Nick Maxwell IRRESPECTIVE OF THE QUESTION OF THEIR AUTHENTICITY, IT IS NOW UNIVERSALLY AGREED THAT THE BLACK DIARIES WERE INTEGRAL TO A SMEAR CAMPAIGN CONJURED UP IN 1916 TO RAILROAD CASEMENT TO THE GALLOWS AND DENY HIM THE MORAL HIGH GROUND THAT HELPED TO JUSTIFY THE IRISH REBELLION. By Angus Mitchell One bold deed of open treason: … Read more
Another sensational trial of the First World War, where politics, law and sexuality mixed in a combustible cocktail, concerned ‘the libel trial of the century’. In early 1918 the Imperialist, a right-wing journal owned by the independent MP Noel Pemberton-Billing and funded by the minister of information and press baron Max Aitken, reported the existence … Read more
AMONG THE MOST INFAMOUS EVENTS OF THE EASTER RISING WAS A SERIES OF MURDERS COMMITTED BY CAPTAIN J.C. BOWEN-COLTHURST. HIS MOST FAMOUS VICTIM WAS FRANCIS SHEEHY-SKEFFINGTON, SUMMARILY EXECUTED ON THE MORNING OF 26 APRIL IN PORTOBELLO BARRACKS, ALONGSIDE TWO NEWSPAPER EDITORS, PATRICK MCINTYRE AND THOMAS DICKSON. BUT WHO WAS THOMAS DICKSON? By Conor Morrissey The … Read more
Joseph Edelstein was among the most eccentric Dublin characters of his era. Born in Portobello in 1886, the son of Russian-born parents, he was a writer and an effective public speaker who frequently addressed United Irish League meetings. In 1908, the year in which his novel The moneylender caused controversy in the Jewish community, he … Read more
By Fiona Fitzsimons Irish prisons were some of the first to make a photographic record of inmates before they were legally required to do so under the Habitual Criminals Act of 1869.In Ireland the earliest known prisoner photographs were taken in August 1857 in Mountjoy Jail. Other Irish prisons followed suit: Londonderry in 1865, Enniskillen … Read more