"An Italian to make me casts in plaster of Paris"

(photo (c) David Radcliffe - used by permission)

P.M.C.Kermode tells the history of these casts well in his introduction to the literature in his classic book on Manx Crosses:

The first copies of these monuments were made in 1841¹ by W. Bally, of Manchester, who took casts of some of the inscriptions for a Mr. Jones; these, in 1844, were bought by Sir Henry Dryden, and after his death presented by Miss Dryden to the Isle of Man Natural History and Antiquarian Society, in whose collection they now are. In 1853 Sir Henry visited the Island, staying with Captain Goldie at Ballagarey; he gave Cumming £25 towards getting a set of moulds and casts, which was done.² When Cumming shortly afterwards left the Island, he left with Quilliam, marble mason, some of the moulds to make what he could out of them by casting and selling copies.

In 1873 Sir Henry Dryden again visited the Island, and found that nearly all the casts had been destroyed. Some of the moulds in Quilliam's possession he bought, and in 1874 gave them to Liverpool; but they were found too much damaged to cast from.

In 1889 Mr. T. H. Royston, of Douglas, began to make my collection, which I should scarcely have attempted had he not been good enough to charge me only the actual cost of material and his out-of-pocket expenses, besides finding house-room for the moulds, and in other ways assisting me. As the casts have been of the greatest help to me in preparing this work, I feel duly grateful, and as the collection, which is in the Museum at Castle Rushen, is now complete and forms a permanent record, accessible to students and experts, residents and visitors, I think that Manxmen generally, and all who are interested in the development of Christian art in the British Isles and the history of our Celtic and of our Scandinavian fore-fathers, will share this feeling.

In 1841 W. Kinnebrook published his Etchings of the Runic Monuments in the Isle of Man. The etchings, twenty-six, are on too small a scale and incorrect in detail; the inscriptions are hopelessly bad. The letterpress gives merely the site and the measurements.

Professor P. A. Munch, who saw copies of the casts taken by Bally, was the first to read the Runic inscriptions correctly, or nearly so. His readings of several were first published in the Mémoires of the Royal Society for the Ancient Literature of the North, 1845-1849, p. 192, and appeared again, revised by his hand, in "The Author's Preface" to the Chronicle of Man and the Sudreys, as published by the Manx Society, vol. xxii., 1874, p. 26.

In 1852 was published An Account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and Ireland, by J. J. Warsaae. This work refers to the crosses in Man of which Warsaae had seen the casts at Edinburgh and at Canons Ashby. Figures are given of five which have inscriptions.

Sir Henry Dryden has left the following MS. note :-" In 1853, Miss Wilkes, of the Isle of Man, possessed the original sketches from which the prints of the Runic stones were done in Trans. of Royal Society, Edinburgh. Done for the Duke of Athol."

In 1857 the Rev. J. G. Cumming, who had left the Island for Lichfield, published his Runic and other Monumental Remains of the Isle of Man, illustrated by figures "taken from photographs of the casts." In 1868 Cumming contributed an essay on "The Runic Inscriptions of the Isle of Man" to the Manx Society (vol. xv.). In the same volume he gave an illustrated description of "Some more recently-discovered Scandinavian Crosses in the Isle of Man"; also an illustrated paper "On the ornamentation of he Runic monuments in the Isle of Man." Of the forty-eight described by Cumming, only eighteen are pre-Scandinavian He was the first to treat of their decoration in a scientific spirit, but his illustrations are far from perfect, and since his time our knowledge of the subject has increased.

Mr. W. Kneale, of Douglas, brought out a Guide to the Isle of Man in 1860, which gives figures and readings of some of the inscriptions.

In July, 1886, an article on "The Manx Runes," by Canon Isaac Taylor, appeared in the Manx Note Book, p. 97, dealing mainly with the chronology of the Scandinavian inscriptions, and in the October number, p. 164, this was reviewed by Professor W. Boyd Dawkins and Mr. Henry Bradley.

Dr. Vigfusson, of Oxford, contributed a valuable and interesting article, "The Manx Runic Inscriptions Re-read," to the Manx Note Book, No. 9, January, 1887. In the Academy, No. 773, February 26th, 1887, and succeeding numbers, Canon Isaac Taylor, Sir Henry Dryden, and the present author criticised some of the re-readings, and Dr. Vigfusson replied.

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1 Train (History of the Isle of Man, vol. ii., p. 32) says :-" In the summer of 1839, Mr. William Bally, of King Street, Manchester, visited the Isle of Man and took casts in plaster of Paris of all the runes in the Island." I got the date 1841 from Sir Henry Dryden; possibly that was the year in which Mr. Jones received them.

2 On the back of one of these, which was broken, I found the name of the Italian engaged to take the casts- "L. Canepa, 12 May, 1853. Viva l'Italia e la liberta / morte a La Tiranni della patria." He appears to have taken about forty; in five or six instances one face of the stone only was cast.

Kermode refrains here from describing the patronising approach taken by Vigfusson in these replies (see Manx Note Book vol III p78) which at least the the good effect of goading Kermode into producing the first edition of his Manx Crosses.

In 1887 Kermode published a Catalogue of Manx Crosses, followed by a second revised and enlarged edition in 1892 In this second edition he mentions that Prof Vigfusson revisited the Island and recanted on some of his original comments - accepting Kermode's readings. The two then appeared to remain in friendship.

The L.Canepa referred to in the footnote was Lazarus Canepa (born c.1828 - possibly in Genoa, father John B.Canepa), described by his family as 'sculptor'. As the family folklore tells the story he returned to Italy to find his beautiful Italian wife(name unknown) had been unfaithful. He divorced (?) her and took his three children back to the Isle of Man where he remarried a Manx woman named Mary Ann [sic] Green on 16 April 1850 at the RC St Francis Xavier (precursor church to St Marys) - hence the query re divorce. The entry is on April 16th 1850: "Baptised Conditionally Alice Green,adult" with the following entry "Married, Lazarus Canepa to Alice Green, witnesses William Rogers & Ellen Green". They appear to have had four children (John, Joseph, Angelena and Rachel) - all baptised at St Francis Xavier. In 1881 Lazarus, by now a widower, is in Oban, Scotland living with his daughter Angelina (25) - his occupation given as draper and hawk (travelling salesman). The marriage was to Alice Green (daughter of John Green, gunsmith, and Ellen (or Eleanor) Thomson) who was baptised (as 'Ally' in IGI) at St Peter's Peel on 5 Jan 1831 - her husband never appears on any Manx census - in 1871 Alice is described, incorrectly, as a widow, she died in Douglas on 1st February 1878 and is buried with her parents - possibly the marriage foundered early on. Lazarus probably arrived in Oban sometime during 1879 where he ran a Drapers shop in High St, Oban, as well as lending money to business people using property as security, at his death his sons John and Joseph and his surviving daughter Angelina inherited considerable property.

In the 1881 census can be found Ellen Canepa, Manx born aged 25, with two children Annie (5) and John James (2); the husband of Ellen was not found in the census. Their son John James later emigrated to Australia.
A Joseph Canepa, aged 54 [57 in transcription], but described as born in Douglas is also present - the age is wrong (27 ?) and he is a child of Alice. In Brown's 1894 directory he is described as a boatman (in 1891 census aged 37 as "pleasure boat proprietor and fisherman")

[additional details from information posted on Manx Genealogy board]