Inside the Museum of London

The Inspiring London space is currently home to a display of photographic work by acclaimed photographer Dorothy Bohm. The display is called Women in Focus and the title is pretty self explanatory. We have lots of great work by Dorothy in the collection and this display gave us a good excuse to use her approach as inspiration for our own creativity.

To do this, we roped in the skills of the talented and wonderfully fizzy artist, Edori Fertig. Not only is Edori an artist in her own right but she also knows Dorothy. They met through her daughter, curator Monica Bohm-Ducen when Edori displayed her work in an exhibition about Jewish female identity called the Rubies and Rebels. So, a good person to introduce us to Dorothy. And also someone it’s great to be around. Edori is part of a collective called the Skip Sisters, so named because they make art from things they collect from skips. It’s so much fun. One thing she makes is oyster card wallets, and it was these we made ourselves on Tuesday.

Layered and layered by participant Cesearea

Edori took us around the exhibition, and showed us that there are some key principals in all of Dorothy’s work. We were encouraged to find these in the work on show in Women in Focus. Firstly, the colour red.

Secondly, the voyeur, or onlooker. This is either a person, or something more subtle like a face on a poster, or within another image. In the photograph below the onlooker is almost hidden. Can you see her?

And finally, layers.

Can you see how these were interpreted and deconstructed in the response work below? That’s the high brow bit. The less high brow bit is how much fun we had making oyster card holders!

London re-envisaged

Making links to when women were fighting to be in focus

The above wallet uses material from our collection relating to the suffragette campaign. Making links to when women were fighting to be in focus, it reads (from right side to left):

Special Note!!

The bearer of this ticket is called a Suffragette
Who tries her best the sexes to reverse
She claims to have a grievance
Which she’s nursing hard, you bet,
What a pity she has NOTHING ELSE to NURSE.

IT ALSO ENTITLES HER TO PASS OUT of her own house and neglect her domestic duties, leaving them to the tender mercies of anyone, while she is trying to get the management of the country INTO HER “CAPABLE HANDS” ? WHEN, HEAVEN HELP US!!

IT ALSO ENTITLES HER, at any moment, to ventilate her grievances, and to turn on HER GAS, but she must not SUFFER-A-JET to escape for more than six hours at a time for fear of asphyxiating her audience.

THIS SEASON TICKET ALSO ENTITLES HER to seize-on every opportunity to NURSE her grievances.

Playing with edges

Made by Sergei

Cataloguing the Museum’s collection of medieval pilgrim badges for Collections Online has been a great opportunity for me to look really closely at our objects and sometimes to find out that items are not at all what they appear to be. A great example recently has been a tiny little badge in the shape of a comb.

This little badge (no. 8737) was catalogued in 1908 as a pilgrim badge of St Blaise with the following entry: ‘Blaise, Saint; a comb, with double row of teeth, divided by a foliated bar in the centre; 13th-14th century’. It was found at Dowgate Hill near the River Thames in the City of London.

These comb badges were thought to relate to St Blaise as he had been martyred in the 4th century by being pulled apart by iron combs (before being beheaded). Some of the relics of St Blaise were kept at Canterbury Cathedral in a shrine by the high altar so it was thought that comb badges may have been brought by pilgrims visiting Canterbury.

While I was cataloguing this badge I double-checked its old record card, which had a better picture than the one in the 1908 catalogue. I noticed something rather odd about the decoration in the centre. What had been described as a ‘foliated bar’ (i.e. a band of foliage such as leaves) seemed to be a line of four phalluses joined by a wavy line. This was very intriguing. As I wasn’t sure whether to trust the photograph I went to the store to look at the object itself. When I peered at the object I realised the photo was correct – there were no leaves on the object, just phalluses.

So what did this mean? Clearly this badge could not have been a saintly souvenir. I knew that we had a couple of so-called ‘sexual’ or ‘erotic’ badges in our collection (one depicting a penis inside a purse for example). Many bawdy badges have been found on the Continent in places like the Netherlands and France showing all kinds of ‘sexual’ imagery but this type of thing is rare in London. In a catalogue of medieval Dutch badges I discovered a comb badge decorated with a copulating couple so obviously the link between combs and sex was not unknown in the medieval period. It was exciting to think that I had re-identified a badge from our collections.

I consulted with a colleague to see what he thought of the discovery. He suggested that it would be worth investigating whether the word for ‘comb’ in the medieval period had a naughty double-meaning. He thought that it might work as a pun in medieval French. Luckily I have a contact who is an expert on medieval French and passed the idea by him. He confirmed that the word ‘penil’ in Anglo-Norman (the type of medieval French introduced into England by the Normans in 1066) meant both ‘little comb’ and ‘penis’, ‘pubes’ or ‘groin’. There is an Anglo-Norman dictionary online where you can check this. He thought it very likely that the pun would still have been in use in medieval London in the 14th and 15th century. However, we don’t know for sure that our comb badge represents this double meaning – at the moment it is just an interesting possibility.

So why would someone wear a badge like this? It may be a smutty version of the beautiful ivory combs given as love tokens in aristocratic circles – perhaps the badge is satirising courtly love. There’s also a theory that badges with bawdy or lewd symbols were worn to distract the Evil Eye away from their wearers and could therefore have protected people against the Black Death. Other scholars have suggested that these badges might have been worn by sex workers to advertise their availability or by young men as a sign of their virility.

There’s still a lot of work to do on this and I’m only at the beginning of my research. However, it looks like the comb badges of ‘St Blaise’ are certainly sexual in nature and not connected to the saint or a holy shrine. I look forward to finding out more in the future.

By Meriel Jeater, Museum of London Curator

Over the last year I have been cataloguing the Museum of London’s amazing collection of over 700 pilgrim badges and souvenirs (that’s just the badges in the museum’s reserve collection – we have even more in our Archaeological Archive!). This has been a labour of love for me as they are my favourite objects in the Museum’s collection. I’m just going to reveal the story behind one of the pilgrim badges from the Museum’s collection but if you want to find out more about the badges, who wore them and why they were made, visit Collections Online. Of all the badges of saints I have examined over the last few months, I am particularly fond of those depicting John Schorn, an unofficial saint from Buckinghamshire.

John Schorn was the miracle-working rector of North Marston from around 1282 until his death in 1315. He was most famous as an exorcist who trapped the Devil in a boot. Schorn was never an official saint but his shrine was a popular pilgrimage destination in the 15th and early 16th centuries.

Head fragment from a John Schorn Badge

Badges of John Schorn often show him holding a long boot with a little bat-like Devil’s head sticking out of the top, in reference to his miracle. The Museum of London has 14 John Schorn badges, bought by pilgrims visiting his shrine. Whilst cataloguing, a particular fragment of a badge caught my eye. It was a saint’s head, shown by the halo around it, connected to something that looked a little bit like holly. The badge had been added to the computer catalogue in 1981 with the description ‘head of saint and foliage? With pin’. When I inspected the badge a bit closer, I realised that the so-called ‘foliage’ was actually a winged Devil’s head that had been bent upwards. It could only mean it was part of a John Schorn badge. After a moment of excitement, I started to wonder what might have happened to John Schorn’s body.

I knew we had several Schorn badges in the collection without heads so decided to do some digging. Whilst investigating one of the headless badges a bit further I discovered that when it was catalogued by the Guildhall Museum in 1908 it actually had a head. What had happened to it?

Headless John Schorn badge

John Schorn badge depicted in the Guildhall catalogue, 1908

I went down to the store and looked at the head fragment and the headless badge and, just for the hell of it, held them together to see if they fitted …and they did! Obviously at some point between 1908 and 1981 the head had snapped off the badge and the two parts had been separated. After doing a little ‘dance of joy’ I took the pieces to our Archaeological Conservation Department to ask if the pieces could be fixed back together.

Back of the devil's head fragment seen through a microscope

My conservation colleague Carmen Vida worked painstakingly to reunite the delicate pieces. Here’s what she said about her work:

‘When I started work on this badge, my objective was to reunite the pieces. This was a challenge, given the small size of the badge. It meant I had to work under the microscope to focus on very small areas, stick tiny surfaces together and introduce reinforcements. Whilst looking at the pieces under the microscope, I noticed two bits of lead folded over onto the back of the devil’s head and wing (see image above). The 1908 photograph of this badge showed the devil had one surviving horn, which seemed to have been lost over the years, but… was I looking at the other horn? I got so excited as I started the delicate operation of unfolding the tiny bits back, and even more so when I saw they indeed were one of the devil’s horns and part of the wing!  Putting the badge back together was an incredible improvement to the object but, for me, finding the horn and a bit of the wing was what really gave it back its character, as the devil looks much more like one now. It’s another way in which conservation contributes to the history of an object, and it was very rewarding seeing the object coming back to life in that way.’

Complete John Schorn badge

And here is the badge, complete again after years of separation. I’m so delighted that John Schorn has got his head back. You can see the record for the badge on Collections Online.

Did you see our curator Meriel Jeater make a special appearance on the Royal Institution 2012 Christmas Lectures? She tells us all about her experience here…

Well, actually more like two minutes of fame but anyway, here’s how it happened. Recently I had the great pleasure and excitement of taking a Roman gold necklace, strung with emerald beads, to be filmed as part of a Royal Institution of Great Britain Christmas lecture. The necklace is from the Museum of London collection and is normally on display in our Roman gallery. The RI wanted an example of an ancient gold object that would demonstrate the amazing properties of gold – that it doesn’t tarnish or rust and can come out of the ground after thousands of years looking as fresh as the day it was buried. We offered them a selection of gold items from our collection and they chose this beautiful necklace fragment.

A necklace composed of seven hexagonal Egyptian emerald (beryl) beads on a gold chain. The links are flat, figure-of-eight shape, attached to the beads by straight pieces of gold wire threaded through beads and then twisted through main link.

Where was it found?

This necklace was found by archaeologists excavating on the site of 48-50 Cannon Street in the City of London in 1975. It probably dates to between 100 AD and 300AD.

Why is it an interesting piece?

Fine jewellery like this is very rare in Britain. This was the first necklace of its kind to be found on an excavation in Britain so it is an incredibly important piece. Delicate, flexible gold necklaces with emeralds like this were fashionable across the Roman Empire and several examples have been found in places like Pompeii in Italy. This necklace shows that people in Britain were following fashions current across the empire, even though they were living right on the edge of the Roman world.

Where did the necklace come from?

It’s made from gold, which could have come from a number of places in the Roman Empire. The main source of gold in Britain was Wales but there were also sources in Scotland and Cornwall. The only known Roman gold mine in Britain was in Carmarthenshire in Wales. It isn’t possible to tell where the gold is from but from analysis we know that it is very pure – it contains around 95% gold and up to 5% copper. Roman gold jewellery is commonly much purer than ours is today (a modern 9 carat gold ring can contain as little as 37.5% gold).

Analysis has shown that the emeralds are from Egypt. Emeralds were highly prized in the Roman world for their colour. Colour was very important in Roman jewellery. Today we are more concerned with our gems being clear and sparkly, whereas in Roman times people didn’t mind that gems were cloudy, they just wanted them to have a vivid colour. We don’t know if the necklace was made here with the emeralds shipped in from Egypt or whether it arrived already made.

It’s important to remember that this object is the result of many people’s back-breaking labour. Roman mines for gems and metals like gold were manned by slaves and condemned criminals. The conditions were appalling and very dangerous. The workers were often chained and kept down in the mine under constant guard and beaten regularly to keep them working. People may have died so that this necklace could be made and worn. If the gold came from Britain it could have been mined by native British people pressed into service in the mines. Just like with many of our modern products, the poorest and most deprived people in Roman society would have worked to produce something worn by the most privileged.

Who might have owned this necklace?

We can’t be sure who owned this necklace and how they came to lose it. It has almost certainly been lost otherwise it would have been melted down and turned into something else and we would never have found it. We don’t know whether it was lost by a jeweller working in Londinium or whether it belonged to a rich Roman lady. In 1994 a nearby archaeological site uncovered evidence of gold working in this area with the discovery of three crucibles containing traces of gold. This shows that gold melting and refining was happening here.

If it did belong to a lady, she would have been wealthy, possibly the wife or daughter of a rich landowner or merchant. We know from excavations around Cannon Street that there were high status houses here with mosaic floors, central heating and beautifully painted walls. Perhaps the lady owner lived close by and was walking through the streets of London on the way to visit the baths one morning or to see friends and her necklace broke. From burial evidence in London we know that some women were able to afford silk clothing with gold embroidery – she may have been one of these elite ladies able to afford the finer things in life. Whoever the owner was (we could let our imaginations run for days coming up with ideas around this) they must have been very upset to lose such a lovely object. I’m certainly very glad that we have it in our collection and that I was able to take it to the Royal Institution for an amazing day of science.

Find out more: Metal working in Roman London

Today marks the last day of 2012 and as such the end of our Archaeological Archive’s 10^th anniversary. As a final celebration of the LAARC’s previous decade of inspiring a passion for archaeology, I’m presenting the last object in our blog series: ‘A History of London in 10 Archaeological Objects’.

Over the last 12 months I have been unravelling stories around a selection of archaeological artefacts that occupy our Archaeological Archive’s some 10 kilometres of shelving. Staying true to my word these have not been the “shiniest” nor have they been “well known” but they have allowed us to explore the history of the city in novel ways.

My final object comes from an archaeological excavation close to the home of the Archive at Mortimer Wheeler House – the Shoreditch Park Community excavation of 2005 (NNR05). Sponsored by the Big Lottery fund, this excavation involved a range of archaeologists, including those from the Archive, in a dig that was later televised as a Time Team special episode: Buried by the Blitz.

The impetus for the excavation was the anniversary of the end of the Second World War.  The project sought to explore evidence of bomb damage from the blitz and later from V1 and V2 rockets to the 1830s houses, involving the local community directly in this archaeological exploration.

Alongside evidence of bomb damage to the buildings through study of their surviving foundations, an interesting material assemblage was discovered, especially relating to the C20^th.  I could have selected an object pertinent to wartime such as a military cap badge, or perhaps something more evocative of the residents of the area such as a toy aeroplane. However, instead I’ve chosen something far more prosaic and that which you may even question as being ‘archaeological’.

Object 10

Modern (C20th) Plastic BC Light Fitting 

This light fitting is a small piece of evidence for the fabric of the many standing structures which were finally demolished, to make way for the area now known as Shoreditch Park, in the 1980s.

This artefact is made of composite materials, but predominantly plastic. Ironically it is this material that makes our 80 year old light fitting harder to conserve, and indeed preserve, than all the other objects in my top ten including our 40,000 year old Palaeolithic flint blade. This is all due to the inability of being able to stabilise the object which is most probably Bakelite, an early form of plastic and one of the first to be entirely synthetic. When I opened the box of plastic objects from the Shoreditch Park archive a distinct smell arose – a clear sign of chemical change, and one that is incredibly difficult to prevent.

Our light fitting is still worthy of being labelled an artefact. It was dug up under controlled conditions that accord to modern scientific archaeological practice and, despite its modernity, like all other artefacts it provides insight into the historical past, although this may at first be unclear.

Changing British Standards mean the wiring attached to our fitting will be out of date, as new colour coding systems have come into effect. Likewise the mechanism itself, although common, may also soon become redundant as new legislation for energy-saving light blubs are further developed, with a corresponding design change. Like all good artefacts we could even develop a typology (categorisation by its ‘type’) based on its morphology (the way it looks) for our light fitting.

Our tenth object is an historical electrical relic but more importantly it is part of a contemporary archaeological context. Although it may appear inconsequential on its own, when considered as part of an assemblage it adds to our interpretation of the Shoreditch site.

Although this blog may be the culmination of an archaeological ‘top ten’, it certainly isn’t the end of archaeology in London, as the city is forever being redeveloped. As such we may have to expand to a ‘top eleven’ in the near future or indeed rewrite the entire series as ‘new’ archaeology is unearthed and questions what we take for granted as ‘history’…

Thanks to everyone who entered our Collections Online Caption Competition last week. We asked you to think of witty caption for this image from our archive.

Bassano Studio

Digital Curator Ellie Miles judged the entries. The winning caption is:

‘Dorothy was putting a brave face on things, despite her swimming costume having noticeably shrunk in the wash’

Well done @All-a-Mort. Look out for this week’s caption competition winner after New Year.

You may be overwhelmed with archaeological objects popping up on our blog at the moment as the LAARC has been running its much loved ‘Object-of-the-month’ competition. To contribute to this artefact overload, I’m now presenting our ninth object in the LAARC’s ‘A History of London in 10 Archaeological Objects’ blog series.

Last time it was a burnt brick that I used to define the Stuart period and its major event, the Great Fire of 1666. We’ve now moved on a few hundred years to the Victorian period (or have we?) and instead or dealing with the iconic I now want to focus on the banal.

As we’ve been slowly approaching the present, I keep making a point of questioning the relevance of archaeology considering how our historical documents become more and more prolific and varied. ‘Historical archaeology’ is one method that engages exactly with this concept head-on, aiming to contextualise and reassess our historical conceptions with oodles of evidence. A great example of this approach is the ‘Living in Victorian London’ collaborative project between MOLA and Queen Mary University of London. In order to better understand everyday life in Victorian London, researchers combined a study of archaeological evidence from households across London with relevant documentary historical records.  This provided new insight into the economic, social and cultural history of Dickensian London.

In this blog series I’ve tried to steer clear of those objects that would perhaps be obvious in compiling London’s historical ‘top ten’.  However, for our ninth object I’ve opted for something quite unusual, to emphasise the importance of archaeology in an historically saturated period. I’ve also tried to touch upon a major theme of the Victorian period – the concept of ‘childhood’.

Object 9 

Victorian (C19th) Georgian (C18th) Wooden Dolls

These two wooden dolls were found during excavation in 1993 at Limehouse, Tower Hamlets (LHC93) and are unique to London’s archaeological record. They formed part of a Victorian assemblage of artefacts and were later studied as part of the ‘Living in Victorian London’ project. Our dolls are made of alder wood and have survived remarkably well, no doubt due to being sealed in a cesspit (aka a Victorian privy). 

Although the collection of finds – the assemblage – from the cesspit were of Victorian date these toys were indentified as ‘Queen Anne’ dolls by finds specialists, immediately dating them to the early C18^th (as opposed to the C19^th). Originally the dolls would have been dressed in elaborate costume but this has long since decayed. The only especial detail that survives are the dolls’ oval pewter eyes. 

Like the ‘Living in Victorian London’ project, I also took a collaborative approach in trying to explore the history of these dolls further. My first stop was the Museum of London’s collections, which revealed one entry (from almost 700) for a doll with a particularly interesting physical description: “Two mortise grooves at base and a flat back indicate that the doll was attached to something at these two points”.

Our Senior Curator of Fashion & Decorative Arts (and a well-known blogger to these pages) not only located this doll in our Costume store for me, but also discovered another doll which puts our privy-worn archeological examples into much better context: 

Suddenly the somewhat enigmatic mortises were revealed as the hinges for legs!

It had been suggested by archaeologists that these dolls might have been made for adults rather than children, which puts an interesting spin on the concept of Victorian childhood. The ‘material culture’ interpreted from this site was both diverse and rich, which is at odds with the census and local rate books. These suggest that households in the Limehouse area at the time were typical of the East End’s poorer districts. Although obvious questions arise over ‘who owned these objects’ and ‘why did they throw them away’, in the case of our dolls we may also question ‘why were they kept for so long’?

Once again, ambiguous archaeology always raises more questions that it can answer, but these dolls hopefully emphasise the potential that ‘modern’ archaeology has for questioning what our historical documents may purport as fact. They also draw attention to the curation of objects within a lifetime and the importance of archaeological context in providing robust dating, as our dolls are archaeological red-herrings in this respect.

LAARC VIP11 – The Conclusion

It’s been a busy few months. 18 new volunteers joined us with various backgrounds, life experiences and indeed archaeological knowledge. We threw them altogether, united them via collections care work and 10 weeks later the London Archaeological Archive & Research Centre has vastly improved archives, nicely packed and accessible material, lots of extra shelf space due to the effective reboxing and best of all, a new team of friends whose passion for the history of the London is stronger than ever.

Job Done.

Although of course, our job is never done. The archive is big – officially the largest archaeological archive in the world – so there will always be more collections work that needs doing, more space that needs creating, more artefacts that will be rediscovered and more enjoyment to be had sharing our work with as many people that are interested.

Our plans for 2013 are to continue the work modeled by this year’s fabulous University of the 3rd Age. The 7 strong team, having learnt the necessary skills in their weeks based at the archive, went on to share their knowledge and experience with visitors to the Museum of London. The response was brilliant, with many visitors learning themselves how to pack and preserve archaeology as well as discover new information about the artefacts they were able to hold in their hands.

We want to take this model, combining archaeology, public participation &  learning experiences and start to pop up in various locations across Greater London, to share London’s heritage.  Because London is great, its people are great and its history is great. Who knows what we’ll discover and learn from each other. Exciting times.

Whatever happens you can bet we’ll come across amazing objects, like the four finalists in the Object of VIP11 competition:

There was a record amount of votes and a huge thanks to everyone who participated. And your winner was…

.

.

.

.

.

.

THE SAXON COMB FROM PUDDING LANE!!!

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to making our 10th anniversary year fantastic. And it’s not over yet. My colleague Glynn still has a couple of posts left in his excellent History of London in 10 Archaeological Objects. Share with the world people, it’s well worth a read.

To mark Disability History Month Curator of Oral History & Contemporary Collecting, Sarah Gudgin, revisits the memories she collected during the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

“2012 was a pivotal moment. 2012 was an opportunity to change the way people felt, and the way people looked at the Paralympics. And the wider implications that it would have for people with disabilities all over the UK and all over the world for years to come.” Ade Adapitan

For most people, the excitement surrounding the success of the London 2012 Games might have finished with the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games. For me, it was just beginning. As part of the Museum of London’s Collecting Strategy for the London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, I was involved in collecting material culture, costume, objects and new oral histories for inclusion in the Museum’s Oral History archive.

My interviews took me to new places including the Home Office, the House of Lords (which was a bit like being in a film set!) and the Olympic Village a rare opportunity to see the location where the athletes stayed during the Games – and I spoke to a wide range of people involved in many different aspects of the Games.

In addition to the 12 or so interviews which I carried out, I was also able to interview two former Paralympic medal winners, Dame Tanni Grey Thompson and Ade Adepitan who headed Channel 4’s Paralympics coverage with presenter Clare Balding.

Hearing the personal accounts of interviewees’ unique experiences of working on the Games was a fascinating insight into the organisation behind the scenes. Like most people who attended the Games or visited the Olympic Park, I had been impressed and captivated by the performance and dedication of the sportsmen and women and the spectacle of the Games. However, what I also came to appreciate though carrying out these interviews, was the intense planning, preparation, expertise and management which went into delivering the Games.

Many of the interviewees spoke about memorable sporting moments in the Olympics. However what also came through strongly during the interviews were responses to the Paralympic Games and the elite athletes who took part. Interviewees frequently spoke with great enthusiasm about watching Paralympic sport and about the impact that this had had on their perceptions of disability, and in many cases this was an unexpected response.

“It has been a rollercoaster of emotions, every single day, of every single event, challenging your perceptions, not of disabled people, but to what is possible as a human being. What is possible with a pure determination. It was fantastic, moving, inspiration and humbling.” Melba Palhazy

Some interviewees felt that the impact of the Paralympic Games would challenge the way we see disabled people, and they hoped this would have a lasting impact for future generations.

“We are not talking about people who are ill here, but people who’ve got phenomenal potential, who can contribute to society. The fact that they haven’t got a leg, or they sit in a wheelchair, or they are blind, does not mean that they are any less capable of contributing in their way to society. And that’s the power of the Paralympics”. Tony Sainsbury

Tim Jones describes the reaction of school children to meeting Paralympic athlete Richard Whitehead who has prosthetic legs. “It gave us a taste for how the public was going to react to the Paralympics and in particular how the younger generation was going to react to it, and they were going ‘Wow! We want to watch this!’”

With this years Disability History Month in mind, I returned to the Museum’s collections. It was challenging to find positive representations of disability without reinforcing negative perceptions, connected to the history of the freak-show, or viewing disability in coldly medical terms. Many objects or images collected were connected to war injury, asylum history, or viewed disability through the prism of philanthropy. Selected objects from the Museum’s collections relating to disability can be seen on the Reassessing what we collect website.

More work is needed in museums to develop new ways of representing the lives and experiences of disabled people. However through the new collecting which has taken place as part of the London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games project, we have, in a small way, been able to redress the balance. The objects, images, costume, ephemera and oral histories collected during the Games reflect the subject of disability more positively. These capture a snapshot of opinion informed and influenced by elite sport performance. The Olympics and Paralympics have created an opportunity to explore other ways of looking at difference, allowing us to ask difficult and searching questions, and perhaps to challenge forms of prejudice.

Thanks to everyone who entered our Collections Online Caption Competition last week. We asked you to think of a witty caption for this image from our archive.

Penguins at London Zoo © Henry Grant

We had so many fantastic entries and it was a tough task for our Digital Curator, Ellie Miles to pick a winner. In the end, the winning tickets will be sent to @mindthepuddle for this brilliant caption:

“…apparently they’re called giraffes”

Look out for this week’s caption competition tomorrow…