See the entry under "Crosscultural" for details of London Metropolitan Archives' Black and Asian Londoners project.

See the entry under "Crosscultural" for details of London Metropolitan Archives' Black and Asian Londoners project.

In 2005, London Metropolitan Archive acquired material from the Chinese National Healthy Living Centre (formerly the London Chinese Health Resource Centre). The material relates to an oral history project called "Whispers in Time" - an oral history of London's Chinese community with memories of migration and settlement. The material was condensed into an 87 minute video, but the full material is held in the archive. It consists of:

30 mini DV tapes: 30 hours of interviews CD of photographs of the interviewees and project

Final DVD

Posters, leaflets and other publicity

Dates: 2004 - 2005

Access: by advance request (audio-visual equipment required to access these records)

London Metropolitan Archive are hoping to acquire more Chinese material over the next couple of years.

LMA has recently taken in the archive of Eric and Jessica Huntley, prominent and influential members of the Caribbean Community in London. Eric and Jessica originate from Guyana (formerly British Guiana), where they were both active political campaigners. On their move to London in the late 1950s Eric and Jessica began a lifelong commitment to the concerns and issues of the Black and Caribbean community in London. In 1969 they founded Bogle l’Ouverture Publications, a publishing house devoted to the production of works from members of their community. In 1974 they opened a bookshop, which became the focus of this activity. Both remain very active in the various movements and organisations which they have founded over the years.

Their archive was deposited by the Huntleys in 2005 as two separate collections: 1 – the personal archive of Eric and Jessica Huntley, which includes campaigning material, records of the businesses and movements they were involved in and papers relating to Guyana and the Black and Caribbean Community in London; and 2 – the archive of Bogle l’Ouverture Publications, which includes business records, publications including videos and tapes, correspondence with authors, awards and tributes.

The Huntley archive in total runs to 190 linear feet and spans the years from 1950 to 2005. It is hoped that the collection will become available to readers early in 2006, once it has been sorted and catalogued.

Also, see the entry under "Crosscultural" for details of London Metropolitan Archives' Black and Asian Londoners project.

+LMA has recently completed a project to compile a database of Black and Asian migration to the capital between the years of 1536 and 1840. This project, entitled “Black and Asian Londoners: Presence and Background 1536-1840”, was funded through the British Library's Co-operation and Partnership Programme (CPP). LMA has been working as the project lead partner alongside other archives around London which are looking at their own holdings for information on Black and Asian people.

The majority of the data has come from the 1129 existing baptism registers for the project period held at LMA. A team of record agents has systematically surveyed the original registers and identified people of Black and Asian origin, pulling out their names, ages, areas of residence and how their ethnicity is described. For example, we have found 'Charles, a boy 10 or 12 years old brought from Guiana by Sir Walter Raleigh', baptised 1597, 'James, a mulatto, footman of Mrs Bruce junior, widow', baptised 5th November 1709 and 'William John, a labourer from Malabar, East Indies', born Christmas 1840.

The second phase of the project has involved expanding the search to include marriage and burial registers for those boroughs which provided substantial returns of names during the first phase. Finally, other sources at LMA, such as family and estate papers have been examined. It is hoped that the finished database will be made available on LMA’s website for general access in due course.

Black and Asian Londoners Online Archive

See under "Christian" for details of French Hugeneot records.

See under "Christian" for details of German Lutheran churches in London.

The Chamber of London, presided over by the Chamberlain of the Corporation of London, acted as the treasury for the City of London as a whole, and as such was the depository for various funds raised for charitable purposes of all types. One of these funds was to aid distressed French Protestant refugees during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Records of this fund survive within the records of the Chamberlain of the Corporation of London. The records date from 1694 to 1718 and consist mainly of briefs for the collection of alms, and warrants for the distribution of the collected funds. These records are available for general access.

LMA also holds the personal and business records of the Gascherie, Gashry and Hanrott families, prominent members of the Huguenot community in London. The papers cover the period 1592 – 1913 and are available for general access.

The archive of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Kirche (German Church, Sydenham), previously known as the German Evangelical Church, has also been deposited at LMA. This church was built in 1882 and after suffering greatly during the second world war, was rebuilt in 1958 and renamed after a previous pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was also pastor of the German United Reformed Church in Whitechapel. The collection includes ecclesiastical records, property records and also a series of records describing work with other German congregations, mainly Lutheran. This archive is available for general access.

London Metropolitan Archives holds one of the best collections of Anglo-Jewish archive material in the UK. Its collections span the religious spectrum of the Ashkenazi community, covering orthodox, reform and liberal congregations.

Among these collections are the archives of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the representative body of British Jewry. This body, which includes representatives from the Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities, blossomed in the 19th century and is now one of international standing, covering all aspects of Jewish life from immigration and anti-Semitism to Shechita and education.

Most of the other Jewish collections held at LMA fall into one of four main areas: religion, education, welfare and Zionism.

Religious collections include: the Office of the Chief Rabbi, which contains the papers of Joseph Hermann Hertz, Israel Brodie, Immanuel Jakobovits and Jonathan Sacks; the United Synagogue, which includes collections from many of its constituent synagogues including the five oldest Ashkenazi synagogues in London; the London Beth Din, the community’s chief religious court and ecclesiastical authority on Kashrut and Shechita; no less interesting are the collections from reform and liberal congregations, including the Liberal Jewish Synagogue and the West London Synagogue (the oldest reform congregation in Britain).

Education has always been a core activity of the Anglo-Jewish community, and several educational establishments have deposited their records at LMA, including the Jewish Memorial Council, which inspects and organises Hebrew and religious classes and organises and endows scholarships; the Jews Free School (now called JFS Comprehensive), which opened as a Talmud Torah at the Great Synagogue in 1732 and is now the largest Jewish School in Britain; the London School of Jewish Studies (formerly Jews’ College), established in 1855 to train rabbis and ministers for service in orthodox Jewish congregations in Britain and the Empire.

In the 19th and 20th centuries the Anglo-Jewish communities established an array of communal organisations to assist poor and underprivileged Jews and many of those organisations have deposited their records at LMA including Food for the Jewish Poor, founded in 1854 in Spitalfields to supply basic food to poor Jews, especially immigrants; The Jewish Bread Meat and Coal Society, which distributed these necessaries of life to the poor during the winter months; the Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief, which provides financial and material aid to Jewish refugees in any part of the world with the help of other bodies represented among its archives including the Jewish Refugees Committee, the Children's Refugee Movement and the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad; the Jews’ Temporary Shelter, which provided shelter for recent migrants and those fleeing religious persecution, mainly helping migrants from Eastern Europe but between 1940 and 1943 also helping those who had been made homeless by the bombing of the East End of London during the blitz.

Zionism is represented in LMA’s Jewish collections by the British Women’s International Zionist Organisation (British WIZO). The organisation, founded in 1918, aimed to train Jewish women in Palestine and the Diaspora for work in a Jewish homeland and provide care for mothers and children in Palestine. After the establishment of Israel in 1948, British WIZO became involved in providing a wider variety of help and continues to be one of the country’s most significant Jewish (and Zionist) organisations.

Many of the Anglo-Jewish collections at LMA are open to the public only with the permission of the depositors of the records. Of the collections mentioned above, which are not an exhaustive list of the Anglo-Jewish collections held by LMA, these access conditions are in place for the following: Board of Deputies, Office of the Chief Rabbi, United Synagogue, West London Synagogue, London Beth Din, Food for the Jewish Poor, Jewish Bread Meat and Coal Society, Jewish Memorial Council, Jews’ Temporary Shelter. The other collections mentioned are available for general consultation. An information leaflet is available from LMA’s website which explains its Anglo-Jewish holdings in more detail.