New Archive Collections for June – Part II

The second collection is not a collection of papers of a medic but of an artist. Margaret Stokes (1832-1900) was the daughter of William Stokes (1804-1878) a leading Irish physician and President of the College. William Stokes was very interested in archaeology and antiquities, and he shared this interest with his daughter.

Margaret Stokes' interest in antiquities and her abilities as an artist combined in the production of a number of works on Irish Christian art and architecture during the 1870s and 1880s, both of her own authorship and editions of the works of her father's friends, Edwin, 3^rd Earl Dunraven and George Petrie. During the 1890s Margaret Stokes undertook long visits to France and Italy where she researched into the lives and relics of early Irish Saints, this resulted in two book; Six Months in the Apennines (1892) and Three Months in the Forests of France (1895). The material held by the archive contains original works, prints and photographs relating to these two publications, as well as Strokes' interest in Irish Christian art and architecture and religious art. The Margaret Stokes Archive collection list can be downloaded here.

The third collection is one the largest donated collections in the archive, the papers of Dr Thomas Percy Claude Kirkpatrick. T P C Kirkpatrick was born in Dublin in 1869 the son of Dr John Rutherford Kirkpatrick. He followed his father into medicine graduating from Trinity College in 1895. Kirkpatrick worked at Dr Steevens' and the Westmoreland Lock Hospitals, specialising in anaesthetics and venereal diseases. You can read more about his medical career here. Aside from his medical career Kirkpatrick was also a prolific author on medical history, publishing numerous articles, pamphlets and books on Irish hospitals, medical men and medical history. He was also a veracious collector, amassing over his life time a large medical history archive and library, both of which he bequeathed to the College.

The contents of the Kirkpatrick archive can be roughly split into three main groups. Firstly, the personal and professional papers of Dr Kirkpatrick, as well as some relating to his father. Secondly, the papers of Dr Kirkpatrick as a medical historian – these include drafts of his works, and well as extensive research notes for these works and his research for the Kirkpatrick Newspaper archive, which is an very important resource for tracing Irish medics from the earliest times up to the 1950s. The final main section is Kirkpatrick's own collection of manuscripts, including case books, letters from doctors, lecture notes, documents relating to Irish hospitals and medical institutions, as well as a collection of visual material. You can read more about some of the items in the Kirkpatrick collection here, and the full collection list can be downloaded here.