RCSI Heritage Collections

  It’s Bloomsday this Sunday, celebrating the day on which Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) takes place.   RCSI has many Joycean connections, probably the most prominent of which is the appearance in Dubliners (1914) of the clock over the front door of 123 St Stephen’s Green (‘He went as far as the clock of the College of Surgeons: it was on the stroke of ten’).   RCSI Professor and President (and bon viveur ) Charles Cameron is one of the real-life people named in Ulysses itself (‘The annual dinner you know.   Boiled shirt affair.   The lord mayor was there… and sir Charles Cameron’). But did you know that Joyce had originally aspired to a career in medicine?   In April 1902, he enrolled at the Catholic University Medical School in Cecilia Street (now the Temple Bar home of Urban Outfitters).   At the time this School opened, it was unlicensed and unchartered, meaning its students were on the road to receiving essentially worthless qualifications.   But...

In honour of Bloomsday this year, RCSI Heritage Collections looks at some of the intersections that can be mapped between the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, James Joyce and the history of medicine in Dublin Ulysses by James Joyce So, will you find RCSI in Ulysses? Yes you will yes... Seek a Joycean connection in Dublin and you shall likely find one.  RCSI’s historic location with a campus spanning from 123 St. Stephen's Green, places it in the right setting. But the College's existence in the realm of Ulysses features more through its people than its locale. Mercer's operating theatre (1908) - 'The Quality of Mercer's', J.B. Lyons In 1904, the year Ulysses takes place, the Mercer building on Mercer St. & Stephen St. Lwr. was operating as a hospital. Today, Mercer’s is part of the RCSI’s Dublin city campus and is home to RCSI Heritage Collections and to Mercer's Medical Centre . In May 1904, Mercer’s Hospital held an extravagant fundraising event...

He went as far as the clock of the College of Surgeons: it was on the stroke of ten. He set off briskly along the northern side of the Green, hurrying for fear of Corley....  - James Joyce; 'Dubliners' With the release of the Central Bank of Ireland's commemorative medal to James Joyce a few months back the above quote from 'Two Gallants' has been in my mind. The clock above the front entrance to the College is a beautiful eye-catching sky blue colour, much like Dublin's sky these last few sunny days. It was made by James Booth and Sons who were prominent watch and clock makers based in Dublin. James had his workshop near Stephen's Green North from 1823 and he is registered in the Dublin Street Directory 1862 as a 'foreign and English watch and clock maker' . His son James Jnr. worked on Nassau Street in 1868 and the business continued up until the 1950s. Booth was popular among the fashionable and wealthy in Dublin and he received a large sh...