RCB Library Notes01 Dec 15

Archive of the Month December 2015 – More Magic Lanterns: Eclectic Collection Found in Stillorgan Parish, Dublin

A significant collection of 105 lantern slides has recently turned up in the Dublin parish of Stillorgan. Thanks to the foresight and conscientious efforts of parishioners who salvaged the slides (complete with an original camera bag and parts of the original projector) and recently transferred them into the safe custody of the RCB Library – and with the support of their rector, the Revd Ian Gallagher – all 105 slides have now been digitally re–mastered, and are displayed here for the first time for viewing by a worldwide audience.

The Stillorgan collection has interesting links to other sets of lantern slides already safely housed in the RCB Library, emphasising once again the particular power of the magic lantern in a church context, enabling both promotion of the church’s mission efforts and also to connect people in local Irish settings with world events.

It provides an additional eclectic mix of amateur and commercially–produced images, complementing existing collections. These are mostly of foreign travels including to European cities, the Mediterranean, Palestine, Egypt, the Lebanon, and more remarkably of the work of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society (CEZMS) in India, Nepal and China in the late 19th century.

The aim of the CEZMS was to evangelise women, by visiting them in their homes (‘zenana visiting’) but also through normal schools (teacher training colleges), medical missions, Hindu and Muslim female schools, and the employment of Bible women. It began its work in India, and this later spread to China in 1884, Japan in 1886 and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1889.

The organisation had an Irish branch, and the Stillorgan set of 10 images depicts a wide variety of activities involving CEZMS missionaries, including teaching, medical care in hospitals and the community, distributing food, and the role of the Bible women, over a wide geographical spread ranging from the Gosha Hospital in Madras (now Chennai) to Ratnapur Hospital in Nepal, and Quetta in what has become Pakistan. The set was probably put together for promotional purposes to demonstrate the society’s work for fund–raising purposes in Ireland.

Two further amateur sets cover aspects of astronomy that may have been used in teaching and an ‘odd’ mix of nine further images covering everything from hymn verses to an Irish round tower.

The largest set in the collection is a mixture of amateur and non–commercial images of a late–19th Century journey to the Holy Land, and caused some amazement when the handwritten label on one image of the port town of Jaffa revealed the words: ‘D Brown Donaghmore 1896 Jaffa’.

Non–commercial shot of a travel party in the Holy Land (15 people in total, 13 men and two women) who appear to be standing in an olive grove with locals looking on from the background. One of the men at the extreme left of the front row has his hand up in a very particular way – either to shield his eyes from the sun, or perhaps to make some astronomical point (which would tie in with the astronomy images elsewhere in the collection).

The library has previously presented the journey and the possible link of a set of Palestine slides to David Brown of Donaghmore (available here: http://ireland.anglican.org/about/174), and the survival of this single item directly attributable to him in this collection may indicate that copies of his photographs were being shared with other enthusiasts, including the person or persons who put together the Stillorgan collection.

The collection turned up in Stillorgan parish for sale at the parish May fair, and more than likely originated in one of the big houses in the area, where the individual (or individuals) who put them together may have one time lived. Although not a church collection per se, much of the content is underpinned by a Christian outlook, and particularly the importance of Christian mission in the wider world. The RCB Library is most grateful to the conscientious parishioners who salvaged the collection and transferred it for permanent safe–keeping.

The seven sets of slides may be viewed at www.ireland.anglican.org/library/archive