There were claims by some pro-amendment activists that the anti-amendment campaigners were being funded by foreign forces determined to undermine Ireland’s status as the protector of traditional Christian values. Far from this being the case, Andrew remembered how tight the budgets were and the lack of resources available to the activists:
Issue 2 (March/April 2013)
No more chains!
John was involved in the publication of a pamphlet, No more chains! Why you should oppose the constitutional ban on abortion, knowing that what they were doing was in contravention of the law, specifically the law on censorship that actually prohibited advocacy on the issue.
Most vicious and refractory girls’the reformatories at Ballinasloe and Monaghan
On 2 July 1883, fifteen-year-old Bridget Carroll arrived at the Spark’s Lake reformatory in Monaghan to serve the remainder of a sentence that had been imposed on her four years earlier. She had been tried at Loughrea petty sessions in September 1879 on a charge that she ‘Did threaten to stab Anne Flynn’. She was found guilty and sentenced to a short term of imprisonment, followed by five years in a reformatory in Ballinasloe. This reformatory, which had been her home for nearly four years, was now closing, and she had made the long journey to Monaghan to serve out her sentence under the supervision of the St Louis sisters.
Timetable
The daily timetable for the reformatories usually included six hours of work and three of instruction. Some children were refused admission to the schools, especially the boys’ schools, if it was considered that they were too ill to work. The children themselves sometimes tried to subvert the system by feigning illness. The inspector of lunatic … Read more
Richard Cantillon —the father of economics
Kerryman Richard Cantillon was born in the 1680s to a Hiberno-Norman landowning family from Ballyheigue. The family fought alongside James II, to whom they were related, during the Williamite War and were consequently dispossessed of their lands. Nevertheless, Cantillon’s landed gentry origins were to leave a lasting impression on his work, and his experiences in … Read more