Christina Houston - Teenie or Tina to her friends - died on September 1st, in her 87th year. As publications editor at the Royal Irish Academy, hers was an onerous post that entailed much dedication and a wide knowledge of a great variety of subjects.
Born in the early part of the century, she often reminisced to her friends about seeing the burning of Dublin, and being advised by her parents to run if she saw a tender containing Black and Tans approaching.
For most of her life she lived in Marguerite Road in Glasnevin. She had one brother, who became an invalid at a young age and predeceased her.
A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, she received a BA in Latin, Irish, History and English Literature. She then did the Higher Diploma in Education and taught for two years, before joining the RIA in 1940.
In addition to secretarial duties she operated the photostat machine, a photographic process in those days and much more complicated than it is with the new technology nowadays.
She also worked in the conservation laboratory, repairing manuscripts and cleaning them. It is possibly not as well known as it should be that the RIA holds the world's largest collection of manuscripts in the Irish language, as well as a vast store of documents of antiquarian interest. In 1951, Christina Houston became publications assistant, then acting editor on the retirement of Dr Farrington in 1966. In 1967, she was appointed editor, and held that post until her retirement in 1978.
During her tenure, she published a large number of papers and catalogues - 74 in 1976 alone. Two of her publications in collaboration with Ms Maura Scannell - Wild Flowers from Nature Painted by Katharine and Frederica Plunket at the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin and A Catalogue of Plant Paintings at the National Botanic Gardens by George V. Du Noyer - are on exhibit in the library of the RIA. The Houstons, like many Irish families, were affected by the second World War, and also on show in the RIA library currently are documents relating to that conflict: a card from a cousin of her father's who was interned in a German prison camp and later repatriated, and ration books belonging to Christina Houston herself. Of Scottish Presbyterian stock, she was a reserved woman who obeyed the tenets of her religion: she observed the Sabbath, taught Sunday school and attended church regularly, usually at Findlater's Corner.
When there was a celebration at the RIA or a launch in the library, she rarely attended and if she did, she stayed for only a short length of time.
She did not marry, but had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, many of them her associates at the Royal Irish Academy.
After her retirement she continued to live in the house on Marguerite Road, but when her health began to deteriorate she took to spending winters in the Highfield Hospital nursing home.
It was there that she passed away on September 1st last. Friends who visited her in her last days talked of how she reminisced about the past, recollecting clearly people and events from over 70 years ago.
Her work and the papers she published will live after her, and she is fondly remembered by her colleagues - many of them now also retired - from the RIA.
Christina Houston: born 1913; died September, 1999