Nick Maxwell By Brian Casey Drinking at the wake of a dead person is a long-standing custom at Irish funerals. This is often about sharing memories of the deceased person and to help with the grieving process. Occasionally, however, extreme drunkenness at funerals in Glasnevin led to violence and assaults on cemetery staff. Two in particular were … Read more
By Damian Murphy The modern origins of Kenmare demesne date back to the early eighteenth century and a Queen Anne-style house built (1724–5) by Sir Valentine Browne (1695–1736), 5th Baronet and 3rd Viscount Kenmare, on an estate inherited from his father, the exiled Nicholas Browne (1664–1720), a Jacobite who had forfeited his life interest in … Read more
By Janus T. Saito-Madsen In Denmark we have a word for what’s happening to history on television—‘Bubberification’, named after Bubber (Niels Christian Meyer), a beloved children’s TV host who now fronts major history documentaries despite having no historical training. The name is affectionate but the phenomenon it describes is not. The pattern will be familiar … Read more
Sir,—In her ‘Local Archives’ article in HI 30.3, May/June 2022, on St Joseph’s Hospital/Limerick District Lunatic Asylum, Jacqui Hayes refers briefly to the death of a patient ‘after being submerged in a bath’. I enclose a detailed account of the event and its outcome following a special enquiry, which may be of interest to your … Read more
Sir,—I’ve spent much of my career studying the forces that caused people to emigrate from Ireland to North America. From the mid-nineteenth century, millions of Irish people from mostly poor rural backgrounds, especially in the West of Ireland, found themselves pitched into the world’s most advanced (and, some said, ruthless) industrial economy, where often they … Read more