Nick Maxwell In the 1700s Irish emigrants to America were remarkably diverse, especially in comparison with the apparent homogeneity of the Famine and post-Famine migrants. Although a majority were Presbyterians from Ulster, a third or more were Anglicans (members of the established Church of Ireland), Quakers, Methodists and other Protestant dissenters, as well as Catholics, from all … Read more
Sir,—The purpose of this letter is to add some more facts to the article on Bloody Sunday 1920 by Tim Carey and Marcus de Burca (HI 11.2, Summer 2003). The following is an account of events that happened to my father on that day. My father was Charlie Murphy (b. 29 July 1900, d. 13 … Read more
Sir,—Pat Marshall’s interesting piece on Major Sirr in your last issue (HI 11.3, Autumn 2003) neglected one aspect of Sirr’s later career: his interest in the Irish language. (Viewers of Pat Murphy’s film Anne Devlin will recall that Sirr is the only major character who speaks Irish on-screen, when talking to an informer.) It extended … Read more
Sir,—Toby Joyce neatly describes (HI 11.2, Summer 2003) the battles of the famous draft riots of 1863, but he fails, I think, to deal candidly with the dynamics of the Irish scene in New York. The Irish working-class realised that many Americans regarded it as ‘papist scum’, one step below the ‘niggers’. Nevertheless the Democratic … Read more
Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin (Oxford University Press, £48) ISBN 0 19820891X The last 30 years have been exciting ones in the religioushistoriography of Ireland. After a century or more of a highlypolemical approach to religious history, Irish scholars have beenquestioning the interpretation of the past and offering a revisionistapproach to many aspects of this topic. There … Read more