Archive Volunteer Achievement: Aberdeen School Board

As part of our decant and move from our Old Aberdeen House Archives site, our service needed to complete several large appraisal tasks. Appraisal involves assessing records and documents for their value and place in the collections and removing those we don't need to retain for the long term. Reducing our collections in this way saves us a lot of time, energy and space, and our volunteers have provided immeasurable support with these types of projects. Most recently, they appraised and listed a massive collection of Aberdeen School Board correspondence. These records were transferred to us as part of the Aberdeen City Education records and are letters from teachers working in the City to the School Board.

This Aberdeen School Board (ASB) correspondence collection consists of 217 files. Over the course of work on these records, letters were removed from their original binders (image above) so they could be assessed and then housed in more appropriate enclosures. This was time consuming work, completed ad hoc by staff members before allocating bundles to volunteers and, finally, by Museum Assistant Lisette and volunteer John.

Volunteers then began appraising the letters. Not all of the these needed to be kept, as some of the information was not of long term value and other information was duplicated elsewhere. Criteria was as follows:

Types of letters retained:

• Job applications with detail about the applicant
• Letters about teacher's qualification
• Letters regarding school attendance or absences of children
• Letters concerning unusual use of school rooms
• Letters detailing the accommodation at the school
• Letters about recreation facilities at the school
• Letters about class sizes
• Transfer requests from teachers [as suggestive of unpopular schools?] or applications for promotion
• Letters about pupils at or admitted to Rubislaw Special School [no admission registers survive for this school - these were the only letters seen about school admissions]
• Details of text books or equipment
• Letters about Farquharson Kennedy Prize subjects
• Allocation of children to specific schools
• Issues with specific pupils or teachers esp. if corporal punishment involved

 Types of letters removed:

• Letters accompanying enclosures (SED forms, lists of applications, fees etc.)
• Letters about teachers' absences and cover arrangements
• Letters of acknowledgement
• Teachers starting duty
• Delivery of furniture
• Meeting arrangements (where held, who can attend etc.)
• Letters of resignation or acceptance of teaching posts [minuted]
• Application for use of school buildings for meetings
• Leaving certificate administration
• Orders of material or forms

Volunteer letter bundles

Here are some of our volunteers letter bundles during the appraisal process.

Volunteers at work

Here are some of our volunteers and Museum Assistant Lisette at work during the project.

Overall, we had up to 20 volunteers appraising and listing 128 bundles of letters in the scope of this project. As a result, the collection was reduced from 7 shelves to just 2! This equated to 14 archive boxes. The amount of space saved was incredible and all our volunteers worked extremely hard. We kept a record of who appraised and listed each bundle, which meant we could see who completed the most - volunteer Charlotte with 21 files! 

Volunteer Charlotte- Our top Appraiser!

With the volunteers appraising and listing such a volume of records, there would inevitably be certain stories or names that would stick out! The most notable teacher, largely due to his terrible handwriting and long winding sentences, was the Aberdeen Grammar School Rector, Harry Fife Morland Simpson (1859-1920). Known to us as just Morland Simpson, he was Rector from 1893 to 1920.

Morland Simpson wrote a number of reference texts, including the Bon Record: Records and reminiscences of Aberdeen Grammar School from the earliest times by many writers.

Replica of Portrait of Dr H.F. Morland Simpson, Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 19 May 1919, p. 3.

Here is a letter written by Morland Simpson, to show a sample of his "famous" handwriting:

[Bundle Reference CA/25/2/11/43]

 

The letter, dated 23rd January 1895, has Morland Simpson asking about how the Lunch Room is to operate. He suggests selling tickets to the pupils...our volunteer Jane discovered that Simpson's son was William Douglas Simpson, who became Librarian, Clerk and Registrar of the General Council in the University of Aberdeen from 1926-1966.

Museum Assistant Freddie, seconded to our Archive team during the move, identified the following letters of interest whilst appraising.

- Letter from Thomas Miller, George Street School on the 1st of June 1925, which gives a report on the outcome of a meeting of the Head teachers’ Association on the prevalence of gambling among schoolchildren.

[Bundle reference CA/25/2/11/177]

Only one instance had been reported and it was decided not to put in a program of education on the dangers of gambling and betting in case children who were previously unaware of it became interested in learning about it. It was also felt that it would create a negative perception of parents who gambled. Any future incidents were to be dealt with in private. 

- Letter from parent William Merrilees on 20 April 1899 complaining about the use of the strap against his child. Teacher William Robertson of Rubislaw Public School, responds to the School Board on the 24 April 1899, giving report on reasons for use of the strap (careless work and lack of attention)

(Bundle reference CA/25/2/11/61)

Appraised by Volunteer Ian, this letter reference CA/25/2/11/55 dated 12 Dec 1897 about the duties of the School Board is of interest. Duncan Clarke writes to Thomas Hector Esq. of the School Board about the Central Evening School, complaining, in a superficially polite manner, that the School Board are not fulfilling their duties.

The Evening School is mentioned again by I Skea from St Paul's Street Public School (19 November 1897). In this case, the teacher is complaining about the pupils and their 'filthy' and 'disgusting' habit of chewing tobacco and adhering this to the walls.

The following year, we find a letter of resignation, which is a common type of letter amongst these bundles. Any letters where the resignation was for an interesting reason were retained. In this case, Mary Wilson of Marywell Street School was leaving for South Africa in April 1898.

[Bundle CA/2/11/56]

The Aberdeen School Board letters also contain evidence of events in Aberdeen. Volunteer Ken discovered letters relating to Barnum and Bailey’s Circus, which he researched further. Ken’s blog about the circus can be found here: https://aberdeenarchives.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-greatest-show-in-aberdeen.html

See also the blog post about volunteer Jane's discoveries: https://aberdeenarchives.blogspot.com/2023/12/aberdeen-school-board-letters-appraisal.html 

We've really enjoyed the interesting stories in these letters and appreciate our volunteers hard work improving accessibility to these records for our researchers. You can view the collection catalogue here: CA/25/2/11, and see the letters themselves at our Town House site (search room re-opening following our closure on Tuesday 29th April – make an appointment via Archives@aberdeencity.gov.uk).

[Kim Smith, Senior Archivist & Kimberley Newell, Archivist]