The existence of two administrative counties with all the appropriate apparatus of local government within the geographical county of Tipperary has always raised the question as to how this arrangement came about. There are bigger, more populous counties in Ireland: scale and internal geographical features in counties like Donegal, Cork and Galway, for example, create … Read more
In the late 1880s trade unionism was an almost unknown phenomenon among unskilled and semi-skilled workers in Connacht. In the agrarian sector it was only the herdsmen who had made efforts to organise in unions, and in the towns it was the artisans and drapers’ assistants who were organised to a certain degree. Twenty-five years … Read more
Women’s contribution to philanthropy in the nineteenth century has been well recognised by religious and social historians of the last decade, and in this scholarly work Maria Luddy provides a comprehensive survey of the Irish experience. Her study is informed by the contributions of other scholars—the pioneering work of Frank Prochaska (Women and Philanthropy in … Read more
Irish Convict Lives, a sequel to Exiles from Erin, aims to explore the personal aspects of the Irish convict experience in Australia. The eight essays present pictures of a small sample of the men and women who received sentences of transportation and who responded to their new involuntary environment in different ways. Men like Andrew … Read more
Ralahine, Prosperous, Kingwilliamstown, Dolly’s Brae, Ceim an Fhia, Carrickshock: small, insignificant places, yet places with strong resonances in Irish history. Is Ballykilcline, an obscure Roscommon townland containing fewer than five hundred souls on the eve of the Famine, now about to join them? Probably not, for a few reasons. Part of the problem is that … Read more