Charles R. Browne – The Irish ‘Headhunter’

In 1891 Charles R. Browne and his colleagues went headhunting in the Aran Islands. They robbed the graves of dead islanders and took the heads of the living with a camera. The skulls were put in a display case in the Anthropological museum in Trinity College Dublin and the photographs were pasted into a series of albums, six of which survive and are held in the library of Trinity College Dublin.

These men were scientists. They were based in Trinity and were searching for evolutionary traces that would reveal the origins of the Irish race. Haddon left in 1893 but Browne continued headhunting until 1900. During that time he ‘surveyed’ districts in Kerry, Connemara and Mayo, taking heads – living and dead – as he went.

60 of these photographs have been exhibited in ‘The Irish Headhunter, The Photograph Albums of Charles R. Browne.’ The project was developed by www.curator.ie, Ionad an Bhlascaoid Mhór and TCD. It was supported by the Heritage Council and the OPW.  The exhibition, curated by Ciarán Walsh and Dáithí de Mórdha, opened in the Blasket Centre in Dun Chaoin, West Kerry in May 2012. After that  it travelled to Aran, Connemara and the Museum of Country life in Mayo, visiting all of the places Browne surveyed. In September 2013 it was shown in the Haddon Library in Cambridge followed by National University of Ireland UI Maynooth, where it was hosted by the Anthropology Society. The Society is affiliated with the only Anthropology Dept. in Ireland.

It is probably the most important photographic archive to have been published in Ireland in a long time. Browne’s survey of the communities living on the islands and remote headlands of the west of Ireland in the 1890s, the edge of the western world, is unmatched because of his attention to detail, his interest in physiognomy, his naming of subjects and, ultimately, his respect for the enduring western peasant.

 Page 2: Headhunting in Ireland: Introducing Haddon and Browne>