A STUDY OF THE THEORY OF APPRAISAL FOR SELECTION By ...

for legal, historical, military, statistical,
economical or official purposes, and of no
possible interest to any one. . . . It may
be safely asserted that if such papers and
documents had been preserved from the Norman
Conquest to the present time . . . really
valuable materials for history in all its
branches would be swamped and crushed by
their surroundings of useless rubbish.11
The paper implicitly accepted the criterion of usefulness for a
broad range of research with its reference to legal, historical,
military, statistical, economical or official purposes. As well,
it unequivocally accepted the need for destruction and requested
the proper authority to do so.
Parliament responded to the call for legal authority to
destroy records in its 1877 Public Records Act. It empowered the
Master of the Rolls, with the approval of the Treasury, and the
head of the concerned government department to make rules
"respecting the disposal by destruction or otherwise of documents
which are deposited in or can be removed to the Public Records
Office, and which are not of sufficient public value to justify
their preservation in the Public Records Office."12 The
criterion to be used in the selection process for preservation or
destruction was broadened from research interests to "sufficient
public value," although the later concept was never clarified.
The 1877 Act also instituted the practice of controlling the
entire process through preparation of the "Destruction
11 Ibid, 16, paragraph 22.
12 Ibid, 17, paragraph 23.
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