Dr. Kit Baston is one of the WS Society’s dedicated volunteers. This month, we spoke to Kit about her long association with the Signet Library and recent projects. Dr. Kit Baston is the author of Charles Areskine’s Library: Scottish Lawyers and Their Books at the Dawn of the Enlightenment (Leiden: Brill, 2016) as well as many other chapters and articles on the subject of the history of the book in Scotland.
Few historians, let alone historians of the book, have had such a long association with the Signet Library. What part has it played in your academic and heritage career?
Having special access to the amazing collections at the Signet Library has enabled me to develop my skills in assessing, analysing, and cataloguing rare books. This has been especially important as a ‘precarious’ academic – that is, someone who is often between project contracts – and has given me stability over the years. As a volunteer, I have been able to remain an active researcher, while keeping my library skills up-to-date and contributing my knowledge about the collections. My association with the Signet Library has allowed me to assist with exhibitions and write and present academic papers. I was proud to host a visit of the ‘Books and Borrowing’ team just after lockdown – the first time some of us ever met in person! – and share some of the Library’s treasures with them. A very gratifying moment was when during an online lecture the presenter – who I’d helped with some research - said, ‘I see my friend from the Signet Library in the audience’. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been doing things at the Signet Library since 2010!
Your recent projects have included the letters of Charles Cockburn DKS, a collection of Polish books that was originally at the Signet Library, and the WS Society’s eighteenth century records. Tell us more about that.
The advocate Charles Cockburn of Sandybed was the Deputy Keeper of the Signet at an interesting time. He was the second son of Adam Cockburn, Lord Ormiston, Lord Justice Clerk. The younger Cockburn kept up a lively correspondence with Cornelius Kennedy, the London-based secretary of James Graham, Duke of Montrose. Montrose was the Keeper of the Signet and a Secretary of State. His letters are full of gossip alongside the practical concerns of his responsibilities as Deputy Keeper of the Signet, his reports of the doings of the Scottish nobility, and his intelligence about local elections – including his brother John’s. They demonstrate political alliances and Whig or Jacobite leanings.
Transcribing the Cockburn letters came about because I happen to be rather good at reading eighteenth-century handwriting. Signet MS 106 is set of 70 letters dating from 30 September 1714 to 25 September 1715. The transcription and the biographical notes I created about the various correspondence are available here: https://www.wssociety-heritage.co.uk/the-last-of-the-old-deputy-keepers-the-letters-of-charles-cockburn-dks-1714-1715/
The Society’s own records are fascinating. I’ve been dabbling at Archive Boxes 18 and 19 for a few years now and creating fuller descriptions of everything from applications made by apprentice WSs to invoices for brooms, coal, and ink in the early eighteenth century. I’ve enjoyed reading lists of William Trotter furnishings and determining that the copy of the portrait of George Dallas of St Martins that hangs in the lobby came from Henry Raeburn’s studio. Librarian Macvey Napier was keen buyer of a particular type of glittery sand to dust down his letters and this is evident in his signature which has a sparkle.
The Bibliotheca Polonica at the Signet Library arrived in the 1820s and remained until 1963 when it was transferred to the National Library of Scotland. The books are still there and I had the privilege of calling them up and examining them last year. (Anyone can do this, by the way!) A group of young Polish scholars gifted the books to the Signet Library in gratitude for the warm welcome they received from Macvey Napier and other Writers at a time when their home nation was wiped from the map. They saw the Bibliotheca Polonica as a means of preserving their history and culture. The collection at the Signet was the first of such Polish libraries outwith Poland, pre-dating the large and famous collection founded in Paris later. I was honoured to deliver a talk and curate a small exhibition in the Upper West Library as part of the History Special Interest Group’s offerings in January. A fuller version of the talk will appear in print in collection of essays about Scoto-Polish links.
You’ve just begun a funded project to work on the records of John Watson’s Institution, founded by the WS Society. What is the project about, and have there been any surprises so far?
The John Watson’s Insitution Archive project’s main aims are to catalogue and research a set of documents held at the Signet Library dating from the 1820s to the 1850s. It’s a project I’ve wanted to do for about a decade! The Institution was a boarding school for orphaned and destitute children which opened in 1828. The Archive is made up of application documents that lay out each potential pupil’s case, recommedations, testimonials, certificates of birth and health, and, importantly, rich information about their families, including their parents and grandfathers. These reveal lives, circumstances, and social networks. Alongside the applications are documents that detail the workings of the Institution such as job applications, Directors’meeting minutes, and annual reports from the surgeon tasked with looking after the children. There are about 500 documents in the archive. The project will create a finding aid which will be freely available via the Library’s Heritage Portal. It will also research some case studies about some of the children and digitise materials relating to these. The collection will be conserved and re-housed thanks to a Jean Guild Grant from the Old Edinburgh Club.
The most surprising thing so far has been a letter of recommendation addressed to Macvey Napier, who was one of the Directors with a right to nominate applicants, from Henry Cockburn when he was Solicitor General, complete with his seal. The child, somewhat less surprisingly, got a place in the Institution.
Tell us some facts about the WS Society and Signet Library and their place in history that people might not know?
· The founder of the world’s first ‘Foot-Ball Club’ was an apprentice WS. John Hope wrote rules for the club in 1824 and ran it until 1841. He was admitted WS in 1828.
· True crime writer William Roughead WS bequeathed his library of research materials to the Society. This includes his correspondence with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle while they worked to free Oscar Slater, a victim of a miscarriage of justice. The Roughead Collection now resides in the Commissioners’ Room.
· The Bibliotheca Polonica at the Signet Library was the first library of Polish materials established outwith Poland.
· The oldest printed book in the Signet Library dates from ‘not after 1473’.
· The first book officially held as a library book by the Signet Library was George Dallas of St Martins’ System of stiles, as now practicable within the kingdom of Scotland which was presented by its author on 1 March 1697. I found this on the open shelves in one of the alcoves in the Lower Library many years ago. It now has a much more secure location!