Coercive confinement in Ireland: patients, prisoners and penitents Eoin O’Sullivan and Ian O’Donnell (Manchester University Press, £65) ISBN 9780719086489 Coercive confinement in Ireland puts the spotlight on the wide range of institutions used by independent Ireland to confine ordinary criminals and those who flouted the moral codes of the period, along with children and … Read more
Throughout the nineteenth century the west of Ireland experienced frequent subsistence crises and famines, as the region’s resources were incapable of supporting its large population. During the Great Famine the contributions of private charities such as the Society of Friends played a major role in alleviating the distress in areas such as Letterfrack and the … Read more
The correlation between the growth of the Southern cotton industry in the nineteenth century and the slave population is unmistakable: in 1790 Southern plantations produced only 70,000 bales of raw cotton; by 1860 that had risen to over four million. Similarly, the number of slaves rose from 700,000 to over four million in the same … Read more
It is supposed that Pope Leo X gave a harp or cláirseach to Henry VIII at the same period as Fidei Defensor during that honeyed pre-Reformation period. The symbol was distinctive enough to separate the Irish coinage from passing into English currency. Sometimes the harp came between Henry and three of his wives, placing the … Read more
A year after the failure of his July 1848 rebellion in Tipperary, William Smith O’Brien found himself in a small cottage, isolated from other convicts, on Maria Island, Van Diemen’s Land. He now had the leisure to write a long-postponed autobiography, which has recently been discovered. Family background Proud of his descent from the great … Read more