Nick Maxwell

Celebrity and endorsements

Betham’s sporting prowess meant that she attained something akin to celebrity status. Not only was she fêted in the press but she also had a dance dedicated in her honour. There was even a faint echo of the modern sporting celebrity’s endorsement of sports goods and other commodities, when Betham wrote approvingly in the Archer’s … Read more

Background

Cecilia Maria Eleanor Betham was born in January 1843 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, the second child and only daughter of Molyneux Cecil John Betham and his wife Elizabeth, the only daughter of Sir Richard Ford, chief magistrate at Bow Street, London. In 1846 the Betham family was recorded as residing at 123 Park Street, Grosvenor … Read more

‘Un festin patriotique’ at White’s Hotel, 18 November 1792: the ‘secret’ origins of Irish revolutionary republicanism

A BANQUET THAT TOOK PLACE IN PARIS IN NOVEMBER 1792, CONCEIVED AS BOTH A PUBLIC CELEBRATION AND AS A SECRET EVENT, SHEDS LIGHT ON THE LITTLE-KNOWN ORIGINS OF IRISH REPUBLICANISM AND ON THE REVOLUTIONARY IDEALS OF SOME OF THE (FUTURE) UNITED IRISHMEN By Mathieu Ferradou On 18 November 1792, about 100 guests or convives gathered … Read more

Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin

By William Cumming Kilmainham Gaol is significant as the site of the executions of the 1916 leaders and of the imprisonment of many of those involved in the major struggles for independence or reform during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But it is often forgotten that the prison was built, and primarily served, as … Read more