During the past 6 months of my traineeship at the Archives and Special Collections library of King’s College London, I’ve had the pleasure of gaining an insight into how diverse our archival holdings are. From the morbid tale of the London Burkers to an escape from an Italian POW camp, there is never a dull day when dealing with such a diverse collection.
One of my favourite items, held in the Liddell Hart Military Centre for Archives, is an account of General Sir Richard O’Connor’s escape from Castle Vincigiliata alongside Lieutenant-General Adrien Carton de Wiart – a man who I would suggest googling for more information. This picture from the O’Connor collection depicts the way in which O’Connor and his comrades had planned to escape in their first attempt.
Illustration from 'Official Escape Narrative' by General Sir Richard OConnor, 1943 (Ref. OConnor 4/5/1-2)
As indicated by the word first, making their way over the wall had proved more difficult than they expected and they were all captured. Their second attempt involved tunnelling out of the Castle which took them approximately 6 months to complete and was more successful than their previous attempt. All of those involved escaped, made their separate ways but were all eventually re-captured.
Another item in our collection reflects not only the history of London but the establishment of King’s College Hospital and the study of medicine. The infamous case of the ‘London Burkers’ who murdered a young street boy and attempted to sell his body to the Medical School at King’s is well documented within the College archives at King’s.
Extract from letter written by Herbert Mayo [KA/IC/M5, King's College London Archive]
Finally with the growing (no pun intended) popularity of gardening in recent years, it is not surprising to learn that the consumption of home-grown fruits and vegetables was encouraged during the Second World War.
In ‘Potato Pete’s recipe book’, you will find such recipes for sausage muffins, pork shortcake and even potato pancakes! These were included to encourage resourceful and inventive cooking during times of scarcity.
Working with such a diverse and historic collection means there is never a dull day. Indeed, there is a wealth of knowledge and oddity that lie deep in almost every archive collection – it’s just a case of looking into it.
