Agnes Cuming (1890 - 1962)
Agnes Cuming was the first Librarian of the University of Hull
(then University College of Hull). She took up her post on 11
February 1929, at the age of 39, with an impressive career already
established. She had completely reclassified and recatalogued the
Library of the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth and had
been in charge of western manuscripts and rare books at the
Bodleian Library in Oxford for four years. Her work at Hull is well
represented in the archives of the Librarian's Office and is also
retold in A Lifted Study-Storehouse Philip Larkin's
account of the Brynmor Jones Library 1929 - 1979.
University College Hull had existed for two terms without a
library, prior to Agnes Cuming's appointment; the library then
opened on 8 March 1929. The Library Committee awarded a handsome
stocking grant of £30,000 - when Agnes Cuming and her two
assistants arrived her primary concern was to organise and control
the rapid influx of books. 40,000 volumes were added, catalogued
and processed in three years, the equivalent of a book every 10
minutes for every single weekday.
Accommodation for library staff and students within the library
was more problematic, "its spatial provision was as miserable as
its financial provision had been magnificent". The library occupied
various rooms in what is now the Cohen Building, expanding
gradually on different floors and also, in 1950, into a large
prefabricated hut. Despite the College's original intention that
the first building after the arts and science buildings of 1928
should be a centrally situated library, this was not accomplished
until 1959.
In the meantime, Agnes Cuming had to face further challenges. In
1941-1942, when heavy bombing started, she organised the evacuation
of 45,000 volumes to various ‘sanctuaries' in the surrounding
countryside. She took decisions as to what books should be moved,
found alternative homes, recorded temporary locations, moved and
shelved the books; and then subsequently, moved them back again.
The University campus survived unscathed, but not so Agnes Cuming
herself. She was bombed out of her house, but with characteristic
obstinacy, moved to a house a few doors away.
Agnes Cuming died, aged 72, in 1962, on 8 March - by
coincidence, the same day on which the University Library first
opened its doors 33 years previously. The University Gazette
recorded her life, career and character.
"Hard working, conscientious and devout, she was liked by all.
... Normally cheerful, she could, when occasion demanded, employ a
formidable Irish tember, which never lasted long and which was
entirely unmalicious."
Staff "called her Miss Cuming, because, though occasionally
referred to as ‘Aunt Agnes' by irreverent junior members of the
staff, even her most intimate friends never used her Christian
name. ... This was partly because she herself disliked it, and
partly because she had no use for the modern fashion for using
Christian names on short acquaintance."
"In her younger days she had been a suffragette and remained an
old-fashioned radical to the end ... always ready to discuss
people, books and politics with combativeness and wit."