Project Pigeon and Birmingham’s social history in the digital age

Introduction

Over the years our service has received many collections relating to community heritage projects. The outputs of these initiatives have enabled us to document and make available information relating to communities hitherto often neglected in the historical record – for example recent immigrants and ethnic minorities or the LGBTQ+ community. For many years content came in as physical objects like audio tapes with paper transcripts, but over the last two decades there has been a noticeable shift to hybrid or wholly digital formats.

We recently had an enquiry from an academic researcher wanting to access an archive documenting the history of pigeon racing in the region. This prompted me to look at challenges around managing, storing, and making accessible digital collections, find an immediate solution to make specific content available for them on-site, and, longer-term, widen access to the collection online via Preservica.

“Project Pigeon” [MS 4680]

The “Project Pigeon” Archive

“Project Pigeon” was founded by artists Alexandra Lockett and Ian England and ran between 2011 and 2013. Alexandra had become interested in the subject of pigeon keeping, also known as pigeon fancying, developing the archive by attending pigeon clubs, shows, and racing and training meets, learning about the care of pigeons.

A long-time staple of working-class leisure activity, pigeon keeping is especially popular in the West Midlands, with more pigeon fanciers here than any other region in Britain. Birmingham was at the forefront of innovative developments in the sport, the city’s pigeon fanciers being the first to use railways to transport the birds to distant liberation points!

Whilst not as popular as it once was, the archive reveals an interesting mix of participants in terms of age, gender, and ethnicity. The project also interviewed people engaged in associated trades including breeders and importers. The archive reveals considerable minutiae documenting working, domestic and social lives of the participants – the eldest participant was born in 1915, so was nearly 100 when interviewed!

South Birmingham racing pigeon “liberation”, 1970s [MS 4680 Acc. 2013/024]. Used with permission of Project Pigeon

Preserving and accessing “Project Pigeon” – challenges and solutions

After finding an entry on the online catalogue, the researcher made an appointment to view the archive over three days, specifically the audio and video interview recordings. Whilst paper content can be viewed here by appointment, no accessible playback versions existed of the digital master files. Processing digital archives can be fiddly and time-consuming. Fortunately, just after Christmas we had a new digital preservation workstation set up with new applications installed which made the task much easier.

I contacted the researcher to explain the situation and that I would prioritise the process of copying the interview recordings to CD. I used a new application installed on the processing workstation, Teracopy, to copy content to a suitable location on network for processing –verifying content checksums (like a digital fingerprint!) before and after copying, it provides evidence digital assets have copied without alteration or data loss.

Other challenges became apparent on analysing content using the file identification tool DROID. The audio recordings comprise solid preservation formats – Audio WaveForm – yet were often too large to fit onto CD. To resolve this, I created compressed MP3 copies using Audacity, another piece of open-source audio editing and conversion software. MP3s were added to data CDs along with the text data sheets and JPEG digital photographs (if they exist). I updated the catalogue to notify researchers surrogate copies are available.

Converting video to MP4 using Handbrake software

The video content proved even more problematic, the Apple MOV files comprising multiple gigabytes of data, too large to render online or fit to DVD. Fortunately, we also have access to another open-source tool, Handbrake, which supports the conversion of video to a selection of modern, widely supported formats, including compressed web-optimised MP4s comprising a fraction of the data of the original.

Longer-term I would like to provide upload content to Universal Access, the public front end of our Preservica tenancy. Although consent forms signed by the interviewees permit us to use the archive for various purposes, including research, publication, or online display, I shall attempt to contact the depositor as a courtesy to inform them of the work I’m doing to preserve the archive and the options being considered to make this unusual collection more widely accessible, both remotely and on-site.

Setting up an Ingest Workstation

As a final note – setting up an ingest workstation can be done relatively cheaply, even by small community groups. Many of the software applications are free, open-source, and easy to use. Any real costs usually relate to hardware – PC equipment, write-blockers, USB disk drives, and the like. A useful four-part blog by Simon Wilson describes step-by-step how he set up relatively low-cost forensic workstation.

Michael Hunkin, Digital Preservation Officer

Sons of Rest: Solace of the mind

Sons of Rest, Handsworth Park, 1950s, Ref: WK/H5/557

Can any of us in 2024 really imagine the psychological impact of World War One – millions dead, many more wounded and injured physically and mentally. The understanding of the unwritten agreement between humans regards how to treat one another, completely shattered. 

In the often overlooked first paragraph of Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence, first published in 1928, the voice of the narrator states – ‘Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins.’ One reading of the passage could be a comment on the psychological and social aftereffects of conflict never previously seen on such a scale. 

How then did individuals and the societies they lived in decide to react to the residual emotional wrench and tumult of conflict. It could be argued the Sons of Rest movement was as a direct response to the traumatic fracture of the world and the call for collective male psychological repair so much needed. 

Sons of Rest, Handsworth Park, 1950s, Ref: WK/H5/555

The Sons of Rest is a social organisation formed in Birmingham in 1927 to provide leisure facilities to men of retirement age. A group of World War One veterans convened in Handsworth Park – one of the group, Lister Muff who has a plaque dedicated to him in the Handsworth Park building, put forward the proposal to start the organisation. Another, W. J. Ostler suggested the name, highlighting they had all been ‘sons of toil’ during their lives. A melding of the allusion to the biblical and the military in the name – ‘Sons Of’ inferring scripture passages referencing the Son of God. Rest referencing the euphemism employed as a mark of respect to those who did not survive the conflict – those at rest. 

The original meeting place in Handsworth Park was an old cab driver’s shelter in the summer and the bowling pavilion in the winter. The first purpose-built building was opened in Handsworth Park in 1930 after funding appeals were made along with support from Councillor George F. McDonald, Chairman of Birmingham Corporation Parks Committee. 

January 1930 Birmingham Weekly Post article

Sons of Rest premises located across Birmingham and the surrounding Black Country were typically located in the vicinity of a park or other green wooded spaces providing solace and peace. Men would gather to chat and to participate in activities such as dominoes, draughts and other board games. Latterly, several clubs extended membership to women. 

WK/A1/88 : War veterans socialising in the new extension to the Sons of Rest, Broad Street Recreation Ground, Acocks Green

At its zenith, the Sons of Rest had well over 3,000 members and up to 29 premises. Several of the buildings survive and remain in use today. 

To find out more, you can read ‘’Sons of Rest’’ : History of the Birth and Growth of the Movement in Handsworth Park, 1927 – 1937 on level 4 of the library.

Image of the front cover of the pamphlet here, Ref: LP 41.14

Paul Taylor, Archives & Special Collections Co-ordinator

Dr. Mary Darby Sturge

Portrait of Dr. Mary D. Sturge. [MS 3949]

Birmingham has a strong history of humanitarian and philanthropic citizens, some of whom are more well known than others. The Sturge family is well known, for instance, as being an influential Quaker family that moved to Birmingham in the early 19^th century. Joseph Sturge was an English Quaker, abolitionist and activist; Charles Sturge was mayor of Birmingham. 

The women of the Sturge family were equally as influential and active in the community. In celebration of Women’s History Month, the theme of which this year is Women Who Advocate for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, I was intrigued to find out more about one particular member of the Sturge family, Dr. Mary Sturge.

Pull up a pew: Progress in ‘Altar’-ing the Parish Catalogues

Re-numbered parish collections

It has been a while since I wrote about the parish collections (EPs) progress, and I thought for this week’s blog an update might be welcome. Back in 2022 I wrote about working on creating a structured catalogue for 27 more parish collections using our cataloguing database. In the last two years, the project expanded to become a broad progress survey across all the parish collections held in the Archive. This progress survey looked at the work that had been completed for each collection and what needed consolidating.

A progress survey spreadsheet was created in 2022 to help focus on the first 27 collections I was working on. This helped me to keep track of the work I had done for each collection. Using the spreadsheet and our cataloguing database, Calm, I could spend time renumbering registers and parish chest material; I could make a note on the spreadsheet and be able to pick up the work again. This made the whole process much easier to handle. Taking each collection one at a time allowed me to ensure each catalogue I had created was consistent with other parish catalogues and ensure that material that was renumbered was done so clearly.

Birmingham Trade Catalogue Collection : All The Tricks of the Trade

Birmingham‘s industrial and commercial heritage is at the heart of the city’s identity. It’s reported that during the nineteenth century, a third of all patents issued in the United Kingdom originated in Birmingham  – the city is referred to historically as the ‘Workshop of The World’ – no one trade defined the city’s industrial output and productivity.

Our Birmingham trade catalogue collection of nineteenth and twentieth century businesses reflects the diverse array of manufactories and trades which helped to form the city’s rich industrial heritage. The collection contains catalogues for some of the more well-known Birmingham companies such as BSA, Cadbury and Webley & Scott along with those which have slipped beneath the historical radar. 

Trade Catalogue for Daniel Manufacturing Co. Ltd; silversmiths, 1939 (Reference: LS 10/D/262)

Amid such frenetic commercial and industrial activity, in a pre – digital world, how did individuals know where to go to find the goods and services they needed. Firstly, they could have consulted a trade directory – for further details see the blog we posted in 2020 on our Trade Directory Collection . Ultimately, they would want to have access to information about the goods and services a supplier was able to provide.

Yates and Sons Silver Plate List of Prices trade catalogue, dated 1872 (Ref: LS 10/Yates, John, and Sons)

Think back to a time before online shopping and websites selling you everything you didn’t know you really wanted. How would you let people know what you had to sell. Trade catalogues first appeared in the eighteenth century as the wheels of industrialisation gathered pace. In essence, a trade catalogue is a calling card, an advertisement for a manufacturer, wholesaler or retailer wanting to promote a line of products and services to individuals wishing to purchase goods and wares. Individuals would acquire a copy of the catalogue, peruse it at their leisure and then contact the company to start the ordering process. 

Trade catalogues vary in size and content. Many are very simple price books with illustrated examples of products – as shown in the example from the Yates and Sons Silver Plate List. Others like to express the cultural legacy of the company, and often as an aside contain a history of the firm. This helps to assert the reliability and heritage of the business. Others are also works of art. We recently posted a tweet about the firm of Reuben Heaton who traded in fishing rods. Stand back and admire this alpine vista –

Reuben Heaton & Sons   – Salmon and Trout Reel Makers, 9, 7, 10 Hospital Street, Birmingham. (Ref: LS 10/H/192/14)

It’s almost as if a trade catalogue can offer a patina of respectability to the operations of a company which may otherwise be engaged in less genteel activities. No one likes to continuously wade in the dirt and muck of back breaking graft. There’s a strong tradition of industry empowering and supporting the creative arts in the nineteenth century and the arts offering sanctuary away from the toil and thrust of business transactions. 

We’re going to be posting more examples from the collection across there next week  – so keep an eye on @TheIronRoom on X/Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

Checking the Catalogue

You can search the online catalogue to our archive Calmview to identify the trade catalogues we hold. There are two routes you can take. Firstly, enter the name of the company in the Search box on the top right of the Homepage. 

Alternatively, click on the Advanced Search tab at the top of the Home Page. In the Ref. No. field enter  – LS 10  – the collection level reference for the collection. This will take you to the beginning of the catalogue. Then click on LS 10 in the next Ref. No. field and then again on the next page until you reach the page with the heading  –  Advanced Search > Search Results > Record > Hierarchy Browser. You should then see a series of headings such as A : Businesses Beginning with A. Click on the + sign to open up the branches of the catalogue for a list of the companies we retain trade catalogues for.

There’s a guide on how to navigate the catalogue

Examples of other Business Literature

Cotterill’s Specification for the Manufacture of Flour, 1843, patent 9714

Trade Card: Marley Brothers; locksmiths brassfounders (Ref: MS 4834/179)

To set you on your way, here are a few examples of the other types of Birmingham business literature we hold  – chiefly trade cards and patents

Don’t forget to check out @TheIronRoom on X/Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

Paul Taylor, Coordinator 

Chinese New Year: Sources relating to the history of Birmingham’s Chinese community

10 February 2024 marks the beginning of the Year of the Dragon. Chinese New Year remains a significant event in Birmingham’s cultural calendar. Focused on the Chinatown district on the southside of the city centre, the celebrations attract around 30,000 visitors annually.

Archives and Collections holds a range of resources documenting the Chinese community and the Lunar New Year events over the years.

Chinese migration and settlement in Birmingham: a brief background

Although a small population existed in the region before World War Two, Chinese migration to the West Midlands increased significantly in the decades thereafter. Covering a small area around Hurst Street, Ladywell Walk and Pershore Street, Birmingham’s Chinatown district took shape from the 1950s onwards.

Most of the incoming migrants came from the New Territories of Hong Kong, then a British colony. Many worked in the hospitality sector or set up restaurants and associated shops, businesses, and services.

Chinese New Year programme 1993 [LS 4/35/22]

Chinese New Year in Birmingham

As the Chinese community established itself and families began to settle, social and cultural organisations were set up. The Chinese Community Centre (founded 1977) played a major role in organising the city’s Chinese New Year celebrations in the early days.

The Arcadian Centre, a multi-levelled piazza of restaurants, bars, and shops at the heart of Chinatown which opened in 1991, has since become the focal point for the celebrations.

Street festivities were interrupted for two years in the wake of the Covid pandemic, returning in 2023. Information on the forthcoming festivities can be found here, a full programme will be announced in January.

Sources documenting Birmingham’s Chinese New Year celebrations

The following resources are in our collections and may be viewed by appointment in the Wolfson Centre unless otherwise stated.

Full reference numbers are provided where applicable. Most items (except photographs) can be found in our online catalogue, CALMView, links are provided where applicable. To search CALMView, use text Chinese New Year or variations.

Text sources:

• Newscuttings/Ethnic Minorities (most of which are indexed) are a good place to start – they include articles about New Year celebrations past, particularly from the 1980s
• LS 4/35/22 [Ephemera Festivals/22] Chinese New Year programme 1993
• MS 2512/1/76 Flyer for exhibition at Midland Arts Centre, c1990s: ‘Reflections.’ A celebration of the Chinese New Year through visual arts’
• MS 2512/1/77 Poster for exhibition of photographs by Terry Lo at Central Library, 1995:’From Cathay to Pershore Street: The Chinese Community in Birmingham’

Dancer performing on stage at the Chinese New Year Celebrations at the Arcadian Centre, Birmingham, 2000. Photograph by Nicola Gotts Image used with kind permission of photographer [Our reference: MS 2363 ]

Visual sources:

• MS 2363 Photographs by Nicola Gotts showing cultural events (including Chinese New Year) around the Arcadian, 1990s-2000s. Image below is on the Photo Wall, Floor 3, Library of Birmingham
• MS 2512 The Terry Lo Collection. Biographical information with digital images can be found on Connecting Histories here
• MS 2683/B/1/2/1 Album of photographs by Russ Escritt – includes 2002 Chinese New Year celebrations in the Arcadian

Oral history:

• MS 4738 Records of the ‘Chinese Lives in Birmingham’ project, playing copy CDs available (no transcripts or full catalogue). Please contact Birmingham Archives and Collections for further information

General sources relating to Chinese history in Birmingham:

• A good general overview is given in research undertaken by Dr Malcolm Dick and Dr Chris Upton, republished on our blog in 2021. Article here
• LF 21.85 BIR Birmingham City Council, The Chinese in Birmingham: A community profile (1996)
• BCOL 21.8 Sue Baxter, The Chinese and Vietnamese in Birmingham. Research commissioned by Birmingham City Council (1986) [Open Access, Floor 4]

Items from Aviss Hutt’s archive [Our Reference: MS 5089]

A new accession

Not specifically relating to New Year, this is an opportunity to showcase a new accession that came to us last year, providing an interesting record of China just after the Communist revolution in 1949.

The archive comprises a small collection of personal papers and photographs belonging to Aviss Hutt (1917-2010), documenting her part in the Birmingham People’s Peace Committee Peace Mission to China.

Between 1947 and 1960 Hutt lived in Moseley, Birmingham. She was active in various peace campaigns in the West Midlands during the 1950s. In 1955, and as Secretary of the Birmingham group, she was invited on a non-government goodwill mission in 1955.

The delegation stayed in China a fortnight, with the aim of studying issues around peace, international relations and Anglo-Chinese cooperation. She recorded her travels and activities in diaries, correspondence, and photographs, all of which are in the collection.

All the records are open and may be consulted in our archives by appointment. For more information see entry for MS 5089 in the catalogue.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Michael Hunkin, Digital Preservation Officer

Shakespeare and World Braille Day

Louis Braille, the inventor of one of the most recognisable systems of tactile writing was born on the 4^th of January in 1809. The United Nations celebrates this day every year to mark the importance of Braille as a means of communication, education, freedom of expression and social inclusion for supporting the human rights of people who are blind and partially-sighted.

Although World Braille Day was only inaugurated in 2019 the history of printing innovations to assist people who are blind or partially-sighted has a long history. This is reflected in the Birmingham Shakespeare Collection which has over 80 books in a variety of embossed writing systems.

Detail from Merchant of Venice : from the Globe edition / edited by W.G. Clark and W.A. Wrightage, 1916, National Institute for the Blind [our reference: S 336.1916 362522]

The following article, about this part of the Birmingham Shakespeare Collection, is from Forgotten Treasures: The World’s First Great Shakespeare Library which brings together a wide range of academics, researchers and librarians to explore the importance of the unique collection.  Reproduced here with kind permission of History West Midlands and Dr Caroline Archer Parré.

Printing Tactile Shakespeare

Frontpiece from Merchant of Venice : [in embossed type for the blind-Moon], 1887 [our reference: S 336.1887 90078]

As early as the 16th century educators had experimented with reading and writing systems for the blind, including alphabets rendered in pin-pricks, or string glued to paper: both approaches were laborious and impractical. It was not until the 18^th and 19th centuries that a number of more efficient and economic methods of reproducing text for the visually impaired were realised.

In 1871, the Worcester-based Society for Providing Cheap Literature for the Blind (SPCLB) printed, at their own offices, Bowdler’s family edition of The Merchant of Venice. The book was produced using a process of embossed roman letters and was based on a method of tactile printing invented in 1786 by Valentin Hauy (1745-1822). Haüy was the founder of the Institute for Blind Youth, Paris, and, for the benefit of his pupils, he devised a system of printing text which could be read with the fingertips. The process was simple: it used ordinary metal printing type pressed against the back of the paper to create embossed roman letters.

Detail from Merchant of Venice : Bowdler’s text [in embossed type for the blind-Lucas’s], 1871 [our reference: S 336.1871 238383]

The SPCLB publication was not the only instance of Shakespeare’s plays being made available to visually impaired readers in the 19th century. Between 1884 and 1916, the National Institute for the Blind (NIB) published the ‘Globe Series’ of Shakespeare’s plays. Edited by the Shakespearean and classical scholars William G Clark (1821- 78), and William A Wright (1831-1914), the plays appeared as individual volumes and were printed using the braille system in which raised dots represented the letters of the alphabet.

Detail from the first page of Merchant of Venice / from the Globe edition edited by W.G. Clark and W.A. Wright, 1887, National Institute for the Blind Our reference

Invented in 1824 by Louis Braille (1809-1952), a student of Hauy at the school in Paris, the braille system of dots was much easier for blind readers to discern through their fingertips than the raised roman letters. Other systems emerged, including a method of using ‘arbitrary’ characters and symbols assigned to represent letters. The most popular of these was Dr Moon’s Type for the Blind, a simplified system of embossed reading using symbols primarily derived from the roman alphabet, but simplified. Moon published more than 300 works using his embossed type.

The volumes of tactile Shakespeare in the Birmingham collection demonstrate the dominant 19th-century tactile printing systems available for the blind. The inclusion of such materials clearly bears out the ‘everything to everybody’ ethos of the Library’s founders.

Dr Caroline Archer-Parré, Professor of Typography, Co-director of the Centre for Printing History and Culture at Birmingham City University / University of Birmingham

Detail of title page from Merchant of Venice : [in embossed type for the blind-Moon], 1887 [our reference: S 336.1887 90078]

You can access the Forgotten Treasures book at the following libraries.

Everyone is welcome to access the Birmingham Shakespeare Collection by appointment in the Wolfson Centre at the Library of Birmingham.

For enquiries, please contact archives.appointments@birmingham.gov.uk