Lantern Slides

I've previously been helped by a number of researchers and posted their questions and feedback on previous blog posts.

Sue Bird is a researcher who got in touch about some images which may involve the GA.

She has been looking at slides with accompanying sketch drawings which also exist within the Oxford HEIR archive (e.g. record 49990 here http://heir.arch.ox.ac.uk/pages/search.php) and trying to source their provenance, which she believes may be with us.

“From my research I am increasingly of the opinion that the typed caption slides were the result of the work of the Lantern Slide Committee of the GA."

G.W. Palmer of Bristol was instrumental in setting this up and first proposed this in 1906 

Source:

GEOGRAPHICAL LANTERN SLIDES / G. W. PALMER : The Geographical Teacher , Spring, 1906, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 177-178.

This was taken up by B.B. Dickinson, who compiled a set about the Rhine Valley & arranged an Exhibition of these slides at the annual meeting of the G.A. that year LANTERN SLIDES OF THE RHINE BASIN / B. B. DICKINSON : Geographical Teacher , Autumn, 1907, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 133-141.

His introductory remarks to that exhibition refer to the work of the Lantern Slide Committee, esp p. 161 THE USE OF LANTERN SLIDES IN TEACHING / B. B. DICKINSON : Geographical Teacher , Spring, 1908, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 161-163

This will then tie in with the 1910 article which mentions the construction of the catalogue I am trying to trace and the fact that the Diagram Co. was responsible for the sale & hire of the slides. I understand that this arrangement lasted until 1939.

NEW VIEW SLIDES PREPARED FOR THE GEOGRAPHICAL ASSOCIATION / Anon : Geographical Teacher, Vol. 5, No. 6, pp. 294-295.

Some very useful information here to follow up on. Any thoughts welcome.

Our Geographers Gaze project is launching soon hopefully, in time for the new academic year.

1930: Basil Bentham Dickinson

Updated August 2021

As I created this blog certain names kept recurring in the documents I was reading from the time.

One person who finally became President in 1930 but was a supporter of the Geographical Association from its origination, perhaps even its 'prime' instigator was B B Dickinson.

This coincided with a change in the way that GA Presidents were chosen: from high profile figures who might be champions of the subject towards acknowledging the long-term service of key officers of the Association.

Dickinson's name was on the bottom of the letter which announced the meeting in Oxford where the GA was founded.

Interestingly, H. J. Fleure, in his look back at the GA, talks about the fact that after a decade or so of appointing high profile Presidents it now "felt strong enough during the decade 1930-40 to choose presidents belonging to its inner circle from time to time".

Basil Bentham Dickinson was a master at Rugby School, at a time when it was Independent schools that were at the forefront of keeping the flame of Geography alight in schools, and looking to support the subject as an academic discipline.

He worked for many years in the classroom, and was also connected with the RGS. He was the Honorary Secretary of the GA from 1893 (when it was founded) until 1900.

He then had to wait 30 years before he became the President.

The year before he had been unwell, and 'Geography' had a piece explaining that he had recovered his health enough to take up the offer of being the President.

Following the Association's founding, Dickinson spent a lot of time working on a geography syllabus that could be the basis for improving school geography, and worked tirelessly for the Association in a number of different roles for the next few decades. Some of these are outlined in this description below, taken from a book on 'Modern Geography' by Gary Dunbar, where he is described as a "prime mover" in the formation of the Association.




1930, when Dickinson finally took office, was a year of great change in the Association, as outlined in Fleure's retrospective of the first 60 years of the Association, and Balchin's Centenary History.

The Honorary Secretary (H. J. Fleure) was appointed to a post at Manchester University (which meant another change in the location of Fleure's Library as space was offered by Spurley Hey.)
When I was a schoolboy, there was a school in Sheffield called Spurley Hey, and it seems there may have been several as he was the Chief Education Officer of the city at the time.
The printing of the GA's journals was also transferred to a new printer at this time: to Percy Brothers in Manchester. The building where they operated, later known as Hotspur Press is still standing, just behind Oxford Street station, where I usually alight when visiting the GA Conference.

There was also the start of some changes to the Primary curriculum in 1930. In several areas, Primary schools which had formerly dealt with pupils up to the age of 14 were made into junior schools for pupils up to the age of 11.

In 1930, his Presidential Address was called 'Reminiscences' and looked back at his time working with the GA, and his thoughts on how geography had developed. He referenced many previous Presidents.

Dickinson died in 1941.

In this obituary, printed in 'Geography' in 1941, he was remembered therefore (quite rightly) as someone without whom the GA may not even exist.




References
DICKINSON, B. BENTHAM. “B. BENTHAM DICKINSON.” Geography, vol. 26, no. 1, 1941, pp. 39–39. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40489910.

Fleure's 60th piece reference

Fleure, H.J. (1953) "Sixty years of geography and education", Geography, vol.38, pp.231-264

FRESHFIELD, DOUGLAS W. “VALEDICTORY ADDRESS.” The Geographical Teacher, vol. 6, no. 1, 1911, pp. 5–9. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40554086.

https://rsgs.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/RSGS-The-Geographer-Spring-2018.pdf - RSGS journal article on the 125th Anniversary of the GA

Image: Copyright - Royal Geographical Society - taken from Balchin's Centenary of the Royal Geographical Society.

If you know more about B B Dickinson and his work for the GA, please get in touch. I'm sure there is more to discover about him.

Updated August 2021

I discovered his first name was Basil not Brian as I had thought.

His death was announced in the Rugby School Digital Archive in 'The Meteor' in 1941.

Lantern Slides and Diagram Maps

These were an important part of the 'Pictorial Method' which was discussed at the meeting where the GA was created. They had been around for some time before the GA was formed, being in use from around 1850. They were used with a powerful lantern, which projected an image onto a screen or wall at a larger scale for an audience to view.
I have some smaller format lantern slides, which date from the middle part of the 20th Century, so they don't have any great age, but are of interest nevertheless.
In the late 1890s, the Royal Mail introduced postcards, and these were also used by teachers as a resource for a while.

The photography of Francis Frith was influential at the time, and Peter Fox (who will appear in a future post) has suggested that he was one of the early 'promoters' of Geography. To begin with, the GA encouraged the sharing of lantern slides, but also realised that there was a market for some ready-made sets of slides. This was done using a company, which was set up for the purpose.


The Diagram Company was set up in the early 20th century.

They produced sets of Lantern slides, and associated lesson materials.
This relationship with the GA continued until the late 1930s, when the company was closed.

Peter Fox wrote about this period in an article for 'Geography' in 2005, which also identified a range of other images which were used at the time.
At the 125th Anniversary conference in Sheffield, an exhibition of lantern slides was available for delegates to browse and a set of cards has also been made available for purchase from the GA shop featuring images from the archive.

References
Descriptions by Douglas Freshfield:

Peter Fox article:
FOX, PETER S. “Images in Geography — Great Expectations.” Geography, vol. 90, no. 1, 2005, pp. 3–17. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40574025

LYDE, L. W. “THE TEACHING OF GEOGRAPHY AS A SUBJECT OF COMMERCIAL INSTRUCTION.” The Geographical Teacher, vol. 4, no. 4, 1908, pp. 163–168. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41552643.
Image: Slide from GA Collection - used in the 125th Anniversary collection.

Visual instruction / the visual method

This is an area which the development of the GA was linked with from the beginning.

I have previously blogged about Emily Haye's article and PhD thesis on the lantern slide, and its link with the work of the RGS and the support of teachers.
Halford Mackinder was a proponent of the visual method, and used visuals in his many lectures.
In his entry, I wrote about a speech he delivered called "On the scope and purpose of Geography".

The Diagram Company was set up to loan, and then sell, copies of lantern slides and accompanying notes.
In turn, these would become the film strips which I remember from my own schooling, which then became the VHS cassettes and the TV in the cage.

Here's one that was in my department when I first started teaching in the 1980s, from a company called 'Pictorial Charts'. There were also the 'Common Ground' filmstrips.

I'll share some more images of these film strips later in the blog, when we get to the era where they started to be used in more detail and appearing in books written by GA Presidents.


Image credit: Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license
TV image: https://www.weareteachers.com/old-school-classroom/

References
Emily Hayes
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/147447409400100203?journalCode=cgja

Some pictures of mine: https://www.flickr.com/photos/geographypages/albums/72157623495566973/with/4433343010/

MACKINDER, H. J. “THE TEACHING OF GEOGRAPHY FROM AN IMPERIAL POINT OF VIEW, AND THE USE WHICH COULD AND SHOULD BE MADE OF VISUAL INSTRUCTION.” The Geographical Teacher, vol. 6, no. 2, 1911, pp. 79–86. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40554112.