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

Josie (Project Cataloguer)

May has been time to have a Spring sort-out in the Archive. Together with Archivist Sophie, we’ve spent time pulling out the remaining in-scope records we plan to catalogue as we approach the late stages of the Archives Revealed project. We’ve still got a way to go, but it’s satisfying being able to physically see what’s left. It’s also been a wonderful chance to see more material! The images below are from a scrapbook kept by Mary Robinson of the Aylesbury Nursing Division between 1929 and 1943.

Mary’s scrapbook/ autograph book contains photographs, drawings, paintings, poems and notes from patients and friends. The pictures above show some of my favourite entries. They tell us of the gratitude Mary received and the real relationships she must have forged with so many people.

I’m going to be taking a 2-month break from the project and will be returning in late July. I’m already looking forward to getting stuck back into the history of St John Ambulance!

Joyce (Project Volunteer)

May in the Archive has flown by – especially with ‘time off’ during Clerkenwell Design Week. A significant achievement over the last month has been the start of cataloguing Annual Returns, Brigade Registers and Record Sheets for Kent-based Divisions. A number of large boxes from Kent had been in the Archives for a while, kept safe but not catalogued.

Firstly, records were taken out of their original boxes and sorted into Ambulance, Nursing, Nursing Cadet, Ambulance Cadet and Combined Divisions.  One of the first things we realized was that there were very few Ambulance Cadet records for Kent in the records we were sorting. Perhaps there are some ‘out there’ somewhere!  Each of the Ambulance, Nursing and Cadet records were then sorted into individual Divisions and placed into Archive standard paper folders and boxes in alphabetical order. At this point all these records were now in appropriate archive storage box conditions.

Next records in scope for the Archive Revealed project were separated out and placed into numbered archive boxes. For the Annual Returns, Brigade Registers and Record Sheets, this is a series of Divisional records that start in 1939 at the latest. For example, the Biggin Hill Nursing Division Annual Return records start in 1939 and so we continue to catalogue to the last date we have for this Division. Which in this case is 1944. If the earliest record we had for a Division is 1940, then the records would not be catalogued as part of the Archives Revealed project.

There were a number of additional records attached to the Kent Annual Returns. These records included Recommendations and Applications for Promotions, parades and public duties attended, and annual accounts. One application to become a Divisional Superintendent includes the Officers’ Promotion Examination Papers, marks achieved and examiners feedback. The applicant passed and went on to lead the Faversham Nursing Division.

Sophie (Archivist)

As Josie has already said, we have spent some time identifying the remaining in-scope material for cataloguing, and my part in the remaining cataloguing work is the in-scope records that were created by the Order of St John. This includes the Order’s statutes, charters, and regulations, some Order publications which reference the St John Ambulance Association and St John Ambulance Brigade, some medal registers, correspondence, books of newspaper cuttings, and minutes of some Committees. These Order records, while not directly created by the Association and Brigade, provide important contextual information about them.

An important record within this are the proceedings of a public meeting held at the Pall Mall restaurant in London on 28 February 1878. The meeting was set up to describe and promote the work of the recently formed St John Ambulance Association, and the proceedings takes the form of a small booklet that records the speeches, questions, and comments at the meeting. It’s a really important resource in understanding the Association’s early work and the public’s opinion and reception of it.

In exciting news, we have also made progress in our planning of launch activities for the end of the project. It feels like I’m keeping secrets, as I’m not going to say exactly what we are planning, but I can provide a teaser and say that we hope to do some presentations nationally and internationally, create a short film, and organise an in-person event in 2026, so watch this space!

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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!