Collecting Memories – Accidental Acquisition

Another Close Look at Our Collections Journey

The collections journey at the Wee Museum of Memory progresses every week and adapts all the time to make sure that our objects are carefully and efficiently archived. This process has evolved many times since the museum’s staff and volunteers began this official process earlier this year. The system now in place has been developed to efficiently and thoroughly comb through and archive the thousands of objects held by the museum. Our archival system is a multistep process that relies on the combination of the unique skills of the museum’s staff and volunteers. The first step of the process is what we call the Treasure Hunt. The Treasure Hunt process makes sure that we carefully match our objects in storage or on display with the donation forms completed when donors generously donated their objects to the museum.

This step gets many of the museum’s volunteers involved, especially those who, from life experience, are able to identify the make and model of, say, a record player or already know what a cobbler’s shoehorn looks like. Volunteers search for and locate objects in our collections so that they can be connected to their donation record as the first step in our archival process. Many of these volunteers have enough life experience to easily recognise all kinds of objects from the past just by looking at them and are indispensable to the Treasure Hunt process and the whole collections journey. Beginning with this first step and throughout the whole process objects are physically handled and examined. It was because of this hands-on examination that the object highlighted by this edition of the blog was discovered.

Accidental Acquisition

We’ve all heard the common saying, “One man’s rubbish is another’s treasure.” Read on to discover an object that has proved to be a treasure trove of information for us at the museum. Discarded by its previous owner, it was hidden inside another object, and only recently discovered by one of our volunteers.

What’s an acquisition?

In museum terminology, acquisitions are items obtained through donations, purchases, or loans. These are the objects that museums hold in their collections and display in their exhibitions.

Last month, our collections volunteers processed an optiscope through our archival system. An optiscope, often called a magic lantern, is an early version of a slide projector. It works by shining a light through painted glass slides. Though these devices were first invented in the 17th century, the one in our collection is much more modern, likely dating from the early 20th century. The optiscope comes inside a large metal case with a couple of detachable components of the lantern inside. One of those components is a delicate light bulb called the Royal Ediswan Lamp. The bulb is still wrapped in its original packaging, which explains that it is a gas-filled bulb. The side of the packaging reads in two places, “IMPORTANT In view of the paper shortage, this wrapper should not be thrown away or destroyed, but should be handed to the local authority or organisation responsible for salvaging paper.” This packaging is partly made of corrugated cardboard, designed to give some padding to the bulb.

One of the previous owners of this optiscope decided to wrap a newspaper around the bulb before placing it inside the case. This was likely a practical decision, making use of whatever materials were readily available to protect the fragile bulb. It appears that the owner of this optiscope made conscious choices to conserve paper, as the writing on the bulb’s original packaging asks.

While carefully examining the optiscope case as part of our cataloguing process, one of our volunteers discovered the newspaper tucked around the bulb. It turned out to be the Wednesday, 13 October 1948 edition of The Scotsman, and is covered front and back with advertisements and story coverages from that week in 1948. Though discarded and repurposed as packaging, for us, this newspaper provides a serendipitous glimpse of life in October 1948. Hidden away for decades and then brought back to light by chance, it’s like an accidental time capsule.

The edition discusses many of the major events around the world and important developments in local politics at the time. However, it also includes some very interesting, smaller stories that would not be featured in most history books, which we have decided to highlight in this blog. Take a look at some of those stories below!

“Policewoman Commended Decoyed Dangerous Criminal “

“A 34-year-old policewoman, who acted as a decoy to bring about the arrest of a man who was subsequently sentenced to four years penal servitude for attacking two women, has received the King’s commendation for brave conduct. She is Policewoman Mabel Ashley, of the County Borough of Tynemouth Police, and the award is “for services when effecting the arrest of a dangerous criminal,” stated yesterday’s London Gazette. At the trial at Newcastle Assizes, Policewoman Ashley said that she went alone in civilian clothes to a dockside road where a man had previously attacked and wounded two women. A man came up and, taking her by the arm, started to lead her away. When she saw a police inspector approaching on a bicycle she arrested the man.”

Women were only allowed to join the police force in 1916, when the “Police Act of 1916” was passed. A woman named Emily Miller had joined the Glasgow Police Force as a “Lady’s Assistant” and was not paid or uniformed. The first woman to offically join the police force in Scotland was Jean Thomas who joined the police force in Dundee in 1918, though it was not until 1924 that woman were granted the power of arrest. And not until 1968 that women were allowed to be a part of the force if they were married, prior to this married women were barred. So we can see here in this 1948 edition of the Scotsman, that Policewoman Mabel Ashley was using her right to arrest in order to take down this dangerous man, but she would not have been allowed to be married and hold her job with the police.

“Rising Generation ‘Danger’ that They May Be Non-Smokers”

“The ‘distinct danger of young people growing up without acquiring the smoking habit‘ because of the present high prices was referred to by Mr. Percy Belcher, general secretary of the Tobacco Workers Union, at a Liverpool meeting last night to protest against the tobacco tax. During the past 18 months, he said, the numbers employed in the tobacco industry had been reduced by 3000, and they could not face the future with any optimism.”

In the year this edition was written, 1948, 82% of men in the UK smoked; this was the highest peak in percentage of UK smokers ever recorded. While the Tobacco Workers Union was clearly pessimistic about the future of tobacco users, smoking did not begin to steadily decline until the 1970s. However, 1948 was the year that Epidemiologist Richard Doll joined the British Medical Research Council, and it was this partnership that would later definitively link smoking to lung cancer.

” Farmer Attacked with Axe rescues assailant from flames”

“Mr. George Glen, a 58-year-old poultry farmer, of Strathkinness, near St. Andrews, after being seriously injured in a struggle with a man at his farm yesterday afternoon, twice pulled his assailant from a blazing hut. Mr. Glen, a well-known speed motor cyclist in his younger days, was, it is alleged, struck on the head six times with an axe. Other members of his family who grappled with the man were also hurt. After the attack, the man rushed into Mr. Glen’s house with a double-barrelled shotgun and fired two shots which embedded in the ceiling. He then broke a window in the room and jumped through on to the ground and ran to a fuel shed where petrol and paraffin were stored. The man struck a match, which was knocked from his hand by Mr. Glen, but succeeded in lighting another, which he threw into the fuel store. He then flung himself on top of the flames. Despite his serious injury, Mr. Glen twice pulled the man from the burning shed and tackled the fire with extinguishers. Mr. Glen’s son, Ian, aged 16, who witnessed the attack, had meantime telephoned for the police, who took the unconscious man to the St. Andrews Memorial Hospital, where his condition was last night stated to be serious. Mr Glen had stitches inserted in a number of head wounds. His wife was also struck with the axe when she rushed to her husband’s assistance. Mr. Glen was on the point of leaving, Mrs. Josef Pawlici, and her two children, aged 5 and 13 months, with the intention of taking them by car to St. Andrews when the attack was made on him.”

“london and edinburgh have most ‘phones”

“At March 31 1948, there were 23.2 telephones per 100 of population in London — the highest figure in the country. Edinburgh, with 14 telephones per 100 people, was the next highest. The figure for Glasgow was 8.6.”

Telephones were still considered a luxury at the time this paper was printed, as the reported number of phones per person clearly shows. 1948 was the first year that the ‘999’ emergency number was rolled out for use in all major towns and cities in the UK.

“400 Women volunteers for nutritional test”

Nearly 400 young women have volunteered to act as “guinea pigs” in a nutritional experiment similar to that recently undertaken by 100 men medical students who lived on tablets for five days without food or drink. Dr H. E. Heitz, inventor of the tablets, said last night, that he proposed to experiment with 120 women in about six weeks time. This experiment also will be conducted at Marsh Court, Stockbridge, Hants. The report of the specialists on the first experiment confirms that the men suffered no ill-effects. Dr. Heitz said that many foreign Governments had placed orders for the tablets which will run into many hundreds of thousands of pounds.”

During WWII, the idea of finding tablets or pills that could sustain soldiers and those back at home on rations without needing to eat food was a very popular, though never an actually successful, endeavor. Many types of pills were manufactured to give soldiers a carbohydrate boost, though they did not provide enough calories to sustain a person on them alone. Horlicks Malted Milk Lunch Tablets were made of wheat, barley, and dried milk powder and were put into pilots’ emergency kits and handed out to athletes during the 1948 Olympics, though these also could not completely substitute food.

This accidental acquisition, though practically discarded at some point by someone wishing to protect their optiscope equipment, provides an interesting snapshot of some of the everyday events and conversations of the past. The stories reported in this newspaper reveal some of the dramatic ways in which the world has changed and the progress made in less than 100 years. Through reading this edition we see that women were already making significant strides in the workplace in 1948, and some women, such as Mabel Ashley from the story, were even succeeding in predominantly male roles like the police force. Today, almost everyone in Edinburgh carries a mobile phone in their back pocket, but in 1948, The Scotsman reported that there were only 14 telephones for every 100 people in Edinburgh.

However, we also want to acknowledge some of the unfortunate, harmful attitudes present in this newspaper, such as the column titled “The Red Peril,” which contains racist ideas about Asian and African countries. Or the “Weddings at St Giles'” column, where the writer uses a derogatory term to describe a shade of brown a bride wore. Reading stories like those is important because they expose the harm that was done in the past and serve as an important reminder to continue to progress away from those attitudes.

In the world of museum collections, accidental finds such as these can be incredibly exciting for those examining the objects. They provide an opportunity to feel more connected to the era from which the object originated, and help to bring into sharper focus the reality that these objects were once owned by real people. We hope you enjoyed reading about this accidental acquisition and sharing in some of our excitement. Keep an eye out for our next blog issue coming soon!

by Matilda Whitelock

Matilda

Collecting Memories – Beauty Under the Floorboards

A Close Look at Our Collections Journey

One of the many exciting projects currently ongoing at the Wee Museum of Memory is our journey towards accreditation! A big part of this journey is the organization and improvement of the museum’s collection of historical artifacts. Around 10,000 museum objects must be catalogued, labelled, and stored, a process that requires each object to be physically handled by the museum’s staff and volunteers. As of this post, we have successfully processed over 700 objects in just a few short months! As objects work their way through our cataloguing process, many pique the interest of the staff and volunteers who are working through our collection and handling each object.

Some of the objects spark our interest because they seem particularly unfamiliar, a relic of a bygone era, while others, for the opposite reason, remind us of our own past. Others have stories attached, provided by their donors, often filled with mysteries that inspire curiosity about those who lived before us. This blog series is designed to give each of those objects a space to shine while also letting you in on our progress towards accreditation!

Want to explore our collections from home?

We’re working hard to improve our collections and store our objects properly so they are available for future generations too! However, at the Wee Museum of Memory, we don’t want objects to be stashed away in storage shelves, but instead we try to put most of our collection out on the museum floor so you can come see them in person. Now we are also moving our collections online. This way, our objects are even more accessible. You can explore and reminisce through our objects from home, and also take a peek at what we have in storage through our online collection. If you want to look at the objects we have uploaded so far, click below!

Click here!

At first glance, many of the objects held in the Wee Museum of Memory’s collection might look like something you’d find at the back of your grandmother’s cupboard, or mentioned in one of her childhood stories, rather than the glamorous artifacts you might initially expect in museum collections. When you think about museum collections, many of us might conjure up something out of the films Indiana Jones or Night at the Museum, images of huge warehouses stacked with rows of huge wooden crates filled with priceless artifacts. Those films portray a dazzling picture of museum archives and collections, and while this sentiment certainly captures how incredibly interesting museum collections can be, in the real world, impressive, luxurious artifacts really only reveal the history of those who could afford to own them.

The artifacts featured in this Hollywood-afied image of a museum collection, like golden goblets, bejewelled crowns, and imposing swords, tell the stories of history’s powerful. If we want to hear other stories, those of the less powerful and less well-known, those of everyday people, we have to take a look at the ‘ordinary’ objects that made up their lives. These are the kind of objects that the Wee Museum of Memory keeps both on display and in its collections. Our objects are often acquired with specific local memories attached and inspire our museum visitors, who might connect these objects to their own past, to reminisce. These ‘normal’ objects once sat in kitchens, school rooms, workplace benches, or other ‘ordinary’ spaces, and witnessed the happy days and the rough times of the everyday people who owned them.

Beauty Under the Floorboards

Five boxes of hair product held in our collections

The first objects that we’ve chosen to look at are five tiny cardboard boxes filled with sets of glass hair dye bottles. While they might appear quite unassuming at first, when you look a little closer, they are almost like little windows, which allow us to glimpse a piece of daily life in the past through them. Surprisingly, these little boxes of hair product have quite a mysterious story attached to them, a story we can reimagine if we peer through them into the past.

Four of the boxes are L’Oreal Imedia Hair Tint. While L’Oreal is a recognizable modern brand, one look reveals that these particular dyes come from a time long gone by. The four L’Oreal Imedia boxes and dyes date from the 1930s. The fifth box, Nusheen Instant Retouch Liquid, is a lesser-known brand that also dates from the 1930s. Curiously, the original Nusheen product is no longer inside the box and was, at one point, replaced by another bottle of L’Oreal Imedia dye. The illustration on the outside of the Nusheen box reflects the beauty standards of the time: thin brows, heavily rouged cheeks, and hair cut into a bob.

Learn more about the origins of L’Oréal

Imedia was one of the first revolutionary hair-care lines created by the just-blossoming L’Oréal company in the 1930s, born in response to a world where women were now clamoring into salons to get the latest fashions in vogue. L’Oreal’s founder, chemist Eugène Schueller, created his first product, a safe synthetic hair dye, in 1909 and named it ‘L’Auréale’, potentially inspired by the popular Auréole hairstyle, which involved wearing the hair like a “halo” around the head. The company only later officially became L’Oreal.

Set of Imedia developer and dye bottles (contained in each of the Imedia boxes), c.1930s

The Bob

was the in vogue hairstyle of the 1920s and 30s. For centuries, Western women had worn their hair long. The bob, which first appeared in the 1910s, began as a rebellious statement of anti-traditionalism and individuality. The hairstyle came to be associated with flapper girls who turned traditional femininity on its head and famously disregarded the social norm. This meant, of course, that many people initially opposed the bob and its connotations of rebellion. However, the popularization of the hairstyle by celebrities such as Louise Brooks, Josephine Baker (who was known for wearing one of the most daring bob styles, the Eton bob), and Clara Bow meant that women were flocking to salons for the cut by the 1920s. The bob had entered the mainstream. To explore some of the many bob styles popular in the 1920s and 30s, click here.

Publicity photo of Josephine Baker sporting the Eton Bob, 1930s

The illustrated woman on the Nusheen box looks like she is sporting either the Charleston Cut or the Shingle version of the bob, and has styled it in Marcel or finger waves. Marcel waves were created using a Marcel curling iron, a handheld metal curling device originally heated over a fire and then clamped around the hair to create long-lasting waves. Finger waves were created by pinching and combing hair into an S-shape flat along the head, then setting them with a styling lotion.

To many women in the 1930s, and likely the past owner of the five hair product boxes in our collection, this illustrated woman would have been the pinnacle of current fashions. While women were striving to achieve this fashionable look, it was also heavily criticized by some. These competing sentiments created a tension for women, who were both encouraged by beauty corporations to subscribe to the new beauty standards of the rapidly changing 1930s and also told to resist them by others.

The three images below, from the Wee Museum of Memory’s own collection of photographs, show real women in the 1920s sporting the bob. The “unknown woman,” photographed in 1925, has styled her hair in waves and likely used a marcel iron or the finger waves technique.

Janet (Nettie) Burgess (later Park, 1924

Want to explore more photos?

We have a photo collection of over 5,000 images online and open to the public! Click below if you’d like to take a look at the rest of the collection.

Click here!

At the same time that women were cutting their hair up to their ears, hair dye became increasingly more popular. Just like the bob, flapper girls were some of the first to dye their hair in noticeable ways. However, many women were partaking in private to cover up greys or subtly change their colour, even though it was often seen as a hallmark of a promiscuous girl. Although the stigma had relaxed significantly by the 1930s and many women were openly dyeing their hair, many still wanted to hide it. Brands recognized this and often chose to advertise their dyes as tints to entice women who were scared of “dyes.”

You can see this sales technique in the five hair products in our collection. The Nusheen product specifically mentions it is “not a dye” and claims to wash out with shampoo, while the L’Oreal boxes are advertised as tints, not dyes. Perhaps the real woman who owned these hair products in the 1930s felt the tension of wanting to change the colour of her hair, but not wanting to reveal or admit that she was using dyes.

Top of the Nusheen box reads “Not A Dye”

Bottom of the Imedia box reads “Hair Tint”

The most mysterious aspect of these specific boxes is the fact that they were discovered under the floorboards of a bungalow in the Granton area of Edinburgh during a renovation. Their discovery, almost like little boxes of buried treasure dug up from the floorboards, immediately makes you question who hid them and why. What kind of pressures led them to be hidden? Was their owner embarrassed? Were they secretly dyeing their hair?

Perhaps a young girl desperately wanted to dye her hair like the fashionable older girls at her school or the movie stars she saw in cinemas and advertisements. Maybe her parents forbade her from dyeing her hair because they considered it too mature for a girl her age. Maybe she wanted the in-vogue look so badly that she scrounged together various bottles from her mother’s bathroom cupboards or enlisted her friends at school to pinch some from their own mothers. Maybe this young girl never worked up the courage to oppose her parents’ no-dye policy, and so the stolen dyes were forgotten beneath the floor.

Or maybe a woman entering her later years felt the ever-growing pressures to maintain her youth through modern artificial means, and so purchased the dye to hide the grey hairs peeking out along her hairline. Maybe she didn’t want to admit that she was going grey. Or maybe she didn’t want to admit that she was subscribing to the new world of artificial beauty, and so hid the evidence under the floor.

Could it have been that someone disliked the fact that their wife or daughter was dyeing their hair and so hid them away? Or maybe someone was jealous of her sister’s coloured hair and so stashed them away and forgot about them.

While we can’t say for sure who hid them or the reason why, these five small boxes of hair product have connected them to us decades later. Someone decades ago was likely facing the same pressures and embarrassment that many of us face today in a world where the beauty standard continues to climb to unachievable heights.

By looking at objects like these, we can relate to those who lived in the past. Their worries and joys are often not so different to out own. Its this connection between the past and the present that can make the exploration of these everyday objects so interesting.

If you want to hear more about some of the other intriguing objects in our collection and stay up to date with our cataloguing journey, stay tuned for our next blog post!

by Matilda Whitelock

Matilda

Interactive displays…fun for all ages!

It’s been a while since our last update but we have been very busy at the Wee Museum. Organising displays and storage, continuing the multiple forms and documentation for our application for Museum Status, working with new groups, setting up new procedures, as well as welcoming sometimes well over 100 visitors per day. The weeks and months have flown by too quickly.

With our bigger space at the old Superdry unit we have managed to showcase a larger selection of our collections – and also accept and display a some larger donations, some of which are robust enough for visitors of any age and background, to try out and have a bit of fun.

Our grand and upright pianos attract a lot of use: lots of visitors seem to be able to play Fur Elise, but others prefer more improvised melodies. However recently we got a donation of a Pianola. Steck Pianola Pianos were made in Gotha, Germany, from the early 20th century. They continued to be manufactured throughout the 1920s, and were very popular in Europe. Production declined, however, and stopped by the early 1930s. The one we have is in great working order and came with several large boxes of paper rolls – classical pieces, operas and operettas, ragtime, dixy and Christmas music. It’s easy to use, makes you feel and sound like a virtuoso, and is very good for exercising the legs. Come in a give it a go…

Another new musical donation is our NSM City jukebox. German manufacturer NSM started producing jukeboxes in 1952. Over the years, the company has produced a wide variety of models with varying features and this is one from the 1980s. It took 20p and 50p coins and is a cumbersome beast. It lights up but unfortunately the mechanism for selecting the 45s and playing them does not work. We have had a couple of attempts to sort the problem but without success. Despite not fully functioning, we incorporated the machine into one of the Thursday morning activity and reminiscence sessions. The single collection that came with the donation is quite eclectic. So recreating a popular TV show the ‘Juke Box Jury’ selected a random number and the record was then played on a conventional record deck. The group then voted: hit or miss. Visitors can’t try out the jukebox but it does stimulate memories.

Car racing and football games are also popular. Peter Adolph developed Subbuteo, known as Assembly Outfits, which was first available in 1947. The ‘players’ were made from cardboard, the more familiar moulded figures being introduced in the 1960s. The game proved a winning concept and is still produced by Hasbro. The version which has been donated is probably from the 1980s and has the standard blue and red teams. Visitors of all ages (including quite a few of the contractors involved in the refit of OT) find themselves drawn to having a go – seeing if they can are still able to flick the figures and get the winning goal! The result? A lot of broken players and lost balls.

Scalextric is British brand of car racing set, which was developed by engineer B. Fred Francis and introduced in 1956. It was acquired by Hornby Hobbies in 1968, who continue to produce it. The design of the cars, track and hand-controls have undergone a lot of modification over the decades but our c. 1970s iteration still attracts a lot of attention and reminiscing. This also means we see a fair number of major crashes through the barriers and a lot of repair work on the pick up brushes by our resident mechanic Barry.

Come in and try out some of our interactive displays and donations…whatever your age.

Seeking the Highland Cow

By Vivienne Corgoova

The year was 1958 when Addie Donaldson went on a cycling holiday with his wife Barbara to explore the Highlands. While cycling, they simply had to capture the approaching automobile in a photograph as they happened to be fellow tourists captivated by the mysterious atmosphere of the Highlands. The romantic promotion of the Scottish Highlands saw its peak after the publication of Sir Walter Scott´s historical novels in the early 19^th century. “My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer,” (Scott, line 2) is one of his profound quotes which summarizes the importance the Scottish nature resembled to the author himself. Scott´s depictions of the Scottish Highlands as a mythical, melancholic, and yet bewitching and beautiful place inspired tourists and families across Britain to use the Highlands as their weekend getaway. The illustrations in Scott´s novels by a history painter, William Allan, complimented his literary depiction of Scottish heritage and enhanced the reader´s desire to visit the landscape. The mid-19th century therefore marked the emergence of literary tourism in Scotland.

In addition to the literary works of Scottish authors, the British royal family also contributed to the popularization of touring Scottish nature mainly thanks to Queen Victoria´s numerous visits to the Balmoral Castle. Many English people wanted to follow her travels and participate in the new “touring Scotland trend.” This can raise several questions concerning Scottish uniqueness. What makes Scotland different? How is Scottish identity defined and why is it so attractive to tourists? The iconography in a typical Scottish souvenir shop would be filled with images of tartans, bagpipes, whiskey, and predominantly magical Scottish nature with the cutest Highland cows and vibrant blue skies without any sign of rain. While these images are usually used to lure tourists into the country, they are also associated with Scottish nationhood. The way most nations started to form is by declaring what they are not like rather than emphasizing their most prominent features. Scotland sought to distinguish itself from the English identity by stating that it was different from England building the evidence from stereotypical images such as men in kilts, bagpipers in the Highlands and magnificent nature. This distinction was the point that made the English public interested in the country and it forced them to explore the country to witness those mythical characteristics.

John Howden with his family in the Highlands, 1960

As the railway system across Britain evolved and improved throughout the 20^th century, tickets soon became more accessible to the working classes who could travel to different parts of the country for leisure. In 1983, ScotRail was first introduced to public transport making the travel from southern parts of the UK to the north even easier. The accessibility of the transport system was strongly interlinked with tourism as the decision to go on a holiday to the other side of the country often depended on the convenience of railways, roads, and buses. In very recent history, we can see how imperative transportation is for touring companies as hundreds of Edinburgh Tour Buses pass us every day. These buses can easily go from the Royal Mile to Royal Yacht Britannia in Leith just in a few minutes while providing the guides with the possibility to cover a wider area of Edinburgh´s history all while looking out the window and seeing the mentioned places. The popularity of such buses shows the importance of the tourism sector in Scottish history which also provides 13% of Scotland´s total employment (Bhandari, 21). Even though the stereotypical images on postcards and guide tour leaflets barely represent the complexity of Scottish identity, they are a profound part of a visitor´s idea of Scotland which can only encourage them to visit the place and experience the full extent of Scottish heritage.

“Trasport and Tourism” display in The Wee Museum

Don´t forget to visit us in The Wee Museum of Living Memory to see our “Transport and Tourism” monthly table!

Sources:

Scott, Walter. “My heart’s in the Highlands”

Bhandari, Kalyan. Tourism and National Identity: Heritage and Nationhood in Scotland. Bristol, UK: Channel View Publications, 2014.

Glendening, John. The High Road: Romantic Tourism, Scotland, and Literature, 1720-1820, Macmillan, 1997.

Wee Scottish Indulgence

By Vivienne Corgoova

‘The Last Word’ – a model pub from the Wee Museum’s Collection, made and donated by a volunteer.

They are seen on every street and every corner, a prerequisite of even the smallest Scottish village and an integral part of all Scottish tourist guides. Their popularity persevered even in the modern era connecting modern society with communities in the past. Bars, pubs, inns, ale houses, and taverns. They were all used as the main sites for socialising for centuries and continue to be regarded as places of social connections even today. Scottish pubs have been an intrinsic part of Scottish history since the 1700s. After the Union of Scotland and England in 1707, major political and social changes took place forcing the general Scottish public to engage in political discussions and form protesting groups. Pubs and ale houses at the time were considered public spaces where labourers, merchants, craftsmen, and others could meet and discuss their discontent with the current politics without being noticed by the authorities. No wonder that even Robert Burns, a prominent Scottish poet during the Jacobite Uprisings, wittily refers to such meetings in his poem “The Author’s Earnest Cry and Prayer”: “Freedom and whisky gang thegither” (Burns, stanza 32). Since then, it was often the Presbyterian ministers and clergy criticizing the Scottish public for their drunkenness and rising level of crime. This notion together with constant rioting was one of the reasons why the Scots were regarded as “the swine and rabble of England and Scotland” (Husks for Swine, 1974).

A wee bit of a Gin Craze

Anyone who enjoys a good pub crawl would soon notice the extensive selection of gins in every good bar or pub ranging from London and its notorious London Dry Gin to Scottish numerous craft gins. This notion can be once again traced all the way back to the 18^th century´s “Gin Craze” when the consumption of gin skyrocketed among the British public. Gin was particularly popular in working-class environments as it was seen as the cheaper alternative to French brandy. First crates of gin were being imported from the Netherlands meaning that the Port of Leith played a crucial part in distributing gin among Edinburgh citizens. Soon enough, the market opened up to gin distillation after Queen Anne herself approved of the botanical drink which led her to reduce taxes for the distilleries and even allow them to run the business without any license needed. However, the heavenly indulgence did not last for long and in the mid-18^th century, the authorities realized that crime had significantly increased after the introduction of gin to the market. By 1743, England was known for drinking almost 10 litres of gin per person per year. Naturally, the taxation on gin was increased in the Gin Act of 1751 as a response to that. Despite the decrease in consumption after the Act was issued, gin remained a popular drink and the established distilleries were getting more recognition.

Bottles, beer mats, souvenir booklets and more make up the Wee Museum’s collection of alcohol-related objects

Gordon’s London Dry Gin was introduced to the market in 1769 by Alexander Gordon who was of Scottish descent. The Wee Museum’s collection holds a miniature book ‘Gordon´s Recipes for Cocktails and Other Mixed Drinks’ which on the very first page highlights that “the name Gordon guarantees purity and quality.” The book contains recipes for the old gin classics. Negronis, dry Martinis or Clover Club. The cocktail more unknown to modern bar-goers would be “Gin Daisy”, which can be made as follows:

Half fill tumbler with chipped ice and add

1 glass Gordon´s Dry Gin

6 dashes of Grenadine

Juice of ½ a Lemon

½ Tablespoonful of Powdered Sugar

Stir well until the glass is frosted, fill with Soda Water adding 2 or 3 sprigs of Mint, and decorate with slices of fruit in season.

All of our alcohol-related objects are handled frequently, but of course the bottles are empty!

Make a wee space for women

Moralising over the consumption of alcohol naturally could not go without a dash of double standards that would demonize women who participated in the “pub culture”. During the First World War, female pub-going significantly increased as a result of growing anxieties surrounding the war continuing in the interwar period too. The public treated female drunkenness as a failure of morality and a total end of femininity and proper womanhood. The reason was simple, the demon drink could only lead to sexual immorality or to the abandonment of maternal responsibilities. The stigma over women in drinking spaces changed after the Second World War when women were widely employed in hospitality, service-based industries, and warehouses. By the mid-1990s in Scotland, there would even be a higher percentage of women in such workplaces than men. A picture from our photo archive depicting the bottling line at Invergordon Whisky Bond in 1990 shows that women made up the majority of such workplaces relating to alcohol.

A photograph from our archive, showing women working at Invergordon Whisky Bond in 1990.

Sources

Burns, Robert. “The Author’s Earnest Cry and Prayer.” 1786

Husks for Swine. Dedicated to the Swine of England, the Rabble of Scotland, and the Wretches of Ireland. 1794. Edinburgh: Edinburgh.

Yeomans, Henry. Alcohol and Moral Regulation: Public Attitudes, Spirited Measures and Victorian Hangovers. Bristol ; Policy Press, 2014.

Cooke, Anthony. A History of Drinking: The Scottish Pub since 1700. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022.

The History of Gin in Edinburgh: From Old Town to New, 2023 https://secretgardendistillery.co.uk/blogs/secret-garden-blog/the-history-of-gin-in-edinburgh-from-old-town-to-new

Our new display…

We are introducing a new display area in the Wee Museum of Memory which will focus on a particular theme each month. The themes, and objects to support them, will be selected by different members of staff or volunteer to reflect their personal interests in the topic or the objects themselves.

This month’s theme was chosen by one of our volunteers Hayley, who has been helping Naomi with the collections, in particular the Queen Edinburgh Project. Hayley is studying history at the University of Stirling and has been voluteering with us for some months. The objects that Hayley has selected all relate to youth organisations such as Guiding and the Boys’ Brigade. She was herelf involved with Guiding for many years, from Rainbows, to Brownies, Guides, and then as a Young Leader with a Rainbow group.

We have quite a lot of material culture related to these organisations in the our collections which has been donated over the years, including: uniforms, hats, belts, badges, books, and programmes.

Hayley has chosen a Brownie Uniform from the 1970s which shows a yellow cross-over tie with a white metal trefoil badge. The girl who wore this uniform was in the Imps and was a sixer. She was also awarded quite a few merit or proficiency badges. The Girl Guide

uniform is older – from the early 1960s – with the traditional pale blue triangular scarf folded into a neck tie and pinned with a white metal trefoil badge. The donor also gained a few proficiency badges including laundress, child nurse, and cook.

Merit or proficiency badges were a key element of youth organisations and we have a board with all the badges that were awarded to May, one of our regular visitors. May was at boarding school in Dollar and was in 1st Dollar B. Company. She was in the Nightingale patrol, and gained seventeen proficiency badges, including fitness, gymnast, cyclist, hiker, country dancer, reader, cook and needlewoman. These badges sum up well what we learned about May in later years: she was a very active lady who had trained as a physio, she liked cooking and was an excellent needlewoman who also knitted and crocheted – she taught some of us how to do both, although we never managed to reach her level of skill.

Hayley also selected a few objects about the Boys’ Brigade from our collection – notably a Pill Box hat which many will associate with the BBs – a leather belt with a yellow metal buckle, and an arm band with some metal proficiency badges including: Leadership, Physical, Adventure, and Interests. The selection of badges we have here is from the later twentieth century, possibly the 1980s.

Boy’s Brigade Pill Box hat, badges and belt.

Many key youth organisations started in the late nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and are still going today. They have had to adapt and evolve over the years, responding to changes in social habits and preferences. The display that Hayley has chosen reflects some of the changes in uniforms between the 1960s and 1980s, but also highlights that offering opportunities and developing skills for young people is still important for all of these organisations. The display demonstrates our ethos at the Wee Museum of Memory: to reflect lived experiences and living memories of social history through the twentieth century, for all ages, young and old.

Pop in and share your memories…perhaps you remember or took part in The Gang Show which was a yearly event at the King’s Theatre?

Oh dear me…it’s a sair fecht!

Cooking, cleaning, shopping, working, looking after bairns and auld folks, blethering with neighbours, paying the electric and gas, rent and insurance…it was all in a day’s (or week’s) work for our mums and grannies. One of the corners of our wee museum that gets a lot of attention is the one packed full of the paraphernalia of housework. From packets of Fairy Snow and Persil to blocks of Carbolic or Sunlight soap, our visitors recognise and remember a lot of the objects on display and can immediately recall seeing many of them being used on a regular basis.

Do you remember your mum or granny wearing this kind of pinny?

Wash day blues…

Although we don’t have any copper boilers for washing, or early twin tubs, we do have a lot of other objects that were regularly used either in the local steamie or the outside wash-house before most households had access to washing machines. We have lots of wash-boards (although it is surprising how many visitors still want to donate them) which were used every wash-day – possibly at the big Belfast sink which was a feature of most tenement flats or single ends. We often use a selection of twentieth-century boards in our reminiscence sessions to spark a debate about the perceived merits of the glass ones over the Zinc or galvanised steel ones – we don’t have any all wooden ones which are even older. It is not quite clear if one was better than the other, but perhaps a compromise was the Duplex variety which combines both glass and steel. Of course the other use for washboards that some visitors demonstrate is as a musical instrument – often associated with the skiffle music of Lonnie Donegan.

Washing and cleaning materials, including a Duplex washboard.

Of course using a washboard required the use of solid soap blocks. We have a variety of soap blocks which are still recognisable – some have never been used; others have had a bit of use. Familiar brands such as: Lifebuoy, Knight’s Family Soap, Nubolic, Fairy, Wright’s Coal Tar, and of course, Carbolic and Sunlight. Many of these hardened blocks have retained their distinctive aroma and picking them up and sniffing can evoke memories of wash days – but also bath nights when the soap was also used to wash children!

Some younger visitors wonder what Orlando Jones Cold Water Starch or Colman’s Azure Blue were used for. Starch was recommended for ‘imparting a creamy colour to laces, muslins, frillings, and curtains…’, and once applied to the material would be ironed, resulting in a stiffened texture. Azure Blue – or perhaps more commonly Reckitt’s Blue Bag – was added to white washes to cancel any yellowness which developed on older white textiles.

Persil and Fairy Snow soap powders; Orlando Starch
and the familiar round canister of Vim.

We do have packets of Persil – ‘For your whitest white wash’ – and Fairy Snow washing powders for use in machines. Fortunately we also have a copy of ‘The Persil Plan for Home Washing’ booklet, which is full of handy hints about how to plan a weekly wash with or without a washing machine! Mrs Holiday of the Persil Home Washing Bureau can also be contacted for further advice…

She wis down on her knees scrubbing…

Washing the family’s clothes was a weekly chore but there was also the house and stair, close or step to maintain. Scrubbing the dirt with a bucket of water and a handbrush was how it was done. Cleaning was done using abrasives such as Chemico Household Cleaner. Vim or Ajax, and Flash powder – ‘The Cleaner for Every Task’ – came in later. Cardinal (green or red) tile polish were quite familiar brands for many households and were used for polishing the tiles at the doorstep. Silvo, or more often Brasso, was used to polish the brasses on the front door – shiny letterboxes and bell-pulls would stop any criticism from nosey neighbours. It was also the responsibility of all those living in a stair to clean and maintain common areas – the ‘It’s Your Turn’ card would be passed round each flat to remind them to sweep and clean the common stair.

Taking turns at cleaning the common stair card and weekly thrift box.

Beaters and sweepers…

Thrashing the carpets and rugs was another regular feature of keeping the house clean. Rugs would be thrown over the washing line and beaten as hard as possible with cane beaters. These beaters come in a variety of shapes and sizes (again despite visitors claiming not to have noticed any, we do have quite a number on display). The beating of rugs was sometimes allocated to children as a task that they could do without causing too much damage. Of course, the beaters also had another less pleasant application: some visitors recall them being used as a form of painful, corporal punishment.

A selection of our carpet beaters – sometimes used for corporal punishment.

The cane carpet beaters were then replaced by carpet sweepers – familiar to many by the brand name – Ewebank. These were developed in the late nineteenth century – the oldest version we have is made of wood. The more modern red Ewebank Major still works and was regularly used in the unit by one of our older volunteers. With electricity, the introduction of vacuum cleaners to households was a major social and culture change. Many were made by Hoover – ‘It beats as it sweeps, as it cleans’ – and the Junior models are recognised by many visitors who describe emptying the bags and patching frayed holes in the fabric of the bags with parcel tape, making them last as long as possible rather than replacing them with a new one. Heavy and cumbersome they may appear now, but they were a labour saving device that were much appreciated by many.

Some examples of carpet sweepers and early Hoovers.

Housework was hard, physical work – many visitors comment on how heavy many of the appliances or tools are and how strong their mums and grannies must have been. There was no need to go to the gym when there was housework to do, they say. It was hard work indeed, and many labour-saving devices have made our lives easier, but being reminded just how much ‘work’ our mums and grannies had to do should make us appreciate them even more.

School corner…from Cuisinaire rods to calculators.

Here in the Wee Museum we have objects donated from all aspects of our lives, from home and work life to technology and toys. Throughout the museum, tucked away in a corner or on a shelf, there will be something, often a small thing, that resonates immediately, and sometimes quite emotionally, with a visitor. All our memories are stored but are not always present in our mind – they seem hidden and not brought out regularly as we rush through the passing years, leaving the twentieth century behind. But then a picture on a box, the feel of a pram as it bounces on its springs, or the sound of the typewriter ping, reminds people of their favourite toy or biscuit, pushing their babies and messages down the street or learning to type at work.

Our school corner is a wee tableau of memory; a snapshot of changing teaching equipment and methods between the 1950s and 1980s. From writing out sums (simple additions and subtractions) in a jotter – pre-decimal – to working out calculations for trigonometry using slide rules. Just at the side of course, the teacher figure stands, well-equipped with gown, mortar board and a tawse or leather belt for the administration of corporal punishment. Physical punishing in schools was made illegal in Scotland in 1987, although it had stopped in most public schools before then. Many leather tawses were manufactured in Lochgelly, Fife, and some visitors refer to the straps as Lochgellies. It is interesting, and not a little disconcerting, to note that quite a few visitors can recount their memories of getting the strap – describing the thwack of the belt on the teacher’s desk, and the pain as they held out their two hands for the required number of strokes. Hands were held out together, palms up, one under the other, which was more painful than a single hand. Another form of punishment was the use of blackboard dusters which were thrown with painful accuracy at the heads of pupils. Experiences of being disciplined, perhaps because it was painful, embarrassing, a bit shocking, deserved or undeserved, have left acute and vivid memories with visitors who often describe them in detail.

On display, and we have more than one set in the collection, is a box of Cuisinaire rods. This was a system of learning to count in decimals using different coloured wooden blocks for each number up to 10. The idea was developed by a Belgium teacher, Georges Cuisinaire, in the 1950s. Cuisinaire felt that some students found traditional methods of teaching arithmetic difficult but using a system that was both visual and physical enabled some pupils to understand how numbers were connected by addition and subtraction. The system was not universally used in Scotland but was used in some schoolds in the 1960s and 70s. Again it is surprising how often visitors will exclaim excitedly ‘Oh I remember using those in primary school! Hadn’t thought about them for years…’. Tactile and colourful, seeing and feeling the rods prompt very immediate and powerful memories. These little blocks of wood can take people back to being aged 5 or so, first year in school, a time of change and new experiences.

Scots mathematician John Napier’s work on logarithms (Napier’s bones) in the seventeenth century provided the basis for Englishman, Reverend William Oughtred to develop the instrument known as the slide rule. A basic slide rule helped solve complex problems as it was ‘relatively’ easy to use and was not expensive. It continued to be used to teach mathematics in schools, and by scientists and engineers, into the 1950s and 1960s as the use of computers was still very limited. An alternative to using the slide rule in school (I would question the use of the term ‘relatively’ as it proved beyond my ability) many people also remember Logarithm tables – probably the four figure version. These slim paper-covered booklets were helpful when required to do calculations involving large numbers, by using the log and then the antilog. It is a strange but little known fact that I can still remember the log for pi or 3.14 is 0.873, which is not been something I use much these days. Both systems of calculating mathematics might seem complicated for today’s generation but school day memories are jogged when visitors see them on display and can prompt an attempted explanation – especially if there are grandparents and grandchildren in the group. Cheap, handheld, calculators contributed to the decline in use of slide rules and log tables in schools and the workplace, although perhaps because they were solidly made we have several examples of slide rules in our collection.

Warwick Set of Mathematical Instruments. slide rule and jotter.

Maths class was something that not everyone enjoyed but it did at least involve extra equipment to help with drawing perfect triangles or circles or part circles. The set square, protractor, and compasses were needed to help show angles in geometry – acute, obtuse or right – or radius, diameter and circumference – that’s of course when 3.14 or pi comes into play – multiply the diameter by 3.14 to get the circumference. The geometry set that we have is The Warwick Set of Mathematical Instruments – A Complete Geometry Set, in a little tin box. Maybe you remember something similar?

If you would like to see our school corner pop in to The Wee Museum of Memory and share your own memories…

What will we do when we run out of space…?

When we opened up as a pop-up in Ocean Terminal we did not anticipate that we would have so many objects and memories donated by our visitors. At that time our policy was never to say no and to try to accept all donations ranging from the smallest bible which required a magnifying glass to read the print to a wardrobe and cabinet made by a local joiner; a 1950s kitchen cabinet to an empty cardboard box of Smarties; an early 1940s television to an Amstrad Notebook, as well as numerous early mobile phones. Lots of Singer sewing machines: treadle versions, hand and electric ones, as well as paper sewing patterns. Vacuum cleaners: Hoovers of all shapes, sizes and eras. Washboards: we’ve got glass ones and galvanised steel ones, and some that are a combination of the two. Typewriters, telephones, irons (flat, steam, coal, gas, paraffin and electric), kettles, teasmades, rolling pins, biscuit tins, iron shoe lasts aplenty (single and multiple ones), as well as stone hot water bottles of various sizes. Silver Cross carriage-built prams, dolls’ prams, and push-along and sit-on horses (as well as rocking ones). Boxes of Meccano, board games, desks with school books and jotters, and shelves of Ladybird early reader books. Guide and Brownie uniforms, BB and Scout uniforms, as well as canvas rucksacks and camping gear. Wedding dresses from the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Cameras galore, from Box Brownies and Kodak Instamatics to cine and video cameras. Think of any one thing from your life, from childhood to adult age, and it’s likely we will have it somewhere!

We started off in a unit on the ground floor of OT, then progressed up a level; we’re now in a much larger space on the second floor – and even here we do not have enough space to store and display our donations. Moving to an even bigger space seemed unlikely, but when Debenhams closed we came up with a cunning wheeze that we could move into it…a lunch time chat which had us all laughing! All the more disbelievingly when OT then actually approached us about running it as a community hub space…and so now we have The Wee Hub as well as The Wee Museum

Some of our collection on display in The Wee Hub

The longer-term objective to have The Wee Museum of Memory recognised as an accredited museum means, that we have had to review how we accept and record donations; as well as how we store and look after them. This means that we have to make sure our improved records are kept up-to-date with information not only about the donor but with photographs, and descriptions about the appearance and condition of the object. Donations have to be quarantined before they are processed in order to ensure that they do not introduce any infestations (such as moths – always a major concern for collections with textiles) or bookworm, which could spread to the rest of the displays. The next stage is recording where it will be stored or displayed (or loaned). Some donations have been moved back into storage to improve the displays in the public space and to make it easier for visitors to appreciate the objects when they are visiting the museum – we now also have an audio tour which includes descriptions and recordings of personal reminiscences which can be accessed via a Smartphone or using one of our MP3 players. And as we are a ‘hands-on’ space, a lot of our collection is handled by visitors – or borrowed by other groups for reminiscence. This means we have to record any change in condition – breakages or deterioration.

The Wee Museum of Memory collection processing and storage space.
It was a kitchen!

These procedures are all necessary so that we can achieve the required Spectrum standard for museum collections. The processing of ‘donation to display’ now takes much longer and it also means that individual donations have to be considered more carefully. Should we take another shoe last, stone hot water bottle, iron or camera? Can we find space for more sewing machines, prams and record players? Are boxes of miscellaneous objects going to be accepted?

More displays of our collections
in The Wee Hub

Without our donations we would not have any collections to display. Visitors have created this museum, but we now need to consider changes in policy going forwards. What do we do with donations in the future? How can we process and store them? This is a dilemma faced by virtually all museums. At the moment we are in the fortunate position of having the Wee Hub as extra space for displaying some of the collection. However this will not be permanent so there is no doubt that we will need to consider how and what we can realistically manage in the future… otherwise we might just burst at the seams!

We appreciate receiving donations very much, but what we love most are the memories that go with the donations – what made it special to your life, your family, your home. As we review our donations and collections, the importance of memories will continue be at the heart of our policies.

Wee Museum of Memory – focus on collections…

This month’s blog will focus on a selection of objects from our collections and how we are starting to collate and catalogue data.

Collections management system

Since the end of last year we have been working on developing and updating our policies and procedures in order that The Wee Museum of Memory can apply for accredited museum status. One of the most crucial areas that needed work was the collections management system (SMS). The photos that have been donated have been entered into an online searchable archive for a number of years. However, although the majority of our objects donated by members of the public often have some personal or family information, we have not previously used any formal collections management system for our physical objects and materials.

Our online photo archive – hosted by Edinburgh Collected.

We lacked the courage to attempt anything for the huge amount of social history objects and ephemera that comprise our displays – the task was way too daunting! However, we are very fortunate to be able to employ two new members of staff – Louise and Naomi – to update our administrative systems, research the objects and start inputting data into an online archive that will be searchable once it has gone live. The data input is being done by Louise and Naomi supported by a small team, some of whom are working remotely.

Our online collections catalogue – hosted by eHive (currently not live).

Forms, forms, forms…

The data that is entered onto the eHive catalogue includes descriptions, dates, object types, and images, as well as using the Social History and Industrial Classification (SHIC) system which means objects will be indexed under: Community life, Domestic and family life, Personal and Working life.

Upgraded donation forms have been introduced and we have a safety procedure for new objects which are quarantined before they are processed. This is to minimise the potential spread of moths, bookworm or foxing or any other form of infestation. Louise is improving our storage system as well … the opening and dressing of The Wee Hub downstairs has enabled us to free up storage space in the Wee Museum.

QRs and virtual tours …

One of the reasons that the collections needed to be managed more effectively is so that the objects, their history, and any associated personal history (sometimes as a recorded reminiscence) can be accessed by visitors more easily – including those who may not be able to visit in person. Barry, our IT expert, has introduced QR codes for some of the collection as well as creating our first virtual tour. Using the wonders of modern technology, visitors can be guided by his dulcet tones, interspersed with recordings of stories and memories from past visitors and regulars.

Visitors can now take a virtual tour of the Wee Museum of Memory.

Or they can find out more using QR codes…

Focus on…tea and coffee

We have so many interesting and varied objects which may be quite ordinary but are sometimes unique; bring their own personal stories or might connect with the lives of many visitors. The personal, as well as the social, history available using our CMS might be a potential research resource for particular objects or themes, particularly once the collection is available on-line.

Let’s look at some objects more closely. Here are some of our mid 20th-century tea and coffee utensils…

Making its first appearance in the 19th century, the ‘alarm that makes tea’ reached its peak in the 1960s and 1970s and many were produced under the Goblin trademark. The example we have is typical of the time and style and may be very familiar to visitors.

This 1950s’ insulated teapot, made of ceramic with a chrome cover, was part of a wedding gift given to the donors. It came with an insulated water jug. It was donated to us by the couple who wanted it to be displayed so that other people could see it and share its memory.

This example of a small aluminium teapot with clear handle and Bakelite button on the lid, is evocative of many a family’s memories. Was the tea made with tea leaves, and how strong did your granny make it? This teapot was made in Stratford upon Avon; the products were known as Sona ware and were made by N C Joseph during the 20th century. With a small spout and a raised decorative trim round the middle, and stained with tea inside, this is nice example of a well-used teapot.

The Russell Hobbs coffee percolator from the 1970s conjures up memories of the plop plop gurgling sound, as it sat in the corner brewing fresh hot coffee to be served in the special small coffee cups which would be produced from the back of the cupboard at Christmas and New Year – or at least that’s my personal memory. Made of stainless steel, with a wooden handle and button on the lid, this style of coffee maker is still in vogue today but for many visitors – and staff – it reminds them of their own childhoods.

Picquot ware was made from a magnesium-aluminium alloy, called ‘Magnaillium’ in Nottingham between 1947 and 1980. The handle was made of sycamore wood and the tea and coffee pots were cast in one piece. Although this is listed as a coffee pot it might also have been used as a hot water pot along with a teapot. Perhaps you remember this type of coffee pot or maybe you got some Picquot ware as a wedding present?