarly, I made sure I kept together things that definitely relate to each other, as a loose photograph of an anonymous battlefield loses its context once separated from the letter and notes.

Nervous system

Files of loose papers with no obvious order were kept as they were found whenever possible

Consistency is also key – both in terms of what I decided a document is about, and the words I used to describe it. Future researchers can then trust my catalogue to point them to everything they want, and only what they want. For example, there are letters in which Smith states his views on how veterinary surgeons are perceived compared to medical doctors. In my spreadsheet, I used words and phrases that describe the subject, e.g. “status of veterinary profession”, and continued to use that exact phrase when Smith writes about it again. Ideal words and phrases are broad enough to be conceivably used by a researcher as a search term in the catalogue. However, if they are too broad, e.g “medicine” they will apply to so many items they will be effectively useless at narrowing down results. Fortunately, Smith had already organised his papers, and annotated many notes and articles with a clear subject title, and so I was able to use his own terminology whenever appropriate.

Put with physiology files

“Put with Physiology files” – Smith made annotations on his papers, which helped him organise his files, and also left instructions for a future biographer to find

Once I had finished my spreadsheet of 299 files of papers, I was ready to move onto the next stage – arrangement into a hierarchy – which I will discuss in my next blog post.

Boxes in cupboard

The papers have been re-housed in acid free archive boxes, to prevent any further damage

Cataloguing Fred Smith Part 2: Order from chaos

In my previous blog post about cataloguing Fred Smith, I had got as far as a huge database of information about all of the papers in the collection. In this post I will describe the next stage of the process – archival arrangement.

An archivist’s job, when making historic material more accessible to researchers, is to provide information about the documents which they have gained from looking at the collection as a whole. Whilst going through the material with such close attention, I learned a great deal about Smith’s life, working habits, and the subjects that particularly interested him. This has helped to inform my ideas about the best way to organise his papers, in a way that accurately reflects how Smith worked. I began to think about some possible divisions I could make, judging from Smith’s filing. For example, he kept separate files of articles, manuscript notes and newspaper cuttings about each system of the equine body. These are most likely related to his book Veterinary Physiology, but were probably also consulted and added to as he wrote numerous articles about more specific physiological subjects. Therefore I decided that all research notes for physiological matters should be kept together.

When thinking about all this material together, it is much easier to work with physical pieces of paper. So I printed out my database and cut apart each row to represent a file.

Pile of slips

My database of information printed out, with each slip representing a separate file of papers.

Laying out the slips

The slips filled a table in one of our meeting rooms – 299 in total!

Adele and I then divided my slips up into piles for each of my initial divisions.

Chair for each series

Dividing the slips into separate ‘series’ of related content.

Anything that didn’t obviously fit into one of these piles, I looked at again to get a better idea. I often find that it is necessary to make initial decisions and then see how they fit the material, and then make new decisions as a result. It is often not until you have an idea in mind, and you try to apply that in practice, either successfully or not, that you can move forward.

Once I was happy with my first collection of seven separate piles, I set about sub-dividing the largest ones. I was then heading towards proper archival arrangement.

Whiteboard arrangement

Subdividing the groups of files, to show more specific themes.

Archival arrangement is a method of organising archive documents so that a researcher can understand from the catalogue how each item relates to other items, the historical context in which it was created, and which specific items are relevant to their interests. Usually this arrangement is structured in a hierarchy, with a level representing the whole collection at the top, and then divided down into lower levels which represent smaller subdivisions, until at the bottom you have a level with single items, such as one letter or notebook. When this hierarchy is put into a catalogue, the archivist writes descriptions at each level, providing information with the appropriate amount of detail i.e. from the general to the specific.

CALM Tree structure

Screen-cap of the hierarchical ‘tree’ demonstrating the structure of the collection.

In the above example, the whole collection is about Frederick Smith, so at the top level I will describe what the collection contains as a whole, e.g. papers relating to Smith’s working life, in the Army Veterinary Service and as a published author, and his interaction with the veterinary profession. I have now decided to divide the collection into three discrete parts: research notes Smith accumulated for his various published books and articles; papers which were created in the course of Smith’s career as a veterinarian and as part of the Armed services; and correspondence between Smith and various other individuals. These are all divided further, e.g. within the research notes section, the papers are divided again into five ‘series’, which relate to broad subject areas Smith researched, such as military history. This series has been divided again into two ‘sub-series’: one relating to the work of army veterinarians, and the other relating to all other aspects of military activities. Within these sub-series there are multiple separate files, which were kept as files by Smith himself, and so will not be broken up. I will describe each file in detail on the catalogue, using the keywords I entered in the database. This will enable researchers to quickly find any files relevant to their interests, but from the hierarchy they can see that this file is one of several on a broader topic, and so they may want to browse through the related files. Likewise, a researcher may use a broad term for their searching, and their results may find ‘series’ level records. They will then be able to see that within the series, there are many more specific files, and being able to eliminate some files will save them valuable time. Also, if a researcher does not have to look through files unrelated to their project, it means the fragile documents are not unnecessarily handled, which also ensures better long term preservation of the material.

Now that I have created my hierarchy structure, my next few months will be spent describing the files in detail, and adding this information to the catalogue. I will talk about archival description in a third blog post in the near future.

In the mean time, if you would like to know more about Frederick Smith’s papers, please do not hesitate to contact us here at RCVS Knowledge.

Cataloguing Fred Smith Part 3: Say what you see

After completing the listing and arranging of the Frederick Smith collection, I now move onto the nitty gritty of archive work – writing descriptions. You can see the descriptions I’ve completed so far on our newly launched archive catalogue, and I have linked to specific records on the catalogue as examples below.

cataloguehome

Homepage of our online archive catalogue

This stage essentially involves describing the material to an appropriate level of detail, in order to best inform researchers what the items are before they are fished out of storage for them to see.

As with the previous two stages, there is no one correct way of describing archives – but there are rules to follow. The international standard for archival description has been drawn up to promote consistency when searching across multiple collections around the world. However, many archive repositories also have their own house rules to better suit their unique collections.

The essential rule is to describe from the general to the specific. If something is true for every item of the collection, then that should be mentioned at the highest level of the hierarchy (Fonds), if something is only true for one batch of files within a series, it should be mentioned at series level. If some sections of material are comprised of very varied files, then the description of the section would probably be brief (e.g. FS/2), and more detail added as you described smaller batches within it (e.g. FS/2/2/2). You should avoid repeating information unnecessarily, but as most catalogues are now accessed online, you do not know that a researcher who finds a description of a specific file will necessarily read the descriptions at higher levels of the hierarchy. Therefore some repetition of essential contextual information can be helpful.

gentospec

The Smith collection in a hierarchy structure

It is important to be concise in description, as the researchers really want to spend as much of their time as possible reading the actual material, rather than just descriptions of it. An archivist should also avoid copying the content of the material (unless you want to include a formal transcription of the text). This may sound obvious, but it can be a challenge to summarise a letter rather than copy it. For example, when trying to find the best way to phrase an argument put forth in a letter, it will often seem easier and quicker to directly quote the author! This is also the case for lists of names or places etc.

listofnames

FS/3/1/4/58 “I now have to deal with the following:- Moses of Palermo…” Smith lists future research subjects.

It is useful to include as many names of individuals as possible, to make it more likely that your material is found in an online search. However, you do not want to mislead researchers into thinking the papers include a wealth of information on Joe Bloggs, when actually his name is one of many on a list drawn up by one correspondent to another, as a suggestion of potentially interesting authors to read! Another example is this draft letter [FS/3/1/13/50], in which Smith is asking about the existence of any portrait of Bracy Clark. It seems that Smith never successfully found one, and so any person searching online for a long lost Clark portrait would be misled by a description of this letter as discussing ‘a portrait of Bracy Clark’. Instead I have tried to make it clear that Smith himself is struggling to find one. People can travel a long way to visit archive repositories, and so you do not want someone to have flown from Australia to the UK in vain!

Another simple rule, but sometimes very difficult to follow, is to not use qualitative language to describe the material. You may find a beautiful sketch on the back of a letter, or a hilarious account of a meeting in a diary, but you should not use words such as ‘beautiful’ or ‘hilarious’. Even seemingly harmless words such as ‘interesting’ or ‘simple’ are too subjective. Archivists should stick to the facts in the catalogue, and use outlets such as Twitter or blogs to highlight material they think is particularly wonderful. However, it is useful to describe quantities if possible – again to avoid misleading a researcher into thinking a file is stuffed full of notes on a subject, when actually there are only brief mentions in  one or two letters. [e.g. FS/2/2/2/1/8]

liverart

FS/2/2/2/1/1 These paintings of the liver from Smith’s case notes are, in my opinion, beautiful. But that’s definitely not something everyone would agree with!

As the title of this blog post suggests, a simple rule of thumb is to say what you see – no more, no less. However, sometimes the archivist needs to do a bit of speculation in order to better describe the material. For example, this letter [FS/3/1/3/11], which has been dated by Smith as 24th March 1911. Judging by the content of the letter, it seems to make more sense amongst letters from March 1912, and so I assume Smith accidentally wrote the wrong year. (It happens to the best of us!)

I have also tried to include the modern names of locations, if they have changed since the time the material was created. For example, Smith worked in Bengaluru, India in the 1880s, but at the time it was referred to by the British forces as ‘Bangalore’. It is possible that a researcher would use either name when searching, so both are included in records such this [FS/2/2/2/1/1].

Whilst cataloguing Smith’s correspondence, I noticed that he referred to consulting very old manuscripts at the British Museum. Of course, since Smith’s time, the British Library has been established, and much of the historical manuscript collection has moved there. I mention in the catalogue that these sources are in a new location, in order to hopefully prevent someone searching for material in the wrong place! [FS/3/1/2]

bm-slip

FS/3/1/2/2 Reader request slip from a research visit to the British Museum in 1911 – this book is now at the British Library

Finally, I add comments if I notice that something is obviously missing, or badly damaged, so that some unfortunate researcher doesn’t get the blame for it at a later date.

The wonderful thing about cataloguing online is that it is never set in stone. As I continue to explore the collections here at RCVS, and speak to the people who will use them, I’ll learn new things about Smith’s work, and the veterinary profession as a whole. I can add this further information to the catalogue at any time, and continue to improve the descriptions.

So please take a look at the catalogue, and let me know what you think!

Digital Collections website is live!

After months of development and tweaking, I am now very happy to show the world our fantastic new Digital Collections website!

My most recent blog posts have described the cataloguing process – with the end result of the online archive catalogue. The Digital Collections site serves the other main aim of the RCVS Vet History Project – digitising our historic material and making it available for everyone to see, from anywhere in the world.

We will be adding more and more content to the site as the project continues, but over 150 works, dating from 1613 to 1912, are currently published. These include original watercolours, photographs, letters and periodicals.

The homepage of the new Digital Collections website

You can visit the live site now at http://www.rcvsvethistory.org/

If you want to know a little bit more about how we got here – this is the story so far…

When I started at RCVS Knowledge in October 2015, there already was a Digital Archive website, which displayed some of the oldest veterinary periodicals in our collections. Whilst this site was suited to the format of periodicals, I could see that it would not work for archive material, such as letters or manuscript notes.

Archive material can be challenging to share online, as you usually need more information about the items before you can understand them. For example, when reading a letter between two individuals, they may refer to each other only by first name, talk about places such as ‘the office’, or ‘the hospital’, or just write ‘Saturday’ for the date. The archivist of a collection will know which people and places are being referred to, and at least an approximate date the letter was written. If this information (or metadata) can be displayed alongside the images, then that provides some context for the researcher. Additionally, if the metadata is searchable, this will help researchers find the material more easily in the first place.

Letter to Fred Bullock from Frederick Smith, 1912 – with final paragraph written up the side

Quite a lot of archive material is also handwritten, which presents another difficulty. Not only can the writing be hard to decipher, it can be written at right angles, in different colours, and sentences can carry on over two pages. To make this as easy to read as possible, you need high resolution, colour images that you can easily rotate and zoom, and quickly navigate between.

Last year, Adele and I began a search for existing platforms that met our requirements for image display. We looked at other digital archive websites, but discovered that the choice seemed to be between complicated multi-functional software for huge organisations, or simple online galleries, better suited to photography and online stores. A third option was to build something ourselves, using open-source software, and I loved the look and functionality of the Universal Viewer tool, used by the Wellcome Library, Bodleian Library and British Library. We are on a slightly smaller scale than these institutions, but our needs were the same! So we contacted Digirati, the developers of the UV, and they worked with us to create a modification of the Viewer, and invited us to take part in the pilot of Wellcome’s Digital Library Cloud Services platform.

Screenshot of the Universal Viewer displaying a close up zoom of a manuscript letter.

The Universal Viewer also allows us to link from the images of the material to the library or archive catalogue record. I knew that I wanted users of the Digital Collections website to easily see and understand how one archive item relates to others in the collection. This is helped by linking to the archive catalogue, but we have also included a content ‘tree’ on the website, which users can expand and collapse to see what is on the whole site quickly and easily.

Underneath each Universal Viewer gallery, you can see the location of the currently displayed item within a tree of all content on the website. By expanding and collapsing the branches, you can quickly navigate to other items

As well as providing access, we wanted to encourage engagement between us and users of the site. You can share content by embedding individual Universal Viewer galleries on social media, and contribute additional knowledge and insight by suggesting your own tags.

We hope RCVS Vet History Digital Collections can become an active hub for interaction between veterinarians, historians and the general public eager to learn more about the fascinating past of the profession.

So take a look and let me know what you think! If you would like to be notified of major updates to content, please sign up to the mailing list here.

Introducing Helena!

Hi, my name is Helena and I am the new Archive and Digitisation assistant. My role, like Adele’s before me, is to assist in the digitisation and online accessibility of documents within the archive and historical book collection.  I hope to one day become a fully qualified archivist so this role is a wonderful opportunity for me and a step towards that dream. I have recently been lucky enough to be accepted onto the Archives Management MA programme at UCL; so it’s been an exciting couple of months for me. Previously I have been a volunteer in the Stanley Kubrick archives at UAL and I have also volunteered my time with conservation staff at the Royal Museums of Greenwich.

Helena, in the RCVS Knowledge office

You are probably now aware that the website on which you can browse through these collections (hundreds and hundreds of years of veterinary history!) is now live. There are so many interesting and weird and wonderful artworks, letters, and articles to delve into. I’ve read about subjects ranging from singing to hogs to the medical properties of Marshmallow.

The medical properties of marshmallow and liquorice, from ‘The Veterinarian’ Volume 4, Issue 1, January 1831

It’s fascinating to be a part of helping to make this history more accessible and to work with varied material.  For example, Frederick Smith’s Boer War letters, even though tricky to read, have been insightful personal accounts into wartime conditions. The website seems to give them a new lease of life, and with the Universal Viewer, you can view the handwriting in amazing detail. A selection of the letters are currently being transcribed. I think the hardest thing for me is to not stop to read too much and get distracted! So far I am finding it a captivating and enjoyable task.

Letter from Smith to his wife Mary Ann, from North of the Tugela River, South Africa, 22 January 1900 [FS/2/2/4/2/8]

Personally my favourite material is the Edward Mayhew watercolour collection – though the artworks detail many unfortunate circumstances, and sometimes his artwork depicting disease and veterinary practice is not for the squeamish!

‘Shyers’ by Edward Mayhew [EM/1/2/1]

There is a great deal more to come and more decisions to be made on what to scan. You can also follow the highlights of the collection on Twitter and Facebook where we regularly post updates, explain the functionality and features, and sometimes ask questions for readers to try and help us answer. Most recently we have been stumped with what the disease ‘Chewgore’ could be, as mentioned in the journal ‘The Veterinarian’, the writers are perplexed themselves.

The Chewgore in Sheep, from ‘The Veterinarian’ Volume 3, Issue 6, June 1830

Please let us know what you think! We value your feedback on your experience with the site. Feel free to join in with tasks like suggesting tags to enhance the searching the collection for other readers. We may one day be able to search within the actual text of printed works with OCR (optical character recognition) technology; though we will keep you posted on this.

I am hoping to get more involved with promoting the works that I interact with; I will post about my unusual and interesting finds as I scan my way through the collections. The site is filling up fast so I know we won’t be short of things to talk about.

If you are interested, then don’t hesitate to visit the site here. To make sure you don’t miss any of the highlights of the collection, follow our Facebook Page, Twitter account @RCVSKnowledge and also follow the hashtag #vetarchives.

Happy 160th Birthday Fred Smith!

Portrait of Fred Smith (with some minor alterations) [FS/2/1/6]

Today, 19th April, marks 160 years since the birth of Frederick Smith in 1857. I’m going to take this opportunity to tell you a bit more about the man, and what I like about him, after spending over a year working with his papers.

Potted History of Smith

Smith was born in Hull, in 1857, and after his father died in India when Smith was aged 10, his education was paid for by the Royal Patriotic Fund. He chose to study to veterinary science, not because of a particular interest in animals, but as a route to joining the armed services.

After graduating from the Royal Veterinary College in 1876, Smith served as an army veterinarian in India from 1878-1885. He was Professor at the Army Veterinary School in Aldershot from 1886-1893, and then returned to regimental duty at Woolwich, in Sudan and in South Africa during the Second Anglo-Boer War. In 1903 he was appointed Principal Veterinary Officer in South Africa, and on return to Britain in 1905, PVO Eastern Command. Appointed Director General of the Army Veterinary Service in 1907, he then retired as a Major General in 1910. He twice briefly returned to the War Office during the Great War, and was knighted in 1918.

Between his military service, Smith was a prolific writer producing some 49 veterinary articles and books including A Manual of Veterinary Physiology, which ran to five editions, and a number of histories of the profession including his four volume work The Early History of Veterinary Literature.

Annotations from the past

Smith was not only a thorough and enthusiastic historian of his profession – but also of himself. I have mentioned in previous blog posts, that he annotated a great deal of his papers before they were deposited at the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. This has meant that I often feel like Smith is directly speaking to me as I catalogue his papers – ninety years on from when we wrote his messages.

An example of these explanatory annotations is found on Smith’s ‘Scheme of Work’:

Tablet of work to be done and subjects to be studied, drawn up in 1886 [FS/2/1/1/2]

This framed ceramic tablet was found in an envelope labelled ‘Original scheme of work drawn up in 1886 and followed for years’. Some of the subjects listed for Smith to investigate include ‘Digestion Experiments’, ‘Describe the Histology of Elephant Skin’, ‘Work out Glanders’ and ‘Make a Urine Bag’. It seems that Smith’s curiosity and desire for knowledge knew no bounds. Smith was undeniably a workaholic and often mentions in letters the long hours he works. He did go on to study and publish papers on most of these subjects, and only in the last few months before his death did he really slow down.

Insights into character

The reason behind this work ethic may have been a fear of falling behind, or running out of time. He wrote in a letter to Henry Gray, a fellow veterinary surgeon,  on the subject of writing his book ‘Veterinary History of the War in South Africa’:

“I have been at ‘the War’ for months; it is only recently that I have been able to get ahead of the printer, but I continue to give it about ten hours a day, for I look up everything. I am compelled, owing to my limitations, to concentrate. I think of nothing else and do nothing else than the matter in hand.”

The ‘limitations’ to which Smith refers, are his perceived academic failings, which he often mentions in his letters. However, Smith is rarely guilty of false modesty, and has kept many examples of praise from his peers amongst his papers. But I suspect this is not just a case of feeling pleased with himself. He always seems grateful to those who have helped him along the way, and is clearly moved by words of support.

I was touched by this annotated photograph in his collection:

Photograph of Smith (second from left) being met by Sir Evelyn Wood (third from left) [FS/2/1/3/1]

The accompanying envelope was labelled:

“A postcard containing a photograph of Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood meeting me outside St James’s Palace after my Presentation on appointment as Director General of the Army Veterinary Service, 1907. The photograph is fading rapidly (I think it must have been taken by an amateur) but the kind thought which prompted him to come specially to the Palace to meet me is for ever permanent. F.S. July 1927”

Views to the future

Over the past year or so, I have grown to greatly admire Fred Smith, and enjoy the insights into his character the project has provided. Although we share very little in common, when it comes to political views or temperament, I share Smith’s fascination with history, and awareness of our place in it. Smith often thought about how the world was changing, and in many ways advancing, as can be seen in this letter to Fred Bullock, Secretary of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, in July 1923:

“Am glad to hear that the whooping cough is running its course correctly. How we shall be laughed at 100 years hence for tolerating this pest!”

Smith foresaw whooping cough being easily treated within the next 100 years, and in fact a vaccine was developed in the 1940s, not long after his death. What Smith did not foresee, was another increase in deaths by whooping cough 40 years after that, due to a mythical connection between the vaccine and encephalopathy which resulted in people refusing immunisation. Our generation is certainly in no position to laugh at those who came before us – and could still stand to learn more from them.

I do not know whether Smith could have ever predicted how people would see his work today, nearly 90 years after his death. So far we have uploaded nearly 200 works from Smith’s collection to our Digital Collections website, which can be accessed instantly, and for free, anywhere in the world. As Smith had to write a letter to the RCVS Secretary, in order to arrange a time to speak on the telephone, I feel sure he would be amazed and excited by these developments.

So birthday cheers to Fred! May your legacy continue for centuries more!

Cataloguing the Correspondence of Henry Gray

As the RCVS Knowledge Archives and Digitisation assistant, my main duties are to scan the historical material, upload it to our Digital Collections website and take part in the promotion of the collection. In recent months, I have worked on a side project: cataloguing the personal correspondence and research papers of veterinary surgeon Henry Gray (1865-1939).

One of the most enjoyable parts of cataloguing Henry Gray’s material is not just the insights into past veterinary practice, but also the veterinary surgeons behind that practice. I spend one day a week delving into his professional and personal life; building up a picture of his character, and his ideals, through the correspondence he received from his peers.

Portrait of Henry Gray

Henry Gray qualified from the London Veterinary College in 1885 and set up a practice in Kensington on Earls Court Road (pictured below), though sadly this original facade no longer exists.

Henry Gray pictured in front of his surgery in Kensington

Henry Gray’s daughter bequeathed his materials to the RCVS in 1955 and now I get the satisfying task of reading, cataloguing and ordering his letters, postcards, research, and notes. It’s a fascinating insight to the work of a veterinary surgeon in the early 20th century and through these letters, I get detailed opinions from Gray’s peers regarding the state of the veterinary profession. I also find out about the diseases they were researching at the time. There is also correspondence from doctors studying human medicine,  because there was often cross-over between human and animal disease, Henry Gray would consult the work of doctors and vice versa.

There aren’t many letters in Gray’s own hand and there is little biographical information about him, but I still build up a strong picture of his character from the letters he received. Gray was described as ‘pugnacious’ and, in letters written to him, his friends would often challenge him on his critical nature. What I admire most about this man was his very clear passion for his profession and his concern for the treatment of animals. He was not only relied upon for his expert opinion on animal treatments, but he was also an avid writer. Gray’s main correspondent was E. Wallis Hoare, the editor of ‘Veterinary News’, who relied upon Gray’s research and writing as content for the journal. Gray also wrote his own papers and was an extremely busy and dedicated man, eventually becoming the editor of the ‘Veterinary News’ himself. Gray was widely read, multilingual, and translated important veterinary works from French and German to English for his peers. Gray was known to be fond of saying:

Gray held this belief in high esteem and from what I have found, he had a real thirst for knowledge and shared it with his peers as often as he was able.

The breadth of topics he researched, and the topics that interested him, seems exhaustive to me –  though he did specialise. Gray became an expert on birds and established one of the first practices that specialised in small animals. He donated some very beautiful books to the library here at RCVS, my favourite is pictured below.

The Speaking Parrots by Dr. Karl Russ (1884)

One of the most surprising things, at least to me, is that vets did not feel respected. Gray’s main correspondents were incredibly dissatisfied with the state of the profession. Gray and Hoare were forward-thinking men who were interested in the progress of veterinary science and education, though Hoare was so dismayed by the men already within the profession, he often discouraged people to enter it. Hoare believed that their work made a better hobby than a living. I have found some quotes in the letters that convey some of the feeling of the time.

“Had I been a Solicitor or Doctor an Engineer or a Tradesman etc – I should have been married ages ago but a horse doctor, a dog doctor … is no catch”

– A. Cholet

The above quote appears in the letter pictured below (which includes a match making request!):

Other notable comments include:

“I am proud of having been an apothecary and medical man, and nearly always ashamed of being a veterinary surgeon”

– H. Leeney

The RCVS was often a favourite topic in the letters and got its fair share of criticism; mainly concerning the education of veterinary surgeons. One remark in a letter questioned why exams for doctors were days long whilst the RVC exam was over in a few hours.  Another comment concerned the females of the profession – specifically Aleen Cust. E. Hoare, who was incredibly progressive, was very outspoken about the attitudes of the council. He writes in one letter:

“ The Lady V.S in Roscommon; I hope to get her to write some articles and show the antiquated members of the council what a woman can do…”

– E. Hoare

I really admire the degree to which these men cared about their work and the reputation of the profession as a whole.

Another significant aspect of cataloguing this collection concerned the time period that most of the letters were written, which was during the First World War. I’ve read firsthand accounts of how the army treated the veterinary surgeons trying to care for their horses. The image below is a section of a letter written by H. Leeney; he rebukes Gray for his critical ways,  but also goes in to detail about working for the army.

There are also passing comments within the letters on major events of the time, such as the sinking of the Lusitania, and these are juxtaposed with the cases they are tackling in their own practices (away from the fighting). My favourite part of working with Gray’s personal archive is that are many facets to the collection. The material is not all clinical and scientific. I also learn about the obstacles the vets faced due to the fact that certain technology was not available. The image below is a snippet of a letter from E. Hoare where he describes his troubles chloroforming a horse.

“I tried chloroforming standing on a big horse last Monday and shall not attempt it again”

– E . Hoare

Throughout this project I  am finding out a great deal about the veterinary profession. Getting to know Gray (and his peers) has helped me understand the challenges and similar circumstances they faced, and how this compares to the present day. It definitely continues to strike me how the members of this profession never wish to stop learning, their intellectual natures and how innovative they continue to be, and often have to be. I am very much looking forward to putting this collection online! Please follow on Instagram where we add our favourite finds from the archives and historical collections.

Helena

The Quarterly Journal of Veterinary Science in India and Army Management

‘The Quarterly Journal of Veterinary Science in India and Army Animal Management’

We have recently uploaded our collection of ‘The Quarterly Journal of Veterinary Science in India and Army Animal Management’. In our Library we hold all eight volumes and the specimen issue.

This Quarterly Journal was the very first British veterinary periodical to be devoted to India. We are actually quite lucky to hold these surviving volumes as copies are scarce.

Specimen issue of ‘Quarterly Journal of Veterinary Science in India and Army Animal Management’. Published in 1882

Fred Smith (who you can read about here) contributed to the journal by providing noteworthy papers on hygiene and diseases along with clinical records.  Smith writes about the ‘The Quarterly Journal of Veterinary Science in India and Army Animal Management’ in his own autobiography, which is an interesting insight into the struggles the journal went through. Smith had to go to great lengths in order for it to be published. At one point in his autobiography Smith writes; “I had to live in the printing office while the Journal was being printed”. The first printer and publisher Smith worked with (who could read English but not speak it) died before the first volume managed to be distributed.

The journal did not make a profit at any time during its print run and Smith and the founding editor John Henry Steel would have to use their own funds to cover its expense.

“We received no help from home. I do not think we had a single English Subscriber … It was a bold and expensive venture and I was glad to be relieved of the financial burden”

In 1885 Smith severed his ties to India as he was invalided back to England and withdrew from co-editorship in 1887 leaving Steel to carry on alone until his death in 1891.  With Steel’s death the Quarterly Journal also met its demise.

The last editorial of John Henry Steel entitled ‘Cui Bono’. Steel passed away in January 1891

It’s rare to find out some of the history behind a journal, how it came to be and the obstacles it faced. It’s provided me with a deeper appreciation of the content and certainly explained the continuity errors which, at times, frustrated me during the digitisation process. Now I’m very much impressed by Smith and Steel’s work. Especially Steel; who wrote throughout his serious illness. He shouldered the journal largely alone. You can find out more about this dedicated man, in this blog post here including further insights into this pioneering periodical.

Smith believed the journal was of equal interest to an English audience as it was to an Indian one. I hope those interested in veterinary history and literature will enjoy reading the volumes now.

As you can see the image below features content from the periodical  including work  by T. J. Symonds: ‘Illustrations of Indian materia medica. If you are interested in seeing more of these gorgeous full coloured illustrations and also finding out more about their creator please click the link above.

You can read the volumes of ‘The Quarterly Journal of Veterinary Science in India and Army Animal Management’ on our Digital Collections website here

Selection of diagrams and illustrations featured inside the periodical.