The Fairport Magazine

Posted on March 28, 2012 by kenb

One of our projects in Midlothian Local Studies is to catalogue a large collection of pamphlets that once belonged to William Hutton Marwick (1894-1982). Marwick was, amongst other many other accomplishments, professor of Economic History at the University of Edinburgh, a Quaker and committed pacifist. His collection includes many rare pamphlets about politics, economics, social issues, peace and religion.

Amongst the collection are several small manuscript magazines compiled by William Marwick’s father, who was also called William. William Marwick senior was born inEdinburgh in October 1863. He spent his early years in Arbroath and attended Arbroath High School. Later, he went to Edinburgh University and became a Church of Scotland missionary.

As a teenager, Marwick produced his own in-house magazine called The Fairport Journal, which was named after his home in Arbroath. Eight copies of the journal have survived in the Marwick collection. The magazine is hand-written in best copperplate-style and contains short articles by Marwick and his friends.

These magazines provide an extraordinary insight into the intellectual life of a group of Victorian teenagers living in a small Scottish town. This must have been quite a serious-minded group of young people, judging by the articles they wrote and contributed. Amongst these are essays on science, history and literature as well as numerous short stories and poems.

The Fairport Magazine first appeared in October 1876 and consisted of 16 pages. It contained the first chapter of a story by the editor (William Marwick) entitled ‘The Two Young Crusoes’ and another called ‘The Far West’ by Henry Angus, as well as short articles and poems by other contributors. The magazine continued fortnightly until the end of the year when it was announced that a printed version would be available.

In January 1878, the magazine returned to manuscript form. Two of the main contributors were young ladies, Miss E H Smith of Glasgow and Miss M E Angus of Arbroath. The magazine seems to have been distributed only amongst its contributors who were allowed to keep it for three days before passing it on. Probably less than a dozen people ever read it.

It is not clear how much of magazine was original work or simply copied from other sources, but in any case it is hard to imagine anybody, young or old, undertaking a similar venture today.

Thank goodness for collectors!

Posted on January 26, 2012 by kenb

Bonnyrigg Calendar 1977

Thanks goodness for collectors! You might call them daft but they are a godsend for archivists and archive collections.

Recently, Midlothian Local Studies has completed a catalogue for a collection once owned by Eric Basden.

Eric B Basden lived at 7 Leyden Park, Bonnyrigg with his wife Joan and four children. He was a keen entomologist, and a member of the Bonnyrigg and Lasswade District Horticultural and Industrial Society. He was active in local affairs and his collection reflects his interests, including horticulture, local shops, businesses, the annual Civic Week, and clubs and societies in Bonnyrigg and Lasswade.

Civic Week programme

Alex Eadie

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Eric collected a huge amount of ephemera from the Bonnyrigg area. This included advertising leaflets from local shops and businesses, political leaflets, newsletters, membership cards and calendars, even books of bingo tickets and brown paper bags. Few people would consider saving this kind of material which is normally just thrown away.

Vote for Buchanan

Fortunately, Basden kept it and it was donated to Midlothian Local Studies after his death. It provides a fascinating snapshot of life in Bonnyrigg in the 1970s, a typical Scottish town of its day.

Amongst the collection is a series of fact sheets called ‘Compar-a-cost’. These were produced by the local council in the 1970s and compared the prices of basic groceries in local shops. Inflation and rising prices were one of the big issues of the 1970s and here local people could compare prices. In December 1975, a tin of baked beans cost 11½p in Nobles of Bonnyrigg but 15½p in St Cuthbert’s of Mayfield.

Another typical item is a receipt for Allan Forrest, Grocer and Fruiterer, High Street, Bonnyrigg. Eric Basden has added a note to the receipt stating that he asked the four members of staff to sign it the day before the business closed for good (15 May 1976).

Raffle tcikets

The collection includes two scrapbooks of local small ephemera, such as bus tickets, raffle tickets, business cards and invitations.

The collection also holds some internment notices from Lasswade cemetery dating from 1916 onwards. Basden probably rescued these from somebody’s bin.

Eric Basden died in 1984, having been a Midlothian man and pillar of the local community for all of his life.

Bonnyrigg & Lasswade Official Guide

The only worying thing about this collection is that if you are of a certain vintage, the 1970s don’t seem that long ago but the decade is rapidly becoming the stuff of archives.

Dalkeith High School Magazine

Posted on October 12, 2011 by kenb

Thanks to our friends at Glasgow University archives, Mildothian Local Studies recently received a generous donation of Dalkeith High School magazines. We were delighted to receive these as we had only one copy in our collections. Ephemeral material of this kind if often very difficult to obtain but is of great interest and social value.

The magazine was first produced in December 1933 although this was described as a ‘New Series’ and presumably it existed in an earlier format. The donation runs upto the 1970s.

The reader cannot help but be struck by the high quality of production of the earlier magazines from the 1930s and 1940s. They are attractively designed, well printed and fine examples of the art of typeography. They contain lots of articles about life in the school, including reports about sports matches, clubs and societies, short stories and poetry.

Some issues contain woodcuts and photographs. As always, the advertisements for local shops and companies, many now long gone, are of great interest.

It is noticeable that there is a marked decline in the quality of production the magazine in the 1970s, although some of the groovy covers are quite eye-catching.

Do schools still produce magazines of this kind? Please let us know.

Gladstone’s Midlothian Campaign

Posted on September 28, 2010 by kenb

William Ewart Gladstone

Midlothian Local Studies holds a large scrapbook of political and satirical cartoons from William Ewart Gladstone’s famous Midlothian Campaign of 1879-1880.

The Midlothian Campaign marked the return of William Gladstone as a politician and ultimately to his second term as Prime Minister. Gladstone’s first administration had run from 1868 to 1874. After his electoral defeat in 1874, Gladstone resigned as leader of the Liberal Party, but from 1876 he began a comeback based on opposition to Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria. Around this time, a series of news stories appeared in the British press about the brutal suppression of the Bulgarian April Uprising by the Turkish Ottoman Empire. British public reaction was generally one of dismay, but the Conservative government of Benjamin Disraeli continued to support the Ottomans, an ally of Britain in the Crimean War and a bulwark against possible Russian expansion.

By 1878, William Gladstone was publishing articles in favour of ending British economic support for Turkey. His dogged focus on the issue gradually dragged it to the forefront of public attention. By 1879, Gladstone had been accepted as Liberal Party candidate for the Scottish constituency of Edinburghshire, popularly known as Midlothian. He committed himself in person to campaign for the Midlothian seat against the Tory Lord Dalkeith.

The Midlothian Campaign of 1879-1880 is often cited as the first modern political campaign in Britain. In many ways, it focused on Gladstone as a celebrity with the Earl of Rosebery as his campaign manager. Gladstone used the newly developed railway system to move rapidly around both the country and the county, giving a series of passionate speeches in different towns and cities. These in turn were widely reported and debated in the national press. The campaign also produced numerous souvenirs, such as badges, political prints, pamphlets and china figurines. Gladstone’s meetings attracted huge audiences, even though the franchise was very restricted at this time. Midlothian, for example, had only 3620 voters. Gladstone’s enthusiasm and eloquence are credited with swaying a large number of undecided voters to support the Liberals in the General Election of 1880, thus ousting Disraeli’s last Conservative government.

The scrapbook held in Midlothian Local Studies is a collection of cartoons that both support and ridicule William Gladstone. Here are two examples from the scrapbook.

Gladstone as the Gentle Shepherd

This cartoon is titled ‘Scene from the Gentle Shepherd’ after the well-known play by Allan Ramsay. Gladstone is the man in the kilt and Rosebery is the dog leading him down the road to Midlothian. Mrs Lightheart, Mrs Curiosity and Mrs Blunt discuss them on the corner. ‘It’s maybe the dog’s fault.’ They discuss letting it go and suspect that Gladstone may throw himself on ‘parish’ welfare if not re-elected.

Gladstone and the Russian Bear

The second cartoon shows Gladstone dancing whilst chained to a trumpet-playing bear. The implication is that he is dancing to the tune of the ‘Russian bear’ on a map of Eastern Europe. The text states: ‘The Tables Turned or Who Dances Now?’ The Afghanistan War (1878-1881) was taking place at this time. It began when Britain sought to extend control from India to discourage Russian advancement into central Asia. It is also worth noting that dancing bears were a common feature of street entertainment in British towns and cities.

How much did the British know about the concentration camps?

Posted on April 30, 2010 by BdBlackHat

Excerpt from 'Workers Under Hitler's Heel' pamphlet, c. 1940s

A British-produced pamphlet called ‘Workers Under Hitler’s Heel’ is held at East Lothian Archives. The pamphlet was probably circulated in 1944, and has images of labour camps, enforced work, and Polish prisoners being forced to dig graves of their compatriots who had been murdered by Nazi troops. The pamphlet is noticeably left-wing and socialist in its tone, as it concentrates on working conditions, wages, and the banning of trade unions limiting the rights of workers in Germany. But it also mentions evidence of the death camps and eugenics, the science of race which the Nazis developed to ‘explain’ the persecution of Jews, Slavs, Romany gypsies and the disabled. Even though the pamphlet may not have been widely distributed and could have been perceived as overtly political or exaggerated, it shows that there was clear evidence of the Nazi ideas of racial purity, and the cruel punishments inflicted on those who were demonised by the Nazis.

Much has been written about the Holocaust, which is estimated to have killed 6 million Jews. It has frequently been asked whether the Allied Forces could have prevented, delayed or stopped the Nazis from committing such horrific acts. During the Allied advance the camps were liberated, and the full extent of the massacres were widely exposed. The survivors obviously welcomed the troops, and the prison guards surrendered.

The British Government did not intervene to help the Jews during the war period, though as this pamphlet shows, knowledge of the concentration camps was used in British propaganda to encourage the war effort, and emotions on the subject ran high. As Churchill said in a letter to the Foreign Secretary in July 1944, “there is no doubt that this is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world, and it has been done by scientific machinery by nominally civilized men in the name of a great state and one of the leading races of Europe…There should therefore in my opinion be no negotiations of any kind on this subject. Declarations should be made in public, so that everyone connected with it will be hunted down and put to death.”

To read the pamphlet, browse the gallery below: