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The third is the List. It can be a full descriptive list whith gives the reader
sufficient information to enable him to know whether it is worth his while
having a microfilm or other copy made of the document; or it can be bare list
giving the exact reference to the record and a bare description and the date. An
Index is a variant form of a list.
The later publications of the Commission, to repeat, have been in the form
of Calendars of major Collections. So even before the last War the H.M.C.,
it must be admitted, had turned aside from the task of surveying the whole
field of private archives to concentrate on the publication of a comparatively
few major collections.
Fortunately, however, archivists and historians that is professsional histo
rians and local historians were very much alive to the needs of the time,
and in 1932 was formed the British Records Association. It owed its formation
in the main to the efforts of a remarkable woman, Mis^ Ethel Stokes, who
could not be persuaded to leave London during the bombing of 1940-41, slept
in the P.R.O. when her flat had been destroyed and was killed in a street
accident during the blackout two years later to the efforts of Miss Stokes,
Miss Joan Wake and my predecessor as Deputy Keeper, Sir Hilary Jenkinson.
The objects of the newly formed British Records Association were defined
in the terms which still cover them:
'to promote the preservation and accessibility under the best possible con
ditions of Public, Semi-Public and Private Archives; to take measures for
the rescue and distribution to recognized Custodians of Documents which
would otherwise be dispersed or destroyed; to arouse public interest in,
and to create a sound public opinion on, matters affecting Records; to
ensure the co-operation to those ends of all Institutions and Persons
interested; to enable such Institutions and Persons to exchange views
upon matters of technical interest relating to the custody, preservation,
accessibility and use of documents; and to receive and discuss Reports
on all these matters from its Council, Committees and Sections as provided
below.'
The Association holds a two-day Conference in London in November.
The most active section of the BR.A. from its inception has been the
Records Preservation Section.
And during the same decade from 1930 tot 1939 there were established
many County Record Offices, and by today, most of the Counties of England
and Wales have their local Record Offices (I should mention here that in
Wales, which has twelve Counties but only six County Record Offices, there
is the National Library of Wales which has for the past 40 years been
collecting the private archives of a great many Welsh families, and has
prepared and published the N.L.W. has its own printing press on the
premises many Calendars and lists of the papers deposited there).
The War, while it handicapped work on records, emphasized the need for
organizing machinery to find and preserve private archives, and to indicate
their contents to historians.
War and its aftermath intensifies the hazards to which collections of private
archives are exposed. I do not need to emphasize to this audience the risk of
destruction: though in Britain I am glad to say that the Public Records in
our charge escaped unscathed during both wars. Some records still in the
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charge of Departments and Offices suffered, but very few collections of
private archives were affected. The great danger during the war to private
archives was not enemy action but the drive for salvage, for the handing
over of old papers for the manufacture of new paper of which of course
there was an acute shortage. The destruction of office accommodation and
the need to find alternative accommodation and the necessity of disposing of
all accumulated papars not of immediate importance, and the importance of
basement rooms where heretofore old papers had been stored; these factors
combined to help a somewhat indiscriminate ware-time salvage drive for paper.
The social and economic effects of war led to the breaking up of estates
and to the closing down or amalgamation of old family businesses. To cut a
long story short, enquiries were started in 1941, owing to fear of the results
of enemy action, into the present state of those archives on which the
H.M.C. had reported during the first 70 years of its existence. Of some
400 collections in private hands, six were reported to have been totally
destroyed (but of these six only one was reported to have been destroyed by
the enemy); 40 could not be traced and 34 had been dispersed in the sale
rooms. These figures referred, of course, only to the more important collec
tions noted by the Commission; we had no means of tracing the fate of
lesser collections in private ownership.
In 1943 the British Records Association sponsored an appeal for State
assistance for the future protection by Statute both of local and private
archives. One immediate result was a committee representative of all archive
interests set up by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Greene, who combined the
offices of President of the B.R.A., Chairman of the H.M.C. and by Statute
Keeper of the Records: a Committee of representatives of the P.R.O., the
Briish Museum, the H.M.C., the Royal Historical Society, the B.R.A., and
the Associations of the Local Authorities, the County Councils, the Cities
and Boroughs.
The Proposals of this Committee for the control of non-governmental
archives (that is, Local and Ecclesiastical Authorities, Public Corporations
as well as Private Owners) these proposals and their fate I will refer to
later, and speak now of one immediate and practical result of its recommen
dations. It decided that as an essential first step there should be a National
Register of Archives. Financial provision was made on a very modest scale
by the Treasury through the H.M.C. and work was begun in 1945, with a
staff of two; the Registrar, Col. Malet, and his Assistant Registrar, Dr. Kathleen
Edwards, who was succeeded by Miss W. D. Coates in 1946; and Miss Coates
became Registrar on the death of Col. Malet in 1952.
The compilation of the National Registrar of Archives was intended
originally to be a temporary activity to last two to three years. It is now an
established organisation and the way it set to work is described by the
Registrar in a recent report:
'The original scheme for the Registrer was in the nature of a directory
of individuals or institutions owning archives. It was soon found, however,
that the extent of archives about which nothing was known was far greater
than had originally been supposed, and that the best way of locating such
material was in the use of local knowledge. Accordingly the Registrar set
up committees of local helpers in one county after another. The inauguration
