The Griffin Parcels

Stacked in neat piles, on some 35 feet of shelving at St Bride Library, are the Griffin Parcels.

Each is wrapped in thick brown paper, grimy, fragile with age, and tied with hairy string in neat bows. At the end of each intriguing bundle a simple label has been glued into place, with notation in a rather more casual style than that favoured by19th century office clerks and accountants, but of the same vintage nonetheless. There are 165 of these packages—some dating from 1860—but only a handful have ever been unwrapped, despite being at the library since 1972. The temptation to tear away the wrappings and examine the contents is hard to resist, but an important aspect of this process cannot be overlooked—conservation.

The mystery parcels contain mid-19th century boxwood engravings and a small number of other illustration blocks from later decades which were produced by the new-fangled photographic processes then emerging. The blocks were all used to illustrate books published by Charles Griffin & Co, and the package labels indicate the title of each work, and sometimes the page range, as many books have multiple parcels associated with them. Griffin transferred the packages to St Bride, along with their paper archives, over 50 years ago. Six albums of block proofs, day books, account ledgers and a huge file of correspondence and author contracts were deposited at the same time.

Charles Griffin and Co. was established in 1852 after Charles, the nephew of John Joseph Griffin, took over the publishing side of the family company. Prior to this acquisition, the business ran as a partnership, also providing chemical apparatus for the science industry. The scientific side of the business was continued by his uncle under the name J. J. Griffin & Sons.

Some Griffin books are also held at St Bride. One of their best-known publications is Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor lavishly illustrated with full page engravings of those who eked out their meagre living on the capital’s thoroughfares, as beggars, crossing-sweepers, bun vendors and prostitutes.  The original boxwood engravings for all four volumes of Mayhew’s work are held at St Bride. The illustrations for the book have a vibrancy rarely seen in wood engraving—and for a very good reason. Every image was originally captured as a photograph, and the resulting prints were used as a guide by the engraver. The original Daguerreotypes were lost long ago, but the surviving engravings capture real-life expressions and poses in a way which a simple sketch never could.

The Griffin parcels remain in a kind of ‘suspended animation’, largely untouched since they were wrapped in the second half of the 19th century, awaiting the skills and knowledge of an expert who can carefully assess their contents, proof them and create detailed documentation for the guidance of future researchers.

When funding for the provision of archival boxes and specialist effort becomes available, each parcel will be carefully unwrapped, noting the position of each block within the three layers separated by strawboard. The inked annotations on the boards must also be recorded, the blocks cleaned and the contents transferred to acid-free storage boxes. The paper and string will be discarded, but the labels will be preserved and stored in acetate pouches with the contents of each package. It is a big job which may take many years to complete. We look forward to proofing the wood engravings for Macalister’s Anatomy,  Frontispieces (Various) and Criminal Prisons in particular.

Several packages have split open, making a small number of wood engravings accessible. Shown alongside this blog are two random blocks from one of the ‘anatomy’ packets, and an original engraved boxwood image showing Millbank Prison. The latter has been dusted with French chalk to show the detail. The prison was demolished in 1890, and Tate Britain now stands on the site. There may be far more interesting examples wrapped within the packages, but their discovery remains some years away.