Sir,—I would like to thank Conor McNamara for bringing to the attention of readers ‘Special Constable Samuel Page’s letter to his mother’ concerning the execution of the ‘Manchester Martyrs’, Allen, Larkin and O’Brien, on 23 November 1867 (HI 19.6, Nov./Dec. 2011). Readers may or may not be aware that a fourth man, Captain Edward O’Meagher … Read more
In 1873 Thomas Clarke (born on the Isle of Wight, 11 March 1857) travelled to Dublin to be sworn into the IRB. After being sworn in, he went north to Dungannon, but the police got on his track and he eventually left for America in 1880. In the United States he was further inculcated with … Read more
In the 1880s many, including Dr Thomas W. Croke, archbishop of Cashel, maintained that ‘ball-playing, hurling, football-kicking according to Irish rules . . . may now be said to be not only dead and buried, but in several localities to be entirely forgotten. What the country needed was an Irish organisation to bring order and … Read more
Sir —Myles Dungan’s article on Captain O’Shea and the Fenians contains interesting information about politics in Clare, but he is surely misinterpreting the situation in speaking of a ‘sustained and practical nature of the [Fenian] alliance with O’Shea’ (p. 37). It was a very regular occurrence from the late 1860s until the mid-1880s for … Read more
During the last years of the nineteenth century Craughwell was one of the most violent corners of Ireland, and several murders were committed by members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) as part of its struggle against local landlords to create a better life for the poor small farmers and labourers of the region. Tom … Read more