The Whitechurch Carnegie Free Library first opened its doors on St Patrick’s Day 1911. It was designed by Thomas Joseph Byrne (1876–1939), then council clerk and architect to the South Dublin Rural District Council. Byrne was born in Kingston-on-Thames and commenced his study of architecture at the age of fifteen, articled to Edward Carter ARIBA … Read more
On 29 October 1929 the Catholic national newspaper, The Standard, proudly proclaimed that the first prosecution under the Censorship of Publications Act 1929 had been successful. The case had been brought against the editor of the Waterford Standard, D.C. Boyd. Boyd was an outsider in Waterford society—a northern Protestant—with a history of investigating corruption and … Read more
In a sermon, reported in the Standard, the bishop of Waterford, Bernard Hackett, advised his flock that: ‘While this outrage [Boyd’s forthright reporting of the Breen trial] remains un-atoned for, parents cannot be expected to admit the offending newspaper to their households with the implicit confidence which they may have hitherto entertained’. The weight of … Read more
Patrick Pearse remains one of the most contested and most elusive figures of the revolutionary period, yet the Pearse Papers (MS 21,046–MS 21,097) contain a wealth of biographical information on all aspects of the Pearse family’s various political, business and artistic endeavours. Some of the most affecting manuscripts in this collection include handwritten drafts with … Read more
Many of the National Library’s most valuable collections pertaining to the Irish struggle for independence were catalogued in the 1930s and ’40s, when the institution’s expertise and resources were at a premium. As a consequence (as many readers may have discovered), the catalogue descriptions of some material pertaining to seminal revolutionaries, including Patrick Pearse, Bulmer … Read more