David Livingstone letters; William Shipley Group events; Visitors to the RSA Archive; new opening hours

Two letters sent to the Society from the missionary and African explorer David Livingstone (1818-1873) have recently been digitised as part of Livingstone Online. Livingstone Online, funded by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL and the Wellcome Trust, aims ‘to use the potential of electronic publishing to make available an online edition of the medical and scientific correspondence of David Livingstone’. The website provides transcriptions of Livingstone’s correspondence alongside high resolution images of the original manuscripts.

The letters were both addressed to Peter Le Neve Foster (1809–1879), who was Secretary of the Society from 1853 until his death. The letters dated December 1864 and February 1865 concern Livingstone’s requests for information on the ivory market with reference to a lecture by Richard Owen delivered to the Society in 1857.

A joint meeting will take place on Tuesday 13 May between the William Shipley Group and the Georgian Group. The lecture “James ‘Athenian’ Stuart and the Society of Arts” by Dr Kerry Bristol, Director of the Centre for Architecture and Material Culture at the University of Leeds, will look at Stuart’s close connections with the Society of Arts. The event will take place at 6.30pm at The Georgian Group, 6 Fitzroy Square, London. Tickets are £10 each. Please book via the Georgian Group’s website.

Readers of this blog may be interested to know about some of the visitors the RSA Archive has received since the beginning of the year. In addition to researchers and academics, the Archive has also welcomed a number of visits from other members of the archive profession. While our collection of historically important records is always of great interest to visitors, our strong rooms (constructed as part of the Heritage Lottery funded project between 1997 and 2002) are of particular interest to those within the profession, as they meet the relevant British Standard for the storage of archives.

Recent visitors have included Liz Wilson, Archivist to the illustrator Quentin Blake, who is one of the RSA’s RDI’s (Royal Designer for Industry). The picture below shows the 1988 Christmas card designed specifically for the Society by Blake.

We also welcomed Professor Robert McWilliam and Archivist Carol Morgan, both of the Institution of Civil Engineers. They had particular interest in our collection of papers written by the engineer and naval architect, John Scott Russell (1808-1882) who became Secretary of the Society in 1845. Professor McWilliam, who is also a Fellow of the RSA, is working on an exhibition to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Scott Russell’s birth which is planned to open later this year at the Institution.


The RSA Archive was also involved in an event at the start of the year to commemorate the 302nd anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin. The lecture ‘Heritage and Learning Beyond the Classroom’, held as part of RSA Thursday and in conjunction with Benjamin Franklin House, was held on 17th January. Speaker Barry Sheerman MP, Chair of the Education and Skills Select Committee, discussed the importance of teaching young people about our cultural heritage (with particular reference to Franklin) and the benefits this can have in terms of citizenship. The lecture was chaired by Dr Marcia Balisciano, who is Director of Benjamin Franklin House.

The RSA Archive provided a display for visitors to the lecture including letters from Franklin to the Society and material showing how archives can be used as resources for the teaching of citizenship. Franklin became a member of the Society in 1756 and was very actively involved during the years he spent living in London. The picture above shows a plaster cast of Franklin by Jean-Jacques Caffieri which was presented to the Society in 1791 by Pahin de la Blancherie and is displayed in the Benjamin Franklin room within the RSA House.


Lastly, we regret that due to internal obligations and pressure on staff time we are now operating revised opening hours. The RSA Archive is open to the public Wednesday to Friday from 9.30am to 4.45pm by appointment only.