Dr William Frazer Papers LA 41 UCD Archives School of History and Archives archives @ucd.ie www.ucd.ie/archives T + 353 1 716 7555 F + 353 1 716 1146 © 2005 University College Dublin. All rights reserved ii Introductory note iv I. CORRESPONDENCE OF DR WILLIAM FRAZER, 1849 - 98 1 II. OTHER CORRESPONDENCE, 1813 - 83 19 iii Introductory note This small collection of correspondence, consisting mainly of letters received by William Frazer, was transferred from the University Library to the Archives Department in September 1988. Its provenance prior to that transfer is uncertain. Frazer was a licentiate of both the Royal College of Surgeons and the King and Queen’s College of Physicians in Ireland.Elected to fellowship of the former, his failure to achieve the same in the College of Physicians was a source of resentment documented by one of the few items in the collection originating from Frazer; a petition to the Chief Secretary concerning representation on the Governing Body of Physicians [LA41/4]. He was an examiner in the Queen’s University in material medica and published widely. But it is to his interests outside medicine, typically Victorian in their compass, that these letters relate in the main. These include archaeology, numismatics, geology, zoology and botany. While the collection of ninety items is certainly fragmentary, it does provide a glimpse into the world and preoccupations of the nineteenth century antiquarian; and contains reference to at least one cause célèbre of contemporary museology, the Broighter Hoard [LA41/77]. Other letters are peppered with reference to accidental finds made in the course of digging drains, planting trees and, in one instance, a gamekeeper digging out a ferret [LA41/6]. There is additionally an abundance of evidence of the generosity which characterised the pursuit of learning. Articles are sent; woodcuts and illustrations are loaned; discoveries are described; information is freely exchanged; gifts of autographs are given. The correspondence is as wide ranging in its origin as its scope; and includes letters from Horatio Robinson Storer, the noted Boston gynaecologist and medical numismatist [LA41/68-71]; Henry Gillenane, the United States consul in Jerusalem [LA41/40]; as well as letters from throughout the British Isles, from both individuals and the major centres of learning and curatorship. The letters have been arranged in a simple chronological sequence with a couple of exceptions where a short sequence of letters from the same individual have been kept together irrespective of the general chronology. A small number of letters, neither written nor received by Frazer, presumably given to him for information or advice, have been separated as ‘other correspondence’ unless they contain some reference or direct relevance to Frazer. The original processing of this material was carried out by Bernadette Chambers in 1989. This present list is based very much on her descriptive work. Letters are to William Frazer unless otherwise described. Seamus Helferty July 2005 iv LA41/ Dr William Frazer Papers I. CORRESPONDENCE OF DR WILLIAM FRAZER, 1849 - 98 1 17 January 1849 Robert Paterson, Constitution Street, Leith. ‘I feel much indebted to you for your kindness in sending me a copy of your valuable paper on the late Epidemic of Fever as it appeared in Dublin’. He encloses a paper of his own on the same disease [not present]. 1p 8vo 2 28 July 1860 Testimonial from Alexander Carte FRCSI, Royal Dublin Society, in support of Frazer’s application for an unidentified chair. ‘I have great pleasure in adding my testimony, to that of your numerous friends, as to the high opinion I entertain of your scientific acquirements. You have studied Zoology and Botany with great zeal and industry and I believe you have been very successful in communicating your information to others’. 2pp 8vo 3 19 May 1871 [Professor] Thomas R. Fraser [University of Edinburgh], Grosvenor Street, Edinburgh. ‘Your kind letter with the notes of cases of purging after mercury, and the three papers you were so good as to send reached me a few days ago; and I beg to thank you cordially for each & all of them. I have read your papers with much interest; that on green vomiting especially because of its bearing on exaggerated flow of bile, and that on the epidemic fever of 1847-48, because of its being one of the earliest accounts in English of an epidemic of Relapsing Fever, of which I have just had an opportunity of observing one in Edinburgh’. 2pp 8vo 4 [14 December 1874] Undated handwritten copy address by Frazer to Sir Michael Hicks Beech, Chief Secretary for Ireland, concerning representation of Licentiates on the Governing Body of the King & Queen’s College of Physicians of Ireland. ‘Sir. I am a Licentiate of the King & Queen’s College of Physicians in Ireland since 1848 for which I paid £75 fee. I was Candidate for Fellowship & rejected under the Ballot, which was declared illegal by the Visitors, the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench, the Chief Baron & the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas: and I further believe you will find on enquiry - 1 - LA41/ Dr William Frazer Papers 4 contd should you deem it necessary, that by social position & professional rank I am fully entitled to hold said Fellowship. The income of this College is derived almost entirely from the fees of its Licentiates, which last year amounted to £772-12. It is not just there should be taxation without representation and direct representation of the Graduates is enjoyed by Graduates of London University, of the Queen’s Colleges & recently by those of Trinity College Dublin. I therefore pray that his Grace the Duke of Abercorn and Her Majesties Government may be pleased not to grant any Charter to the College of Physicians which fails to secure for me and the other Licentiates direct representation on the Governing Body from which at present we are sedulously excluded’. William Frazer M.R.I.A. Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Late Examiner in Materia Medica to the Queen’s University. Lecturer in Materia Medica to the Carmichael Medical School. Member of Council of the Royal Geological Society of Ireland. 2pp fscap 5 15 December 1874 Acknowledgement from the Office of the Lord Lieutenant of the receipt of Frazer’s letter concerning the College of Physicians. 1p fscap 6 21 June 1876 Robert H. Scott, Meteorological Office, 116 Victoria Street, London S.W. ‘There has been a find of about 50 coins made near the Hill of Down by a gamekeeper digging out a ferret. It has come into my sister’s hands, as she knew the finder & he sent the lot to her. She has asked me to find out from you whether or not any one in Dublin would like to buy some …’. 2pp 8vo 7 18 November [1876] [J.H.?] Scott, Delgany, to Dear Robert [her brother, Robert H. Scott]. She has just received his letter and the one from Frazer he had enclosed, asking for information about the find of coins in her locality. She gives a detailed account of the hands through which the coins had passed since their discovery; and their sale to various collectors. 7pp 8vo 8 19 November 1876 Robert H. Scott, Meteorological Office, 116 Victoria Street, London S.W. He has sent Frazer’s letter to his sister and he gives a brief account of the find of coins and their sale. ‘ … the find was peculiar in that most of the coins were rare, & of hardly any was there more than one’. 2pp 8vo - 2 - LA41/ Dr William Frazer Papers 9 2 September 1878 Philip Dwyer, Bandon Street, Ennis, mainly concerning reviews of an unidentified work of his. [A handbook to Lisdoonvarna and its vicinity Dublin 1876?] ‘I hope to join the Harleian [Society] by next year & to have funds for so doing’. 2pp 8vo 10 18 March 1881 Margaret Stokes, Carrig Brear, Howth, concerning Mr Young’s work on pencil drawings for an unspecified publication. ‘¾ of the collection are archaeological – the remainder landscape’. 2pp 8vo 11 5 October [1881?] Mary Eliza Haweis, [artist, illustrator and writer on art and decoration], The Amber House, Regent’s Park, enclosing the syllabus of her new book. They are about to set out for Rome as she had told him when they met at Cambridge. 1p 8vo 12 28 October 1883 Mary Eliza Haweis, The Amber House, Regent’s Park, bringing herself to Frazer’s remembrance as having met him at Mr Dickson’s at Cambridge ‘a year or two ago, when you were kind enough to tell me some very useful things about prints &c’. She asks advice about suitable lodgings for a young friend travelling to Dublin to sit a Dublin University examination. ‘You have not passed through London I am sure lately, or you would have kept your promise to look us up. I could have shewn you some nice Hollars, but no Albert Durers!’ 4pp 8vo 13 25 February 18[8?]4 Joseph Wright, 39 Duncan Street, Cork, to W.H. Bailey, mainly concerning rows of interambulacra in the genus Palachinus; and whether the number of rows is a sufficient generic distinction. 3pp 8vo 14 29 April 1884 C.A. Briggs, headed Dublin, but apparently written from Berlin, with an address care of Brown Shipley & Co., Founders’ Court, Lothbury, London; outlining the inquiries in which Frazer has offered his assistance. These concern John Henry, a minister of the Presbytery of Dublin, received by the Presbytery of Philadelphia in 1710; and subsequent financial aid from Dublin to Philadelphia. - 3 - LA41/ Dr William Frazer Papers 14 contd Frazer will examine relevant Presbytery minutes and correspondence in Dublin and the account books of the general fund.