Thursday 14 March 2013

Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics

Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics

Max is very pleased to be associated with this project. We were privileged to digitise the work of Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin who made crucial contributions to the discovery of DNA's structure in 1953 at Kings College London. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/newsevents/news/newsrecords/2013/03-March/Codebreakers-the-story-of-DNA.aspx



The Great Chart Letters


Great Chart is a village in the Ashford District of Kent. The village is typical of many English villages, with two pubs and a thriving cricket club. The village war memorial is located on the main road with the names of the fallen including the rank, place and date of death. Two rolls of honour hang in the parish church.
1915 was a momentous year in the history of the First World War and included the first German zeppelin attack, German U-Boats attacking allied shipping, allied amphibious attack on Gallipoli, first use of poison gas at Ypres and the sinking of the Lusitania. During this year Mrs Elizabeth Strouts started up the Great Chart Sailors’ and Soldiers’ fund. The Committee of this fund sent almost 600 parcels and 989 letters expressing goodwill and support to servicemen and in turn received back 1,605 letters and numerous ‘Field Cards’.
From the appeal notice of the fund:
“These men are making effort and sacrifice ‘Out there’. How great the effort and how great the sacrifice can never be realised. They are enduring unspeakable hardships, facing difficulties of so many kinds, grim dangers, probably mutilation and death, for the security of Home and for all that is held most dear.”
The letters received back from the servicemen are held in the archives of the Kent History and Library Centre within twenty-two bound volumes. The letters are from very diverse parts of the world and give a fascinating insight into the lives of servicemen during the First World War. The letters include replies by sailors on the North Sea, soldiers in the trenches in Europe and men serving in the British-Indian garrison 100 miles south of Baghdad.
Max is very pleased to digitise this collection of important letters for the Kent History and Library Centre in Maidstone. With the coming centenary of the First World War this digitisation project is an excellent way of providing much greater access to these letters and also to help preserve them long into the future.