Eric Dempsey
speaker
35 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 17 Aug
Eric Dempsey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Dear Sir, I have brought back in spirit a rather fine puff adder from South Africa.
It was killed at Simonstown in May last.
I should be very pleased to give it to the Dublin Museum if you would care for it.
I am sorry I've not been able to bring back anything alive for the Dublin Zoo.
Let me know if you would care for the snake, which I think is a really fine specimen of a very venomous reptile.
Yours sincerely Roger Caseman.
It's a lovely day, isn't it?
Good, Eric.
Great to have you back in the behind the scenes of the Natural History Museum.
Yeah, so what I've done, I've taken here some stuff from our archives, some physical specimens that I'll talk about in a minute to try and recreate for you the research that I've been doing to piece together donations from Roger Casement, animal specimens, some plant specimens that are now in the Botanic Gardens.
and figured the provenance of them from his letters, from our own register books and so on, and put together a catalogue of the things that he gave to the Natural History Museum in Dublin and also to Dublin Zoo as living specimens.
So it probably makes sense to start at the start.
So the first thing that Roger Casement gave to us was this snake in a pickled specimen.
It's in a jar of alcohol.
It's a thing called a rhinoceros viper.
He didn't send us a letter.
about this one first but we have in our register book here so it's the original book of curators in the past they'd be writing down what was donated in and you have it here in 1898 given in March 4th of March 1898 we know that Roger Casement would have dropped this in in person at the time he was on a leave of absence from Africa and he was staying in Dublin around the corner so he had this bitus nasi cornus the rhinoceros viper it's one of the most poisonous snakes in Africa and it says here given by Roger Casement
And it says Consular Service Niger Territory.
So it doesn't help us zone in exactly.
It's a huge area.
Showing 1–20 of 35 · page 1 of 2
Next →