by Suzanne Francis-Brown, UWI Museum Curator
One of my bucket list items this past few weeks was tracking early documents relating to the UWI’s lost Charter – the first Royal Charter, granted in 1949 and lost in a plane crash en route to the founding Mona campus in Jamaica. Some of those documents are on deposit at the UK National Archives, and they include explanations of why a Royal Charter was considered the best option as the nascent university developed its governance and administrative structures.