Community rallies to save historic law books from dump

Devastated by the sight of hundreds of old law books and other documents being discarded in George Town, Anna-Maria Kafizas and Gina Whittaker took to social media on Wednesday to save the precious Caymanian history from ending up in the landfill.

Within hours of their efforts, the books and documents, once part of the Truman Bodden Law School library, were given a new lease on life after the Cayman Islands National Museum took possession of them for preservation. Some of the items date as far back as the 1800s.

Kafizas, speaking with the Cayman Compass on Thursday, gave full credit to the Public Works team, led by Tommy Wood, for saving the books for hours to have them rehoused, rather than dumped.

“I could see from speaking with the men, including Mr. Woods, that they felt as if that there was maybe an alternative way, rather than dumping the books, and that was a priority for them,” she said in a telephone interview.

The priceless books had been discarded as part of the Truman Bodden Law School’s relocation exercise currently underway.

Law school response

However, Mitchell Davies, director of the Truman Bodden Law School, in an emailed comment to the Compass on Friday, denied that the books that were dumped were of historical value.

“These materials comprised out of date student textbooks and duplicate copies of incomplete series of English/Canadian law reports. It should be emphasized that none of the reports comprised Cayman or Caribbean materials and none had historic significance. Neither do the aforementioned materials have any commercial value,” he said.

Happily, however, he said the National Museum has now taken these books.

He also said that before “releasing the materials”, the Law School had reached out to multiple agencies, including the Cayman Islands Legal Practitioners Association, law firms, the prison service and various individuals and donated numerous books and law reports to them.

Davies said, however, there was no interest from the “many parties” contacted for some of materials that were the subject of Kafizas’s and Whittaker’s posts.

Kafizas said the whole effort to save the books began purely by coincidence. While on her way to court, she walked by Monaco Towers and saw the books being dumped in a truck.

Push to preserve

Kafizas said she began chatting with the Public Works team there and was told that the law school tried to give the books away, but no one would take them, so they had to be dumped.

“I did a little rummage through and saw how old some of them were, and some were in great condition. Some were over 100 years old and the leather bound was still intact. I just thought this would be a travesty really to take them to the dump and then, who knows. It’s part of Caymanian history that just is lost as a result,” she said.

Kafizas said Whittaker came along and expressed the same thoughts.

In Whittaker’s case, she had gone to the law school to collect chairs that were being offered to government departments as part of the relocation.

Whittaker, officer manager at the Elections Office, told the Compass that when she came upon the books being discarded in the truck, she was “shocked” and “flabbergasted”.

Together the women posted photos, Kafizas in the Women in Cayman Facebook group and Whittaker in the FreeBee Cayman group, to alert the community about the books and urge them to come down and take some away.

Whittaker said the posts “blew up”.

“I wanted to make sure that we tried our best to salvage these books. I’m not saying the law school didn’t do that … it was just, I guess, a fluke with social media and the Women in Cayman group being so impactful,” Kafizas said.

She said she and Whittaker also urged cruise ship passengers walking nearby to take a piece of Cayman back with them, all in an effort to save the books from rotting in the landfill.

People from the court and a law student also came over to take books, Whittaker said.

She said it bothered her to see so many books that could be put to use by students at risk of going to the dump.

She said she collected some for her children’s school as well.

“It was a sigh of relief knowing that they didn’t have to be dumped. I mean, it’s so much history that can be found there. So, to know that they could have been saved instead of ending up in Mount Trashmore just makes you feel good,” Whittaker said.

The museum, in a post on its official Facebook page, thanked Tommy Wood and the Public Works Department “for their invaluable assistance” in helping secure the books from the law school library.

In an emailed statement to the Compass on Friday, the museum said, it was “only natural that the Board and Staff of the Museum would spring into action when a social media post revealed that a sizable collection of outdated Law School books (some 100 years old) were about to be disposed of at the landfill”.

It said its goal is to collect “material evidence of the natural, historical and cultural significance of the Cayman Islands” and, via appropriate use of its collections, raise public awareness of and respect for Cayman’s heritage.

It also issued a message to the community about items that may hold historic value.

“In the future, should anyone wish to discard any items of historical significance, please first contact the Cayman Islands National Museum as we would be happy to secure and preserve them for generations to come,” the museum said.

Kafizas said she could not allow the books to be dumped, not when “you have some companies, including the Compass [Timeback project] trying to preserve Cayman’s history and share that with the public”.

“Any project or attempt to preserve Caymanian culture for me is something that is so crucial. I’m very well aware of that and for me, it was like, I don’t care what I have to do, I want to make sure that we try our best to salvage these books,” she said.

She said she hopes a process can be established in Cayman where people with historic materials can have them digitised and preserved for future generations.

The books are now being kept in the museum storage facility.