Michael Davitt and the Salvation Army

In its hundred years of operation many other mechanics' institutes in Tasmania turned to the Launceston Institute for assistance, most frequently with requests for books, and advice.

One particularly interesting enquiry came from the Scottsdale Young Men's Mutual Improvement Society in September 1884 seeking guidance on policies for use of the Institute. Their first question was; "To what classes of persons and for what purposes, public and private, would the Mechanics' Hall be let?" A specific example was given. Would the hall be let "to Michael Davitt or to the Salvation Army?"

Their trepidation regarding the Salvation Army was understandable. At the time the "Army" was regarded as a controversial moral crusade, radical in its views, enthusiastic and noisy in its public demonstrations. The organisation was new to Australia and its members often faced rowdy disruptions at their assemblies. On 11 September 1884, for example, Launceston Army representatives brought actions in the Police Court against four men who had attempted to disrupt their tent meeting on the previous Sunday. All were convicted and fined. Similar disturbances were reported at the time at Longford, Deloraine and the Don.

But what was the special interest in Michael Davitt; Fenian, MP and founder of the Irish National Land League?

Reports circulated throughout the colonies in 1884 that Davitt was planning to visit on a speaking tour. The Launceston Examiner made its view plain; "when Mr Michael Davitt arrives -should he deem it advisable to visit us – let that gentleman be politely informed that here at least his room will be preferable to his company."(1)

See Footnote (2)

As it turned out, Davitt's visit to Tasmania did not take place until 1895 and the Institute was not required to decide whether or not he was a welcome guest. He spoke at a reception at the Cornwall Assembly Rooms and was warmly received by a large audience. His visit was extensively reported in the the newspapers of the day.

Three years later he published an account of his visit in 'Life and progress in Australasia', in which he recalled his impressions of Launceston, including these observations;

The city has a very commodious Mechanics' Institute, with a free reading-room and a library of over 20,000 volumes. In clubs, societies, associations, and in institutions of a religious, charitable, literary, social, and athletic character the reputation of Launceston is very high. There is a bewildering number of these set forth in the local directory, and this probably explains the decidedly favourable estimate which the citizens form of their own culture, commercial standing, and political importance as compared with the opinions they hold and express upon Hobart and its people.

Launceston, in fact, holds its head very high when instructing a friendly stranger how to differentiate between a city with brains and capacity and an accidentally selected capital. You are soon reminded by Launcestians that Melbourne is the daughter of the little city by the turbulent South Esk, as Victoria's capital was founded by the adventurous Batman and other exploring Tasmanians. This historic fact causes your Launceston politician, pressman, lawyer, dock labourer, or newsboy to speak of Hobart, the capital of the colony, in the most patronizing manner, and to predict with the confidence of a prophet the advent of the day when the seat of government will be transferred from the banks of the delightful Derwent to those of the tranquil Tamar.(3)

That a democrat and autodidact should draw special attention to the Institute is not surprising. The Mechanics' Institute at Haslingden in Lancashire had played an important role in the development of Davitt's political ideals. The image below is from the Haslingden Old and New blog and shows Michael Davitt working in the upper rooms of their Institute.

The Launceston Mechanics' Institute quickly acquired a copy of 'Life and progress in Australasia' when it was published in 1898, and the book is still in that part of the collection (some 500 volumes) housed in the Launceston Library.

Scottsdale's Mechanics' Institute Hall was commenced in 1881, opened in 1883, and was operated by the community until 1917 when the building and its library were taken over by the Municipal Council. The building still stands and a volunteer committee has recently taken on the task of redeveloping the hall. Images of the building can be accessed at their Facebook page.

1. 'Launceston Examiner', 13 June 1884, p2.

2. Portrait of Michael Davitt from 'Harper's New Monthly Magazine', August 1887, p422. (LMI Collection)

3. Davitt, Michael, 'Life and progress in Australasia' (1898). p314.

VISIT TO BALLAARAT MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE

Prue and Mike McCausland

We visited Ballarat to learn about the BMI collection of books and periodicals and to draw if possible on its members’ experience of preserving and managing them. One member of the Library Committee, Rex Bridges, took us on a tour for about an hour and a half on the 25 March 2014. It was just what we’d hoped in terms of appreciating the challenge that FOLMI is taking on, and its potential rewards. Rex has had a central role in the cataloguing and maintenance of the BMI heritage collection, and was a most welcoming and enthusiastic guide with a thorough knowledge of their collection.

The BMI has both an extensive heritage and a working collection (a subscription library of current titles, similar to a public library). Membership covers both lending rights and research access. Both are housed in the fine 1859 building at 117 Sturt St, Ballarat, recently restored at a cost of over $5m. and reopened in 2013. It has a number of beautifully furnished rooms over five floors, a number of which are leased or available for rent for functions.

The Heritage Collection has its own large room, about 20m by 14m, which has an upper balcony/mezzanine floor. The books and serials are mostly stored on shelves, with the really valuable items kept in locked, glass-fronted cabinets. Most of their newspapers have specialist shelving in the basement. The basement is a warren of storage and working areas as large as the library space above.  Both sections are linked to an effective air-conditioning system. 

Mike with Rex Bridges at the Ballaarat MI

Following are some of the bits of information we picked up about the collection and how members of BMI manage it:

A large number of volunteers, drawing on library and archivist skills and direction, took about 3 years to draw up a database for what had survived of the collection from its early days of donations and purchases since 1859.  They used FileMaker, a program also used for the working library collection operated by BMI (with its own full-time librarian).  Since that time some six or more volunteers come in once a week to work at computers to enter and edit entries.  There is a dedicated workroom for this, in addition to the reading room/computer facilities in the Heritage Library itself.

The Heritage Collection has about 18,000 volumes, with a further 1800 bound volumes of newspapers. Over 100 of the books are pre-1800, over 6,000 are pre-1900 (with about 1,200 before 1859). Works by Australian authors are separated from the main collection. Since 1980 when the numbering system began, each item is numbered sequentially (in pencil inside the front cover) and as it is added to the database it has its Dewey number recorded. Dewey numbers are used to order the books on the shelves.  FileMaker has a variety of ways of listing and accessing information about titles.

FileMaker also produces catalogue slips which are placed inside the front cover of each item, solving the problem of sticking labels on the spine. More recently a barcode has been placed on the fly leaf as well.

The books vary in condition, with some in a fragile state as would be expected for a working collection existing for over 150 years. Some are tied by library ribbon tape to keep parts together, and the most vulnerable are placed in archival plastic bags. The collection includes volumes from about 20 other local mechanics’ institutes, as well as donations from the earliest years.

Funding comes from a variety of sources: state government grants, the Williamson and Potter Foundations, strong continuing support from local government, membership fees, the leasing of parts of the BMI building and hire of facilities (including a magnificent period-styled dining or function room, once a ballroom).

The Heritage Library is used by researchers, especially those associated with the University of Ballarat. Most of the general researchers use the newspaper collection, though as their contents are not indexed, family historians are not particularly encouraged.

It was inspiring to see how much had been accomplished by the BMI volunteers, and how an important part of Ballarat’s, in fact Australia’s, heritage had been preserved through their labour and dedication. They have created a valuable national resource. Rex generously passed on to FOLMI a copy of their databases for books and newspapers.

We believe FOLMI should maintain ties with BMI as fully as possible, share with them what we discover about the Launceston Mechanics’ Institute, and use their experience and advice in further planning our project.  The collections, though remarkably similar in their founders’ conception, are different in character as well as in specific holdings. We will need to make decisions based on our situation, of course, but it is reassuring to know another group has achieved what we hope to do, and have done it so well.

Lefroy Mechanics' Institute

Sorting the books of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute has revealed a most interesting artefact of a long-forgotten Tasmanian country Institute.

The mining town of Lefroy, located north-east of GeorgeTown, established its own Institute in the early 1880s, as envisioned in this article in the Launceston Examiner, 1 August 1881 (p.3):

LEFROY. (From a Correspondent.) Among the many plans of practical utility which engage the attention of the residents of this rapidly progressing town, that which, when perfected by the erection of a Mechanics' Institute, will provide a place of intellectual and innocent recreation and amusement, deserves of more than passing notice. The idea of founding a Mechanics' Institute originated with a gentleman who had had considerable experience in erecting kindred associations elsewhere, and his plan was at once approved, and supported by those to whom he imparted it. Subscriptions in money and donations in books were at once promised, and it was determined to at once hold a meeting to test the feelings of the district. Sufficient support was here given to justify the promoters in taking such steps as that of securing the ground, appointing officers, prosessional committee, etc. Unlike many institutions which have been born in flame and buried in smoke, the Lefroy Institute will spring from a modest and small foundation. At a meeting of the provisional committee on the 25th inst., it was elicited that with a sum of £40 in hand a start would be made by the erection of a building suitable for a reading-room and library, that, chiefly through the exertions of Bernard Shaw, Esq.*, the Government had made a free grant of the land required for a site, and that of the £50 required £33 18s had been promised, and also 200 volumes of books. A vote of thanks was given to Mr Shaw for his courtesy and kind efforts on our behalf. A decision arrived at to provide monthly entertainments in aid of the institute, and an amusement committee was formed to make all necessary arrangements in connection therewith. It will thus be seen that we are, in this part of the colony, thoroughly alive to our needs and requirements. If, as is highly probable, we succeed in meeting with fair and generous support, so much sooner will the institute, in its entirety, be an accomplished fact, and we trust that, considering how greatly our uncoined gold has benefited Launceston, its inhabitants will devote some portion of their surplus coin in aid of an institution so truly beneficial. I need not say also that anything literary will receive a warm welcome at our hands.

*Bernard Shaw, Esq., (1836-1910) was Commissioner 

of Mines and Goldfields at this time.

By 1883 the Institute was well-established, and was described by a visitor to the town in these terms;

A VISIT TO LEFROY, (BY AN OCCASIONAL RAMBLER.).

Next to the Anglican Church is the Mechanics' Institute, a small and unpretentious building. It contains a library of 600 volumes, and is well supplied with newspapers, periodicals, etc.

Launceston Examiner 17 July 1883, p3

By 1887, the collection appears to have shrunk somewhat as the "Tasmanian Directory and Gazetteer" of that year refers to a "library of 400 volumes".

How long the Institute operated at Lefroy is yet to be discovered, but clearly from the overlaid library plate illustrated below, part of its collection found its way into the Launceston Public Library (1929 -) at some later date.

The plate was found in Volume VII of "The British Essayists ..." edited by A. Chalmers, F.S.A.(1823).

UPDATE

A fully exposed Lefroy bookplate has since been found, although a different colour, in a copy of Collier's "Lectures on Scripture Facts" (1802), bound by G. Rolwegan, Hobart Town.

Another volume with interesting provenance, and a mining connection, found its way into the LMI collection in 1890 via the first Launceston Public Library. It was originally part of the Pleasant Creek Library and Mechanics' Institute collection from Quartz Reef (now Stawell), Victoria. The volume 'Episodes of Fiction' (pub. 1870) features a handsome black leather binding with stamped insignia.

MIV Newsletter No.32 - Winter-Spring 2013

The latest issue of Useful Knowledge, the newsletter of the Mechanics' Institutes of Victoria Inc., is now available. The newsletter features a two-page article headed "Launceston Mechanics' Institute's nationally significant remnant book collection".

The illustrated article charts the development and survival of this remarkable collection, and highlights the opportunities for serious research afforded by its preservation.

MIV Inc. was formed in 1998. It aims to foster the preservation and restoration of the social, cultural and physical heritage of Mechanics' Institutes through the development of information exchanges and systems of mutual support.

Membership is open to groups and individuals with an interest in the MI movement, particularly in Victoria.

Since its formation MIV has:

• Staged the first National Mechanics' Institutes Conference in Melbourne in 2000 and published its proceedings.

•  Facilitated the publishing of the 350 page book If the Walls Could Speak: A Social History of the Mechanics' Institutes of Victoria.

•  Assisted the publication of The Libraries of the Mechanics' Institutes of Victoria.

•   Secured a round of Government grants for some of Victoria's MIs.

•   Produced two Travelling Exhibitions Remember the Mechanics? and Mechanics'... And Proud of it!

•  Staged Regional Meetings in country Victoria.

• Established a Mechanics' Institutes Resources Centre (MIRC) and database at Prahran MI.

•  Staged the First International Conference Mechanics' Worldwide in September 2004.

•  Launched MIV's Historical Plaques Program in 2003 have to date issued over 30 plaques statewide.

To discover more about Mechanics' Institutes of Victoria Inc. and to obtain a copy of the newsletter visit their website at; http://home.vicnet.net.au/~mivic/index.htm

Other Mechanics' Institutes in Tasmania

In addition to the Launceston Mechanics' Institute, and the less successful Hobart Institute (1827-1871), institutes were established in many smaller Tasmanian centres.

Stefan Petrow has identified Mechanics' Institutes at Franklin, Huon, Don, Waratah, Port Esperance, Ellesmere (later Scottsdale), Emu Bay, Ringarooma and Queenstown. The word 'mechanics' did not form part of the name of the Bellerive, Campbell Town, Devon, Glenora, Green Ponds, Hamilton-on-Forth, Lefroy, Oatlands, Sorell, Stanley and Wynyard institutes, but they had similar aims to mechanics' institutes.

Related but short-lived societies included the Tasmanian Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (Launceston, 1831), the Tasmanian Society for the Acquisition of Useful Knowledge (Hobart Town, 1845), and the Mechanics' School of Arts (Hobart Town, 1850).(1)

Two collections which have survived in part are those of the Bothwell Literary Society (founded 1834) and the Evandale Subscription Library (1847).

(1) The Companion to Tasmanian History (Hobart, Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, 2005), p232.

What happened to many Institute libraries in Australia?

Geoffrey Burkhardt contributed a very interesting article on the collections of Mechanics' Institute libraries to the Book Collectors of Australia blog in September 2011. This extract from his article demonstrates the vulnerability of Institute legacy collections;

The demise of the Schools of Arts and Mechanics’ Institutes from the 1930s onwards was largely due to the rise of the movement for the establishment, by local government councils and municipalities, of free local and regional public lending libraries in Australian towns and suburbs. This development, together with the discontinuation of state government subsidies to the institutes, led to the closing down of many country district institutes, whose halls reverted to local government ownership and management in many cases. With the exception of some of the large state capital institutes, mentioned above, and a few surviving country institutes, many institute book stocks were subsumed into the local municipal public library. This was the case with the libraries of the Queanbeyan School of Arts and the Goulburn Mechanics’ Institute which in the 1940s became part of the Queanbeyan Public Library, and Goulburn Regional Library respectively.

It is now hard to find many of these former institute library books in these public library collections today, as repeated weeding of public library stocks of “old” and seldom borrowed books has resulted in the discarding of most of the former institute stock.

With many smaller institute libraries, the books were simply thrown out due to lack of use and interest, or sold off to local secondhand dealers, or local citizens. An example of this was the sad case of the sometime esteemed library of the Braidwood Literary Institute. The remaining library books were given to a local service club for a huge “white elephant” auction held in 1971. I attended this sale, where many boxes of books containing many rare and scarce items of Australiana were auctioned off at $5 and $10 per box, until all the Institute’s library books were disposed of. Other institute libraries, such as the Grafton School of Arts Library, in store at South Grafton, were destroyed in a flood that struck the town in the 1960s. The institute library at Cathcart was damaged beyond recovery when a roof guttering overflowed, discharging torrents of water into the library reading room and down all the shelving, soaking all the books. Other libraries were destroyed in earlier decades by fire when local institute halls were burnt down during bush fires, or through unfortunate accident.

Although the large majority of book collections once held in the libraries of Schools of Arts and Mechanics’ Institutes have long been dispersed or destroyed, the few original libraries which have survived and been preserved may be regarded as valuable historical artefacts and sources for the study of the Australian bibliographic history.

Burckhardt, Geoffrey, The Libraries of Schools of Arts and Mechanics' Institutes: Time capsules of Australian Book Collections, http://bookcollectorsaustralia.wordpress.com/, September 8, 2011.