This year will mark the 200th anniversary of one of Ireland’s most notorious murders: the brutal killing of a beautiful fifteen-year-old peasant girl called Ellie Hanley, who became known asthe Colleen Bawn. By Robert Whelan Elopement and sham marriage Ellie Hanley lived in Ballicahane, just outside the city of Limerick. Her great beauty attracted the … Read more
Labour’s 1918 anti-conscription ‘Plan of Action’—an alternative strategy for independence? By Padraig Yeates In 1918 the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress (ILP&TUC) proposed methods of passive resistance to conscription that could have been adapted by Dáil Éireann to pursue the struggle for independence in 1919, rather than allowing the country to be catapulted … Read more
Sir,—In his review of volume III (1730–1880) of the Cambridgehistory of Ireland (HI 26.6, Nov./Dec. 2018), Timothy Murtagh faults itspredecessor, A new history of Ireland,on the grounds that it was more than ‘just a series of books’ but was ‘astatement by an entire generation of revisionist scholars’. If this is a fault,it could be made … Read more
Sir,—The article by Bryan MacMahon (HI 26.6, Sept./Oct. 2018) accurately highlights the impact of the Abergele disaster on contemporary society. A footnote to this sad tale is that the clerk in charge of the Travelling Post Office (TPO) van was Henry Cole Silk. He was the youngest son of Edmund Silk, attorney and long-standing seneschal … Read more
Sir,—Mark Phelan’s excellently compressed account (‘How the Central Powers were defeated’, HI 26.6, Nov./Dec. 2018) is very informative. However, one contributing factor to large-scale surrenders by German soldiers is not mentioned. British historian Professor Niall Ferguson has drawn attention to the consideration that the cessation by British soldiers, in the last months of the war, … Read more