On 14 November 1901 Elvina T. appeared before the Dublin City sessions charged with child neglect and with being a habitual drunkard. The previous month, a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (SPCC) inspector had visited her family home at Kevin Street to find the children ‘miserably clad’. Some weeks later he found … Read more
In September 1949 Dr Wenceslao Oliveros arrived in Ireland on a scientific mission to visit UCD and its president, Michael Tierney. Richard Mulcahy, minister for education in the first interparty government, had been in correspondence with his Spanish colleague, José Ibáñez Martín, and had approved the trip, despite Oliveros’s acquired reputation. Dublin welcomed the arrival … Read more
Seventy-plus years ago—February 1944—and it is at last clear that the Allies are going to win the Second World War (1939–45). In Eastern Europe, the Red Army’s march west is gathering pace. In Italy, the Allied offensive at Monte Cassino is under way. And in Northern Ireland, in anticipation of D-Day, the number of British … Read more
The centenary anniversary of the Howth gun-running falls this coming weekend. It is being marked by an official ceremony, and the weekend will also witness a commemoration of the related (though less well-known) Kilcoole gun-running, which is being marked with what looks like a very impressive ‘Heritage Weekend’. The Irish Times has given a good … Read more
Robert Erskine Childers wrote these words in the darkness of his damp prison cell less than an hour before his execution for unlawfully possessing a firearm (ironically given to him by Michael Collins) during the Civil War. It was then, and has since, been speculated that he had been an agent of the Crown and … Read more