page_title: Thomas Tobin
section_title: Travel and antiquities
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Tobin / Travel and antiquities
context_page_description: Sir Thomas Tobin was a British merchant. He moved to Ballincollig in 1863 to become managing director of Ballincollig Royal Gunpowder Mills. He played an active part in the social and industrial life of Ballincollig and Cork until his death in 1881.
context_section_description: Thomas and Catherine had a common interest in travel and in the antiquities of the middle and Near East. Thomas was elected member of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, Copenhagen (1849), a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (1853), and a member of the Royal Irish Academy (1869).
  Thomas and Catherine travelled to North Africa, the Levant and Palestine. In February 1856, he lectured in the Athenium (Opera House) on 'Egypt, Past and Present', an account of a visit Cairo and a journey along the Nile. He concluded that the Turkish empire was doomed and speculated on Egypt's future.
  George Kelleher has suggested, however, that while Thomas Tobin was an 'antiquarian and curio collector in the spirit of the Victorian age', his wife Catherine, 'was a far more considerable cultural figure'. Her interest in antiquaries led her to write two books, "Shadows of the East" (Longmans, 1855) and "The Land of Inheritance" (Quaritch, London, 1863), and to translate a third "Illustration of Discovries at Ninevth" (Longmans, 1859) by Paul-Émile Botta.
caption: Visite in Karnak, Egypt
   (January 1861)
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