A Week at the British Jesuit Archives

This blog post comes from our most recent work experience student, Kit.

Amongst very hot weather, I spent a week doing work experience with the British Jesuit Archives; I had not done anything related to archival matters before, so when I rang the bell to the Archives on Monday morning there was a slight sense of nervousness mixed in with excitement! I was greeted by the archivist, Rebecca, who then showed me around the ‘behind the scenes’ areas of the archive: which being a Roman Catholic archive, included a wooden statue of the Virgin and Child, several relics in lavishly decorated containers (but in the case of some were lurking in a shortbread tin!) and of course, heaps of neatly arranged boxes with labels relating to a Jesuit school in Wimbledon or a mission in South Africa. After the tour I quickly learnt that the second most important thing for the archives team, after looking after the collection, was the 11 o’clock coffee break and at this I met the others properly for the first time.

Relics and statue in the repository

 After the break, Rebecca and I met together to discuss these two questions: ‘What is an archive?’ and ‘What skills does an archivist need?’  After writing down mind maps for my answers to the questions Rebecca told me on how she got into working as an archivist, more specifically, a Catholic archive which was highly informative. After lunch I was put to work: digitising a Jesuit magazine called Letters and Notices which is a journal which compiles articles written by members of the order and also lists where members of the Society are located. Using a flatbed scanner which was connected to the computer, I was digitising a series of diary entries of Fr Henri Depelchin SJ which detail his and his fellow Jesuits' exploits and efforts to evangelize peoples south of the Zambesi River in Zimbabwe in 1879. At times it was rather frustrating, as you had to make sure that the book was lined up properly to the scanner so on the scanned photo it looked not too wonky or was the right way round.

On day two, I was cataloguing a Fr William Dempsy SJ’s personal papers and a part of this included writing a paragraph of his life, so using Letters and Notices I read his obituary and wrote a brief summary of his life, which is called an admin history. After this the person who was supervising me, Jamie and I put Fr Dempsey’s photographs, which mainly consisted of holiday photographs in Wales, into melinex sleeves which helps to prevent damage to them. After this we then had to put them onto the system (Atom) which involved putting them into an online spreadsheet which had several parameters which got increasingly specific as you filled it in.

Du Halde's History of China

After this it was lunchtime - after this I met Lucy, the archive's rare book cataloguer who then showed me the rare book collection, which was absolutely fascinating and included a book that belonged to a monk of Westminster Abbey before the Reformation and a book which detailed the Jesuits in China in the 18^th century which had beautiful foldouts of the priests wearing Chinese robes and very detailed maps of China which are some of the first mass produced maps of China to reach Western Europe. Interestingly, the book was made for a non-Catholic audience, despite at the time of the book’s publication it was illegal to be a Roman Catholic in Great Britain.

On the morning of day three I was once again with Jamie but instead of cataloguing individuals I was given a hefty photograph album of very stern looking 19^th century Jesuits and using a spreadsheet appropriately called ‘The list of the dead’ I was to match the caption written in the photo album to somebody listed in on the database.

19th Century Jesuit Portrait Album PH/A/5

Sometimes old-fashioned handwriting improved impossible to decipher or there was a surname which did not match up with a name on the list. I found this very interesting and important, as it saves time if one is a researcher looking for a specific Jesuit then looking at that list would make finding a picture of him far easier to locate. After lunch, I was back with Lucy who walked me through what she does in cataloguing a book and the different things she does when such a situation arises. After that she set me to work cataloguing the Blandyke Papers which are a series of articles written by Jesuit seminarians whilst the seminary was at St Mary’s, Hodder Place. They cover all sorts of topics ranging from poems about contemplation to an essay titled ‘What is humanism.’

Thursday morning was spent listing 18^th century books. To make life much easier, the Jesuit Archives catalogue their rare book collection in pre 1700 and post 1700 so previously I had done with Lucy had been pre so now I was doing post. Cyril and I were listing a collection of letters that had been published and these had been written by Cardinal Pole who was the last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of Mary I. Unfortunately, since being in Latin, I could not make head nor tale of it! After that we turned to do the exact same thing but rather than letters it was another series of books which were about Mary, Queen of Scots printed in Edinburgh in 1727.

The British Jesuits ran the Society’s activities in British Guyana from 1857 to 2023

Bernard Darke SJ photographs

and so the bulk of the Society’s records are in the archive and so I was given quite a thick dossier of photographs, taken in the mid-1960s and showed various school plays, and I had to put them into acid free packaging and sort through the duplicates of these. There were a couple of anomalies, such as when there was a photograph that had nothing to do with plays, rather it somebody opening something i.e. a sports hall. I asked Lucy what I should do and she said that rather separate it from the rest of the photos that I should leave it in with the others, as it is important to keep things together. After lunch, I was given the opportunity to do either some more repackaging of photos or listing some more Jesuit photographs. I chose the latter and for the next two hours I worked my way through another chunky book. It was an absolutely fascinating experience and I really got to grips with what an archivist does and how my traditional stereotype of one, stooped over old papers has been completely smashed and transformed into something completely different. Many, many thanks to Rebecca, Mary, Jamie and Lucy as well as the others who made me feel so welcome and made this experience as interesting and enjoyable as possible.