Category: Collection Spotlight

Collection Spotlight for March: St Patrick’s Day Bash, Brisbane, 1948

Published: Fri, 2013-03-01 09:54 by Elizabeth Alvey

Amongst Fryer's manuscript collections is a folder of papers relating to the 1948 St Patrick's Day clash in Brisbane. The papers form part of the collection of Connie Healy, whose husband, Mick Healy, was secretary of the Trades & Labor Council of Queensland at the time. Mick Healy was the leader of the protest march that was met with such violence by the Queensland police.

On the morning of 17 March , a group of about 200 trade unionists began a street march from the Trades Hall building down Edward Street towards the centre of Brisbane.

They were protesting the Industrial Law Amendment Act introduced by Queensland's Labor government a week before. Reacting to the strike by railway workers which had commenced in early February, the Hanlon government invoked State of Emergency legislation on 27 February. It now sought even greater powers to combat what it labelled civil unrest by militant communist-led unions. This additional legislation prevented picketing, marching and demonstrations, and extended police powers to the arrest without warrant of strikers and those who encouraged their activities.

The unionists were met by more than 200 baton-wielding policemen. The onslaught led to multiple injuries and arrests, with a number of marchers being taken to hospital. One of the injured was Fred Paterson, MLA for Bowen, barrister, and the only Communist parliamentarian ever in the history of the British Commonwealth. Paterson had been observing the march and taking notes when he was felled with a blow from behind by Detective Sergeant Jack Mahoney. He was later taken to Royal Brisbane Hospital for treatment for concussion and a suspected fractured skull.

Fred Paterson standing behind lawyer Max Julius taking notes.

Greg Tippert being arrested, having had his nose broken by police

In the following days there was mass protest over the incident with more than 10 000 union sympathisers gathering in King George Square.

In June the government announced the repeal of the act which had brought the demonstrators to the streets. But the anti-communist paranoia which manifested itself in this brutal police action on Edward Street, Brisbane, on the morning of St Patrick's Day 1948 continued to be mobilised over the subsequent decades.

More about the 'St Patrick's Day Bash' can be found in Found in Fryer: stories from the Fryer Library collection.

Treasure of the Month: 'The universal conchologist'

Published: Mon, 2013-02-04 15:00 by Amanda Winters

In the seventeenth century, many members of the upper classes collected objects for 'cabinets of curiosities', amusing their guests with rare and unusual specimens of natural history. Shells were one of the most popular objects among collectors, and in the eighteenth century, as major voyages of discovery made available new and previously unrecorded species, these shells came to be studied in a more scientific way. One of the most beautiful products of this new scientific enthusiasm was Thomas Martyn's The universal conchologist (1789), a high quality publication intended for an elite and wealthy audience.

Martyn was present at the return of Cook's third voyage and bought two-thirds of the shells available for purchase for the large sum of 400 guineas. Rather than simply selling them on to wealthy collectors, however, he intended to produce an illustrated catalogue of all the shells of the world 'with a new systematic arrangement by the author'. Martyn's first difficulty was in finding artists experienced enough to make the detailed hand-coloured illustrations his book required. Despairing of obtaining enough artists with the proper skills, Martyn established at 10 Great Marlborough Street, Westminster, an 'Academy for Illustrating and Painting Natural History' where he trained ten young boys to produce the drawings he required.

Such was Martyn's fanatical perfectionism that when seventy copies of the first two volumes of the work were ready, each containing forty plates, he declared them to be of poor quality and started again. Complete four-volume sets of The universal conchologist containing all 160 plates are extremely rare. The work is most commonly found as two volumes bound as one, with eighty plates illustrating the shells brought back from the voyages to the South Seas. Fryer's copy takes this form.

More about Thomas Martyn and The universal conchologist can be found in Found in Fryer: stories from the Fryer Library collection.