The working life of Museum of London

Natasha Powers (Head of Osteology) writes:

At MoLAS much of our commercial work involves studying the remains of people who died in the early 19th century. We have the unique opportunity to compare archaeological findings with the historical record. Over the next few weeks I’m going to talk a little about some of the discoveries made and the questions raised.

The team have recently completed analysis of nearly 750 individuals from the Catholic Mission of Saints Mary and Michael, Whitechapel. These people died and were buried between 1843 and 1854.

A number of women appeared to have unusually shaped ribs. By laying out the ribs in sequence it was possible to see a consistent pattern. The ribs were flattened from the side so that they pointed forwards and down, forming a somewhat triangular shape to the ribcage instead of a gentle curve. These deformities are caused by wearing corsets or stays.

We visited the Department of Fashion and Decorative Arts at the Museum to find out what type of underwear could have caused this. It turned out that the damaging effect of corsetry on the Victorian body is a ‘hot topic’ amongst costume historians. Writers in the 19th century campaigned against the wearing of tightly laced corsets and medical papers were published showing the effect on the internal organs.

You can see an illustration of ‘deformities to the ribs as a result of wearing a corset‘ at Project Gutenberg.

Understandably, our colleagues were largely unaware of the potential of the human remains to help answer this question. We are now looking forwards to working with the Curators to investigate this fascinating aspect of Victorian health further.

I am one of the team working on Jack the Ripper and the East End. I am an archaeological conservator but I often work on projects or exhibitions that are not archaeological. The material for this exhibition is fascinating; I’ve just finished reading the book that accompanies the exhibition so I understand more about the objects that we are installing now in the display cases.

My role has been to act as the link between the exhibition project team and the conservation and collection care staff who prepare the material for display. There are 20 of us in conservation and collection care working at the Museum of London, Museum in Docklands and our resource centre (Mortimer Wheeler House). I am one of the archaeological team; there are also conservators who work on paper, textiles and costume and decorative arts/social history material.

A quarter of the team work in collection care and object handling; they look after the objects in storage and carry out the movement of our collections between our three main locations and sometimes to other museums when objects go out on loan. The conservators also do a lot of collection care work for our stored collections and work on individual objects in our laboratories and workshops. We ensure that the objects are in good condition and carry out treatments when needed. For this exhibition, the conservators worked on a huge variety of objects from wax heads to police uniforms. The paper conservators were kept particularly busy as there are so many paper items, many of them such as police reports and files in poor condition because they were working documents.

There are nearly 200 objects going on display in about 30 cases, on the walls and on open display. Some of the display cases are new so part of my job was to work with the designer to make sure that they are the right type and size for the objects . Conservators are particularly concerned that the cases are stable and secure, dust-proof and made of good quality materials.

We also need to check on the overall conditions for the objects. For this exhibition, because there are so many original 19th century documents, light is our biggest concern. Many of the documents have writing in ink which is already faded. The light levels will need to be low to keep any further fading to a minimum. Just before the exhibition opens, we will check every case to make sure the light is within the right levels. Luckily the designer wants a dark, atmospheric look!

The most challenging part of the work has been working out how to fit all the material into the cases. Some of the cases only have a few items, say two documents relating to one of the victims. Others have many objects made of many different materials. Each case has to be carefully planned so that everything fits and is well supported. The designer started this process many months ago working with the curator, Julia Hoffbrand.

The next step was to work from the plans and try out mockups of each case to see how the objects fitted into the cases and if they needed supports. A small team of us, a curator (Jackie Keily), our chief technician (Cliff Thomas) and others, started this process in February. It was a challenge as we had to work from photos and records of the objects since so many were coming from other museums or individuals as loans.

We are now putting the objects into cases and it’s great to see everything, some for the first time as couriers bring them from other museums and archives. Maps, prints and plans are also being hung on the walls; this has had its moments with different opinions on how high or low to place things. Luckily our collection care team (Alison Guppy and Paul More) are used to this and are very patient!

A huge amount of other work went into the exhibition before we started with the cases and objects (graphics, set construction, installing the lighting and audio-visuals). It’s all coming together now and with a few more days work (captions are on their way!), will be ready for the opening on the 15th of May.

You can see more photos from the installation of Jack the Ripper and the East End on Flickr.

Emma Ramsey recently volunteered for work experience at the Museum of London, and this is her account of her week:

“When I first decided to undertake work experience at the Museum of London, I was simply hoping to learn more about the Roman invasion of Britain and other periods of early history. So I was pleasantly surprised to come away, not only with more historical knowledge, but also with a good idea of what goes on in a museum behind the exhibitions and displays.

On Monday I began by sorting the entries for the London’s Burning exhibition poem activity, and typing up the audio recording of the Great Fire of London study day (held on 6 October 2007). I never really knew a great deal about the Great Fire before, but having listened to the recording of the study day for a good part of the week I feel as though I would have a good chance at Mastermind with ‘London in 1666′ as my chosen subject! Or at least, I was able to reply to an email sent in by someone asking what caused the fire at the end of the week.

On Tuesday afternoon I visited the Guildhall amphitheatre on a guided tour with the Roman curator Jenny Hall. This, coupled with my time spent in the Conservation lab on Thursday and Friday, taught me a lot about the methods of preservation used for wood and leather.

I also had the opportunity to see the Transit room on Thursday, where I got a sneak preview of some of the ‘Jack the Ripper’ items to go on display at the Museum in Docklands in May. [A note for readers: the Transit Store is a temporary storage room for objects either about to be installed in an exhibition/gallery or that have just been taken off display and are about to be sent back to their permanent stores.]

During the week I was also able to visit the costume department and sit in on a meeting about the events planned for National Archaeology Week. I also had the task of putting visitor comments from the Outside Edge exhibition at the Museum in Docklands into an Excel document in order to record its success. I always had plenty to do and it feels as though the week flew by. I would thoroughly recommend this work experience to anyone who is interested in history and how it is preserved as it really gave me a great insight into museum work and taught me skills that I would not learn at school. It was a thoroughly enriching experience, and I am grateful to the Museum for giving me the opportunity.”