Sepik Art at Leeds Museums

Last week I was in Paris for the opening of a stunning exhibition on Sepik art at the Musee de Quai Branly, and a two day workshop on The Materiality of Sepik societies in 2015. The exhibition coincides with the 40th anniversary of Papua New Guinea’s independence. 

The Sepik River is an area with a distinctive style of ancestor figure sculpture and portrait heads, some shown in family dwellings, and others in the huge sacred men’s houses or Haus Tambarans. Different musical instruments are linked to men’s initiation into sacred knowledge.

Abelam yam mask photographed by missionaries Barbara
and John Ross in the Wosera area of Papua New Guinea.

Here in Leeds we have a few examples of Sepik art. These include a large chunky figure hook, probably an ancestor figure, which shows the sort of scarification designs that men acquire during initiation, on their shoulders, back, navel and thighs. 

Much better documented is a collection of 50 or so items purchased in 1983 from Barbara and John Ross, who lived for a while amongst the Abelam, in the Wosera area of Papua New Guinea, helping with the educational side of missionary work (Their collection is accessioned as LEEDM.F.1983.200 to 251). Their items include several Abelam yam masks (pictured above), a basketry Iatmul pig mask, and some of the huge colourful net bags with their intricate geometric designs.

Mr and Mrs Ross also let Leeds Museums make prints from a selection of their colour slides, including images of yam masks at a Yam distribution at Malba in 1976 and masked dancers at a funeral dance at Magendo in 1977.

Keram River story board from Papua New Guinea

Other key items in the Ross collection are one of the huge sago pots from the village of Aibom, a large Iatmul mask with feather hair, nassa shell inlays, boar’s tusks, and bird shaped nose extension. The largest piece is a Keram River story board (pictured above).

According to John Ross this intricate carving tells a traditional story about a village sorcerer who can change himself into a crocodile. Two flute players are playing traditional songs, whilst a man with a cockatoo's head represents a cockatoo spirit bird. These storyboards developed after the 1940s, taking inspiration from earlier paintings on sago spathe which hung inside the sacred men’s houses on the underside of the roof.

It was a delight to see so many key pieces of Sepik art at the Paris exhibition and hear talks from a broad range of anthropologists who have made the Sepik their special area of study.

By Antonia Lovelace, World Cultures Curator

The First Leeds Assizes 1864

6th August 1864 was a symbolic day for Leeds and its increasingly confident Corporation. 

Six years after the opening of the new imposing Town Hall with a purpose-built court, the High Sherriff and Under Sherriff (Mr.C. Trench Gascoigne and Mr William Grey) and two assize judges (Sir Colin Blackburn and Sir Henry Singer Keating) were at last coming to town.

Leeds Museums hold two bill posters recording these events.The first (above) is a bill announcing the programme of the Leeds Assizes. A woodcut shows the High Sherriff in his carriage, accompanied by two policemen in top hats. The judges were to arrive at Wellington Station and would stay at the Queen’s Hotel. From there a grand procession was organised to the Town Hall where the High Sherriff and judges would be welcomed by the mayor, Obadiah Nussey.  

The bill optimistically states that “It is confidently expected that the populace will observe their customary decorum and assist the police in preserving order”.  As well as conducting their judicial business, the visitors were to be lavishly entertained with a mayoral dinner and a Soirée Musicale.  

The same welcome was not of course given to the accused whose crimes were to be judged. The main novelty here was that the cases were being judged in Leeds, rather than Leeds felons having to trek 30 miles to York to face trial. However, most of those on the list were still travelling quite a distance for the privilege of being tried, whether from Bradford, Sheffield or Rotherham. 

Out of the 67 cases listed, only six were from the Leeds area. These included:

• William Newton Ackroyd (forgery)
• Edward Ackroyd (misdemeanour – 4 cases)
• William Thompson (burglary), John Lofthouse, Edward Buckley, Samuel Buckley and William Sykes (assault and robbery)
• Patrick Nalls (assault and robbery) 
• The sad case of Mary Ann Winterbottom accused of attempting to murder her child.

Aside from the usual cases of murder, assault and robbery, there are a number of crimes which shine a light on Yorkshire society in 1864. There are rural crimes such as arson of a haystack or sheep stealing and industrial crimes including “damaging warps” in Batley (i.e. sabotaging a textile loom) and “stealing German silver and brass casting models” in Sheffield. A number of people are accused of “uttering base coin” which meant knowingly using forged coins. Someone else was accused of “stealing a post letter” and another of “attempting to upset a train at Whixley”.

Trial & Sentence of Death: James Sargisson and Joseph Myers

The two criminals who made the headlines, however, were James Sargisson and Joseph Myers.  So much so that they feature in a second bill in the museum collection, this time headed “Leeds Assizes – Trial & Sentence of Death on James Sargisson for the murder of John Cooper near Rotherham; also on Joseph Myers for the murder of his wife at Sheffield, June 10th 1864”.  

Although both men were sentenced to death for murder, the document clearly shows more sympathy for Joseph Myers.  Sargisson’s crime involved murder as part of a cold-blooded robbery and he had attempted to lay the blame on his accomplice.  

Joseph Myers was a tragic case of domestic violence fuelled by drink.  His wife had just managed to get him released for a previous incidence of assault against her and it was argued that he was a “good-natured fellow when he was sober, but that wasn’t very often”.  He murdered her in a frenzied attack with a pair of broken scissors, and then tried to cut his own throat in remorse (or to cheat the gallows depending on which version you read). 

The bill includes the words to a ballad which has the refrain “Christians all, far and near, For Joseph Myers pray shed a tear” and exhorts readers to “Always live a sober life, and walk in virtues way” to avoid the same fate. The ballad was set to music by folk singer Jon Rennard (died 1971) and a recording can be heard on YouTube.

The other first (and last) for Leeds was the public hanging of Sargisson and Myers outside Armley Gaol on 9th September 1864. The executions did not go as planned with Sargisson taking several minutes to die and Myer’s self-inflicted throat wound re-opening to gory effect.  No further public executions took place in Leeds and the next hanging at Armley Gaol was not until 1875, eleven years later.

The last execution at Armley was in 1961 and the Death Penalty was abolished in the UK in 1965.

Both bill posters will be on display at Abbey House Museum as part of the Crime and Punishment exhibition from January 23rd to the end of December 2016.

By Social History Curator Kitty Ross

The 1941 Leeds City Museum bombing

Bomb damage to Leeds City Museum, 1941
(Courtesy of the Yorkshire Evening News)

15th March 1941 was a dark day for Leeds Museums and the moment everything changed is recorded forever on this weather chart which was recording atmospheric pressure in the meteorological window of the museum. 

 The moment of the blast is indicated by an arrow on the chart, and the dramatic inkblot resulted when the barometer stopped working a week later.

Leeds escaped lightly compared with other industrial cities but did suffer nine air-raids and the worst raid was that of 14th-15th March 1941. At 3 am a bomb crashed through the roof of the bird room in the City Museum (then on Park Row) and the explosion destroyed the roof and floor of the front half of the building. 

 Fortunately no-one was seriously hurt, although both the foreman and a fire-watcher were caught in the blast and suffered minor injuries from the debris. Many exhibits were less fortunate and the main museum building (dating from 1819) had to be demolished. The photograph above, courtesy of the Yorkshire Evening News, shows the scene the morning after.

Leeds Philatelic Society items

It was not only the museum collections that were damaged or destroyed. The Leeds Philatelic Society had lent items for a temporary exhibition at the museum at the time. These bomb-damaged exhibits are currently on display at Abbey House Museum to celebrate the 125th Anniversary of the Society and can be viewed until the end of June 2015.

By Kitty Ross, Curator of Social History

The Henry Chimney Sweeping Collection: Victorian Employment and Humour

We often associate employment in Victorian Britain with notions of drudgery, hard toil, long hours and factory work but this wasn’t always the case! The content of the Henry Collection allows researchers a detailed insight into the ordinary and often extraordinary working lives of many Victorian ‘Street-Sellers’. 

As a result of Dr Henry’s fascination with Chimney Sweeping, the Ernestine Henry Collection at Leeds Museums and Galleries contains a wealth of original publications, pamphlets and periodicals about everyday life and employment in Victorian London. Some even contain original photographs of Victorian people at work! These include ‘The Crawlers’, ‘Covent Garden Flower Women’ and ‘Public Disinfectors’. Journals such as Old and New London, Street Life in London and a personal favourite of mine, London Labour and London Poor are among many that this collection holds.

Henry Mayhew, author of London Labour and London Poor wrote a twenty-six issue long series of this pamphlet. Each issue gives detailed eyewitness accounts of the occupation and life of street sellers of certain goods and services. Some of these occupations we would recognise today such as ‘The Baked Potato Man’ and ‘The London Coffee Stall’ but others we may not; ‘The Street-Seller of Nut-Meg Graters’, ‘Street-Seller of Grease Removing Composition’ and ‘Doctor Bokanky, The Street Herbalist.’ Mayhew even relays the sounds of the Street-Sellers; ‘Eight a penny, stunning pears!’, ‘Chesnuts all ‘ot, a penny a score’, ‘An ‘aypenny a skin, blacking.’ These incredibly detailed accounts enable researchers to build a vivid image of everyday activities in a Victorian trading street.

Another unique aspect of this collection is the way in which sometimes dreary aspects of Victorian life, such as employment and more specifically the role of the Victorian chimney sweep, were counteracted with humour. The sheer volume of satirical literature apparent in the collection did surprise me. 

Although some authors in Victorian Britain wrote serious accounts of Chimney Sweeps’ experiences, sweeps were often the central punch line of jokes, witty stories and rhymes. The Humourist's Miscellany; containing Original and Select Articles in Poetry on Mirth, Humour, Wit, Gaiety and Entertainment and also Fun for the Million or The Laughing Philosopher, consisting of Several Thousand of the best Jokes, Witticisms, Puns, Epigrams, Humorous Stories, and Witty Compositions in the English Language, intended as Fun for the Million are just two publications which present jokes related to the occupation of Chimney Sweeping. Judging by the amount of humorous literature in this collection alone it is likely that the Victorians certainly knew how to have a laugh!

A final but equally captivating aspect of working with the Henry Collection is the unique ways in which the objects tell the stories of their previous owners. As a social and gender historian I am fascinated by ordinary peoples experiences of the past. I have catalogued a large number of books, scrapbooks and archive documents in this collection which leave clues as to how such objects were exchanged and came to be in peoples’ possession. 

From the unique, personal, handwritten messages often included on the title pages of various works it is likely that at least some of these objects were given as gifts. The Comic Keepsake was offered to Mary Bolton, possibly as a birthday gift in 1835; 'Mary June Bolton, presented to her by her Mamma, Sept 12th 1835' and likewise, from a handwritten annotation written on the inner cover page, we know that The Christmas Annual belonged to Joe Shard in 1903. 

In a period when literature and especially bound printed works were not as easily accessible as the present day, is touching to observe the handwritten messages in the front of books, pamphlets and scrapbooks in the Henry Collection.

By Chloe Simm, Social History Intern

Exploring the Archaeology Collections

What's in a box? In the vast and varied collections of Leeds Museums and Galleries you could find just about anything.

I am privileged to volunteer with the archaeology collection where I am helping to add object records to the computer database. I’ve catalogued everything from swords and arrowheads to brooches and coins. Currently, I’m looking at finds from a Roman site at Wattle Syke, excavated as part of the A1 Bramham to Wetherby upgrade work.

The site has been researched and published before being deposited at the museum. I’ve been working through the publication, pencilling in the new museum numbers and creating a record for each object on the database. As well as the identification, I’m typing in where on the site each object was found so they can be related back to excavation results. Digital record photos are also added.

This is a fascinating chance to open up the boxes and the bags and look at some really good Roman finds first hand. Reading the finds identifications and specialist reports is a great experience, teaching me what things are and what they can tell us.

The objects are made from a range of materials and cover all aspects of Roman life. Below are some favourites from my current box – the copper alloys.

The intricately decorated Roman brooch pictured above is in remarkable condition, despite dating from the 4th Century AD. The preservation of metal objects at Wattle Syke was very good, so much so that a lot of the metalwork was thought at first to be modern.  


Some of the objects need to be examined very closely in order to see the details. The picture on the right shows a belt buckle with horses’ heads decorating the frame. These features don’t show up very well on the object itself but were recognised by the researcher and have been highlighted in an illustration, which has been added to the database.

The object below is another good example of why having the specialist reports to hand is so informative. It was thought to be a pair of tweezers at the time of excavation but further investigation led to an expert identifying it as a clasp. An X-Radiograph of the object revealed two rivets between the arms which are not visible to the eye.

Finally this twisted Roman bracelet (below) is really interesting. It is broken, but here that is an advantage as it means we can see how it was made - by twisting two strands of copper alloy wire together.  We can say it was a right-hand twist because of the s shape the twist has formed, whereas a left hand twist would look like a 'z'.

Objects from the past can tell us so much about the people who made and used them. I wonder what will be in the next box….

My Quest for Chinese Tigers at Leeds Museums

Objects do not easily give up their secrets, but for every secret they divulge many more are yet to be discovered. 

When I was asked to research an object in the Voices of Asia exhibition at Leeds City Museum, I was keen to find a small and little-known item, something that might have been previously overshadowed. I saw the small Chinese jade bowl and I was intrigued by it from the start.

I started reading up on Chinese jades, both online and in the reference library at Leeds Discovery Centre. I gained interesting insights in to the history of Jade carving in China, which dates back 6000 years, as well as a rough idea of when this particular bowl may have been made (Qing dynasty, somewhere between 1800-1880).

Researching jade carved characters

However, I soon noticed that insights were not answers. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the meaning of the bowl’s band of elusive carved characters. The more I researched the carvings the more ambiguous they seemed. I spent a long time examining the object in its case, and then looking around at other items in our collections or in the various books and online references on Chinese symbolism. This was all informative, but I was still no closer to finding out what those characters actually were.

In the end, I needed a closer look. The curator kindly let me take the bowl from its case. Carefully tilting the bowl this way and that, I saw that the figures seemed more muscular than the sinewy lizard-like forms I had imagined, with strong defined spines and large feet. 

Small carved lines on the base of the limbs and on the back of the head suggested fur, and not scales. There was something distinctly feline about the characters.

I took several pictures for our records, and prepared some hand-drawn sketches of the characters. What surprised me was that this act of sketching, which involved focussing in on certain seemingly insignificant incisions, revealed features that I had previously taken for granted. Two highly defined incisions on the top of each of the heads, and several incisions on the limbs, started to look too deliberate to just be a suggestion of fur. They seemed to be tiger stripes.

After some time, a cup of tea, and a bit more online research, I was finally brave enough to write the words ‘carved tigers’ in the object description. This discovery illuminated the meaning of the carving. 

In China, the tiger is appreciated for its beauty and savage power, and is an appropriate symbol for a military person of high rank. The tiger is king of all the animals and can drive away evil demons.

Despite this small victory, I can’t help but feel that there is more that those characters can tell us. If anyone knows more please do tell!

By Sarah, World Cultures intern