The factory opened its Dublin operation in 1851, and by 1911 it employed approximately 3,000 workers. George Jacob, chairman from 1902 to 1931, is remembered in the Dictionary of Irish Biography as a ‘benevolent employer in the Quaker tradition’ who was ‘ahead of his time with employee-focused reforms’. Yet unlike George Cadbury or Arthur Rowntree … Read more
The centenary of the revolutionary decade will focus public attention as never before on the events that led to partition and independence. Given the current context—relative stability in the North, economic crisis and political disenchantment in the South—there is potential for a more honest engagement with this formative period than in previous major anniversaries. But … Read more
The republican trade unionist and ITGWU organiser P.T. Daly alleged that the low wages paid to the female employees at Jacob’s factory were ‘the cause of driving many of them onto the streets as prostitutes’. The Dublin Metropolitan Police estimated in 1901 that while female prostitution was decreasing there were still an estimated 1,677 women … Read more
The weekly wages of a DMP or RIC constable during his first years of service were by no means high, slightly more than the wages of a labourer during a full week of summer employment, or just over a pound (20–22 shillings). The report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Royal Irish Constabulary and … Read more
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was born in 1890 in New Hampshire. Her mother, Anne Gurley, emigrated from Loughrea to Boston in 1877; her father, Thomas Flynn, was born to Irish immigrants living in Maine in 1859. Her father was an itinerant cartographer during her youth, bringing her into contact with the everyday brutalities of America’s industrial … Read more