| Description | A partially numbered and incomplete compilation of papers, including a few mimeographed copies, with a manuscript list of contents and the front covers of volumes from which the papers were extracted [prior to transfer to the University of Birmingham]. Chiefly comprising memorials, copies of minutes, committee and conference papers, committee reports, memoranda, fund papers, appeal papers, reports on visits overseas, copies of letters to newspapers, reprints and proof copies of papers published in the 'Church Missionary Intelligencer', papers compiled for use by deputations, papers received from related organisations.
Covering a wide range of issues relating to the Society's work in the UK and overseas. Subjects include: churches and bishoprics; polygamy; re-marriage of converts; branches of missionary and home work (for example, educational, literary, medical, women's, candidates); issues and events affecting CMS interests; administrative procedures; regulations; CMS finances; criticisms of the Society; the CMS centenary. Pencil annotations on some of the papers indicate that they were loaned out. Annotated second copies share the same item number.
Examples are listed below with clerk's numbers as they appear on the records.
1: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel: statement requesting an extension of the Episcopate in India prepared to accompany memorials addressed to the British Government and directors of the East India Company, 1857.
11: 'Indian Home Mission to the Santhals', [c 1876] and 1878.
14: Letter from J. B. Whiting and E. Hutchinson, Madeira, 3 March 1881: about an experimental scheme to 'open through their College at Fourah Bay [Sierra Leone] an English University for the young men of the West Coast of Africa'.
23: Correspondence between Rev R. A. Squires and the Lord Bishop of Bombay [Mumbai] concerning CMS and missionary work in Poona [Pune], [1883].
29: Bengal Native Church Constitution, 1884.
30: 'A brief view of the principles and proceedings of the Church Missionary Society', revised edition 1885.
35: The Indian Institute, Oxford 1885.
73: 'To the Far West of China': letters from Rev Horsburgh describing his journey up the Yang-tze River into Sz-Chuen [Sichuan] Province, [1888].
87: 'Sudan Mission, C. M. S.': first issue of a monthly leaflet, 1 January 1890.
113: Letter from J. Murdoch to the CMS Committee urging the need for literary work, 1890.
125: Constitution of the New South Wales Church Missionary Association, 1892.
129: Speech by Lord Aberdare at the Annual Meeting of the Royal Niger Company, 1893.
136: Livingstone College 'for the Instruction of Foreign Missionaries in the Elements of Practical Medicine': prospectus, nd [1894].
195-196 and 202: Committee's Instructions to missionaries departing overseas 1898 and 1900. |
| Arrangement | The papers were originally collated, basically in year order, in four volumes. Prior to deposit in Special Collections, Cadbury Research Library, the contents were extracted and transferred to folders; the front covers, with titles giving the numbers of the contents as reflected by pencil annotations on the records, were retained and filed separately (some of the papers are also marked with numbers in blue crayon scored through). The catalogue has been structured to reflect the original working arrangement of the volumes as indicated by the front covers such that each file level entry represents a recreation of one volume of papers. Thus, for example, the five folders containing the papers that were originally bound together as the first volume in this sequence now share the file level number G/AZ 3/1, the three folders containing papers that were originally bound together as the second volume in this sequence now share the file level number G/AZ 3/2 and so on. |