Charles R. Browne, The Irish Headhunter: a project by www.curator.ie

with the support of:

 

 

RTE National Prime Time News, 05.05.2012

A report by Seán Mac an tSíthigh

 

HEADHUNTER RTE NEWS 5 May 2012 from Ciaran Walsh on Vimeo.

 

Irish Independent

The Headhunters

By Ciarán Walsh

Wednesday April 28 2012

 

28.05.2012: Irish Independent Weekend Magazine, article by Ciarán Walsh, www.curator.ie, giving the background to the ‘Headhunter’ project. Read More:

 

The Irish Times

Headhunter exhibits get the measure of Irish anthropology in the late 1800s

DEIRDRE McQUILLAN

Fri, Apr 27, 2012

 

 

PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN in remote parts of the west of Ireland between 1891 and 1900, are to be displayed in public for the first time in The Irish Headhunter exhibition which opens on May 3rd in the Blasket Centre in Dunquin.

The pictures were taken by Dublin GP and anthropologist Charles R Browne, who was instrumental in developing anthropology in TCD’s anatomy department.

Dr Browne surveyed communities on the western seaboard in a series of studies, starting with the Aran Islands, using the so-called anthropometric methods of the time to measure and classify humans and “racial types”.

Sliding rules, steel tapes and “craniometers” were used to gauge the circumference of the heads of his often unwilling subjects: methods that seem repellent to modern sensibilities, as Jane Maxwell says in the catalogue.

“Alive or dead, the head of the Irish peasant was a source of intense interest to Browne and his associates,” writes curator Ciarán Walsh in his introduction.

“The taking of skulls recorded in the photographs and ethnographies makes the evidence of headhunting in the west of Ireland the most striking aspect of the albums.”

These images and eyewitness accounts, however, give a valuable snapshot of the lives of rural people: their houses, their dress and modes of transport. Most importantly, their names are recorded – very significant in small, tight-knit communities, although a portrait of Inishbofin schoolmaster Myles Joyce and his daughter neglects to give her name, a telling omission.

The first photographs of the people of the Great Blasket are included along with the rugged people self-described as the “kings” of North Iniskea, Inishark and Clare Islands.

Dáithí de Mórdha of the Dunquin Centre identified Tomás Ó Criomhthain, author of The Islandman, in one photograph.

Dr Browne, born in 1857 in Co Tipperary, the son of a school inspector, graduated from TCD in 1893. He began his studies in the west with professor of zoology AC Haddon of TCD and later had a surgery in Harcourt Street.

He died in Cornwall in 1931 and his daughter Gwendoline gave the photographic albums to Trinity in 1997, shortly before her death.

The exhibition will later travel to Inis Oírr, Eanach Mheáin, Castlebar, Cambridge University and Dublin.

© 2012 The Irish Times

 

 

Irish Independent

When the head hunters went way out west

By Majella O’Sullivan

Wednesday May 09 2012

 

HE is considered one of our most important writers, but in a picture taken nearly 120 years ago, it was the size of his head that captured the photographer’s attention.

Tomas O Criomhthain wrote ‘An tOileanach’ (‘The Islandman’), his autobiography about growing up in the Blasket Islands.

But he was also one of the subjects captured by Dr Charles R Browne for his study on the ethnicity of the people of the west coast of Ireland in the late 19th century.

At a time when race issues were in vogue, Dr Browne, who was attached to the Anatomy Department of Trinity College Dublin, was part of a study that was trying to search for an Africanoid Celtic race.

They set about measuring the heads and examining the physical features of the people of the west to establish where they were in the ‘Index of Nigrescence’.

This was designed to quantify how close people were to “being negro”.

Between 1891 and 1900 Dr Browne, who was from Co Tipperary but of Anglo Irish descent, travelled the west coast and the islands to study “isolated tribes”.

His study is illustrated by 62 photographs that are on display as part of ‘The Irish Headhunter’ exhibition in the Blasket Island Centre in Dun Chaoin, Co Kerry.

Exhibition

At the end of June the exhibition will move to the Aran Islands and Connemara, before it finishes up at the National Museum in Castlebar, Co Mayo.

“Browne wrote detailed ethnological reports of all these places, comparing the people of the islands to those living on the mainland,” said Daithi de Mordha, one of the curators of the exhibition.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have the report he did on the Blasket Islands and west Kerry but what we do have is a record of the west coast taken 120 years ago that is unparalleled.”

Dr Browne measured the heads of his subjects using an instrument called Flower’s Craniometer, often without their consent.

The photographs of Tomas O Criomhthain and two others show their front and side profile, almost like a modern-day police mug shot.

The photographs were taken on the Blasket Islands in 1897 when O Criomhthain was in his 40s.

Dr Browne also made detailed observations of the people.

Of the people of the Aran Islands he wrote: “The range and distinctiveness of the vision is astonishing . . . and we are told by Dr Kean that on a clear day, any of the men whose eyesight is average can, with a naked eye, make out a small sailing boat at Black Head, 20 miles away.”

Of the population of Mullet in Co Mayo he observes: “The people on the whole are good-looking, especially when young; many of the girls and young women are very handsome, but they appear to age rapidly and early become wrinkled.”

Other observations are less flattering like this one made on ‘dietetic diseases’ on Inishbofin: “There can be no doubt that the use, or abuse, of tea must bear a certain amount of the blame. The most common forms of complaint are flatulence and constipation.”

While in the 20th century we were obsessed with the north/south divide, these pictures show the east/west divide, Mr de Mordha added.

However, he also notes that while Dr Browne’s study may have begun as a cold, clinical scientific one, this changed over time.

“I think his opinion softened as he went along and he talks about them in more human terms,” the curator said.

 

 

Irish Examiner

Rare photos capture island life in 1890s

By Donal Hickey

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

 

An exhibition of rare photographs is offering a glimpse of life on the Blasket Islands and other parts of the west coast in the late 19th century.

Just opened at the Blasket Centre in Dunquin (Dún Chaoin), Co Kerry, the exhibition has been described as one of the most important and interesting photographic collections to come into the public domain for some time.

The photographs are drawn from the albums of Charles R Browne, a medical doctor and anthropologist from Dublin who surveyed communities in the remotest parts of the west between 1891 and 1900.

The photographs were filed in a series of albums, six of which survive, in the library of Trinity College Dublin. A selection is now being exhibited for the first time, with the permission of the TCD board.

Dr Browne began systematically recording skull measurements as a means of racial classification of island communities and their mainland neighbours in Kerry, the Aran Islands, Connemara, and Mayo.

Between 1891 and 1893, he worked with Alfred Cort Haddon on the Ethnography of the Aran Islands for the Royal Irish Academy.

According to the exhibition’s co-curator Ciaran Walsh, the Browne archive is an unequalled illustration of life in the west of Ireland in the 1890s, including some of the earliest known photos of these communities, their physical appearance, and styles of dress.

“The difference between these and other photographs of the same time lies in the systematic way Browne recorded his subjects,” Mr Walsh said.

Among the people photographed were Myles Joyce, the schoolmaster on Inishbofin, with his daughter, whose name is not recorded; Seán ‘An Common Noun’ Ó Dálaigh and all the schoolchildren of the old schoolhouse at Dún Chaoin; and the first photographs of the people of An Blascaod Mór (Great Blasket).

“The naming of subjects is one of the most striking features of Browne’s albums. Many people have not been named, but it is probable that many people will identify their great, great-grandparents during the run of this exhibition,” Mr Walsh said.

The exhibition will run for six weeks in the Blasket Centre before going on to venues in Galway and Mayo.