On 7 October 1843 the lord lieutenant of Ireland issued a proclamation banning the ‘monster meeting’ scheduled for the following day at Clontarf, in the northern suburbs of Dublin. Some 2,500 troops, nearly 1,000 constabulary and four field guns were deployed to enforce the order. With only hours to spare, the organisers of the demonstration, … Read more
WHALEY, Thomas (‘Buck’) (1766–1800), politician and rake, was born on 15 December 1766, son of Richard Chapel Whaley, a wealthy landowner and notorious priest-hunter of Whaley Abbey, Co. Wicklow, and his second wife Anne, daughter of Revd Bernard Ward. On his father’s death in 1769 Thomas—the second, but eldest surviving, son—succeeded to his father’s estates, … Read more
‘There were two engines, the first drawn by four horses, on the top of which sat twelve firemen and their foreman dressed in pea-green, plush breeches and vests with gilt buttons. The men had two bugles on this engine, and on arriving at Dublin Castle Yard played ‘God Save the King’ to the delight of … Read more
In 1793–4 Anthologia Hibernica published a series of letters by ‘Mentor’ on the philosophy of nature, covering a wide range of mathematical and scientific topics. Letter eighteen in October 1794 dealt with the nature and properties of magnetism. This was followed in November by one on electricity in which ‘Mentor’ described what he called a … Read more
March 2007 marks the centenary of the death of John O’Leary, immortalised in the refrain of W. B. Yeats’s ballad ‘September 1913’. Owen McGee poses the question: can this ‘Romantic Ireland’ that Yeats spoke of be historically defined, and why did he associate it particularly with O’Leary? Yeats evidently equated the death of ‘Romantic Ireland’ … Read more