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“More curves than a seventeenth century road through the Liberties.”
Earlier this week, the statue of Molly Malone was added to the Talking Statues series, an innovative and playful idea that allows Dubliners and visitors to engage with monuments in the city. Oscar...
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Gabriel Lee (1904-37) and Eoin O’Duffy’s ‘Irish Brigade’
Gabriel Lee is the only member of Eoin O’Duffy’s Pro-Franco ‘Irish Brigade’ to be commemorated with a public memorial in Ireland. A small plaque in Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral marks the fact that he died...
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Constructed in eight weeks: The Papal Cross and the Phoenix Park
In March 2013 we published an article on the site looking at the Papal Cross in the Phoenix Park. For the week that is in it I have revisited this subject, and this is an expanded piece on the subject....
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Before Chicago, there was Marino.
US 1920s advertisement for the Tommy Gun, “the gun the bandits fear most.” In time of revolution, hushed meetings can happen in the most unlikely of places. In revolutionary Dublin, intelligence...
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“A sordid and repulsive evening in the theatre.”
“The Dublin play that started London!” (Image credit: the excellent JPdonleavy-compendium.) J.P Donleavy’s The Ginger Man is, to my little mind, second only to Ulysses as a Dublin masterpiece of...
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History On Your Doorstep
Back in 2011 I attended a conference in Barcelona where social historians and others active in a similar field of history to ourselves from across Europe met up and talked shop. I was very struck in...
View ArticleA good day for The Metropolitans (1938)
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you will have heard that Sam Maguire is to remain in Dublin at least a year longer. This year marked the 80th anniversary of the last time the Liam McCarthy cup...
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A voice against slavery: Sarah Parker Remond in Dublin.
Sarah Parker Remond, who spoke in Dublin in 1859 and 1861. This year is the bicentenary of the birth of Frederick Douglass, the influential abolitionist who visited Ireland in 1845. His time in Ireland...
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All you need is a ball and a wall.
Handball Alley, Mount Pleasant Buildings, Dublin. (date unknown) The story of Dublin handball is interesting. Through the years the country has always been a recognised stronghold of the game, which at...
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From Aslan to Liam Mellows: My talks in Dublin Festival of History.
The Dublin Festival of History begins next week, and will run right through into a brilliant weekend of talks in Dublin Castle. There are over 140 events taking place in Libraries across Dublin....
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The end of Patrick Lynch and the beginning of the Newgate hangings.
Newgate Prison from Robert Pool & John Cash. Views of the most remarkable public buildings, monuments and other edifices in the city of Dublin; 1780 (Dublin City Council) Though a grim thought to...
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‘Devils Driving Mad’- Dublin’s Pirate Buses
“The pirate buses used to go around to all different routes. Oh, they could go anywhere they liked. They weren’t confined to one route – a free-for-all! There was no bus stops, anybody could just put...
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Herbert George Simms, died September 28 1948.
If there is anything more depressing than a study of Dublin’s slums in detail it is a study of Dublin’s slum-dwellers…They look like people who have no healthy interests, no fresh and natural desires,...
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Disappeared Dublin: The Dardanelles
What’s the news the newsboy yells? What’s the news the paper tells? A British retreat from the Dardanelles? Says the Grand old Dame Britannia. -From the contemporary song The Grand Old Dame Britannia....
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River House (1973-2018)
Former motor tax office, Chancery Street (Aug 2018) The removal of the motor tax office on Chancery Street has been a reminder of just how divisive the building is. River Horse has been empty for more...
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The Tenants Leagues of 1930s Dublin
At night we lie in filthy beds Scratching our aching lousy heads. Broken by the thought of rent For a room in a stinking tenement. -excerpt from ‘The Workless’ in Republican Congress, 30 June 1934....
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Jubilation and confrontation: the day the slaughter ended.
A hundred years ago today, it finally ended. A war that had coughed and spluttered along since 1914 came to a halt. For men like my great-grandfather, who survived the Somme and Passchendaele in the...
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The Dublin Castle scandal’s “Unspeakable Crime” (1884)
The Dublin Castle homosexual scandal of 1884 is a complex story. It involves more than a dozen characters that were introduced over a series of separate criminal trials. All sections of society were...
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Alan MacSimoin (1957-2018) – Dublin Historian and Political Activist
Alan at anti-fascist demo in the 1990s. Credit – WSM. We learned at lunchtime today of the tragic news that Alan MacSimoin has died. It was sudden and hit us hard. Alan was a social historian,...
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Mob violence, women voters and a landslide (of sorts). The 1918 General...
1918 Election handbill. The election occurred a century ago today. It is difficult to imagine political canvassers tossing “rotten eggs, dead cats and rats” at one another today. A century ago this...
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