Introduction

Tamsin Bookey, Heritage Manager

“The period covered by this report was another year of steady growth in public usage of Tower Hamlets Local History Library, thanks in part to the programming of interesting exhibitions and events on a wide range of local history topics. Over 3,000 people attended these activities on and offsite, an increase of 14% on the previous year.

We were grateful to receive council funding for two key investments – firstly, a new digital microfilm reader which has enabled us to digitise archival editions of the East London Advertiser. Secondly, new overhead lighting in the Reading Room of our Grade II listed building. The outdated 1970s tube strip lights were upgraded to smart new dimmable LED fixtures. This has made a real difference to the look and feel of this room, whose decorative ceiling is beloved by all who visit.

Over 1300 people used our Reading Room during 2023-24, which was 10% up on the preceding year, even despite an 11-week closure period for the lighting upgrade to take place. The total number of items from the collection that were consulted by readers also increased by 5% on the previous year.

Our entrance hall hosted several exhibitions, most notably Everything is different, nothing has changed which was the outcome of a two-year partnership with the department of English and Drama at Queen Mary, University of London. Three sound artists were commissioned to produce new work inspired by oral history and archival audio held in our collections, in a project funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council.

We also hosted the very popular Brick Lane 1978 exhibition of photographs by Paul Trevor and Four Corners; the artist Maria Amidu’s solo show living in fear of quicksand, a partnership with Bow Arts; and This Is Our History, a collaborative exhibition with Tower Hamlets Schools Library Service, showcasing local history booklets produced by and for Tower Hamlets primary schools

Finally, a shout out to our volunteers, who have completed many important projects, including Tower Hamlets Library Service’s 'Isle of Dogs Local History Collection', a series of cuttings and pamphlets which document the island’s eventful history during the later 20^th century.”

The year in numbers

Highlights of 2023-24

Archives News

New Additions to the Catalogue

Local Studies Library News

Highlights of 2023-24

As selected by our Local Studies Librarian:

• Digitisation of East London Advertiser microfilms

Using our new ScanPro 3500 digital microfilm reader’s Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature, we have begun scanning our microfilms of the East London Advertiser, prioritising 1960-1995. As of March 2024, 1,300 issues of the East London Advertiser have been digitised, covering the years 1913-1914, and 1960-1983.

This project creates high quality digitised versions of the original publications which

• allows searching across a year’s worth of issues for a specific word, name or phrase
• conserves fragile original hardcopies of the newspaper, which as popular research items get a lot of use in our Reading Room.
• Oversize pamphlets

This year saw the completion of the oversize pamphlets cataloguing project. 283 historic large-size printed pamphlets which had previously been inaccessible were catalogued, repackaged and relocated to the Reading Room.

• Book Sale

December 2023 saw the return of our extremely popular sale of duplicate books and pamphlets withdrawn from the local history library collection. Many are rare and out-of-print and cover a wide range of East End topics such as social history, politics, fiction, and local biographies. Our first post-lockdown book sale raised £1,656 and was attended by 120 people. The duplicate stock sold also created a bay of empty shelving for incoming new collections.

• Tower Hamlets Arts and Events Unit videos

25 VHS tapes dating from 1980s-2000s kept by Tower Hamlets Arts and Events unit were digitised. Access copies are available to researchers in the Reading Room.

• Rolled maps

30 rare and historic large, rolled maps were catalogued, repackaged and added to our collections. These include

• hand-coloured manuscript map of the Isle of Dogs from 1812 which is over 2 metres long!
• two first edition prints of Joel Gascoyne maps from 1703 showing Stepney and Mile End.

Top Ten most popular topics

In 2023, these were the subjects within our library collection’s classification scheme that were consulted most frequently:

1. Ethnic groups, migrants, race relations
2. Stepney
3. Housing
4. Life of the people
5. Associations, institutions, social and youth clubs, community centres, settlements
6. Markets
7. London
8. Literature and local authors
9. Town planning and improvements, development
10. Statistics, population, censuses

Collaborations & partnerships

We continued to work closely with community groups, activists and organizations to produce a varied programme of events for the public.

• Nijjor Manush is an independent campaigning group that aims to educate, empower and organise Bengalis and Bangladeshis in the UK. MayDay Rooms is an archive, resource and safe haven for social movements, experimental and marginal cultures and their histories. We partnered with both groups in 2023-24 to produce two workshops themed around local community activism within the borough, both historical and contemporary.

• London School of Economics

Our engagement officers partnered with their equivalents at LSE Archives to deliver a Women’s Activism & badgemaking workshop for a Women’s History Month event

• Subterranea Library Somali poetry writing workshop

We hosted Subterranea Arts Library and Ibrahim Hirsi to facilitate a workshop exploring poetry, visual languages and political expression during the Qaraami movement of the early 20^th century in Somalia.

• University of the Third Age

Continuing our partnership with U3A locally we hosted a talk about the Matchgirls Strike of 1888, one of the most important industrial actions in UK history

Access & Engagement: Exhibitions

We were very proud to have staged two large scale exhibitions during the year. Both focused on the artistic expression of the rich history of Tower Hamlets’ varied communities.

Access & Engagement: Events & Workshops

In addition to the exhibition programmes, our Engagement & Learning Officers facilitated more than 50 additional events and workshops during 2023-24. Here are some highlights:

Black History Month 2023:

East London Borough Archives: Caring for African & Caribbean history

This all-day community event raised the question of how East London borough archives are caring for African & Caribbean history.

Guest speakers from Hackney & Tower Hamlets, both archivists and community members, spoke about the process of depositing collections at borough archives, and the ways in which the histories of African & Caribbean communities in the East End are being preserved and celebrated.

Speakers included:

• Singer, Songwriter and Activist, Janice Knight exploring her archive collection with Dr Etienne Joseph, Archives Manager, Hackney Archives
• Harry Cumberbatch MBE, Community Worker, talking about depositing his archive at Tower Hamlets in conversation with Richard Wiltshire, Archives Manager.

There was also an interactive DIY collections care workshop with Genova Messiah and Richard Wiltshire using examples or stories from participants’ own records to find advice on how to keep them safe.

Communities of Liberation: African Peoples in the East End | 1567 – 1802 Launch event

This project, exploring the long history of Africans who have lived in, passed through or liberated themselves from enslavement in Tower Hamlets, began in 2022 with the formation of a steering group of historians and activists. A year-long research and activity phase led by Tony T was launched at this event attended by Deputy Mayor Cllr Maium Talukdar. A group of Co-Producers were sought to carry out research in the collections and develop an exhibition based on their work, thanks to a £25k grant from Historic England’s ‘Everyday Heritage’ fund.

LGBTQI+ History Month Creative writing workshop

East London-based writer and facilitator F. Zeeshan Choudhury produced an onsite event consisting of writing games and activities that interacted with archival photos, records and memories of the LGBTQ+ community in Tower Hamlets. There was also a discussion exploring elements of our queer past and the ways it could be brought into the future.

Exploring infant feeding support in Tower Hamlets: online event

This event was held in partnership with the Grow Your Own childcare oral history project and London Challenge Poverty Week.

Joy Hastings, a retired Infant Feeding Manager joined Genova Messiah (Engagement & Learning Officer) and Rosa Schling, oral historian in conversation about her pioneering contributions to maternity care in Tower Hamlets, providing unique insight into the history of infant feeding in Tower Hamlets past and present.

We also conducted an oral history interview with Joy which will soon be catalogued as part of our collections.

Women’s History Month 2024:

Hyenas in Petticoats film screening

A screening of short films made by participants of the Hyenas in Petticoats women’s radical filmmaking course led by Katy McGahan and Mizgin Mujde Arslan in 2023.

These short documentary films covered topics such as environmental activism, gentrification, concepts of home, women’s relationships with the city, love and loss. Tower Hamlets was an important location in several of the films, including Carol Gyasi’s ‘First Whispers’ and Susan Croft’s ‘In search of Margaret Wynne Nevinson’.

East End History Club workshop: Women Revolt!

In partnership with The Women's Library at LSE, we explored how women in the East End resisted and fought for their liberation.

Material from the collections of both archives illustrated the fights for voting rights, better living and working conditions, equal pay and better health and family care, There was also a badge-making activity for those who felt inspired to mark their own mini protest!

Access & Engagement: Education

Nine onsite educational workshops for schools in the borough were held with over 200 pupils participating. Migration, Colonisation & Exploration was the most requested workshop theme.

Students were able to engage with original records, some over 300 years old. Our library & archive collections were used to deliver sessions on various curricular topics, including History, Geography, Art, and English Literature.

Many schools are returning for visits each year and our engagement officers have continued to build relationships with new schools through partnerships with the Tower Hamlets Schools Library Service. This collaborative work will continue through 2024-25, with a National Lottery Heritage funded project developing local history educational resources, using our collections.

Access & Engagement: Talks, walks, tours & visits

Talks

Listening to the Jewish East End: A guided walk

Professor Nadia Valman and Dr Vivi Lachs of Queen Mary, University of London presented a free guided walk through East London’s Jewish East End based on their Arts and Humanities Research Council project on English and Yiddish literature and song of the East End from the 1880s to the 1950s.

East End History Club: Voices in the archive!

An event presented by our librarian Robert Jones who explored materials related to our sound collection, highlighting the types of recordings held here, with a selected listening session.

How Writers Remembered the Jewish East End with Nadia Valman

In this online talk, Professor Nadia Valman (QMUL) discussed how Jewish writers remembered their childhood in the East End of the 1930s.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2024

In an inter-generational conversation on remembrance and memorialisation of the Jewish Holocaust, two speakers discussed questions such as: the effectiveness of national memorialisation initiatives in the UK and Europe, how Jews of different generations commemorate the Holocaust today, the response of the East End’s Jewish community to the genocide in the decades that followed World War Two, and whether Holocaust remembrance can ever be non-political.

Who Do You Think You Are: Filming at Bancroft Road

We were delighted to welcome a film crew and the lovely Gemma Collins to our building to film parts of an episode for the Who Do You Think You Are? TV series in November 2023, a secret we had to keep until the episode’s screening in September 2024!

Visits, tours and workshops

We also hosted, among others, visits, tours and workshops for the following:

• University College of London students
• A delegation of Nigerian business officials organised by The National Archives
• London Borough of Kingston Archives
• Queen Mary, University of London staff
• Members of the Friends of Island History Trust
• Barts NHS Archive
• Rothschilds Archive
• Society of Genealogists
• Bow Geezers community group

Access & Engagement: Working within Idea Stores

During 2023-24, staff at Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives facilitated:

• 2 Prime Time sessions at Cubitt Town Library for the over 55’s
• 1 Tour Guiding for Beginners course for Idea Store Learning at Idea Store Whitechapel
• 1 Get Online family history workshop at Idea Store Whitechapel
• 1 local history stall at Tower Hamlets Town Hall
• 1 tour of Tower Hamlets Town Hall (supporting)
• 2 online Local History introductory session for Idea Store staff
• 1 onsite Idea Store staff visit
• 1 ESOL group visit

How Did We Do? Example feedback from our users

In the Reading Room

• “I would just like to take the opportunity to express my thanks to all the staff that assisted me on my visit, from the gentleman at reception [to] the staff who helped me obtain the necessary information to help with my family history. It was my first visit and was so impressed with the service I received from the research staff. The lady and gentleman made me feel comfortable, gave me all the assistance I needed and further guidance on research. Please pass on my sincere thanks to all staff involved for making it a very special day for me. It was a most enjoyable experience.”

• “This service is an extremely valuable part of the area history. The staff are fantastic, very helpful.”

• “Managed to find an unfindable print thanks to archivists!”

• “I visited the Tower Hamlets Historic Records Library earlier this week and was so delighted at the service I received from two members of staff. I am a blind visitor and so needed a lot of assistance in accessing the visual materials but received the highest level of support and left with all the information I needed and more. I would also like to say that, as a disabled person, I found your building and staff training to be extremely inclusive. The staff spoke directly to me - not to my husband about me - and I was very pleased to find an accessible toilet that was also for all genders. I'd be so grateful if you could please say thank you to the staff involved, including the diversity lead at the council as it is so rare to have an experience that leaves me feeling as welcome and with the same level of equity as I experience during my visit on Tuesday 20th February. Thank you.”

Remote enquiries

• “Wow! This is why I love you guys😊. This information is more than I expected. I am indebted to you, as always. I hope that I can visit again in the future - actually, given all the budget cuts, it makes me feel very happy you are still there.”
• “Thanks so much for this! What (in my mind at least) seemed a relatively simple question was (of course!) much more complicated and so thank you for such a detailed response. Very much appreciated.”

• “This is amazing information you have unearthed for me. Thank you very much.”

• “Thank you very much for supplying the information for the exact location of my late mother's house before it was bombed in the war.

• “I would like to say that I found your response exceptional in both your willingness to help and the speed in which you responded.”

Exhibitions

• Excellent exhibition and series of events about an undiscussed aspect of East End life - the huge impact that artists have had in the area” - living in fear of quicksand

• “This is a fantastic exhibition! It's so rare to find exhibitions that centre around archival audio. I work in radio so really appreciate & connect with this!” – Everything is Different, Nothing has Changed

• “Amazing exhibition! Loved all 3 installations, so creative & engaging. Well done!” – Everything is Different, Nothing has Changed

• “I have had a really pleasant afternoon, helpful staff, knowledgeable, in a beautiful building” – Brick Lane 78

• “Keep doing what you do! Given a warm welcome – thanks!” – Brick Lane 78