RLMH News - The RUSI Archive Photograph Collection

Located in the stunning Banqueting House under the magnificent Ruben’s ceiling, the RUSI Museum housed some of the most important military exhibits of the nineteenth and twentieth century’s. This extraordinary Victorian museum was crammed to the gunwales with flags, ship models, bayonets and swords, guns and uniforms, not to mention skeletons and even stuffed pigeons! Sadly disbanded in the 1960s, the collection was a huge attraction with visitors queuing down Whitehall for entrance This photograph captures the grandeur of this overcrowded space, dripping with flags and gleaming with silverware.

Taken from the street outside the Banqueting House (then the RUSI Museum) on 15 June 1953, this photograph captures the spirit of the day. To celebrate the occasion, RUSI offered tickets to members and their families to view proceedings from the building and some of theirfaces can be seen looking on from the windows! The RUSI sign at the entrance to the Museum is visible above the heads of the onlookers

In this photograph you can see the previous Librarian proudly making a demonstration of the new catalogue. Originally the Library Catalogue was printed in large bound volumes with individual entries pasted in under the author, title and subject. Later a card catalogue was produced and this was the main way of accessing the Library’s collections for many years. Eventually in the late 1990s the catalogue was digitised. Whilst this work is on-going we now have almost all of our collections accessible through our online catalogue.

The RUSI collection of photographs has now been fully catalogued. You can view the catalogue records for this collection through our OPAC.

If you are interested in the history of RUSI and would like to visit our collection please do contact the Librarian at library@rusi.org.