I am a bit mystified about a mystery writer and a mysterious
place that celebrates another mysterious person. Are you mystified already? I
don’t blame you!
Choosing a career
Back in 1974 I had just finished at university and was
unsure as to what I wanted to do for a career. One possibility was
librarianship, but before committing myself I decided to have a go at the job
to see what it entailed. I therefore found myself at the central library of the
University of London, working as a junior assistant for a whole academic year.
This involved moving round a number of departments within
this vast library, housed in a towering edifice very close to the British Museum. One of the departments was the
Reference division, which was responsible for a number of special collections.
And that brings us to the mystery!
It is not unknown in academic circles for scholars to
accumulate vast collections of material and stipulate in their wills, or even
during their lifetimes, that they want those collections to be housed by
prestigious university institutions. This is partly out of vanity, but also
because the value of their work is widely recognised and it is the university
that has persuaded the scholar to make such a provision. However, in the case I
want to mention here, I reckon that vanity had much more to do with it!
Harry Price
Harry Price is a name that was much more widely known in the
first half of the 20th century than it is now. He was one of the
chief pioneers of “scientific” psychical research, investigating claims of
ghostly apparitions, spirit phenomena, and all sorts of weird and wonderful
things. He came to public attention in a big way when he investigated the
ghostly goings-on at Borley Rectory in Suffolk, which caught the public
attention as “the most haunted house in England” in the years just prior to
World War II. Unfortunately for Harry’s reputation, later investigations have
shown that in his efforts to expose frauds and mountebanks he committed a huge
number of fakeries himself.
However, the gift of his library to the University of London
in 1936 was made before the truth was known, and the collection was accepted in
good faith as a contribution to the world of learning and knowledge.
The Harry Price Library
When I found myself having to visit this collection on an
almost daily basis, it had been in situ for nearly 40 years, kept intact in a
part of the building that was not generally accessible to students and other
visitors, except by special arrangement. The space it occupied was crossed by
pipes through which the wind whistled eerily or water gurgled menacingly, and
the lighting was not of the brightest. This all seemed highly appropriate for
the contents of the library, namely Price’s vast accumulation of books and
papers on virtually anything to do with the occult, mediums, ghosts,
witchcraft, magic, astrology, conjuring, and much more. Several of the young
ladies who worked as library assistants were very reluctant to go near the
place, and I quite often ran gallant errands on their behalf!
I mentioned above that visitors were only allowed by special
permission, and the few who did ask tended to be of a different nature from the
usual class of researchers that would be expected in a university library. I
remember one little old lady who had a fascination with witchcraft and the
occult and who established herself in the library on a virtually permanent
basis. It may have been her resemblance to a witch that made visits by the girl
library assistants so unpopular! The lady had eventually to be asked to leave
when it was found that she had brought in an electric toaster that was plugged
into a lighting socket!
So who is the mystery writer that I mentioned in my opening
sentence? Not the little old lady with the toaster, but another “scholar” with
an abiding interest in all things mysterious, and who might indeed have
gathered much from the contents of Harry Price’s library. She even features a
very similar library in her stories about a boy wizard, curiously named Harry.
Did J K Rowling ever make use of this library? No biography
I have read has said so, but it would not surprise me if this was the case.
© John Welford
