On 18 September 1867 about 50 Irish Fenians, led by William Allen, attacked a prison van guarded by a large number of unarmed police at Hyde Road in Manchester, England. Their aim was to release two important Fenian prisoners, Thomas J. Kelly and Timothy Deasy. In the course of freeing the men, an unarmed police … Read more
Joseph Gleeson, Sinn Féin and IRB, LiverpoolI was born in Liverpool of Irish parents. My father and my uncle were Fenians. My earliest remembrance is being brought as a small boy to a lecture by O’Donovan Rossa in the Picton Lecture Hall, alongside the Museum and Art Gallery in Liverpool. The lecture was the usual … Read more
R.W.G. Hingston was born in London in 1887 but spent most of his early life in the family home at Horsehead, Passage West, Co. Cork. He was educated at University College Cork, from which he graduated with first-class honours in 1910. He subsequently passed into the Indian medical service. In 1913 he joined the Indo-Russian … Read more
The gradual dismantling of the Penal Laws in the later eighteenth century fostered a modest spate of chapel-building across Ireland. Emancipation under the Catholic Relief Act of 1829, however, encouraged an accelerated building programme celebrating the liberated status of the Catholic Church. More often than not, each new church was a communal effort combining fundraising … Read more
The first celebrated victory of the ‘Gentlemen of Ireland’ over the English at cricket was in a match played on Monday and Tuesday 26–27 May 1862 at Lord’s, the headquarters of the MCC and universally known as the home of cricket. Because the opposition was an ‘MCC Club and Ground’ team it cannot be considered … Read more