LOCAL HISTORY DAY 2018

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Christmas comes but once a year, and sadly the same can be said of Local History Day in the Dublin City Library and Archive (DCLA) in Pearse Street.

It is a wonderful, enjoyable and stimulating day for all those with any wisp of an interest in local history. And, of course, as I keep telling myself, much local history is also national history as everybody comes from somewhere and also needs a place to be historical in.

I'm up again myself this time round and I can't comment on my own performance other than to say I was satisfied with it and the turnout, and I think the audience got the message.

Pól Ó Duibhir

No Blood on the Ceiling
The Story of Edward Ball.
Edward put a hatchet in the Mammy's head in Booterstown and disposed of the body in the sea in Shankill. That was in 1936, before my time, but I managed to dredge up a few personal connections with the case.

I lived in Ballybrack for 20 years and at my youngest played in the battery on the cliffs at Shanganagh, not far from Corbawn lane where the Mammy's body had set sail. I was born in the same house as Edward, and would not rule out the same bed. And, my uncle may have played cricket with Edward during his (Edward's) detention in the Central Criminal Lunatic Asylum in Dundrum. Surely I am approaching the status of a second class relic at this stage.

I didn't spare my audience the grue and the literal grizzle, the animal sex and the rumour of post-mortem-incestual courting, the feat of motor car (Baby Austin) engineering, and more. So far nobody has complained.

But it was not without its funny moments, heterobonking and unrequited homosexual advances, funny in retrospect but a source of frustration and embarrassment at the time to some of those involved.

Now, see what you missed if you weren't there.

James Scannell

Service Terminated: the Last Trams
from Dartry & Miltown, October 1948
James is a reliable regular here, and this time he gave us a potted history of the trams and a vivid version of the termination of two of the routes in the general post-war shut down of the system.

The early part was new routes and corporate amalgamations. Then there was the advent of buses which used to vie with each other for passengers. The last time I heard a reference to this practice was in Jimmy Meenan's class in UCD in the early 1960s.

CIE rationalised this area but its preference for buses over trams and the depreciation of the trams' infrastructure led to a general tram shutdown.

CIE preserved the logo and the route numbers. The number 14 and 15 bus routes on which I used to travel in the early 1950s, when we lived in Orwell Gardens, inherited their numbers from the earlier Dartry and Terenure tram routes. The CIE logo was one we used to draw in our copybooks in school. Sadly it was surrendered to the modern culture of graphic design, which has its occasional merits, but of which I am not an uncritical fan.

James gave us a graphic desciption of the last trams being stripped of their fittings by eager souvenir hunters en route. The Howth tram lasted a further decade as it was run by the Great Northern Railway (GNR) until that company's operations in the South were merged with CIE. The closure of that tramline in 1958 was better policed. Lessons had been learned.

That tram used to go up the back of our house when we lived in the Gem in Howth in the late 1940s. There was a certain romance in the trams: the passing points along the route, reversing the trolley for the return journey, and the reversible wooden slatted seats of which there is an example in Dublin's Little Museum.

When I was small I wanted to be either a tram driver or a bishop, or so I'm told. The tram driver I can understand but have no idea where the bishop bit came from.

Cecelia Hartsell

"I live a New Life":
Frederick Douglass in Ireland
It hadn't struck me until I sat down to write this but this was the first talk I was ever at given by an African American. Amazing at my age. But it does go to show how homogeneous white Irish society had been up to relatively recent times.

It certainly added punch and poignancy to the content. Had I been around in 1845 I just might have heard Frederick Douglass speak as that was the time when this educated not-yet-free black, though of mixed race, slave came to Ireland.

I can't remember the precise percentage but I think Cecelia said she was 10% Irish. I think that came out of my remarking on Irish participation in slave ownership in America, particularly in the Caribbean.

Douglass was amazing. Born a slave and got himself educated while still in slavery. Escaped northwards but still at risk of recapture, he took up the cause of anti-slavery, women's rights and democracy generally.

His trip to Ireland & Britain got him temporarily out of the way of possible recapture and he was bought out of slavery on his way back to the USA. Ireland seems to have been his first taste of real freedom, free from the danger of recapture but also of the petty harassment of blacks even in the supposedly free Northern States. He was amazed at being fully accepted into the society in which he mixed here.

He was highly influenced by Daniel O'Connell and has recorded his astonishment at the power and appeal of the Liberator's oratory.

Cecelia made the point that Douglass's dress, education and manners acted as a bridge to white society and gave lie to the malicious belief that negroes were some sort of lower class humans, totally inferior to their then masters.

She was asked why the qualified term Afro-American is so often invoked in the States. Are they not just Americans like everyone else over there?

Cecelia referenced other communities describing themselves in generic terms like Irish or Italian Americans. I take the point to a limited extent. With others the qualification is probably only invoked when relevant to what is going on. Its more widespread invocation in respect of African-Americans probably suggests that there is still a long way to go.

Frank Whearity

Aspects of the Skerries Irish Volunteer Company's reorganisation
& it involvement as "C" Company with the 1st Battalion 8th Fingal Brigade
as told principally from the papers of participants,
James & Charley Murray, Skerries, Co. Dublin
Frank's long title illustrates well that his presentation was a patchwork of incidents and relationships.

He invoked men coming home from Frongoch and other detention centres following the 1916 rising, right through to the vicious retribution of the Tans in the Sack of Balbriggan during the War of Independence.

Many activists in the area were marked men and they with others suffered torture and death at the hands of British forces. The Auxiliaries were supposed to be putting some restraint on the Tans but often as not the latter ran amok at will.

Frank has assembled a huge amount of local material, just some of which he presented with a promise of more to come next year.

As I understand it this material is an expansion of Frank's MA thesis of 2011 but with a greater focus on Skerries itself.

Mary Muldowney

Remembering Our Referenda:
the 1983 Referendum Campaign
Mary is a historian and an activist. The second one is important as it raises the question objectivity. Mary deals with this by firmly declaring an interest at the outset and presumably expecting that we adjust our perspective accordingly. As she says, all historians are coming from somewhere and will have preconceptions. I suppose the important thing is that facts are facts and the rest is up for debate.

She briefly outlined the background to the 1983 abortion amendment referendum, reminding us that abortion was illegal at the time and the purpose of those pushing the amendment was to use the constitution to prevent the law being changed to allow abortion in the future.

Much is made of the pro-amendment lobby's opposition to divorce, contraception and other issues on the "liberalisation" agenda. That may be true of many others but I see abortion as sui generis, both a health and a human rights issue but I'm not going to get stuck into that here.

Mary comments on the cowardice of Haughey in bending to the pro-amendment lobby to get votes, despite the advice of his Attorney General, and of Fitzgerald in following him. There was still at that time the institutional abuse of power of the Roman Catholic Church threatening eternal hellfire, a product over the distribution of which it claimed ownership. Apparently the other churches held their peace.

Fast forward to 2018 when the moral clout of the Roman Catholic Church has all but disappeared and the mood of society has changed so that people are more likely to speak out and also recount their own personal experience.

Meanwhile the steady trek of women to England for abortions has become less a moral imperative for the rest of us and its devastating effect on a significant cohort of women has become better known.

Mary is making intensive use of oral history and I am a great fan of this often neglected method of research since reading the work of Kevin Kearns.

It is very labour intensive and the question of confidentiality arises particularly in the case of subjects as sensitive as abortion. This means that transcriptions cannot be outsourced and current speech-to-type software is not much use when you're dealing with multiple inputs which vary in cadence and accent. So a funding problem arises pretty quickly.

Bring in Mary's current full time job as resident historian for Dublin Central and you have added a serious time constraint. I really don't know how this can be resolved.

Let me just compliment DCLA and the resident historians, some of whom I know, on this wonderful project. It is not only subsidising the spread of local history but the actual research of the resident historians themselves and stimulating that of others.

Enda Leaney

Occasions like this local history day are then a great outlet for presenting the results of the research for both the professionals and completely lay people like myself.

So it's thanks and compliments to Enda and his team for another great day.

WOMEN AT WAR

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The Dublin City Library and Archive (DCLA) in Pearse St. have been playing a blinder in recent times, actually over the last thirteen years or so since the tarting up and resourcing of the old (1909) Gilbert Library.

Between talks and exhibitions for the public at large and significant inputs into history research projects and publications, not to mention the archiving of material old and new, the place is a powerhouse of Dublin history.

The latest exhibition deals with women on the home front during WWI and it follows closely on a Suffragette exhibition, both of these making a significant contribution to countering the writing of women out of our glorious past.

So let's go in and have a look.

Needless to say, women started into the war in their "traditional" roles in society. They, no more than anyone else, had no idea of how their lives and future roles were to be eventually changed by this continental convulsion.

The exhibition traces the roles they played on the home front while many of their menfolk were away fighting for the King against the Kaiser.

Their activities at home were subsequently downplayed in the male history of the day, but the seeds that were sown in this period eventually grew up through the tangled undergrowth and today's world, had they seen it eventually come to pass, would surely have cheered them up.

I say that though, on reflection, I'm not sure that this would in fact be the case. There's still a long way to go.

This poster is typical of the use of women by the authorities to shame the men into going to war. Poor little (Catholic) Belgium is seen in flames with only a small area of sea between it and the home shore. Taken in tandem with other propaganda messages, this one appeals on more than one level.

What man would leave it up to his woman to go to war in is place? What will happen if the hated Bosch are not stopped? Next thing they'll be on the home shore and your family will be tortured and killed.

And if that didn't work, look at what the hated Bosch did to that lovely nurse Cavell.

I have to say I was familiar with Edith Cavell's name from having seen her statue in London many many years ago, but I had no idea that she had been executed for treason, of all things. That took me aback as she wasn't German. But apparently the Germans had conjured up a bespoke definition of treason which included helping the enemy no matter who you were, where you did it, or where you are from.

Would have saved a lot of paperwork in the case of Roger Casement. And him coming to mind brought up a British inconsistency that I must get to the bottom of sometime: they hanged Casement; shot the 1916 leaders; and refused to shoot Wolfe Tone. Funny old world.

But back to the women. On 9 June 1918, designated as Lá na mBan, and in the days following, thousands of women all over the country signed an anti-conscription pledge where, as well as indicating their opposition to conscription, they undertook not to do any of the work left undone by the men should these be conscripted.

Granted, this was well into the war and, unlike at the begining, its effects were being felt and such glory as there might have been at the beginning had dissipated. Then there had also been the Rising and its consequences.

So the poster above stands in stark contrast to that further up above which attempted to use women to leverage the men to join up.

However, a lot of men had joined up. Some for idealistic reasons, little Belgium and all that. But others had joined for a steady income for their family. And yet others had been suckered into volunteering at the end of a late night's drinking in the pub.

I'm told my grand-uncle, John Burgess, was in the last of the above categories. His joining up didn't make a lot of sense. He was married with at least two and a half children; he was well fixed working in his father's successful shoemaking business which he was about to inherit on his father's impending retirement.

When he enlisted, his father evicted his wife and children from the "company house" in Kilmainham and banished them to a wee box house across the river on Oxmantown Road. I'd say she well needed the separation women's allowance at that stage.

The allowance, which was paid to women whose men had enlisted, evoked many reactions on the home front. The Republican movement opposed the allowance on the grounds, inter alia, that it was irresponsibly squandered by the recipients.

There was mention of drunkeness, idleness and loose morals and the National Union of Women Workers established Irish Women's Patrols, reminiscent of the rural Parish Priest with his shillelagh scouring the ditches for misbehaving couples.

Cumann na mBan were active throughout this period and the exhibition features a book of poetry from Maeve Cavanagh, Sheaves of Revolt, which decried the enlistment of Irishmen into the British Army, was stridently anti-British and was suppressed by the authorities.

Maeve was the sister of Ernest Cavanagh who did memorable cartoons for Jim Larkin's Irish Worker. He was shot on the steps of Liberty Hall during the Rising.

A fine picture of Kathleen Clarke, widow of Tom Clarke, who was a founder member of Cumann na mBan and who served on the City Council with my grand-uncle PJ Medlar, finally knocking Alfie Byrne off his pedestal in 1939 to become the first female Lord Mayor of Dublin City, and that in an election in which Alfie actually cast two votes for her.

When my friend, Felix Larkin, pointed out this wonderful electoral anomaly to me, it reminded me that Albert Reynolds had signed the articles establishing the European Bank for Reconstruction (EBRD) twice and my grandfather signed his 1901 census form twice - all legit and by the book.

An unusual photo of Constance Markievicz, far right. Founder member of Cumann na mBan, sentenced to death for her part in the Rising, first woman elected to the British House of Commons and first woman in the world to become a Cabinet Minister.

Monica Roberts was a young woman who set up a voluntary organization, ‘The Band of Helpers to the Soldiers’ to provide gifts for Irish troops at the front, particularly those serving with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and the Royal Flying Corps.

Many soldiers wrote to thank Monica and a correspondence then developed. These poignant letters give vivid pen-pictures of conditions at the Western Front and reveal the courage of troops in the face of appalling circumstances.

An ID certificate issued in London with a permit for Monica to travel (return to) Ireland within three months.

A general observation about the exhibition. This is one of a number of recent exhibitions drawing on archives and collections held by the DCLA, including some only recently acquired - Dublin Fusiliers, Jacobs Biscuits, Monica Roberts.

Senior Archivist Ellen Murphy has responsibility for these archives and for this and recent exhibitions. She is doing a marvellous job both behind the scenes in sorting out the archives and then organising their presentation in the exhibitions.

The current exhibition draws on the three archives mentioned and it is encouraging to see how these sources complement each other and contribute to building up a wider picture. Ellen's head must be filling up at a rate of knots of late but it is all grist to the mill.

While I'm at it I'd like to congratulate Monica in the Council's Irish Language Unit on her recent promotion. I have commented on her creative use of the Irish language both in the Jacobs and in the current exhibition. Her good fortune will be the Unit's loss.

LOCAL HISTORY DAY - MARCH 2018

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This event in the Dublin City Library and Archive in Pearse St. is becoming ever more popular not only with audiences but with speakers. This is a very encouraging trend. As I never tire of repeating to people, outlets like this not only promulgate the results of existing research but stimulate people to do further research in the knowledge that the results will have a platform.

For those who are not professionals in the game, it ensures that their work will be up to the highest standards, not only in content but also in presentation.

I think it was mentioned that this is the thirteenth year of this event which would have its existence coincide with the explosion in local history over that period. Much more than a coincidence I imagine.

Enda Leaney

This session, the first of two scheduled for this year, took place on 24/3/2018.

I nearly had a paper on the agenda myself but in deference to the plethora of aspiring speakers I was happy to settle for the second session in November next, and even further ahead if there is any danger of me squeezing anyone out.

I was thinking of a paper looking at some of the deaths in my family against the wider national background of when they occurred. I have infant deaths, drownings, war, TB and even a potential double mercury poisoning.

However, I am now contemplating putting that one off for a while and instead introducing the story of Edward Ball who murdered his mother in Booterstown in 1936. We'll see.

Enda, who is running these sessions, had his hands full this time round. The queue of speakers meant reducing presentations from forty five to thirty minutes, skipping lunch, and postponing any Q&A until the end of the session. I'm not sure if this will be the new template or is just a temporary response to the current profusion of riches.


Starting a Local History Group.
James Madigan, Liberties Cultural Association

James Madigan

James took the line of advise by example. He sketched the brief history of the formation and success to date of the Liberties Cultural Association.

From a small coffee group beginning, it is now organising very successful tours/walks in the area. Core group members bring varied sets of skills to the table. They have eschewed a written constitution as being too restrictive and likely to dampen the spontaneity and enthusiasm of members, That enthusiasm was palpable in James's presentation.

The name and the logo were the subject of much debate and the result achieves both inclusiveness and historical resonance.

I have a particular interest in the Liberties (outer reaches in James's St.) where my great grandfather was a master bootmaker and where my granny was born (up at the Fountain).


Closure of an Unremunerative Railway Line: Harcourt Street to Bray, 1958.
James Scannell, The Old Bray Society

James Scannell

James gave us the rundown on the Harcourt street line, from its opening to its closure and substitution by the crazy 86 bus route which staggered all over the place on its way to and from town. He took us through some of the many accidents on the line and the plight of the unfortunates who were seen to have caused them.

You could sense his sorrow and frustration at the withdrawal of the Drumm battery trains, and, indeed, at the closure of the line, most of which is, ironically, now back on the rails, so to speak.

I have memories of the No.15 bus on its way into town from Terenure. Passengers passing Terenure church blessed themselves, a common reflex in those days. Then again passing Rathgar church and again passing Rathmines church and yet again passing Harcourt Street Station. It's amazing what an imposing frontage will do to your subconscious.


The Meeting at Rochestown Avenue, 1884 and related history.
Thomas Burke, Local History Alumni Group

Thomas Burke

Tom sounded like he was building up to a bloody confrontation in Rochestown Avenue with his account of preparations for the big National League meeting there in 1884.

The Orangemen were making elaborate plans to attack the meeting from two sides. One crowd coming straight out from town and the Bray crowd trekking up from Killiney Station. The venue was on the borderline between the jurisdictions of the DMP and the RIC and both forces were highly mobilised for the event.

However, we were denied what appeared inevitable bloodshed by the weather and some Protestant good sense. So the epic tale turned into a shaggy dog story but not before it had got us all going.

Another item in which I had a great interest as I used to live just down the road from Rochestown Avenue.


“Dear Miss B” – a Collection of Edwardian Postcards.
Brian McCabe, Kill History Group

Brian McCabe

Brian was great entertainment with a sample from his collection of Edwardian postcards from around 1909/11. He had the audience in stitches betimes.

The postcards were all addressed to the same lady who appeared to be in service to a much traveling Lord. So the destinations were varied and interesting. The brevity of expression stimulated our imagination and some of the banalities rang loud bells - trust you are all keeping well, no news here.

Brian has produced a little book of some of his cards and I look forward to going through it when I finish this post.


An Irish Country House in Cloyne, Co. Cork.
Marie Guillot, Cloyne Literary & Historical Society

Marie Guillot

Marie has achieved the magnificent feat of living in Cork for the last twenty years and not picking up the slightest trace of a local accent.

I didn't think I'd have much interest in this item as big houses and their various accoutrements tend to leave me cold. But Marie's enthusiasm and her careful tracing of the evolution over the last three centuries of Kilcrone House in Cloyne had my rapt attention.

Each new family added a bit and the old pile just growed over the years. Marie had done a mountain of research, not forgetting her intensive personal interrogation of one of the former maids.

I took it from what she said that she is now living in the house, though I may be mistaken. Her evident pain at the work of some of the local jerry-builders in the house's distant history makes me feel I might have heard right.


Lesser Known Dubs – The Good, the Bad and the Downright Despicable.
Ken Finlay, The Old Dublin Society

Ken Finlay

Ken Finlay is no stranger to Dublin history. He's been at it for years and has published all over the place. What he was giving us here were snippets on some of Dublin's less well known characters.

He started with Charles Cameron, who profoundly affected the life of the city and that for the better. Cameron became the city's medical officer in 1876 and, as Ken pointed out, being a polymath he was able to rise above the silly preoccupations of the time and see the wider picture. I think of him as a major contributor to the emergence of epidemiology. He was one of the good guys.

Ken he went on to Frank Dubedat. From a well got Huguenot family, he let them down by scarpering with a load of his client's dosh. He was presumably a bad guy.

And then there was Leonard McNally who turned informer on the 1798 crowd. He was presumably a despicable guy.

Ken had got through just a few more off his long list when time ran out.


My Experience as a Dublin Docker 1963-2009.
Thomas Walsh, Dublin Dock Workers Preservation Society

Thomas Walsh

Thomas Walsh's contribution was riveting, so much so that he's been booked for an encore at the next session.

His description of his life as a docker was not only a personal testimony, it was a significant contribution to the not-so-glorious history of the city port.

He explained how hard and precarious was the life of a docker. The work was backbreaking at the best of times. There was the constant danger of serious accident which could end a career and deprive a family of the breadwinner. There were health hazards such as the handling of asbestos.

And then there was the inequality of the button system which created a permanent and hereditary elite, the button men. You can see examples of buttons in the photo above. Eventually, the Port Authority took over directly employing the dockers, so work, or at least remuneration, was spread over a wider pool.

But that was not the end of the story. Despite prolonged resistance from the dockers mechanisation and containerisation put paid to most of the jobs.

Just on a personal note: he mentioned a union/button meeting in Coláiste Mhuire. I assume that was in the halla. The whole complex there is scheduled for redevelopment, including where a meeting of nationalist groups took place in 1914 to start planning the 1916 Rising. I hope the new building will respect the site's historic past.

I'm looking forward to Part 2 in November.



irishhistoryonline.ie – a Resource for Local History Groups.
Jacqueline Hill, NUI Maynooth

Jacqueline Hill

Jacqueline's contribution was short and straightforward. Irish History Online is a mammoth bibliography of Irish history and if local historians want to be in it they will have to ensure that their journals are captured by the system. One way of doing his would be to be sure to comply with current copyright legislation regarding legal deposit.

SUFFRAGIST CITY

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Dublin City Library & Archive have done it again.

A very interesting and thought-provoking exhibition on the Suffragist movement. The movement had an initial success when women were given the vote in parliamentary elections in Britain and Ireland in February 1918. The voting age for men was 21 with no property qualification. For women it was 30 with a property qualification. Equal access to the vote for women and men was achieved in the UK in 1928. It had already been the case in the Free State from the beginning.

I'll just hit a few spots below but, if you get a chance, do drop in and have a look.

But first, a more general observation. This exhibition clearly demonstrates the relevance of cartoons to the developments of the day. It is great that there has been a revival of interest in the role of the cartoonist in recent times. Felix Larkin led the way with his politically perceptive book on Ernest Forbes Terror and Discord: The Shemus Cartoons in the Freeman's Journal 1920-1924. The collection is available online from the National Library of Ireland. This was followed by James Curry's book Artist of the Revolution: The Cartoons of Ernest Kavanagh (1884 - 1916), Kavanagh (EK) was the cartoonist for Larkin's Irish Worker until his unfortunate death in 1916. Then we had both James's and Ciarán Wallace's beautiful book The Lepracaun Cartoon Monthly. The Lepracaun contained mainly the cartoons of its founder and editor Thomas Fitzpatrick, but it also featured those of Frank Reynolds (S.H.Y.). And finally, there is Gordon Brewster, in whom I have taken an interest, a collection of originals of some 500 of whose cartoons have become accessible online from the National Library of Ireland, and whom I have recently publicised in a talk, also available online. Felix has a post in the now sadly inactive blog Pues Occurrences which mentions a number of other works on cartoons.

So you won't be surprised to see the works of at least three of the cartoonists mentioned above figuring in this exhibition. If a picture is worth a thousand words, most cartoons are probably worth much more.

The Suffragettes were generally depicted in the public media of their day as a crowd of violent harridans, and the illustration above and the two below certainly attempt to give this impression. Mind you, I'm not saying they weren't above the odd bit of violence (unlike the men?).

This history is in a glass case at the exhibition so I didn't get a chance to leaf through it. I'm sure its content is adequately reflected in the exhibition panels.

This is the verse on the cover of the pamphlet.

And this version of "the storming of the Bastille" by the knitters brigade has a certain air of spontaneity about it.

This development in 1911 when John Redmond's party in Westminster abandoned the women in favour of Home Rule really got them going. I can do no better than to quote from James and Ciaran's book here:

In January of 1911 the unpredictable nature of electoral politics left the Irish Parliamentary Party holding the balance of power in Westminister. At last, or so it seemed, Redmond's moment had come. In this particularly sharp cartoon Fitz plays on a famous advertisement for Sunlight Soap drawing the Liberal Prime Minister Asquith as a traffic policeman holding back two great forces in British Politics, the House of Lords and the Women's Suffrage campaign, to allow a delightfully prim John Redmond to carry his Home Rule parcel safely across. The label 'Soft Soap' on both the parcel and the cartoon shows that the Irish public were not fully convinced.

As a special favour to my readers I am reproducing the original ad above. This is not in the exhibition but is in the book. Gordon Brewster took similar liberties with one of his political cartoons but in that case it was Pears and not Sunlight soap.

In another of Fitz's cartoons featured in the exhibition poor Tom Kettle comes in for a hard time. Here he is, a year before the Redmond cartoon, promising the female population the vote.

I have to confess that this cartoon reminded me of Brexit, at least insofar as the twin promises of the vote for women and Home Rule proved incompatible and in making his choice Redmond opted for Home Rule first. The cartoon is based on the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, Patience. You can see the full cartoon here.

I just couldn't resist this photo from the exhibition of Constance Markievicz as Joan of Arc. Call me cruel if you will.

This cartoon from the pen of Grace Gifford poses the question less asked, if ever. Indeed, why would men ask it. Her point i'm sure. Grace was an artist and cartoonist in her own right but she is probably better known to the public today for her marriage to Joseph Mary Plunkett in Kilmainham jail the night before his execution in May 1916.

A few small quibbles. I was not gone on the green and orange colour scheme. I thought it took from the impact of the content. There is an ongoing problem with the high large windows. They are not always suitable as a light source and they can make it difficult to view the exhibits, particularly against the light. I had some niggles on the Irish. "Sufragóir" is neither the singular nor the plural genitive, and I don't think you can use "um" when there is a sense of purpose involved. I have seen the meaning translated as "about" rather than "for" and I think that is a good guide for its use.

Small things truly. That said, this is another great exhibition in the series commemorating the Ireland of one hundred years ago. And it is a worthy contribution to ensuring that women getting the vote, albeit on a restricted basis, will not be overshadowed by either the ending of WWI or the UK General Election of 1918.


Kim Bielenberg has a very good piece in the Indo