Thomas Davis, writing in the 1840s, urged his readers to ‘seek for histories’, ‘create museums’ and ‘study the manners of the dead’ in order to ‘create for the future’, the museum enthusiast can only whole-heartily agree. The museum exhibition is now one of the pre-requisites of commemoration and indeed serves a purpose which no textbook, … Read more
Dublin continues to debate a replacement for Nelson’s Pillar, but in its own time (1808-1966), while lording it over Dublin’s O’Connell Street, the Pillar was debated again and again in parliaments, newspapers and council chambers. A controversy that would have continued into the indefinite future was suddenly jolted on Tuesday morning, 3 March 1966. Under … Read more
In 1810, the radical journalist Watty Cox accompanied a lead article in his Irish Magazine on Lord Edward Fitzgerald with a crude yet dramatic woodcut of the famous arrest of the United Irishman on 18 May 1798. The woodcut conflates the events of Fitzgerald’s capture as they occurred at 135 Thomas Street, Dublin, the home … Read more
Just over a decade later, in 1917, the first issue of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce Year Book listed a total of 337 classes of goods manufactured in the city, ranging from account books to zinc goods and including artesian well-boring appliances, buoys, deformity apparatuses, feathers, gunpowder, hat racks, ladies’ corsets, magnesia, prayer books, river … Read more
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) emigrated with his parents from Scotland to America in 1848. He became exceptionally successful in the steel business eventually gaining a near monopoly of steel production in the USA. In 1901 he sold the Carnegie Company and all its holdings to John Pierpont Morgan’s Federal Steel Company for $480,000,000. The new company … Read more