As a celebration of Volunteers Week 2024, running from next Monday (June 3) to the following Sunday (June 9), we asked freelance writer and one of our longstanding Heritage Volunteers, Tony Harcup, to tell us about about the research he has been doing with old newspaper stories about libraries.

When Leeds Libraries appealed for help indexing some aged scrapbooks of newspaper cuttings, my ears pricked up. It sounded like something I might find interesting, and that thought alone probably qualified me to offer my services. Being a news junkie, it was right up my street, even though the collected press cuttings were all about the seemingly unsexy topic of Leeds Libraries themselves.

Having reassured myself that I would not be doing anybody out of a paid job – some of the scrapbooks had lain unindexed for more than a century, after all – I became a heritage volunteer. A little more than 18 months later, the first scrapbook has just been completed, which should make it easier for researchers to find the useful information within. It has indeed been interesting. True, some reportage of the council’s library committee can be a little dry – apart from a flurry of excitement in 1911 about whether to ban books by H.G. Wells – but that’s not the half of it. To paraphrase the old News of the World motto, all human life was there.

Spanning the years 1898 to 1920, Scrapbook One is crammed with neatly glued-down items concerning the city’s public libraries, collected mostly from local papers such as the Yorkshire Post, Yorkshire Evening Post, Leeds Mercury, Yorkshire Evening News, Yorkshire Daily Observer, Leeds Daily News, Leeds Times and Yorkshire Weekly Post, all but two of which have long since ceased publication.

There is coverage of everything from grandiose opening ceremonies at local branch libraries to rat infestations at the Central Library – they were partial to eating the glue in book bindings, apparently – but it is in human interest stories that news really comes alive. Such as the 1898 court report of a 14-year-old lad fined five shillings for carving his initials (“WG”) into the library stonework, or libraries’ employment of women assistants as well as men, which was seen as controversial until it wasn’t.

Rodents, graffiti artists and females were not the only causes for concern in certain quarters. Library users’ preference for reading works of fiction rather than more “serious” literature resulted in occasional moral panics, as did the insistence of some readers on consulting daily newspapers more for horse racing information than for keeping abreast of public affairs. Library usage itself was frequently thought to be threatened by the latest “craze”, whether that be cinemas or roller skates, but despite such distractions, over time more people were making more (and more varied) use of the city’s growing number of public libraries.

Local newspapers reported that library newsrooms were particularly crowded in the days after the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912, with people eager to read the latest news in depth and breadth. Then, of course, from 1914 to 1918 there was World War One (not yet labelled as such), which saw some library staff depart for the trenches while those left behind faced increased demand for books on military matters and geopolitics.

Libraries are not just for adults, though, and staff also made efforts to encourage youngsters to acquire the reading habit. An early pioneer was Miss Hummerston, who put on sessions for children at branch libraries across the city, during which she read and chatted about Peter Pan and other exciting literature. She was described as “a delightful story-teller” by the Yorkshire Evening Post, which recorded that her sessions “enjoy great popularity among the children, and there is a great brushing of boots, and a washing of hands and faces, on the evenings when she is to visit the reading rooms”.

Yet the most dramatic story is not to be found in one of the library’s adventure books but in the scrapbook of press cuttings itself. It took place in May 1905 at what was then called Chapeltown Library (the present-day Chapel Allerton). A member of staff had been sent from town to clean the glass roof of the new branch library when the glass shattered and he fell straight through, startling users as he plunged onto the floor of the reading room below. He was still unconscious when an ambulance took him to Leeds General infirmary, although the Leeds Mercury later reported that he was “not seriously injured, no bones having been broken, but he had lost a lot of blood, his face and hands having been severely cut by the glass”.

This story is a salient one not just for anyone concerned with health and safety in the workplace, but also because it underlines how difficult it can be for reporters to achieve 100% accuracy, given the time pressures and other constraints under which they work. The events of that day feature in cuttings from three different newspapers in the scrapbook, all of which agree that the man lived in Bramley but each of which gives him a different name: he is Joe Frickett in the Leeds Daily News, Joe Tuckett in the Leeds Mercury and Joe Trickett in the Yorkshire Evening Post. He was aged either 27 or 29, depending on which paper you read.

Disappointingly, there were no follow-up stories to clarify the matter, so I used the library’s access to the Ancestry database to search census records and registers of births, deaths and marriage to see if I could discover more. I found a Joseph Edward Trickett, born in Bramley in 1878, getting married in 1909 and described in the 1911 census as working as a library attendant at Leeds Municipal Offices, still living in Bramley at the age of 33. I’m pretty sure that’s our Joe, having recovered from his nasty accident at work. If so, it means the Yorkshire Evening Post gets the kudos of having reported his name correctly, even if it did get his age wrong, while the Leeds Daily News seems to have got something right in saying he was 27 at the time of the incident.

News, then as now, is about people. This first scrapbook is full of people, even if some of their names may be wrong. By the time it ends in 1920, there are stories about the first footage being donated for what was to become a movie library: film of a Whit Sunday procession along Sweet Street in Holbeck, donated by Charles Higgins of the Manor Road Picture House.

The story continues and Scrapbook Two now beckons. Whenever I visit the library to consult it, I’ll be keeping an eye out for any sign of that “WG” illegally etched into the stonework by a Leeds schoolboy 126 years ago.

* Tony’s book on the point of news is published by Palgrave and his most recent scholarly article on the subject can be read free here.