The post-medieval archaeology of Ireland, 1550–1850 Audrey Horning, Ruairí Ó Baoill, Colm Donnelly and Paul Logue (eds) (Wordwell, for the Irish Post-Medieval Archaeology Group, €70) ISBN 9781905569137 This welcome collection serves several purposes and prompts even more questions. First, it surveys comprehensively what post-medieval archaeologists have achieved, mainly during the last 30 years. It also … Read more
The infamous Mrs Mack, who appears in the ‘Nighttown’ episode of Ulysses, kept a brothel at 85 Lower Tyrone Street in the heart of the red-light (Monto) district of Dublin. She was so well known that the area was often referred to as ‘Macktown’. The 1901 census records that Mack had five ‘lodgers’, ranging in … Read more
As the nineteenth century progressed, prostitution in Dublin became more geographically confined. After the 1870s women began to move into cheaper accommodations available in the Lower Mecklenburgh Street area. The evidence of the Revd Robert Conlan to a commission on housing in 1885 revealed that brothels were extending into the district. He observed that some … Read more
Thousands of women working as prostitutes roamed the streets of the towns and cities of Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While there was a common belief that prostitution was an inevitable feature of life, especially where military garrisons existed, as long as prostitutes remained out of the public eye they were tolerated. … Read more
In a debate in the late eighteenth century in the Irish House of Commons on the vote of a grant, which was recommended by the chancellor of the exchequer as one not likely to be felt burdensome for many years to come, opponents argued that the House had no right to load posterity with a … Read more