National archives gave me a quote

[MrTwibbs]

I got back today a quote from the National Archives in London for

MEPO 1/48 Commissioner's letters, confidential and private, 1867-91.
MEPO 1/54 Out Ietters, 1890-1919.
MEPO 1/55 Letters to Home Office etc., 1883-1904.
MEPO 1/65 Letters from Receiver to Home Office etc., 1868-91.
MEPO 2/227 Police reinforcements for Whitechapel after Pinchin St. murder 1891.

I nearly spat my water out when I read how much it would cost. About £1000
to get it copied and sent to me.
That's a lot of money and they cannot copy MEPO 1/55 and MEPO 1/54 as there's too many pages to count they tell me.
I have the Source book by Mr Evans but how much information is actually in the public domain? i.e. available in books? or should i assume researchers have already been over these files and selected only pertinent ones?
if there's so many pages of it...over a 1000 ripper documents relating to the case?
wow!!

[Bob Hinton]

National Archives

I got back today a quote from the National Archives in London for

I nearly spat my water out when I read how much it would cost. About £1000
to get it copied and sent to me.
That's a lot of money and they cannot copy MEPO 1/55 and MEPO 1/54 as there's too many pages to count they tell me.

wow!!

They quote such horrendous prices to put people off; otherwise the entire staff would spend all their time copying documents.

If you can manage to get there they have excellent facilities for photographing the documents. They have a special section for people wishing to use their own cameras complete with about thirty industrial type camera stands.

I have used this free facility many times as it is cheaper for me to go up to Kew to copy what I want. Be warned though police files contain a lot of garbage. I recently had over 700 pages of police files from South Wales Police and about 5% of the contents were things like ‘Thank you for the letter you wrote” etc. My personal favourites are the letters enclosing Postal Orders for some document sent by another police force. “I enclose a PO for 1/7 please make sure it goes to PC 987 Wilson”

[MrTwibbs]

Hi Bob thanks for the advice. They sound very posh. I'm going to get down there asap.

[Bob Hinton]

Humble

Hi Bob thanks for the advice. They sound very posh. I'm going to get down there asap.

I found them incredibly helpful with one exception. I took my digital camera with me and a laptop so I could instantly check the photos were clear.

They issue you with a readers card when you get there so take some form of picture ID with. It is a fantastic place with a great snack bar on the bottom floor.

[Chris]

They are quite particular about which forms of identification are acceptable, so it will be worth checking here in order to avoid problems:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/visit/readers-ticket.htm

[mariab]

National Archives

Bob Hinton wrote:
I have used this free facility many times as it is cheaper for me to go up to Kew to copy what I want. Be warned though police files contain a lot of garbage. I recently had over 700 pages of police files from South Wales Police and about 5% of the contents were things like ‘Thank you for the letter you wrote” etc. My personal favourites are the letters enclosing Postal Orders for some document sent by another police force. “I enclose a PO for 1/7 please make sure it goes to PC 987 Wilson”
I can TOTALLY confirm this is the case for all National Archives, having intensely researched at the Paris Archives Nationales and at the Archivio di Stato in Naples and in Rome. Plus the inventaries (when there are are some, prepared by librarians from older generations) are not always correct as to the content of most boxes/documents. Often the inventaries mention documents that are NOT there (missing? misplaced?). I've had that very often, and it's a huge disappointment going through the same box twice, and finding out the source(s) in question's other gone or quoted wrong. Esp. in Paris, the inventory by the late director of the Paris Archives Nationales (Dr. Brigitte Labat-Poussin) states things like “letter by X refusing to participate in Y“, (making me expect that I've hit pay dirt on some scandal/internal conflict), while in reality the letter was about X asking for a postponed participation in Y due to his being too busy for that week with other obligations, etc.. But it's a known fact that the French are too volative for real attention to detail, so possibly the Kew inventaries are very good. I've seen various mistakes at the British Library catalogues, but only pertaining to false identification of musical scores as alleged autographs, but such a mistake is easy to happen to librarians, if they're not specialists in the field involved. And at the British Library they correct the mistake immediately, when notified. (While at the Staatsbibliothek Berlin, they still haven't corrected some painfully wrong claims in their card catalogue, which my boss and I signaled in 2002!!)
Mr Twibbs, are you going to Kew to consult documents in the near future? I wish I could, and if I were London-based I would! If I were you, I'd start with MEPO 1/48 Commissioner's letters, confidential and private, 1888-91. I'm sure the letters would be sorted out chronologically and in good order. But perhaps someone's already gone through this?
Anyway, the best of lucks, Mr Twibbs, if you go to Kew!