Museum of the Order of St John

06/12/2023

Come join us and play with all things sparkly and shiny to celebrate at the last Under 3's and 5's free session of the year on Wednesday 13th December, "My Pet Star".

https://linktr.ee/museumstjohn

Discover what it takes to nurse a star back to health and create your own sparkling star decoration to take home!

Our free under 5s sessions run on the second Wednesday of each month during term time and feature crafting, storytelling, singing and dancing. Sessions run for 45 minutes followed by refreshments and the opportunity for children to play. Spaces are free but must be pre-booked.

01/12/2023

For today's Explore Your Archive post on the theme of , let’s explore a link to a magazine...

In 1914, hundreds of school children from up and down the United Kingdom responded to an appeal published in 'Hobbies; magazine to assist the St John Ambulance Association in their work to aid soldiers at War. This aid included funds, food, medical supplies, and home comforts.

These letters are just some of the amazing St John Ambulance related records discovered in the early stages of our Archives Revealed project!

To read more about the work on St John Ambulance during the First World War check out this blog post: https://museumstjohn.org.uk/st-john-and-the-first-world-war/

30/11/2023

For today's Explore Your Archive post on the theme of , let’s explore the illustrative work in one of the early St John Ambulance publications: First Aid to the Injured.

The St John Ambulance Association was founded in 1877 to provide practical first aid training, and it opened training centres across the length and breadth of the country. The Association’s training lectures on ‘First Aid to the Injured’ were developed into its first aid manuals, first published in 1878. The manuals were initially titled ‘Handbook Describing Aids for Cases of Injuries or Sudden Illness’, but moved to adopt the same title as the Association’s key training lectures in 1885, becoming known as ‘First Aid to the Injured’.

The manuals were one of the first pocket-sized practical guides for dealing with first aid scenarios and life-threatening injuries, designed for quick and easy access, and including detailed accompanying illustrations. They are small and slim, measuring 111mm x 140mm when closed, and 220mm x 140mm when open. They have an average of 203 pages, and most copies have a fold-out illustration of the human anatomy tucked neatly into the front cover.

First Aid to the Injured was intended for non-professionals, to ‘enable any one to act in cases of injury or sudden illness, pending the arrival of professional help’, and was initially created for use by the Association during their first aid classes for the public and for use by the Metropolitan Police. Within eight months, 20,000 copies were sold, demonstrating the real appetite for access to lifesaving skills and information. They are a unique record of the Associations developing training and guidance in the decades before Health & Safety legislation and the National Health Service.

They are also home to detailed illustrative examples of bandaging, first aid treatments, and methods of resuscitation, which we’re sharing today. Although you might not see these illustrations hanging up in an art gallery, they are certainly worthy of some admiration for their artistry.

Please note that these are historical illustrations and should therefore not be considered as current recommended methods of first aid.

28/11/2023

For today's Explore Your Archive post on the theme of , we’ll explore a physically small record: a personnel card from the Archive collection for one of the many female members of the St John Ambulance Brigade.

The biographical information tells us about a woman called Margaret Bomken who was born on 7th January 1893. She was 49 years old when she joined the St John Ambulance Brigade on 27th May 1942 (a Wednesday), at the age of 49, and she is recorded as being 5 foot and 4 inches tall. Margaret joined a Division of the Brigade (a local group) coded as ‘16N’, otherwise known as the New Cross Nursing Division, in southeast London. At the time, Divisions separated men into Ambulance Divisions, and women into Nursing Divisions, where their first aid syllabus had a stronger focus on the nurturing and nursing side of first aid (including bedmaking!)

The section titled ‘efficiency’ identifies the years in which Margaret was an efficient member. Efficiency (a rather an outdated term now) was granted on a yearly basis, and to be an efficient member, volunteers with the St John Ambulance Brigade must have passed their First Aid Re-examination, uniform inspection, and undertaken duty hours. We can see from Margaret’s card that she was an efficient member for 17 years, from 1942 until 1958.

The section titled ‘service chevrons’ identifies the years in which Margaret became entitled to wear service chevrons on her uniform. This entitlement was granted to members who served for three consecutive years with the Brigade, and Margaret’s service chevrons were awarded in 1944, 1947, 1950, and 1953.

The section titled ‘Service Medal’ identifies the year in which Margaret was awarded her Service Medal. Service medals were granted to members of the Brigade who had (at the time) been efficient for 15 consecutive years, and Margaret was awarded her Service Medal in 1956.

The section titled ‘SM Bar’ identifies how many Bars were awarded to Margaret. ‘Bars’ were awarded to recipients of the Service Medal who achieved 5 further years of continuous efficient service. They are small, slim, and silver, and are attached to the ribbon of the Service Medal.

Margaret’s leaving date was not filled in on her card, so we do not know exactly when she left, although we can make a guess that she left in 1958 after achieving efficiency, or in 1959, as that date is not recorded in her efficiency.

Margaret joined the St John Ambulance Brigade during the Second World War, and St John was incredibly busy with a whole range of war work. If you’d like to find out more about St John during this time, why not check out this blog post on the Museum’s website: https://museumstjohn.org.uk/st-john-during-the-second-world-war/ #:~:text=Throughout%20the%20Second%20World%20War,the%20home%20through%20aerial%20bombing

From one physically small record, we can unearth quite a bit of information, and gain some insight into Margaret’s time with the St John Ambulance Brigade. This record is indeed small, but also mighty.

27/11/2023

For today's post on the theme of , let’s explore a big scrapbook from the St John Ambulance Brigade’s 50th anniversary in 1937.

The St John Ambulance Brigade was established on 24th June 1887, St. John’s Day, as ‘a voluntary civilian organization for rendering assistance to cases of accident and sudden illness in civilian emergencies’, and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1937 (the same year as the coronation of King George VI and his wife Elizabeth).

The Brigade’s 50th anniversary celebrations included a reception at St John’s Gate, an afternoon party at St. James’s Palace, first aid and nursing competitions for Brigade Divisions within the British Empire, a Review in Hyde Park, London of representatives of the Brigade at Home and Overseas by Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother), a service at St. Paul’s Cathedral attended by HRH The Duke of Kent, an Investiture at Buckingham Palace, and tea party at the House of Lords. What a lot of celebrations!

One of the big records in the Archive is a scrapbook, filled to bursting with all kinds of paperwork, planning documentation, invitations, photographs, and newspaper cuttings relating to the anniversary. Most of the newspaper cuttings on the example pages refer to the first aid and nursing competitions.

There were three Home and five Overseas teams representing Ambulance Divisions (the men) who participated in first aid competitions, and two Home and six Overseas nursing teams representing Nursing Divisions (the women) who participated in nursing competitions. The winners of competitions for Ambulance Divisions included teams from England, South Africa, Australia, Ireland, and Canada, with the Wolverton Division of England winning the Earl of Scarborough’s Cup for the best individual team. The winners of competitions for Nursing Divisions included teams from England, South Africa, Canada, Hong Kong, and New Zealand. Cups and prizes were presented by HRH Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone.

Some of the cuttings also refer to the royal Review (a Brigade inspection) in Hyde Park, where a total of 5,127 members of the St John Ambulance Brigade from all over the world were in attendance to be inspected by the Queen. She sent the following message after the Review:

“Please convey to all ranks of the St John Ambulance Brigade my appreciation of their smartness on parade this afternoon. It was most gratifying to me to see the Overseas contingents so well represented and as Commandant-in-Chief of the Nursing Corps and Divisions of the Brigade, I was particularly pleased to see so many nurses taking part in the Review. I would also ask you to convey to all the members who were on duty my admiration of their splendid services on Coronation Day”.

This scrapbook is not only a physically big record, but its contents also record a big moment in St John’s history, and the celebrations of its members around the world.

25/11/2023

Coming up this Wednesday 29th November at 7pm...

Our final evening lecture of the year in partnership with the St John Historical Society, in which Professor Marion Wynne-Davies explores the first female-authored city play, set in the former site of St Mary’s Nunnery, Clerkenwell.

At the start of the English Civil War two sisters, Elizabeth Brackley and Jane Cavendish, wrote the first female-authored city comedy, The Concealed Fancies. During the war they were exiled in Nottinghamshire, but they imagined themselves back in London with all the delights that pre-war Clerkenwell and the city could offer. The play is set in Newcastle House, Clerkenwell Close, which their father, William Cavendish, had purchased around 1628 and was originally the site of St Mary’s Nunnery; it was demolished in the 1790s. The talk explores how the sisters used the play to recreate their home, although sadly it was a world to which they would never return.

Professor Marion Wynne-Davies holds the Chair of English Literature in the School of Literature and Languages at the University of Surrey. Her main areas of interest are Early Modern literature, Shakespeare and women’s writing. She has published two editions of primary material, Renaissance Drama by Women: Texts and Documents (with S.P. Cerasano) and Women Poets of the Renaissance, as well as several collections of essays in the same field. She has written four monographs, Women and Arthurian Literature, Sidney to Milton, Women Writers of the English Renaissance: Familial Discourse and Margaret Atwood.

Professor Marion Wynne-Davies explores the first female-authored city play, set in the former site of St Mary’s Nunnery, Clerkenwell.

21/11/2023

Starting on Monday, we are participating in by showcasing some of the early items from the Archive collection.

Watch this space to see which of this year's themes we've picked and the items that we'd like to share!

20/11/2023

Coming up this Saturday... our Winter Party!

And everyone's invited. No need to book, just drop in and join us any time between 2 and 4:30pm for some festive cheer.

09/11/2023

Did you know that today is the anniversary of 's first public duty?

The Lord Mayor's Show is the oldest and longest civic procession in the world, dating back to the early 13th century, when a desperate King John granted that the City of London could appoint its own Mayor. He insisted that each newly-elected Mayor must come upriver to distant Westminster and swear loyalty to the Crown.

The Mayors, and later the Lord Mayors of London have been making that journey for over 800 years, and around them grew up the noisy, colourful, joyous procession that over the centuries became known as the Lord Mayor's Show.

On 9th November 1886 (137 years ago), two temporary ambulance stations were set at police stations on Bow Street and King Street to provide public first aid, if needed, at the Lord Mayor’s Show. According to a report in the 1887 Annual Report (have a look at the image to see for yourself), there was ‘little need for their services’, although ‘sufficient was done to prove the advantage that such supplementary aid might be’.

We don’t know exactly what first aid was given to the public, but the work that the first aiders did was enough to show that further first aid posts were required for Queen Victoria’s jubilee in 1887.

If you’d like to read more about St John’s work in 1886, why not check out the digitised Annual Reports available here: https://issuu.com/museumoftheorderofstjohn/stacks/9d9cc2159f9e4f04b3b02055b827edd0

04/11/2023

The leaves are falling in London 😍🍂
(📸: )

02/11/2023

For World Digital Preservation Day, Archivist Sophie Denman shares a brief introduction to digital preservation in the latest Museum blog post:
https://museumstjohn.org.uk/an-introduction-to-digital-preservation-at-the-st-john-archive/

World Digital Preservation Day is celebrated annually on the first Thursday of November; an opportunity for data creators, archivists, curators, and many others to shout about the benefits and opportunities of digital preservation. In celebration of World Digital Preservation Day, Archivist Sophie D...

25/10/2023

Clocks and Crusaders, Radicals and Rascals.

Join our friends Islington Museum this Sat 28 Oct at 11am for this free guided walk exploring the story of Clerkenwell Green and the streets and alleyways that surround it, discovering colourful characters, fascinating stories and the well that gives the area its name.

A radical walk around Clerkenwell with Karen Lansdown of Islington Guided Walks

08/10/2023

Archivist Sophie Denman provides an update on the progress of the Museum's Archives Revealed cataloguing project.

06/10/2023

It’s been a month since we announced that the Museum’s Archive had won a £35k cataloguing grant from . Read our latest blog to find out how the project is progressing: https://museumstjohn.org.uk/an-update-on-the-museums-archives-revealed-cataloguing-project/

06/10/2023

It's been two months since we announced that the Museum's Archive had won a £35k cataloguing grant from The National Archives - read our latest blog to see how the project is progressing:

Archivist Sophie Denman provides an update on the progress of the Museum's Archives Revealed cataloguing project.

05/10/2023

Shakespearean Music in the Crypt
🗓️ 12 October

We’ve teamed up with to bring you an evening of music and tales from Shakespeare’s London.

Shakespeare wrote for all of society and PIVA will be reflecting this by performing music which runs the gamut from village green to stately court, all in the unique surrounding of our medieval crypt.

Doors open at 18:30 and will be running the bar.

Tickets can be booked via the link in our bio.

04/10/2023

Preserving Malta's Heritage: 2023 Jonathan Riley-Smith Memorial Lecture
Wednesday 11 October, 7pm

An evening lecture in partnership with the St John Historical Society.
This event will be BSL-interpreted.

The Malta Study Center, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library leads an international project to preserve and digitally reconstruct the widely dispersed archives of the Order of St John, much of which was scattered following Napoleon’s invasion of the island in 1798. Dr Gullo will explore the significance of the Museum’s Maltese material and its links to private and public collections around the globe. This lecture marks the start of a new partnership with the Museum of the Order of St John to digitise manuscripts and rare printed books from the collection and make these more widely available to scholars and the public.

Dr Daniel K Gullo joined the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML) in 2014 and serves as the Joseph S. Micallef Director of the Malta Study Center. He earned his PhD in History from the University of Chicago. Prior to joining HMML, Gullo served as Assistant Professor of History and Geography at Columbus State University, where he co-founded the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program. He has also taught at Northeastern Illinois University and was a Spenser Fellow at the Newberry Library. In addition to leading digital preservation projects for the dispersed archives of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Gullo served as the project director of vHMML.org from 2015-2020, HMML's online resources for the study of manuscript cultures.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/preserving-maltas-heritage-2023-jonathan-riley-smith-memorial-lecture-tickets-666929793967?aff=oddtdtcreator

Dr Daniel K Gullo, Director of the Malta Study Center in Minnesota, will explore the significance of the Museum's Maltese collections.