Reeks 1 - Glass plate negatives and prints of the Irish civil war

19 glass plate negatives and 24 prints

Prior to the closing of the Manchester Guardian darkroom, the late staff photographer Don McPhee discovered a series of 3.5 x 4.5" and 4 x 5" glass plate negatives believed to be by Doughty. This included a series taken for the paper's centenary celebration in 1921 (See GUA/6/9/1/11/1) as well as the Irish conflict images.

Series of glass plate negatives taken by Walter Doughty for the Manchester Guardian/Manchester Evening News during the Irish Civil War (1920-22).

Doughty was sent to Cork in the autumn of 1920, and later to Dublin during the Irish civil war (1922-23) with his self-built camera and recorded the scenes on 3.5 x 4" and 4 x 5" glass negatives. The first known date of publication is 1 November 1920 when the paper ran two large images of Doughty's depicting scenes following the return of the body of the Lord Mayor of Cork to the City. Although the paper's first reports in 1922 used news agency prints from 'LNA' (London News Agency) and 'Sports and General' as illustrations, ten photographs by Doughty were published the following week between June 30 and July 7, 1922, a further photograph depicting a man looking out of a shattered window pane (WHD/1/1) appeared on July 8 in the Manchester Evening News. With the exception of these three images from Cork, none of this published material remains in the collection, but it is apparent that most photographs were taken from the same view, and in some cases moments after those which appeared in the paper. This suggests that Doughty is photographer for both published images, and those in this collection. It is likely that he was together at certain times with other agency photographers at the recording of many of these events. In 2001 the magazine 'History Ireland' reproduced nine of the images. They were later reproduced in the Guardian Newsroom publication, and featured in the accompanying show of the same name 'Hidden History' (August 2005) and again in 2007 in a Guardian 'Archive' supplement feature on Guardian photographers by Eamonn McCabe. Although it has not been proven that Doughty is the photographer of all this work, it is most likely that he was, given that he was the only staff photographer at the Manchester Guardian at the time and that Doughty's daughter owns a vintage print from the series in the same hand as other Doughty print captions.

Access to glass plate negatives restricted due to fragile nature. Contact Archivist for further information.

See also 'Ireland - historical' in GUA/6/9/1/4/I which includes some vintage Doughty prints, made at the same time, but not included within this set