Nick Maxwell The County Roscommon district courthouse was crowded in January 1935 when sisters Elizabeth (23) and Rose E. (18) were tried for the murder of the elder sister’s infant daughter. Like most of the mothers who stood trial for infanticide in post-independence Ireland, Elizabeth was unmarried. Irish society was deeply intolerant of unmarried mothers and their illegitimate children … Read more
There was no separate category of infanticide in southern Ireland until the passing of the Infanticide Act in 1949 and thus the murder of infants under the age of one year was until then a capital offence. Most single women who stood trial for the murder of their illegitimate infants at the Central Criminal Court … Read more
The First World War was good for Dublin. Living standards rose and mortality rates fell as money flowed into the tenements in separation payments to soldiers’ wives. The British government’s relatively generous compensation to property owners for the destruction wrought in 1916 allowed for a slight reduction in the commercial rates, and Lloyd George provided … Read more
One of the few success stories of the war was entirely pacific. The allotments movement was founded by the artist and former independent nationalist councillor Sarah Harrison in 1909 but made little progress until Dubliners began to experience chronic food shortages from 1915 onwards. It crossed political and religious divides, with Revd Dr Denham, Presbyterian … Read more
Had anyone been of a mind to survey the attitude of Northern Ireland’s Catholic population on the evening of Sunday 8 August 1971, they would have discovered an agitated people alienated from the ruling Stormont regime. A similar study carried out seven days later would have found a community still alienated from Stormont but now … Read more