Sometimes being an archivist is frustrating

Recently posted on the Wellcome Library Blog: There are a million stories in the Naked Archive: here are some of them.

 While those stories are tantalising, and there are things that one could probably never find out about about the context to those particular manuscripts, sometimes it might be possible to discover at least a bit more detail, if one had the time to spare.

For example, in the case of Fanny George, Chancery lunatic, it's not improbable that the records of Court of Chancery in The National Archives might have something about how she was declared to be of unsound mind and who initiated the inquisition.

There might be local records about the Rev Joseph Cook and Dr Robert Pringle.

But the likelihood of making a definite identification of who compiled that recipe book, and where (and if there was ever a fatal accident involving arsenic-based facewash in the vicinity), seems remote indeed.  

Wellcome blog post

Recently posted an entry on the Wellcome Library blog about an interesting little group of correspondence relating to the war-work of the Strangeways Research Laboratory -The Strangeways Laboratory, ‘The Mustard Club’, and Honor Fell’s ‘aliens - although much of this related to the technicalites of research into toxic gases and counter-measures for the same, there was a significant degree of 'human interest', including Honor Fell's principled refusal to supply details of the contingent of German refugee scientists who had been working for quite some time at the Strangeways to the authorities so that they could be subjected to surveillance by the military police.

Also posted to the Wellcome Library blog by one of my colleagues - a chef tries out one of Lady Ann Fanshawe's C17th recipes