Indian arms
When mutiny broke out in India in 1857 it sent shock waves through the British Empire. For over a century, India had been considered the great success of British colonisation. Recognising that the mutineers’ captured weapons probably would be destroyed, the Chairman of the Public Library’s Trustees, Redmond Barry, wrote to Governor Barkly suggesting that Barkly exert his influence to secure some of them. In Victoria, Barry argued, the weapons, ‘would be highly prized; such objects placed in the Museum attached to the Library would afford interesting illustration of oriental national customs and peculiarities’. The collection of 287 items, described in an accompanying letter as ‘of value and rarity’, arrived in November 1860 and was displayed in the library’s main stairwell.
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