We are currently marking the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the single most catastrophic event in the history of nineteenth-century Europe, the Irish Famine of 1845-50. Yet commemorations of the disaster are hampered by a dearth of visual material. It is a problem which applies to Irish history in general before 1900 and one which has been … Read more
In 1892 Dublin Corporation opened a wholesale fruit and vegetable market on a site immediately to the north-east of the Four Courts on the city’s north side. The main reason for its establishment was hygiene. Food was being sold off the back of carts in dirty streets. In 1883 Dublin Corporation’s Market Committee took the … Read more
The 1917 Sinn Féin Convention was a crucial watershed in the Irish struggle for national independence. It was the culmination of a process of reorganisation that had begun almost as soon as the quicklime had settled upon the bodies of the executed leaders of the Easter Rising. For a significant group of Irish women, many … Read more
The forthcoming beatification of Edmund Rice will inevitably focus attention on his life and deeds. Yet, the absence of a diary, memoirs or a contemporary biographer restrict our image of the man’s personality to mere glimpses. Above all, his modesty and reticence make him an elusive subject for a biographer. His contemporaries, for instance, appear … Read more
Few events in modern Irish history, especially in the history of revolutionary nationalism, haunt the imagination like the massacre that took place in the townland of Scullabogue in southern County Wexford on 5 June 1798. The killing of well over a hundred government supporters by rebels has been immortalised in the illustration that George Cruickshank … Read more