Thomas Aiskew Larcom was born on 22 April 1801 in Gosport, Hampshire, into a military family. From 1817 to 1821 he undertook a soldier’s education and was commissioned into the Royal Engineers as a second lieutenant. He was trained by Charles Pasley and Henry Mudge, head of the Ordnance Survey (OS) of England. Larcom joined … Read more
There is a history of over 200 years of public health service in Ireland, and by the early nineteenth century county infirmaries, fever hospitals and public dispensaries had become the most important providers of health services. As can be imagined, the public health service, then as now, was highly political. The dispensaries in particular, and … Read more
Few places suffered more severely from a combination of eviction and famine than Kilrush and its surrounding districts in the mid-nineteenth century. Only Skibbereen in south-west Cork and a few other parishes in the west of Ireland are likely to have experienced a comparable degree of human misery. But Kilrush has a further claim on … Read more
We are currently marking the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the single most catastrophic event in the history of nineteenth-century Europe, the Irish Famine of 1845-50. Yet commemorations of the disaster are hampered by a dearth of visual material. It is a problem which applies to Irish history in general before 1900 and one which has been … Read more
As a contribution to the on-going commemoration of the anniversary of the Famine, a one-day symposium on the theme The Irish Famine and Migration was held in March at Queens’ College, Cambridge. Organised by the Cambridge Group for Irish Studies, under the auspices of the Cambridge University History Faculty and in association with History Ireland, … Read more