Focus on the past as confectionery king's historic slides handed over to university

The lost glass photographic slides had been used by Seebohm Rowntree, the former director of the historic Rowntree's confectionery factory in York, during his famous lectures on poverty and housing in the First World War.

The slides depict images of New Earswick, near York, a "garden village" formed by his father Joseph Rowntree to help people escape the overcrowded city centre slums.

Seebohm Rowntree used the slides in speeches up and down the country and they are still praised for helping to pave the way for the creation of the welfare state.

The slides had been loaned to MP Frank Field by a relative of Mr Rowntree's 30 years ago. But they had been forgotten and were only discovered when he cleaned his desk a few weeks ago.

He gave them to York MP Hugh Bayley and asked them to be handed back to the University of York's Borthwick Institute, which already has an extensive archive on Mr Rowntree's work.

Mr Bayley, who made the presentation yesterday, said: "It was a privilege to hand over such a cherished and important part of Yorkshire's history.

"Seebohm Rowntree was an amazingly important figure in British social history and played a pivotal role in the creation of the welfare state."

Seebohm Rowntree was born in York in 1871 and published his groundbreaking study of poverty in the city in 1901.

He was the first social reformer to argue that poverty was the result of low wages rather than the widely-held belief of the time that the poor were responsible for their situation.

Partly as a result of his work, the Rowntree family introduced new working practices in their factory, including education, wage increases, an eight-hour day, a pension scheme, free medical help and a library.