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Catholics, science and civic culture in Victorian Belfast

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

DIARMID A. FINNEGAN  and
JONATHAN JEFFREY WRIGHT
DIARMID A. FINNEGAN
Affiliation:
School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen's University Belfast, BT7 1NN, UK. Email: d.finnegan@qub.ac.uk.
JONATHAN JEFFREY WRIGHT
Affiliation:
School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen's University Belfast, BT7 1NN, UK. Email: d.finnegan@qub.ac.uk.
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Abstract

The connections between science and civic culture in the Victorian period have been extensively, and intensively, investigated over the past several decades. Limited attention, however, has been paid to Irish urban contexts. Roman Catholic attitudes towards science in the nineteenth century have also been neglected beyond a rather restricted set of thinkers and topics. This paper is offered as a contribution to addressing these lacunae, and examines in detail the complexities involved in Catholic engagement with science in Victorian Belfast. The political and civic geographies of Catholic involvement in scientific discussions in a divided town are uncovered through an examination of five episodes in the unfolding history of Belfast's intellectual culture. The paper stresses the importance of attending to the particularities of local politics and scientific debate for understanding the complex realities of Catholic appropriations of science in a period and urban context profoundly shaped by competing political and religious factions. It also reflects more generally on how the Belfast story supplements and challenges scholarship on the historical relations between Catholicism and science.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. 261 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 2014 

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References

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17 ‘The Victoria fete’, Belfast News-Letter, 10 September 1851. Denvir was a vice-patron of the fete, established to commemorate the visit of Queen Victoria to Belfast in August 1849.

18 ‘Annual meeting of the British Association: third day’, Belfast News-Letter, 6 September 1852. The same session included a paper by Henry Hennessy, librarian at Queen's College Cork and one of the few Catholics who participated in the Belfast meeting. The (then) Catholic Frederick M'Coy, for a short period professor of geology and mineralogy at Queen's College Belfast, was also involved in the meeting. M'Coy converted to Anglicanism shortly afterwards and moved to Australia in 1854. See Darragh, Thomas A., ‘Frederick McCoy: the Irish years’, Victorian Naturalist (2001) 118(5), pp. 160–164Google Scholar.

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22 Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners appointed to inquire into the management and government of the College of Maynooth, HC 1854–55 (355), XXII, p. 53.

23 Suspicions that Irish priests and bishops harboured at least some aspects of Gallicanism was a live issue at the time. See Turner, Michael, ‘The French connection with Maynooth College, 1795–1855’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review (1981) 70, pp. 78–87Google Scholar.

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26 Anon., ‘The Anglo-Saxon theory’, Freeman's Journal, 15 September 1852. McElheran's ‘address’ was not an official one and was not part of the proceedings of Section E (Geography and Ethnology).

27 Northern Whig, 14 September 1852.

28 We are grateful to Marianne Smith, college librarian, Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, for providing this information.

29 In different places, Knox and McElheran refer to each other as ‘friend’. See Knox, Robert, ‘New theory of race: Celt v. Saxon’, The Lancet (1857) 2, p. 343Google Scholar; and McElheran, John, ‘Comparative anatomy of human crania’, New York Journal of Medicine (1857) 2, pp. 99–101, 100Google Scholar.

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41 ‘The Celt and the Saxon’, Freeman's Journal, 8 October 1852.

42 McElheran, op. cit. (35), p. 21.

43 McElheran, op. cit. (35), p. 17.

44 ‘St Patrick's Dinner in Belfast’, Belfast News-Letter, 21 March 1853.

45 ‘Patrick's day in Belfast’, Belfast News-Letter, 21 March 1853.

46 Anon., ‘Prospectus’, Ulster Journal of Archaeology (1853) 1, no pagination.

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51 For more on Cahill see Finnegan, Diarmid A., ‘Daniel Willaim Cahill (1796– 1864) and the rhetorical geography of science and religion’, in Kember, Joe, Plunkett, Jill and Sullivan, John A. (eds.), Popular Exhibitions, Science and Showmanship, 1840–1910, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012, pp. 97–114Google Scholar.

52 ‘Dr. Cahill's lectures', Belfast News-Letter, 5 February 1855.

53 ‘Dr. Cahill's Scientific Lectures’, Banner of Ulster, 8 February 1855; ‘The Rev. Dr. Cahill’, Belfast News-Letter, 15 April 1856.

54 ‘Dr Cahill's lectures in Belfast’, Belfast News-Letter, 19 February 1855.

55 ‘The Rev. Dr. Cahill’, Belfast News-Letter, 15 April 1856.

56 ‘Dr Cahill's Scientific Attainments’, Belfast News-Letter, 16 April 1856.

57 ‘Doctor Cahill Challenged’, Belfast News-Letter, 24 April 1856.

58 ‘The Rev. William M'Ilwaine and Dr. Cahill’, Belfast News-Letter, 3 May 1856.

59 ‘Challenge to the Rev. Dr. Cahill’, Banner of Ulster, 26 April 1856.

60 ‘Dr. Cahill's Lectures’, Ulsterman, 18 April 1856; ‘Challenge and its answer’, Ulsterman, 25 April 1856. If audience figures cannot now be recovered it is safe to assume that Cahill attracted large crowds, as he did elsewhere. Cahill's remarkable popularity can be taken as one indication that there was a widespread appetite among educated Irish Catholics for science. For further discussion see Finnegan, op. cit. (51).

61 ‘The Working Classes Association’, Belfast News-Letter, 30 January 1858. This was the last notice in the paper of the association's activities. Three weeks later the association's name was changed to the People's Reading Room. Belfast News-Letter, 20 February 1858.

62 ‘Mr J.F. Maguire, MP in Belfast’, Belfast News-Letter, 2 February 1858.

63 ‘The destiny of the Irish nation’, Freeman's Journal, 16 January 1864.

64 For a detailed account of the institute see MacAuley, op. cit. (20), pp. 140–152.

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66 ‘Roman Catholic Institute Association’, Belfast News-Letter, 14 July 1859.

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70 Ulster Examiner, 15 August 1874.

71 ‘The “Belfast Guide” and the Roman Catholics’, Belfast News-Letter, 26 August 1874.

72 Ulster Examiner, 20 August, 1874.

73 See note 80 below.

74 It was not in the interests of those wishing to support Belfast's town council and leading civic institutions to openly criticize the president of the British Association.

75 Belfast Morning News, 20 August 1874.

76 Belfast Morning News, 21 August 1874.

77 It was widely acknowledged that the association, through discussions in the economic section, had played a part in resolving the dispute.

78 Ulster Examiner, 21 August 1874.

79 Ulster Examiner, 24 August 1874.

80 Barton, Ruth, ‘John Tyndall, pantheist: a rereading of the Belfast Address’, Osiris (1987) 3, pp. 111–134Google Scholar, has argued that Tyndall's metaphysics is best described as a form of ‘lower pantheism’. We are interested here, however, in how Tyndall was interpreted by Catholic commentators.

81 Ulster Examiner, 27 August 1874.

82 See, for example, ‘Belfast Presbytery’, Belfast News-Letter, 3 September 1874. See also Watts, Robert, ‘On the hypothesis that animals are automata’, in Problems of Faith, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1875, pp. 57–133Google Scholar.

83 Ulster Examiner, 27 August 1874.

84 Ulster Examiner, 29 August 1874.

85 Ulster Examiner, 16 September 1874.

86 Ulster Examiner, 8 December 1874.

87 On the pastoral address see O'Leary, op. cit. (5), pp. 28–32.

88 Cuming is listed among the founding directors of the Catholic Institute. See Magee, Jack, Bernard Hughes of Belfast, 1808–1878, Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 2001, pp. 131 ffGoogle Scholar.

89 Although he was enrolled at St Malachy's, Harkin took the anatomy and physiology exams at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. See Quarterly Journal of Education (1835) 10, p. 200. For further details of his training and career see British Medical Journal, 18 March 1882, p. 407.

90 Magee, Jack, ‘Anatomy of a Belfast surgeon: Sir Peter Reilly O'Connell (1860–1927)’, Breifne (2005) 41, pp. 20–58Google Scholar.

91 Using the 1901 Census of Ireland, available online at www.census.nationalarchives.ie/search, it is possible to identify the denominational affiliations of the club's members.

92 Ulster Examiner, 2 July 1874.

93 Twenty-Ninth Report of the Science and Art Department of the Committee of Council on Education, HC 1882, (3271), XXVI, p. 192. More needs to be done to determine the level of science teaching in Catholic schools and seminaries during the nineteenth century.

94 Royal Commission on University Education in Ireland. Appendix to Third Report, HC 1902, (1229), XXXII, p. 91.

95 We have not considered Catholic participation in Queen's College Belfast here in any detail largely because of our concern with science and civic culture outside the confines of state-adminstered institutions and because of our desire to look beyond national-level debates about education. On Queen's College Belfast and science see Adelman, op. cit. (4).

96 Royal Commission, Appendix, pp. 96–98.

97 ‘Our invisible friends and foes’, Belfast News-Letter, 22 January 1890.

98 ‘Great Unionist demonstration’, Belfast News-Letter, 29 January 1890. On the anti-Home Rule politics of leading Irish scientists in this and a later period see Jones, Greta, ‘Scientists against Home Rule’, in Boyce, D. George and O'Day, Alan (eds.), Defenders of the Union, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 188–208.Google Scholar

99 Belfast Morning News, 29 January 1890.

100 Belfast Morning News, 30 January 1890. It was, in fact, Thomas Henry Huxley who had referred to his Protestant detractors ‘pigmies’.

101 Northern Whig, 2 January 1890.

102 See Livingstone, op. cit. (68), pp. 403–405.

103 For one interesting example, see Ciaran Toal, ‘Protestants, Catholics and masonic conspiracies: the British Association in Montreal’, Isis, forthcoming.