Sir,—The short piece by Joseph E.A. Connell Jr (HI 26.5, Sept./Oct. 2018, 100 Years Ago) on the sinking of the RMS Leinster on 10 October 1918, while it was sailing between Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire) and Holyhead, was most informative. It may be of interest to your readers that one of the 270 people who … Read more
A chara,—The article by Eoin McLaughlin and Paul Sharp concerning the 1919 dispute between Richard McEllistrim and the Ballymacelligott Co-operative Dairy Society (HI 26.4, July/August 2018) is rather wide of the mark in its suggestion that dairy processing in Ireland was made ‘exclusively cooperative’ following the purchase of all private creamery interests by the Dairy … Read more
Sir,—When Michael Collins accepted the gift of Dublin Castle from Lord Fitzalan on 14 January 1922 he was the finance minister of the Irish Republic, appointed by its parliament, Dáil Éireann, in 1919 and again in 1921. That Republic was established by the popular mandate of the 1918 general election, ‘regarded on all sides as … Read more
By Joe Culley At the height of the Famine, an English Quaker and philanthropist, James Hack Tuke, visited Connemara to assist the stricken populace and witnessed its full horrors. So when similar conditions threatened the region 30 years later, Tuke again mobilised his resources to help avert a catastrophe. His story is told in Gerard … Read more
JONATHAN EVERSHED Notre Dame Press £43 ISBN 9780268103859 Reviewed by Brian Hanley Brian Hanley is a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh. In contemporary Ireland, many see commemoration of the Great War as aiding reconciliation, hoping that the ‘shared human costs’ of the conflict might ‘transcend local Irish political sectarian differences’. As Jonathan Evershed … Read more