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)