Eye - 13 April 2012

From historical insights to Quakerly conincidences

Peering through the pages

What were Friends debating in the 1860s? How did British Quakerism develop in the nineteenth century? Were there ripples that can still be felt today?  A forthcoming Quaker History Meeting at the Quaker Centre in Friends House will shed light on these questions by peering through the pages of Friends’ periodicals. On Tuesday 24 April Jennifer Milligan, senior library assistant at Friends House Library, will be speaking on ‘British Quakerism 1837-1914 as seen through ten periodicals’.

As the member of Library staff with responsibility for periodicals, Jennifer has ‘long been fascinated by the sudden explosion in periodicals in the mid-late nineteenth century and how some of these titles such as The Friend and Friends’ Quarterly still survive’.

She has focused on the period spanning the start of Victoria’s reign through to the start of the first world war, covering major shifts in Quaker thinking and key events such as the Beaconite Controversy in 1837 and the Manchester Conference of 1895. The ten periodicals Jennifer will be featuring open a window onto modernisations within the Society as well as casting light on the theological debates that raged – some of which will be familiar to readers of the Friend today.

Jennifer tells Eye that she hopes that ‘this will be an interesting and hopefully enlightening trip through nineteenth and early twentieth century British Quakerism, which helps to show how Britain Yearly Meeting became what it is today’.

For further details please call 0207 663 1030 or visit: www.quaker.org.uk/quaker-history-group

Quakerly coincidences

Eye was fascinated when, following the article on North American Quakerism in a recent issue of the Friend (30 March), David Hickok wrote in to say:

‘As an American from, on my mother’s side, an Orthodox/pastoral Quaker family, but being now a member of Friends House Meeting, I was utterly surprised to see in the Friend a picture of the Apponegansett Meeting House.

‘According to our family records my ancestors Benjamin and Nicholas Howland built that Meeting House and my family worshipped there for quite a few decades – from 1790 until the 1870s.

‘It was abandoned for a while but later used as a set for the 1920s movie Moby Dick and local Quakers, including my grandmother who came from a local Quaker whaling family, put on their parents’ grey garb to be extras in the movie.’

Friendly faces via video

Quakers at a recent meeting of the Friends House Moscow (FHM) Management Group didn’t have to worry about their carbon footprint… they simply travelled as far as their nearest computer. Friends in Moscow, St Petersburg, Elektrostahl, York, Surrey and Lancashire all took part in a live videofeed via www.anymeeting.com. Daphne Sanders, clerk to the board of FHM, said: ‘Bar a few hiccups, it worked! We would recommend it! A novel feature was the cats which appeared at our meeting: a tail sweeping across one of the screens within a screen; and we pioneered the virtual handshake – or thought we did anyway!’

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