The working life of Museum of London

  Bone changes caused by infection and bacteria, as well as the broken bones and fractures resulting from injury are often seen in skeletal analysis of past populations. Another type of disease observed are those that reflect the diet an individual had during their life. Poor diets can lead to many health problems and illnesses, and the types of food eaten may also cause changes in the bones. A lack of nutrients such as vitamin C and D in the diet may lead to metabolic disorders, such as scurvy and rickets. These can affect growth and prevent the development of strong and healthy bones. Diets too rich in certain foods may also lead to illness.

   One such diseases is gout, this results from a build up of uric acid in the body and may be associated with a high alcohol intake and diet rich in protein and fatty foods (Roberts and Manchester 2005). Crystals of uric acid may form in the joints and lead to inflammation. This can affect the joints of most limbs but is most commonly observed in the first metatarsophalangeal joint (big toe), causing joint pain and stiffness. Over a period of time this swelling may lead to erosion of the bone at the joint. This can be seen in skeletal remains as punched out lesions with overhanging edges (Rogers and Waldron 1995).  Six adult individuals (6/268: 2.2%) from the Catholic mission of Saints Mary and Michael, Whitechapel, London, displayed evidence of gout. All had erosive lesions of the big toe.

 Another disease that may be related to a rich diet and obesity is Diffuse idiopathic hyperostosis or DISH. This is caused by the ossification (turning to bone) of ligaments in the spine and other sites of the body such as areas of tendon and muscle attachments. This can result in individual vertebrae of the spine becoming fused together, with the new bone having the appearence of dripping candle wax (Rogers and Waldron 1995). Two males, both aged over 46 years at death were diagnosed with DISH in the Saints Mary and Michael cemetery population. Both showed the typical fusion of over four continuous vertebrae.

The occurrence of these diseases, when compared to an entire cemetery population, can help us to learn about and understand the health and lifestyle of people in the past. They may help reveal the types of diets eaten,  the foods available, and make inferences about a populations background and status. 

Late:Create is an exciting monthly workshop where members get creative using our collections for inspiration. 

This month artist Emily Candela worked with the group to create a huge temporary sculpture inspired by the Museum of London’s 1559 painting, Nimrod supervising the construction of the Tower of Babel by Martin Van Valckenborgh.

Liam, a member of the group explains how the sculpture was made:

‘This months Late:Create was sculpture. The inspiration was a building called the Tower of Babel. Instead of copying it from a picture we covered it in all kinds of materials so it symbolises the building giving it a new artistic look. I hope you can see the resemblance!’

Late: Create is free and takes place 6 – 8pm on the 1st Thursday of every month and is for people who are currently out of work.  Future workshops include creative writing and sculpture.  The sessions are coordinated by the Museum’s Inclusion Officer, Lucie Fitton. To find out more contact community@museumoflondon.org.uk  

Late:Create is an exciting monthly workshop where members get creative using our collections for inspiration. 

The workshop was lead by poet Meryl Pugh, and here, our regular blogger Liam, tells us more:

‘This months Late:Create was poetry. We were taught that there are different ways of writing poetry – some rhyme and some don’t. We learnt how about consonance, which means using similar sounds in words.  For example, bored and board. We also talked about assonance, which means using the same sounds such as ‘ard’ in lard and hard.
 
Next we started writing. We each had an object from the museum and had to describe its features, what it was used for and who used it. We went into the galleried to collect this information. Next we were ready to write a poem. Meryl helped us by writing the first word or two of each sentence and we filled in the rest using the ideas and words we had gathered.’

Late: Create is free and takes place 6 – 8pm on the 1st Thursday of every month and is for people who are currently out of work. Future workshops include sculpture and hat-making. The sessions are coordinated by the Museum’s Inclusion Officer, Lucie Fitton. To find out more contact community@museumoflondon.org.uk

Back in April I mentioned that we had very gently gone live with the
Database of 19th Century Photographers and Allied Trades in London 1841-1901 on the photoLondon website. It seems like a good time for an update for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, the site has proved to be quite a success, at least compared with our modest expectations. Actual visits and pageviews have only crept up gradually since the launch, albeit with a few great flurries of activity. We get around 3000 visits a month and people tend to look at 7 or 8 pages per visit. But user reaction has been growing inexorably, with more people contacting us through the website every week as they find their ancestors or seek the photographer of a photo they own.  I think that Google is sending a lot more of our visits now, which means people with very specific interests and questions - which you should probably expect with a database of 10,000 people! Still I don’t think we were expecting quite so many inquiries, and it’s often hard to offer more than is already on the site. Tunjay, who is the administrator in our Later Department, does everything possible to give a helpful answer, but the fact is that we at the Museum of London aren’t the source of or experts about the data; that role belongs to David Webb, whose many years of research he generously contributed to the database.

The second reason for an update is that we were contacted while ago by the production team of a TV programme that’s due to air very shortly, and which just might feature the website, since it helped in researching the family history that the programme explores. I don’t know if it will actually be mentioned, but it would be nice validation of David Webb’s work if it was.

Both of these illustrate that family history and genealogy are a very important part of the reason that a site like this is interesting to a wide audience. Soon after the launch, as we started to get inquiries from family historians, I ventured onto their turf to ask in a couple of forums what we could do to make a site like this useful to them. The answer was basically “not a lot, it’s already what we need”; that’s gratifying, but I suspect there’s always more we could do. One thing might be to offer downloadable datasets; another (perhaps less for the benefit of genealogists) could be to integrate the biographies with related resources on photography, geography, social history, archive collections etc.

As well as inquries, there is another kind of contact we get through the site, where people write to add to or correct our information, and this is really exciting. Again, we pass the information on to David Webb for him to examine and process as he sees fit. So far, because of this roundabout flow of information, we have not re-integrated any information, but I would hope to do this in the future so if you have any amendments for us, please, please keep on sending them.

One final thing: I created a simple REST API for those geeks out there who want to play with the database. Sadly the quality of the address data isn’t that brilliant at present, which limits what we can do in terms of mashups until I get a chance to crunch it a bit, but if you want to play then please drop me a line and I’ll give you the keys.

So to wrap up, I would love to know your suggestions for how we might improve the site. Tell us things like

• what sort of information do you need that’s not obvious at present?
• would you like any tools to collect or download information?
• would it be useful to integrate a wiki with the site, so that each person can have a page that our site’s visitors can add to and edit?

Stick your ideas in the comments or drop us a line.

This year August is “Lucky Loser” month, where the three objects have all tried their luck once before, have come close but failed to win. However, now one of them will and join previous winners in December’s object of the year comp.

Follow the link to the archaeology blog to see which lucky losers are in the running and vote for your favourite. Result will be announced on Friday 5th Sept

  Smoking was introduced to Britain in the 16th century, and pipe and cigar smoking had become popular by the 19th century. Tabacco use continued to rise and the first mass produced cigarettes were introduced in the 1880s. Evidence of smoking is often demonstrated on archaeological sites in the form of clay pipes. These disposable items were easy to make and the different types and manufactures markings can provide valuable dating information.

Recent analysis of over 700 skeletons from the Catholic Mission of Saints Mary and Michael, Whitechapel, London, who died between 1843 and 1854, has demonstrated how evidence of smoking can also be observed in the bones of past populations.

 Fifty eight adult skeletons (58/268: 21.6%) displayed wear patterns to the surfaces of the teeth. These were often smooth, rounded grooves resulting from long term pipe smoking. In many cases a circular hole or ‘pipe notch’ was clearly visable when the upper and lower jaws were closed. Thirty two of the individuals with pipe notches also showed a brown coloured staining to the inside of the teeth. Pipe notches were found on a number of young adults. These may have developed over several years suggesting that smoking could have been taken up at a younger age. Adult smokers were also found to be more likely associated with lesions to the inside surfaces of the ribs, possibly the result of lung disease resulting from smoking.

This evidence may help provide information about how smoking affected the health of an individual and if it made more susceptible to other diseases and the infections compared to non smokers. If smoking was more commonplace amongst the Victorian working class, this may be used as an indicator of status and possibly gender. This may also help better our understanding and awareness of smoking in the modern world that is reported to kill 5.4 million people each year (World Health Organisation 2008).

A year on from the smoking ban, the museum of London looks into the history of smoking in London and life in the captial since the ban with a new exhibition ‘ The Big Smoke’. More information can be found at the following link…

http://www.molg.org.uk/English/NewsRoom/Current/The+Big+Smoke.htm

This week,  Clare Wood, Archivist for the Sainsbury Archive, introduces a new website that brings the Sainsbury Archive to life and asks you  to add your memories of working and shopping at Sainsbury’s:

Alongside my regular duties looking after the Sainsbury Archive, over the past year I’ve been busy creating ‘Story of a Supermarket’, a new website for the collection, which is now live within the Museum in Docklands website.

The Sainsbury Archive at the Museum in Docklands is a unique collection of photographs, documents and objects which tells the story of Sainsbury’s from its foundation in 1869 to the present day.  It’s a fascinating and varied collection, including everything from old packaging and recipes to Victorian tiles and staff uniforms.

This new website replaces the Sainsbury’s Virtual Museum educational site which was launched ten years ago. This popular site, which enabled schools to explore the archive via a virtual museum building, needed significant updating. We therefore decided to create a new site using the Museum of London’s content management system and page templates, retaining popular elements of the Virtual Museum, but also adding extra information and images from the archive to help answer some of the 400+ enquiries received each year.

We started work on the project last July, consulting with local primary school teachers, retired Sainsbury’s staff and people who had contacted the archive with an enquiry over the last couple of years. The results were sometimes surprising, but gave us a clear picture of what people liked and didn’t like about the old site, and the kinds of information they were looking for.

We frequently receive enquiries about aspects of social history such as food and nutrition during wartime and the employment of women.  We therefore decided to create pages for a range of popular topics, arranged under the themes of ‘People’, ‘Places’ ‘Products’ and ‘Progress’.  Researching and writing this content proved time-consuming, and we have tried to find the right level of detail, so that the information is useful, but not overwhelming…

To add a personal touch to the official records in the archive, there is also a contributory area for visitors to add their memories of working and shopping at Sainsbury’s. All stories submitted will be added to the collection and highlights will be published on the website.

For schools at Key Stage 2, our Learning consultant trawled the archive to produce six curriculum-linked units exploring the history of food, shops and shopping. Linked to these are classroom activities, interactive quizzes, a timeline, and a scrapbook of images to download.

For informal family learning, as well as the quizzes and scrapbook, we have recycled popular features and activities from the Virtual Museum, including old-fashioned packaging to colour and make, the chance to ‘Explore a Store’ from 1909 and ‘Harry’s story’, a day in the life of a  Sainsbury’s delivery boy in 1912.

The project has grown quite a bit since its inception and the resulting website is a large and detailed resource. The collection is highly visual, so I’m particularly pleased that the new site features around 300 images. ‘Story of a supermarket’ has actually been live since May 2008, but following testing and approval by external stakeholders, we have now begun to tell people it’s there!

We’re also planning to showcase the site at ‘The way we shopped’, a day of free talks, film screenings and activities inspired by the Sainsbury Archive, which is being held at the Museum in Docklands on Saturday 4th October.
‘Story of a Supermarket’ is located within the Museum in Docklands website under ‘Collections Online’ and can also be found at: www.museumindocklands.org.uk/sainsburyarchive

A quick announcement before I go on leave, and fingers crossed I haven’t broken anything, but site pages on the LAARC will now display maps again.

They’re only static maps, I’ll add dynamic maps (so you can zoom, move around, etc) if I get a chance when I’m back from holiday.

Late:Create is an exciting monthly workshop where members get creative using our collections for inspiration.

Writer Rachel Warrington lead July’s Late:Create session and a group of budding scribes were born.

A group member, Liam, tells us more:

‘This month’s activity was creative writing, lead by Rachel who gave us some simple tasks to get us started. We jotted down answers to questions about our journey to the Museum, such as what we did before we arrived and what we thought at the time.  We turned these answers into a poem and then turned the poem into an artist’s book using old maps of London as covers.

Next we each chose a painting from the collection and picked a person out of the image. We wrote down the thoughts of that person regarding what’s going on around them. After that we jotted down what we know about the picture and tried to relate own experiences to those in the picture.  We combined what we thought the person was thinking and our own perception of the picture to create sentences together to give us a poem or story.’

Poems will be posted here soon!

See more photos from the workshop here.

Late: Create is free and takes place 6 – 8pm on the 1st Thursday of every month and is for people who are currently out of work.  Future workshops include creative writing and photography.  The sessions are coordinated by the Museum’s Inclusion Officer, Lucie Fitton. To find out more contact community@museumoflondon.org.uk

Museum of London’s archaeological archive is the home of the Museum’s collection. The big warehouse in Hackney is the largest in Europe and 10km of shelving houses fascinating finds that have been unearthed in London. Clearly the archive is an incredibly important place but it faces a great threat…dust.

Dust, grime and dirt are all enemies at the archive and so it was decided that a big clean was needed to rid the space of its arch nemesis. The cleaning and clearing of the archives was scheduled for 16-20 June 2008. Staff, volunteers and members of the City of London Police rolled their sleeves up to give the archive its first deep clean since opening in 2002.

From Officers to Inspectors, all ranks were involved in the big clean over 2 days. How had the tables turned so that they were now the subjects of community service and why had they chosen the archive? These particular officers work for the City Police’s Specialist Crime Operations, where anonymity is of the utmost importance as there is a lot of covert work involved, and so this was the perfect opportunity to render a service to the London community whilst retaining discretion. Another officer added ‘The archives just fitted the bill and we wanted to see your coach!’ referring to the Lord Mayor’s Coach which is being temporarily housed at the archives whilst the redevelopment of the lower galleries of Museum of London is in progress.

From one genre of detective to another; Graham White from Southend-on-Sea, is a long-serving and dedicated volunteer at the archive with a qualification in Archaeology. Usually his job entails examining and documenting artefacts from previous digs which is of huge importance to the cataloguing system at the archive; yet, he is on the clean today and is very positive about the positive effects that it will inevitably have on the preservation of the artefacts of the building.

This optimism is shared by the two work experience students currently at the Archives. Sam Ridgeway, also from Southend-on-Sea, studies at Westcliff High School for boys and gained his work experience through Museum of London. Having already been involved with the archive for a week, the prospect of cleaning does not seem to have dampened his spirits - ‘well it certainly needed a clean!’ Dressed in their white boiler suits with dusters at hand, it seems that although unconventional work experience, this has not put off Nick Beaver who started as soon as the big clean did. Nick studies at Berkhamsted Collegiate School who helped him get in touch with the archive due to his interest in History and English. He doesn’t mind a bit of hard graft with the cleaning at all and is looking forward to a sneaky peek at exactly what goes on in the archives before returning home to Watford.

The clean up operation was a huge success with a horrifying amount of dust removed and the Museum’s collections preserved for a few more years to come. The yellow rubber gloves and masks have been put away until next time…

Check out our photos for a glimpse of the archive cleaning operation.