ASKED TO NAME A FEMALE IRISH INTERNATIONAL SPORTS STAR, INDIVIDUALS SUCH AS THE ATHLETICS ALL-ROUNDER MARY PETERS, THE ATHLETE SONIA O’SULLIVAN, THE SWIMMER MICHELLE SMITH DE BRUIN OR THE BOXER KATIE TAYLOR WOULD SPRING TO MIND. FEW WOULD HAVE HEARD OF CECILIA BETHAM. By Brian Griffin For a number of years in the 1860s, Cecilia … Read more
THE FEMINIST MOVEMENTS OF THE 1960S AND 1970S ELSEWHERE WERE IN ESSENCE MODERNISATION MOVEMENTS; IRELAND’S TIME-LINE WAS DIFFERENT. The feminist organisation of which I was a founding member in 1970 was called the ‘Irish Women’s Liberation Movement’ (IWLM). It is historically inappropriate to call it ‘the women’s movement’ as there were many different ‘women’s movements’, … Read more
Since the middle of the nineteenth century there have been two universities in Dublin—Trinity College and the Catholic (later, from 1908, National) University—and so it is not surprising that a rivalry developed between them. In Dublin on 11 November 1919 the first anniversary of the Armistice was widely commemorated. Trinity students gathered outside the gates … Read more
‘Bullet-throwing’, as it was almost universally called in Belfast, involved the throwing of an iron ball weighing 28 ounces along a course of two to three miles. A match or ‘score’ was most often contested by single players, but doubles matches also occurred. The winner or winners were those who completed the course with the … Read more
Úna Byrne’s Mission to Clean Up the Irish Housewives Association In 1961, the Irish Housewives Association (IHA) hosted the Congress of the International Alliance of Women at the Dublin Institute of Catholic Sociology – an institute founded by Archbishop McQuaid to promote Catholic social teaching. Mary Cullen’s article “Women, Emancipation and Politics from 1800-1984” posited … Read more