By Anne Casey On 16 December 1848, fifteen-year-old Catherine McNeill from Roscommon was one of 234 girls to board the Digby, the fifth ship of the Earl Grey scheme to ferry its live cargo of Irish orphan girls to Australia at the height of the Irish Great Hunger. Departing one of Ireland’s worst-hit counties—which … Read more
By Brian Hopkins and Peter McClintock Darver, Co. Louth, 22 December 1799: on this date and in that village Nicholas Joseph Callan was born into a prosperous farming family with a spread of business interests, including brewing. His formal education began at the Presbyterian Dundalk Academy, followed by a stint at Navan Seminary in preparation … Read more
By Laura Fitzachary ‘It must, however, be remembered, when considering their good fortune, that in the day in which they lived beauty was all powerful’ —Francis Gerard, Some celebrated Irish beauties of the last century (1895). Dublin in the mid-eighteenth century had varying degrees of social hierarchy, and the highest level of social standing, or … Read more
By Richard Harrington In late 1641, as the dispute between Crown and Parliament in England veered towards civil war, Ireland was torn apart by one of the most chaotic rebellions in its history. Spurred by fear of a Parliamentarian victory, Gaelic Irish and ‘Old English’ Catholics joined forces to overthrow English rule and reverse the … Read more