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Birkbeck’s First Christmas

Jerry White, Emeritus Professor in Modern London History, takes us on a trip down Christmas memory lane, reflecting on the College’s inception nearly two hundred years ago and considering how Christmas in 1823 might have looked.

There probably wasn’t much talk of Christmas when the London Mechanics’ Institution was founded at a famous meeting at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Strand, on 2 December 1823. Unlike today, when Christmas shopping and advertising begins around mid-November if not before, Christmas preparations then only began in mid-December: ‘The note of preparation is now sounding through all the different places of public Amusement, to gratify the visitors to London during the festive time of Christmas,’ the Morning Post told its readers on 19 December, and little seems to have been done up to that point. The weather didn’t help this year, with much of December unseasonably warm and humid till just a day or two before the festival, with a marked ‘mildness of weather in and about London; so mild, indeed is the season, that the writer, on Sunday [the 21^st], saw, in a private garden at Hammersmith, a wall-flower in blossom, out in the open grounds….’[1]

A festive marketplace

But once the great day approached then all minds were turned to how Christmas might be celebrated: ‘Probably there is no country where Christmas is more enjoyed by the community than in Great Britain’, patriotic newspapers claimed.[2] The real opening announcement of Christmas to Londoners had come a few days before with the first of two Monday ‘Great Christmas Markets’ at Smithfield, where the country’s cattle farmers paraded their best beasts for sale, knocked down to the butchers of Smithfield, Leadenhall, Newgate and Whitechapel. The markets were packed tight with cattle and sheep, driven on the hoof for weeks before; the animals had their last stop for grazing and rest in the fields of Islington to get them to market in peak condition. Once sold at Smithfield, though, ‘the crowded state of the market’ presented ‘an unusual difficulty in getting the Beast out; their heads are battered by two or three drovers at a time, and their eyes in numerous instances knocked out; and this from sheer necessity….’[3]

Beef was, indeed, the favourite food for Christmas dinner, with turkey (driven in flocks from Norfolk), geese, hams (from Yorkshire, Westmorland, even Westphalia) and mutton (for poorer families especially) also in much demand. So much roast meat could pose a problem to some. ‘There is no period probably when persons sympathize with those who have lost their grinders, more than at Christmas, when stews and wishy washy messes are excluded from the festive board, and the loss of teeth is felt as the greatest misery and affliction.’ Boiled plum pudding, though, could be enjoyed by all, the toothless included, and was a Christmas necessity. Great care was essential in getting it just right: ‘If the plum-pudding, from being too rich, should crumble or break, the misfortune never fails of agonizing and fretting the worthy hostess – all the eyes of the company are instantly and most unkindly directed towards her, as if darting reproach, to add to her embarrassment, and aggravate the calamity.’[4] Wine with dinner for the middle classes was followed by madeira, sherry and ‘good old Port’ after the pudding; in poorer households, beer or porter would have to suffice and the whole dinner might have to be taken to the baker’s shop for roasting in the bread oven, though a plum pudding could be boiled in the copper or in a pan on the range. But probably all homes could enjoy some after-dinner games: ‘hunt the slipper’ a great favourite, and ‘snap-dragon’ in richer families, which involved the unlikely pleasure of snatching almonds or sultanas and raisins from a shallow bowl of burning brandy. In all houses, churches and shop windows Christmas decorations seem to have relied mainly on branches of evergreen, especially holly, and candles, though no doubt the theatres and places of public resort were able to put on a bigger display. Mistletoe seemed a little out of fashion in 1823, no longer said to be hanging from drawing-room ceilings but ‘sent down stairs’ to the kitchen ‘for the benefit of rubicund cooks and rosy house-maids.’[5]

Christmas presents were no doubt personal and varied, just as now. Diaries and ‘illuminated pocketbooks’ were much in demand if the advertisers were to be believed, like ‘Friendship’s Offering; or, The Annual Remembrancer: a Christmas Present and New Year’s Gift for the Year 1824’, at a whacking 12 shillings. Dancing at Christmas was all the rage and many advertisements were directed at helping people look their best: Mrs Bell, of 52 St James’s Street, offered a ‘variety of novel and beautiful millinery, Head Dresses of almost every description, Ball and Evening Dresses’, as well as her ‘Patent Corsets, unrivalled and universally admired’; W. Rowe, at the Magasin de Nouveautes, 72 Oxford Street, offered an ‘assortment of Trinkets’, ‘just received from Paris’ and ‘adapted for Christmas present,’ like bead purses, red mohair bracelets, bone fans plain and painted, ornamental combs and much else; ‘Rowland’s Macassar Oil’ guaranteed ‘a beautiful arrangement of the Human Hair,’ for ‘the Youth of both Sexes … “To dance on the light fantastic toe”’; and music publishers offered fresh arrangements for solo piano and duets as Christmas presents, like Boosey & Co’s new editions of Rossini and Mozart operas, ‘with Italian words’. And there were Christmas foods on offer as presents, some exotic and reflecting London’s reach as the centre of world trade, like ‘Muscatels, in boxes; new Jordan Almonds … Spanish Grapes, very fine Normandy Pippins in baskets, Guimaraen or Portugal Plums, fine New Smyrna Figs in small drums,’ and much more from Hickson & Co’s Foreign Fruit Warehouse at 72 Welbeck Street.[6]

Dancing and riotous behaviour

Dancing could be everywhere, not just in the homes of the middle classes and above, and could no doubt spill into the streets, which were at their liveliest at Christmas. Perhaps this was the cause of ‘an unusual number of dissolute women brought before the [Bow Street] Magistrates yesterday morning from the watch-houses, charged with riotous behaviour in the public streets on the preceding night [the 23^rd]. They pleaded the season in their defence. They had only indulged in a little Christmas festivity. The Magistrates told them that no season could justify drunken riots in the streets; and sent two of the most obstreperous among them to spend their holydays [sic] in Tothill-fields Bridewell – Mary Baskerville for one month, and Ann Davis for fourteen days.’[7] The streets had other dangers too. For a day or two before the 25^th, apprentices, artisans of one kind or another and shop assistants would go house-to-house soliciting pennies and sixpences for their ‘Christmas boxes’. This year the ‘housekeepers in and around the metropolis are cautioned against a set of men who go about in the assumed character of Bow-street Patrol, soliciting Christmas Boxes. It is proper that it should be known such persons are impostors, and that the Bow-street Patrol are strictly prohibited from soliciting Christmas Boxes and are liable to be dismissed their situation if it be known that they do so.’[8]

Christmas boxes were one indication that charity was then as now one of the defining characteristics of Christmas, publicly lauded in the press and from the pulpit. Charity sermons were preached everywhere, with particular sections of the deserving poor in view, or for the benefit of charitable institutions like the Magdalen Hospital for ‘rescuing fallen women’, or the Asylum for Female Orphans, both in south London. There was an unusual Christmas tradition in a fast-growing part of west London where every year ‘according to annual custom, a large quantity of bread and cheese was distributed at Paddington Church amongst the poor by tickets; the assemblage was immense: until within these last three years the custom was to throw it in baskets full [sic] cut into square pieces from the belfry of the Church amongst the crowd, but owing to the confusion and many accidents occasioned by the scramble, that custom was abolished and the present mode substituted in its stead.’ This was paid for by an endowment from ‘two old maiden sisters (paupers), who travelling to London to claim an estate, in which they afterwards succeeded, and being much distressed were first relieved at Paddington on that day.’[9] The sisters were luckier than some in London that Christmas of 1823. At Marlborough Street Police Court on Christmas Eve, an ‘elderly woman, who stated that she had scarcely tasted food for the two last days’ told the magistrates that the St Pancras relieving officer had denied her relief until her case went before the guardians of the poor, who would now only meet after Christmas. The magistrate ordered that she be given temporary relief, presumably in the workhouse, until the committee should meet.[10]

Pantomimes and Christmas cheer

Of all the pleasures of Christmas 1823 it was the London theatres who offered the richest dose of Christmas cheer. Pantomimes then began on Boxing Day and ran into the early New Year. Very few opened in the run-up to Christmas, in contrast to today’s extended festival, now often beginning at the start of December. But on Boxing Day the theatres – even the grand Theatre Royal, Drury Lane – let their hair down. This year there were Harlequin and the Flying Chest (Drury Lane), Harlequin and the House that Jack Built (Covent Garden) where the action travelled from the London parks to the Tuileries in Paris and back again, Fox and Geese, or Harlequin the White King of Chess (Surrey Theatre, Blackfriars Road), Harlequin’s Christmas-box, or the London Apprentices (Olympic Theatre, Wych Street, Strand), and Doctor Faustus and the Black Demon, or Harlequin and the Seven Fairies of the Grotto (Adelphi, Strand). At the last, all did not go according to plan. Despite ‘some pretty scenery’ and ‘a lively Clown and Columbine’, the pantomime ‘tried the patience of the audience severely through a number of scenes, throughout the whole of which there were not three clever tricks, and those that were attempted were for the most part bungled…. Good humour, however, which had more than once … begun to give way, was completely revived by the introduction of a panoramic view of the British fleet under Lord Exmouth bombarding the town of Algiers, which … was warmly applauded.’[11] The patriotic fervour of a London theatre audience was a sight to behold long before ‘Jingoism’ was ever invented.

By the time the London Mechanics’ Institution opened its first premises at Southampton Buildings, Holborn, late in 1824, this first Birkbeck Christmas was just a faint memory. Among those founders at the Crown and Anchor that December, who would have thought that another 200 Christmases would be celebrated with Birkbeck still providing adult education in London that is second to none?

[1] Morning Herald, 23 December 1823

[2] Morning Advertiser, 25 December 1823

[3] Cobbett’s Weekly Register, 20 December 1823

[4] Morning Advertiser, 25 December 1823

[5] Sunday Times, 28 December 1823

[6] Morning Post, 22 December 1823 (capitalisation simplified) and Bell’s Weekly Messenger, 22 December 1823 (macassar oil)

[7] Morning Herald, 24 December 1823

[8] Morning Post, 25 December 1823. The Bow Street Patrol were a small force of police run by the Bow Street magistrates, before the formation of the blue-uniformed Metropolitan Police in 1829.

[9] New Times, 23 December 1823

[10] Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser, 25 December 1823

[11] The Times, 27 December 1823

Birkbeck beyond the boundaries

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In 2023, Birkbeck celebrates its 200th anniversary. In this blog, Richard Clarke, a researcher, discusses how the College developed its extra-mural provision from the end of the Second World War to the beginning of the 21st century.

One hugely significant event in the post-1945 history of Birkbeck College was its amalgamation with the (federal) University of London Department of Extra-Mural Studies (DEMS, or, simply ‘Extra-Mural) in 1988. Then, almost all of the (pre-1992) British universities had some form of ‘outreach’ unit, charged with delivering their scholarship to a wider audience, and these tended to fall into one of two categories, both funded directly by the state under the 1944 Education Act.

One was the (Cambridge) ‘university extension’ model which typically involved academics travelling to deliver their expertise some distance from their university base. Launched in 1873 and focused first on northern manufacturing cities, it reached London with the establishment of the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching (LSEUT) in 1876. The other, beginning in 1878, was derived from a parallel (Oxford) ’tutorial classes’ model in which tutors (not ‘lecturers’) were provided by the university but the syllabus was negotiated with students themselves. Courses were typically delivered in collaboration with other organisations including the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA, founded in 1903). This provided two distinct traditions in tertiary level adult education, manifest variously in different university extra-mural departments.

London University DEMS was unique in that it consisted of two ‘Responsible Bodies’, each separately funded under the 1926 University of London Act which established its governing University Extension and Tutorial Classes Council (UETCC). Both grew rapidly in the decades following the end of the Second World War. The ‘Extension Section’ delivered a programme comprised mainly of accredited Certificates and Diplomas – everything from archaeology to religious studies, and it included several relatively autonomous vocational units, notably in nursing, in social work and in transport studies. The other, the ‘Tutorial Classes Section’, focussed principally on non-accredited classes, covering if anything an even wider range of subjects, mostly delivered in conjunction with what was then a strong network of local WEA branches as well as with trades unions, local community organisations and third-sector organisations. Together with their programme – in terms both of subjects, student numbers and of full-time equivalent (FTE) grant was significantly bigger than that of the College to which the amalgamation brought important additional funding.

By the time of the London ‘Extra-Mural’ centenary in 1976, Birkbeck College had itself survived more than one crisis. This included a proposal in the 1960s “to change the character of the College from an institution for part-timers and evening students to a college for full-time undergraduate school-leavers, on some green-field site outside central London.”⁽¹⁾. While this was defeated by determined opposition on the part of Birkbeck’s staff and supporters, the consequence was that the College and the federal University’s Extra-Mural department continued their development along parallel, but largely separate paths – the College focussing on high-quality research and part-time degree teaching, and the Department developing an extraordinary diversity of activities beyond its traditional ‘liberal’ core.

By the mid-1980s, however, the anomalies had become a major challenge. The independence of ‘extra-mural’ had been an advantage in the early post-War period when degree-level study was restricted to a few; but with the growth of the university sector the lack of connection between extra-mural ‘outreach’ and teaching and research within the University’s walls had become increasingly apparent.

Many of those taking extra-mural certificates and diplomas wished to progress to degrees and postgraduate work but found it easier to do so at universities outside of London. A major growth in the numbers of young – and not-so-young – people going ‘to’ university, reduced the demand for degree-level certificates and diplomas. The success of the Open University had shown that universities do not need to have walls at all; there was a growing demand “to study with and through the University of London but not necessarily at it.”⁽²⁾ And the establishment of new universities (Essex, Surrey, Kent and later Brunel) all involved a contraction of the London extra-mural area. This nevertheless by the mid-1980s still stretched “north to south from Chorleywood to Croydon and east to west from Southend to Uxbridge.”)⁽³⁾

At the same time, the distinction between what went on ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the walls had become an encumbrance. Staff within the Extra-Mural Department were increasingly developing their own research specialisms and reputations and making, or wishing to make, links with cognate departments within Colleges and Schools. It happened also that the then Master of Birkbeck, George Overend, was also Chair of the Senate Committee of Extra-Mural Studies. In the session 1985-6, a Working Group was established, chaired by Overend, to consider future options for the London DEMS. The Group had only met on a few occasions (its deliberations inclining towards some kind of merger with Birkbeck) when Birkbeck itself suffered a major financial crisis. This led to another committee, chaired by Sir Barney Hayhoe MP, charged specifically with restructuring the College to meet the challenge. The Hayhoe Committee, amongst its other recommendations, endorsed the proposal that DEMS should become part of Birkbeck as one of its new resource centres. The proposal also began to interest the University which had recently appointed Dorothy Wedderburn, the Principal of Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, as its first Pro-Vice Chancellor for Continuing Education, as part of a policy to develop a coherent federal policy in this area. Wedderburn in turn endorsed the proposal for incorporation, and established a formal University Working Party, chaired by Tim Brinton, a lay member of the University Court, to take this forward.

A key proposal of the Brinton report was for ‘complementary development’ of Extra-Mural Certificates and Birkbeck degree programmes. Where cognate provision existed in both institutions, Brinton argued, it should be linked; subjects offered only ‘extramurally’ might stimulate the development of new degree programmes (acting, inter alia, as progression routes for certificate students) or offered as options within existing degrees, and elements of Birkbeck degree programmes not already matched by certificates and diplomas could be offered ‘extra-murally’. In practice, integration did not go nearly as quickly as Brinton envisaged, partly as a consequence of the size of the extra-mural programme and fears of College staff that they might be ‘swamped’; perhaps because of reciprocal fears of ‘absorption’ and ‘dilution’ which had prevented any progress towards a merger in 1976, but also because of the significant organisational barriers to collaboration produced by the new College ‘resource centres’ that arose from the implementation of the Hayhoe Report.

Initially, DEMS was simply incorporated within Birkbeck in 1988 as a semi-autonomous Centre for Extra-Mural Studies (CEMS). Subsequently, when the resource centre structure (introduced by Tessa Blackstone upon her appointment as Master in 1987) was replaced by academic faculties in 1999, it was renamed the Faculty of Continuing Education (FCE) and then in 2007, the Faculty of Lifelong Learning (FLL), throughout still occupying the two buildings; 26-28 Russell Square and 32 Tavistock Square (which hosted the WEA’s regional office on its top floor) to which it had moved in 1975 from its earlier home in Ridgemount Street.

At the end of the 2008-9 academic session — after two decades of semi-autonomous existence (and little more than a year after its change of name from ‘continuing education’ to ‘lifelong learning’) Birkbeck’s FLL, its staff, their teaching and research were finally assimilated into four new ‘super-schools’ alongside colleagues in cognate subjects ‘across the car park’ from their base in Russell Square.

Writing in 1988 on the eve of the incorporation of the ‘Extra-Mural’ Department within Birkbeck, its then Director, Brian Groombridge, had described the incorporation as “one of the most profound structural changes in the Department’s history.”⁽²⁾. The incorporation reflected the start of much broader changes in the structure of part-time higher education.

One factor was a rise in credentialism – both a demand for certification and an insistence on it by the DES as a condition of funding. ‘Mainstreaming’ – the requirement for formal assessment of learning outcomes for all funded students meant a loss of flexibility in the Tutorial Classes curriculum. This was followed in 2008 by the introduction of the European Qualifications Framework (EQF), implemented in Britain as the National Qualifications Framework (NQF) whereby all awards were referenced to a series of levels and carry a credit rating in the Credit Accumulation and Transfer Scheme (CATS). NQF was accompanied by ‘ELQ’ – the withdrawal in 2007 of funding from students already in possession of a qualification at equivalent (or higher) level than that at which they wished to study. ELQ anticipated the subsequent abandonment of all state funding for liberal adult education by an increasingly instrumentalist neoliberal government. In combination, their consequences (and the end of one of the last remaining university departments of adult and continuing education) may be seen also as the final stage in inexorable erosion of the ‘liberal ethic’ (and of partnership provision) within the university sector.

Paradoxically, the final assimilation of FLL within the new College structure made possible the realisation of some of the possibilities envisaged over two decades previously in the Brinton Report. One of the DES funded innovatory projects already in progress as the 1988 incorporation of DEMS within Birkbeck was underway (and cited in the Brinton Report as potentially beneficial to the outreach capacity of Birkbeck) was an ‘East London Project’, aimed at exploring ways in which the University, through its extra-mural department, might contribute to the social and economic regeneration of the area. Then the collaboration envisaged was with Queen Mary College and the London Docklands Development Corporation; today it is with the (‘new’) University of East London, the London Borough of Newham, and other organisations in the region of the London Olympics and the Thames Gateway, but Stratford East represents in many ways the fulfilment of the opportunities identified in the Brinton Report and by the 1988 incorporation of ‘Extra-Mural’ within Birkbeck.

Other recommendations of the Brinton committee were manifest in different ways. For example, complementary development and integration of certificate and degree programmes were limited in practice to the Certificate in Ecology and Conservation which, in 1988, became a key ‘vertical’ slice through Birkbeck environment degrees, providing an ‘outreach’ element to students who might not otherwise have considered a full degree as well as an exit route for those who had done so but who found the time commitment of three evenings per week too demanding. Other attempts to develop new integrated degrees and certificates by means of newly created joint (extra-intra mural) posts (for example in archaeology, development studies and in science & society) placed an enormous strain on the colleagues appointed, who were not only expected to do far more than their notional fractional allocation to each ‘home’ but had to operate dual incompatible assessment and administrative systems.

At the same time however new awards were developed within the new Centre, in part as a response to – or a defence against – a perception within ‘main College’ that much of its work was of ‘sub-degree’ standard. Several of these new awards were at postgraduate level. Examples included postgraduate diplomas in Environmental Management and in Counselling. Partly because of a concern within the Centre that progressing approval through the College’s academic board might meet with opposition, these were taken through the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) route in 1992 – just before the CNAA was itself set up as part of the process of transferring degree awarding powers to the ‘post ‘92’ universities. The CNAA confirmed their rating as postgraduate, and they became the core of new Masters’ awards (the first in the Centre) in 1995.

The Masters in Environmental Management (Countryside and Protected Area Management) and another MSc in Environmental and Heritage Interpretation were particularly significant in that, being taught at weekends (coupled with week-long residential modules elsewhere) they attracted students from well beyond the London area, including Scotland, Switzerland and the USA. Moreover, being ‘national’ in appeal, they attracted sponsorship, so that for a number of years both the then Countryside Commission and The National Trust each funded six scholarships – the former for local authority countryside staff and the latter for the Trust’s own employees.

Today few universities retain a significant level of extra-mural provision – part of the general collapse of liberal, non-vocational adult education.⁽⁴⁾ Exceptions include Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education and Cambridge University’s Institute of Continuing Education. Within Birkbeck, while little of the 1988 ‘outreach’ provision survives today, legacies of the incorporation can be found in the College’s research and teaching, for example in London studies, in links with significant institutions in working-class education such as Toynbee Hall and the Bishopsgate Institute, and in other, now mainstream areas of university provision which were pioneered with DEMS/ FLL. For example, DEMS and – by inheritance, Birkbeck – was the first university institution to recognise women’s studies as a legitimate field of scholarship and teaching, manifest in the appointment of Britain’s first lectureship (Mary Kennedy) in the subject. Extra-mural traditions of radical history and critical science complemented those that had already been pioneered within the College by such prominent individuals as Eric Hobsbawm and J D Bernal. Another legacy is the relatively large number of hourly-paid associated fixed-term ‘teaching and scholarship’ staff which remains a feature of Birkbeck today.

Hobsbawm EJ. ‘Birkbeck and the Left; Concluding address to the 175th Anniversary Appeal Lectures at Birkbeck’. Times Change 2001:14-17.
Groombridge B. Extra-mural Futures: The Prospects for London. London: University of London Department of Extra-Mural Studies; 1998.
Brinton Report 1986, unpublished
Clarke R. ‘‘Really useful’ knowledge and 19th century adult worker education – what lessons for today?’. Theory & Struggle 2016;117:67-74: https://online.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/ts.2016.17.

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Birkbeck and the dubious dealings of Francis H. Fowler

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In this blog, Ciarán O’Donohue an MPhil/PhD student in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, shares the story of the development of a new Birkbeck building in the nineteenth century. This blog is part of our 200th anniversary series.

New building of Birkbeck Institute 1800s

New building of the Birkbeck Institute. ‘Bream’s building, Chancery Lane’

Once the decision had finally been made in 1879 for the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution to fly the nest and leave its original home in Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, it took years for the necessary funds to be raised. Rather than move to another existing building and “make do”, Birkbeck’s executive committee was dead set on commissioning a new one. Fund raising was slow. Scarred by the struggles of the mid-nineteenth century, where mounting debts had threatened the Institution with collapse, the Committee set about taking public subscriptions to reduce the costs.

Nevertheless, the risk had to be taken. Birkbeck could remain in its home no longer. A new building, the Committee asserted, was essential to ‘the prosperity and development of the Institution.’ The revival of its fortunes under the leadership of George Norris was such that, by 1879, new applicants were having to be turned down. There simply was not enough room.

Perhaps this explains the expediency with which an architect was selected to build Norris’s dreams. Intriguingly, the Committee decided not to request tenders from architects. Birkbeck’s future was entrusted to one man, Francis Hayman Fowler. Fowler was an internationally famous and reputable theatre architect. Hailed as a “pillar” of the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW), the forerunner to the London County Council, he had been an important figure in London politics for twenty years.

With his reputation taken into consideration, his selection out of the blue seems above board. It then merely seems incongruous that the Committee asked eighteen different vendors to tender for the job of constructing Fowler’s edifice. Besides, they could not take any risks. After taking into consideration the various pros and cons of each – and making especial note that they were selecting a builder based on a number of factors, not merely who was cheapest – a Mr. Cates was awarded the contract.

During the Committee’s next meeting, the contract was suddenly and inexplicably presented to Messrs. Nightingale. No clarification was forthcoming. A solitary clue remained, however. Amidst the notes of the meeting, a special note was made thanking Fowler ‘for his attendance and explanations.’ These breadcrumbs seemingly amount to nothing, until we look deeper into Francis Hayman Fowler’s conduct.

As Breams Buildings, the Institution’s new home, was being designed and built, the Royal Institute of British Architects was starting to doubt the legitimacy of the Board’s conduct. Three presidents used their inaugural addresses to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the MBW’s processes, in 1879, 1881, and again in 1883. Singled out for particular admonishment were the Building Acts Committee and the theatre subcommittee, of which Fowler was one of only five members. Specifically, other architects suspected Fowler and other members of the MBW of abusing their position in order to gain contracts, or exact payment for advice and services which would then guarantee that projects met final approval with the Board.

Three years after Breams Buildings was completed in 1885, the rumours surrounding Fowler and a number of other architects on the MBW reached a fever pitch. The Financial Times interviewed a number of disgruntled London architects, and boldly declared that the “facts are no secret.” A scandal erupted off the back of the article. Parliament took up the issue. Almost immediately, a Royal Commission was set up to investigate the Board for corruption, and Lord Herschell was appointed its chairman.

What it found was a shock to a great many people. Fowler’s reputation was such ‘that the Commission was genuinely surprised’ that the allegations were true. Fowler certainly was using his positions to exact payments in expectation of serving external interests on the board. Fowler was forced to resign but refused to ‘admit that he had behaved reprehensibly.’

How does all this relate to Birkbeck, you might be asking? Let’s go further down the rabbit hole. Another member of the Board, John Rüntz was also implicated. Only because he was not an architect, the Commission did not find him to be corrupt per se. Nevertheless, Rüntz and Fowler, the Commission asserted, were part of an ‘inner ring’ which exerted control over the affairs of the MBW.

Rüntz had extremely close ties to Birkbeck, spanning several decades. Originally a cabinet maker, he started attending the institution in the 1840s. By 1848, he had been appointed Master of the Birkbeck school. By 1852, Francis Ravenscroft had co-opted Rüntz onto the board of the Birkbeck Bank. This relationship with Ravenscroft would have brought him in very close range of the Executive Committee, of which Ravenscroft was a dedicated, important (and honest) member. By 1860, Rüntz was a trustee of the Bank. 1868 saw Fowler elected to the Board of Works, and Rüntz became Chairman of the bank’s board.

The close relationship between the two men, and Rüntz’s extensive connections with Birkbeck, may have set the scene for Fowler’s introduction to the Committee at the very least. In such situations, both men would profit, as Fowler would pay for other MBW members for introductions. This is one course of events that may explain the peculiar decision to award Fowler the commission, with no prior interaction and no alternative tenders by other architects. Alternatively, it could all be entirely speculative, creating false links between the dots.

Either way, it is also important to consider the historical context even of dubious dealings. As historian David Owen conceded, architects were one of a number of occupations that were undergoing a gradual process of professionalisation in the Victorian era. An important yet fractious facet of this transformation was the establishment of agreed standards of ethics. Fowler’s case is evidence of this process. Debates were still ongoing concerning what was permissible in obtaining commissions, how to distinguish a justifiable use of connexions, and precisely what constituted a corrupt use of special influence. This is a potent reason for why Fowler might have refused to concede any wrongdoing: he sincerely felt he had acted reasonably. If architects themselves had differing opinions of the basic standards of fairness, furthermore, how were those commissioning work to decide what was honest or not?

Seemingly, although this scandal put an end to Fowler’s political career, it did not put an end to his scheming. Theatre magnate Sefton Parry commissioned Fowler to build the Avenue Theatre in 1882. With inside knowledge from the MBW, who owned the land, Parry financed the theatre with the express intention of having it requisitioned by the South Eastern Railway. Subsequently, he would receive a payout for the value of the theatre; that is, more than he spent on construction. His plan came to nothing. Then, in 1905, something suspicious occurred. Allegedly, the Avenue needed renovation. Parry commissioned Fowler once more. Before the opening night, part of Charing Cross Station collapsed onto the theatre, leaving only its original façade! Parry got his payday after all.

“Marriage or Career?”: The Times and Tribulations of Dr. Turnadge

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Dr Isabel Turnadge,née Soar was a Birkbeck alumni who championed women’s right to vote and work after marriage in the 1920s. As part of the College’s 200th-anniversary celebrations Ciarán O’Donohue, PhD candidate in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology recalls the origins and trajectory of Dr Turnadge’s activism.

Dr. Isabel Turnadge, née Soar, with her son, Peter James. Becoming a parent will be a turning point for anyone, but perhaps for none more so than Isabel.

Only five PhDs in the sciences were awarded by the University of London in 1921. These were the first people ever to hold the distinction. Among them was botanist Isabel Soar, who had toiled tirelessly every weekday evening after work for five years at Birkbeck College.

Soar was in many ways the archetypal Birkbeckian, engaged as she was in full-time work and part-time study. The daughter of a stationer and a book-seller, Soar was a bright child: a ‘keen student of science, and particularly fond of botany’. After her own schooling, she pursued a career in teaching, taking up her first post as a science teacher in Ipswich in 1907.

Within six short years, she found herself in the daunting position of lecturing to trainee teachers in London at Stockwell Training College: an impressive achievement for one so young. Yet, Soar was not satisfied. Perhaps inspired by the experience of teaching others, Soar was determined to deepen her own knowledge. So, working full-time in the week, Soar began evening classes in botany at Birkbeck.

All her work was crammed into long weekdays. She made ‘it a point never to study on Saturdays, Sundays or other holidays’ and was a fervent believer that there was ‘a time for work and a time for play.’ In 1916, after three years of intense study, dedication and sacrifice, Soar achieved her Bachelor of Science in Botany, with first-class honours. The Middlesex County Times highlighted Soar as ‘an outstanding example of the rewards which await industry and determination.’

Still, Soar’s thirst for knowledge remained unquenched. Immediately after the completion of her bachelor’s she began to pursue original botanical research. Her trademark abundance of determination and its seemingly inexhaustible wellspring ensured she persevered for five long years. In June 1921, Soar’s Ph.D. thesis was approved, and she became the second Birkbeck student to achieve the title of Doctor. Bearing the title, The Structure and Function of the Endodermis in the Leaves of the Abietineae, it was of substantial interest to contemporary botanists. Before the end of 1922, an abridgement was published in The New Phytologist and she was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society.

Meanwhile, her professional life was also reaching new heights. In this same year, she was appointed headmistress of Twickenham County School for Girls by Middlesex County Council. For her work, she was to be awarded an extremely generous commencing salary of £600 per annum. And her run of good fortune was not over yet.

On Saturday 4 August 1923, Soar married Charles James Turnadge. Turnadge was a member of the Aristotelian Society, and was sometime editor of South Place Magazine, the organ of the South Place Ethical Society. Soar took her husband’s name, and they soon departed on their ‘ostentatious’ honeymoon: a six-week motor tour of Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, and Wales.

Life seemed to be going well for Isabel Soar: academically, professionally, and personally. Unfortunately, it was not to last. In November 1926, in what should have been a happy time in her life, Soar, now Dr. Turnadge, was in the newspapers again.

In May 1926, she gave birth to Peter James Turnadge. As a result, she was fired. The Twickenham Higher Education Committee beseeched the Middlesex Education Committee to terminate her employment. They argued that ‘the responsibilities of motherhood are incompatible with her school duties.’

The Chair, and Twickenham’s Mayor, Dr. J. Leeson, defended his actions to the press: ‘with characteristic male impertinence,’ according to the feminist weekly Vote. He asserted that he had warned her, spluttering that it ‘was against my advice that Dr. Turnadge, holding the position she did, ever married… We pay her a good salary, and we want her undivided interests.’

Turnadge’s argument that her being a mother would be an asset to her work was given short shrift. In an interview with the Middlesex County Times, she explained that she was ‘even bold enough to hold the view that, as a mother, I might be better qualified to teach. May not maternal sympathy… be something of a help in training the young?’ She even later argued that ‘single women are not normal, they are emotionally starved.’ Accordingly, large numbers of single women teachers posed ‘a grave menace to the pupils.’ She made the further point that it was ‘absurd to pretend that it would be impossible for me to make adequate arrangements for Peter’ during the day, given her salary. This, similarly, did nothing to move the Committee from its position either.

Her arguments fell on deaf ears. Charles’s birth was the pretence they had been searching for since the wedding. Middlesex Education Committee had a policy that the marriage of an elementary school teacher would void their contract and terminate their employment. At the time of Soar’s wedding, however, this did not cover the marriage of secondary school teachers. The loophole was promptly closed afterwards, and although they could not act retrospectively, Soar became an exception in a fragile position, with a hostile employer.

Turnadge’s case added fuel to a debate which was already raging about the state’s employment of married women. Clearly, not everyone was in favour. Upon hearing of Turnadge’s dismissal, author James Money Kyrle Lupton sent his opinions into the West London Observer. ‘This position ought to be held in all cases by a single woman, who can devote all their time to the position,’ Lupton opined, continuing that besides a ‘married woman with any family cannot do her duty to the school and her home at the same time – this is self-evident.’

Others were appalled by the decision. Bernard Shaw quipped that ‘Twickenham is not very far from the river, and the sooner the people of Twickenham put their Higher Education Committee in the river, the better.’ Vote declared the incident ‘sufficient indication of the necessity for further vindication of the important principle of the freedom of the married woman.’

As for Dr. Turnadge herself, the bar imposed on married women teachers became the next target of her fiery determination and indefatigable work ethic. On 7 February 1927, Turnadge delivered a lecture entitled “Marriage or Career?” to the Six Point Group, a feminist organisation founded by Lady Rhondda in 1921. In Turnadge’s lecture, she decried the ‘present position of women’ as ‘most unsatisfactory, because we are not chattels, yet we are not regarded as responsible individuals who should be allowed to choose our own paths in life.’ For her, this was an issue of state interference in private life, and along undeniably unequal lines. Some women wanted ‘to continue their work after marriage, and I do not see why anyone should interfere with them,’ she asserted. It was not the work of education authorities to regulate household economies. If they were economically minded, she stressed, they would realise the folly of expending public money on teaching scholarships, only then to dismiss married women outright.

By March, she was honoured at Vote’s annual spring sale, by giving the opening address whilst rubbing shoulders with veteran campaigners such as the president, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence. Her focus had crystallised on equal suffrage, for both married and single women.

Her points were direct, brimming with a scientist’s rationality. A woman and her life must no more be interfered with than a man. Anything less than equality would rob the nation of talent. Women should be given the same rights of individual determination. Her conviction was that possessing the vote at 21 was of the highest importance. This is when women were entering their professions, she determined, and so most needed the power to influence policy. Evidently, her experiences had left their mark on her, and she was determined no other woman should suffer the same fate.

When the Equal Franchise Act was passed a few months later in July 1928, the achievement of policy change through the exercise of the vote was in sight. For many women, their objectives had been achieved, their battles over. Lady Rhondda, a suffragette and life-long feminist, recalled some years later ‘that when, in 1928, the vote came on equal terms, one felt free to drop the business.’ For her at least, it ‘was a blessed relief to feel that one had not got to trouble with things of that sort anymore.’

As indomitable as ever, Turnadge’s years of campaigning were only just beginning. As the international organiser for the Six Point Group, we last catch a glimpse of her busy organising a conference in Geneva to lobby for an Equal Rights Treaty. With the confidence equality was well on the way in Britain, her sights were set on the League of Nations.

Today, Birkbeck awards over 100 PhDs a year; quite the difference to a century ago. Yet, it seems that Birkbeck’s students retain the same qualities. Isabel worked consistently, with perseverance and dedication, to follow her passion. She took her fate into her own hands, sacrificing her evenings to better her prospects. And although she faced it in spades, adversity never triumphed over her. She cannot help but remind us of our peers and colleagues in these current days of difficulty, and thankfully Isabel’s virtues seem set to live on in Birkbeckians for another hundred years.

A short history of Computer Science at Birkbeck

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The story of the contribution of one department to the life of the College, the development of computing technology and to the computer industry.

The first official reference to computing at Birkbeck can be found in the 1947-8 College Annual Report, which says: “An ambitious scheme is in progress for the construction of an Electronic Computer, which will serve the needs of crystallographic research at 21-22 Torrington Square; it will also provide a means of relieving many other fields of research in Chemistry and Physics of the almost crushing weight of arithmetic work, which they involve.”

The origins of these computing efforts at Birkbeck are inextricably linked with the names of J D Bernal, the great crystallographer, and his new assistant, Andrew Booth. Returning to Birkbeck at the end of the Second World War, Bernal started building a new research group to study crystallography. He appointed four assistants, one of whom was Booth, who was to lead on mathematical methods. Booth began by building his first electromechanical calculator, the Automatic Relay Calculator (ARC).

Kathleen Britten Xenia Sweeting and Andrew Booth working on ARC in December 1946

A highlight of Booth’s early career at Birkbeck was an extended visit to the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton, where he was accompanied by Kathleen Britten, who would soon become his wife. The trip allowed the pair to work with John Von Neumann, one of the most influential early computer pioneers, and convinced them that the ARC should be redesigned in accordance with what is now commonly known as a “von Neumann” architecture. Together, Andrew and Kathleen wrote a widely-circulated paper entitled “General Considerations in the Design of an All-purpose Electronic Digital Computer” which examined the options then available for building each component. The construction of their first electronic computer, called SEC (Simple Electronic Computer), was completed around 1950. Andrew wrote up the project in his MSc dissertation, which appears to make him the first computing graduate at Birkbeck and hence the Department’s earliest alumnus.

The couple’s best-known machine, APEC (All-Purpose Electronic Computer), was designed in 1949. In 1951, BTM used its hardware circuits as the basis of the design of their HEC1 computer, which evolved directly by the end of the 1950s into the bestselling British computer, with a total of nearly 100 machines installed.

Even in the days of cumbersome early machines, Andrew wrote about making computers available as widely as possible, securing a grant for a programme ofresearch on “desk calculating machines” as early as 1949. A copy of his reportevaluates the technical options for putting computers on, if not the desktop, at least the laboratory bench.

From the start, Kathleen was closely involved in the building and testing of the computers that Andrew designed. Getting these early machines to work involved a

The BTM HEC1 Prototype in store at Birmingham Museum

combination of testing the electronics and then checking that the programmes executed correctly. In 1953, they co-authored their best-known book, Automatic Digital Calculators, which ran to three editions. As part of her software development work, Kathleen developed a very early assembly language for their computers and in 1958 she published a book on software entitled Programming for an Automatic Digital Calculator.

The first of its kind

In 1957, a Governors’ Resolution stated that Birkbeck’s Computer Laboratory was to be constituted as a separate Department under the headship of Dr Andrew Booth. As far as can be made out, the Department of Numerical Automation was the first department established to teach computing in a UK university; elsewhere the courses were still taught in Computer Laboratories.

Andrew and Kathleen Booth stayed in the Department until the summer of 1962, when they moved to Canada. Andrew continued his career in computing initially at the University of Saskatchewan and subsequently as President of Lakehead University, Ontario.

Over subsequent years, the Department crossed many milestones: adopting the name Department of Computer Science in 1963; awarding MScs to 29 students in 1968; and appointing a chair in 1970. The College Calendar for 1970-71 is the first to acknowledge “Computer Staff” as a distinct group, comprising two programmers, two operators and four computer assistants who prepared paper tape and punched cards. At this time, the College’s IT support staff reported to the Head of the Computer Science Department. This arrangement continued for many years until a separate College Computer Service was created.

At the turn of the century, Birkbeck gave its highest accolade, a College Fellowship, to two members of its community who had made distinguished contributions to the advancement of computing. Firstly, in 2002, to Dame Stephanie Shirley, who created a major UK software house, whose workforce for many years was composed principally of women working from home and who has subsequently done much to promote the responsible application of IT and other charitable activities. Secondly, in 2003, it awarded a College Fellowship to Andrew Booth in recognition of his lifetime contribution to computing.

Left to right: Dame Stephanie Shirley and Dame Judith Mayhew

Dame Stephanie Shirley (left), on the occasion of her installation as a College Fellow in 2002 with Dame Judith Mayhew, Chairman of Governors.

The Department today

The Department of Computer Science and Information Systems’ research activities have continued to expand over the past twenty years, into advanced logics, computer vision, ontologies, personalisation, web technologies, and ubiquitous computing, with the appointment of several new members of academic staff.

In 2004, the Department set up the London Knowledge Lab in collaboration with the neighbouring Institute of Education. The Birkbeck Knowledge Lab established in 2016 extends this legacy, drawing on multi and interdisciplinary perspectives and methodologies to investigate how digital technologies and digital information are transforming our learning, working and cultural lives.

The Birkbeck Institute for Data Analytics was founded in 2016 to develop

Andrew and Kathleen Booth in 2008

interdisciplinary research in data analytics and data science between computer scientists at the Department and members of Birkbeck’s other departments, across the sciences, social sciences, economics, law and humanities.

The Department celebrated its 60^th anniversary in 2017, and the legacy of Andrew and Kathleen Booth continues to inspire generations of computer scientists. Each year, distinguished scholars and practitioners of computer science are invited to the College to deliver the Andrew and Kathleen Booth Memorial Lecture, which commemorates their pioneering work.

In 2018, Birkbeck became a founding member of the Institute of Coding, a national initiative established to address digital skill needs in industry sectors in key areas including data science, cyber security, artificial intelligence, and coding. Through our part time evening face-to-face model of delivery, Birkbeck is well placed to support those already in employment and has developed new full and part time programmes in Data Science to address the digital skills gap in this area. The Department has also established a relationship with industry through our partnership with the British Library and National Archives, where we jointly develop a PGCert in Computing for Cultural Heritage to help upskill their respective workforce and address the need for digital skills, such as programming, to manage the large volumes of digitised documents being made available for research and to the public as part of our digital economy.

The discipline of Computer Science is never dull. Rapidly evolving technology is always opening up new application areas, while new challenges from the real world drive technology developers to continually push the frontiers forward. We look forward to what the next 60 years will bring.

This article was adapted from the School of Computer Science and Information Systems: A Short History by Dr Roger Johnson, which was originally produced for the Department’s 50^th birthday celebrations.

Department of Computer Science and Information Systems Timeline

1947 Andrew Booth and Kathleen Britten undertake a six-month US tour based at Princeton, where they work with early computer pioneer John Von Neumann.

Andrew Booth secures funding from the Rockerfeller Foundation for a computer to carry out natural language translation.

1948 Andrew Booth designs the Simple Electronic Computer.

1951 Andrew Booth is Birkbeck’s first computing graduate.

BTM’s HEC1, based on Andrew Booth’s Circuitry, is built.

1955 The Birkbeck Computer Laboratory gives a public demonstration of machine translation.

1957 The Department of Numerical Automation is officially established.

Andrew Booth is elected to serve on the first Council of the British Computer Society.

1958 Kathleen Booth’s book Programming for an Automatic Digital Calculator is published.

1961 International Computers and Tabulators Ltd. provide the Department with an I.C.T. Type 1400 computer, worth just under a quarter of a million pounds.

1967 The Chair in Computer Science is established.

George Loizou (now Emeritus Professor), joins the Department as a Lecturer.

1968 29 students are awarded MScs, seven with distinction.

1971 Betty Walters is appointed Department Secretary, where she will serve for over 36 years.

1973 The Department takes part in a College Open Day, offering specialist equipment demonstrations. The then Secretary of State for Education, Margaret Thatcher, is among the attendees.

1983 Dr Roger Johnson (now Fellow of the College) joins the Department.

1987 The Department plays a major role in organizing the Very Large Data Base Conference in Brighton, which will host 700 delegates from all over the world.

1992 Dr Roger Johnson serves as President of the British Computer Society.

2002 Dame Stephanie Shirley is made a Fellow of the College in recognition of her distinguished contributions to the advancement of computing.

2003 Andrew Booth is made a Fellow of the College in recognition of his lifetime contribution to computing.

2004 The London Knowledge Lab is established in partnership with the Institute of Education.

2008 The first degree programmes are offered on Birkbeck’s Stratford campus.

2009 The School of Business, Economics and Informatics is established. The Department of Computer Science and Information Systems becomes one of four in the School.

2016 Birkbeck Institute for Data Analytics is founded.

2017 The Department celebrates its 60^th anniversary.

2018 Birkbeck is a founding member of the Institute of Coding.

2020 The Department of Computer Science and Information Systems offers twelve scholarships to the PG Cert Applied Data Science for black and female candidates in order to widen representation in computing.

Further Information

The Use of the ‘Useless’: Exploring the Story of Classics at Birkbeck, 1963 – 2003

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Jonny Matfin, a PhD candidate of Birkbeck Knowledge, discusses the contemporary development of Classics at Birkbeck. This blog is part of the 200th-anniversary series, marking the founding of the College which we will celebrate in 2023.

Birkbeck College, copyright Birkbeck History Collection.

In a series of compelling critiques of recent government policy on higher education in Britain, the academic Stefan Collini mounts a conceptual defence of the university; through exploring the question of what universities are for, Collini concludes that higher education institutions – that is, places like Birkbeck – ‘embody an alternative set of values’. Such values, it is argued, have been debased by decades of political drives towards managerialism and marketisation – they are not easily captured by audits and reports.

Within this context, the academic subject of classics is key. As Collini observes, Latin and Greek university studies have had a long journey, ‘from being a preparation for clerical or political office, through the centuries in which they served to hallmark a gentleman, and on to their current standing as favoured example of a “useless” subject.’ Ironically, it is this very – inaccurate – verdict that makes classics so vital to historical understanding of changes to British universities since the 1960s: if, as Collini suggests, our higher education system has been seen by others around the world as a canary in the mine, then classics has been – so to speak – the canary’s canary.

Margaret Thatcher at Birkbeck Open Day in 1973

Margaret Thatcher at Birkbeck’s 150th Anniversary Open Day in 1973. Image courtesy of the Birkbeck History Collection.

Birkbeck, like most universities and colleges across Britain, experienced two major periods of change from 1963-2003: the expansion – in response to a booming population – of the 1960s and 1970s, and the moves towards managerialism and marketisation – widely, but not solely, associated with the Conservative Thatcher Government – of the 1980s and 1990s. Classics was one of a number of ‘smaller’ subjects which came under increasing scrutiny within higher education institutions during policy pushes connected to the second of these significant shifts.

Crisis point was reached in 1985 when a government body, the University Grants Committee, launched an inquiry into Latin and Greek teaching and research in UK universities. A subsequent report by the UGC recommended the closure of a number of classics departments nationwide – including that of Birkbeck, forcing its merger with King’s College by 1989-90. Critically, the government audit failed to take account of the unique part-time tuition provided by Birkbeck’s Department of Classics – an academic lifeline for working students wanting to pursue the discipline.

This then, is the crux: if examining the recent history of academic classics in Britain can help us to explore the question of what universities are for, studying the development of the discipline at Birkbeck from 1963-2003 can help us to break new ground – to understand what an institution like this college, providing exceptional part-time tuition, is for. In short, this aspect of the story of the “useless” is extremely useful in a historical sense. Moreover, the revival of Latin and Greek at Birkbeck through a Department of History, Classics and Archaeology – and its continued evening tuition in both disciplines, is no small reason for institutional pride in the present.

Further reading:

Stefan Collini, What Are Universities For? (London; New York: Penguin, 2012).

Cancel the Window-Cleaning Contract!

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Professor Jerry White, Professor of Modern London History at Birkbeck recounts how the College faired during the Second World War. This blog is part of the 200th-anniversary series, marking the founding of the College and the 75^th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day.

Bomb damage to Birkbeck Library. The area around Birkbeck College was bombed during the air-raid of 10-11 May 1941. The resultant fire destroyed the Library. Image courtesy of Birkbeck History collection.

Most of London University shut down on the declaration of war in September 1939. The headquarters at Senate House was taken over by the Ministry of Information and most colleges were evacuated (like much of the BBC, many government departments and most of London’s hospitals) to areas thought to be less vulnerable to bombing. University College shifted to Aberystwyth and elsewhere in Wales, King’s to Bristol, LSE and Bedford to Cambridge, and so on. Birkbeck, its London roots deeper than any of its sister colleges and so unable to be useful to Londoners if sent to the country, resolved to close on the outbreak of war and for a time did so. But the war failed to open with a bang and in the absence of air attack, or apparently any likelihood of bombing for the immediate future, Birkbeck reopened at the end of October 1939. Indeed, it didn’t merely reopen but expanded its offer: for the first time, extensive daytime teaching was made available for those London students unable to follow their chosen university colleges out of the capital. And despite the blackout, a wide range of evening teaching also resumed.

Birkbeck was not yet at its present Bloomsbury site. That building contract had been let but work had to stop in July 1939 because of the uncertain international situation – contractors were given more pressing projects to work on, both civil defence and industrial – and in fact the new college would not be completed and occupied till 1951. So Birkbeck was still in its late-Victorian location in Breams and Rolls Buildings, straddling the City and Holborn boundary west of Fetter Lane, incidentally sharing a party wall with the Daily Mirror building. It had some near misses during the main blitz of 1940-41 and narrowly escaped total destruction in the great City fire raid of 29 December 1940, which opened a view – never before seen – of St Paul’s from the college windows. From that time on all places of work had to arrange a fireguard of staff to be in the building at night time to deal with incendiaries and raise the fire brigade if necessary. There followed nearly three-and-a-half years of relative quiet, with sporadic bombing of London and the Baby Blitz of early 1944 rarely troubling the college and its work. But Birkbeck would nearly meet its nemesis from a V1 flying bomb (or doodle-bug) at 3.07am on 19 July 1944.

Dr A. Graham was a member of the college fireguard that night, on the 1-3am watch.

I wakened Jackson [the College accountant] to do the 3-5am spell…. We were saying a few words to one another when we heard The Daily Mirror alarm go. Suddenly the bomb, which had merely been a near one until that second … dived without its engine stopping. Its noise increased enormously; Jackson and I looked at one another in silence; and I remember wondering what was going to happen next. What did happen was all over before we realised it had happened … a gigantic roar from the engine of the bomb, not the noise of an explosion, but a vast clattering of material falling and breaking, a great puff of blast and soot all over the room, and then utter quiet. Massey [another fire watcher] raised his head from the bed where he had been asleep and asked what all that was….

As the dust settled Graham climbed over the flattened metal doors of the College and went into the street. The first thing he heard was footsteps coming at a run up Breams Buildings. It was a Metropolitan police constable: ‘he called backwards into the darkness… “It’s all right, George, it’s in the City”’; satisfying himself there were no urgent casualties he promptly disappeared. Troup Horne, the College secretary from 1919-1952, was also one of the fireguard but, not wanted till 5am, was in a makeshift bed in his office: ‘At 3.06am I was awakened by a doodle overhead. Thinking we were for it, I pulled a sheet over my head to keep the plaster out of my remaining hairs; and five seconds later the damned thing went pop.’ Horne was found ‘covered from head to foot with soot, dust, and thousands of fragments of broken glass and other bits scattered from the partition which separated the general office from his room.’ His chief assistant, Phyllis Costello, was also sleeping in the College that night and was frequently part of the fireguard. She rushed to see if he was injured and was greeted by Horne instructing, ‘Cancel the window-cleaning contract’.

Indeed, there were no windows left anywhere in the College. For some time after, a witticism coined in Fleet Street during the main Blitz, was Birkbeck’s watchword: ‘We have no panes, dear mother, now.’*

*Edward Farmer (1809?-1876), ‘The Collier’s Dying Child’: ‘I have no pain, dear mother, now.’ All the information used here comes from E.H. Warmington, A History of Birkbeck College University of London During the Second World War 1939-1945, published by Birkbeck in 1954.

Maths for the Masses

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In this blog, Ciarán O’Donohue a PhD student in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, discusses the decision to teach mathematics to the first students of the Mechanics Institute. This is part of the 200^th anniversary blog series that celebrates the College’s bicentenary in 2023.

The Massacre of Peterloo. The commander is saying “Down with ’em! Chop ’em down my brave boys; give them no quarter! They want to take our Beef & Pudding from us – & remember the more you kill the less poor rates you’ll have to pay so go on Lads show your courage & your Loyalty!”

Many of us will be familiar with the common questioning of why certain concepts are taught in our schools. Mathematics, and especially its most intricate systems, are often first to face the firing squad. It is not unusual to hear someone discussing education to ask: “Why are we not taught about credit, loans, and tax? I’m never going to use Pythagoras’s Theorem!” Certainly, when the subject of mathematics is brought up, the utility of algebra and theorems are often jovially dismissed as unimportant.

Two centuries ago, the picture was very different. The question of whether mathematics would be useful or dangerous knowledge to teach to the working class was one that was debated extremely seriously. In November 1823, the same month that the London Mechanics’ Institution was founded (which has now come to be named Birkbeck, University of London), Bell’s Weekly Messenger seized upon the propriety of teaching maths to London’s lower orders, lamenting that “the unhappy scepticism in France has been justly ascribed to this cause.” The implication was that teaching maths to the wider populace had caused them to question the order of society, and directly contributed to the French Revolution and its aftermath. Pertinently, this was an order which the British government had spent a fortune, not to mention the lives of hundreds of thousands of British subjects in the Napoleonic Wars to restore.

A revolution in Britain itself was still palpably feared in the 1820s, and its spectre was made more haunting by the Peterloo massacre just four years before this particular article was written, in August 1819. And so, surrounding the foundation of our College, and which subjects were appropriate, a war of words was waged.

The idea of teaching London’s working classes mathematics filled many with visceral dread. It was believed this would cause them to also become questioning like France’s peasants, eventually seeking proof for statements which they had hitherto blindly accepted.

The teaching of mathematics to mechanics, then, was considered by many to be socially, politically, and morally dangerous. Not only might it turn them into a questioning multitude, unwilling to simply accept what they’re told, it might also make them question the very structure of society and push for a semblance of equality. For critics, both outcomes could readily lead to revolution.

Henry Brougham, one of the founders of the College, believed that this catastrophe could be averted by teaching a reified body of knowledge, including a simplified version of mathematics. Writing of geometry, Brougham argued that, rather than “go through the whole steps of that beautiful system, by which the most general and remote truths are connected with the few simple definitions and axioms” it would be sufficient (and indeed safer) if the masses were to learn only the practical operations and general utility of geometry.

Similarly, many religious supporters of extending mathematical education to the mechanics believed that it would make people more religious, not less, if only it were taught in the right way. As God was believed to have created the world, the logic and order inherent in mathematic systems was held to show traces of his hand at work. An appreciation of mathematics and its traceable, systematic connections would thus create a renewed appreciation of God; not to mention for the order of the world as divinely ordained.

Likewise, moralists perceived more benefits in teaching the mechanics mathematics than drawbacks. The issue for them was not if the mechanics were to learn or read, but rather what. The key issue was that the mechanics were already largely literate. The rise of cheap literature, especially of the sentimental and pornographic varieties, preoccupied the minds of moralists and industrialists.

As the lower orders were believed to be motivated primarily by sensuality, learning mathematics was presented as a salve to degeneracy; a way to occupy their time with higher minded pursuits and strengthen their characters against wanton immorality.

Perhaps most worrying was the growing and uncontrollable availability of radical political writings. This more than anything was likely to upset the current order of society. The perceived and highly theoretical disadvantages of a mathematical education were thus infinitely preferable to such a realistic and allegedly growing threat. It was believed that the teaching of mathematics and science through a dedicated course of study, being undertaken as in the evenings, might reduce the time and energy the working man would have to devote to reading political tracts, let alone political activism.

It is, however, worth noting that, although many mechanics were literate, and most had rudimentary mathematical skills, the wider debate was far removed from the reality. Many mechanics required far more elementary lessons in mathematics before the advanced classes could even be attempted. Although mathematics and science initially formed the centre of the curriculum at Birkbeck in the 1820s, by 1830 the reality of need had been discovered: advanced classes had been removed altogether, and instruction in elementary arithmetic was given to vast numbers of members. This was to continue to be the reality for much of the next 30 years.

How far, then, the raging debates about the inclusion of mathematics in the curricula of new centres for working-class education impacted the trajectory, is still a topic for debate.

Further information:

Birkbeck’s 200th Anniversary

Lillian Penson: the first PhD in the University of London

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Lillian Margery Penson was the first person in the University of London to be awarded a PhD. In this blog, Joanna Bourke discusses the life and achievements of Penson. This blog is part of a series that celebrate 200 years since Birkbeck was established and International Women’s Day on Sunday 8 March.

Lillian Margery Penson (1896-1963) was an outstanding scholar and university administrator. She was the first person (of any sex) in the University of London to be awarded a PhD; she was the first woman to become a Professor of History at any British university; and she was the first woman in the UK and Commonwealth to become a vice-chancellor of a university, at the age of only 52. She owed her undergraduate and doctoral education to the History Department at Birkbeck.

Opinions about her were divided. Was she the “foremost woman in the academic life of our day” (The Scotsman), a “remarkable woman” (The Times), and someone who exuded “charm, tolerance, and a sense of humour”? Or was she an “imperious grande dame”, “très autoritaire”, and “too trenchant”? The answer is probably “a mixture”. Although Penson “could on occasion be brusque and even intimidating”, she “had a happy knack of getting to know people quickly”, was “an excellent judge of wine and loved good company”, and projected “a wealth of genuine kindness”. In other words, Penson was probably trapped in that familiar double-bind experienced by powerful women in male-dominated fields: she was admired for her intellect and determination, yet disparaged as a woman for possessing those same traits. One newspaper report on the achievements of “the professor” even referred to Penson using the masculine pronoun: “he”.

Who was Penson? She was born in Islington on 18 July 1896. Her father worked as a wholesale dairy manager and her family were of the Plymouth Brethren persuasion. Indeed, one colleague observed that the “marks of a puritanical upbringing were never effaced” and her “belief in work and duty” meant that she was always made uncomfortable by “flippant talk”. She never married.

From her youth, Penson was intrigued by diplomatic history, colonial policy, and foreign affairs. Her intellectual talents were obvious. In 1917, at the age of 21 years, she graduated from Birkbeck with a BA in History (first class). The war was at its height, so she joined the Ministry of National Service as a junior administrative officer (1917-18) before moving to the war trade intelligence department (1918-19). At the end of the war, Penson returned to her studies of history at Birkbeck and became, in 1921, the first person in the University of London to be awarded a PhD.

Penson’s achievement was even more remarkable because of her gender. After all, throughout the period from 1921 to 1990, only one-fifth of PhD students in history were female. Penson was also young. The average age for history students to complete their doctorates was their mid-30s; Penson was only 25 years old. Birkbeck immediately offered her a job as a part-time lecturer, during which time she also taught part-time at the East London Technical College, now Queen Mary University of London. In 1925, she was given a full-time lecturing post at Birkbeck.

More notably, she was the first female Vice-Chancellor of a university in the UK and the Commonwealth. Indeed, the second female vice-chancellor would not be appointed for another 27 years (this was Dr Alice Rosemary Murray who was appointed Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge in 1975). Then, in 1948, the University of Cambridge agreed to award degrees to women. The last time they had tried this (in 1897), there had been a riot. In 1948, however, the Queen, Myra Hess, and Penson became the first women to be awarded honorary Cambridge degrees (in Penson’s case, a LL.D or Doctor of Laws). The Scotsman decreed Penson’s academic and administrative talents to be “unsurpassed even in the annals of that great institution”.

Many of the values that Penson promoted were those at the heart of the Birkbeck mission. She spoke eloquently on the need to offer university education for “virtually all comers”, with no restriction based on religion, race, or sex. She was keen to insist that the job of the university teacher was to “do something more than impose upon the memories of our students masses of detailed information”.

As with many powerful women, she has largely been forgot. After her death, a University of London Dame Lillian Penson fund was established to provide travel money between scholars engaged in research in one of the universities of the Commonwealth, especially Khartoum, Malta, the West Indies, and new universities in African countries. This seems to have disappeared. All that remains is a bricks-and-mortar legacy in the shape of the Lillian Penson Hall, which still exists next to Paddington Station in Talbot Square, providing accommodation for over 300 students.

Birkbeck’s London Landscapes

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Richard Clark, Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Politics, writes about how Birkbeck is woven into the very framework of the capital city. This blog is a part of a series that celebrates Birkbeck’s 200th anniversary in 2023.

Unlike paper maps, smartphone navigation will tell you how to get there but not what’s around you. But search through the index of an old ‘A to Z’ map of London and if your destination starts with ‘B’, you’ll probably be surprised to notice quite a few ‘Birkbeck’ place-names.

Birkbeck roads survive today in Hornsey N8, in Finchley N12, in Tottenham N17 and in Mill Hill NW7. There are more in Ealing W5, and in Wimbledon SW7and Acton W3. Acton also has a Birkbeck Mews, and there is a Birkbeck Grove in leafy Acton Park. Dulwich SE21 has a Birkbeck Hill and a Birkbeck Place and the pub-like building where they join was once precisely that – the Birkbeck Tavern. In east London, Bethnal Green E2 has a Birkbeck Street, Dalston E8 has a Birkbeck Road (as well as another Birkbeck Mews) and Leyton E11 has two Birkbeck Roads, North and South, as well as another Birkbeck Tavern – still a lively pub protected by its patrons who saved it from redevelopment by a campaigning ‘Birkfest’.

Outside the London postcode area, there are yet more Birkbeck roads — in Beckenham, in Brentwood, in Enfield, in Ilford, in Romford and in Sidcup. There’s a Birkbeck Gardens in Woodford and a Birkbeck Avenue and a Birkbeck Way in Greenford. Beckenham has its Birkbeck Station (established as Birkbeck Halt in 1858).

More Birkbeck place names can be found on old maps and census records of the London area. For example Birkbeck Road, Birkbeck Place and Birkbeck Terrace in Streatham, Wandsworth, are recorded in the 1881 and 1891 census but have subsequently been lost as have Birkbeck Road and Birkbeck Place, Camberwell which appear also in the censuses of 1871. Elthorne Road in Archway N19 started life as Birkbeck Road as did Holmesdale Road in Highgate N6. Both had Birkbeck Taverns – the former is now converted into ‘Birkbeck Flats’ (but still, like the Dulwich Tavern, recognisably an old pub). The Boogaloo at the top of Holmesdale Road is still a pub — a lively music and comedy venue, well worth a visit, with a ‘Birkbeck’ mosaic (desperately in need of protection) testifying to its past still on the threshold as you enter.

All the above have a close connection with Birkbeck, University of London, and reveal something of the College’s past. Greenford’s Birkbeck Avenue and Way are the most recent. Both are named after what used to be the Birkbeck College Sports Ground, leased to the College by the City Parochial Foundation from the 1920s until 1998 when governors felt they could no longer justify the rent. Today’s lessee is the London Marathon Charitable Trust and the ground’s football, rugby and cricket pitches serve clubs across West London.

Several of the Birkbeck toponyms – for example those in Bethnal Green, in Dalston and in Camberwell — are associated with the Birkbeck Schools, established by William Ellis between 1848 and the early 1860s. Ellis was one of the founders and benefactors of Birkbeck College’s predecessor, the London Mechanic’s Institute —his name appears on a foundation stone in the lobby of the Malet Street entrance. One Birkbeck School building — today Colvestone Primary School in Dalston — still stands, its structure (including well-lit classrooms in place of dull monitorial halls) reflecting what for the time were Ellis’s progressive educational theories. The schools were set up to teach children ‘social economy’ as an antidote to the radical socialist ‘political economy’ then gaining ground in Europe and they prefigured the civics curricula taught in English schools today.

Most of the other toponyms mark the locations of ‘Birkbeck Estates’ – land purchased and developed by the Birkbeck Land and Building Societies established in the premises of the London Mechanics Institute by Francis Ravenscroft in 1851. Ravenscroft had joined the LMI as a student a couple of years previously, became a Governor, and set up the Building Society as a ‘penny savings bank’ to encourage thrift and diligence amongst its students, offering them the prospect of a house – and (for the men) a vote. Initially based in a cupboard in the LMI’s office, the Societies grew to become a major bank, taking over the LMI’s premises and financing its move —as the Birkbeck Literary and Scientific Institution — to new premises nearby. Without Ravenscroft (his bust sits on a windowsill in the Council Room) Birkbeck College would probably not exist today. The estates played a significant role in the suburbanisation of London and are interesting for many reasons – not least because, unlike the temperance building societies of the period, they featured pubs.

For more on the story of the Birkbeck Bank and Building Society, watch out for a subsequent blog or have a look here. And there’s some information on the Birkbeck Boozers here. I’m about to submit a paper on the Birkbeck Schools, and perhaps I’ll blog a little later about these too.

Further information:

Celebrating Birkbeck’s 200th anniversary

Birkbeck Perspectives

Birkbeck experts and students share their opinions on a diverse range of thought-provoking topics.

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