With the theme for this year's Heritage Week being 'It's in your Nature', this is the perfect time to delve into the history of the RCSI Museum, which held an impressive collection of zoological specimens.
Much of the information in this post comes from Sir Charles A Cameron’s great work 'History of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, The Irish Medical Schools etc' which in 2016 RCSI Heritage Collections made available to read and search on-line. It is an immensely readable tome and contains fascinating insights into the history of the college. We’ll also utilise other sources including J.D.H. Widdess' history of RCSI as well as the annual reports of the College.
The museum began life late in the 18th century on Mercer Street; early contributions were made to it by Mr. John Halahan and Mr. William Dease. The first museum catalogue was prepared in 1795 by the professors of Anatomy.
By 1819 the museum was somewhat neglected, Cameron tells us that ‘about this time the condition of the museum was very unsatisfactory’. In 1820 the College decided to expand the museum ‘upon a scale commensurate with their other departments’ and distinct from that used for teaching purposes in the College. Over the next few years contributions of all shapes and sizes began to flow in to the museum; by December 1823 the museum contained over 1300 specimens.
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| Houston's first published catalogue, 1834 |
Houston also undertook the cataloging of all the preparations in the museum, creating and publishing the college's first descriptive catalogue of pathological and anatomical specimens. RCSI Heritage collections holds a number of copies of this catalogue, one of which can be seen below. You can also read the catalogue online at https://archive.org/details/descratal01roya
Over the next few decades interesting items continued to be added to the museum’s collection. These included a giraffe skeleton, a Peruvian mummy, a moose skeleton, an Egyptian Mummy and a collection of human skeletons to name but a sample.
In 1872 the College passed a resolution recommending to the Council an enlargement of the museum buildings and in 1878 the new museum was completed. Pictures of this space are below, from circa 1900.
It seems that the museum was neglected and fell gradually into disrepair in the opening decades of the 20th century. The annual report of the Curator, William Boxwell, from 1937 is scathing:
The museum, he says, 'is mainly used as a lumber room and furniture store, it is now almost impossible to see [the specimens] at all, and what are left of the specimens in separate glass cases are in danger of irretrievable ruin'. Not a man to pull his punches then!
Some improvements were made to the museum in the following years; the museum annual report of 1951-1952 reports that many specimens 'were cleaned and remounted' and that 'hundreds of specimens were re-labelled throughout the year'. It was also noted that many specimens had 'been re-arranged to give a better view of them'. The report from 1953-1954 notes that 'the recently painted walls brighten the museum considerably and the show cases are seen to better advantage'.
The final annual report of the museum appears in 1979/1980. It notes that two new specimens had been added to the collection over the past year and that plans were afoot to 'restore the museum to its original size' and allowing for the 'expansion of the showcase area'. This is the final mention that we have come across of the College museum in the annual reports, a somewhat unsatisfactory ending to a two century old story.
Luckily RCSI Heritage Collections still have many of the specimens that were once on display...highlights from the Natural History Collections are on display in College during Heritage Week 2017.