Archive of the Month
DUMCN images in the “Killaloe lantern slide collection”
Archive of the Month – February 2012
Canon Billy Marshall of DUMCN estimates that the slides depict the Mission and outlying areas at an early stage of its development. For example, photo number 2 which shows the group of pioneering missionaries on the steps of the Museum Building before they left Trinity College can only have been taken before December 1891 when they departed, while the images of Bishop Whitley (numbers 6 and 7) must have been taken before his death in 1904. Two of the images (numbers 2 and 6) were reproduced in the book to mark the 50th anniversary of the mission work in the region by the first head of the DU Mission, Revd Eyre Chatterton, The Story of Fifty Years’ Mission Work in Chota Nagpur (London, SPCK, 1901) – again helping to date the collection at the end of the previous century.
The most recent images (numbers 41–43) date no later than the late 1920s, when G.C.P Stevenson arrived at the Mission as a schoolteacher which gives the probable terminus ad quem to the photos during that decade.
All of the images in the slide presentation are of scenes in Hazaribagh town and district, unless otherwise stated. Hassardganj is a mission compound on the outskirts of Hazaribagh named after Frances Hassard, the first Lady Associate.
Note that five images of the original 48 Chota Nagpur images in the “Killaloe collection” have not been reproduced, being either copies of other photos, or badly mottled by the ravages of time.
The glass plate images in this collection were re–mastered digitally at the Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin, and we are most grateful to the IAA, particularly Colum O’Riordan, for his technical expertise and guidance in this project. We are also grateful to Charlotte Howard in the RCB IT Department for getting the materials online.
Click here for slide show in a new window