Casting the spotlight back 300 years on an eventful year in Middle Temple history, featuring such challenges as pirates, swindlers, abandoned children and exploding privies.
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Exploring the long and winding history of Readers and readings at the Middle Temple, from the dull to the debauched, and looking at the disruptions of the Civil War, the first female Reader and an unexpected royal visit.
Meetings of the Middle Temple Historical Society are open to all members, staff, friends of the Inn and their guests who are welcome to attend a meeting before becoming members. We meet four times a year, usually in the Bench apartments for drinks at 6.30pm followed by an informal buffet supper and a talk on an historical topic, usually with a legal theme. Meetings finish at 9.15pm.
The Inn, two decades into the twenty-first century, is a robust institution which looks to the future and respects its past. The conditions laid out by James I in the 1608 charter (confirmed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2008 with a second charter) – to provide education and accommodation for lawyers – remain at the core of the Inn’s mission, and it strives to serve and support its members at all points in their careers.
Background
Although we know that the Inn had a small library prior to 1540, an early account about the Inns of Court states that Middle Temple ‘had a simple library in which were not many bookes besides the law and that library by meanes that it stood always open, and that the learners had not each a key unto it, it was at last robbed of all the bookes in it’!
The Library subscribes to electronic journals, law reports and the legal databases listed below. Access to subscription-based resources is only available in the Library, apart from Bloomsbury Professional Online, Kluwer Arbitration, Lexis Practical Guidance and Oxford Legal Research Library which can be accessed remotely, upon application to the Library, by Middle Temple members who hold a practising certificate as a barrister in England and Wales AND/OR are on the
The Inn is launching an Oral History Project, led by the Archive Department, with the particular objective of gathering stories from historically marginalised and underrepresented groups, in order to ensure that these stories are heard, recorded, and passed on as part of the Inn's history. The first phase of the project will focus on collecting histories from members who identify as LGBTQ+.
We are currently seeking expressions of interest from members of the Inn who identify as LGBTQ+ and who would like to take part in this project. Those selected will participate in a private, one- to two-hour audio-recorded interview with a trained member of the Archive department, during which you will have the opportunity to share your stories and reflect on your experience as a member of the LGBTQ+ community both in the legal profession and at the Inn. The interview will be conducted in a flexible and open-ended manner, and you will be free to discuss and focus on the subjects and issues which are most important to you.
We are looking in the first instance to interview up to 10 members of the Inn, with the potential for a second round of interviews subject to interest.
If you would like to be considered to participate in this project, please send a paragraph telling us a little about yourself and your story, and why you would like to participate, to oralhistory@middletemple.org.