The factory opened its Dublin operation in 1851, and by 1911 it employed approximately 3,000 workers. George Jacob, chairman from 1902 to 1931, is remembered in the Dictionary of Irish Biography as a ‘benevolent employer in the Quaker tradition’ who was ‘ahead of his time with employee-focused reforms’. Yet unlike George Cadbury or Arthur Rowntree … Read more
The weekly wages of a DMP or RIC constable during his first years of service were by no means high, slightly more than the wages of a labourer during a full week of summer employment, or just over a pound (20–22 shillings). The report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Royal Irish Constabulary and … Read more
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was born in 1890 in New Hampshire. Her mother, Anne Gurley, emigrated from Loughrea to Boston in 1877; her father, Thomas Flynn, was born to Irish immigrants living in Maine in 1859. Her father was an itinerant cartographer during her youth, bringing her into contact with the everyday brutalities of America’s industrial … Read more
William Martin Murphy was born near Castletownbere, Co. Cork, on 6 January 1845, the only child of Denis Murphy, building contractor, and his wife, Mary Anne Martin. The next year the family and business moved to Bantry. When William was four years of age his mother died. He retained, nevertheless, happy memories of Bantry. He … Read more
Big Jim Larkin was born on 28 January 1874 at 41 Combermere Street, in an Irish Catholic working-class enclave near the south-end docks in Liverpool. Both his parents came of tenant farmer stock from around Newry, and Jim would claim that his father and uncles had been Fenians. The second of six children, he grew … Read more