For week 2, the volunteers got their hands on some Registered Finds – objects that have been issued their own finds number as they have an individual importance.

Monday’s team got off to a flying start working through all the finds from the St Thomas St excavation in 1974 (1STS74). The 6 volunteers saw the full range of artefacts from Roman samian stamps, to bone counters, to wooden writing tablets to leather hobnail shoes. Altogether 541 objects were checked and by effective packaging and reboxing, the site reduced from 19 boxes to 15!

Tuesday’s team began VIP5’s first mammoth site – Trig Lane (TL74). One of the first huge waterfront sites dug by the Department of Urban Archaeology (DUA), this archive has 215 boxes to get through. However, Tuesday’s 6 managed to audit all the site’s bone artefacts and all its wooden objects too. One object that stood out was this curious wooden piece (see below). Possibly a joint or some kind of fitting, we weren’t too sure. Any suggestions let us know in the comments field.

Wednesday’s VIP Graduates mixed their day up a little, starting off with some of the pottery from London Docks (LD76). But it was back to the leather finds from Trig Lane in the afternoon, processing a few more boxes and coming across some awesome bits such as the leather at the top of the page and this spectacular decorated strap.

And Thursday’s team picked up where the Graduates left off, continuing all day with the leather and managing to get through the whole lot! The final thing they got to see was this amazing 15th Century boot.

Week 2 saw the first of our specialist workshops with Monday and Tuesday’s lot examining a human skeleton and discovering how disease and trauma can be identified in bones. Wednesday and Thursday’s teams learnt more about archaeological leather and saw some sweet examples of roman, medieval and later shoes found on waterlogged sites.

Saturday’s team are due to start today and then next week we’ll be splitting the days up working on both strands of the project. Who knows what will turn up ? To see more photos visit our Flickr account

You would think we’d bought them hot off one of London Fashion Week’s runways. But no, they were worn in 1945 by Gladys Sandford on the day of her wedding to Charles “Arthur” White. I will tell you more about Gladys and Charles in a future blog, today I want to concentrate on the shoes.

Looking inside the shoes, you can see a stamp looking a bit like two Pac-Men (Mans?) about to devour a ‘41′.

Clothing, like food, was rationed during and after the Second World War, from 1 June 1941 to 15 March 1949, to be precise, and the sign stands for ‘Civilian Clothing 1941′.

Let me try to explain. To buy clothes you not only had to have money but also coupons, which were provided in a ration book. You did not get receive many coupons, 66 per year at first, and later only 48. To put this in perspective, to buy a coat you had to spend 18 coupons. If you want to know the number of coupons for other items of clothing, have a look at these pages from a ‘Clothing Coupon Quiz’ published in August 1941, also from our collection (click on the image and you should be able to read it).

Not every item of clothing sold during the war had a CC41 stamp. This was only applied to so-called ‘Utility’ clothing, which was produced to strict guidelines. Skirts, for instance, could only have a certain number of pleats, buttons and so on, to save material. Below is a detail from the ‘Making of Civilian Clothing (Restrictions) (No. 6) Order from 1 May 1942′, which lists the ‘restrictions on making’ of women’s dresses (and maids’ dresses!):

We have a number of shoes with the CC41 stamp in the collection. Some were made with wooden soles to save leather. None of the shoes are made of snakeskin, but I guess there were not many other uses for this material during the war.

Gladys’ shoes were donated by her daughter Pat, together with a lot of other, beautifully presented material. Amazingly Gladys’ diaries from the period have survived and she noticed the purchase of her shoes on 18 October 1945. Pat told me that Gladys’ always said that the shoes were bough second-hand and had once belonged to an actress!

The last entry on these two pages is for 20 October 1945, the day of the wedding. As was her custom, Gladys was very matter of fact: ‘Arthur and I got married / went home tonight’.

Sadly, there is no wedding picture but there is an undated photo of Gladys, which I reckon was taken at about the time she met Arthur, in 1941/42  (I might just be hopelessly romantic). Charles was a lucky man and this as well as other photos of Gladys show that she certainly had a good eye for fashion.

Gladys and Charles White were happily married for almost 50 years, until Gladys’ death in 1995. There will be more of Charles and Gladys’ moving story in the future.

We’re back! This week saw the start of LAARC’s 5th VIP project, which we’ve quite cunningly named… VIP5! 30 volunteers working their way through the neglected archives of the 70’s. So what have they been up to?

As per every VIP project, each day started with an hour’s induction into the LAARC. Volunteer’s are issued with  a shiny new volunteer handbook, their photos are taken for their ID cards and we take them on a health and safety focused tour of LAARC, highlighting the under appreciated dangers of staples and how to avoid squashing people in roller-racking.

VIP5 has seen the best start so far over all our VIP projects with almost a full complement of volunteers making week one. This time round, each day has six volunteers witha nice mix of ages, sexes, backgrounds and social situations. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday’s volunteers are all new (Saturday’s new volunteers are starting soon) and each day followed the same structure this week. After the induction, they all were introduced to repacking general finds, with some boxes of animal bones to get their mits on. Over the three days, all the animal bone from 1976’s London Docks excavation (LD76) was processed and transformed from disintegrating brown paper bags to brand spanking new plastic ones.

Included amongst the bone were some fabulous examples including a complete dog skeleton (see above), a deformed chicken leg and a cow bone with additional bone growth and the “cloaca” – the hole where the pus would have drained out from. We were very lucky to have MOLA zooarchaeologist Jim, come and identify some bits and pieces and MOLA osteologist show us the difference between human and animal bone during their tea breaks.

Each afternoon, volunteers moved from animal bone to pottery from The Highway (LD74). In doing so they encountered various sherds of Roman and Post Medieval ceramics, from mortarium to delftware. To complete their day, we thought we’d treat them to their first visit to the Ceramic and Glass store to handle some complete versions of the fragments they’d earlier been repacking.

So that was Mon, Tues and Thurs but what about Wednesday? Well, Wednesday welcomed our “VIP Graduates” back to the project. With experience from VIP1, 2, 3 & 4, the grads are focusing on leather finds with the view to reducing the space they take up so eventually they can be reintegrated into the rest of the registered finds. The first site they got to update was the awesome Trig Lane excavation from 1974  (TL74), one of the first and largest sites excavated  by the old Department of Urban Archaeology (DUA). Some spectacular medieval shoes, straps and scabbards were amongst the beauties they audited this week.

And so week one ends. Next week volunteers are introduced to Registered Finds and we have the first round of specialist workshops to look forward to. All good stuff.

For more photos from the project visit our Flickr Account

Stories of the World is a project by which museums all over he country are contributing to the cultural Olympiad. London: World City is the London region’s project.

The film crew in action during interviews

Some of the panellists joined Museum staff (Inclusion Officer Lucie Fitton and me – Lucy Sawyer the new Youth Programme Assistant) and a film maker from Quiet Voice Film Productions during half term to make a short film. It needed to explain what the London: World City project is, talk about exploring the theme of Place through Roman London’s legacy on our city today and encourage other young people to get involved. This was no small task.

Tom, one of the participants put it this way:

“When I walked in on the Monday morning to start the Youth Panel’s week-long project with the Museum of London to make a short film I laughed at the possibility of having a film as an end product!  A film in one week? You must be joking! Especially as after the first day we hadn’t even started a script or decided what the film was going to be about.”

Instead, we learnt about filming roles, practiced shots and generally got to know each other better.

Tuesday saw us exploring the Roman handling collection and sharing stories about objects the Junction members had brought in. The group grilled Jenny Hall (senior curator of Roman collections) and Jon Cotton (senior curator of Prehistory and Public Archaeology) on some of the finer points of the period in question and we also had the opportunity to find out more about the project from Louise Doughty (Stories of the World project manager).

Wednesday was when the group laid down the nuts and bolts of the film itself. Un-phased by the task, Tom writes that

“coolly and calmly the Youth Panel member’s got down to business”

We defined the film’s message, outline, drafted script and decided shots and even started filming.  Everyone went home exhausted!

On Thursday, our main filming day, it poured with rain. Despite this, the brave Junction panellists went out across London, filming each other and trying to get footage to cover our themes of settlement, language and religion.

Alice says that

“Myself and Vicki were set the task of getting footage on the theme of religion and belief. This began to seem like an impossible task when drenched and wandering aimlessly around Holborn we found a Buddhist centre that turned out to simply be a house. Pretty sure that we were never going to find any interesting religious buildings our luck changed when we went to a Krishna Temple. Here we were even allowed to film inside their temple and it was really interesting to learn about and experience a completely different culture”.

Friday was Tom’s highlight of the week

“It was the day that we recorded most people’s interviews to camera. We had to say set sound-bytes to camera as they were written in the script as well as respond to open questions (both of which proved surprisingly tricky and took multiple takes for all of us!). In a way I feel this was the most challenging part of the process and also the most entertaining part of the week in that it really made us work as a team and it really drew out people’s personalities and views.”

Everyone worked really hard, overcoming issues of foreign language, camera fright and interfering heart beat noises!

Alice says

“The project in general was really rewarding, especially learning about the production side of film making and how much work goes in to such a short amount of footage.”

And Tom adds that

“Overall, the project was really good fun and made me realize that everyone has a story to tell and, furthermore, these stories deserve to be told despite people’s age, background or social class. People make our city what it is today.”

We’re all excited about the end result and are hoping it will be ready to show and Junction’s first meeting in March.

Well done everyone!

Ribbons, or cane strings, as they seem to have been called, were attached to small holes either in the head of the cane or slightly further down. They were mainly ornamental but you could also wrap them around your wrist to let your cane dangle in a laissez-faire fashion.

Once I discovered cane strings, I saw them everywhere. Have a look at this 1777 fashion plate from our collection.

Another good one is here (you have to zoom in on the gentleman on the left – don’t get distracted by the doll!). And if you are really, really interested, try searching for ‘macaroni’ on this website (I know this sounds weird, but trust me …).

Apparently, the ribbons were bought from milliners. In the 18th century, milliners were a bit like haberdashers, selling flowers and pompons and such like as well as gloves and caps:

‘The Milliner deals in a great variety of articles principally for ladies wear … but this trade is not wholly confined to women, since the beau and fine gentleman has his solitaire or stock, his watch or cane-string from the pretty milliner … (The Monthly Review, 1761)

I guess VV Rouleaux is a modern equivalent and I knew I was going to end up there eventually. However, my first stop was Hand & Lock, one of my favourite places in London. I showed the very nice lady in charge of military adornments my pictures and she found a beautiful sword knot in one of her many drawers. It would have been perfect for one of the sticks, but it cost more than I wanted to spend. So I bought some Russia braid and some tassels instead.

One of the gentleman wears a wool suit with silver embroidery and I thought he would have accessorised it with a silver string and tassel. As you can see, this is still a work in progress but I will have to finish it by the end of today.

For the second cane I will probably go with a striped ribbon and gold tassels.

And I am thinking green and pink for cane no. 3. The tassels are not perfect (they could be bigger) but the really good ones just cost too much and I don’t think I could make one myself.

I wish canes, or even better, swagger sticks would make a comeback. They would be so useful in situations in which one is required to strike a pose. It seems they were also useful in other ways.

In 1800, a certain Gambado (slightly stupid ‘nom de plume’, I think) composed ‘Instructions for the Lounge in Bond Street’:

‘Let it be a fixed rule, never to be seen in the LOUNGE without a stick or cane; this, dangling in a string, may accidentally get between the feet of any female passing: if she falls, in consequence, that can be no fault of yours …’.

Social media

I have taken a few actions following on from my last blog entry about what we’re doing on social media. The first action was to get support from my colleagues in Press & Marketing to help me manage the some of our social media activities, and over the past few weeks, you may have noticed that the numbers of tweets by us have increased. This is due to one of my colleagues, Tim, taking over much of the activities on this platform. Though I occasionally still go and respond to tweets and retweets, both directed at @museumoflondon as well as when ‘Museum of London’ is mentioned, Tim has been doing a wonderful (and much more interesting – thank you Tim!) job on it. Please continue to show your support and follow us on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/museumoflondon

Tim has also been introduced to our Facebook account and he has started to update our statuses. I am still responding to all the comments and enquiries and adding the occasional status updates but I am hoping Tim will take over managing this soon as well. Yes I know I’m giving away the management of the juiciest aspects of web publishing (!!!) but this is very much due to the restriction in resources I am currently facing and the projects I am working on at present.

Information Architecture & web redesign

One of the things that have been keeping both Jeremy and I very busy is looking at restructuring our website information architecture and redesigning the site, in particular, addressing the site navigations. Between Jeremy, Rhiannon and I with support and input from many other people from across the organisation, we have come up with a number of new information architectures. We have now come to a compromise on one particular architecture and are in the process of testing it with users. We have also looked at a few design proposals and are currently deciding on which designer we will go with.

The hardest part of the activities so far has been getting the top level navigations right so that the three arms of Museum of London are all represented and clearly branded, without taking away from the fact that we are all one organisation. I can go on for days about the difficulties we have encountered so far, but for now, I won’t bore you further with it.

Just remember to look out for a whole new website at the end of May!

You are here

Something else my colleagues and I are working on and you should watch out for is our ‘You are here’ campaign at www.youarehere.org.uk. I won’t say any more about this, but check out this link in the coming months!

Over at the Museum of London Docklands, Lynda (Community Access Officer) and I have been working in partnership with students and staff from Newham Community Links to prepare a programme of video interviews. This project forms part of a series of community involvement projects that are currently underway.

The young people involved in this project have been commissioned to research, organise and film interviews on the theme of ‘the Children of the Windrush Generation’. This will explore the experiences of London-born adults with Caribbean parents, documenting their memories of childhood, attending school and growing up in London during the 1960s,1970s and 1980s.

The final interviews will be installed into a permanent touch-screen display in our ‘London, Sugar and Slavery’ Gallery. We currently have some great people lined up to interview, but are still looking for more interviewees. If you would like to take part, please contact us here: crossingtheseas@museumoflondon.org.uk.

So who is our project production team and what have they been up to so far?

Meet Shona, Grant, Tola, Freddie, Charley and Jason.

We have been working together since January, when Lynda and I went over the the Newham Community Links Centre to introduce ourselves and explain the project brief. We discussed the ways we would be working, what we needed to research and film, and a rough timetable of the project. It was a chance for the group to decide whether they wanted to get involved, to ask questions and to let us know if there was a particular aspect of the project they were most interested in (for example music/soundtrack production). It was also a great opportunity to catch up with Sophie, who is one of the Centre Managers, and who has been extremely patient with us whilst we got the project brief together (Hello Sophie! and thank you!) 

For the first week, the group came over to the Museum of London Docklands to get acquainted with the Museum space, and to take a look at the touch screen interactive in the LSS Gallery that their final work will go into. We had some great discussions in reaction to the Gallery, and followed this up with a look at the film ‘500 years later’ by Owen ‘Alik Shahadah – we have shown this film to previous project groups at the Museum, and find it always serves as serious food for thought.

The second week was all about getting our head round the periods of the 60s-80s, and in particular, focusing on what was happening in London. Using the timeline produced by the Roots to Reckoning team (Neil Kenlock, Armet Francis, and Charlie Phillips), each group member selected a particular event or issue from each respective decade, and used the wonder of Internet connections to research related articles and photos. The information collated made up the beginnings of idea/mood boards for each decade, which we will continue to build on over the project. From these boards we also drew up four working categories: Education, Entertainment, Career and Ambition, and Lifestyle. These will be developed into the final themes the interviews will go into on the touch-screen installation.

Last week we were joined by Rib Davis from the Oral History Society, who led an introductory workshop on recording Oral History and practical interview techniques. Rib has worked on a series of fantastic Oral History projects over at The Lightbox, and has a wealth of experience having carried out hundreds of interviews. It was great to pick his brains regarding interview etiquette, finding the right questions to get people talking, and of course, the art of laughing without making a sound (essential for audio-only interviews).

I particularly enjoyed listening to the practice interviews, when our young people took up the interviewer roles. It was a sly opportunity to earwig into the teenage lives of Lynda, Shona, Jason and Rib – I heard snippets of disgruntled trumpet practice, football matches vs. live music, and the inevitability of growing old and relying on Lucozade, it was pretty fascinating!

And so, the project continues on this week, which I hope to update you with in the not-too-distant future. Major kudos must be given to our group (both staff and students), who have kindly volunteered to come in during their half-term break (which Lynda and I are really very happy about, otherwise I will eat all the biscuits). I am also hoping that we will actually get some of our young people on here to update the project blog, and I do believe we have a mix-tape in the works……..  

 The nineteenth century also saw major advances in the practice of dentistry and the development of new restorative techniques. New materials such as amalgam (mercury and metal) were introduced to fill cavities and prosthetics were used to replace missing teeth (Roberts and Cox 2003: 323).

These false teeth could be made of ivory, bone or porcelain and human teeth were also often used. These came from live donors or could be extracted from the dead, earning some extra money for body snatchers if the bodies they exhumed were too decayed to sell to anatomists (Richardson 1988).

 An example of dental work was recovered during the excavation by MOLA of  the cemetery of St Mary and St Michael. A maxillary (upper jaw) prosthesis was found associated with an adult female burial. This comprised a thin plate of rose-gold coloured metal that was carefully fitted around the remaining teeth. A high degree of skill had been used in the construction of this item and the metal was molded around the gums and palate in order to hold it in place. Four ceramic teeth were fixed in place by small gold pins. These replaced the right premolars, left second premolar and first molar teeth that had been lost during the individuals life. A dark material to the central aspect of the occlussal (biting surface) of the right secondary molar suggested that this person had also had a cavity filled.

This evidence provides an important glimpse into the types of dental treatment available. However, the construction of such dentures would have required considerable time and skill and would have remained out of reach of many individuals from poorer backgrounds in London.

If you do follow up a recommendation let us know what you thought of it either by …

• Popping in to see us in the galleries, you can’t miss us – we’re usually walking around with a chainmail hood, hand axe or similar – oh and the uniform’s a bit of a give away too!
• Sending us a letter – we love post! 150 London Wall, EC2Y 5HN
• Commenting on here, the Museum’s Facebook page, Tweeting at us… etc
• Dropping us an email – hosts-mol@museumoflondon.org.uk

So here are the things we’re into this month ….

A couple of the gang went to Tower 42. Amazing views – including out across the Olympic site, great service, nice Tapas type food. Very chic. Book a couple of weeks in advance though.

Chris visited Greenwich on a sunny Monday – recommended for a week day because area is much quieter then. Begin the day by having milkshakes at a café which promises over 100 flavours of milkshakes just down from the Cutty Sark. Visit the Maritime Museum and learn about British sea voyages, the telescope and take in a show at the Planetarium. Have lunch at one of the cheap Thai/Chinese places around Cutty Sark aimed at students – you get the £ to portion ratio!! Top tip – to try get in on the kids’ session at the Maritime Museum as they come up with some classic lines and are clearly legends in the making.

Rachel, Ashley and Leigh finally made it to a Jack the Ripper walk (having been promising to go for ages). They went on a walk organised by London Walks with Donald Rumbelow. A good one to go to with a bunch of mates and he really knows his stuff. When you’re done head for a curry in Brick lane. You can also buy Donald’s book, The Complete Jack the Ripper, in the Museum shop.

Our newest discovery is Jen’s Café in China Town – head there for ‘bubble tea’. Any flavour is good.

Ashley visited the Imperial War Museum and recommends the special exhibition on espionage.

A bit further afield, Kareen went to a cool coffee place in Stockholm on Sveavägen which is one of the main roads in the city. The place was full of strange antiquities and had a view out onto most of the city. Well worth a visit.

And Rachel headed to Paris – visiting the catacombs. Walk through the old underground quarries deep beneath the city streets that hold the remains of (allegedly) over six million Parisians.

And finally we have to give ourselves a quick plug … we (of course) recommend our brilliant Gallery Highlight Tours at 12.00 and 4pm every day – come and hear about 450,000 years of London history including Roman bikinis, medieval castration tools and prehistoric trepanation.

Post by Rachel Kuhn, Team Leader

LAARC VIP5

We’re back! And refreshed after the coldness of January, we’re revitalised and ready for the fifth LAARC Volunteer Inclusion Project (VIP5)

Over the next few weeks we shall be recruiting 20 new VIP volunteers for 10 weeks of finds handling, archive improving and skill acquiring work. Sites that we intend to improve this time around include the huge Trig Lane site from 1974 (TL74), the London Docks site, also from 1974 (LH74) and the excellent Chaucer House site from 1975 (CH75)

In addition to the new 20, we welcome back 6 VIP Graduates, who have all volunteered in previous VIP programmes. Their work will also include a focus on leather finds, in an attempt to improve a large quantity of our leather collection.

The VIP project is slowly transforming the Museum’s archaeological collections, taking neglected finds from the 1970’s, objects that never had the funds to be housed properly, and giving them a new home, in a clear plastic bag with two legible labels and numerically organised neighbouring objects in new sturdy, standard sized boxes.

The previous projects have seen volunteers improve 1245 boxes of general finds, audit over 10,000 individually registered finds, move archives from 353 sites excavated between 1972 – 1987 on to new shelves in our metal store and complete work on the whole finds archive from 2005’s community excavation in Shoreditch Park.

As per previous projects, we have organised four specialist workshops which aim to provide volunteers, both VIP and throughout the Museum of London, with basic background knowledge of the material they will get to handle

Find out how we progress by viewing these blog pages which are kept updated each week as well as our project photos on Flickr.

For some time now I’m obsessed with vertically striped socks because we had to find some for one of our Pleasure Garden gents. Meet William Oxtoby, 23 years of age, dandy on the make, trying to find love, preferably with a rich heiress. He is wearing his best suit: blue-green shot silk suit with silk embroidery from the 1770s, which no doubt he would have accessorised with vertically striped hosiery.

This type of fancy stocking seem to have been particularly fashionable in the 1770s and 1780s, check out the fashion plates below and also Charles James Fox in this print of 1788 (one of my favourite Museum of London objects).

They have also been mentioned on fashion blogs for a while now and even appeared in Alexander McQueen’s 2009 autumn RTW collection (that’s probablywhy they’re so hot at the moment). Nevertheless the only stockings we found that would have worked well with the colouring of the suit were from a re-enactment site in the US and … they were out of stock (haha).

So I turned to the dress curator’s best friend: ebay. Thankfully Emos and Goths also seem to be fond of vertical strips and I found two pairs for only £3.50 each with high cotton content. The last bit was important because I thought we might have to do some customisation.

The black stripes turned out to be too harsh for the suit and the fuchsia was just ludicrous and too 21^st century. Hilary heard that theatrical costumiers sometimes use bleach to get different colours so I thought I’d have a go.

Apparently thin bleach without additives is best, which is actually not that easy to find but I eventually got lucky in Waitrose. So on Saturday I assembled my bleaching kit. I am actually quite scared of bleach (well, one should be) so I wasn’t looking forward to this. HEALTH WARNING: bleach can be dangerous so do not try this at home without following the guidelines on the bottle.

I took all the necessary precautions: I had gloves (never do washing up without my Marygolds), a poking stick (well, a cooking utensil, really) and I kept my bathroom well ventilated, not much fun in this kind of weather.

According to one website, the recommended mix is 4 parts water and 1 part bleach, which seemed a bit excessive, so I started with a much lower dose. Apparently things were supposed to happen within 15 minutes but I poked and poked and watched and watched but the black stripes stubbornly stayed black (I started with the b/w pair, didn’t want to ruin them both). After 30 minutes or so and after increasing the bleach content several times, I just left the stockings to their own devices, occasionally checking up on them and doing a pit more poking.

After more than an hour the black seemed to slowly turn into brown and once the process started the socks lightened up quite quickly. After a good wash we now have stockings with medium brown and white stripes, still not ideal, but an improvement. After another trip to Waitrose the next day (the glamour!), I had a go with the fuchsia ones, but the dark pink dye was even more difficult. Have a look at the result.

I think the stockings are still too bright but I have not yet held them against the suit yet. If it doesn’t work we might have to dye the brown/white ones, maybe purple, or blue-green-ish to match the suit but I think I will spare you the description of that process.

So, when you come to the Pleasure Garden display in our new gallery (open from the end of May), look out for fancy hosiery and, if you like, tell me what you think.

At last year’s annual SMA conference, I (along with many others!) enjoyed an excellent presentation from Detective Sergeant Vernon Rapley about the work of the Metropolitan Police Service’s Art and Antiques Unit. D.S. Rapley discussed several recent cases of fakes and forgeries, such as the infamous case of Shaun Greenhalgh.

D.S. Rapley’s talk provoked a lot of interest and discussion amongst SMA members, and we recently had the privilege of learning more about the world of fakes and forgeries with a guided tour of the ‘Fakes and Forgeries’ special exhibition put together by the Metropolitan Police Service’s Art and Antiques Unit at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Of particular interest to me were the archaeological artefacts that had been forged, including a number of Anglo-Saxon coins.

Walking around the exhibition and listening to our guide, Detective Sergeant Ian Lawson, you couldn’t help but be struck by the lengths that people had to gone to in order to establish a history or ‘provenance’ for the objects they had created. In many cases, documentation ‘proving’ the authenticity of the objects had been forged, including letters from Museum curators.

The special exhibition and work of the Metropolitan Police Service’s Art and Antiques Unit has really brought home the need to work closely with other museums, particularly in London, to tackle fakes and forgeries.

In 1839 Charles Dickens remembered the skeleton suit as ‘an ingenious contrivance for displaying the full symmetry of a boy’s figure, by fastening him into a very tight jacket, with an ornamental row of buttons over each shoulder, and then buttoning his trousers over it, so as to give his legs the appearance of being hooked on, just under the armpits.’

Well, our suit is not quite like that, but you can see his points about the buttons. If you look closely, you can see a boy wearing such a suit on the right of this painting. Our suit is made from printed cotton, which has now much faded, but originally might have looked a little bit like denim.

Before I go on, I should introduce myself. My name is Beatrice and I am one of two curators responsible for the Museum’s large fashion collection. For the last two years we have been working on preparing the 70 outfits and more than 150 accessories that will go on display in our new galleries. Most will be displayed on ‘cut-outs’ (more about that some other time) but for the pleasure garden we have decided to use full-figure mannequins.

Pleasure Gardens were a bit like amusement grounds today, and were particularly popular in the second half of the 18th and early 19th centuries. The most famous gardens in London were Vauxhall and Ranelagh.

We will show 16 outfits from the 1740s to the 1840s in two cases in the new display. Of course you would never have seen them together originally, but we wanted to highlight particular gems from our collection. The main outfits, suits and dresses, will be original and so will be many of the accessories. To help us put together the right objects we invented a character for each figure. Our little boy is the three-year old Charles Winter, who has come to the gardens with his sister and father, Captain Winter.  Charles is very excited, has even suffered his hair to be curled because the gardens are so fun but is keen to get rid of his starched collar.

Speaking of which, we did not have an appropriate shirt for Charles in the collection, so we asked Amy, who is studying Costume Interpretation at Wimbledon School of Art to make us one. That’s what you see in the photo. It works perfectly and Charles will look even cuter once he is wearing his read shoes. In case you are wondering why he has a plastic bag over his head, we are worried the paint will scratch so are protecting it until installation.

Unfortunately we found that Charles’ arms were a little short (maybe not, what do you think?) so they have now gone back our mannequin makers for a quick fix. I will show you pictures of the finished Charles in a few weeks and I will write about some of the other figures we are working on.

A major difficulty when diagnosing pathological disease in archaeological skeletal remains is that many conditions may only affect the soft tissues of the body, such as the skin or organs. This may result in the death of a person before bone changes took place, leaving no visible traces on the skeleton to be observed. Some diseases, however, may directly affect the bones. The way that bone responds and the distribution pattern of changes throughout the skeleton, enable certain pathologies suffered in life to be identified.

One such pathology occasionally encountered in the osteological analysis of archaeological human bone is Paget’s disease. During life, the human skeleton constantly remodels, repairs and grows. Paget’s disease disrupts this normal routine and results in an increased bone turnover. This can affect single or multiple bones and involve the entire skeleton, resulting in severe deformity and enlargement of affected areas. The skull, spine, sacrum and upper legs are the most commonly involved.

This rare condition was first described by James Paget in 1877. Today the exact causes remain unknown and multiple origins are thought likely. In modern cases, the disease is more common amongst males than females and tends to affect older individuals.

The osteological analysis of post-medieval population from Bow Baptist Church, London by MoLA revealed one individual who displayed bone changes consistent with a diagnosis of Paget’s disease.

An older male aged 46 years or over displayed thickening of the cranial bones with new bone formed to the internal and outer surfaces that was porous and pumice stone like. Examination of radiographs revealed enlargement of the bone cortex with areas that displayed a ‘cotton wool’ like appearance.

The vertebral bodies also showed enlargement and this was more apparent in the lower lumbar regions of the spine. Radiographs showed sclerotic areas (thickening) at the margins of the vertebral centra and areas of porosity to the internal trabecular structures. This gave a ‘picture frame’ appearance in radiographs. The disease had also resulted in deformity and enlargement to the clavicles (collar bone), scapula (shoulder) upper legs and pelvis.

Pathological fractures are a common feature of this disease due to weakening of the bone structures that may cause bowing of the limbs. This individual had suffered compression fractures to several vertebrae. This had also resulted in degenerative joint disease and osteoarthritis throughout the spine. Osteoarthritis was also recorded in the hands and shoulder joints.

This individual may have been unaware that he had such a disease during life as many cases are asymptomatic. However, some people can suffer bone pain, headaches and hearing loss.

For more information see:

Brickley, M, and Ives, R, 2008 The bioarchaeology of metabolic disease, Oxford

Ortner DJ, 2003, Identification of pathological conditions in human skeletal remains. London

Roberts, C A, and Manchester, K, 2005, The archaeology of disease, Third edition, Stroud

Here at the Museum of London we are looking at the theme of place and focusing on the legacy left by the Romans. Between now and March 2011, we will be doing lots of exciting work with young adults, ranging from films, archaeology, podcasts, art and drama in a series of five key projects. Young adults are at the heart of the project and through this work we hope more of them find our fabulous Museum relevant and fun.

Key to the success of this project is our ability to involve young adults in the planning and development. We are also setting up a youth panel (called Junction) so that members can act as consultants and advise us on what young people want. There are two open recruitment afternoons in early February and we are looking for young adults ages 16 – 21 from all backgrounds.

Find out how you or anyone you know who may be interested can get involved (PDF 142kb, opens in a new window)

If you don’t yet know, we will be opening our new Galleries of Modern London at Museum of London in May and as of the 1st of January, we are revealing daily, the 1919 Diary of Oscar Kirk, a young messenger boy employed by the Port of London Authority. You can follow daily tweets from Oscar at http://twitter.com/oscarkirk1919.

Also coming soon is a new gallery, “War, Plague & Fire“, telling the story of London from the Elizabethan times, through the ravages of the English Civil Wars to the Great Fire of 1666 at Museum of London, and a display of post abolition commemorative stamps from around the world at Museum of London Docklands.

All that and so much more to look forward to this year, so stay tuned to find out more!

The day started off very excitedly with many people doing last minute finishing touches to their hats that they will bring along to the lunch where the Lord Mayor and the Mayoress would judge them, and the owner of the best hat creation would win a prize. We make our way down to the Guildhall around 12.30pm, hoping to find the best seat, choosing the person we wish to sit next to (or not!) and generally starting the ‘party’.

Some people bring along Christmas crackers and party poopers, and the very brave even bring along squeaking balloons that they compete to try and get the balloons to go as high as possible.

We start of with starters (this year it was artichoke soup), then continue the meal through a main course until desserts (yum!). Finally, we stand up to toast the Queen and the Lord Mayor and the City of London. Inevitably, by the end of the lunch and the many toasts, some people are a little worse for wear and head off home (we’re not allowed to go back to work after drinking alcohol, so most people take the afternoon off).

Throughout the lunch, the Lord Mayor and Mayoress look around and decide on the best made hat. I am proud to say Museum of London has won this competition on and off for many years, but have held on to the title consecutively for the last three. Each year, only one winner stands out, and ladies and gentleman, the prize for the best hat this year went to…

Carol Thompson and Tanya Pollard of Museum of London!

Both did so well that the judges decided to make a first and make them joint winners. Carol especially was thrilled as she had won the hat competition two year ago as well.

I started volunteering at LAARC back in 2003, was employed here in 2004 and have been here ever since. On a day to day basis I get to handle some of the world’s best objects. But forget all them at this time of year, as there’s one annual object that get’s me more excited than any other – the LAARC Gingerbread house!

The history of Gingerbread seems to go back over 500 years with Germanic/Swedish origins, arriving in Britain in the 1500’s and being widespread by the 1700’s. But I’m not here to write about the history of Gingerbread, but instead the Archaeological Archive’s tradition of making a Gingerbread House each Christmas.

Back in 2003, LAARC had a full time conservator, Jannicke who came from Norway. It was she who first introduced the Gingerbread house to the archive. Keeping with Scandinavian tradition, the house was decorated for Christmas and sat proudly as the centre piece at our Christmas party. Decorated with an abundance of sugary sweets, bonded together with icing sugar, it’s a dentist’s worst nightmare, but looks a dream. Its true moment of glory however, is when it gets smashed, revealing even more sweets and chocolates inside.

Ever since then, despite Jannicke leaving in 2005, we’ve kept up the tradition of decorating a house each year and along the way have watched it evolve into one of the highlights of each Christmas party.

The smashing of the house is now preceded by two events; the decorating and the competition to determine who gets to smash it. The decorating gets done by LAARC staff in a creative morning session, where we let our artistic skills flow. The competition’s vary and have previously included a Christmas caption competition, a Christmas catapult competition and a Christmas song quiz. This year, we were very lucky to have Jannicke join us at our party and as our guest of honour, she along with her 1 year old daughter and volunteer Chris (he volunteered the most this year)  got to be the smashers.

We may not be as grand as the recent Obama Gingerbread WhiteHouse, but it’s a nice little tradition we have and long may it continue!

These are just three of the 9000 objects (including over 2500 from MoL) that are available for the public to view and enjoy and that cover almost every conceivable part of London in the 1900s. The objects have been made available by the Museum of London and 13 other London institutions.

The site has recently had a makeover so that images are bigger and it is a lot easier to browse around.

Take a look and see what you can find!

Jason Webber
Web Manager, Exploring 20th Century London

This month the Museum of London Docklands launches a web-based initiative bringing to life London’s Docklands in the early twentieth century through the diary extracts of a young messenger boy employed by the Port of London Authority at the time. Recently donated to our collection, the diary details Oscar’s daily activities both at work and home, personal interests (Oscar loved to read) and details of the things he enjoyed when not working ranging from comics and sweets he bought, to visits to the music hall. 

The Museum plans to feature the corresponding daily diary entries on the homepage of the Museum of London Docklands website and on other social media sites starting from January 1^st 2010.

A planned online archive of all diary entries and further supporting details relating to the subjects that Oscar covers in his diary will also be updated regularly. 

Oscar was 15 when he started to work in the East India Docks in 1918 ferrying messages and mail between different docks and Port of London Authority offices. Oscar would have been provided with a uniform and would be expected to look smart at all times (Oscar notes making a “boot pad” on Sunday January 5^th 1919, possibly to keep his boots clean). 

Although work days for Oscar could be arduous he still found time for fun as the start of his diary entry for Wednesday 22^nd January 1919 highlights: “got chapped hands today. Played between 12.30 and 1.30 in the sack shed”.  Oscar was also saving to buy a bicycle of his own, by giving his father a few pence at a time towards the cost. By the time the entries in the diary finish in July 1919 he had given his father 1/6d (7.5p) towards the cost.

Oscar’s diary is currently on display in the Sainsbury’s Study Centre at Museum of London Docklands.  Find out more about Oscar’s thoughts and duties daily on our website from January 1^st 2010 and follow Oscar on Twitter at:  http://twitter.com/OscarKirk1919

Time has seemed to speed by during this project as we packed and checked off our final objects until February next year. Saturday’s volunteer helped check off the final objects from Seal House (SH74), viewing along the way some fine iron artefacts (see below photos) By the end of the day, there was only three more boxes left from the site.

Monday’s final morning saw them work on a dreaded box from London Docks, labelled “Misc finds”. Always an excitement to open, sadly it quickly became apparent why these had been left in this box as a mixture of materials, some nice, some rusty nails, finally got placed into the standard bags we require.

Tuesday’s team culminated their experience at LAARC with 15 minutes of fame as a reporter and photographer spent time with them during their last morning. A piece is soon to be written via the Museum’s Hub and Renaissance, highlighting the spectacular effort LAARC volunteers put in. Whilst snaps were being taken, the fantastic four also completed Seal House (SH74) material, finishing the final three boxes and even working on some remaining pottery sherds from London Docks (LD74)

Wednesday morning was a chance to sit back and relax as the U3A volunteers presented some of the finest PowerPoints we’ve seen in the archive. All topics were inspired by the Shoreditch Park archive and ranged from V1 & V2 bombs, to The Lives of The Family of 32 Dorchester Street, to War Time Rations, to Crime in Wartime Shoreditch. These excellent presentations included personal photographs, original rations books, sound recordings and Powerpoints with animation.

To celebrate the achievements of VIP4, each afternoon was spent at the Museum of London itself, with special behind the scene tours, starting with the recently opened Clore Learning Centre, followed by the fascinating Centre for Human Bioarchaeology and ended with a visit to the Roman Fort Gate, beneath London Wall.

Overall, the project has seen many successes and continued to develop Inclusive Volunteering Opportunities with archaeological collections. 11 site archives have been fully audited on the Registered Finds side of the project and another length of 20+ shelves full of boxes processed on the General Finds side. The next project starts in February 2010. See you then.

So we decided to have a bit of an adventurer last Friday afternoon after the builders had ‘shut up shop’. Yes, we finally went to see the new galleries and I managed to sneak my handy camera in with me and took a few photos to share with you.

I must warn you that I am no professional photographer and my very slim digital camera does not deal well with poor lighting, but the photos below will still give you an insight into some of the fascinating things that await your visits in May.

The head of communications, Antony Robbins, gave us an excellent tour. We explored the new Galleries of Modern London, starting with checking out some really cool chill-out areas where visitors can surf the net and perhaps even sneak in a coffee or two!

What looked like a ghostly figure shrouded beneath plastic appeared to watch us as we made our way through the galleries. I found that we are being very eco-friendly and have recycled many of our display cases from the previous galleries.

I was much taken with one of the exhibits of an 18th century printing press that spews reams and reams of papers, notices, and posters on to over 20 plasma screens to show the 18th century version of the white heat of technology. Wow, I thought, I can’t wait to see this in action!

I finally discovered what the back of the glass display cases look like (they actually look like the back of normal cases to me!), and I was able to look up closely into what the inside of the Wellclose prison was like in its original form. I didn’t have time to read all the names and see all the pictures etched on the walls, but it was fascinating none the less.

For the first time ever, Museum of London will have display cases under the floor and I was told that the glass will be bullet proof (no, please don’t bring your gun in to check!).

I ‘accidentally’ stumbled into the power room behind the gallery and decided to take a photo as I was already there.

The pleasure garden was next and how pretty and peaceful it was! One of my colleagues was playing around with the different sounds that would be played in the background and I could have just stayed there for a very long time. There were real trees in the middle, and the garden has the ability to change from day to night, with the music reflecting the different mood.

We were lucky to see the Selfridges lift all lit up and my colleagues and I marvelled at the detail.

We toured the galleries that had maps and interactives, and what I thought were sails but weren’t sails at all (it was just sheets to protect the new galleries from dust and keep it private from visitors visiting the galleries on the upper floors). It turned out that we were keeping the development sites very clean because I even saw a very happy, smiling ‘Mr Henry’, vacuum cleaner.

I was interested to learn that an unexploded insidious bomb recovered in the early 1940s in the East End will loom large on top of a glass case. You and I will have to find out by visiting the gallery when it opens exactly what this looks like.

I found out that the largest glass case in the gallery will host the Tom Hunter ghetto (recreation of groups of streets in Hackney, home to squatters, including Tom himself) and that there will be an interactive river Thames (it was not installed fully yet so I couldn’t really get my hands on it and test the interactivity, all in the line of duty of course).

We were unable to see some parts of the gallery but as I did not want to disappoint you, my colleague and I raised the zip up a little and I took the photo of the Lord Mayor’s Coach (which you can see below).

The timeline for ‘a London year’ had not been installed yet but Antony did suggest that the web team may want to buy a year and I said that as soon as he gives us a pay rise, we would be more than happy to contribute. I’m sure we can expect a pay rise very soon. (If you haven’t yet bought a year, and wish to do so, why not visit our website at www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/SupportUs/Year-of-London-History/availableyears.htm for more information)

The Clore Centre was the last thing we saw. It opened recently and has hosted many events already. In the Centre, I’ve learned that learning continues, even if you go to the toilets!

Photographs of developments

Below are thumbnail images showing parts of the things I saw on my tour. Click on each image to see the full, larger image:

For the past four years, the London Archaeological Archive & Research Centre (LAARC) has run an object of the month competition. Since its conception and humble beginnings, it has developed and evolved into a popular monthly event, enjoyed by LAARC visitors, volunteers and Museum staff alike.

Back in late 2005, the idea of an object of the month was not a new one. If you visited the websites of several museums across the country, you could find a monthly updated page dedicated to an object within their collections. The Museum of London however, wasn’t one of these and with over 6 million archaeological artefacts to choose from, it seemed a pity not to highlight our goodies.

LAARC volunteers regular get to rediscover incredible objects when working on site archives and it was a common for us to joke that certain objects were so good that they were definitely the best object of the day, if not the week, if not the year. So around Nov 2005 I thought we should do something about it. As luck would have it, the next month we inherited a suitable display case and come January 2005, our first outstanding object that caught our eye.

The first object was a Samian bowl from Borough High Street, which had been repaired in antiquity with lead rivets. (It later proved so good the V&A borrowed it for one of their exhibitions) And so the LAARC joined the many other museums and had an object of the month!

However, being the innovators that we strive to be, I wanted our Object of the Month to go beyond us simply picking an artefact and with the number of cool stuff volunteers were coming across each week, I thought about making it a competition, with several objects competing against each other to win votes; the one with the most became that month’s object.

And so it continued through January to December for the whole of 2006, yet the focus was still pretty much a competition directed at our volunteers and visitors to the archive. In 2007, we took it to the next step and hosted the competition on the LAARC website. This then progressed in April 2008 to the museum’s archaeology blog page, which gave voters the option to leave comments.

In 2009, the competition was due to continue on the blog site with the format the same as it always had been; three objects chosen by volunteers from the material they had recently been working on. However, around the start of the year, the blog’s server went down and forced to find an alternative host, I also thought it time to refresh the format.

For the past year, each month there has been one object selected by a LAARC volunteer, one by a LAARC member of staff and the final by a Museum of London curator. Unlike before, the objects were no longer necessarily from recently worked on archives, but could also include people’s favourite objects. Yet, the basic concept remained: Three objects, one vote, one winner selected by the public.

As the months passed the audience grew and each month saw more votes, a few comments about the objects from voters and even people requesting to nominate objects. Halfway through the year, special competitions were held, including former staff nominating, a special retirement competition and a “lucky loser” second chance month. Almost 1000 votes were received this year in total.

The final monthly competition took place in November, when for the first time seven objects were nominated, these by seven members of staff from seven different museum departments. As with previous years, all the monthly winners go through to December’s Object of the Year, which you can vote for by clicking here.

Having reached its peak, the LAARC competition now retires on a high, with its legacy continuing on these blog pages as the Museum of London now has its own Object of the Month, with contributions from all over our museum staff and volunteers. Thoughout 2010 you can discover a whole range of spectacular objects held within the museum’s collections.

Thanks for voting in the past and enjoy the objects in the future!

• 100% of members want MOL to continue on Facebook,
• Most members would recommend MOL and MOL on Facebook to other people,
• Very few visitors were engaging with MOL through Facebook and the blog sites,
• More effort needs to be put into improving the communication on Facebook and blog to make it effective,
• MOL was not utilising Facebook or the blogs enough at the time of research and used it for information purposes only,
• It appeared that people wanted to receive information but not necessarily engage with MOL in any way other than to read emails, update alerts, and the blog entries, and
• People want to be prompted and guided to available content in the most convenient way.

So what are we doing now to ensure we utilise these available resources in the best way possible?

I have taken the feedbacks and lessons learned from my research to ensure that more use is made of all of our social software sites and activities. Although there are resource constraints, I have been attempting to:

• Add regular Facebook status updates on the MOL Facebook fan page,
• Twitter regularly on the MOL Twitter account,
• Blog more frequently on this blog site, and
• I have been vigilantly ensuring that all comments on MOL Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and Flickr, and all tweets and Twitter messages at Museum of London is responded to.

In addition to this, I am working on a new ‘Online’ section on the Museum of London website to bring together all these activities into a central location. I am also emphasising the use of social software to my colleagues and attempting to pass on responsibilities to various departments to manage some of these tools.

We are a long way from accomplishing all that which can be accomplished with all the available social software, but slowly and surely, we are heading towards that line were our visitors are able to engage with us in their preferred platforms and we are able to say ‘yes, we are listening and we care’.

On another note, I have finally visited our Modern London Galleries currently under development, due to open in spring 2010 and I have taken many, many pictures, so watch out for my next post to find out about all the exciting developments!

Keeping on track of things, we made steady progress this week, with a bit of work on pottery on Monday as our attempt to finish the boxes of pot from London Docks (LD74) continues. Interesting ceramics such as fancy decorated Tin Glazed ware and Angry faced Bartmann Jars were amongst the hundreds of sherds our hard working volunteers repacked.

Our second current aim – to finish the registered finds from Seal House (SH74) also progressed nicely on Tuesday, when volunteers checked all the ceramic accessioned finds from the site, including over a hundred tiles that made up a Medieval floor. This was followed in the afternoon by checking through the site’s general leather finds, namely post medieval shoe fragments, waste fragments and offcuts. Despite the sound of this, some spectacular bits cropped up including an extremly rare example of a piece of waste leather that was never properly cleaned when first used around 500 years ago. Tuffs of animal hair still remain on the piece of leather.(see above photo) Incredible!

Wednesday’s U3A team finished off their powerpoints for next week’s presentations and the effort they have put in is second to none. Next Wednesday looks set to be a fab morning as they present topics including War time gardens, the impact of bombs and the crows in Shoreditch Park!

Thursday’s lack of volunteers gave Adam & Glynn an opportunity to catch up on some reboxing and get closer to finding out just how much extra space VIP4 has produced.

In next week’s final week we shall be seeing if we can achieve those targets and finish the London Docks pottery and Seal House finds, before spending the afternoons seeing behind the scenes at the Museum of London itself.