Gaeilge
Tá gadaí na gceann ar ais in Árann: osclaíonn ‘Fiagaí na gCeann Gaelach, Na Halbaim Grianghraif le Charles R. Browne’ in Áras Éanna, Inis Oírr, Árann.
English
The headhunters return: ‘The Irish Headhunter, The Photograph Albums of Charles R. Browne’ opens in Áras Éanna, Inis Oírr, Árann.
‘Anthropometry in Aran’ captures Browne and Haddon in action measuring he head of Tom Conneely on Inis Mór, Árann, in 1891. It is one of a small number of photographs of Aran that feature in ‘The Irish Headhunter, The Photograph Albums of Charles R. Browne,’ a project developed by www.curator.ie that opened in Áras Éanna, the arts centre on the island of Inis Oírr on Sunday 1 July, 20.
These are the first images of Aran that are known to exist and form part of a photographic survey of the communities of the western seaboard of Ireland between 1891 and 1900. It is the first time that these photographs have been published and it is probably the most important photographic archive to come into the public domain according to Ciarán Walsh who curated the show with Dáithí de Mórdha.
In 1891 Charles R. Browne and Alfred Cort Haddon (Haddon the Headhunter) arrived in Aran to carry out an ethnographical survey of the Aran Islands on behalf of the Anthropological Museum in Trinity College Dublin, one of a complex of initiatives based in the Department of Anatomy of TCD that were involved in the investigation of the origin of the species in the aftermath of the acceptance by the scientific community of the theory of evolution.
Browne and Haddon, Irish scientists funded by the Royal Irish Academy, had established the Anthropometric Laboratory in TCD and, during the long vacation of 1891, they pitched their tent in Aran and began surveying the ‘natives’ in an attempt to record the typical Aranite. The idea that the population of the British Isles was composed of ‘types’ that could be differentiated through measurable racial characteristics was closely linked to ideas about the origin of the species and social Darwinism in particular – that societies evolve from a primitive to a civilised state. In crude terms, the primitives of Aran were less evolved than the white, Anglo Saxon Protestant as represented by the scientific establishment to which Browne and Haddon belonged. The fact that Aran had once been occupied by ‘Firbolgs’ – a mythical race of small dark, people – had no doubt influenced the decision to begin the survey of the remotest parts of Ireland (na Gaeltachta effectively) in Aran.
After Aran, Haddon returned to Cambridge and became very influential in the development of British anthropology -; earning the nickname ‘Haddon the Headhunter’ in the process. Browne continued with the ethnographic survey of the the western seaboard, carrying on with Haddon’s habit of collecting specimens, the skulls of dead islanders removed from graves and ruined churches in the islands. He became the Irish headhunter, a practice revealed for the first time in this exhibition.
In 1893, Browne and Haddon published the Ethnography of the Aran Islands in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, the first of a series of six reports on the people and their lifetstyle, customs, folklore, archaeology and natural environment of the west coast of Ireland. Combined with the photographs in this exhibition, they form an unprecedented social history of the communities that were surveyed.
The opening of ‘The Irish Headhunter, The Photograph Albums of Charles R. Browne’ by Micheál de Mórdha revisits Browne and Haddon’s survey of the Aran Islands for the first time in 120 years.
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.
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