Nick Maxwell SEPTEMBER 08/1806 Patrick Cotter (46), giant, died. Born in Kinsale, Co. Cork, Cotter was just eighteen when he began exhibiting himself in England as Patrick Cotter O’Brien, ‘a lineal descendant of the old puissant King Brien Boreau’. It was recorded that Cotter ‘had less imbecility of mind than the generality of overgrown persons’ but also … Read more
By Dianne McPhelim The Revd and Mrs Cassandra Hand arrived in the small country town of Clones, Co. Monaghan, in October 1847, bringing with them a family of seven children and memories of a comfortable life in England. Born in 1809, the ninth child of the Molyneux family, Cassandra had enjoyed a privileged upbringing in … Read more
This September marks the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War—or the ‘Emergency’, as it was officially described here with heroic understatement—and in this issue John Gibney and Michael Kennedy outline the genesis of independent Ireland’s policy of neutrality (pp 48–51). That inevitably raises the question of whether it was the correct, … Read more
Daniel Davitt was, like so many of the Irish Volunteer Army, an ordinary working man. At the time of the Easter Rising he was 30 and living in the tenements of Russell Street, Dublin, with his wife, Elizabeth and two small children, Vincent and Eileen. The family were poor but proud, just about surviving on … Read more
By Fiona Fitzsimons This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Irish Church Act (1869), which disestablished the Church of Ireland. As the State church, the Church of Ireland was an arm of the government at local level. Its basic administrative unit was the civil parish. All the people of the State were required to … Read more