I started volunteering in the British Jesuit Archives in November 2023, in this time I’ve worked on numerous different projects relating to Jesuits and their histories and have expanded my knowledge of Jesuit history while growing my archive skills alongside studying.
The project that I’ve spent the most time on recently and the one that I’ve become most familiar with are the papers of Frank Hannan. A Jesuit priest with poor sight, Fr Hannan dedicated much of his life to supporting the blind and founded a small organisation known as the Blind Crusade which provided support for blind Catholics. He was instrumental in running the Crusade for 30 years alongside his early career teaching English, Maths and Religious Doctrine and then from his base in Clitheroe where he spent thirty years on the parish staff. The papers held by the British Jesuit archive are his only papers to have survived and interestingly are almost entirely focused on the Blind Crusade, though this element of his life and work was not mentioned at all in his obituary.
Examples of Fr Hannan's notes and letters
A prolific collector and note taker, Fr Hannan was meticulous in keeping correspondence and paperwork relating to the Crusade, this gave me an exceptional insight, not just into him and his life but into the impact that his life’s work had on blind Catholics in the UK from the mid 1930’s until the 1970’s. Using the covers of children’s exercise books as folders, he kept some order in his paperwork, making my job of cataloguing his papers a bit easier. By combing through hundreds of letters, notes and pamphlets, I learnt how he worked to support blind Catholics in their everyday lives, giving them connections and bringing them together at events and parties as well as furthering their learning and opportunities by supporting them on a more individual and personal basis.
As I worked on Fr Hannan’s collection I became familiar not just with him and the challenges he faced in this work, but also with the names of those who supported him in his mission, some of whom wrote him dozens of letters. I followed their progress through time, observing their handwriting change as they became more elderly, and noticing as eventually as their letters disappeared from the files of correspondence. This gave me a small glimpse into the lives of others and left me with a strong sense of nostalgia for letter writing and of how handwritten communication can bring a person and their writing to life in a more rounded way than the emails that define our communications today.
My experience with this project has given me a glimpse into the privilege of being an archivist, of delving into the lives of others, of reading the letters of those who knew them and of personal shared moments between people. People who aren’t necessarily well known but whose lives have made an impact and whose memory should be preserved and made accessible for others to appreciate.
Fr Hannan died in 1984 aged 82 and later this year on the 40th anniversary of his death his papers will be made accessible in the British Jesuit Archive.
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