This two-part mini series of blogposts was written by MA Public History student Olivia Huidobro, who spent the summer of 2025 working for Special Collections as a Research Assistant. Photos for these blogs were sourced by Chelsie Mok, Teaching and Collections Co-Ordinator. Thanks so much Olivia and Chelsie!

During the summer, I have been researching UCL’s Special Collections to uncover printed and archival materials related to East London. Realising that perhaps the most important part of any place is its people, I focused on investigating East Londoners and their stories.  

Following are the lives of three very different figures connected to the area and its heritage across centuries. Through material in the collections, these persons come into focus, not only through their biographies, but also as lenses onto social movements, cultural identities, and the broader historical processes that have shaped East London’s communities. From an activist involved in one of the most famous labour strikes of the 19th century, to a Jewish writer and community member, to a controversial figure of the East India Company, their stories reveal the diversity and contradictions of East London’s past. 

Annie Besant and the Match Girls’ Strike of 1888 

Annie Besant, born in 1847, was one of the figures I encountered during my research. Although she was neither born nor based in East London – as was the case for many of other social reformers or social workers of the time – she became involved with the area through her left-wing politics and her activism around the organisation of unskilled workers. Besant was a socialist, theosophist, freemason, educationist, and a campaigner for women’s rights, Irish Home Rule, and Indian nationalism. 

By the mid-19th century, one of Bow’s best-known industries was match making – in particular, at the Bryant and May factories in Fairfield Works. Women and girls represented the majority of the workforce, responsible for removing matches from frames and boxing them. In 1888, while working as editor of The Link, the Law and Liberty League journal, Besant published an article criticising the poor working conditions and low wages provided by the company. In response, Bryant and May attempted to retaliate by dismissing three women they thought were whistle-blowers and therefore ‘trouble-makers’. This act would then spark a mass walkout, with around 1,400 match women and girls going on strike. Within days, Bryant and May decided to settle, re-hiring the fired workers, and promised to cease unfair deductions from pay and other improvements to their working conditions.  

 

The strike was successful because of the determination and organising efforts of the young working women themselves, although Besant’s role contributed to the efforts and was relevant in raising a strike fund, building support within the community, and ultimately leading the formation of the match girls’ union on July 27th, 1888 – the first for women only. The following year, Besant won the Tower Hamlets seat on the London School Board running on a socialist platform, and also emerged as a key figure in the growing ‘New Unionism’ movement. 

Finding material about her in UCL’s Special Collections was genuinely exciting: I came across an 1889 copy of the Fabian Essays in Socialism, to which she contributed alongside figures like George Bernard Shaw and Sidney Webb, as well as archival documents including her own letters to Karl Pearson, discussing feminism and political activism. 

Grace Aguilar and the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Congregation 

Grace Aguilar was born in Hackney in 1816  to a family of Sephardic Jewish refugees from Portugal. She was a novelist and poet, who brought Jewish subjects to the spotlight. Writing for a popular readership, she defended Judaism and argued for religious tolerance. Also, she specially addressed female readers with The Women of Israel (1845), a book of essays on Old Testament heroines. A first edition of this text is held within the Collections. Another particularly interesting find was a set of her papers, dated from 1831 to 1853, which included her manuscript notebooks as well as manuscript material in other hands – such as a book of tributes to Aguilar, a description of her last illness, and an account for the administration of her estate. These can certainly be a rich and underexplored resource for understanding the literary, religious, and cultural life of East London’s Jewish community in the 19th century. 

She and her family were active members of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish congregation in London, which I discovered to be prominently featured in the Special Collections and thus discovering its significance for the area’s history. I was struck by the wealth of material showing up for searches like the ‘Bevis Marks Synagogue’, especially within the Mocatta Collection and the Gaster Papers. I enjoyed browsing through ephemera items, like visiting cards, greeting cards, cards of thanks and condolence, invitations, menus, place cards, table plans and guest lists, dance cards, programmes, orders of service, postcards, announcements, tickets, membership cards, price lists, forms, library slips, calendars, and pressed flowers. These small, everyday objects offer a glimpse into the community’s relationships, venues, fashions, meals, and other subtle patterns of cultural life. Many of these items are digitised and can be accessed here. 

Josiah Child and the East India Company 

East London is also entangled with darker aspects of British history. Josiah Child, born in 1630, was an economist, politician, and merchant who lived in Wanstead until 1673, when he purchased Wanstead Abbey in Epping Forest. He was involved with joint-stock companies from the early 1670s, an investor in the slave trade, and one of the founders and presidents of the Royal African Company. However, his primary focus was the East India Company, which is historically linked to East London, especially through its promotion of the East India Docks on the Isle of Dogs and the bustling trade that passed through them. Child served on the Company’s court and held positions as both deputy governor and governor, gaining powerful enemies and drawing widespread criticism along the way.  

In response to this opposition, he published a number of treatises, copies of which can be found in the Special Collections. One of them is titled “The great honour and advantage of the East-India trade to the kingdom”. The other one takes the argument further, arguing that “the East-India trade is the most national of all foreign trades”, that “the clamors, aspersions, and objections made against the present East-India Company, are sinister, selfish, or groundless”, and that “the East-India trade is more profitable and necessary to the Kingdom of England, than to any other kingdom or nation in Europe”. Dating from the last decades of the 1600s, the possibility to access these texts is an incredible resource to think about the history of colonialism, empire and trade, and the public opinion and discourse around it.  

The Company also played a prominent role in slavery, beginning to use enslaved labour and transport enslaved people as early as the 1620s, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. With the aim of mapping the material available on this issue and identifying resources for further study, I began the search for these difficult and often painful findings. The Collections seem to offer a wide-ranging view of the public discussions of the time and their political repercussions – covering issues like the Slave Registration Acts, the Slave Trade Act, the Abolition Act, and the wider anti-slavery movement. It is also relevant to consider the collections involved when finding this material: while most of the texts come from the Hume and Ogden Libraries, a few books belonged to Francis Galton’s library, bringing insights not only through their content but also through their context. 

One last archival material I would like to highlight are the Jamaican Plantation Records – a small number of records from the sugar plantations of Buff Bay River Estate and Fearon’s Place in Jamaica, which include details of enslaved individuals and are incredibly rare. This collection was donated to the UCL Centre for the Study of Legacies of British Slavery in 2020, and was passed to UCL Special Collections in 2023.

By visiting these lives and legacies, we can access some of East London’s social struggles, its cultural diversity, and the entanglements with global commerce and empire. The items that form part of UCL’s Special Collections help illuminate their stories, while also revealing broader historical processes – like the area’s activism, community identities, and colonial trade and slavery. All of these have shaped East London’s heritage and continue to influence its character today. 

 

Bibliography 

Grassby, Richard. “Child, Sir Josiah, first baronet (bap. 1631, d. 1699), economic writer and merchant.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 September 2004. Accessed 22 July 2025. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-5290. 

Satre, Lowell J. “After the Match Girls’ Strike: Bryant and May in the 1890s.” Victorian Studies 26, no. 1 (1982): 7–31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3827491. 

Taylor, Anne. “Besant [née Wood], Annie (1847–1933), theosophist and politician in India.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 September 2004. Accessed 22 July 2025. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-30735. 

Valman, Nadia. “Aguilar, Grace (1816–1847), writer on Jewish history and religion and novelist.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 September 2004. Accessed 22 July 2025. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-217. 

“Annie Besant.” Wikipedia. Accessed 22 July 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Besant. 

“East India Company.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Last updated July 15, 2025. https://www.britannica.com/topic/East-India-Company.  

“Grace Aguilar.” Wikipedia (Spanish). Accessed 22 July 2025. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Aguilar. 

“Matchgirls’ Strike.” Wikipedia. Accessed 22 July 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchgirls%27_strike. 

“Match Girls’ Strike.” English Heritage. Accessed 22 July 2025. https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/match-girls-strike/. 

This two-part mini series of blogposts was written by MA Public History student Olivia Huidobro, who spent the summer of 2025 working for Special Collections as a Research Assistant, finishing a two-years long project to investigate what material we look after relating to East London. Photos for these blogs were sourced by Chelsie Mok, Teaching and Collections Co-Ordinator. Thanks so much Olivia and Chelsie!

Answering seemingly straightforward questions about East London can be harder than one might think. Where is it? What is it? And when? Although the East End is likely to hold a place in the imaginary of  Londoners and others alike, it certainly refers to a highly heterogenous space. I kept this in mind when I started with the ambitious task of researching UCL’s Special Collections looking to identify East London material. What I hadn’t anticipated was just how rich a local history would appear, one deeply shaped by the spaces, communities, and industries across this part of the city. 

In Beyond the Tower: A History of East London, John Marriott describes the emergence of East London as a distinct area in the 18th century. Precisely when London was becoming a metropolis, the East End became the manufacturing and commercial heart of it, drawing people from abroad with the promise of new opportunities, and acting as a place of refuge for those displaced. By the late 19th century, however, “the whole of East London was in the minds of many middle-class inhabitants as remote and inaccessible as the far corners of the empire”1. By finding material in the Collections that is related to the area, this project sought to explore and reflect on that complex, diverse, and often misrepresented history. As the UCL East campus approaches its third anniversary, having a selection of these items available for teaching will offer the possibility to promote a local object-based approach to learning. 

East London limits have been intensely contested. Charles Booth’s mapping placed it between the City wall and the River Lea, while Walter Besant broadly defined it as everything east of Bishopsgate and north of the Thames. In contrast to the latter’s diffuse definition, which represented the perception of outsiders unfamiliar with the area, Millicent Rose suggested delineating East London in detail, bounded by Aldgate in the west, the Lea in the east, the Thames to the south, and Clapton Common to the north.

For the execution of this project, the geographical focus included the boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Hackney, Havering, Newham, Redbridge, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest. The time scope, on the other hand, was actually shaped by the collection itself, and by the dates of materials that began to surface during the research – spanning from the 17th century to our present day.  

I was lucky to join the project after it had started, so a lot of groundwork had already been done by previous contributors. For example, they had done impressive work identifying relevant information in secondary literature to help develop a list of keywords, and had even started executing some of the searches based on those keywords. 

The search list, a key resource that acted as a guideline for my work, was subdivided into four categories: People, Groups, Companies & Industries, and Places related to the area. East London’s history quickly began to take shape through these terms and the materials they uncovered. Prominent groups included the Quakers, the Huguenots, and Irish and Jewish communities, and industries such as brewing, furniture-making, and sugar refining.  

The Places listed included not only names of neighbourhoods, but also theatres, synagogues, churches, hospitals, and docks, amongst others. Searching for specific sites like “Spitalfields”, for example, brought up printed material related to the presence of the Huguenot community, the silk weaving industry, clock-making, and the findings of archaeological excavations at the Spitalfields Market. Among the archival material, one of my favourite items were Gene Adams’ papers on the Spitalfields Projects. Carried out in the 1970s, this initiative aimed to raise the awareness of the area’s 18th century architecture which was being threatened by redevelopment. It also included a history trail and activities at the Geffrye Museum, a proposed Spitalfields street museum, and an exhibition of the area.  

Another search I found especially interesting, particularly for what it revealed about the area’s communities, was “Stepney”. The results included a book on the Stepney Jewish Girls’ Club, the marriage registers from St. Dunstan’s, an 18th-century volume about the Stepney Society (an early local charity), and a photograph of a home economics class at Stepney Green School. These items came from a range of collections, including the London History Collection, the Hebrew and Jewish Collection, and the Papers of Brenda Francis. 

The initial names in the People list, however, fell short in reflecting East London’s diversity. Most of these had been selected from published secondary literature and were, unsurprisingly, white men. It was also not always clear who the name on the list was referring to. To address this, we developed a curated directory featuring the biographies of both men and women connected to East London, which also informed the project with topics and movements relevant to the area’s history. Although after looking at the catalogues I realised that the Collections didn’t always have material related to the people listed, the resource may remain as a reference of a more diverse set of stories of the lives within the area. 

My research then continued with the aim of highlighting significant women who had lived or worked in East London. At this stage, I broadened my sources beyond academic journals to include digital and collaborative platforms like Wikipedia and the East End Women’s Museum. One of the most compelling discoveries was East London’s strong activist heritage, shaped by progressive groups campaigning for the rights of workers, women, and local communities. I was particularly drawn to the networks surrounding socialist figures, which came into focus through organisations such as the Dockers’ Union, the Women’s Trade Union League, the Independent Labour Party, and the East London Federation of Suffragettes, among others. 

Towards the end of the project, the list compiling all of the East London material in the collections reached over 1,400 items. Within this extensive compilation is also reflected the outreach, diversity and the layered histories within the area itself. As a result, we also decided to create a narrower list, which included only the most relevant items while still enabling us to explore a wide range of topics, including education, feminism, workers’ rights, public health, crime, navigation, city planning, the silk industry, and many, many more.  

Although this stage of the research project has concluded, its outcomes are still to come. The findings could support future teaching initiatives and help shape a dedicated subject guide on London, making it easier for students, researchers, and the wider public to discover the city’s stories through the university’s Special Collections.  Ultimately, the project not only helped to map material and relevant themes of East London history, but also evidenced the capacity of collections to prompt new questions, build connections, and offer different perspectives on familiar places. 

 

Bibliography 

Marriott, John. Beyond the Tower: A History of East London. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vkwsx. 

While many of our colleagues have been enjoying (much deserved!) holidays over the past few months, it has been business as usual for UCL Special Collections’ outreach team. We have been lucky this year to be able to offer not one, but two summer schools for secondary school students, both taking their inspiration from our amazing Small Press Collection.

Protest in Print: Year 12 Non-residential Summer School (funded by Widening Participation)

This week-long summer school was co-led by artist David Blackmore, 2018-19 Honorary Research Associate at the Slade. The project aimed to give participants an opportunity to explore the ways in which artists, activists and writers have used and continue to use print to communicate a message of protest or political activism.  David was already familiar with much of the protest material in our Little Magazines collection, having taken part in the 2019 Small Press Project, Visions of Protest. With his encouragement, our students were quick to outline the many issues that they believe are worth drawing more attention to (including mental health, Islamophobia, the Extradition Bill in Hong Kong, and data protection) and staged their own demonstration on UCL’s Portico steps.

Our students then spent some time immersing themselves in archival and print collections, exploring ways in which some marginalised voices have found platforms in small press and self-published works. As well as viewing some of the wide range of titles held in Little Magazines, curated for them by Liz Lawes, they visited the May Day Rooms on Fleet Street, and had a tour of the Bishopsgate Institute Archives.

Putting their newfound knowledge into action, each of our students then created a work of art, using collage that incorporated copies of items they’d seen, and screen printing taught and facilitated by the Slade’s Lesley Sharpe.

The week ended with a ‘soft crit’ of their work, and a well-attended public exhibition. While many of our students had arrived anxious that they weren’t ‘art students’, they all showed a remarkable amount of skill and creativity, and a real passion to explain what was important to them through the medium of print.

 

Paper, Press, Print: East Education Summer School

With barely a pause to breathe, we launched straight into our second summer school, a free three-day course based at UCL Here East, as part of the Olympic Park’s education programme for local 13-to-16 year olds. It was wonderful to be able to host our project at UCL’s own campus at Here East, where our colleagues made both us and our students feel welcome.

We were once again looking at protest in print, but with a different twist: this time, we focused on the ‘grassroots’ nature of many of the magazines in our Small Press collection, and invited Lu Williams of Grrrl Zine Fair to run a zine-making workshop. While our students differed in ages and abilities, they were all able to use photography, collage, block printing and a photocopier to create their own zines, allowing them to disseminate their ideas almost instantly.

And if that wasn’t enough…

…we’ve had plenty of other workshops to keep us busy! This year Sarah Hutton of UCL Culture invited us to take part in her Year 8 and Year 12 summer schools, both of which saw us discussing morality through 19^th Century scientific archives and 16^th Century religious texts, and July’s Paper Trails Conference was followed by a two-day workshop for Year 12s from Newham Collegiate Sixth Form College, led by Andrew Smith, on how to use primary sources in history research.

We will shortly be looking ahead to the new school and academic year – but first, we’ll finally be taking a well-earned summer holiday of our own!

First Stop; Stratford Library

UCL Special Collections have been busy putting together an exhibition that combines items from the Main Library exhibition East Side Stories and Newham Borough’s own archival items.

This ‘pop-up’ exhibition features historic photographs, archival documents, maps and rare publications that tell of East London’s rich and fascinating past.  As the banners tour all of Newham’s 10 public libraries, we’ll be running a range of different workshops to deepen engagement and to create opportunities to record local people’s oral histories.  Many of these activities will take place in Newham Heritage Week.

Poetry from the Archive

We’ve kicked things off with three poetry workshops in Stratford and East Ham libraries.  These groups are already well established and participants enjoy writing poetry in an inclusive and positive environment. They were keen to engage with the forthcoming exhibition and the archival items we brought to them.  Poems ranged from sombre, thoughtful pieces about racial tensions and migration, to playful tales of the quintessential cup of tea at a Newham street party in the 1920s.

London Memory Archive and UCL East

The oral histories we record will be the beginning of a new initiative, the London Memory Archive, which will be part of UCL East’s Culture Lab.  It’s a timely opportunity to start developing a collection that reflects the memories and perspectives of a local community that UCL will soon be neighbour to.

Successful Funding Bids

To support the project, and to help lay the foundations for a longer term relationship with Newham and its library and archive services, we’ve sought external funding.  We are pleased to announce that we have been successful in a UCL Culture Beacon Bursary grant and a Heritage Lottery Fund grant.  This means that we are able to buy the equipment needed to make archival quality recordings, receive specialist oral history training, pay for the printing of the exhibition and promotional material and all workshop resources, as well as support volunteers’ involvement throughout.

We hope that we will be able to collaborate with Newham in further touring exhibitions that make use of the research and digitisation that takes place for the Main Library exhibition and also gives us a chance to bring a different edge to the narrative told.  Newham has an incredible collection of historic photographs, for example, which often bring the content of an item from UCL’s collection to life.

Be sure to check back for further updates and photographs of Special Collection’s outreach work!