RCSI Heritage Collections

This evening RCSI welcomes very special guest Mary Robinson, President of the Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice, Former President of Ireland & Former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to receive the Emily Winifred Dickson Award. The Award was established in honour of Emily Winifred Dickson who was the first female Fellow (1893) of the surgical Royal Colleges in Britain and Ireland. This distinguished award recognises women who have made an outstanding contribution to their field. In honour of her visit, we take a look back at two previous occasions in which Mary Robinson has visited the College. The first was in 1991 when Mary Robinson, as President of Ireland, officially opened the new RCSI Mercer Library and Mercer Medical Centre. This site was formerly Mercer's Hospital and had closed its doors in 1983 after almost 250 years of medical service. In 1984, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland purchased the building and decided to rebuild is so tha...

Last night was the launch of ' Outsider Women ' an online exhibition of digitised archival collections from RCSI, Maynooth University and DCU: St Patrick's College through the 3U Partnership .  This online exhibition explores the lives of Emily Winifred Dickson (FRCSI 1893), Agnes O' Farrelly (Irish language activist and writer) and Teresa Deevy (playwright). These women lived in different time periods and social worlds but are connected by two major themes - their contribution to their societies and their status as outsiders, either in their contemporary world or in our subsequent historical recordings of it. All three collections have been catalogued, digitised and made available through their own standalone websites. Click on the links below to visit each one Emily Winifred Dickson  Agnes O' Farrelly Teresa Deevy In a video and essay Dr Jennifer Redmond, Lecturer in Twentieth Century Irish History in the Department of History at Maynooth Unive...

The papers of Emily Winifred Dickson the first female Fellow of the RCSI have been fully catalogued and will soon be available for researchers to study.  Dickson  was born in Tyrone in 1866 to the Ulster Liberal MP Thomas A. Dickson and his wife Elizabeth. She was the second youngest of seven children and was educated at the Ladies Collegiate School in Belfast and Harold House School in London. In 1887 she enrolled in RCSI, where she was the only female medical student. The certificate below is a  RCSI first class certificate in Preliminary Education awarded to Emily Winifred Dickson on 19th October 1887. The certificate is signed by Anthony Corley, President and John Brennan, Registrar.  RCSI/IP/Dickson/1/1/1 RCSI/IP/Dickson/7/3 (Back) RCSI/IP/Dickson/7/3 (Front) The inscription reads  'Presented to Miss Winifred Dickson by Sir William Stokes and Professor Hamilton Professors of Surgery Session 1889-90' Dickson obtained...