ABSTRACT

Great pomp and ceremony attended the inaugural exhibition of Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in 1904. Launched by the then Prince and Princess of Wales (later King George V and Queen Mary), the outlying Lister Park and the Hall itself became the venue for a series of festive events that drew all of the people of Bradford. One event much written about by the press of that time was the recreation of a Somali village in the grounds of the park. The Somalis attracted a great deal of attention and, judging from newspaper accounts, the curiosity was not unmixed with goodwill. The reports also record moments of poignancy and tragedy. A child was born to one of the Somali families and she was named Hadija Yorkshire. The inclement May weather hastened the death of one Somali woman who was found to have consumption. A large number of Bradford citizens turned out to mourn this sad event. What makes the whole episode so shocking to us today was the study of living, breathing human beings as though they were museum specimens or exotic animals in a zoo. It was, at best, an anthropological approach to the study of culture and very much of its time.