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of these committees was normally preceded by the holding of a 'County
Meeting' under the chairmanship of the Lord Lieutenant or of an important
land owner. At the time of Col. Malet's death in 1952 such organisations had
been set up in forty of the fifty two administrative counties in England and
Wales. These have now been extended to cover nearly every county. It should
be remembered that in its earlier years the Register was often doing pioneer
work in counties which offered none of the archive facilities now considered
normal, and in many cases the Register's influence resulted in the setting up
of Record Offices where there had been none before. The rapid growth of
local Record Offices has tended to make them the pivot of the Register's
local organisations. Usually the local archivist or librarian is better placed
than any other member of the committee to obtain secretarial assistance,
transport and other facilities. As a result, work for the Register in many
counties is being done by the staff of the local repository.
The Register's work, however, is not undertaken exclusively in London;
helpers are to be found throughout England and Wales, and there are local
committees, honorary secretaries and representatives on a County basis. The
willing co-operation of local Record Offices and the larger Libraries is a
most welcome and essential development in the exchange of information, and
in finding a suitable repository for documents whose owner wishes to find
a home for them'.
The present staff of the National Register consists of the Registrar and
four Assistant Registrars, four executive and clerical officers, two typists
and a photoprinter. The work of the Register has continued to be reinforced
by numerous voluntary helpers.
Many hundreds of collections have been inspected and reports made, ranging
from the papers of many important families many of them being archives
of first class national importance down to small accumulations of private
estate and household accounts adn title deeds.
Most of the reports at the Register's Central Office come from County
Archivists and other custodians of MSS. in various public local repositories,
and others are made by voluntary helpers, owners, scholars, and also by the
Register's own staff. The Reports deal with a very large number of family
and estate records as well as the archives of local authorities, ecclesiastical
and civil parishes, charities, schools, colleges, hospitals and business firms.
The original function of the reports as contemplated in the early days of
the Register was to provide information for the compiling of a card index of
archives arranged under the places of location. The direct consultation by
students of the original reports and the circulation of duplicated copies were
developments arising out of a spontaneous and unexpected demand. This was
increased by requests from the larger repositories such as the British Museum,
the Bodleian and the John Rylands Libraries for copies of reports made by
and received by the Register. This service has been greatly facilitated and
extended by the adoption in 1954 of photography and similar processes as a
means of reproduction for all the Register's work.
Hitherto the Reports made by the Register's staff and other work needing
reproduction had been typed on wax stencils for subsequent duplication.
For the Register's specialized type of work this was both slow and une
conomical of materials, and well as requiring a great deal of careful handling.
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As you know when once a wax stencil is removed from a machine it rapidly
deteriorates and cannot be re-used. It was, therefore, necessary to produce
sufficient copies to meet all future requirements, at the same time as those
for immediate circulation. The numbers varied considerably according to the
report concerned. Some means of speeding up this process was essential in
order to cut down delays in issuing reports and to increase production. An
additional problem was that of the need to reproduce existing lists in the
hands of local repositories and of private owners for the Register, of which
copies could only be obtained by retyping. Owing to lack of typing facilities
this had to be ruled out, thus depriving the Register of much important
information.
After an exhaustive survey of the processes and machinery available, it
was found that dyeline photoprinting was the only process which would meet
all the requirements without making undue demands on existing facilities. The
machinery finally chosen was made and supplied by Messrs. Van der Grinten
of Holland and is known as the model 150 combine printing and developing
machine. This machine is designed for the large scale production of copies
from translucent masters.
Six of the National Libraries receive copies of all lists reproduced. After
the initial printng the masters are stored, and can be used to produce subse
quent copes whenever required, thus avoiding the necessity of having to store
spare copies of lists that may never be required.
Possibly the greatest gain to the Register has been the ability to copy
lists of documents of which only one copy exists. Masters are made of these
either by a reflex process or the originals are microfilmed and subsequently
enlarged on to translucent paper by Xerography. Both methods produce a high
contrast positive image which is used in the same way as the typed trans-
lucents.
The growing interest in the Register's reports by scholars from all over
the world has necessitated a complete reorganisation of existing indexes and
the setting up of new ones. (Details of which are given in the Registrar's
Notes to Bulletin No. 10.)
This has been our practice since 1954. Some 600 lists are prepared or
received annally. All together, since the Register started 15 years ago, more
than 7000 lists have been received and registered.
It is a story of co-operation between the nucleus staff of the Register,
the County Record Offices, the Major Libraries, many voluntary helpers
and last but not least, the British Records Association and particularly its
Records Preservation Section. The R.P.S. was aware years ago that there
were in the strong-rooms of London Solicitors a vast quantity of the private
records of their clients, and their clients are not only Londoners but drawn
from all parts of Britain and indeed the Commonwealth and the world over.
Over many years the R.P.S. has sought to persuade these London Solicitors
and their clients to allow the Section to remove these records which are no
longer required by solicitor or client, to remove them and list them, and to
persuade their owners or custodians to deposit them in appropriate Record
Offices. To enable this work to be done, the Pilgrim Trust Lord Evershed,
the present Master of the Rolls has been for many years one of the
Trustees of the Pilgrim Trust (he is now its Chairman) and so was Lord
