Making sense of the history of psychiatry in Ireland By Brendan Kelly The history of psychiatry is a history of therapeutic enthusiasm, with all of the triumph and tragedy, hubris and humility that such enthusiasm brings. In Ireland this history is dominated by the vast network of public asylums that commenced in earnest with the … Read more
Ulster’s forgotten Fenians, 1858–1867 By Kerron Ó Luain On the surface, the 1850s were barren years for those with Irish nationalist ideals. The Cookstown, Co. Tyrone, Fenian James Mullins wrote in later years that national sentiment ‘in those days, the fifties … was almost extinct in Ireland’. In Ulster, the Ribbon secret societies kept alive … Read more
The nationalist and patriot Thomas Davis (1814–45) is well known as a political journalist who developed his brand of cultural nationalism in the Nation newspaper and as a dynamic contributor to Daniel O’Connell’s repeal campaign. While Davis has been described as a romantic and an idealist, he displayed considerable pragmatism in his views on educating … Read more
In 1716 Grant’s publishers of Pater Noster Row, London, circulated Poems of love and gallantry, which contained a composition by Charles Wogan of Rathcoffey, Co. Kildare By Richard Maher During the winter of 1715/16, Charles Wogan awaited trial for treason in one of London’s notorious prisons, Newgate. A little over a year earlier, in the … Read more
An assessment of the character and career of an atypical advocate of English rule in late Tudor and early Stuart Ireland By Joseph Mannion Intriguingly described by seventeenth-century churchman and historian Thomas Fuller as ‘a mere [pure] Irish man, but good Protestant’, Sir Francis Shane’s life and career in late Tudor and early Stuart Ireland … Read more