Every month someone from the Library chooses an interesting object, book or document from the Library collection, which is displayed in the hall of the Library. Here are a selection from 2015. Click on the links to see more information.
January: Holocaust Memorial Day
The Library holds a range of pamphlets published in the 1930s and 1940s detailing what was happening to Jewish people in Hitler's Germany, as well as highlighting anti-semitism closer to home.
March: Tailor's notebook, 1907
Chosen by Lindsey Cole, Library Assistant, who says "Around the time that our tailor's notebook was being used a group of middle class reformers organized The Sweated Industries Exhibition which was held in 1906. The aim of the exhibition was to raise public awareness of the poor working conditions of those within the ‘Sweated Industries' such as tailoring".
May: International Conscientious Objectors' Day
Pamphlets from the Library collection, to mark International Conscientious Objectors’ Day on 15 May 2015. From August 1914 until January 1916, the British government relied on volunteers to produce an army to fight on the Western Front and other areas of the war. Towards the end of 1915, a reduction in the numbers volunteering and the sheer scale of casualties meant that conscription was being considered.
May: 1835 election expenses archive
The Library is now the owner of a rare and most unusual archive of election material - from 1835. The material details the expenses of a Lincolnshire Tory candidate, Thomas George Corbett, including amounts spent on alcohol, tobacco and wagons to get his voters to the hustings.
August: 1920 National League of the Blind march
This photograph, donated to the Library by Tony Baldwinson, is the only surviving print from a now-lost negative. In order to put pressure on the government, the League took the then novel approach of a march from three locations to converge for a mass demonstration in Trafalgar Square. There had been many protest marches but this was the first to choreograph different contingents to raise awareness, with rallies in towns along their route as well as on their arrival in London. The Jarrow March 16 years later was based on their model.
October: Railway strike appeal cards 1933
These collecting cards belonged to Dick Shaw – ‘Railwayman and Vigilant’ as his grandson described him when he donated the cards to the Library recently. Dick Shaw became an active member of the Railwaymen’s Vigilance Movement in Burnley, and the Library is now very pleased to have been given copies of the movement’s journal Railway Vigilant – including the issue from April 1934 which contains a photo of him when he was standing for the Executive Committee of the ASLEF union as a Vigilant candidate.
