Books in the library at Newcastle Meeting Photo: Photo: Steve Chettle/ARTS UK.
A Quaker library
Stella Clark delves into an archive of papers and books
Some of us knew they were there, of course, lurking in solid, leather-bound, rows in the basement of our Meeting house, and only accessible by lift. Most local Quakers, however, had no idea that there were thousands and thousands of pages of our past hidden underground. Next to them were boxes of papers from Local and Area Meetings. These were occasionally visited by assiduous clerks, so we knew they were there.
Then came the day when the furniture vans drew up and the collection, built up over decades, had to find a new home. Newcastle Meeting was moving to smaller premises. Everything had to go. It took four of us many hours of patient removal, elevation in the lift, and packing, to get the collection into boxes in the foyer. There were over 800 of them. They now sit at the side of our main Meeting room in locked glass-fronted bookcases. ‘Weighty Quakers’ indeed!
What to do next? ‘Get an electronic catalogue’, they said. So, we did. Hours of work, by someone who knew how to do it, produced the final list. It was based on the original systems employed by previous librarians: systems, in the plural. What we actually had was two libraries merged together and, without much effort, we discovered that after the closure of North Shields Meeting all the books had been put together to form a collection based in Newcastle. This had been moved from its original Meeting house to our basement only to emerge, Kraken-like, when we moved again.
What’s there
So, what do we have amongst this store? Inevitably, the Bible and George Fox’s works are the weightiest books, in every sense of the word. Bound copies of the Friend and American Friends Review, dating from 1846, reveal what was on the minds of Quakers in England and across the Atlantic. The works of William Penn and Isaac Penington are there, books about prominent Friends such as John Bright, the Cadbury and Rowntree dynasties – all the familiar stories of the famous, with their inspiring tales of creativity and righteous endeavour. Amongst these familiar volumes there were fascinating memoirs about lesser known Quakers, such as the beautifully named Loveday Hambly of Cornwall, faithfully remembered by her friends. Weighty Friends from the North are also well represented: the Spences, the Peases, the Richardsons and the Wighams are all there. The story of the first Meeting house in Gateshead is told, with the later move to Newcastle. These books we expected to find in the collection.
However, for me, there were several unexpected elements. The collection of tracts come to mind. They are examples of straightforward Quaker ‘preaching’ and certainly contain some of the snappiest titles!
The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Married State as entered into with religious or irreligious persons represented under the similitude of a dream.
(The entry in the catalogue concerning the above reads ‘In a bad state of repair’. Was it a popular tract?)
The Anarchy of the Ranters and other Libertines, the Hierarchy of the Romanists and other pretended churches equally refused and refuted in a two-fold apology for the church and people of God, called in derision, the Quakers.
Fighting talk, indeed! No indication as to popularity!
Humane treatment
My heart also warmed to a small book written by Samuel Tuke, in 1813, which described in detail his grandfather William Tuke’s setting up of the Retreat, the pioneering Quaker institution in York established to care for the mentally ill. The book contained a revealing comment by a visiting doctor on how patients were treated:
At the Retreat, they sometimes have patients brought to them, frantic and in irons, whom they at once release, and by mild arguments and gentle arts, reduce almost immediately to obedience and orderly behaviour. A great deal of delicacy appears in the attentions paid to the smaller feelings of the patients.’
He goes on to describe how, as far as possible, bolts and bars are removed to enable the patients to walk round the grounds and receive visitors.
Again, Elizabeth Fry’s advocation, in her book of 1827, of the deliberate humiliation of misbehaving prisoners by cutting off their hair, came as a surprise to me, but it did make me think harder about the daily problems existing in nineteenth century prisons. And who wouldn’t be won over by some of her tender observations?
Let our prison discipline be severe in proportion to the enormity of the crimes of those on whom it is exercised, and let its strictness be such as to deter others from a similar course of iniquity; but let it be accompanied by a religious care and a Christian kindness, and let us ever aim at the diminution of crime through the just and happy medium of the reformation of criminals.
The sufferings
But, for me, the most moving descriptions were those of the hardships endured by early Quakers. The Sufferings of the Quakers contains first-hand descriptions from the seventeenth century, from every county:
Our Brethren that lie in Prisons, and Houses of Correction, and dungeons and many in Fetters and Irons, have been cruelly beat by the cruel Goalers, and many have been persecuted to Death and have died in Prison, and many lie sick and weak in Prison and on Straw.
(London, 1660)
As touching the manner of our Sufferings here at this Place; here are 90 and odd in this Prison, very near an Hundred, most committed for refusing to take the Oath of Allegiance, some being taken out of their Meetings, and some out of their Houses and from their Employments, and for refusing to Swear committed to Prison. We met with a very avaricious inhuman Goaler, who threw 20 of us into a stinking Dungeon, where we could not all lie down at once; and put 13 of us into another, where we remained 5 Days; but the High Sheriff, understanding it, manifested a large measure of Christian Compassion towards us and caused us to be removed to the House of Correction, where we have had moderate Usage, and the rest of us were removed into a cold room, where the Goaler still continued much Hardness, very hardly suffering any to come in to them, saving twice a Day that his Man unlocked the Doors, and of late would not suffer them to exonerate Nature.
(A letter written from Durham Goal, 1660)
Of these Sufferers, though many of them were Men of Substance, others were poor: One of them, William Hewitt, was a poor Labourer, from whom the Informers took most of his wearing apparel; after which he still continued constant in going to Meetings. – Another of them, Thomas Pyborne, was so poor, that when the Informers brake into his house and seized all his household goods, the Constable, moved with compassion to the Man and Family of young Children, gave the Informers 20 shillings to desist from their attempt. A third, Laurence Strickland, was reduced, for want of bedding, to much Hardship, having nothing of necessary bedclothes left for him and his Family to cover themselves. These Men, though poor in this World, were rich in Faith, patient in affliction, and Unmovable in the Stedfastness of performing their religious duties.
(Durham, 1682)
How many modern day Quakers could withstand such suffering, I wonder, accepting it without responding in kind? What would we be prepared to suffer and die for in the twenty-first century?
Meanwhile, Friends, the books are still sitting in leather-bound rows. Newcastle Meeting will have to make a decision about what to do with them. Should we decide on dispersal? If so, are there any good Quaker homes out there? The catalogue is free if anyone would like to adopt!
For further information: clarksm2003@yahoo.co.uk
