Necessary Women: uncovering stories of women in the archives

In this guest blog Dr Mari Takayanagi, Senior Archivist at the Parliamentary Archives, discusses doing historical research as an archivist and previews the story of archivist Elisabeth Ross Poyser, one of the women featured in 'Necessary Women', her new book with Elizabeth Hallam Smith.

As an archivist working in public services and outreach, I get to engage briefly with lots of fascinating documents in the Parliamentary Archives but rarely to read them in depth. Some years ago I decided to do a history PhD on the subject of women and Parliament, to deepen my knowledge of our records and understand more about their historical context.

Gamekeeper turned poacher: archivist turns historian

Although most of my sources were at the Parliamentary Archives, I visited various other archives in the course of my research including The National Archives, London Metropolitan Archives, the Women's Library (now at LSE), the Bodleian, and Cambridge University Library, and always found it illuminating being on the other side of the supervisor's desk. I felt like a gamekeeper turned poacher, no longer patrolling the use of pencils and cameras, but trawling the records for anything that might help my research. I hope I've always had a strong customer service ethos, but the experience definitely gave me more empathy for our researchers and helped me understand the way they work.

As a woman working in Parliament I was particularly interested in finding out more about my predecessors, and as a small part of my research I investigated the history of female staff in the House of Commons and House of Lords. Fast forward 10+ years, and I have finally returned to develop this research and turn it into a book. Along the way I gained a collaborator; Elizabeth Hallam Smith, another archivist and historian. She was researching women staff in Parliament in a slightly earlier period to me, and our areas of knowledge met perfectly in the middle. We worked together to do lots more research, utilising many sources that simply hadn't been available when I did the PhD, such as the 1921 census and the British Newspaper Archive. And the result is our book, Necessary Women: the Untold Story of Parliament's Working Women.

Elisabeth Ross Poyser, 'Records Girl'

One of our Necessary Women is an archivist - Elisabeth Ross Poyser MA, who became Assistant Clerk of the Records in the House of Lords Record Office (the former name for the Parliamentary Archives) in July 1950. She was second-in-command to Maurice Bond. Bond was Clerk of the Records for many years; he and his wife Shelagh were important figures in the archival profession in the post-war period, including in the British Records Association and at St George's Chapel Windsor, both of whom still have Bond Memorial Lectures.

The House of Lords Record Office was only founded in 1946, so Poyser was one of the earliest archivists in Parliament. She was born in 1923 in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, and was a history research student at Newnham College, Cambridge, before coming to the Lords. Newnham Archives were very helpful in confirming details of her background and study. Her recruitment to the Lords was sufficiently notable to make the press with the headline ‘Records Girl’.

‘Records Girl’, press cutting, August 1950. Parliamentary Archives, HL/PO/RO/2/66

Wanted: a woman graduate

I was particularly intrigued to discover in the archives that the reason for having a 'Records Girl' was that Maurice Bond set out to recruit a woman. He wanted a woman graduate in History or Classics, with an archives diploma or research degree and palaeography and Latin skills, so he wrote to the Public Record Office (now TNA) and the Institute of Historical Research to ask them to recommend female candidates. Bond interviewed six women and Poyser got the job. The role was to run the public search room, prepare records for microfilming, list Acts of Parliament, box and index the Parchment Collection, undertake research and writing for publications, and continue the calendar of House of Lords manuscripts.

Although Bond regarded the post as particularly suited to a woman, the records do not explain why. There is no evidence that he was motivated by reasons of gender equality. I contacted two retired staff of the House of Lords who had known Bond well, who confirmed that he would have been looking at the requirements of the post, relevant skills and knowledge, and potential of the applicant, as well as seeking comparability between his staff hierarchy and the clerks (senior staff in the Lords). Bond had to argue hard for increased staffing and may have suggested a woman in part because she would be cheaper to employ – this was a few years before equal pay was introduced in the public service. Additionally, he would have expected a reasonable pool of candidates. I discussed this with Elizabeth Shepherd at UCL as the expert in the history of the archival profession in the UK, who confirmed that women entered archives as a profession in greater numbers after the Second World War, as well as being recruited to do historical work for projects such as the Victoria County History.

A pioneering woman

Poyser did not find the House of Lords a welcoming environment, and Bond and Poyser did not have a particularly good working relationship. However Bond took steps to try to rectify overt discrimination when he could, fighting for her to have access to the House of Lords Library, for example, at a time when women were not allowed. In 1965 Poyser departed Parliament for a new job at the Westminster Diocesan Archives. The Diocesan Archives told me that she was the first female lay archivist employed by the Catholic Church – so another pioneering role.

Maurice Bond retired from Parliament in 1981 and died in 1983. Poyser remained as Diocesan Archivist until her retirement in 1989 and died in 2010. I'm grateful for her part in preserving and cataloguing the records that I now look after and research in myself. I'm sorry that I never got the chance to meet her, and that I didn't start researching her story until after her death, but I'm glad to be able to shed some light on such a pioneering woman now, via Necessary Women.

Dr Mari Takayanagi, RMARA, FRHistS

'Necessary Women: the Untold Story of Parliament's Working Women' by Mari Takayanagi and Elizabeth Hallam Smith is published by The History Press on 22 June 2023. ARA members are entitled to a discount of 25%, valid until 5 August 2023. Please email deborah.mason@archives.org.uk for details on how to obtain this discount.