Any local government archivist will tell you that there is always something unusual lurking in what appears to be a mundane transfer of administrative records. Iain Flett of Dundee City Archives was recently delighted to receive some of the works of Elizabeth Turner Bell, Infants’ Mistress and Lady Superintendent of Ancrum Road Primary School, Lochee. The works were among the records of the school when it was a general public school. Elizabeth Turner Bell was also a popular author of dance manuals for children, her first being Fifty Figure and Character Dances for Schools published by the Waverley Book Company in 1921. It produced such a demand that she wrote twenty five more. The illustrations are interesting, not only as a method of teaching, but also for their local content.

Old English Dance (above) provides a fascinating glimpse of the interior of the school in the 1920s. A separate book of musical accompaniment, written by David Stephen of the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust, was also produced, and the introduction by Miss Bell may still strike a chord with teachers of what are now called the expressive arts: "As no provision for the teaching of this subject has been made in the curriculum of Scottish elementary schools, the time devoted to it has been found outside of school hours..."