[Leica] IMG: Inside a hospital on Malta in 1917

[Nathan Wajsman]

Fantastic! Great that you have those photos. I too inherited some pre-war and wartime photos from my father after his death in 2004 and have scanned quite a few of them. The B&W prints made in Poland in the 1920s and 1930s have held up amazingly well. The prints from Communist Poland made in the 1950s and 60s are often badly faded, confirming the maxim from those times: “You pretend that you pay us, we pretend to work.”

Cheers,
Nathan

Nathan Wajsman
photo at frozenlight.eu

http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws
http://www.greatpix.eu
http://www.frozenlight.eu

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> On 20 Nov 2022, at 19:37, Douglas Barry <imra at iol.ie> wrote:
> 
> My grandfather Tom Casserly, a sapper in the British Army's Royal Engineers, is shown  hospitalised on the island of Malta in 1917. He was fighting in Greece in the 8th Wireless Section in Salonika when he got infected with dysentery and had to be shipped to Malta which was known as "The Nurse of the Mediterranean" during WW1. Casualties from the campaigns in Salonika and Gallipoli flooded the numerous hospitals specially set up there. Photographer and camera unknown, but at a wild guess, based on images with similar backgrounds, it was taken at St. Georges Hospital near Valletta.
> 
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/DouglasBray/TFC+Hospital+Malta+1917+b.jpg.html
> 
> Can be seen larger
> 
> I intend to tidy this up a bit, but the image print has been a bit battered over the last 100 or so years, and is also quite small at 9 x 10.25 cm, so it will be a challenge. However, I've just brought down my old Epson Perfection 3200 Photo scanner from the attic as wrinkled and ragged photos need a scanner, rather than a camera and stand setup, and this is the first shot I've scanned. I've loads more of these as we were never allowed to hear any family history other than generalities, let alone see photos. Remember, In the last 110 years, Ireland has seen some very fractious events - the 1916 Easter Rising, the War of Independence, the Treaty and division into north and south. the Civil War, the euphemistic "Emergency" (WW2 to everyone else) and many more culminating in the "Troubles".  It turns out my grandfather who died in 1953 at the age of 57 while still working as Chief Superindentent and head of the Crimes Unit in the Irish police force - the Garda Siochana - was involved in a lot of these events. All connections with armed resistance
> 
> Tom also contracted malaria out there in Salonika, and much later got TB which ultimately killed him. That said he did return to Ireland, and, as he had been a radio operator which was cutting edge tech at the time, he got a job with the Department of Post and Telegraphs who placed him in Dublin Castle. The Castle was the headquarters of the British Army in Ireland, but Tom was not deemed to be a security risk - with his war record, and the fact that his father was a sergeant serving in the Royal Irish Constabulary, the Irish police force during British rule. Well, they got that wrong...
> 
> Apparently, his position in the Castle was noted by Michael Collins, the head of the IRA Intelligence unit, and he was recruited as one of Collins's spies. He also evidently became utilised in other ways during the War of Independence later on. When I visited the Garda museum to check records four  years ago to try to discover just why he had been recruited at Inspector level and why then, within nine months, had become Superintendent, the written reason for his recruitment was "IRA Battalion Intelligence Officer". My mother and her two sisters knew nothing of this and it was only in 2020 I got to ask my uncle the background on what turned out to be his deathbed. I discovered from him that Tom had been in Michael Collins's "Squad" - a group of deep cover IRA specialist assassins and when Arthur Griffith became President of the Dáil - the Irish parliament, he and two of my grand uncles Pat Swanzy and Joe McCarthy - also both secret (to me) were Griffith's minders when he was a priority target for anti-Treaty gunmen.
> 
> Anyway, here Tom is receiving succour from the British Army.
> 
> Douglas
> 
> 
> 
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