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Category: College Archives

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Soldiering on

WWIThis Saturday, 12 July, Trinity College Dublin is playing host to the ‘WWI Roadshow’ in partnership with RTÉ Radio 1 and the National Library of Ireland. This consists of a series of events throughout the campus designed to explore Ireland’s role in the Great War. Of particular interest is a lecture to be given by Jane Maxwell, of the Manuscripts & Archives Research Library, entitled ‘Manage to exist and try and be cheerful’: sources in Trinity College Library’s Manuscript Collections for the History of the First World War. The talk will take place in the Long Room Hub at 10.15am and is part of a series of pop-up talks and lectures scheduled throughout the day.

In her talk Jane will cover subjects such as the logistics of warfare in Mesopotamia (which required the transportation of camels by boat and baking bread outdoors in the desert); Molly Childers’ charitable work in aid of Belgian refugees, among others, (for which she received the MBE); and drawings of the first occasion in history in which zeppelins, sea planes, submarines and ships of war were deployed together.

IMG_7715Also of interest is the exhibition, with the same name, curated by Aisling Lockhart, which has just been installed for the occasion in the Long Room. This exhibition showcases diaries, photographs, drawings and letters, belonging to servicemen and their families, which are housed in M&ARL.

The Department of Early Printed Books have curated a Francis Ledwidge display in the Berkeley Library for the Roadshow.

Saturday’s programme of free events also includes music, poetry and drama events in the Chapel, Great War-related history tours of the campus, cooking demonstrations of ‘the food of WW1’, and a ‘Last Cricket Match of Peace’. The day will finish with the final bugle call of ‘The Last Post’ and ‘Reveille’.

WWI dress medals MS-EX-12_063The World War 1 Roadshow forms part of Trinity’s engagement with the Decade of Commemorations celebrations. A new website has been launched outlining College’s activities marking the Decade of Commemoration.

Estelle Gittins

The talk ‘Manage to exist and try and be cheerful’: sources in Trinity College Library’s Manuscript Collections for the History of the First World War takes place at 10.15am on Saturday 12 July in the Long Room Hub, Fellows’ Square.

The exhibition ‘Manage to exist and try and be cheerful’ will be on show for the next two months in the Long Room, Trinity College Library.

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JFK and TCD

Kennedy letter MS5958_001_LO (3)

Half a century ago, in the June of 1963, Ireland welcomed President John F Kennedy back to his ancestral home. Everywhere he went Kennedy was greeted by adoring crowds, and the feeling appears to have been mutual.

On the evening of the 28 June 1963 the President was escorted to St Patrick’s Hall in Dublin Castle to be awarded honorary doctorates in law from both Trinity College Dublin (Dublin University), and the National University of Ireland. In his speech to the dignitaries gathered at the civic reception he praised the quality of Irish universities as well as quipping ‘I now feel equally part of both, and if they ever have a game of Gaelic football or hurling, I shall cheer for Trinity and pray for National.’

Kennedy wrote many thank you notes in the weeks following his return to the US, each one warm and effusive about his trip. In this letter, written to the Chancellor of Dublin University, he conveys how the ‘impressive’ degree conferral ceremony ‘meant a great deal to me and proved to be one of the highlights of my visit to Ireland’.

The letter was written on 5 August 1963, a busy day for the President, for it was the same day that the US, the UK and the Soviet Union signed the limited nuclear test ban treaty after 8 years of difficult negotiations.

The letter is one of a small collection of M&ARL items connected to Kennedy’s honorary degree, along with Trinity College’s copy of the degree certificate and a photograph of the occasion.

Kennedy photo MS4881_002_LO (3)

Kennedy degree cert MS4881_001_LO (3)

The John F Kennedy Presidential Library holds a similar photograph taken from a different angle as well as an audio recording of the President’s speech.

Estelle Gittins

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Digital History – Trinity College Library Tercentenary Online Exhibition

_T5P9790

Last year marked the tercentenary of the Old Library, whose foundation stone was laid in 1712.  Events such as lectures, a conference and an exhibition were organised to celebrate the occasion.  The exhibition – ‘A Great Many Choice Books’ – was on display from April to October.  This online exhibition was designed to complement its physical counterpart, as well as give an overview of the history of the Library: the building, its collections and its people.

Ellen O’Flaherty

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Stoking the imagination

TCD MUN SOC HIST 1872-73
TCD MUN SOC HIST Officers 1872-73
Bram Stoker seated centre

Today is the 165th anniversary of the birth of Bram Stoker (1847-1912), well-known civil servant and author of The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland, which he published to some acclaim in 1879. He wrote the more popular, but considerably less practical, novel, Dracula, almost 20 years later. Stoker was a graduate of Trinity, a top-class student athlete (despite being quite ill for most of his early childhood) and a member of the student societies the Hist and the Phil. The Library has a good collection of manuscript material relating to the Stoker family generally, although only a small amount of it relates to the great man himself.

One of the items in the collection supposedly links the idea of Dracula – with its themes of blood infection and the ‘undead’ – to an epidemic of cholera which was witnessed by Stoker’s mother, Charlotte Thornley, in Sligo in 1832. Stoker scholars believe Charlotte’s vivid descriptions of the suffering she had seen may have fuelled her son’s Gothic imagination in later life. Among the papers in the Library is a copy of Charlotte’s account of the onslaught of the disease.

Cholera epidemics were not unheard-of in the nineteenth century but the one in 1832 was particularly virulent; infection was believed to be so rapid that a man, becoming infected on one side of town, was said to have fallen from his horse, dead, at the other. It was thought more than 1,500 people died from the epidemic; that carpenters were unable to keep up with the demand for coffins and local legend suggested that some people were buried alive, so great was the haste to dispose of the corpses.

TCD MS 11076/2/3
TCD MS 11076/2/3 f2 Stoker, Mrs CMB (Thornley) Experiences of the Cholera in Ireland ?1832

Jane Maxwell

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One hundred years ago in TCD…

TCD MUN V5 20 f264r
TCD/MUN/V5/20 f264r

The Board of Trinity College, comprising: the Provost, nine Fellows and two professors, met every Saturday from October to July.  The official minutes of each were recorded in large bound volumes, which constitute one of the most important series (TCD MUN V 5) of the College archives.

TCD MUN V 5/20 covers the years 1910-1913.  A glance at entries for the year 1912 shows that the Board was concerned with day-to-day academic and administrative business, such as the approval of degrees, and decisions regarding lecturers’ salaries and pensions.  A programme of activities to celebrate the Medical School bicentenary was regularly discussed and was estimated to cost around £500.  There is no mention of the anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone of the Old Library, but in February the librarian was authorised to consult Sir Thomas Deane regarding a possible extension to the building.  Benjamin Guinness (Viscount Iveagh) was Chancellor at the time, and proved to be a very generous benefactor to the College, donating large sums throughout the year, part of which were invested in stocks and bonds.  Although concerned primarily with the internal machinations of the College, an acknowledgement of events in the outside world also appeared in the minutes, in the form of numerous references to the third Home Rule bill and to War Office grants, both ominous forewarnings of the troubles to come in subsequent years.

Ellen O’Flaherty