Amateur sleuths dig up the stories behind these old-timey Irish photographs

They hunt through family history sites for missing brides, soldiers and children. They pour over census records and cross reference leads against old newspaper clippings. When the going gets tough they hit the streets with maps in hand, or hit Google Streetview looking for figments of the past amidst the present. Sometimes they get lucky and a long lost relative gets in touch, or find a local with a good memory for faces and names.

They’re Photo Detectives and ever since the National Library of Ireland began posting images on Flickr in 2011 they’ve been figuring out the who, when and where hidden in old photographs. This crowdsourcing has proven effective as well as popular. To date the NLI account has almost 35 thousand followers and has received some 40 thousand comments.

The more than 5 million photos held by the NLI span over 150 years of history, but don’t necessarily have captions or other information identifying people, places and dates. Posting images online and inviting amateur sleuths to track down a photograph’s details is the only practical way to fill in a lot of blanks.

New images are posted almost daily, accompanied by whatever information archivists have on hand. Sometimes the crowdsourcing focuses on figuring out the basics of who’s in a picture and where it was taken. Other times, the mystery is a matter of context, unearthing the story behind a photograph by digging into the details of a long lost trade or a piece of antiquated equipment. Comments become an evolving conversation of facts revealed and checked, congratulations and personal anecdotes shared. As things take shape, NLI’s Flickr curator updates descriptions to reflect what discoveries have been made. The process is intentionally bouncy and fun, more like a game with a play-by-play announcer than a night in doing homework.

An exhibition featuring 26 photographs, annotated with crowdsourced information and context, is free and open to the public seven days a week. Photo Detectives runs through September 2018 at the National Photographic Archive in Temple Bar, Dublin.

Meet Annie and Edward Riley, and their twins, Sutcliffe and Ethel. We were amazed to find out so much about them. The Rileys had been living in Massachusetts, USA and were travelling to visit relatives in England during World War I. Their ship, the Lusitania, was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the Irish coast. The Rileys were incredibly lucky, as few Lusitania families survived intact. A great newspaper report (thanks, Sharon Corbet!) about their final safe arrival in Bradford ended: “After not sleeping for three nights, Mr Riley remarked that it felt grand to be back home again, surrounded by their friends and family.”

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These Traveller women and children, in their beautifully decorated caravan, were on their way to the Cahirmee Horse Fair. Frank Fullard told us that “the Fair of Cahirmee is still going strong and members of the Travelling community are still as much a part of it as ever.” We found out these caravans are called Vardos, and that good stopping places are called Atchin Tan in Romany language. We heard about Traveller life in 1940s Ireland, and stories from a freewheeling family in the USA “who like rolling down the roads, always something to do or to see that’s new”.

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Ever heard of New Tipperary? Our Detectives discovered this Arcade was built during Plan of Campaign protests (1880s/early 1890s), when protesting tenants paid landlords only what tenants considered fair rent. Arthur Smith-Barry, main landlord of (Old) Tipperary Town, was not happy with this. His evicted tenants moved to New Tipperary — just a few streets and this Arcade — built from funds raised in Australia and America. Business wasn’t great in the Arcade. It probably didn’t help that local magistrates refused to grant New Tipperary liquor licences! In the end, Smith-Barry defeated his former tenants. This Arcade was demolished at 4 a.m. on 11 August 1892.

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This was just a sad and lonely “Unidentified Photograph from the Wiltshire Photographic Collection” before our Photo Detectives took on the case. Sharon Corbet searched other National Library photos, and tracked the house to 18 Abercorn Road in East Wall, Dublin. Amazingly, Sharon discovered this had once been the home of writer and playwright Sean O’Casey. We asked local politician Maureen O’Sullivan if she could help identify any of the children. She certainly could! Left to right, we have Catherine Byrne, Helen Boyle, Rose Byrne, Elaine Kane, Imelda Redmond, and Ann Byrne. The boys are the Ryan Twins.

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We’re 99% sure that our Flickr community is right in identifying this little chap as Edmund Becher, only child of Ella and Edmund Becher. Edmund was 11 years old when this photograph was taken outside Castle Farm House in Lismore, Waterford. Skip forward eight years, and he was a Second Lieutenant fighting with the Royal Munster Fusiliers in World War I. Edmund Becher was wounded in action, and died in France on 19 July 1916. Back home in Lismore, his parents Ella and Edmund, heard the news by telegram two days later.

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Once our investigators found out this chap’s surname was Frazer with a Z, not Fraser with an S, they were on his trail. They tracked Edward’s life from birth in China to Aravon boarding school in Bray, Wicklow. His Royal Field Artillery helmet crest was a great help, because military records revealed that Edward served in Nigeria during World War I. He survived the war. Our biggest surprise was finding out that Edward was an uncle of Hollywood film star Maureen O’Sullivan — famous for playing Jane in 1930s and 1940s Tarzan films. And that made him a great-uncle of actor, Mia Farrow!

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We enjoyed a great debate about the bearded gentleman up on the huge telescope at Birr Castle in Offaly. Was he Lawrence Parsons, 4th Earl of Rosse, or Otto Boeddicker, Parsons’ German assistant? Argument centred mostly around beard colour and length! We’re very grateful to stargazer John C McConnell for settling matters. John had a photo showing Parsons and Boeddicker together. So this was indeed Lawrence Parsons, whose father had built the remarkable telescope — the biggest telescope in the world from 1845 until 1917. We also loved that John Spooner told us you can make the word ‘moonstarers’ from ‘astronomers’.

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All we knew about this lovely smiley man was that he was a fisherman. One of our Kerry Photo Detectives, Mossy Carey, took to the streets of Portmagee. Mossy spoke with staff and customers of the Moorings Bar. They identified our fisherman as Tadhg Devane, aged 58, who was also a boatbuilder and “a great character”. Mossy was sent on to Tadhg’s family, who still live in Portmagee, to double-check all the information he’d found for us. We duly appointed Mossy Carey as “our honorary South Kerry consultant”.

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This busy market at Ballybricken in Waterford stirred lots of memories. Swordscookie told us his brother-in-law used to love going to this market. He “invariably came home covered in cow dung as he was very small and got slapped by many a cow’s tail as he wandered about”. We also found out Phelan’s Hotel on the right later became Mackey’s Pub. Mackey’s “was known locally as ‘Lourdes’ because if a man wanted an early morning ‘cure’ badly enough, he’d always get a drink in there very early in the morning by giving a discreet knock on the side door”.

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See the election posters outside the National Bank? They helped our Flickroonies to whittle down the date of this Dublin photo to June or July 1969. Aside from that, for once we were left with more questions than answers! What was the story with these very fancy bollards? Did the holes help release smelly fumes from underground public toilets or sewers? Were they air vents from a huge basement at Findlater’s Wine Merchants? And why had the bollards been moved from the other end of O’Connell Street, to stand here beside the Parnell Monument? We still don’t know. Do you?

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Photographic evidence of Jewish life in Ireland is rare in our collections, so this is an important photo. Niall McAuley searched the 1901 census and found that Ireland’s Jewish community numbered 3,618. Niall estimated that 1% of them appear in this photograph. We found out the Weekly Irish Times called the wedding of Ester Levin of John Street, Waterford (22), and Myer Stein of Raymond Street, Dublin (25), a “novel and interesting spectacle”. And we’d love to know if beachcomber australia is correct in suggesting the “fellow in the middle” is Dr. Hermann Adler, Chief Rabbi of the British Empire (1891–1911)…

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From little information and an incorrect date, our Flickr researchers scored another who, where, when hat trick with this gorgeous photo. They identified the girls, and established where and when the photo was taken. Using family history sites, they traced the bride to Tramore, Waterford. Dancinanne from Tramore confirmed the house in the background as Rockfields. A search of online newspaper archives gave us an exact date of 27 July 1929. Most delightfully of all, we found our smiling girls named in the Sunday Independent. They are, left to right, “Miss Esther White, Miss Gladys Roche, and Miss Marie Gallwey”.

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A “selfie” of photographer Thomas Wynne. In 1867, Thomas set up a photographic business in Castlebar, Mayo. Some of Thomas’ descendants got in touch, and the comments on this photo became an informal Wynne family postbox. Mike Hannon is Thomas Wynne’s great-great-grandson. Mike very kindly shared information and early photos of the Wynne family with us. He told us how Thomas’ daughter Mary (Mike’s great-grandmother), set up her own studio in Loughrea, Galway in the 1890s. Thomas Wynne’s other sons did likewise in Limerick, Tipperary, and Portarlington. We were sorry to hear that Wynne’s of Castlebar closed in 2011.

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