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.

The Tasmanian Sisters

An exploratory look at The Sunday at Home recently turned up a story with an interesting title – to a Tasmanian anyway – in the volume for 1899-1900 (Vol. 47).

The Sunday at Home, subtitled in some years "a family magazine for Sabbath reading", was produced by The Religious Tract Society in London from 1854 until 1912. The Launceston Mechanics' Institute collection includes a substantial run of the magazine although it is far from complete.

The story in question, 'The Tasmanian Sisters' by E.B. Moore, appeared in serial form over two issues with the assertion that it was "Founded on Fact."

Nothing has been discovered about E. B. Moore, although the Religious Tract Society had previously published a novel Lucia: A Spanish Tale of Today in 1896 under the same name. There is no reason to assume E. B. Moore was a Tasmanian, and the detail in the story does nothing to settle the question.

Chapter One opens thus;

The evening shadows were settling down over Mount Wellington in Tasmania. The distant city was already bathed in the rosy after-glow.

It was near one of the many lakes which abound amongst the mountains round Hobart that our short tale begins.

and the story, over four chapters, is set in Tasmania, on Gibraltar, and on board the Minerva.

This Sunday at Home version of the story is not recorded on TROVE, but a later version is, published in The Empire Annual for Girls of 1911 where it is described as "a story of loving service and changed lives". 

The final section of the story is omitted in this version, as is the illustration.

For those who wish to read the story (or part of it), the Annual has been made available on Project Gutenberg and in other places.

This illustration by Sydney Cowell was used for the second instalment of 'The Tasmanian Sisters' in The Sunday at Home.

A Charles Darwin Miscellany... a travelling exhibition from the book collection of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute.

Where: Launceston LINC

When: until the end of April

The profound influence of Charles Darwin on all areas of nineteenth century thinking was the springboard for this exhibition.

It is a mark of the quality of the service provided to the Launceston community that its Mechanics' Institute acquired such a range of Darwin's works in early editions, and that its collection reflected contemporary thought and reactions to the twin theories of evolution and natural selection.

The select group of items in the exhibition all relate to Darwin with examples from his own writings, the works of his supporters and opponents, and from those who were influenced by his theories, including many noted authors.

  

The Institute collection offers a unique insight to the intellectual life of Launceston in the colonial era and to the openness of a small and isolated city to the ideas that were profoundly reshaping the world.

A Punch cartoon from 1861

All facets of the collection are represented in this selection - nonfiction, novels and periodicals - a tiny part of the 22,000 volumes which have survived from this remarkable library owned and operated by the people of Launceston for over one hundred years from its inception in 1842.

This travelling exhibition is proudly presented by the Friends of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute with the support of Arts Tasmania's Lynne Stacpoole Caring for Your Collection Grant Program.

This project was assisted through Arts Tasmania by the Minister for the Arts.

Books on Polynesia

One important area of analysis of the surviving Institute collection is to establish the retention rate of books through a comparison of what was in the collection (sources such as the Accession Registers and printed catalogues are invaluable in this regard) and check this against what is still held.

The working hypothesis is that survival will vary greatly in different subject areas and categories of reading. Thus, recreational fiction titles would be less likely to survive than philosophical works on the basis that they would be more heavily read when new and then fall out of favour, or would be worn out and discarded because of condition. Only when the collection is fully catalogued, will it be possible to conduct statistically reliable surveys to measure survival rates.

In the interim a small survey was conducted on a subset of the non-fiction collection. A subject area – Polynesia – was chosen because a list of holdings in 1906 was available as the basis for a check of the shelved collection.

In the Catalogue of the Works in the Launceston Mechanics' Institute and Public Library (1906) as a subset of Reference Room Section D Australia and Polynesia, a separate listing of 37 titles was arranged under the heading Polynesia (pp18-19). This was the first catalogue in which this subject category had been separately listed. 

KORO BASABASAGA

 Detail from an illustration in Seamann's Viti (1862)

A survey conducted in September 2014 aimed to discover how many of the titles listed remained in the surviving part of the LMI collection, and where they were located.

Of the 37 listed titles, 33 were located. Ten of these are in the Launceston LINC Local Studies Collection, and 23 have been transferred to FOLMI. Another is listed on the State Library's catalogue as being held in Launceston, but was not found on the shelves. Thus only three items of the 34 appear to have been lost from the collection since 1906.

Such a high survival rate (89%) needs to be considered as a factor of the subject  category – Polynesia - one likely to be of enduring interest to a limited readership and having historical value through links with the history of Australian exploration and settlement. Additionally the location of the books in the Reference Room in 1906 suggests they were not available for loan.

The survey however reflects the value of having such strong provenance records to assist in the interpretation of the collection.

The main period of collection development in this subject area appears to have been the 1880s when travel titles by C F Gordon Cumming, Mrs Edgeworth David, Rev W W Gill and Frederick Moss were all added. However some titles are of earlier date, including early editions of Melville's  Omoo and Typee, Rev George Turner's Nineteen Years in Polynesia (1861), and botanist Berthold Seemann's Viti (1862) an interesting account of a Government mission to Fiji in 1860-1 led by Colonel William Smythe which was tasked to investigate cession of the islands to Britain.This last appears to have been donated to the collection by a teacher at the Launceston Grammar School, Mr Hedstrom.

Our New Display Case

Introducing the latest addition to our collection, a display case designed to house travelling exhibitions featuring the Launceston Mechanics' Institute collection and the activities of FOLMI.

Our commission was beautifully executed by Tony Mitchell of TJM Woodturning and Joinery who cleverly married a secure perspex display case with an old cedar table frame to produce this very attractive and easily moved unit.

We are most grateful to Arts Tasmania, and particularly the Lynne Stacpoole Caring for Your Collection program, for their financial support.

Watch out for our display at Launceston LINC in 2016.


Prior to 1891 the Launceston Mechanics' Institute also maintained a museum collection. The illustration below, a detail from a drawing by William Charpentier held in the QVMAG collection, shows one of the Institute's original display cases. It would be fascinating to discover the identity of the figure seen squatting in front of the exhibit.

A Swallow at Christmas

Click on image to enlarge

Our Christmas image this year is the work of George Cruikshank, at his most Rabelaisian, and is taken from The Comic Almanack for 1841. Here's to excess!

Seasons Greetings 

from the 

Friends of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute

Fawkner's Circulating Library

I recently picked up a book in our collection which was in a sorry state. No back cover, spine chipped and torn, front cover loose. Faded and inkstained. Volume one of Criminal Trials (1832) from The Library of Entertaining Knowledge, long separated from its companion volume.

Our policy is to retain all the surviving books of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute, irrespective of their state, and this was a perfect example of why. Sometimes it is the meta-content which is even more interesting than the book itself.

Below the series title was a faded signature – John Fawkner, Jur. – underlined, and the same signature was repeated above the chapter heading on page 40.

Museum Victoria Collections

It was indeed a book from the library of John Pascoe Fawkner; the man who beat Batman in the race from Launceston to establish a foothold on the banks of the Yarra. The man who built Melbourne's first hotel, published its first newspaper, and played a key role in its first parliament. The man who helped establish the Melbourne Institute and championed the mechanics' institute movement throughout Victoria.

Launceston was the place in which he served his "apprenticeship", building the Cornwall Hotel, publishing the Launceston Advertiser and operating the settlement's first library, between 1822 and 1835. He also ran a bakery, a plant nursery and a coaching service.

Fawkner's Circulating Library.

The Public of Launceston, are respectfully informed that the above Library will in future be kept at the residence of G. L. Gooch, Charles-street, where the subscribers can be supplied with Books, as heretofore. Launceston, June 13th, 1831.

Launceston Advertiser, Monday13 June 1831, p 188

 Presumably this was George Lonsdale Gooch, a transportee who had served out his sentence as overseer of the George Town hospital, married and settled in Launceston in 1831, and was insolvent by 1836.

On June 27, 1831, John Pascoe Fawkner placed a further advertisement in his newspaper, the Launceston Advertiser:

ALL Persons who have borrowed Books from the Undersigned, are respectfully requested to return them within one week from this date, or they will be held responsible to pay at the rate charged for each book by the printed regulations, published in this journal some time back, and to be seen in the various books now in my Library, at Mr. G. L. Gooch's. There are also a number of my Books, some with, and some without my name written in them, which persons hold, who have not received them from me.  Such Persons as with-hold them after this Public Notice, must expect to be prosecuted for such illegal detention. JOHN FAWKNER, jur.

It offers some evidence of the operation of Launceston's first library, as well as some insights to the character of Fawkner and his modus operandi. This issue of the newspaper is significant as the last under Fawkner's editorship, and other advertisements point to a major restructuring of his business interests.

Clearly Fawkner's Circulating Library was a casually arranged service, where some books were identified by a printed slip, some by the owner's name, and others not at all.

Criminal Trials, which could not have been added to his Library before 1832, is of particular interest because of its subject matter. During his time in Launceston, Fawkner operated as an advocate, effectively a "bush lawyer" who appeared in court for many defendants at the rate of six shillings. No doubt studying the great trials in the English courts was a part of his legal "training".

Whether or not this particular book did duty in Fawkner's Circulating Library, it soon found its way to a successor. Pasted onto the cover is the plate of Hill's Circulating Library, which operated as a part of James Hill's establishment in St John Street. 

 The advertisement below, from the Launceston Advertiser, by this time owned by Henry Dowling, appeared on 21 May 1835, just as Fawkner was arranging a vessel for his voyage to Melbourne.

Exactly when the book made its way into the Mechanics' Institute collection is not yet clear. From the evidence of its accession numbers it survived three great reorganisations of the books, finally settling at No 1610 in the 1880s.

Much has been written about the character of John Pascoe Fawkner but  James Bonwick's description of 'a native energy that made him rise superior to all assaults, endure all sneers, quail at no difficulty, and that thrust him ever foremost in the strife, happy in the war of words and the clash of tongues' best evokes the man who by his actions demonstrated an unyielding sense of social justice,  a passion for learning and ideas, a deep respect for books, and a lifelong belief in the value of libraries.