Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 12 July 2012

Technical Memories (Part 24)

The Die of War

“The present juncture, notwithstanding the inevitable disturbance in the labour market, is favourable for active preparation for the great commercial developments resulting from the war. With the prospect of new markets it becomes essential to study the conditions for supplying them, and to adjust our methods of production and distribution accordingly” (George Fletcher, Assistant-Secretary of Technical Instruction, 20 April 1915).

In George Fletcher’s paper of 1915 (see last week) he alluded to a number of conditions, physical, geographical and social that Irish industry needed to focus upon. He pointed to the fact that the larger portion of Ireland was unsuited to the introduction of large, highly-organised industries, such as those that characterised the north of England and the north east of Ireland. The principal factors to consider were the cost of labour, the cost of raw material, the neighbourhood of markets and cost of transport, the cost of motive power, and rents.

Industrially and commercially the interests of Ireland were intimately bound up with those of Great Britain, which was by far the country’s greatest market, and as Fletcher noted what concerned one country concerned the other. On presenting information on the numbers involved in agriculture in Ireland the numbers had decreased in the late nineteenth century by nearly 100,000 and those engaged in industrial work alone decreased only by 26,000. The land under cultivation had diminished by about one half since 1851. In general, the population diminished at the same rate as the land went out of cultivation. Ireland was also without coal and iron and lacked certain other raw materials as well. According to Fletcher, it was also a regrettable fact that just as the change from tillage to cattle rearing displaced human labour so did the change from the simpler methods of production to the use of machinery. He noted though that on several occasions, the displacement due to the introduction of machinery was temporary and was followed by increased employment as factories sough to produce more.

George Fletcher flagged that the higher cost of living in cities necessitated higher wages; “The workman in the smaller towns can, with lower wages, secure greater comfort. The difference between the rates of wages will, in many cases, be sufficient to turn the balance in favour of the small town. The value of labour cannot be measured by the rate of wages alone. Low wages do not imply cheap labour”. He gave the example, that closely associated with the linen weaving industry of Ulster was the hand-embroidery of linen. The industry was essentially a home industry. It was carried on by women and girls, and yielded in the region of £250,000 per annum in wages. In times past it was considerably larger. For twenty years previously to 19195 it had declined, both as to the number of persons employed and the prices paid for work. Manufacturers were getting their linen embroidered abroad. Huge quantities of handkerchiefs were sent to Switzerland, to be embroidered on machines introduced no less than fifty years previously. As a result the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction undertook to aid in the maintenance of two schools of machine embroidery, one at Ballydougan, Co. Down and the other at Maghera, in Co. Derry.

Before war broke out, Germany was sending Ireland over a million pound’s worth of toys and games per annum. The export of such goods from the United Kingdom to Germany was of the value of £50,000. The cutting-off of the supply of nearly a million pound’s worth of toys was to Fletcher “a serious menace to domestic peace; the nursery was in danger, and immediately men’s and women’s minds were turned to producing toys”.

Before the war Ireland was importing into the United Kingdom from Germany over a million pound’s worth of glass and a further £1 ¼ million’s worth from Belgium.  Experiments were being conducted in the laboratories of the Royal College of Science with a view to testing the suitability of Irish sand to make Irish glass. The first results were encouraging and awaited verification by tests on a commercial scale. To Fletcher, another great opportunity arose from the country’s leather trade. German exports to Ireland per annum amounted to over £2 million’s worth of leather. In his conclusions, George Fletcher considered that a condition essential to success was high efficiency in production and that, “the war had brought home to a large number of people truths which a year ago found only unwilling hearers”.

During World War One over two thousand Corkmen were killed, some eleven hundred of them from Cork City alone. Many of them lie buried with hundreds of thousands of other British soldiers in the cemeteries of northern France and Flanders. At the South Mall is a memorial to those Irishmen who died in the First World War.  It was erected in 1925, and is one of the few example Irish examples of its type. Carved in relief on a modest limestone obelisk, sitting on a plinth, is the profile of a Munster Fusiliers soldier in full military uniform, head down, gun at rest.

To be continued…

Caption:

649a. Gravestone, A Soldier of the Great War, Tyne Cot Cemetery, Belgium (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 5 July 2012

Technical Memories (Part 23)

Calls to Arms

By the time the Crawford Municipal Technical Institute perhaps settled down in its educational programmes, its goals shifted again not just for the Cork institute but for other institutes across Ireland. The advent of World War I or the Great War again changed the focus of the country’s needs.

During World War I (1914–1918), Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which entered the war in August 1914 as one of the Entente Powers, along with France and Russia, when it declared war to halt the military expansion of the Central Powers. The central powers consisted of the German Empire, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria. At the outbreak of the war, most Irish people, regardless of political affiliation, supported the war in much the same way as their British counterparts and both nationalist and unionist leaders initially backed the British war effort. Over 200,000 Irishmen fought in the war, in several sites and just under 30,000 died.

Arising from the blockade of imports and exports to and from Ireland George Fletcher, the assistant secretary of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, reflected in a paper delivered to the Insurance Institute of Ireland in April 1915 on new opportunities for the country’s existing resources. He was one of the first gentlemen to be recruited by Sir Horace Plunkett, the first vice president in the Department, following its establishment in 1899. In Fletcher’s paper (published afterwards), he reflected on the Department’s work to that point in time and also outlined the uses of technical instruction in the crisis that lay before it.

Commenting of the introduction of machinery and steam power, the change in the nature of apprenticeships through the new conditions of manufacture, and by the application of science to industry Fletcher deemed technical schools as essential to industrial progress. Yet he noted that the vast majority of Ireland’s youths never received any school education after the age of thirteen or fourteen; they never entered either an evening continuation school or a technical school. Hence to Fletcher, “they receive little direct education for their business in life; such a state of things constitutes a grave national danger and calls for immediate remedy”. Technical education should be provided to the army of workers in the country but also the economic leaders, what he described as “captains of industry”. He argued that technical institutes should be more generally availed of and in connection with this some lessons should be taken from the educational organisation of Germany. A great leap in industrial progress could also be affected if employers fully realised the advantages to be derived from providing technical education to their apprentices.

Scientific research was an important aspect to George Fletcher who noted that there should be “a more intelligent appreciation of the importance of and a greater readiness to apply the teachings of science to industrial uses”. He further related that to protect the interests of trades as a whole and to promote their development, the cultivation of a community of interests amongst manufacturers should be encouraged. Those ideas could be greatly assisted by the formation of manufacturers’ associations. 

George Fletcher also spoke of the feasibility of small but well-organised industries in Ireland, and called for a great extension of their kind in Ireland’s smaller towns. Backing up his statements, he critiqued the state of imports and exports in Ireland and the opportunities available arising from Germany going to war. In 1912, the imports into the United Kingdom of manufactures from Germany amounted to some 40 million pounds. The corresponding exports from the United Kingdom to Germany were about 30 million pounds- a difference of 19 million pounds. The export of German manufacturers to the Overseas Dominions and Foreign Countries outside Europe amounted to over 80 million pounds. Fletcher on Germany’s industries and international connection noted of the country’s choice to disconnect from the market: “it is certain that Germany has suffered in enormously great degrees owing to the removal from the seas of Germany’s shipping and the cutting-off of supplies by neutrals. Some 40 per cent of Germany’s total port trade was to countries now at war with her and other sources of supply are now being developed. She is suffering acutely by the stoppage of supplies of raw materials. Germany’s woollen trade depends largely, therefore, on imported wool, two thirds of which came from countries now hostile-most of it from Australia and the Cape.”

Under the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction strong and successful efforts had been made, to encourage home and cottage industries. The production of Irish woollen goods had nearly doubled since 1904. Another example, the lace industry, yielded a valuable supplement to the family income in many an Irish rural home. The number of persons employed in this industry increased from 2,099 in 1901 to 3,004 in 1911. To Fletcher, effort needed be made to conserve and develop such industries “that the tendency is for work to pass, sooner or later, into the factory”.

To be continued…

For an up to date index of Our City, Our Town articles, see www.corkheritage.ie

Caption:

648a. World War I propaganda poster (source: ebay)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 21 June 2012

Technical Memories (Part 21)

Wandering and Wondering

In 1908 Alfred Leonard was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Research Scholarship (continued from last week). The 1851 Research Fellowship was and still is a UK scheme conducted by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 to annually award a three-year research scholarship to approximately eight “young scientists or engineers of exceptional promise”. Today candidates are required to be citizens of Britain, the Republic of Ireland, Pakistan or a Commonwealth of Nations country. The Commission has been awarding fellowships and scholarships since 1891. The Commission’s Archive contains material relating to various schemes as well as to the students who have held these prestigious awards. Previous award holders include 12 Nobel Laureates.

From his scholarship Alfred Leonard spent two years at the University of Bonn where he obtained the degree of Ph.D. He notes in his memoirs:

“The chemical institute was a detached building with several laboratories and two lecture theatres…in the main research laboratory there were fifteen Germans, three British, two Russians, and one French student…the majority were very keen on their work and it was interesting to discuss our problems amongst ourselves. These consisted largely in the preparation of new compounds and combustions thereof to verify their composition. My line of country was connected with tartrazin and related compounds”.

Alfred carried out work with Professor Richard Anschütz who had succeeded Professor Friedrich August Kekulé as Director of the Department of Chemistry. Kehulé was a German organic chemist. From the 1850s until his death, he was one of the most prominent chemists in Europe, especially in theoretical chemistry. He was the principal founder of the theory of chemical structure. Of the first five Nobel Prizes in Chemistry Kekulé’s most famous work was on the structure of benzene. Richard Anschütz was interested in stereochemistry and studied the isomerism of unsaturated acids with Kekulé. Anschütz made a point of teaching chemistry to British POWs in the First World War because of his admiration for another chemist, Archibald Scott Couper’s work on chemical structures. In later life Anschütz became interested in the history of chemistry. His name is associated with the Anschütz synthesis of anthracenes from substituted benzoyl chlorides. He had a big influence on the future work of the Cork born scholar Alfred Leonard.

On Bonn, Alfred noted:

“Bonn is situated on the Rhine about twenty miles above Cologne at a point where the river is some 500 yards wide and becoming really picturesque. It was popular to make excursions by pleasure steamers to Godesberg, Remagen, Konigwinter and many other beauty spots, but the most beautiful of all these was the valley of the Ahr which we used to explore on foot.”

In student life Alfred tells of the tennis that was catered for in the summer on an enormous flat piece of land laid out in hard gravel courts. In winter, when frost arrived this land was flooded artificially and this created an extensive area for skating. A full brass band provided suitable music and restaurant catered for the comfort of the skaters, while coloured lights at night gave the appearance of a “fairyland”. According to Alfred, “the orchestras at dances were superb and played music, very different from what passes for dance music today [1950]. The spirit of carnival reigned supreme on the three days preceding Ash Wednesday; business houses closed and the whole population joined in the general festivities including elaborately bedecked processions, fancy-dress dances and increased consumption of beer and wine.”

In 1910 Alfred returned to Ireland and became an assistant to Professor Senior in the Department of Chemistry, University College, Galway. A year later he was appointed Head of the Department of Chemistry in the Crawford Municipal Technical Institute, Cork, where he remained until 1916 when he rejoined the Royal College of Science, Dublin, as Lecturer in Physical and Metallurgical Chemistry. By the Act of 1926, he became a member of staff of the University College. As a teacher, Dr. Leonard was eminently successful, and generations of students came to appreciate his meticulous presentation of lectures and the thorough grounding he gave in laboratory skills. His training in the College of Science followed by his experience in Bonn had instilled in him a strict sense of discipline, and students in his charge rapidly learned that an untidy bench or sloppy notebook called for comment that was not readily forgotten. The high standards he maintained made an impact, and it was quite common for students to return as graduates in later years to pay tribute and to thank him for the training they had received.

Alfred Leonard played an active part in organising the profession of Chemistry in Ireland. He was associated with the Irish Chemical Association (Cumann Ceimicidhe na h-Eireann), founded by Professor Hugh Ryan in 1923, and when the ‘old Cumann’ became the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland in 1950, he was elected President of the new body. He retired from his statutory post in 1957, but continued to help, until prevented by illness, with the teaching in the Department of Chemistry. He died on 28 August 1966.

To be continued…

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)