Ihe landing of arms at Larne on 30 March 1914 prompted the Irish Volunteers to purchase and bring ashore their own arms shipment. The O’Rahilly directed Darrell Figgis and Erskine Childers to a firm in Hamburg, where they purchased 1,500 rifles and 45,000 rounds of ammunition. Historian Alice Stopford Green was responsible for raising most … Read more
Robert Erskine Childers wrote these words in the darkness of his damp prison cell less than an hour before his execution for unlawfully possessing a firearm (ironically given to him by Michael Collins) during the Civil War. It was then, and has since, been speculated that he had been an agent of the Crown and … Read more
When Lord Frederick Cavendish was killed by the Invincibles in the Phoenix Park in May 1882, nothing like it had happened in British political life since Prime Minister Spencer Percival was shot dead in the lobby of the House of Commons in 1812. Percival is the only British prime minister to have been assassinated, and … Read more
As early as May 1975 the Irish Times noted that ‘many people seem to have forgotten that the bombings ever took place’. Over the years other atrocities, such as Bloody Sunday, Bloody Friday, Enniskillen and Omagh, have loomed far larger in the public imagination. Bombings carried out by the IRA, such as at Warrington in … Read more
Robert Owen’s visit to Ireland represented an important effort to attract government support for his ‘Village Scheme’ (see sidebar). A select committee would soon meet to investigate the prevailing distress, and Owen, hoping he might give evidence, as he had on child labour, set about familiarising himself with Ireland. From October 1822 to April 1823 … Read more