The working life of Museum of London

Following on from Marie-Claire’s earlier blog post on documenting the Port of London Authority Archive , Marie-Claire now moves on to cataloguing the archive of the longest-lived of the dock companies, the East and West India Dock Company (EWIDC).

This is a very different challenge: not only are there far more documents, but their structure is far more disrupted. Having learnt from our previous cataloguing, we decided to vary our approach. While it is essential to list some material at item level, others fall into sub-groups which can be adequately listed more briefly at series level.  This approach has been taken in relation to the documentation of a Working Agreement set up between the EWIDC and the main other dock company, the London and St Katherine Docks Company in an attempt to stop the competitive reduction of the rates charged for use of the companies’ docks which had brought the EWIDC to the brink of bankruptcy.

The Working Agreement heralded the beginning of the end for both dock companies as separate entities, and they merged in 1901. The EWIDC Minute Book for this period contains delightful evidence of the affection in which the company was held by some of its employees. At the end of the final entry, with the company formally wound up, an anonymous hand has added “Good Bye. R.I.P.”

It is interesting to see this sentiment in relation to the dock company, perhaps balancing the usual perception of the companies as the villains in contemporary labour relations. I should add that the more typical view is also reflected in the collection!

Written by our cataloguer, Marie-Claire Wyatt.

Look out for our next PLA Archive blog post as we focus on the work undertaken to conserve  these fragile paper records.