The working life of Museum of London

Thanks to my earlier blog about Museum of London Archaeology’s (http://www.museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk/) research on Regency and Victorian Spitalfields, I had reply from Rick and Roy Glanvill.

We focused on finding the descendents of the people that had occupied the remains of some of the houses we excavated that once stood on Fort, Steward and Duke Street. Rick and his uncle Roy are the descendents of the silk manufacturer James Vernell who lived at 24 Fort Street. During our extensive excavations around the present day market completed a decade ago we uncovered a cesspit that served this property. The cesspit – a brick-lined feature dug in the ground to deposit human waste, rubbish and refuse and covered with a wooden structure called a privy – was filled with large quantities of pipes, glass wine bottles, wine glasses and tumblers, and ceramic dining and tea drinking wares, alongside a host of other bric-a-brac in the mid 1820s. It was clear this happened over a short period of time.

Just some of the boxes of finds found in the cesspit of 24 Fort Street, Spitalfields

A selection of objects laid out from the boxes in the above picture

To understand the lives of the people who lived in these now demolished streets and project this onto the archeological finds, we adopted a genealogical approach to understanding these ’time capusles’ and linking them to the people responsible with throwing them away.

Through using historical sources spread across a range of London archives, in particular the City of London’s Guildhall Library Archive (http://bit.ly/iN3KgM) and the London Metropolitan Archive (http://bit.ly/KftHL), we found that James Vernell and his wife Elisabeth Ive Vernell who occupied 24 Fort Street between 1814-25 were therefore the most likely candidates responsible for the rubbish. 24 Fort Street was one of the more expensive and larger properties to rent on the street during this time. James was described as a silk manufacturer, and we found through the 1816 dated trial of William Lee in the Old Bailey criminal court (t18161030-21 http://bit.ly/m1ZGuj) that he kept stock and silk samples on the ground floor of this two-storied house and employed a clerk. He issued commissions to the poorer journeymen weavers living to the east of this area, especially Brick Lane and Bethnal Green.

Rick and Roy visited our archaeological archive (the LAARC: http://bit.ly/l48mQm), a resource where the finds from all archaeological sites in London are eventually deposited, in order to view the the boxes and boxes of things used by their relations. Both are direct descendents of James’ brother, John Vernell, also a silk manufacturer who lived on neighbouring Steward Street. John and James were highly successful, with James leaving the equivalent of over £800,000 to John upon his death in the 1850s, having spent his last years living in the fashionable Tavistock Square in London’s Bloomsbury.

The pictures below show the results of Rick and Roys recent visit. I feel it is a great example of how detective work across a number of different archives, both archaeological and historical, can be united and bring the past into the present.

Enjoy. P.S you can follow me on Twitter @nigeljeffries

Roy and Ray Glanvill handle their descendent's crockery

Roy and Ray Glanville, with Ray enjoying a pipe...

If you are interested in the Living in Victorian London project undertaken with Alastair Owens http://bit.ly/hfS8xE at the School of Geography at Queen Mary, University of London, then here is a list of outputs to date:

Project website: http://bit.ly/hInshX (needs updating!)

On BBC London’s Inside Out programme: http://bit.ly/7hpm8p (takes you to YouTube site)

Publications:

Owens, A, Jeffries, N, Wehner, K and Featherby, R, 2010, Fragments of  the modern city: material culture and rhythms of everyday life in Victorian London J Victorian Culture 15 (2), 212–225

Owens, A, Jeffries, N, Featherby, R, and Wehner, K, 2010 From the unusual to the banal; the archaeology of everyday life in Victorian London Research Matters 4

Owens, A., Jeffries, N., Hicks, D., Featherby, R. and Wehner, K. (2008) ‘Rematerialising metropolitan histories?: people, places and things in modern London’ in M. Palmer and A. Horning (eds) Crossing Paths, Sharing Tracks: Future Directions for Archaeological Study of post-1550 Britain and Ireland, Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge

The excavations at the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel (RLP05) in London’s East End have yielded a small, but unique, group of pottery and glass relating to the selective clear out of hospital equipment around the 1860s. Excavated from the Bedstead area of the east wing of the Hospital, this adds to the large volume of fascinating disarticulated human and animal bones already found from the old Hospital’s cemetery.

Filled with pharmaceuticals from the dispensary of the hospital, the two glass prescription bottles (see image below) have the embossed text of ‘STOLEN FROM THE LONDON HOSPITAL’ written down the side. This warning ensured that if taken, they could not be refilled and resold: similar warnings on glass from this period are common with companies sometimes prosecuting individuals for illegal reuse.

Glassware from the Royal London Hospital

However, it is the specially commissioned blue transfer-printed whiteware crockery bearing the image of the London Hospital that provides most of the stuff thrown away here. Supplied as a special commission, probably by one of Stoke-on-Trent potteries, it is thought these pots were brought to coincide with the hospitals extension and refurbishment during the 1830s. In addition to the new board room furniture and hospital equipment added, pottery was also purchased for use in the wards. The blue transfer-printed whiteware vessels found were used as wash basins, saucers, plates and jugs but the most well preserved vessels are the sputum mugs (see below image). These spit mugs were used to collect the patient’s phlegm, water was then added to distill its contents which were concealed by a removable funnel….

Sputum mug

Nearly all the commissioned pieces have numbers ranging from 1 to 4 painted on their base – we think this was the individual ward or floor they belonged – to make sure each could be accounted for.  The remaining hospital pottery comprises plain whitewares bedpans and an invalid feeding cup used for serving pap – a mixture of flour or bread and diluted milk – usually to infants.

Ward crockery was necessary as patients to the hospital had to supply their own tea, sugar, and butter and so needed jars to store their food and plates to eat their meals from. It is therefore easy to imagine the many ways in which this pottery could have been broken, not least because running water was not extended beyond the first floor of the hospital until the early 20th century, and therefore boxes of washing up water had to be carried up and downstairs for the nurses to wash the crockery. Any breakages were taken out of the nurse’s wages!

Comparisons can be made between this assemblage and the objects curated by the Royal London Museum with pottery bearing similar images of the Hospital also present. Like the excavated examples, many have also have a number on the base and the range of vessels in their collection includes a teacup and saucer, a butter dish, sugar and soup bowls, and hygiene wares such as a chamber pot and soap dish.

Combining and further researching the Royal London Museum’s with our excavated collection will significantly add to understanding the context of use and the pottery and glass in London’s hospitals during the mid to late Victorian period.

Since I joined the organisation in 1998, much of my work at the Museum of London Archaeology has been focussed on analysing and interpreting the vast quantities of 16th-19th century dated artefacts excavated as part of the redevelopment of the area between London’s Bishopsgate and Spitalfields market (just to the north of Liverpool Street station) during 1994-2005 (modern map).

Much of this material was found during the abandonment of backyard features of a dozen or so houses built during the late 17th/early 18th century. These backyard features, related either to the drainage of the kitchen, yard and guttering (soakaway pits) or the disposal of human and household waste (the privy) were often filled with both organic waste (cess, remains of meals) and rubbish (glass, pottery, pipes, hearth sweepings etc). Each individual feature was quickly filled though the dates when this occurred across these properties ranged between 1820-50.

I’ve used some archaeological jargon – in this context, a ‘feature’ is a hole in the ground that represents some human activity. ‘Assemblage’ is another term that has a specific meaning in archaeology – roughly speaking, it’s a group of artefacts found near each other.

These tightly dated finds assemblages, from properties on what was once Spital Square and Fort Street, Duke Street and Steward Street, London – a neighbourhood mostly demolished between 1920-50 – therefore required a different interpretive response and focus. By employing essentially genealogical approaches, I searched the surviving administrative records for these streets for the period (Land Tax assessments, commercial directories, Sun Life Insurance records, Sewer Rate books and census returns) and worked out the addresses of the properties studied. Once achieved, my attention shifted to finding out more about the people whom lived here at the time when these backyard features were abandoned.

This meshing of finds and documentary evidence – focussed on individual households – provided me with an intimate insight into the lives of many of Spitalfields forgotten residents.

Though this household archaeology approach, aided by using online resources such as the Old Bailey online (www.oldbaileyonline.org) and the The Times newspaper, captured much information, I am interested in finding out more about the following people whose possessions are now curated in our archive. I therefore welcome comments from any descendants of the families listed below! The names of the principal heads of household are given by address(along with the dates of occupation) though we often know the names of their children too.

1. Joseph Graham, Ann Graham and Mark Graham of 24 Fort Street: 1811-25. Silk manufacturers. Joseph died in 1817/8.
2. James Vernell and Elizabeth Ive Vernell of 25 Fort Street: 1813-24. James was a silk manufacturer, his brother John Vernell worked nearby on Steward Street.
3. Thomas Walker of 29 Fort Street: 1831-4. Silk manufacturer.
4. Barnabas Martin and Mary Martin of 29 Fort Street: 1841. Barnabas was a silk manufacturer.
5. William Gilbert of 30 Fort Street: 1830-5. Silk manufacturer. William and his family were long-term residents of Fort Street whom frequently moved between different houses here.
6. Judah Woolf and Rose Woolf of 31 Fort Street: 1871-9. Judah was a general dealer. Part of the Jewish community. London born.
7. Charles Millingen and Sarah (neé Barnet) Millingen of 5 Spital Square: 1847-57. Charles was employed as a umbrella manufacturer and were Ashkenazi Jews. Charles was London born, Sarah from the Bay of Biscay. More information about this family appears on GenPals Cemetery Project.
8. John Reid and Louisa Reid of 21 Spital Square: c1833-45. John was employed as a silk manufacturer. Scottish born.
9. William White and Ann White of 17 Crispin Street: 1841. William was employed as a shoe maker.

I look forward to receiving your comments about these 19th-century Londoners.

Small disclaimer: whilst I am happy to field questions about these specific individuals, or about my research on Fort, Duke, and Steward Street and Spital Square for 1800-50, i cannot field general questions about all family history in Spitalfields, so please keep questions/comments focused.

When visiting an archaeological site anywhere in the world, one of the most common mechanisms used in presenting the past and interpreting the way that people lived is through the numerous examples of the countless broken fragments of pottery found. Unsurprisingly, when my colleagues at the Museum of London Archaeology Service (MoLAS) dig a site in London, the amount of pottery they excavate ends up filling boxes (sometimes numbering into their hundreds….).

Why, however, is so much of this material found? Firstly, pottery is durable and so tends to survive well even when broken, secondly it has been readily available to Londoners since ‘London became London’ after the Roman Conquest of AD 43, and (thirdly) the millions of people whom have cumulatively lived in our city over the last 2000 years all would have used pottery in some shape or form. Think about how many plates, dishes and cups etc that you have already broken, and decided you should throw out or give away. Multiply this against the above factors and you can see how the Museum’s archaeological archive is filled with so much of this stuff.

Given the large volume of these excavated materials then it is little wonder that I represent just one of a number of people whose job it is to deal with either the Roman, Saxon or medieval and later pottery found from London’s archaeological sites. While the fragments I handle date from the later Saxon period in London (generally after AD 950) to later Victorian pottery, I also have colleagues who work on Roman pottery alone. It is a job that excites many (whilst also baffling a few).

At the most basic level of analysis, the identification of pottery is important because accuracy provides the main framework by which we can date the excavated layers, pits, privies, rubbish dumps, buildings etc we find in London (though this is the same for any archaeological site, anywhere in the world).

But how can we be so sure about our identification and our chronologies? We are fortunate that for the medieval period we now know something about where the pottery that sat on Londoner’s tables and their cooking areas was made. Here we have relied on the identification of the kilns and those waster pits around them containing their (broken) products, to match up against the similarly excavated in London. We therefore now know that the white-fired pottery with a green glaze so commonly found in excavations on medieval London was made in Kingston and its immediate environs simply because many of the pottery production centres making these pots have been excavated.

Chronological refinement can also be achieved for the tonnes of pottery found dumped behind London’s medieval wooden waterfront sequences, where dendrochronolgical analysis (tree ring dating), together with other evidence (for example coins), can be used to show when particular types of ceramics where most popular. Put another way this has shown that the products of a particular kiln or a particular style and shape of pottery (for example different shaped jugs) could be present in dumps dated to 14th century but completely absent in those dated earlier or later.

However, there is more to interpreting broken pottery than what I have written above. Different periods require different techniques and responses. This is the case when analysing the pottery dating to the Georgian and Victorian period, the material culture (not just pottery) of which I am particularly interested in. Much of my eight years working for MoLAS has been spent looking at the pottery excavated from sites around Spitalfields market, prior to its present day redevelopment. It is the interpretation of the pottery and other things discarded in quickly abandoned privies between the mid 18th and 19th century that provides the focus of my next blog.