Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 14 June 2012

Technical Memories (Part 20)

Conversaziones in Science

Alfred Godfrey Leonard, the chemistry lecturer of the Crawford Municipal Technical Institute in 1912, had a long and chequered teaching and research career. His memories, some of which he published reveal he received his degree education at the Royal College of Science, Dublin in St Stephen’s Green. Being a government institution, it was run with strict discipline. Punctuality was enforced and non-attendance at any class or lecture had to be explained satisfactorily, or fines were enacted.

Alfred Leonard started attendance at the college at a time of great transformation. By the end of the nineteenth century the research and teaching facilities of the Royal College of Science for Ireland were no longer adequate.  Constant complaints from the college’s council about the severe overcrowding in the building led to the establishment of a government committee to assess the accommodation requirements for the college. The new building was originally designed to accommodate the Royal College of Science for Ireland as well as government activities transferred from London to Dublin. In March 1904 the London architect Aston Webb and Cork born Thomas Manly Deane were appointed joint architects. Both men had experience in designing public buildings. Webb had designed the Royal College of Science and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (and was later to re-design the principal facade of Buckingham Palace) and Deane had partnered his father as architect for the National Library and National Museum in Dublin. By the mid-1920s the College had been absorbed into University College Dublin, and the complex housed the headquarters of government of an independent Ireland.

A recent exhibition on the history of government buildings in the National Library in Dublin outlines that the exterior of the college is in the ‘Edwardian baroque’ style; the intention of the architects was to continue the classical tradition of Dublin’s eighteenth-century public buildings. The imposing front facade was surmounted by a dome, under which was a clock ‘the four faces of which can be seen from distant parts of the city’. Oliver Sheppard and Albert Power provided the sculptures, with the main entrance flanked by statues of the great Irish scientists Robert Boyle and William Rowan Hamilton and overlooked by a figure representing Science. Within the building there were four storeys of lecture theatres and laboratories with all the most up-to-date apparatus for scientific experiments (at an estimated cost of £15,000). Electricity was to be used for light; there were elevators, and although many of the rooms were furnished with fireplaces there was also a central heating system.

A member of the student’s union in 1904, Alfred noted: “the foundation stone of the present college in Merrion Street was to be laid by King Edward VII, but we found that no seating accommodation had been provided at the ceremony for the students. A meeting was at once summoned and a letter sent to the authorities pointing out the indignity to students. The reply stated that provision would be made to seat a few student representatives. Our reply went back ‘all or none’. Then the Board of Works got busy and erected a stand to accommodate all the students. Unfortunately this stand did not give a view of the ceremony and when the students discovered this, a unanimous vote was given against any students taking a seat in the stand”.

A conversazione was held annually under the auspices of the Students’ Union, originally due largely and to the energy and initiative of Mr. J. F. Crowley, a student of engineering.  Every student gave his time to set up some working experiment to attract the attention of the layman and illustrate the experiment to attract the type of work done in the college. A string orchestra was engaged, short lectures, refreshments provided and the guests were received by the Dean. In 1905, the Chemical Association came into being. Its methods were simple and efficient. Alfred Leonard noted: “Saturday being a college holiday, we met at 10am when some student gave a description of a manufacturing process in operation. The number of chemical factories in Dublin being very limited, a petition was sent to the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for the students to visit factories in England. This was approved and it became a custom for senior students to spend about ten days once a year in visiting factories in England and Scotland”.

In June 1905, Alfred Leonard agreed to walk with a friend of his Thomas Alexander, now a veterinary surgeon from Dublin to their homes in Cork. This they accomplished in five days. In June 1914, they covered the same route with certain stops in four days in a second hand motor car costing £15.

As demonstrator in the chemical department from 1905-08, it was Alfred Leonard’s duty to assist Professor Hartley in his research work on absorption spectra and to assist James H. Pollok in conducting laboratory work for first year students.  Alfred noted of that time, “it was then I found that the best way to learn about a subject was to teach it. Students have no hesitation in questioning a young demonstrator, but are naturally timid in approaching the senior staff”.

To be continued…

Caption:

645a. Government Buildings, Dublin 2012 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town 

Cork Independent, 7 June 2012

Technical Memories (Part 19)

Experiments in a Shed

 “It was my goof fortune in the early nineties to attend St. Luke’s National School, Cork, the headmaster of which, John B. Crawford ruled metaphorically with rod of iron. Crawford was a giant in stature and was known generally as ‘Long John’. He was a gifted teacher and in addition to the ordinary routine subjects gave us instruction in the fundamentals of sound, light, magnetism, electricity, anatomy and physiology…such experiments may seem trivial to the youth of today, but appeared very wonderful and intriguing to us, youngsters of fifty years ago” (Alfred Godfrey Leonard, address to Institute of Chemistry of Ireland, 22 November 1950).

The lecturer in physics and chemistry at the Crawford Municipal Technical Institute in 1912 was Alfred Godfrey G. Leonard. He gave an address to the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland in 1951, which was published in their journal called Orbital. An obituary to Dr. Leonard is also listed in the same journal in 1966. Over his career, he worked with others in making chemistry a main stream subject in educational organisations across Ireland.

A native of Cork, Alfred Leonard received his early education at St Luke’s National School in Montenotte. In 1898, he moved to the Cork Grammar School, at Sidney Place on Wellington Road. The school was the property of, and under the general control of, the City of Cork Church School Board. In street directories in the early 1900s, this boarding and day school prepared boys for the university, army, navy, civil service, legal and medical professions and mercantile pursuits. There were a few scholarships from the elementary schools. The general work of the school included training for the Intermediate Examinations, Science and Art Department, Agricultural and Technical Department, and the General Synod’s examination in Holy Scripture.

Alfred received teaching from the headmaster Rev. Ralph Harvey, Osborn Bergin, George Taylor and Louis McNamara. Osborn Joseph Bergin (1873-1950), an eminent scholar in the field of Irish Studies, was a native of Cork. He was educated at Cork Grammar School and Queen’s College Cork (now University College Cork). He learned Irish from Pádraig Ó Laoghaire, a national teacher in Beara. Bergin was appointed a lecturer in Celtic at Queen’s College Cork in 1897. Bergin was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy in March 1907. He held the post of Professor of Old and Middle Irish at University College Dublin from 1909 to 1940.

On the teaching of science at the Cork Grammar School, Alfred Leonard notes that:

“Prior to 1900, the teaching of science was under the control of the Science and Art Department, South Kensington. We received oral instruction in sound, light, heat and mechanics which enabled some of us to pass examinations conducted annually by the Department. On rare occasions inspectors from the Department visited the school and when this occurred prompt warning was sent to the Christian Brothers’ School next door, a friendly act, which was reciprocated by them should an inspector arrive there first. On one occasion, I remember, we were engaged in mathematics when the warning arrived and promptly the few pieces of apparatus possessed by the school were brought out and the instruction was changed to Natural Philosophy; but all to no purpose, as the inspector did not appear.”

When the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction was established in 1900, Alfred remembers the starting of a campaign for the introduction of experimental science teaching in schools, and laboratories were established in almost secondary schools. When the laboratory was under construction in the Grammar School, Mr. England, who had been trained in Owen’s College, Manchester taught Alfred and his class. Alfred notes that he and his friend wished to move beyond oral teaching and wished to have practical experience;

“Most of our pocket-money went in the purchase of small quantities of very ordinary chemicals. These we used at home in an outhouse for the preparation of hydrogen, oxygen, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, chlorine, bromine, iodine, carbon dioxide and such like substances. Instead of flasks we used stoneware pickle jars; corks were bored with red-hot skewers and heating effected by a spirit lamp.”

In 1902 Alfred won a Government Scholarship to the Royal College of Science in Dublin. The scholarship amounted to 21/- per week of the college (30 weeks) with a travelling allowance to and from home. Some 40 students entered the college each year. The first year course was common to all faculties and laid a sound foundation in mathematics, mechanics, chemistry, physics, practical geometry, and free-hand drawing. Professor Walter Hartley delivered the first year lectures, which were fully illustrated with experimental demonstrations. A pioneer in the area of spectroscopy, Hartley was the recipient of many international honours. Among his most significant analysis was his work on the relationship between molecular structure and absorption spectra, and his discovery of the absorption of ultraviolet radiation by ozone. Many of his studies addressed practical applications of scientific research, covering subjects such as dyes for the Irish textile industry, studies for the brewing and distilling industries and chemicals for the prevention of potato blight.

To be continued…

Caption:

644a. Alfred Godfrey Leonard, c.1960 (source: Institute of Chemistry of Ireland)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 31 May 2012

Technical Memories (Part 18)

Striving towards the Sun

“Developments are constantly in progress in the world of industry…If our technical schools are to fully meet the need of instruction, they must adapt their curricula and teaching in accordance with these developments. The cost of adequate staffing and equipment makes its impossible for small schools to do this work. In Germany and other Continental countries, monotechnics have been established, and in England the course system appears to have taken root, while in London there is a strong movement in the direction of this specialised teaching (A.F. Sharman Crawford, part of his paper at the Irish Technical Instruction Association Annual Congress, 1913, Bangor, Co. Down).”

With the opening of the Cork Technical Institute in January 1912, the staff worked diligently over the ensuing two years to develop Crawford’s idea of running specialised courses to meet demands of industry. Newspaper clippings on the expansion of courses and calls for new lecturers and students survive in the minute books of the Crawford Municipal Technical Institute in the Cork and County Archives in Blackpool, Cork. Entrusted with heading up the Cork venture was John H. Grindley, D.Sc, who was a Whitworth Scholar.  The Whitworth scheme arose from the work of Sir Joseph Whitworth (1803 –1887) who was an English engineer, entrepreneur, inventor and philanthropist. In 1841, he devised the British Standard Whitworth system, which created an accepted standard for screw threads. A strong believer in the value of technical education, Whitworth backed a new Mechanics’ Institute in Manchester and helped found the Manchester School of Design. In 1868, he founded the Whitworth Scholarship for the advancement of mechanical engineering. John Grindley was one of these scholars and went to become an Honorary Fellow of the Owens College Manchester which later transformed into the Victoria University, of which Grindley was also was a Fellow. He received a great education in mechanical education from one of the United Kingdom’s leading technical universities. Interesting the motto of the University was “Arduus ad solem”, meaning “striving towards the sun”. It is a metaphor for aspiring to enlightenment. It is quoted from Virgil’s Aeneid book VI.

The secretary to the Crawford Institute was Francis B. Giltinan. He had a long career within the organisation being present from the beginning in 1901 and he was still secretary in 1930.  In 1912, his assistant or clerk was R. Sisk and the Librarian was J Wilkinson. In September 1914, an advertisement in the Cork Examiner appeared looking for a female clerk with competence in short hand typing, with £39 per annum as salary.

In the Institute’s botany and gardening section was John Griffin. In the carpentry and joinery department was P. O’Connor, who had a full technological certificate from the City and Guilds of the London Institute. Founded in 1878 by the City of London and 16 livery companies – the traditional guardians of work-based training – to develop a national system of technical education, City & Guilds has been operating under Royal Charter granted by Queen Victoria, since 1900.

In the department of Building Construction and Builder’s Qualities in the Crawford Institute were John J. O’Sullivan and John Murphy, both with technological certificates from the London Institute as well. In September 1912, a call appeared in the Cork Examiner for a building construction teacher, with a salary of 8s. per evening for the duration of two hours. I’m uncertain if this was an expansion of the course. Certainly in 1916, there was a call for an assistant teacher in building construction.

In the domestic science department covering cookery, laundry work, the Chief Instructress was Miss A. Murphy, B.A. She had a diploma from the Irish Training School of Domestic Economy. In 1912 there twenty-three students in the Department’s training school in Stillorgan, county Dublin. Entrance to this institution was by open competitive examination, but candidates who had passed the Senior Grade Examination of the Intermediate Education Board or who were graduates of a university were given priority without examination. Miss Murphy’s post was advertised in July 1912 with a salary of £80 per annum, rising in increments of £5 to £100. The instructress in January 1912 was Miss O. MacDonagh who also had a diploma from the training school. The instructress in dress-making and millinery was Miss M. O’Donovan whilst the instructress in millinery was Miss B. Gleeson. In October 1913, a new shirt-making class had a course fee of 5s. In October 1914, a teacher in short-making was advertised with a salary of 7s. and 6d. per lesson with two lessons per week.

In electrical engineering, the lecturer was C.E. Greenslade whilst the Laboratory assistant was vacant. In October 1913, a lecturer in machine drawing for electrical engineers was advertised one evening per week at a salary of 10s per evening. In the mechanical engineering section, the lecturer was W. Fearnley, who had a B.Sc from London, and like Grindley was a Whitworth Scholar. He was also a National scholar. J.Lowe, a Ramsbotton Scholar from Manchester University was the assistant lecturer. The workshop assistant was H. Nolan. In late January 1912, a new class in motor car engineering was to be held on Mondays, 4-5.30pm. 

To be continued…

Caption:

643a. John H. Grindley, Principal of Crawford Municipal Technical College, Cork (picture souvenir booklet, 1912)