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Archives Revealed: what we’ve been up to in February 2025

Posted Thursday 6th March
Museum of the Order of St John Sophie Denman (Archivist)

We’ve come to the end of February, so read on to hear about what the Archives Revealed project team have been getting up to over the past month…

 

February 2025 in the Archive from Pat (Project Volunteer)

February has flown by and I am pleased to say that, on a personal note, I was able to collate and file the entries for my old (37 GWR Paddington) Division with a total of 396 items for the period from 1901 – 1985.

We continue to catalogue the B.F.1.A or B.F.2.A (annual return) forms with the evidence that we previously reported in our January blog. What is evident is the “expansion” of Divisions in some industries in the 1930s, specifically the London Post Office. As well as some of the usual names of Divisions that I have known in my years with St John Ambulance, I regularly stumble across Divisions that are unknown to me, i.e. the No. 62 Whyteleafe Ambulance Division or No. 63 W.H Smith & Sons Ambulance Division or the No. 65 Harrodian Ambulance Division.

We can also see evidence of how Divisions have moved between Counties or Regions, i.e. Watford was a London Division, and the Whyteleafe Ambulance Division transferred from the No. II District to the No. I District (London) in 1912.

 

February 2025 in the Archive from Joyce (Project Volunteer)

I have continued to catalogue the Nursing Division annual return records: B.F.1.N and B.F.2.N. As for the Ambulance Divisions the records show a surge in Nursing Division registrations from the late 1930s onwards. Many of the records are concerned with London area Divisions and another trend that be seen through the 1930s is the suburbanisation of the city. Divisions are registered in areas such as Hendon, Epsom, Malden, Eltham, Ruislip and Warlingham.

Milestones include cataloguing the No. 100 Uxbridge Nursing Division, registered in March 1939, and reaching No. 115 St Johns Wood Nursing Division. The St Johns Wood Nursing Division was registered in January 1940, which marks the end of the in-scope date for this project. So next month it will be on to cataloguing a different set of records!

A man and a woman are pictured (head and shoulders) inside a room, in front of metal shelving which is crammed full of grey boxes and large leather books. The man and woman are both white. The woman is on the left; she has short dark brown hair and she is wearing a grey jumper with a red top visible underneath. The man is on the right; he has short grey hair and is wearing a dark grey jumper with a blue checked shirt visible underneath. They are both smiling.
Project Volunteers Joyce and Pat in the Archive.

 

February 2025 in the Archive from Josie (Project Cataloguer)

This month I catalogued the remaining high-priority founding records of the St. John Ambulance Association for the project, which means my next move is to join Pat and Joyce in cataloguing records of the St John Ambulance Brigade.

The runaway highlight for me this month has been finding some original drawings for litters by Josef Neuss, the Berlin car manufacturer who was contracted to build litters for the St. John Ambulance Association in the 1870s.

A long horizontal blueprint showing three drawings of a litter (a device for carrying injured people) made out in white lines. The left drawing shows the litter as a flat bed with two large wheels towards the top end (where a person’s head would be if they laid flat, and two vertical legs extended towards the front end (where a person’s feet would be). The second and central drawing shows the litter with the two vertical legs extended, towards where people’s feet would be if they were to lie on it. This drawing shows a litter with a protective covering for people’s heads at the top end. The litter is placed on wheels. The third drawing on the right of paper shows a man laid in the litter, which is placed on the ground on short legs. The background is not solid blue and features some lighter patches. Text in black ink added to the print at the top of the paper reads, “Surgeon Major Manley’s improved pattern”. There is German text in white at the bottom of the paper (part of the original print), reading “Activ-Gesellschaft fur Wagenbau, vonn Jos. Neuss, Berlin”. The paper features five vertical fold lines.
Blueprint for Manley’s original litter design. Josef Neuss, 21 September 1878.
A pencil drawing on yellowed paper, photographed on a pale yellow background. The central drawing shows alterations to a litter (a device for carrying injured people). The litter is a flat bed with two large wheels towards the top end and vertical legs towards the front, where people’s feet would be if they were to lie on it. The litter is shown with the front legs extended. It features a stamp in blue ink above the drawing and a date written in black ink at the bottom of the drawing. The paper has fold-lines showing it has previously been folded twice.
Pencil drawing on paper showing Neuss’ modifications to litter originally designed by Surgeon-Major Manley. Josef Neuss, 21 September 1878.
A pencil drawing on yellowed paper, photographed on a pale yellow background. The central drawing shows alterations to a litter (a device for carrying injured people). The litter is a flat bed with two large wheels towards the top end and vertical legs, bent underneath with a hinge, towards the front, where people’s feet would be if they were to lie on it. This drawing shows a litter with a protective covering for people’s heads at the top end. It features a stamp in blue ink above the drawing and a date written in black ink at the bottom of the drawing. The paper has fold-lines showing it has previously been folded three times. Some of the edges are still folded.
Pencil drawing on paper showing Neuss’ modifications to litter originally designed by Surgeon-Major Manley. Josef Neuss, 21 September 1878.

These drawings show suggested alterations to Surgeon-Major Manley’s original design. In 1877 Neuss wrote to Herbert Perrott (then Chief Secretary of the Association), explaining the modifications: “we have heard from parties in our country, who we suplie [sic] with litters of the improved Manley pattern, instead of the original St John pattern, that the stationary fixed front legs often strike the ground, particularly if the attendant is a tall man. This striking the ground gives the wounded man on the litter great pain; therefore we have made an alteration and make the front legs with a joint similar to the hind legs”. (Neuss, 21 September 1878, p.2)

Perrott immediately forwarded this correspondence onto Manley, who rejected the idea for five reasons, the most strong being that, “with a hinged foreleg two attendants must always accompany the litter, because it would be impossible for the one at the rear to leave the handler to let-down the legs, without putting the litter at an angle that would cause suffering and further injury to the wounded, he could not ever leave the rear handles to give the slightest assistance to the man he might be conveying no matter how much it was required.”  (Manley, 26 November 1878, pp.2-3)

Not only are these delicate drawings of suggested alterations and Manley’s original design visually striking, for me they suggest a collaborative dialogue about, and development of, transportation for the injured across country borders. It’s also interesting to read about Neuss offering the modified design to other ambulance organisations in Germany, calling it the ‘St. John litter’. It’s another find that builds our excitement of being able to publicly share these collections as part of this project – the research possibilities are endless!

 

February 2025 in the Archive from Sophie (Archivist)

This month has flown by for me too! It’s been a very busy month with lots of cataloguing again, and a lovely engagement event at the Royal College of Physicians.

I have finally finished cataloguing the in-scope records for Australia and South Africa, meaning that all of the in-scope international records are all fully catalogued to file level, and it feels like a big milestone. There are a few boxes of records relating to the St John Ambulance Brigade Overseas offices and administration to catalogue, and once they are done, the entire sub-fonds of records relating to the work of the St John Ambulance Association and St John Ambulance Brigade internationally will be complete. Josie and I will decide what I move on to cataloguing next, to watch this space to see where the cataloguing work takes me next.

A sneak peek at the St John Overseas sub-fonds area of the archive catalogue!

My colleague Rebecca (one of our Curators) and I went to the Royal College of Physicians to take part in Up Close and Medical, an object handling event run by the London Museums of Health and Medicine. This is an annual event where museums in London in the specialities of health and medicine areas get together to showcase some of the objects in the collection for members of the public to handle. It is free to attend, and open to all ages. This year, the attendees were the Royal College of Physicians Museum, The Old Operating Theatre, the Royal College of Nursing Library and Museum, the Hunterian Museum, the Association of Anaesthetists Heritage Centre, and us – the Museum of the Order of St John.

This year, I took along some  records from the St John Archive which showcase some of the early work of the St John Ambulance Association and St John Ambulance Brigade, to connect this event with our Archives Revealed project, and Rebecca brought along some medals from the Museum’s handling collection to complement the archival items. We had some really lovely engagement from members of the public who were interested in our Museum and our collection, some of whom were current Cadets, or had family members who had been in St John Ambulance, and one of our attendees had two grandparents who were awarded OBEs for their work with St John! It was a lovely event and a great opportunity to engage and connect with people and other medical museums within London.

Two women are standing behind a table. The woman on the left is wearing a black dress with a black cardigan; she has blonde shoulder-length hair and is wearing light framed glasses. The woman on the left is wearing a white shrt with a sweater vest in blue colours on top; she has shoulder length purple hair. The table is covered in a light coloured tablecloth, and on the table are paper documents and metal medals. To the left of the table is a tall banner which promotes the Museum of the Order of St John.
Sophie (Archivist) and Rebecca (Curator) at Up Close and Medical.

We will be launching a public-facing catalogue of all the records catalogued as part of the Archives Revealed project in late summer 2025, so keep your eyes peeled over the coming months for more information!

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