In the year when we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the parliamentary vote for women, a look at the later lives of some of the women involved and their support for Indian independence—Maud Gonne MacBride, Charlotte Despard and Mollie Woods. By Kate O’Malley Maud Gonne This Irish nationalist/feminist icon needs little introduction, but what are … Read more
Cork city—a case-study. By Pat Poland In the early hours of Saturday 31 May 1941, the Whit bank holiday weekend, Acting Chief Officer John J. McInerney of Cork Fire Brigade was summoned from his quarters at the Central Fire Station to the watchroom to take an urgent telephone call. Bombs had again fallen on Dublin, … Read more
An ambitious scheme to build a ‘New Geneva’ on the Waterford coast in 1782 attracted a number of Swiss exiles, but ultimately floundered. By Isadore Ryan The story starts during the night of 1 July 1782, when the bourgeois citizens of Geneva decided not to oppose an expeditionary force sent by France, Bern and the … Read more
By Fiona Fitzsimons There is a point that every family historian reaches when, having exhausted all the documentary evidence, s/he draws a line under research. In this last decade medical science has delivered a new research-tool—DNA testing. Genetics is the science of inheritance. Everyone’s genome contains a wealth of information on their ancestry. DNA testing … Read more
The Irishwoman who became the first female lord mayor of Manchester almost 70 years ago. By Arnold Horner Born in 1877, Mary Latchford Jones grew up in an upwardly mobile Protestant family that migrated across suburban Dublin. Her father, Percival Jones, had spent his early years assisting in a Capel Street china and earthenware shop … Read more