Nick Maxwell Magee Presbyterian College opened in Derry in 1865 for theology studies, later providing ‘literary and scientific instruction’. It could not award general degrees, though from 1909 students could transfer to Trinity College, Dublin. Renamed Magee University College, it struggled financially—‘a small college that was nearly down and out when we took it over in 1953’, … Read more
In September 1949 Dr Wenceslao Oliveros arrived in Ireland on a scientific mission to visit UCD and its president, Michael Tierney. Richard Mulcahy, minister for education in the first interparty government, had been in correspondence with his Spanish colleague, José Ibáñez Martín, and had approved the trip, despite Oliveros’s acquired reputation. Dublin welcomed the arrival … Read more
A professor of law at the Complutense University of Madrid, Dr Wenceslao González Oliveros was a senior player in the Francoist dictatorship. After the fall of Barcelona in January 1939, he had been appointed civil governor by the minister for the interior, Serrano Súñer (General Franco’s brother-in-law), to suppress any opposition to the dictatorship. He … Read more
Records of the Poor Law Unions, 1840s–1924 From the early 1840s until 1924, approximately half of all destitute children in Ireland were accommodated in the workhouse system. Unfortunately, there is a huge variation in the rate of survival of Indoor Relief registers that record admissions, for all Poor Law Unions. The late Dr Chris O’Mahony … Read more
Seventy-plus years ago—February 1944—and it is at last clear that the Allies are going to win the Second World War (1939–45). In Eastern Europe, the Red Army’s march west is gathering pace. In Italy, the Allied offensive at Monte Cassino is under way. And in Northern Ireland, in anticipation of D-Day, the number of British … Read more