Eye - 30 June 2023

No politics please, we’re Quakers

On 21 May almost forty people packed the upstairs room at the Sheffield Central Meeting House, as ten Friends took to the floor to read the words of the Victorian Quakers Pen and Pencil Club.

Alice Collins, of Sheffield Central Meeting, told Eye that the extracts were written in 1887, at the time of Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

She writes: ‘Set up in 1868 by James Barber and Daniel Doncaster, the club had twenty-seven original members, including women. They drew up rules from the start and continued to meet once a month for the next forty years, discontinuing in 1908 as numbers dwindled.

‘Contributions varied widely: reviews, travelogues, poems, funny incidents often accompanied with beautiful hand-drawn illustrations.

There were pen and ink sketches, watercolours and simple photographs. Contributions were then bound together at the year’s end.

‘Throughout the contributions there is a thread of moral or ethical concern, yet often argued in a radical way: women’s rights, trade union activity, anti-vivisection, the press in relation to war and liberty. Also social welfare, natural history, scientific subjects too – the first bicycles in Sheffield are mentioned in an extract from 1869.’

At the event in May: ‘We read the words of eight Victorian Quakers, sharing longer extracts between two or three readers. The audience applauded and laughed, cheered us on, enjoying our improvised costume. We’d all raided the dressing up box – hats, scarves, not-quite-antique jewellery, waistcoats, and long skirts. We carried rucksack props, and baskets filled with bottles of good old Adam’s Ale. One extract described with horror how the Official Society of Friends Delegation to Balmoral chose to toast the Jubilee with water. Many of us sported Blue Ribbons to suggest our predecessor’s support for Temperance and Signing the Pledge.

‘The longest and, from the Club’s point of view, most controversial extract described a member’s twenty-eight-mile walk in Derbyshire “with two of his descendants” as an antidote to the traditional Jubilee celebrations going on in the town.

‘The subject of how Friends should spend the Jubilee Bank Holiday seemed to divide opinion and led to ironic, sometimes catty, exchanges between Club members. Just as today, Friends held all sorts of different views on all sorts of issues, and meetings could become so heated a rule was introduced banning mention and writing about politics. This was, of course, a highly-controversial decision, and proved impossible to enforce.

‘We read extracts which seemed remarkably modern, reflecting our own contemporary concerns. Many audience members enjoyed spotting the similarities between then and now as we read extracts on: compulsory vaccination; female equality; Irish home rule; and the reform of monarchy, parliament, and the House of Lords. Also included were extracts on pollution, the environment, and questions of whether science and progress always benefit humankind.

‘Not least, members of the Club were concerned with how their writing would be received – and judged – by those who came after them, and on many occasions sought to “put the record straight” from previous entries.

‘Many audience members stayed on after the readings to talk with Richard Hoare, the Quaker assistant archivist, and to peruse little notebooks of extracts and admire the beautiful sample pages, copied and laminated by Faith Rodger.’

She adds: ‘Richard Hoare would like to hear from other Meetings which have records of similar Pen and Pencil societies, he can be contacted at richard_hoare@hotmail.com.’

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