Jocelyne Dudding (Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology) and Ciarán Walsh (Curator.ie and Maynooth University) .
RAI RESEARCH SEMINARSEMINAR SERIES AT THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE Haddon in Ireland:reconstructing the archive of the Irish Ethnographic SurveyCiarán Walsh, Curator.ie and Maynooth University Wednesday 8 April at 5.30 pm This illustrated talk outlines a project to reconstruct the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey that was established by Haddon in 1891 under the umbrella of the British Ethnographic Survey. The Irish Survey was overshadowed by subsequent developments in Cambridge / Torres but, unlike the British Survey, it was active ‘in the field’ for almost a decade. The records of the Survey were dispersed over collections in Ireland and the UK where they have remained uncatalogued and largely overlooked for 120 years. Recent research has however, uncovered manuscripts, photographs and artifacts (the contents of Haddon’s Anthropometric Laboratory in Dublin for instance) that have the capacity to change our understanding of the early development of Anthropology in Ireland and the UK. More work needs to be done and the role played by the RAI in particular in the establishment by Haddon of the Survey and the Laboratory in Dublin needs to be examined. Information: http://walshdudding.eventbrite.co.uk |
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Location : Royal Anthropological Institute 50 Fitzroy Street London W1T 5BT United Kingdom |
A photograph of the Great Blasket Island in the 1930s taken by Thomas H. Mason of Dublin. L-R: Domhnall Mharas Eoghan Bháin Ó Conchuir and Pádraig ‘Ceaist’ Ó Catháin.
The definitive exhibition of photographs of life on the Blasket islands opens in St. John’s Theatre in Listowel on Saturday 9 August 2014.
‘An Island Portrait’ has been developed by The Great Blasket Centre and www.curator.ie to accompany the publication by Collins Press of a book of photographs of the Blasket Island. The text was written by Micheál de Mórdha (Director) and Dáithí de Mórdha (Archivist) and the photographs were edited by Ciarán Walsh of ww.curator.ie. The exhibition contains 50 photographs dating from 1892 onwards and it combines classic ‘outsider’ views of the islanders and their way of life with photographs from family albums. The ethnographic look is counterbalanced by personal and, at times, intimate glimpses of family life on the island.
Gearóid Cheaist Ó Catháin, the last child to live on the Great Blasket Island with Dáithí de Mórdha, The Great Blasket Centre, in front of a photograph of Gearóid with his Grandfather Maurice Mhuiris Ó Catháin, taken by Dan MacMonagle after the Island was evacuated in 1953.
A starving Irish family from Carraroe, County Galway during the Famine . (Source: University of Virginia)
About 10 years go I came across this photograph. The caption suggests that it was taken during the Famine of 1845-9 in Ireland. It wasn’t. True, it is very similar to the scenes recorded in cabins throughout the west of Ireland and graphic illustrations of such scenes were published in illustrated newspapers at the time. There is no record, however, of any photograph of people dying of starvation in the 1845-9 famine. Indeed a photograph like this would have been impossible in the early stages of photography – invented less than a decade before the famine. As a result he photograph has been dismissed by some people as a fake, the harsh pool of light suggesting a studio staging.
I set out to look for the original and test its authenticity. I never found it, but I found the next best thing – the original document in which the photograph was first published. The photograph is entitled ‘A Sick Family Carraroe’ and is one of 18 photographs that were published in a pamphlet entitled ‘Relief of Distress in the West and South of Ireland, 1898.’ The photographs were taken in April during an inspection of conditions in Connemara by Thomas L. Esmonde, Inspector of the Manchester Committee. He was reacting to reports of famine in Connemara, what locals call the Second Famine or Gorta Beag. He inspected a dozen houses in which he found people lying on the floor, covered with rags and old sacks and barely able to move from a combination of influenza and hunger.
The search for the photograph became the basis of an idea for a TV series on social documentary photography or, to put it another way, a social history of documentary photography in Ireland in the 19th century. I pitched the idea to a producer and a broadcaster in 2011 and funding was eventually secured from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland in 2014 for a six part series based on my research. TG4 will begin broadcasting Trid an Lionsa or ‘Through the Lens’ tomorrow Sunday 25 October 2015.
I haven’t been involved in in the production itself, just the research into historical social documentary photography and the people who work in this area. This material has been “translated into television” by Cathal Watters (Oíche na Gaoithe Móire) and follows the TG4 controversial format of presenter driven, on-the-road info-tainment. (Lost in Translation).
I have no idea what to expect. Like a colleague I will be watching from behind the couch … hoping! It’ll be interesting to see how the balance between a social history of documentary photography and ‘factual’ entertainment works out. The reliance on off-the-cuff interviews rather than scripted narrative is a risky business in general Read Full Article. It suits some formats but I don’t know about a documentary on 19th century photography, with it’s intricate social, political and historical contexts and plots. I know some key “voices” were excluded but that is the unenviable task of a producer. Dropping a key commentator on the history of photography because, apparently, there were already enough English speakers is a bit odd though. Either way it promises be an intriguing televisual event and, at the very least, it should create an awareness of the rich resource that exists in photographic archives and collections around the country.
For more images / Comment see: Ballymaclinton, The Town that Time Forgot
Jocelyne Dudding, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge and Ciarán Walsh of www.curator.ie in the foyer of the British Museum in London.
It’s a big claim, but papers presented by Jocelyne Dudding and Ciarán Walsh at the Anthropology and Photography conference in the British Museum (May 2014) have challenged the chronology of the early development of British anthropology and Haddon’s role in it.
Dudding and Walsh have been working on the ‘Haddon In Ireland’ project for the past 6 months, focussing on photographic and manuscript collections that are held in Cambridge – in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), the Haddon Library and the University Library.
They presented preliminary finding of their research at a conference organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute and the British Museum. The research, part funded by the Heritage Council of Ireland, is part of a project that is attempting to reconstruct the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey of 1891-1903.
The photographic record of the the Survey, the photograph albums of Charles R. Browne, were published by www.curator.ie in 2012 as part of the the ‘Irish Headhunter’ project. The albums are held in TCD but there was no trace of any paperwork that could place them in context. The search moved to Cambridge and significant work has been done in the photographic collections of the MAA and the Haddon Papers in the Haddon and University Libraries there.
Preliminary findings suggest that the Survey, established by Haddon and Cunningham in TCD in 1891, played a much greater role in Haddon’s transition from Zoology to Anthropology than had previously been thought. The photographic record, correspondence and journal entries reveal a lot about Haddon’s role in the survey with significant implications for the history of the early development of anthropology.
These are being teased as the ‘Haddon in Ireland’ project continues with the re-construction of the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey.
Ciarán Walsh at work in the Manuscripts Room in the Library. He is surrounded by documents from one of the files containing uncatalogued material dating form the early 1890s when Haddon was active in the Irish Ethnographic Survey 1891-1903.
'Haddon in Ireland.' is a research project that is trying to piece together the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey 1891-1903, a project being developed in association with the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge and National University of Ireland Maynooth. The initial research in Cambridge has been funded by the Heritage Council of Ireland.http://rpk-tramplin.ru
Walsh recently spent ten days going through uncatalogued material relating relating to the Survey in the photographic collection of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology as well as the manuscripts in Cambridge University. Working closely with Dr. Jocelyne Dudding (Manager of the photographic collection), Aidan Baker (Haddon Librarian) and John Pickles (former Haddon Librarian) Walsh discovered a lot of material – photographs and manuscripts – that shed a lot of light on the administration of the survey and the early development of ethnology in Ireland in the late 1880s and the early 1890s.
The results will feature strongly in a panel on Haddon and the Survey which has been organised by Walsh, Dudding and Dr. Mark Maguire of NUI Maynooth as part of the Royal Anthropological Institute’s conference on Photography and Anthropology which is taking place at the end of May.
www.curator.ie has commenced work on a project that promises to significantly rewrite the history of the early development of anthropology. Supported by a grant from the Heritage Council of Ireland, the initial phase of the ‘Haddon In Ireland’ project comprises of an assessment of unpublished photographs and manuscripts held in the Haddon Library and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) in Cambridge, in partnership with Aidan Baker, Librarian at Haddon, and Jocelyne Dudding, Manager of Photographic Collections at the MAA.
Aidan Baker, Margaret Rishbeth (granddaughter of Alfred Cort Haddon) and Ciarán Walsh at the launch of the ‘Irish Headhunter’ exhibition in the Haddon Library in 2013.
The Skeleton of the Irish Giant, Cornelius Magrath.
Pietro Longhi, 1757, “True portrait of the Giant Cornelio Magrat the Irishman; he came to Venice in the year 1757; born 1st January 1737, he is 7 feet tall and weighs 420 pounds. Painted on commission from the Noble Gentleman Giovanni Grimani dei Servi, Patrician of Venice.” Museo di Rezzonico, Venice. Photograph: Osvaldo Böhm.
The Skeleton of The Irish Giant, Cornelius Magrath is held by the School of Anatomy in Dublin University, Trinity College (TCD). It is the most famous item in a historic collection of anatomy specimens, records, and instruments that is held in the ‘Old’ Anatomy Building. The building was decommissioned in 2014 and the collection is being resolved as part of post-grad research programme managed jointly by the School of Medicine TCD, Maynooth University, Kimmage Development Studies Centre, and funded by the Irish Research Council (IRC).
I am employed as a full-time researcher on the project and resolving ethical issues relating to the retention of human remains is a major part of the work in hand. Indeed, the research proposal had to pass rigorous ethical approval procedures in Maynooth University, the School of Medicine TCD, and the IRC before I could get access to the ‘old’ Anatomy building and the collections held therein, which include the skeleton of Cornelius Magrath.
The skeleton is “in the news” following calls for Magrath’s remains to be buried. The controversy kicked off on the History Show on RTE Radio 1. It was picked up by chat show host Joe Duffy on Monday. Duffy argued that TCD should bury the skeleton of Cornelius Magrath because it was taken in a ‘body snatching’ raid on Magrath’s wake. Since then a debate of sorts has been taking place on the show.
The problem here is that there is no evidence that the body snatching story, however entertaining, is true. Magrath died on 16th May 1760 but the only contemporary account of his death was most likely written by either Robert Robinson, Professor of Anatomy in TCD, or Dr. George Cleghorn, the University anatomist. It is a rather enigmatic account, stating only that “Upon death, his body was carried to the Dissecting House.” (see Daniel J. Cunningham’s 1891 report to the Royal Irish Academy).
Magrath was dying of a wasting disease and it is clear from the Robinson/Cleghorn account that he was receiving medical attention at the time of his death. It records that Magrath’s “complexion was miserably pale and sallow; his pulses very quick at times for a man of his extraordinary height; and his legs were swollen.” Elsewhere, it states that his pulse beat almost sixty times a minutes “on his arrival here.” It sounds like Magrath was being cared for in the School of Medicine TCD when he died.
The body snatching legend has it that Magrath was being waked when medical students spiked the porter and made off with his body, which was immediately dissected in secret. Such a sensational body snatching could not have escaped notice and, furthermore, the dissection was both public knowledge and uncontroversial. Historians of anatomy in TCD have always believed that the body was paid for by Cleghorn and that the acquisition of the body was legitimate and ethical by the standards of the day. The problem here is that there is no documentary evidence of Magrath having consented to dissection or the permanent display of his skeleton.
That brings us to the contemporary issue of retention or burial. The report of the Working Group on Human Remains in Museum Collections (WGHR), published in the UK in 2003, acknowledged that human remains in collections “represent a unique and irreplaceable resource for the legitimate pursuance of scientific and other research” (p. 28) and concludes: “The Working Group feels that there is much merit in including museum collections of human remains within the regulatory structure proposed by the DH for health authorities and hospitals.” (p. 81).
Supervision by the Inspector of Anatomy of the ‘Old’ Anatomy collections in TCD covers the issue of regulation in Ireland in terms of the retention of Magrath’s skeleton as part of a historical scientific collection. This leaves the burial of Magrath’s remains at the discretion of the college authorities; which means that any decision will have to deal with public perception as to the “morality” of retaining identifiable human remains in collections of scientific material. That is deeply problematic, and Duffy’s attempt to frame the issue in body snatching folklore is distorting what should be a valuable and timely debate.
For more see: http://wp.me/p56Bmf-eP