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Library life in black and white

Recently on Twitter there has been a library challenge: 7 black & white photographs of , no humans, no explanations. We (@TCDResearchColl – are you following us?) were challenged originally by the Royal Irish Academy Library (@Library_RIA) and subsequently by Waterford Institute of Technology Libraries (@witlibraries). We thought our blog followers might like to see the photographs we posted, perhaps with explanations this time, although most of them speak for themselves. Continue reading “Library life in black and white”

Davitt Down Under

Michael Davitt, who was born in 1846 and died in 1906, was a radical Irish nationalist, social reformer and champion of the Irish diaspora of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Davitt’s papers are held in the Manuscripts’ Department of the Library of Trinity College Dublin. The photographs within the collection are in the process of being catalogued and digitised.

In 1895, Michael Davitt departed Dublin for a tour of Australia, New Zealand, Samoa, Hawaii and the United States.

Mining shacks in Tipperary Flat, Queensland, 1895

One of the aims of the tour was to re-connect with the Irish communities in Australia after Charles Stewart Parnell’s adulterous relationship with Kitty O’Shea became public knowledge and caused major damage to the Irish Parliamentary Party’s (IPP) reputation internationally.

Irish-Australians had been major financial contributors to Irish famine relief, the IPP and the Land League throughout the nineteenth century. Their support was essential for continuing the campaign towards Irish Home Rule in Westminster. Other reasons for the tour were personal; including Davitt’s need to make money for his family by lecturing in Australia and New Zealand.

MS 9477/4425 Telegraph from Mary to Michael Davitt, 1895

During Davitt’s journey to Australia, disaster struck his family in Ireland, when his six-year-old daughter Kathleen died suddenly from the flu. However, Davitt’s wife pressed him to continue his ‘mission’, in a telegram he received from Mary in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Following his wife’s advice, Davitt continued on his voyage to Australia.

Following his tour of Australia and New Zealand, Davitt published Life and Progress in Australasia in 1897. His book focuses on the gold rush in Western Australia and particularly on the town of Coolgardie.

MS 9649/348 Crowd of men at a sale of mining lots in Coolgardie, 1895

Davitt describes Coolgardie as ‘full of the gold-seeking fever’, with miners from vastly different backgrounds. In his diary for Western Australia MS 9565 he lists these as ‘any number of men with University training, pressmen, politicians, barristers, lawyers…all here on same gold hunting purpose’. The independence of the miners from the Australian authorities is illustrated by his photographs of a fire on Bailey Street in Coolgardie, which he reports in his diary was caused by the burning of an effigy of the Mayor of the town.

MS 9649/373 Group of Aboriginal Australians under a tree near Great Boulder, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, 1895

Davitt includes an interview with Catholic bishop Matthew Gibney in his book. Gibney discusses the mistreatment of Aborigines, the privatisation of Aboriginal land and hunting grounds in Western Australia. In Life and Progress Davitt declares that ‘the white man’s law justifies him in stealing the black man’s country, his wife, and daughters whenever he wants them; but to take a sheep from this moral professor of the ten commandments is to earn the penalty of a bullet!’

Davitt, as a radical politician and writer from a famine emigrant, working class background, was an important figure to the Irish diaspora in Australia. Davitt’s family were part of the million people who emigrated from Ireland to England, the United States and Australia to escape starvation after the failure of the potato crop during the Irish Great Famine. His importance to the Irish diaspora is evident throughout the Davitt photographic collection as large welcoming committees were organised to from MS 9649/32 below, where Davitt is welcomed at the train station in Maryborough, Victoria, Australia.

Reception Committee for Davitt during his lecture tour of Australia
in Maryborough, Victoria, 1895

The online catalogue has now been updated and can be viewed here.

Dáire Rooney

Digitising the Michael Davitt photographic collection at the Library of Trinity College Dublin: MS 9649.

MS 9649/17 Davitt wearing a Russian fur coat and hat, Moscow, 1905

Trinity College Library is home to the papers of Michael Davitt, 1846-1906. Davitt was a convicted Fenian, Irish nationalist, Irish Parliamentary Party MP, investigative journalist and agrarian campaigner, who is well known for being one of the founders of the Irish National Land League. This extensive collection was presented to TCD library from 1978 to 1980 by Davitt’s son, Cahir Davitt and includes over 6000 letters, 550 photographs, 40 diaries as well as newspaper cuttings, published pamphlets and articles.

The Davitt photographic collection provides a visual record of the latter half of Davitt’s career, when he toured across the prairies and mountains of Northwest Canada, the gold fields of Australia and the battlefields of South Africa during the Second Boer War. The photographs document Davitt’s investigations, as a social campaigner and journalist, into the migration of Scottish crofters to Northwest Canada following the Highland Clearances, the Murray River communal settlements in South Australia, the rush to settle Western Australia fuelled by the gold fields at Coolgardie and the aftermath of the Kishinev pogrom in the Russian Empire.

MS 9649/296 Scottish crofter family, the McKenzie’s wearing their ‘best’ in Manitoba, Canada, 1891
MS 9649/280 First Nation Canoe in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, 1891

Davitt was an important figure to a generation of the Irish diaspora who migrated from Ireland to the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand after the devastation of the Great Famine. As a migrant himself, his family left Mayo for Haslingden in Lancashire, his commitment to improving the lives of agricultural tenants and labourers in rural Ireland through his work in the Land League cemented his reputation amongst Irish people living abroad. This is demonstrated in MS 9649/32, which depicts a large crowd of people gathered to welcome Davitt to Maryborough in Victoria.

These photographs are currently being catalogued and digitised. While the Davitt collection is one of the most heavily used historic collections in Trinity Library, this important and extensive collection of photographs within the Davitt papers is less well known due to limited cataloguing. The project aims to update the existing catalogue, the digitisation of the photographs and the publishing of the photographs on Trinity’s digital collections repository to increase accessibility to this significant collection.

The online catalogue has now been updated and can be viewed here.

Dáire Rooney

MS 9649/32 Reception Committee for Davitt during his lecture tour of Australia in Maryborough, Victoria, 1895

Good things always come in trees

Because of its historical significance as the spot where a famous conversation took place, there has been much interest in the media recently regarding the felling of a tree on the corner of Leeson Street and Appian Way in Dublin 2.  For many who passed it every day its loss will probably have more of an impact on their consciousness than its presence.  And so it is with the trees that grow on the grounds of Trinity College; they are possibly not sufficiently appreciated until they are to be cut down, moved, or simply pointed out.  A case in point is a Sorbus (‘Joseph Rock’) in Library Square, which was felled in January 2016 as it was nearing the end of its life.  A superb view of its striking autumn leaves had previously been afforded to the lucky few who had access to a second-floor window of the west end of the Old Library.

Sorbus ('Joseph Rock'), Library Square, November 2014
Sorbus (‘Joseph Rock’), Library Square, November 2014
The same view after tree felling, January 2016
The same view after tree felling, January 2016

 

 

 

Much thoughtful planning and expertise is required for the maintenance of the 600 or so trees on campus, which are looked after by the College’s Grounds and Garden staff in consultation with the Grounds and Gardens Advisory Committee.  It is this team who ensure that the grounds always look their best for the students, staff and visitors who walk through campus every day.

Account for garden expenses, including the purchase of cherry, abele and poplar trees, 10 February 1705 (TCD MUN P 4/10/15)
Account for garden expenses, including the purchase of cherry, abele and poplar trees, 10 February 1705 (TCD MUN P 4/10/15)

Records in the College Archives demonstrate that College authorities have long shown a healthy interest in the grounds and gardens of the Trinity.  There are documents from as far back as the seventeenth century that refer to gardens, gardeners, trees and plants.  For example, a document from the Bursar’s office dated February 1705 relating to the College garden account refers to £4-2-0 due to Philip Walker for cherry, ‘abele’ and poplar trees.  Other financial documents testify to the variety of trees and plants that have been planted over the years, including hollies, hornbeams, beech trees, elms, firs, sycamores, limes, oaks, poplars, honeysuckle, lilac and sweet briar, and make reference to the diverse locations – including Liverpool, Edinburgh and Jamaica –  from which trees, plants and seeds were imported over the years.

mun-p-4-22-17_1_blog
Gardener’s bill for fertiliser (‘mold’) for elm trees ‘sett at the front of ye College’, 21 November 1717 (TCD MUN P 4/22/17)

There has clearly been a structured approach to the landscaping of the grounds from an early period.  A document from 1708 refers to a payment of £7-2-10 for 500 beech trees for the Physics Garden hedge, and another from 1717 refers to money owed to Nathaniel Hall for ‘[t]horns for ye long walk’.  Such records help to give some idea of the appearance of the campus over the years; there are reference to elms planted ‘at the front of College’, to a ‘large elm’ in ‘front court’, and to black Italian poplars and beeches for hedges in the Botanic Garden.

From the names of some of the gardeners and suppliers, it would appear that they were born for their profession: in 1717 Joseph Twigge supplied elms and firs for the grounds; John Greenwood received £2-6-6 for beech trees and shrubs in 1811, and, according to a late seventeenth-century job application (complete with testimonials), a certain John Greene was seeking work as a College gardener.

While the majority of the records in the College Archives relating to TCD grounds and gardens are of a financial nature, there are also some photographs, maps and plans directly or indirectly relating to gardens and greenery.

Photographs ostensibly of buildings and other features on campus inevitably include trees and grass as background or foreground to the subject, and therefore are an important source for the study of the botanical history of the college over the last 150 years.

The ‘TCD MUN P 4’ series contains financial documents known as ‘Bursar’s vouchers’, which relate to money owed to staff, tradesmen and merchants for labour and goods.  They date from the early 17th to the mid 19th century, and many relate to gardening activities.

Contact sheet of photographs of the area between the Arts Building and the back of the 1937 Reading Room. Includes an Oregon maple on the south side of the 1937 Reading Room, which was felled in 1991 due to Dutch elm disease. Pre-1991. (TCD MUN MC 310)
Contact sheet of photographs of the area between the Arts Building and the back of the 1937 Reading Room. Includes an Oregon maple on the south side of the 1937 Reading Room, which was felled in 1991 due to Dutch elm disease. Pre-1991. (TCD MUN MC 310)

The ‘TCD MUN MC’ series within the College Archives contains maps, plans, photographs, postcards and drawings of the College and its environs.  The subjects of the photographs and drawings include buildings and other architectural features, sculptures and open spaces within the College.  They also include trees; you just have to look out for them …

Ellen O’Flaherty

 

 

Further reading:

Jeffrey, David (ed.), Trees of Trinity College Dublin [with notes by D.A. Webb] (Dublin, 1993)

The Team Behind Trinity’s Trees’: Trinity News and Events. (22 September 2014).