To celebrate International Women’s Day on the 8th March, I am delving in to the archives to discover some of the ways women’s lives are documented.
MS 1509/5/8, Personal Papers of Rachel Albright
Rachel Albright was a Quaker woman living in Edgbaston in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her personal papers are held within a collection of records relating to the wider Albright Family.
Originally from Tottenham in north London, she married Arthur Albright in 1848 and they had eight children one of whom died young in 1872. Of interest to an archivist is the way that Rachel documented her life and the records that have survived. The archive includes travel journals, sketches, commonplace books, photographs and poetry which allow us an insight into her life and how it differs from those of women in Birmingham today.
Travel journals
Before Rachel was married, she kept a journal of a four month trip to Falmouth in 1836. Luckily this survived and is one of the items in the archive (MS 1509/5/8/1). In her journal she documents the occupations and pastimes she engaged in on a daily basis.
Here are a few extracts:
5th mo 8th (May 8th) Had my French lesson. In the afternoon went for a nice long walk with Aunt and cousins to Penzance. The rocks I think are very fine and beautiful, the sea dashing beneath them.
5th mo 10th (May 10th)
A very lovely day. Sat out in the garden this morning and prepared some of my French. Went into the town with Aunt and in the afternoon went for a nice walk with Aunt and cousins to Bar Beach where we found a great many shells.
5th mo 20th (May 20th)
Went in to the town after breakfast with Aunt and cousins and afterwards finished our paintings and worked out in the garden and read some of Campbell’s poems- admire them very much. In the evening had a game of chess with Uncle.
Sketching, letter writing and knitting are other pastimes mentioned in the journal and Rachel also records her attendance at Quaker meetings.
Sketches
As the journal tells us, sketching was an activity that Rachel frequently engaged in and there is a series of sketches in the archive of places she visited during a trip to France and the Swiss Alps in 1879 (MS 1509/5/8/10). In fact the archive is remarkable in that it contains a wide range of drawings and sketches thought to be by Rachel.
One of the sketches among the papers but not by Rachel is entitled ‘Original George Road house in Birmingham drawn by cousin R.J. Lloyd for Arthur Albright to show his fiancée Rachel Stacey of Tottenham‘, 1848 (MS 1509/5/8/10).
We can imagine Arthur excitedly showing this to Rachel as an introduction to the first house they would live in on George Road in Edgbaston (the road looks much more rural than it appears nowadays). In contrast to today when most of us can take photographs on our phones, this must have been quicker and easier than obtaining a photograph.
Commonplace books and Poetry
Commonplace books were often kept by individuals over the years to record passages and writings of significance to them as a way of remembering them. This was evidently something that Rachel enjoyed doing over the years as the archive contains not just one but five of these books often presented to her by family members. For example one was given by her mother, one by her aunt Sarah Alfred Fox and one by her cousin Maria Beaumont. Here is a picture of the inside of one of these books with some favourite verses (MS 1509/5/8/5)
As well as enjoying reading and recording poetry written by other people, Rachel used writing her own poetry to cope with a difficult event in her life which was the death or her daughter. ‘A week in heaven’ is a poem written by Rachel which she called ‘a mother’s lament on the death of her daughter Wilhelmine’ (MS 1509/5/8/7)
Photographs
When reading about people alive in the past, I am always intrigued to know what they looked like and luckily a number of family photographs featuring Rachel have survived. These images show her with her children and husband and also on her own. They are formal in style and look as though they were taken in studios, so it is difficult to catch a glimpse of her personality, but luckily we have her writings through which she expressed her feelings, tastes and experiences in her own words (MS 1509/7/10, 11 and 2).
The catalogue to this collection is available online here. To make an appointment to view items from this collection please email us at archives.appointments@birmingham.gov.uk.
Emma Hancox, Archivist
The Iron Room 