Reflections on my Archives Internship

In this blog post, recent intern Neron reflects on his experience at the British Jesuit Archives, particularly the digitisation of the Jesuit Missions magazine.

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I have volunteered at the Archives for 5 weeks as part of my Internship module for my Single Honours History Course. I spent time doing a myriad of archival work, including digitisation, indexing the Blandyke Papers, adding metadata to a digital preservation system, and planning for this blog post. Compared to my prior experience with accessioning and box listings, this has greatly expanded both my understanding of archival work and my comfort level in the environment.

Illustrated pages from the 'Blandyke Papers', Christmas 1902

My favourite part of the internship was digitising and documenting some of the Jesuit Missions magazine. A quarterly magazine published in January, April, July, and October, it began with no. 1 in 1953 to no. 97 in 1985. The archives hold a near complete run of Jesuit Missions, having issues from 1961-1984. As an example of its progression, the magazine reached 21 volumes and 161 issues by the beginning of 1975. It covered the ongoing work of Jesuit missionaries and missions. The articles were written by Jesuit missionaries providing accounts of their current experiences, often including context on their missions and the people. It appears to be made for people with an interest in overseas Catholic missions and in providing charity; consistently near the end of the issue are ads or appeals related to funding or aid.

'Jesuit Missions' magazine, Summer 1965

When documenting the various editors of the magazine, I became particularly interested in Editor Peter Low SJ, who I then researched through his obituary. Born February 26^th, 1929, Low became Choirmaster at Heythrop College after joining the Society in 1946. After 1953, he spent 4 years at Stonyhurst College, became playroom master in his 4th year, organising activities for the scouts, such as rugby. Before reading up on him, I had no idea that both Stonyhurst and Heythrop are closely linked to the Jesuits, albeit Heythrop closed in 2019. He became the editor of the To Our Friends magazine, (which Jesuit Missions ultimately merged with to become the still in-existence Jesuits and Friends) and later the editor of Jesuit Missions from 1962-67 (at least according to the obituary. In the issues, he only officially is mentioned as editor in 1964) before finally at Stonyhurst. Low was particularly engaged in magazine layouts, photography and typography, and was repeatedly praised for it in the obituary. I must admit I agree, as not only do I think his era of editorial had the best graphic design, but he also seemed to have a significant influence on the magazine's style, even when he wasn’t editor, up until his death in 1971. Apparently, during his editorship, he maintained close contact with overseas Jesuits and visited missions to gain first-hand knowledge.

Fr Peter Low SJ

What struck me in particular is that he spent the night before he died listening to a 17-year-old school dropout share his poetry with Low until 4 in the morning, which apparently inspired the boy, who wanted to quit studying, to resume his A-levels. One aspect of heritage that I’ve always found interesting is learning about the personal— by learning about someone through a source. I closely associate heritage with identity, it provides a level of connection to the subject that, in my experience, you usually do not get in a field like history, which tends to be distant. So being able to discover such interesting parts of someone’s life and personality through a magazine and their obituary was deeply engaging.

Another activity I was tasked with whilst digitising the magazine was to find a few interesting double page spreads to display at the Explore Your Archive exhibition, which will be taking place for Jesuits and staff in the new year. I created an introductory paragraph and captions.

Mock-up of the display

If you are interested in exploring the Jesuit Mission magazine, or any of the other records mentioned in this blog post, please contact us.