| Description | Initialled minutes, 1939-1950, with many abbreviations and little detail. Comprising pasted in typescript minutes up to 2 December 1940 and manuscript minutes in ink and pencil thereafter. With lists of Council members and a name and subject index in each volume; volumes 2-3 have separate indexes for general subjects and missionaries, recruits etc.
The minutes seem most likely to have been intended as a working record for Council members comprising a list of agenda items and very brief record of action agreed with little if any detail regarding discussion or the correspondence giving rise to the minute. They include numerous references to decisions regarding individual candidates and missionaries (usually surname only) including approval of missionary marriages, locations, grants, recruitment issues, offers [of service] and items to be actioned by other committees or departments.
The early minutes are missing, a previous minute book having been destroyed by [incendiary] fire 29 December 1940.
[The first meeting of the Council was held 17 September 1914. It had no authority to decide committee business but was established to provide a forum whereby members could advise one another 'in preparing their work for committee decision' (source: letter, 14 September 1914, from F. Baylis to Mr Bardsley, CMS/G/AP 4)]. |