International Children's Day

Children’s lives, and how to protect them.

On this day, International Children’s Day, it seems appropriate to showcase one of the LMI’s books on children.

This book, published in 1879 is in the collection of the LMI. When I came across it I thought how relevant it seemed to concerns we have today. But rather than covering subjects such as abuse, neglect, bullying, access to education, or lack of it, this book deals with one issue that was foremost in the minds of parents in the 19^th century: how to prevent their children from dying.

This page from the index shows that the book deals with some general neonatal care issues, but the greatest portion of the book deals with diseases such as consumption, smallpox, whooping cough and others, and their treatment.

A good start in life is seen as the best way to combat these common childhood diseases, and the first part of the book concentrates on nutrition. It is heartening to see that, as well advocating some very doubtful practices …

… there are quite a number of recommendations that we would accept today. Handling the child quickly and quietly after birth so that it can be with its mother as soon as possible, is a practice we follow now. Breastmilk is seen as the best food for a baby.

All the recommendations are based on scientific knowledge and doctors’ observations, which is all that we can still do. In 1879, however, the limits of that knowledge must have put at risk those very lives the doctors were trying to save. The scientific method used to create the recipe for ‘Artificial Mother’s Milk’ is quite impressive, despite the resulting inadequate product.

The application of scientific method, however, leads to other dangerous recommendations, which are advocated with frightening certainty. Up to the age of one children should have solids only in the form of bread, flour mixed with milk, and beef tea, or maybe a little egg white beaten with milk. After one year is reached, babies can cope with more solid food:

It must be remembered that an English meal at this time, for adults too, would have had few, if any, vegetables included.

I can highly recommend this book. It will induce laughter, gasps of horror, and frowns of disbelief, but its redeeming feature is the earnestness with which nineteenth century doctors and families undertook the care of their young charges. 

 Contributed by Sue McClarron

Cataloguing Our Collection

The Friends of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute have started to catalogue our collection and our holdings will gradually appear on the ANBD and TROVE over the next two years.

 Our National Union Code symbol is TLMI. The screenshot below shows three of our titles as they appear on TROVE, including one of the titles which does not seem to be held elsewhere in Australia.

As we begin the biggest project we have undertaken so far, it is timely to revisit a survey undertaken in October 2014.

It will be interesting to see if the results are borne out when the collection is fully catalogued.

The aim of the survey was to determine the proportion of Launceston Mechanics' Institute's nonfiction books held in other Australian libraries. A further aim was to provide a basis for comparison with the holdings of the Ballaarat Mechanics' Institute, an Institute of similar age and size to the LMI.

Methodology

A representative sample of the LMI collection was checked using the National Library of Australia's TROVE books discovery service. TROVE indexes 21 million books, theses and proceedings held in Australian libraries.

The same sample was checked against the holdings of the Ballaarat Mechanics' Institute, using a database supplied by the Institute.  The BMI collection is not listed on TROVE.

The sample was randomly selected by tagging and checking the tenth book on each shelf.

Sample size – LMI nonfiction Sample (n=367) – 95% confidence, 4% MoE.

Publication dates of all sampled items were recorded in order to develop an age profile of the collection.

This is an outline of what we discovered:

TROVE Listed

1. Libraries listed on Trove held 276 titles in the same edition as that held by LMI (75.2% of the sample).

2. Of these 53 (14.4% of the sample) were held by only one other library.

3. Libraries listed on Trove held a further 47 titles (12.8%) but only in a different edition to that held by LMI.

4. Libraries listed on Trove offered access to a further 39 titles (10.6%) in digital format but did not hold the printed book. i.e. only LMI held a print copy of these titles.

5. LMI held copies of a further 5 titles that were not listed on Trove in either print or microform editions and for which no digital access was offered. (1.4%)

6. In total 24.8% of the sample was unique to the LMI collection in print form in that specific edition

Ballaarat Mechanics' Institute

1. Of the 367 titles in the sample, 86 (23.4%) were found on the Ballarat collection database.

2. There were 55 exact matches (14.9%).

3. 31 titles in the sample were the same title but in a different edition.

4. A subsequent check of 373 fiction titles held by LMI revealed even less correlation. Only 11 titles (2.9%) in this sample were held by both Institutes.

In summary:

1. The LMI nonfiction collection includes a significant proportion of material not held elsewhere in Australian libraries.

2. There are great differences between the holdings of the LMI and the Ballaarat Mechanics' Institute – a feature which merits further research.

3. The age profile of the sample – below -  illuminates, and raises many questions for further research about, the development of the collection over its period of operation.

Figure 1: LMI Collection by Date of Publication

Plomley Foundation

Followers of our Facebook posts will be aware that we were recently granted funding from the Plomley Foundation for volunteer training to catalogue our collection. When catalogued, the collection will become available for the first time on the Australian National Bibliographic Database and through TROVE.

Significantly enhanced access to the collection will support FOLMI's future activities in collection management and interpretation. A catalogued collection will enable research, evaluation and analysis of the collection by allowing multiple access points and faceted searching which is currently not possible. It will also allow FOLMI to maintain its own catalogue as a subset of ANDB.

It is the single most important way FOLMI can improve access to its collection because it provides national and global access to its collection. Information about the collection and individual items will be made available for the first time to all those researchers, students, historians, bibliophiles and readers who may have an interest.

Members will be aware that this cataloguing project received strong endorsement as a priority for our organisation in the Significance Assessment completed by Dr Susan Marsden in 2015.

The Plomley Foundation was established in 1984 by the late N J B (Brian) Plomley, a former Director of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery from 1946 to 1950 and from the early 1980s until his death in 1994, an Honorary Research Associate at QVMAG.

Since its establishment the Foundation has supported a wide variety of research projects on various aspects of Tasmania’s natural and cultural heritage.

While we were aware at the time of our funding application that Brian Plomley had taken an interest in the Launceston Mechanics' Institute collection during his lifetime, and that he had used the collection while researching popular fiction writers such as A E W Mason, Harold Bindloss and C N and A M Williamson, we had no idea that he also had a much closer and more significant personal connection with the whole Mechanics' Institute movement.

Among Brian Plomley's forebears were the Birkbeck's of Settle, in Yorkshire's West Riding, about whom he wrote in Several Generations (1971) Therefore he shares a common ancestry with Dr George Birkbeck, pioneer of the Mechanics' Institute movement and founder and first president of the London Mechanics' Institute. 

One of the treasures in our collection is the first volume of The London Mechanics' Register (1825) into which is bound a six page 'Biographical Memoir of George Birkbeck M.D.'.

LMR, v1, no1

It is fitting then that we draw inspiration in our project both from the direct support of Brian Plomley and the contribution of his close relative.

The following summary of Brian Plomley's career is taken from the introduction to QVMAG's guide to its Plomley archives (CHS53);

Norman James Brian Plomley (known as Brian) was born on 6 November 1912 in Sydney, the elder son of Morris James Plomley, medical practitioner, and his wife Winifred Julia (nee Pickburn).

After graduating B.Sc. from the University of Sydney in 1935, he spent two years in England gaining research experience at the Imperial College of Science, London, and the University of Cambridge. 

Returning to Australia, he spent 1938 as Acting Curator of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston. At the beginning of 1939 he joined the Department of Physics at the University of Tasmania as a research biologist. Later, during the Second World War he worked in the Optical Munitions Annex on the Queen’s Domain, Hobart.

In 1946 he returned to the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery as Director. He was awarded the degree of M.Sc. from the University of Tasmania in 1947 for a study of the genetic effects of ultraviolet radiations.

He re-entered the academic world in 1950 when he was appointed Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anatomy at the University of Sydney. In 1957/58 he worked at the Galton Laboratory, University College, London, researching human genetics, then became a temporary lecturer in the College’s Department of Anatomy.

Back in Australia he was Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anatomy at the University of New South Wales from 1961 until 1965, when he travelled to Paris to study French observations of Tasmanian Aborigines. The following year he joined the staff of the Department of Anatomy and Embryology at the University College, London. He left the College in 1973 returning to Australia where he was Senior Associate in Aboriginal and Oceanic Ethnology in the Department of History, University of Melbourne, until he retired in 1976.

From 1977 he lived in Tasmania, devoting himself to writing. For his services to historical research he was honoured by Membership of the Order of Australia in 1979 and awarded the Clive Lord Medal by the Royal Society of Tasmania in 1983. He lived in Hobart until November 1985, when he moved to Launceston.

In September 1984 the Plomley Foundation was established with his generous support, being one of the most important donations received by the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery. The foundation’s aims are to encourage research and publication about Tasmania’s natural and cultural heritage and the further development of the collections of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery.

Brian Plomley was an Honorary Research Associate at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery until he died on 8 April 1994.