The working life of Museum of London

 By Maggie McDonald

How do you know when you’re shaking hands with a finds processor at MOLA? Simple. Rough finger tips. Like needlewomen who sew without thimbles, we all have innumerable pinpricks, fresh and healing on the ends of our fingers. The cause? The staple. How could such an invaluable invention cause so much bad temper and pain? A wonderfully useful device in thoughtful hands, the staple has a rich history, beginning with a lavish device believed to have been invented for Louis XV in the 18th century, then refined and patented from the mid-19th century.

Weighing in at a kilo or so, the early staplers bound together everything from carpet to paper. George McGill patented the first single-stroke stapler in 1879, an elegant cast-iron press decorated with swirling patterns of gold, rather like an old Singer sewing machine. McGill hand fed a staple into the press, then a single push on the handle closed it against a small anvil  . We’ve left the cast-iron a long way behind. Modern staplers are ubiquitous, light weight and indispensable. No one, not even a finds processor with shredded gloves and fingers would disagree with that. It’s the use to which that indispensable stapler is put that causes us grief.

Finds come in to MOLA in plastic bags, stapled shut. It’s a fine, sensible and invaluable way of doing things because we have to keep finds and their context labels together and protected.  It sometimes goes wrong. Why use 17 staples to close a small plastic bag?  

Maybe we processors should use staple removers? Yes, but given mud, dust and debris round a bagged find, those ubiquitous staples are all but invisible. You can pick out the obvious ones with a staple remover, of course, but it’s the hidden extras that slash through rubber and latex gloves on their way to piercing the flesh. No, the only way forward is re-education of those wayward stapling diggers.

Here’s the rule: one bag, two labels, one staple. It’s doable: you just have to put a context label in with the find, take the second label and position it inside the bag, near the top. Fold over the top of the bag, then staple once  through the fold and the label. Worried that the find will fall out? Fold the top over twice, staple once through the double fold and label.  That will earn you the gratitude of your fine finds processors. All we have to do is tug open the fold, and, just like that, the staple springs out.  No ripped gloves, no bleeding fingers.