Toon Time

The venue was Dublin's National College of Art and Design, now housed in the old distillery in Thomas Street. The subject was "Political Cartoons and the 1913 Lockout".

I turned up a day early and had to have a second coming, and the talk started late due to a spat between a computer and a projector. But it was well worth waiting for.

Gary Granville

The session was introduced by Gary Granville, Professor and Head of the Education Faculty at the college. He remarked that we were fortunate to be in the presence of two historians of political cartoons. Felix Larkin, who chaired the session, had published a book on the Shemus cartoons, and James Curry, who gave the talk, had published one on Ernest Kavanagh, who turned out to be the subject of the talk.

Felix Larkin

Felix, who had also contributed a post on Shemus to the National Library's blog, made some salient points relating to political cartoons in general. He stressed the importance of the cartoon as a means of getting an often subtle point across to readers of the publication in which it appeared. He reminded us that, while today the cartoons need to be accompanied by a fair amount of commentary to be fully appreciated, the original readership, being familiar with the context and controversies of the times, would have grasped their meaning immediately.

James Curry

James took us through the cartoons of Ernest Kavanagh. These cartoons were known through Jim Larkin's paper "The Irish Worker" where they appeared on the front page. In modern history books and articles some of the cartoons are reproduced in the context of the Lockout, for example, but without attribution or explanation. This is because they were simply signed "EK" and Ernest's real identity was not widely known at the time and had been lost sight of since, until James Curry discovered it.

The three main targets of the cartoons were, John Redmond, the Police, and, of course, William Martin Murphy. Murphy was the subject of some vicious cartoons. the most famous of which is reproduced below.

The Vulture of Dartry Hall

Murphy is depicted as a vulture, at his residence at Dartry Hall, looking down on a citizen who has had his head bashed in by the police. This one was published just after the riot in O'Connell Street, where the police had killed some and wounded many of the worker participants in a banned major protest meeting.

My own interest in the area comes from the sudden death of cartoonist Gordon Brewster in my mother's shop in 1946. The National Library of Ireland have recently come into possession of a collection of some 500 of Brewster's excellent cartoons and have digitised them on the internet.

The Library have also digitised the Shemus cartoons.

Olive Revisited

Amnesty Peace Tree, Cows Lane, 14/12/2006
Click on any image for a larger version

I was passing by Cows Lane again today so I thought I'd check out if Amnesty ever got round to putting the promised plaque on the olive tree.

On 14 December 2006, to great fanfare and the beating of Burundi drums, the tree was planted in a wooden container in the Lane. According to Amnesty, the tree had been given to an Amnesty activist by Yoko Ono.

The Amnesty invite described it as follows

Amnesty International invites you to lighting up of the Peace Tree to raise awareness of the human rights abuses in Darfur. There will be drumming bands and speakers from Darfur, returned from Sudan and bearing witness to the atrocities that are happening there. Join us for the ceremonial planting and lighting of the 300 year old Olive tree in Cows Lane (between Dame Street and Essex Street) at 6pm on Thursday 14th.

And indeed there was. It was a most impressive evening.

14/12/2006

14/12/2006

And the promise, on which I had been regularly checking for the last seven years?

It will be permanently located on Cow's Lane in Temple Bar with a plaque explaining its significance. It will be a constant reminder of the work Amnesty does here in Ireland and all over the globe.

So, what's the story then?

Well, the plaque finally arrived.

25/2/2014

But where is Amnesty? Where is Yoko? Where is Darfur?

Not a trace?

The tree has now been dedicated to "the events of 1714" effectively celebrating the recapture of Barcelona from the Grand Alliance (Britain, Netherlands, Austria) by Franco-Spanish forces 300 years ago. The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Oisín Quinn, did the needful, on 11/11/2013, in the presence of the Deputy Mayor of Barcelona. And the original donor of the tree, Bill Shipsey, who was not named in 2006, now figures on the plaque.

Two for the price of one, you might say. And I'll bet there's more of a story behind this.

Thanks to Extra-Extra Blog for blogging the original occasion and thereby preserving the record.

On the Waterfront

Click on any picture for a larger version

Dún Laoghaire Borough Historical Society had a packed house in the Kingston Hotel (19/2/2014) for a talk by Tom Conlon which examined changes on the waterfront between the late nineteenth century and the present day, using old and modern photographs.

Most of the material for the earlier period consisted of photos from the National Library's Lawrence collection. On 16th December 1893, Robert French, the studio's principal photographer, had spent a whole day in Dún Laoghaire (then Kingstown) photographing the area. He was fortunate to find a bay window in one of the terraced houses facing the harbour from which he could take a panorama of high angle shots of the waterfront to supplement those at street level.

Tom took these photos and examined some of the details they revealed about the period. For example we see horses drawing carts of soil along The Metals. Then there was the Dalkey horse-drawn tram, the sidecars, landaus and brougham carriages.

At the military end he took us through the history of the shifting position of a Russian cannon and the presence of a troopship in the harbour. He also managed to mention the Battery at the People's Park as an indication of the power of the British but without any reference to the Martello Tower, which was once at the centre of the park and of which network of defences the Battery was a part. He didn't include the site of the other seafront Martello, near the old Crofton garage, which had been demolished to make way for the railway around the 1830s. But then I'm mad about Martello Towers and presumably he is not.

Using his own photos, he showed how the same views looked today; mostly a serious disimprovement.

I have drawn attention before to the wonderful resource that is the Lawrence collection, which I have used extensively, in the 1970s, in my research of Killiney Bay in the late 19th century. The detail in these photos is phenomenal and many of the individual photos could provide material for a chapter in a book.

Tom Conlon

So what was I doing at this talk that had nothing to do with me really?

Well, I lived for twenty years in a suburb of Dún Laoghaire, Ballybrack, and had a lot of truck with that town.

You can see one of my favourite Dún Laoghaire photos below. I have christened it Beetle Juice, which you can work out for yourself. St. Michael's church burned down on 28 July 1965 and iconoclastic me got in fast for a photo, while it was still smouldering and before they put up the scaffolding.

Then there was the day in 1968 when I had my name taken by a Garda for attempting to take a photo of the town's phallic symbol, the George IV monument (below). Mind you, that was the day after someone had blown up one of the Kings bollix and the monument was to remain resting on the three remaining ones for at least the next twelve years.

George IV, who visited Ireland in 1821 gave his name to Kingstown, whence he departed, and also to Kingsbridge in the city centre. The people of Howth were not so obliging, restricting themselves to leaving the trace of his footprints in stone on the East Pier where he drunkenly disembarked.

And then there was the Boo. The Bamboo Café was run by the Bellini family and served up the best spaghetti bolognese I have ever tasted. My recollection is that they were from Milan. Mammy and Daddy did the cooking and Granny made some of the exquisite sauces. Franca served at table. I used to drop in with Brian Reynolds, and there was frequently a gaggle of foreign (mainly female) students around the place. It was eventually turned into a Chinese and the new owners changed the name. Fancy that.

Medlar's landau: l-r driver John;
back row Patrick, Nell, Connie;
seated Tess, twin babies Tess & Paddy, unknown lady;
front Mai.

And so back to the talk. Tom identified a landau in one of the Lawrence photos but didn't have a specific separate photo of a modern landau for comparison. So, I offered the above. The whole Medlar family and more, and all in the one landau. The photo dates from 1925 and the landau was part of Patrick Medlar's undertaking business, based in James's Street.

Mentioning this at the Q&A session resulted in Lorie Kelly (née Massey) coming across to talk to me and we had a chat. She will be retailing some of that to her 90 year old relative, one of the original (pre-split) Masseys.

1014 & All That

A combination of Clontarf and Raheny Heritage Societies are running a series of talks on the Battle of Clontarf as part of the 1014-2014 programme.

On 10/2/14, the talk was on Viking Dublin and the Excavation of Wood Key and it was given by the former Director of the National Museum, Pat Wallace, who, as a more junior employee of the Museum, had been in charge of the excavations.

Pat Wallace in full flight

He hit us with a lively story-telling account in two parts.

In the first part he dealt with the combatants. He started with the military line up for the Battle, pointing out that there were Vikings on both sides and that they were all Christians. He outlined the evolution of the various alliances, not sparing anyone's modesty, and he roundly defended King Sitric's decision to keep his own troops enclosed within the city walls. Sitric knew that whoever won the battle would then have a go at taking over Dublin (his patch) and he was making sure he would still be in a position to do something about it.

Pat's colleague Andrew Halpin
published on excavated weaponry

He then took us through some of the weapons that were involved. The armour piercing arrows sounded pretty exciting, though you had to be a bit back and out of the thick of it to be able to draw the bow. His own favourite symbol for this period/commemoration was the sword, and as you can see above that's what's in the logo.

In the second part, he spent a fair while taking us through photos of different stages of the excavation and speculating on how the original setup might have looked. He reassured those of us without the archeological background that we could catch up with what he was saying next year when he will be publishing his book on the subject.

With Kay Lonergan, Clontarf Historical Society

There was a lively Q&A after the talk. In response to a query about whether corn might have been stored on the site, he said it most certainly was,and the evidence was the beetle. Beetles were specialists and if you could identify the type then you knew what he ate. The two beetles in question here had been stamped on by Vikings, but no matter, the dedicated archeologist is not easily deterred.

He was quite critical on two fronts. At the time of the excavations his advice had not been heeded and this adversely affected the acquisitions and documenting of the site. A more modern criticism was that many experienced and specialist staff had been let go, and this has contributed to the almost total undermining of the Museum. It must be very hard for someone to see their life's work casually brushed aside like that.

With Douglas Appleyard, Raheny Heritage Society

I asked if he could give any estimate of what percentage of the total potential of the site had actually been realised in the relatively short window allowed to the excavation. He didn't venture a percentage but said that all he had wanted was to spend the rest of his life excavating the site.

It was, apparently, the best site of its type and period in Europe and he implied that there would have been no end to the exciting finds.

Since following up my family history I have taken more of an interest in the area. My great grandfather, Christopher Burgess, started his shoemaking career in the 1860s in No. 10 Wood Quay.

Link to Cathy Swift's lecture (10/3/14) in the series

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On a supplementary note, Hugh Frazer's 1826 depiction of the Battle of Clontarf has been repatriated and will be on display, free of charge, in the Casino in Marino, from 15 March to 24 April 2014.

Battle of Clontarf (1014), by Hugh Frazer (1826)
Click for larger image

Link to other 1014 related posts, including two other talks in the series.