Inky Blackness

The bottle of ‘Registrar’s Ink Blue-Black’ sits on the desk in the vestry, and occasionally I’ve tried to use it. In theory, you’re supposed to use it to fill out legal documents such as the Marriage Registers as it makes the most permanent mark available. We don’t have many weddings in Swanvale Halt so, as others have before me when they’ve been feeling enthusiastic, now and again I’ve tried to use it for the service and baptism registers, which isn’t strictly necessary as these aren’t legal documents. When I arrived, I remember, the register entries were pale and ghostly, a sort of mucky grey-brown, and when we bought a new bottle of ink they went onto the page splendidly black and shiny – for a while. Then it got harder again.

Pen after pen got clogged up with ink. I washed them out but it didn’t seem to make writing any easier. I blamed buying cheap fountain pens and scaled up to a mid-range Parker (other brands are available). This Saturday morning as Marion got ready to marry a couple later on in the day I offered to write out the marriage registers and discovered that the pen was, once again, uselessly gunged up. I tried to pump ink through it and the nib popped off the end under the pressure.

It couldn’t be the pen at fault so it had to be the ink. What was special about ‘Registrar’s Ink’ that caused these problems? I decided at last to find out.

Old-fashioned black ink – old-fashioned enough to have been used across Europe for centuries – is made from iron sulphate and oak gall. It’s permanent because its corrosive qualities etch its marks into the writing surface, but that means it’s only suitable for dip-pens, and it plays havoc with capillary-action fountain pens. The modern versions of the ink which substitute the old substances with synthetic ones will still clog pens up, and the manufacturers advise that users flush pens out after each use. Even the bottled ink deteriorates over time, which is presumably why it starts looking nice and ‘inky’ and then goes pale and watery.

Why have I not learned this little, practical detail until thirteen years after my ordination and nine after becoming an incumbent? Sense declares itself at last. I’m afraid that on this occasion the registers had to be made out and signed in ordinary India Ink, which would I’m sure be much to the Registrars’ disgust were they to know about it. But then when I arrived to look after Goremead church back in 2008 I found some entries in their registers written in blue biro …