| Description | Interview with Miss Margaret Agnes Stephen, recorded on 22 February 1985 by Dorothy Johnstone.
Transcript of Interview :
J Well I think perhaps we can begin with your entry to the University. I understand that you came from the Strichen area. Is that correct?
S I was born there, yes. We came into Aberdeen when I was two and a half and my father had been a GP (General Practitioner) in Strichen right through the First World War and because he was slightly lame, although you wouldn't notice it, they decided he wasn't physically fit for the army, so he wasn't called up, but many of the other practitioners in the area were so that he ended up by doing four men's work in the country and he broke down, so he decided to get over the breakdown by coming into Aberdeen and taking his D.P.H., his Diploma in Public Health.
J So you were actually educated then in Aberdeen.
S Oh yes. Because of my physical handicap, I didn't go to school at the age of 5. I was taught by my mother at home until I was 7 and then I went to, I suppose you would call it a dame school run by three maiden ladies in Carden Place, Miss Knowles's, and it was very small and I was there for a few years, I can't remember, and then I went to St Margaret's and I was there for two and a half years, but I wasn't terribly happy there, so I moved to the High School [now Harlaw Academy] and I was at the High School from One Higher School right up to the sixth form. I was very happy there. There was the added advantage that by that time we were living in Rubislaw Terrace, which is directly opposite the High School which meant that I just had to walk through Rubislaw Terrace Gardens to get to school. I suppose I was the pupil nearest the school, and the Headmistress, Miss Rose at that time, lived next door to us and I used to watch in the mornings to see if I could dodge Miss Rose otherwise I had to escort her to school. And perhaps, normal school days....need I go into that?
J We could perhaps leave that for the moment and see, it might be interesting to return to later.
S I had two brothers, both of whom were much cleverer than me. My brother George was Dux of the Grammar School and he did classics - he got a first in classics before he went into medicine and he had a first in medicine as well. My brother John did an ordinary MA and then medicine and in those days you could sandwich things so that he did his medicine (arts and medicine) in 7 years and George in six and a half or something like that. So that although there were two and a half years between them [in age] they both graduated [in medicine]in the same year but three months between, with the result that when my elder brother got married, the papers said his best man was his twin brother! Stupid! Anyway, before I went up to University myself, and I think this is very relevant, they were extremely active in University affairs, charities weeks, Student Christian Movement, SRC, you name it, they did it, and I sat at the back of our big sitting room and listened to all the goings on.... We had foreign students or speakers for SCM who were always put up by us because we always said we had a spare room and I met all these people, Chinese, Africans, Americans, and I liked sitting at the back and I was interested and my brothers, never, and my parents never, left me out. I always drank it all in and it was a great help when I came to University because there was all sorts of background information that had seeped into me. So I had various orthopaedic operations which helped a bit but the biggest one was when I was in the fourth year at school and I missed a term, and I had physiotherapy in the morning and went to school in the afternoon, which was a bit traumatic; and the result was that when I came to do my Highers they decided that I should do higher Maths and lower French. And I found lower French extremely easy but of course I didn't do any work for it, it probably helped, and I came down in higher Maths and I'd never come down in anything, so that upset my plans for University. I'd always liked History and it was planned at school that I would go on to do History honours. However, in the long vacation before I went up to University in 1935, I took fright and I thought, no, I'd better just do an ordinary degree because all my best friends were doing ordinary degrees and I thought I'll be alongside them and it will be easier. Of course I was wrong, I should have done English or English-History but nobody else from the High School was doing History in those days. You hadn't the same advice as you get nowadays and the University gave me none. You went up to the Office and they said 'Where are your certificates?' and they looked at them, and said, 'Oh well, you've got entrance, what do you want to do? And you say 'I want to do an ordinary degree and I want to do such and such and such and such and such and such.' With my brothers' background I knew what you could do and what you couldn't do without going to the Office. So they had worked out a scheme, my brothers, and worked out a curriculum for me but nobody else advised me and so I started and I did this ordinary degree and in my third year I was pretty far up in the English class (which I had left for various reasons till the third year) and in Moral Philosophy and in History, Advanced History rather. So I could have done honours alright. However, that is by the way, that's what I did. And I graduated in '38. Now my brothers both graduated in '35 and they both did teaching jobs in the University after their house jobs in the Infirmary or Woodend. One of them, my elder brother, was in bacteriology and the other one was in anatomy, and that was useful to me, you see, because they were still in Aberdeen. I was a student, and they had a little car, which meant if one of them was going to Marischal I would get a lift to Marischal instead of taking the tram, as it was in those days. And as a difference in price you could get from Holburn Junction to King's for tuppence (old money) in an ancient bus but if you took the tram along to King Street, you got for a penny-halfpenny. We lived in Rubislaw Terrace in those days so I walked to the Junction and took the bus or the tram if I wasn't getting a lift from one of my brothers. And of course there were no facilities for lunch out at King's in those days, none. Well, there might have been in the Pavilion but I never, I never went there. I always had to go home. And we all did, all went to our digs or something. There was no, no halls of residence, no, no.... Of course, for people who hadn't homes in Aberdeen, I don't quite know what they did. I always went home and that of course meant that things were a bit difficult if you had a class till one. English was twelve to one, and I had something else at Marischal at two, [I had to]get home from King's to Rubislaw Terrace and back to Marischal. I usually managed it by getting one of my brothers to give me a lift, or perhaps my father might give me a lift if he had a call to make, he would give me one. But that I think is one of the big differences between our day and today. The bulk of the people at Aberdeen [University] were Aberdonians or from the area round about. There weren't nearly so many people from other parts of the British Isles as there are now and people who had homes in Aberdeen came to Aberdeen as a rule, I mean, stayed at home and went to Aberdeen instead of going to another University, as is so prevalent now. Some people went to Oxford or Cambridge, if they were very bright, but some of them, like my cousin, David Murison, with whom I worked, he did honours Classics at Aberdeen and then he went to Cambridge and he did honours classics at Cambridge and he had to do it all over again. He didn't get [any allowance made for his] Aberdeen degree [it] mightn't have been there. He had to do it all over again. He said it was an awful waste of time.
J Why had he done it?
S He was very young. He came up to the University at fifteen or fifteen plus and he was very young, so he thought he would go to Cambridge [after graduating here].
J So the choice of University was not ever an issue?
S As far as I was concerned, no. No, but it wouldn't have been in any case. Because of my disability I had to, being at home. And I wasn't so disabled then as I am now, I mean, I can remember running to catch a bus. I couldn't do that now to save my life. But when I went up to University, other people, people on the staff, had known my brothers, who were, you know, in things. My brother George was vice-president of the SRC or something like that and president of SCM and so on, so that people knew the family and I was very interested in the Student Christian Movement as well and I went to a conference as a delegate from Aberdeen. I was sitting beside one of the senior people in the SCM and he looked at my name tab and said, 'Not another Stephen?'. I said, 'Yes, it's the last one'. And it made such a difference because people knew my brothers and I knew people, you know, people who had come to the house, got to know me and were very helpful. But I was very grateful to people on the staff who were kind to me because of my disability and two things stick out in my mind. One was while I was a student, I can't remember in which year it was, but I was in the library in Kings, in the old library, and in those days we had the long ladders that you climbed and there weren't any feet on them. They weren't the, you know, the proper stepladders, they were ladders.
J Yes, I remember.
S And I remember being well up one and it was swaying about, and I was swaying about, and I was thinking, 'Help', and there was a stern voice beneath me, 'Come down at once!'. And I looked round and here was old Dr. Simpson standing at the bottom of the ladder and he said, 'You are not to go up those again. Get some of the others to get your books for you.' Which is all very well but I thought it was very nice of the old man, well he wasn't so old in those days.
J This was when you were a student?
S This was when I was a student, yes. He had just come through to the library and he saw me wobbling on this thing and it wasn't so long after that, I think, we got stems on the bottom of the steps so they weren't so unsteady. But [there was] another thing that also impressed itself on me. I was graduating.. in Marischal, the Mitchell Hall, you go up [steps to the platform] when you're capped and you go down the other side and there was no railing; and I got up the first steps by sort of holding on to the girl in front of me and was capped and was going down the other side and saying to myself, 'How am I going to get down those steps?' - steps were always my trouble. And Colonel Butchart, who was then Secretary, rose from his seat in his kilt and gave me his arm down the steps and I didn't know he knew me from Adam and I was very touched. That was... these were two gentlemen that I remember and of course I got to know Dr. Simpson very well later.
J One of the interesting angles which seems to have changed in the student life between your time and now is the importance of the bursaries to the students. Would you have anything to say about that?
S Well, I didn't have a bursary myself because I didn't sit the Bursary Competition because they changed the rules when I was in the sixth form and you could either sit five subjects or three, but because of my difficulty about Maths, I had dropped Maths in the sixth form, so I couldn't and the new system of three subjects had only just started so none of us could avail ourselves of it, so that everybody had to sit the five papers, or four papers or something, in English, Latin, Maths, French or German, or Physics, something like that. I did, when I went up, I did, it was compulsory to do Maths, Nat. Phil... if you wanted an ordinary degree, that was compulsory. And I had never seen Nat. Phil... I had never done any except some very rudimentary stuff early on at school, so that was dreadful and the Maths was also dreadful because I had this trauma about Maths but I got it.
J Did you have Maths when you went there? I thought you said you came down in it in Highers?
S Yes. But I had had Maths up to the Highers standard but I came down in the Leaving Certificate, but they gave me my group all the same, taking my operation, time off, into consideration.
J So, you weren't required to sit it in Prelims?
S I did sit it in Prelims.
J But was that a requirement?
S No. It was my requirement to satisfy myself that I could do it. So I sat both higher and lower Maths - belt and braces - and got both, thanks to the great assistance of the lady who was now my sister-in-law, who married my younger brother. She did Maths, she did a B.Sc. and a M.A. and was a teacher, became a teacher, and she helped me all those holidays before I went up to University to make sure that I did pass. So I did have considerable amount of Maths, but no Nat. Phil... but I got it and you had to do Latin or Greek, so I had Latin. Well, my brother who did classics was a great help there. And every week you had to do a Latin prose - that's translating English into Latin, which was difficult, but he always used to go through my Latin proses before I handed them in and took out the worst mistakes, and the gentleman who corrected them was a retired master who'd been a master at the Grammar School and he knew perfectly well that my brother was my brother so he used to write 'Good' with three exclamation marks at the bottom of this prose. He knew.
J Was he a member of the University staff?
S Well, he was retired from the Grammar School but he got this job of marking the proses of the first year work, class. He was an extra assistant, he got an honorarium for doing it I presume.
J Who was this?
S Dr. Middleton ....
J I see.
S ...Known to the Grammarians as 'Caesar' which was his nickname. And I did that was in my first year, French as well [with the Maths Nat. Phil..]. Then in my second year I did German and History and something else, I can't remember, and then in my third year I did Moral Philosophy, that was another must, you had to do Moral Philosophy or Logic, and English and advanced History, that was British History, and philosophy, Moral Philosophy. We had Professor Laird in his last - it would have been his last year, and he threw us into the deep end by announcing at the end of the first week, 'Now, you will write an essay on slavery', just like that, and we didn't [know] anything about Moral Philosophy, you know. You didn't get philosophy at school in those days. And of course I'd been steeped in Student Christian Movement things from my brothers and also from my church connections and so on, so I wrote rather from a Christian point of view than a moral point of view, this essay, and I got a[an A]. I was most astonished. He was very kind and I was in the merit list at the end. And it was the practice in those days to ask the people on the merit list to afternoon tea at the professor's house and the Lairds stayed in Powis Gate and it was a very genteel afternoon tea with little sandwiches and little cakes and tea and you stood holding your cup in your hand and your sandwich in your saucer and I got a sandwich that I just couldn't eat. It was chutney or something, and I remember I was standing beside one of the men. 'I can't eat this', and Mrs. Laird looking at me. He said, 'Put it in my plate', so I put it in his plate and he ate it and it was Professor, he became the Principal, Professor Noble. And I can remember that tea just because of that sandwich. But I don't think the professors ask the merit list to tea nowadays.
J Was that the only contact of that kind that you had with the professors?
S More or less, yes.
J Did you know many of them through the classroom? Laird obviously lectured to you.
S Yes, and Professor Jack [Professor of English].
J Professor Jack. What was your impression of him as a lecturer?
S Well. It was obvious that he gave his first year the same lecture year after year because after I took down my first lecture, I went and looked up my brother George's lectures which he had taken down in '26 and the same words were there except that the lectures given in '26 were better than those given in '35.
J What about additional work, seminar work or tutorial work? Was that done by the professors?
S The assistants, mainly.
J Do any of them remain in your memory?
S Not really. I'd have to think very hard.
J But you would have had regular assignments, would you?
S We got essays. That was about all.
J And you met with other students?
S Oh, yes.
J And the assistant and you discussed a topic or an essay?
S Well, the essays, yes, but just essays. Nothing much else as I remember. Old Professor Souter, who was Professor of Latin - Humanity, I think he was about his last year when I had him as well.
J Was he an impressive lecturer?
S No. Not really. He was, he was past it. [Well past 65.] He took us for one specific thing [Seneca] and the ... assistants took us for the others. And he also took us for Roman History. And if you didn't give him back his Roman History lectures as given, you didn't get marks, You had to give him back what he gave you. I don't think he was all that good really, but then I suppose he thought the first year Latin people, especially the bottom grade, which I was in, weren't worth bothering about, he bothered more about the honours people, honours class.
J What was the level of competence of your fellow students in Latin?
S We all...we were divided into three sections, I was in the bottom section because the honours people were in the top section, you know first year, and there was a second section, but I was in the bottom section. I got through, I mean I wasn't that bad because I had six years at school and as I say I had help at home as well.
J What about the other classes, French for instance. Do you remember who taught you there. Did you have Professor Roe?
S Yes, I had Professor Roe, but he just took us for one section, I've forgotten which one it was now, it's such a long time..
J Yes, it is of course. What about Professor Witte in German?
S I don't think he had come. It was before it became a professorship. It was the chap before him. We were mainly taught .....He took us for - I think it was German literature possibly, but at the end of the year we had the papers and we had orals and I had my oral from the two assistants, one of them the German-speaking assistant. I don't think it was Witte. I don't know if he was there, but anyway I know they asked me about the Charities Campaign. Now suddenly to be faced with trying to describe the Charities Campaign, even if I knew quite a lot about it, in German was not easy. And I thought, couldn't they have thought of something better? I suppose, perhaps one of them had known my brothers, and had thought 'Oh this is something she will know something about'. Never mind, I got through. The classes I enjoyed most of course were the History, and also Moral Philosophy and although as I say Professor Jack took us through Macbeth and we had been through Macbeth for the Highers, so to use a Scotticism, I took a scunner at Macbeth. However...
J What about History. Was that taught by Professor Black?
S Yes.
J It was always the professor himself was it?
S Yes. Yes we had the professor himself. I can't remember now. In British [and Scottish] History we had Mr. Henderson, it was before Mr. Humphries' time and he wasn't very inspiring but I realised my potential by this time and I was turning out good essays. I suppose I got up to it and I knew how to go about it. But one great disadvantage that we had was that there wasn't the system of reserving books for essays as there is now or was when I was on the staff. With the result that you were given a list of recommended reading and the people who could get over to the library quickest got the best books with the result that I always had to take a choice that nobody else took because they were the only ones left. That wouldn't happen nowadays. I would have got my turn. But I had one great advantage that at home we had a considerable library which my uncle Billy, my uncle William, had built up. He had done an ordinary degree at Aberdeen and he didn't make use of his degree but he became a bookworm. He bought books and he bought books and he bought books. I think that every book that was required ... he would have bought it and he kept them and we got them when he was killed in the First War and we got them from my grandmother. And this was a great help you see because this supplemented my reading. I could find stuff at home that helped, all sorts of things, and the same with English literature - it was there.
J To what extent did the students work in the library?
S Quite, quite a lot, but not so much as nowadays because people went home. They worked at home more, at least I did.
J Was the library open in the evening?
S I can't tell you, because I never was there in the evening.
J What about the student activities? Were they, they took place in the evening did they?
S Oh yes, oh yes.
J And were they mostly held in King's?
S Well, I didn't, because of my disability, I didn't take part in a lot of the student activities in the evening, except Student Christian Movement, that I did. We had a room in the top of a building in Union Street that we rented and we used to have our meetings there. It was easier for me to get there... It was Marischal I think that most of the meetings were at but because of my disability I didn't take part in so many things because it just wasn't possible. From the time I finished my work at King's I had to go home, I was too tired.
J You did mention that you had to go to Marischal sometimes for lectures.
S Well, you had to go to Marischal for natural philosophy and if I'd had Chemistry it was at Marischal, you see. Not that I had Chemistry but then I had... Zoology was at Marischal.
J Yes, yes. But Natural Philosophy would have been what brought you there?
S Yes, that's right, it took me there.
J As far as student activities were concerned, can you recollect any particular ones that you may not have been very actively involved in but were aware of?
S Well, I was very aware of Charities Campaigns before I became a student because one of my brothers was Charities Campaign organiser and so many of their meetings took place in our house, or painting up slogans and so on took place in the garage and small sister was employed to fetch and carry [and I] with the result that when I was a student myself, that I was involved one time at Charities Week. A friend of mine, her boyfriend was Charities, what was it, immunity badges convenor, so she said would I go and sit in the shop in Union Street where immunity badges were on sale and also the record of the student show. I never sold any copies but it was on the turntable all day and I remember that, sitting in the shop with this record on all the time and waiting for people to come in to buy.
J This was a gramophone record?
S Yes, yes. They usually did a 'Songs from the Show's' record which was sold and this was on before... the show always was the week of Charities Week, it was the same as now and in those days, even in my own time, but in my brother's time as well, there were far more students in fancy dress on the streets on - it was Gala Friday not Gala Saturday that they went out with their tins all over Aberdeen. Nowadays if you go down on Charities Saturday, if you go down Rosemount you'll never see a student but in our day you were supposed to spread yourself all over the town and get money and there weren't so many stunts, quite a few stunts, but not to the same extent and yet we got in a great deal of money, relatively, but in those days of course there was no health service so all this money , it was always for the hospitals.
J Yes. Charities is obviously is one area of general student activity. Another one I was thinking of was the rectorials. I believe there was one when you were a student. Do you recall anything about it?
S Yes. I can't remember.... I think it was Evans of the Broke. Admiral R G R Evans. He was elected and [another candidate was Zord Stamp with the slogan] what was it, 'a tuppeny stamp, stamp he would gain'. He must have been a Liberal or Labour. That was the one, it was him I backed I remember. I remember wearing a blue favour and I remember recording my vote by nation. I of course having been born in Strichen, near Fraserburgh, was in the Buchan nation and we didn't vote for the rector, the person you wanted to be rector, you voted for his procurator, who was another student.
J And how did that system work? Did the University office say that you were in the Buchan nation or did you register yourself?
S Well, there were lists you see. And they knew from your place of birth. Angus was the nation for all the people who weren't Aberdonians [or from north east Scotland]. And they had to get a sort of majority of the ...was it four or five nations. They had to get a majority. Somebody had a casting vote. I can't remember who that person was.
J Do you remember anything about the activities that led up to the campaign?
S I know that there was a fight in the quad. at Marischal. I kept out of the way. Threw fish heads and offal at each other and fought and flung their banners from each end of the quad. I don't know if they still do that.
J Was this all good-humoured?
S Oh yes. A bit rough, I believe, but I remember my brothers coming home filthy, but I kept out of the way.
J One of the other things I was wondering about was the wearing of the student toga.
S Well, more people did wear it in our day but mainly the arts people.
J It was optional?
S Not... It wasn't compulsory, no. My best friend and I shared one and when she wasn't, it was really hers, but when she wasn't wearing it, I wore it and, it shows you the honesty in those days, there was a cloakroom in Kings where you left your coat and hat, and your toga, and it was there the next, I mean the toga was still there the next day. Nobody pinched.
J Where was the cloakroom?
S It was somewhere, somewhere under the Cromwell Tower. Things have changed so much, I can't remember. Somewhere there. For the ladies.
J Yes. That leads me to another question I was going to ask you, whether there was, you were aware of any distinction made between you as female students and what perhaps your brothers experienced. Was there any sense of being different?
S Well, there was this difference in that even in the Student Christian Movement, we had a men's branch and a women's branch, also we often met together but there was a men's branch and a women's branch. And there was a men's union and a women's union and there was a women's common room to which no man was allowed to go and it was right up to the top at the Cromwell Tower, up at the top of the Cromwell Tower. I think it must have been really what is now part of the... which became part of the library further up.
J And that was simply for arts students in King's ....
S [Warren] Arts students in King's ...
J Who wanted somewhere to sit down and rest.
S Yes. There was an old lady who used to stand at the top of the stairs with a big basket full of buns and bars of chocolate and somebody made coffee or tea and you could get a bun for a halfpenny, old money, and a cup of coffee for - or tea, for a penny or twopence and if you were very flush you would get a penny bar of chocolate. And that's what you existed on until lunchtime.
J Did the students not ever use that common room as a place to eat lunch? Would they not have brought in sandwiches or the equivalent?
S I don't - I can't remember. You see, I never did. I always went home.
J Well, that's interesting. What about in the class room? What sort of proportion would you recall as having been usual [of] men and women students? Did you feel in the minority?
S I couldn't say that we did, you know. I mean we were.
J Well, there are just one or two points I think about the period as a student which I'd like to clear up. One was, can you tell me how you would have spent your vacations? Would you have had to work to prepare yourself for the next year or was this pure holiday?
S Well, as I was doing an ordinary degree except in History, yes, to quite an extent.
J Yes?
S Yes. It was more of a holiday. That was the pattern. Of course, if I had been doing honours I would have been doing my thesis, working on my thesis. But I did a lot of reading in my vacation.
J Yes. Did any of the students take employment during their [vacation]
S Oh yes. oh yes.
J This was an important supplement to their [income]
S Yes. Because of course bursaries such as they were very much smaller. My elder brother had quite a big one because he was fairly far up in the bursary competition. I mean, big one for those days. But because my father was a general practitioner, we didn't qualify for, or ask for, what were known as Carnegie fees that were grants towards fees paid by the Carnegie Trust. We didn't apply for those. And also my brothers, both my brothers, had bursaries, and they were allowed by my father to keep the major part of these for spending money. I mean he paid their fees and they used the bursary, they were expected to live - live on their not at home expenses - on their bursaries.
J You mentioned that one of your brothers had a car. Would this have been unusual for...
S Well, they had a car between them. They had an Austin, the first one they had was an Austin 7, costing £118 new, and I think, yes, they were both students at that time.
J Was this unusual for a student to be running [a car]?
S Yes. It was very unusual, quite unusual. Some of them had ancient cars of the - second-hand ones. This was actually a new one. I think they got it when they went into medicine because they were running between Marischal and the Infirmary and so on. But they shared it. So that sometimes I went into the quad and I, looking to see if any of them was there, there was a note saying 'Gone home, John', 'Gone home, George', but it was unusual for students to have cars. Most of them had bicycles.
J Well, if we can move now to the point at which you are graduating and deciding what you wanted to do. Had you come to University with a specific career in mind?
S No, not really. As a matter of fact, my mother thought that once I got my degree, I could stay at home, do my father's clerical work, and just be at home, and I said, 'No, I'm not going to do that, I must get a job'. And I did shorthand, did a course in shorthand and typing and to begin with I tried it by correspondence but that wasn't very successful and I went to one of the business schools in Aberdeen and did shorthand and typing there. And then the war came. You see I graduated in 1938 and in 1939, I think I must have been ill or something, but anyway when the war broke out, I was looking for a job and the job on the Dictionary, the Scottish National Dictionary, was up and I had tried for two other jobs but hadn't got them - mainly shorthand and typing plus...
J Is that what a number of your friends from college would have done? Is that the same sort of pattern?
S No, most of them went into teaching. Most of my friends went into teaching or medicine or...
J Would many of them have had the same expectations on the part of their parents, like your mother thinking that you might have stayed at home?
S Oh I think it was mainly because of my disability, you see
J I see. So you got this job with the Scottish National Dictionary.
S Yes, in 1940 I think.
J And was that work based in King's?
S No. No. When I joined they were working in the - an office actually it was the Board Room of the Training College, what is now known as the College of Education, [then]in Blackfriars Street. But old Dr. William Grant, who was the first editor of the Scottish National Dictionary, had been on the staff there and they gave the Dictionary the use of the room. [The Dictionary] had been going since l9.. Oh, I can't remember, 1918, 1919, 1920 or something. I can't remember when it actually started but anyhow I'd gone there in 1940 as a dogsbody, the typist, the book-keeper, and I was also started on doing a little actual compilation. First of all tidying up Dr. Grant's work on the letter E and as he was getting quite elderly by this time, it really meant doing it over again, because [his mind wandered a bit.] Anyway I gradually did more and more Dictionary work and one of the others on the staff left because it was during the war to go back to teaching so I took over from her and we got a young typist to do the rock bottom typing, and the shorthand and book-keeping. But I and the other assistant editor did our own typing. She ran, the assistant, young assistant, ran off the copies that went round the committee, but we typed our own drafts.
J Well, perhaps we'll leave the Dictionary and maybe if we have time come back to it later, but move on to the next point in your career.
S I left, perhaps we had better establish, I left the Dictionary because they moved to Edinburgh, I'd say 1950 something, 1953 was it. And, at least they were going to leave in the 1950s and I couldn't leave because my parents really needed my presence at home because they were getting on in years and my father was due to retire. And so I stayed in Aberdeen and the job of listing the papers of the Duke of Atholl in the Library was advertised and I applied for that, among other things, and then got it. And I settled down to do that, and I really hadn't a clue but I just, [did my best] somebody had done one box roughly, and I used that as a pattern and my lists grew as they went on and my interest.
J Did Dr. Simpson give you much assistance initially and showing you how you set about things?
S Well it was somebody in Economics I think who'd done this initial listing My first - I blush to think of it now, my first box I listed in a fort-night. The things I missed in that first box must have been tremendous. Anyhow, I did my first list, just in longhand - I hadn't a typewriter at that time, and I showed the first two to Dr. Simpson and he kept them up his sleeve a bit and then I said 'Please Dr. Simpson will these do?' He said, 'Oh yes, that's the right way to go about it. So we helped Professor O'Dell, who was the professor in geography who was so keenly interested, he was interested more from the geographic point of view than historic, and I gradually worked my way into doing it properly.
J The entire collection was housed in the library was it?
S No. Professor O'Dell and myself used to go periodically to Blair Castle and bring back so many tins of documents and I would work through them and then they would take them back and so on. So I never got through the whole lot of course. I only got through so many and then the University said look, you've had enough time of Miss Stephen on this. So I stopped.
J And at that point were you moved quite abruptly into the muniments or had this been gradually....
S Well I think that gradually. Dr. Simpson used to sometimes come and ask me to do something with regard to some manuscripts that had come in, and then after Dr. Simpson retired Mr. Drummond gradually got me to do more and more things. Actually new collections had come in [and I'd] to look at them, sort them out and so on, and then I gradually got more and more of the queries to answer on them and instead of the Librarian dealing with them, they were passed to me.
J What was the nature of your responsibility in this job, I mean would you have advised about storage conditions, or was all of this done by the Librarian personally.
S The storage. Oh, I had nothing to do with that.
J So if manuscripts came in which you were working on you would simply ...
S Well I treated them with care and put them back.
J Yes. Yes. I see. Can you tell me anything about what it was like to come back to King's Library which you had known as a student quite some time before. Were there many changes?
S Yes. It was more comfortable. In my days as a student, as far as I can recollect, the seating and the tables were rudimentary, I mean the present tables and ancient chairs. [This was before the building of the Queen Mother Library.] Not decent tables and comparatively comfortable chairs to sit on and of course there weren't so many books, I mean, it wasn't so big. There weren't so many students in my day. I don't think I ever was in the stack room when I was a student. I don't know if I knew it existed to be quite candid. We weren't encouraged.
J As students, did you have departmental libraries which you supplemented with the [main one].
S I don't think we could have because I don't remember using them. I can't remember now [perhaps honours people had more facilities].
J But your impression of the changes when you came back as a member of staff, did they reach to other things as well as this general impression of comfort.
S Well, of course, when I was on the Dictionary we had quite a few books on permanent loan from King's and every year they had to come back for inspection and it was part of my job, there was no van in those days, I had to take them, I had to carry them back to Marischal for them go to King's, nobody thought of coming and just taking them straight to King's and so I used to see the Librarian at Marischal when I wanted something out of King's. We used to go across to Marischal for[a book] to save us going all the way up to King's, and phone and ask them to have it delivered to Marischal and I would go and collect it. So that I had known of it, you know, I never lost my connection with the library.
J Had procedures changed much in the period, I mean things like the issuing of books?
S Oh yes, I think so. They changed, they must have changed during the war. You see, when I was still on the Dictionary, we'd shifted to the Brewery [beside New King's]. We had rooms in the Brewery after the Training College so that I was continually going across to Kings for books then because it was so much easier. Often had to go to answer the telephone. [The Dictionary office had] no telephone. So that I gradually got to know more, the library wasn't unfamiliar to me when I came back to the staff.
J Yes, yes. And what about the members of staff? You presumably knew faces but maybe not...
S I didn't know them, no, I'd know them as faces. Except for, when I was a student, Miss Brown was on, she was I think sole counter hand at King's, old Miss Brown. And she was there in my brothers' time and they knew her as well. She was about ninety when she died.
J And what were her duties?
S Well, I, she seemed to be, she, she issued books. She didn't catalogue, I don't think. She issued books and she kept a very stern eye on the students and I don't think she - there were cataloguers as well. As a student you didn't have anything to do with the cataloguers and there weren't the same contacts - students and people didn't come up to the counter and ask. You'd never dream of asking Maggie Brown questions. You just asked for books.
J You had to know which book you wanted?
S Oh yes.
J And the issue system was one operated by slips?
S Yes.
J Oh I see. Could you give me any idea of what it was like to work in King's in the fifties? Was it a happy place to work in?
S I found it so, once they found a place for me to work in. Because you see, to begin with I was actually sitting in the big library at King's with a typewriter. I mean that's unheard of nowadays. But until they found a corner for me, where I could ply my typewriter. And I used my own one until they gave me a typewriter. And I was in various holes and corners until I actually got a room.
J You worked directly to Dr. Simpson's instructions presumably, initially?
S Initially, yes.
J What was Dr. Simpson like as a Librarian?
S Well, it's rather difficult for me. Because I didn't have anything to do with him as a Librarian. I mean he would come and say - ask how I was getting on. Sometimes he would ask me to do something and say there was no hurry for it and then he would come back the next day and say, 'Have you finished it?'. And I said, 'Well, you said there was no hurry for it, I haven't finished it'. And then the next day he would say, 'I'm wanting this in a terrific hurry' and you'd do it in a terrific hurry and then you'd find there was no hurry.
J And what sort of thing are you referring to there?
S Well, say, a specific piece of investigation. Perhaps a query had come up, this was the start of me answering queries. You know, somebody had written and he said, 'Oh would you look this up and give me something to answer this by' and then as the years went on it was, I was passed the letters [....]
J Did he himself have a particular interest in the early records of the college?
S Well yes. He, had, he, well P.J. Anderson of course did the Fasti but Dr. Simpson was more interested in his castles and his archaeology than the other thing.
J Did you form any impression of how he viewed P.J. Anderson's work?
S I can't say that I do. I thought that P. J. Anderson, how he managed to do all that he did do, I couldn't er- it was a tremendous piece of research doing all these Fasti. And as far as I could see, you know when I had to investigate things, it seemed to be correct.
J And the work that Dr. Simpson did outside the library, were you very aware of this, of his external researches?
S Well, everyone did. Yes. We all knew, his heart was in his castles. But the days of that kind of Librarian... He wasn't so interested in Librarianship because he wasn't - he was a historian. He hadn't gone on library training, I think.
J But the atmosphere in the library.
S We got on well.
J Would he have known most of the staff by....
S Oh yes. He would have...
J He would have addressed you by your surname would he, or would he have....
S I can't remember if he always called Miss Stephen or not, I can't remember. I can't remember.
J I have heard a story that at the time of inspection he sometimes organised an informal outing.
S Oh we always had an outing during inspection. It was always to a castle.
J And this was done by Dr. Simpson?
S Well, or a member of the staff, but I mean Dr. Simpson was behind it. I mean he encouraged us to do it. A member of the staff usually, actually saw to the booking of the hotel and the ordering of the bus.
J And when would you have normally done this?
S I think we usually, in my day, I think we usually did it in inspection week or at the end of inspection week.
J And it was during the week was it.
S Oh I think so. An evening.
J An evening, yes I see.
S 'Embus, debus. Get on to the bus, get off the bus.' And it was always a castle or a kirkyard.
J Any other members of staff that you've got particular memories of?
S Well of course I worked quite a bit with Mr. Drummond. It was he who gradually gave me actual manuscripts, apart from the Atholl stuff. 'You might pick up a bit of this and see how, see about , you know look into this and catalogue it or list it'. Because of course the cataloguing of the manuscript collections as you know was very behind hand.
J Yes the trades union material presumably...
S I did all that. Mr Hall started it and then he found that he couldn't cope with it as well as his own work and it was passed on to me and I did all that. I don't know if there is still any coming in is there? Is there any coming in now?
J Odd bits and pieces, not very much. Could you tell me anything about your connections with the academic staff? Would you have known many of them?
S You mean when I was working in the library? Of course I was working away at the back, I wasn't in evidence, you know, but I did know of course some of the staff and they got to know me. Walter Humphries, who was lecturer in Scots History, for example. He was a friend of mine and he used to come through and ask me about things he wanted to know about. But the others as a rule, well they would come with queries, queries, yes, but I mean I never got on intimate terms with them.
J Yes. But you would have felt part of the University community in other words.
S Oh yes. Oh yes. Oh yes.
J Could you tell me from that point of view of your impressions of the various changes that occurred which affected the library of course, but were changes within the University at large.
S You mean from my days as a student?
J From your days as a student. We haven't really mentioned the period of the war years, because as I understand it you weren't really involved in the University then.
S No. I was working on the Dictionary at that time.
J So the main change I suppose was the period of expansion in the late 50's and the 60s and early 70s the fact that the University was growing.
S Well of course the expansion didn't really affect me when I was working away in my small corner and the expansions didn't affect me you see.
J It didn't affect the workload in the library.
S Well it didn't affect my workload.
J The areas were never blurred, I mean you never found work being put upon you which would probably have been done by a Librarian.
S I don't quite know how to answer that. I know that people who were supposed to be in charge of enquiries, you know public coming in, the number of times my phone rang and I was asked the question by the person in charge, because she didn't know, but she expected me to know. Of course, I was local and that's a great advantage. I found that a great advantage because I had a mass of local knowledge in my head which I could draw upon and also my work upon the Dictionary helped me.
J Yes. Well I suppose the biggest single change in your career in the University library came in 1969 with the creation of a separate Department of Manuscripts and Archives. Had this been a development which had been built up towards over a number of years or did it come quite as a surprise?
S Well, I suppose it had been building up. I didn't know that it was building up, I mean, this was when Mr. McLaren was appointed. I didn't quite know what was coming and when he started he had so many new schemes about process sheets and, what's the other kind of sheets involved...You know the sheets we had to fill up. I mean that didn't happen before and I gradually got into the listing.
J Had you been aware of a build-up in demand upon that area of the library's activity? It was getting busier.
S Yes. There were more queries coming in and more collections and there wasn't anybody to handle them who had the training to handle them properly. I mean I was handling what I was told to handle but I was working quite a lot in the dark. I managed I think fairly successfully and then it was put on a regular basis.
J So you then worked to Mr. McLaren's direction?
S Yes, yes, and gradually as more and more queries came in I got more and more skilled in answering them. It was fortunate that I was able to type because I could, before we had any clerical assistance, I had to do all the typing as well as everything else.
J Would you think on recollection that this these new developments in themselves increased the demand upon your department? Do you think, looking at the seventies, that they were even busier than the sixties partly because you had more lists and the University was perhaps more aware that there was this activity?
S Oh, I think so. I think so. And then I suppose people writing from other universities and other institutions, the word got round that their queries were being answered.
J Were you ever involved in any sort of extra-mural activity?
S No.
J You never had to speak about the collections or ..
S No. Well, not extra-murally. Once there was a conference in Aberdeen and Mr. McLaren was going to give the wives of this conference a talk upon the Bull, the Papal Bull, and for some reason he couldn't do it and he said to me would I do it. And I said, 'Well, I don't really feel competent to do it'. And he said, 'Don't be silly.' So I got up stuff about the Bull and quite a lot of learned stuff as well and I had my notes and we went over it together and he said, 'Oh no, you must get it off by heart.' And so I did. And I went to go and speak to the people and we had the Bull itself, not a facsimile, but the bull itself up on the table, much to my horror, because the wives had brought their children and so I thought, 'Well there's no use talking learnedly to these youngsters', so I had to change my talk on the trot as it were and then I just gave them a simplified story of the Bull and a few stories about the library, which seemed to go down well, and at the end I got a box of peppermints and a bunch of flowers. So that was my...
J Yes. In the days before Mr. McLaren came, if distinguished visitors had come, would they have been shown something like the Bull or the Bestiary?
S Yes, by the Librarian.
J By the Librarian.
S Yes.
J And when members of academic staff were allowed access to manuscripts, were you ever involved in that in a supervisory capacity?
S [...]
J Yes, I understood that a number of them could consult the manuscripts on the shelves.
S I can't remember exactly, I think Mr. Drummond used to go up to the room himself. Sometimes he might depute me, I can't remember that.
J Yes. Well there is one area that we haven't touched on at all yet and that is a period when you were assisting Mr. Mackintosh.
S On the Roll of Graduates?
J On the Roll of Graduates, yes. Could you tell me a little about that?
S Well, I was working on the Atholl manuscripts at that time and Mr. Mackintosh was working at Marischal and he got a bit bogged down and they asked if I would go and help him. They thought that having worked on the Dictionary and having put proofs through before I left the Dictionary - I was in sole charge of a letter from beginning to end and putting it through prints and correcting proofs and so on - so they thought that I would be able to help Mr. Mackintosh and [as clerical assistant] so I went there part-time to begin with and then full-time until we got it finished. And after it was finished, I said to the University, 'Look, my job in the Library has been part-time up till now but I've been doing so much, don't you think you could make it full-time?'. And they did. But the Roll of Graduates, we did it on slips - each person had a - you know, there was a for each, curriculum vitae...
J Yes, yes.
S But there was a lot of, again there was a lot of typing.
J And this would have been just at the time of the publication in 1960?
S It was before that, the year before.
J The year before that, yes.
S Yes, that seemed ... And it was, you know, you worked from University's records of the person and then you tried to get in touch with them by letter and the number of addresses was - so many of them were wrong and returned and so on. It made life very difficult for me to try and find out from other sources what had happened to people. I don't know if we were as successful as we might have been, but we did our best.
J Did you get the impression it was a well-organised venture?
S I think it could have probably been better organised if we had really known what we were doing, better known how to go about it. Mr. Mackintosh was full of enthusiasm but not terribly business-like, I think.
J Were you aware of the reception of this volume by the graduates?
S Well, of course, I went straight back, I came straight back to King's and the minute that I did the last proof I left all the finishing off to Mr. Mackintosh and went back to my own work.
J So you never heard whether there were complaints about inaccuracies or anything like that?
S I had nothing to do with it after it was sent to the press, [and proof-reading finished].
J Did you have any contact in the preparations for the next Roll of Graduates, any contacts with Louise Donald?
S Well, they came to ask me what how they'd gone about the one before and they discovered that all the - Mr. Mackintosh must have just thrown out all the stuff when he was finished because they couldn't find anything, you know, any notes or 'this might be followed up for next time' or something. There was nothing. We couldn't find anything anywhere. So I don't know what happened to it. Perhaps somebody else found out what had happened to it but I didn't because as soon as I was finished with editing, I left, so that I didn't know how he did his clearing-up, otherwise I might have said to him, 'Look, don't throw that away', but I hadn't the opportunity.
J Yes, but you did then have some contact with the people who were preparing for the next Roll?
S Well, with the - it must have been the editorial committee and Louise Donald.
J Yes, and this was from your experience in the archives and the fact that you were...
S Yes, or anything that had happened that was in the press or anything like that.
J So it was partly a personal contact?
S Oh yes. It had to be. Completely personal, I never was down to her office or anything
J Yes, yes, I see.
S But we belonged to the same church and I often used to see her on Sundays..
J Well, I think perhaps in the time that's left there may be just one or two points. We haven't as yet referred at all to the Principal and I wondered if at any stage, either as a student or a member of staff, did you ever meet any of the Principals or...?
S Well, I met Sir Peter Noble - not Sir Peter...
J Fraser.
S Fraser, Fraser Noble, as a student. We were doing Moral Philosophy together but I didn't really know him because the women in the Moral Phil. class didn't really meet up with the men unless they were interested in each other. I didn't know him.
J What about the Principals in office?
S I remember [Sir William Hamilton]Fyfe coming in to look at us in class when I was a student and then going out again. And then I remember when I was first was on the staff of the library, being asked to a evening's reception sort of thing by Sir Thomas Taylor.
J As a member of the library staff?
S Yes. That was the only time that a Principal asked me and I think that was partly due to the fact that Sir Thomas Taylor and Lady Taylor knew me through the Student Christian Movement. That was the only time I was ever [in the Principal's house].
J Was that something that most members of the library staff would have enjoyed?
S Oh, I don't know. You were asked, I think it was that Lady Taylor asked you when you first came on to the staff, I think that was it. I never was asked again. So I don't know what the others will say...
J But what did the students generally think of the Principal? Was he a very distant figure or...
S I think so.
J Would they have recognised him by sight?
S Oh yes, I think so. Well, it would depend. The medicals mightn't have. I don't know.
J What about the University Office? You mentioned Colonel Butchart came to your assistance on one occasion. Had you known him by sight well before?
S Yes. Nobody could miss Colonel Butchart with his kilt. No. Everybody knew Colonel Butchart by sight. And the Office, we didn't come in contact, well I didn't come in contact with the Office until much much later.
J Were you at all interested in the activities around college chapel?
S Well, I didn't come out to, didn't go out to college chapel mainly because I was an active member of my own church, round the corner in Beechgrove, and it was much nearer. Even when I was staying in Rubislaw Terrace because our family, ever since we came into Aberdeen, had been connected with that church. So I didn't go out to chapel, mainly again for physical reasons.
J Can you think of any areas, perhaps, we haven't covered and might touch on?
S In what respect?
J Anything you'd like to add about, well perhaps particularly about the changes in the University?
S Well, I think that I would say the main change is that we were much more the University of the North-east and the Highlands in my day than nowadays. And the medicals and the arts people, unless they had members of their family in both, they didn't mix so much as they possibly do now. But there was the Union - but I don't think there was - there weren't so - it wasn't so big. Mind you, of course, because of my own disability, I didn't take part in all these activities so I can't really tell you about that.
J When you mentioned that it was more North-eastern, you're referring to the student body?
S Yes. And also the professors too. There were far more, far more of the staff had their roots in this area than nowadays.
J How were appointments of outsiders greeted? I mean to say when you were in the library and they were increasingly appointing people who came from elsewhere - did this go quite without comment or...?
S I couldn't really say. I mean you took it for granted. I don't think I thought about it, to be quite candid.
J No. It's just something that happened naturally.
S Just happened, yes.
J Well I think...
S Thank you. May I say that I enjoyed every minute of my life within the University, although it had its ups and downs. I'm very glad to have been there and been some service to it, and I was very glad to - very proud to have got a Jubilee medal from the Queen, probably for my work in the University and I did appreciate that.
J Well I think that's a nice note on which to end.
End of interview
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