Request for closure of a catalogued item

To the stewardship,

I am writing about two items in the public catalogue. One is a photograph of the Shore House kitchen taken in 1989. The other is a letter of the same year which names the people in it. My mother is one of them. She left the Practice in 1994 and has not spoken about it since.

She is eighty-one and still living in the town where the photograph was taken. Two people have now shown it to her, kindly, because they found it and thought she would like to see it. She did not like to see it. She has asked me to write because she does not want to write to you herself, which I hope you will read as the point rather than as rudeness.

I want to be fair to you. Nothing in either item is untrue and nothing in them is shameful. The letter is ordinary and rather warm. I am not saying you have done anything wrong by keeping them. I am saying that they are findable, that she is findable, and that the two facts together are doing something to her that the items themselves do not contain.

I am also aware that she is one person and that your archive is for a great many. If the answer is that the photograph stays, I would like to be told that plainly, with the reason, rather than be managed.

What I am asking for is the scan closed and the entry kept, if that is a thing you can do. I understand she may not be the only person in the picture and that the others may not agree with her.

Yours sincerely,

[Name withheld at the correspondent's request]