I suspended work on my Ballymaclinton blog while writing my book on Haddon for Berghahn Books New York, but the announcement that the Trustees of the Hunterian Museum in London have withdrawn the skeleton of Charles O’Brien – an Irish giant known and Charles Byrne – from public display brought the resumption of blogging forward by a couple of weeks.
The ethics of such displays were an important part of my research and the subject of a previous blog on Cornelius Magrath, another Irish giant. It seemed like a good time to resume blogging and An Irish giant, 24 stolen skulls, one colonial legacies project and a slave owner named Berkeley is the first of a new series of blogs that feature aspects of my recent research and current activism.
Preview:
Brendan Holland in the Anatomy Museum TCD during the filming of The Giant Gene for BBC. Photo Chris Nikkel. Chris Nikkel and Brendan Holland filmed part of their documentary The Giant Gene in the museum and a key question for Holland, as a contemporary Irish giant, was whether he would like his bones to go on public display like Magrath in Dublin and O’Brien in London.
What does the removal of the skeleton of Charles Byrne from public display in London mean for Trinity College Dublin with regard to its retention of 24 skulls stolen from community burial grounds in Inishbofin, the Aran Islands and St. Finian’s Bay, Kerry? The repatriation of these remains has become a test case for the colonial legacies project initiated by Prof Ciarán O’Neill in 2020 and the question now is whether the issue of human remains in collections in London and Dublin tells us anything about the impending judgement on Berkeley’s involvement in slavery. …
The statement issued by the Board of TCD in relation to Inishbofin is welcome for the fact that the Board finally considered the question of what to do with stolen human remains held by the college. However, the statement falls far short of the islanders’ petition seeking the immediate return of the remains of their ancestors and it is clear that TCD is determined to deal with this as a matter of de-accession by request rather than repatriation by right, ignoring all the evidence submitted to TCD in recent weeks by the repatriation project and its supporters.
A spokesperson for TCD has confirmed to media sources that a decision has not been made to return the skulls. TCD is busy trying to spin this as a major advance in its plan to deal with colonial legacies, but the decision merely restates the blocking strategy the School of Medicine adopted in August. All the rest is spin and the colonial legacies project looks incapable of getting its agenda adopted in the face of opposition. We will continue to press for the immediate return of the remains.
As of Friday last (November 18, 2022) 150 members of the Inishbofin community had signed a petition demanding the repatriation of the remains of thirteen islanders stolen from the burial ground on the island in 1890 and placed in a collection of anthropological specimens in the Anatomy Museum in TCD, where they remain in their original display cases.
Marie Coyne, Director of Inishbofin Heritage launched a repatriation campaign ten years ago after reading about the theft in an exhibition of ethnographic photographs held by TCD. In 2020, Coyne co-signed a letter to Paddy Prendergast, Provost of TCD, seeking the repatriation of the remains after he announced plans to ‘decolonise’ the college campus. Prendergast agreed that the remains should be returned but the college did a U-turn after a committee tasked with the redevelopment of the Anatomy Museum objected.
Behind the scenes negotiations continued, but little progress was made and in August 2022 a spokesperson for the “Old’ Anatomy Working Group confirmed that TCD School of Medicine was is ‘not in a position to support a request for deaccession of the crania and transfer to the possession of private individuals or historical interest groups’.
Two weeks later, community representatives and repatriation campaigners attended a meeting Provost Linda Doyle organised with members of the colonial legacies team and a decision on repatriation seemed imminent. It never happened and sources in TCD confirmed that Council of the university agreed with the School of Medicine.
TCD sent a delegation to the island in November for a public meeting with the community. The delegates outlined how the college intended to process the claim as part of the Trinity Colonial Legacies project and asked for the community to engage with the process. The community responded with a unanimous show of hands demanding the repatriation of the remains held by TCD and this was repeated as an emphatic mandate when the delegation refused to engage with proposals from the floor.
26 people attended that meeting although many more islanders could not be present because of a funeral and the timing of the meeting. It was decided to confirm the show of hands with a petition of the full community and the petition will be sent to TCD early next week. In the meantime, the Trinity Colonial Legacies project is finalising a process of public consultation and evidence gathering that it hopes will persuade the Board of the college to support the repatriation process in the face of continued opposition from the School of Medicine, even though they accept that they are asking the community to jump through hoops.
The Ann Doherty Collection is an archive of photographic material, typescripts, and print journalism generated by Ann Doherty while working as a social-documentary photographer and photojournalist between 1997 and 2005. Donegal County Council Archives Service acquired her collection in 2018 and, with the assistance of the Heritage Council, employed Ciarán | curator.ie to catalogue the entire collection and digitise 100 images for exhibition in the County Museum. “A Common Humanity: Full Circle” opened in Letterkenny on September 22, 2022 in preparation for Culture Night.
The Haddon Dixon Repatriation delegation gathers in TCD ahead of a meeting with Provost Linda Doyle and her colonial legacies team. L-R: Pat O’Leary, St Finian’s Bay community representative, Cathy Galvin, journalist and poet, Pegi Vail anthropologist and film maker at New York University, and Ciarán Walsh, curator.ie.
A delegation from the Haddon Dixon Repatriation Project (above) met with Provost Linda Doyle’s colonial legacy team to begin negotiations on the return and burial of the Haddon Dixon Collection, a collection of 24 skulls stolen from community burial grounds in the west of Ireland in 1890 and currently held in the “Old” Anatomy Museum in the University.
Pat O’Leary opened the meeting by presenting the community perspective on the repatriation claim. Cathy Galvin read a statement on behalf on Marie Coyne, Inishbofin Heritage Museum, who initiated the claim in 2012. A large contingent of community representatives attended via zoom. Eoin O’Sullivan, Senior Dean in the School of Social Work and Social Policy, and Ciarán O’Neill, Ussher Associate Professor in Nineteenth-Century History, responded and the discussion that followed marked the commencement of a public engagement process that will inform a decision on the repatriation claim, which is expected in December 2022.
