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RECORDS-MANAGEMENT-UK  January 2013

RECORDS-MANAGEMENT-UK January 2013

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Subject:

Have Records Management Attitudes and Practices Changed Since Dickens' Time? Discuss

From:

Lawrence Rodgers <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

[log in to unmask]

Date:

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 07:18:30 -0000

Content-Type:

text/plain

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text/plain (71 lines)

Taken from David Copperfield Chapter 33... Apologies if posted
before...........

"Taking that part of the Commons which happened to be nearest to us - for
our man was unmarried by this time, and we were out of Court, and
strolling past the Prerogative Office - I submitted that I thought the
Prerogative Office rather a queerly managed institution. Mr. Spenlow
inquired in what respect? I replied, with all due deference to his
experience (but with more deference, I am afraid, to his being Dora's
father), that perhaps it was a little nonsensical that the Registry of
that Court, containing the original wills of all persons leaving effects
within the immense province of Canterbury, for three whole centuries,
should be an accidental building, never designed for the purpose, leased
by the registrars for their Own private emolument, unsafe, not even
ascertained to be fire-proof, choked with the important documents it held,
and positively, from the roof to the basement, a mercenary speculation of
the registrars, who took great fees from the public, and crammed the
public's wills away anyhow and anywhere, having no other object than to
get rid of them cheaply. That, perhaps, it was a little unreasonable that
these registrars in the receipt of profits amounting to eight or nine
thousand pounds a year (to say nothing of the profits of the deputy
registrars, and clerks of seats), should not be obliged to spend a little
of that money, in finding a reasonably safe place for the important
documents which all classes of people were compelled to hand over to them,
whether they would or no. That, perhaps, it was a little unjust, that all
the great offices in this great office should be magnificent sinecures,
while the unfortunate working-clerks in the cold dark room upstairs were
the worst rewarded, and the least considered men, doing important
services, in London. That perhaps it was a little indecent that the
principal registrar of all, whose duty it was to find the public,
constantly resorting to this place, all needful accommodation, should be
an enormous sinecurist in virtue of that post (and might be, besides, a
clergyman, a pluralist, the holder of a staff in a cathedral, and what
not), - while the public was put to the inconvenience of which we had a
specimen every afternoon when the office was busy, and which we knew to be
quite monstrous. That, perhaps, in short, this Prerogative Office of the
diocese of Canterbury was altogether such a pestilent job, and such a
pernicious absurdity, that but for its being squeezed away in a corner of
St. Paul's Churchyard, which few people knew, it must have been turned
completely inside out, and upside down, long ago.

Mr. Spenlow smiled as I became modestly warm on the subject, and then
argued this question with me as he had argued the other. He said, what was
it after all? It was a question of feeling. If the public felt that their
wills were in safe keeping, and took it for granted that the office was
not to be made better, who was the worse for it? Nobody. Who was the
better for it? All the Sinecurists. Very well. Then the good predominated.
It might not be a perfect system; nothing was perfect; but what he
objected to, was, the insertion of the wedge. Under the Prerogative
Office, the country had been glorious. Insert the wedge into the
Prerogative Office, and the country would cease to be glorious. He
considered it the principle of a gentleman to take things as he found
them; and he had no doubt the Prerogative Office would last our time. I
deferred to his opinion, though I had great doubts of it myself. I find he
was right, however; for it has not only lasted to the present moment, but
has done so in the teeth of a great parliamentary report made (not too
willingly) eighteen years ago, when all these objections of mine were set
forth in detail, and when the existing stowage for wills was described as
equal to the accumulation of only two years and a half more. What they
have done with them since; whether they have lost many, or whether they
sell any, now and then, to the butter shops; I don't know. I am glad mine
is not there, and I hope it may not go there, yet awhile."

Lawrence Rodgers

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