Poet Dora Sigerson Shorter (1866-1918) was recently the subject of a post based on the Library’s holdings in the Department of Early Printed Books & Special Collections. She is also well represented among the collections in the Manuscripts & Archives Research Library. Shorter’s nationalism, expressed in the poetry she wrote, […]
Yearly archives: 2015
37 posts
Canon Charles O’Neill’s ballad The foggy dew is synonymous with the events of Easter 1916. Shortly after printing this copy in 1919 the firm O’Loughlin, Murphy & Boland experienced financial trouble and insolvency. Proprietor John O’Loughlin soon found employment with his son, Colm Ó Lochlainn (1892-1972), who had earlier established […]
The Easter Rising of 1916 took the British army by surprise. The troops already in Ireland consisted mostly of reserve forces, and although they were mobilised immediately, much of their military hardware was then deployed in the War in Europe. As a result, improvised armoured personnel carriers were hastily constructed […]
Richard J. Hoskin’s account of the Rising opens with the words: ‘Monday 24th April. At Ballycorus – Insurrection begun’. It continues until 1 May 1916. The total length is 8 folios. Hoskin uses plain language. His sentences are generally short and filled with abbreviations. He probably wrote in haste. There […]
TCD MS 3560/1 is the personal narrative of Peadar Ó Cearnaigh (1883-1942), detailing his experiences as a Volunteer in the 1916 Rising. During Easter week Ó Cearnaigh fought at Jacob’s biscuit factory, but escaped arrest when British troops took over the building. The account held in M&ARL is an eloquent […]
The Irish poet and sculptor Dora Sigerson Shorter (1866-1918) was profoundly affected by the 1916 Easter Rising and mourned those who had lost their lives in the rebellion in her verse. Dora was born in Dublin in 1866, the eldest daughter of George Sigerson, a physician, Gaelic scholar and writer, […]
Elsie Mahaffy’s handwritten book The Irish Rebellion of 1916 is one of the longest, most detailed and most valuable accounts of the Easter Rising. It is valuable because much of it was written in real time, day by day between 24 April and 30 May 1916; because it was written […]
On 11 May 1916, John Dillon MP declared in an impassioned speech to the British House of Commons that by the execution of the leaders of the recently suppressed rebellion, the government were ‘washing out our whole life-work in a sea of blood’. When the Easter Rising broke out on […]
Despite his derogatory epithet Denis Johnston’s play The Scythe and the Sunset is an interesting adjunct to the canon of literary works relating to the Easter Rising, informed by personal experience of the Insurrection: Denis and his family (and a parrot), were held hostage in their home at 61 Lansdowne […]
1966 marked the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising and in this week’s post we take a look back at some of the golden jubilee commemorations. In addition to official events in the Republic sponsored by the government’s commemoration committee, local ceremonies and celebrations took place in all 32 counties […]
In the aftermath of the Rising Major G A Harris, Adjutant of the Dublin University Officers’ Training Corps (OTC), was tasked with writing a report for the military authorities on the defence of Trinity College during the period 24 April to 6 May 1916. As […]
Maps and war are inextricably linked. Long used in the planning, reconnaissance, and execution of warfare, maps have proved crucial in the sharing and co-ordination of tactical information. Why then have so few maps survived from the 1916 Rising? Among the few is a map of Dublin belonging to Thomas […]
‘Such excitement! Dublin is in the hands of the Sinn Feiners’. So opens Lillian Stokes’ account of the 1916 Easter Rising, and it continues in much the same lively vein. Lillian (Lil) Stokes (1878-1955) came from a prominent Dublin family with links to the Jellett, Purser and O’Brien dynasties. She […]
The impact of conflict on families features as a theme regularly on Changed Utterly. We have learned of the occupation of Denis Johnston’s house in Ballsbridge and the tragic accounts of the Boyle and Kidd families. This week, the trend continues as we look at the Gifford family and in […]
James Hanratty was 32 years of age when he was arrested by British Forces and lodged in Richmond Barracks in Dublin, prior to being shipped (literally) to England. His young wife had died at the beginning of 1915, and their little daughter was being raised by her grandmother, with the […]
John Joly (1857-1933) was one of Ireland’s most distinguished scientists of the early twentieth century. Professor of Geology and Mineralogy at Trinity College Dublin, Joly, a native of Offaly, was well-known and respected amongst the scientific elites of Ireland, Britain, and Europe, and published on disparate subjects, most notably the […]
Until now our weekly blog posts have concentrated on a specific collection or a particular item among the holdings of our Library. This week’s theme, however, is about items no longer available to consult as a direct consequence of events during Easter week 1916. Before our in-house bindery was established, […]
A large section of the papers of the Wynne family of Avoca, Co. Wicklow, were presented to the Library in 1987. The great strength of the collection – apart from the evidence it contains of the family’s business entrepreneurship and estate responsibilities in Ireland and Germany – lies in its […]
The Ashbourne 1916 Memorial pictured here commemorates the battle of Ashbourne, one of the most significant events to take place outside Dublin. The Memorial is a fusion of Irish nationalism and religion, resonant of the Easter Rising itself. On the Friday of Easter Week, 28 April, men from the 5th […]
‘The Soldier’s Song’ is known to have been sung by the rebels in the GPO during the Easter Rising, and later in the internment camps. This gave it a particular status amongst nationalists, leading eventually to its adoption as the national anthem of the Irish Free State in 1926. The […]
Eva Gore-Booth (1870-1926) and her sister Constance (later Markievicz, 1868-1927) were the daughters of baronet and Arctic explorer Sir Henry Gore-Booth and his wife Georgina (née Hill). They were brought up in Lissadell, Co. Sligo; the Gore-Booths were considered good landlords and opened their house to poets and artists. The […]
The Catholic Bulletin was first published in 1911 as The Catholic Book Bulletin, a monthly review of Catholic literature and soon established itself as a family magazine with popular appeal and an estimated circulation of 10,00-15,000. While not overtly political in the beginning, the Bulletin was opposed to the English […]
Thomas Johnson Westropp (1860-1922) was a Limerick-born scholar and a graduate of TCD. He was an antiquarian and a member of the Royal Irish Academy and the Royal Society of Antiquaries in Ireland; he published widely and spent his life researching and recording the archaeological sites of Ireland. Westropp is especially […]
The Manuscripts & Archives Research Library continues to add to its research materials. Sometimes these can be substantial and we may know a lot about the donor or subject, and sometimes we receive a small amount of material, with little knowledge about its provenance or author. One such item is […]
The majority of our weekly posts relate directly to events surrounding the 1916 Rising. However, we also have the opportunity to delve deeper into the collections and realign the focus to include topics such as 20th century social and living conditions, fallout from the conflict, and significant commemorations etc. This […]
That Trinity College took a side in the 1916 Rising should be of surprise to no one. Her links with the British establishment began with the foundation by Royal Charter of ‘the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin’ in 1592, and continued throughout the […]
There is one hint in the family background of Nancy Maude (b. 23 May 1886) that might explain her transformation from British society debutant into avid Irish nationalist. Although she was the daughter of Colonel Aubrey Maude, Cameronian Highlanders and the granddaughter of Colonel Sir George Maude (Crown Equerry to […]
One of the earliest published accounts of the 1916 Rising written “while the ruins [were] still smouldering” is A record of the Irish rebellion of 1916 published by the magazine ‘Irish Life’. Received by Trinity College Library on the 29th of June 1916, this issue contains a history of events […]
A single sheet of notepaper in the Thomas Bodkin papers, MS 7013/7, gives a concise impression of the atmosphere in Dublin during the 1916 Rising. Thomas was a young barrister at the time, the eldest son of a prominent middle-class nationalist family living at 52 Upper Mount Street. For the […]
Dr Frederick William Kidd (1857-1917), a professor of midwifery and gynaecology at the Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin, spent Easter 1916 attending Rugby fixtures at Lansdowne Road and entertaining visitors at home at 17 Lower Fitzwilliam Street. Three of his four sons were then serving in the Great War, and […]
Henry Hanna (1871-1946), barrister and later High Court judge, was an engaged observer of events in Ballsbridge over the course of the Easter Rising. His diary (TCD MS 10066/192), a photocopied typescript, is now part of the papers of playwright Denis Johnston (1901-1984). The Hanna and Johnston families lived within […]
Far away from Denis Johnston’s leafy suburbs, Dublin’s inner city was suffering a major housing crisis in the early 20th century. Although the population increased by 20% between the census of 1851 and that of 1901, Dublin had also managed in that time to go from the 2nd largest city […]
The 1916 Junior Sophister term examinations were due to be held in Trinity College on Tuesday and Wednesday 25 and 26 April. Eileen Corrigan, a student from Belfast, travelled to Dublin by train on Easter Monday to attend them, and an account of her experiences appeared in the ‘Belfast Evening […]
The events of Easter 1916 appear to have had little or no immediate impact on the young composer Ina Boyle (1891-1967). Living in the secluded environment of her family home, Bushey Park in Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow (where her father was Church of Ireland curate), Boyle was more closely affected by […]
The enforcement of the Defence of the Realm Act at the outbreak of WWI made it an offence to publish divisive false reports or inflammatory press articles. Up until the Easter Rising, some republican newspapers such as the ‘Irish Bulletin’, ‘Éire Ireland’, ‘The Leader’ and ‘Irish Volunteer’ all benefited from […]
In the early hours of Easter Tuesday 1916, 61 Lansdowne Road, the Ballsbridge home of Judge William Johnston, his wife Kathleen, and their only son, the future playwright Denis, was occupied, under ‘amiable circumstances’, by four armed and apologetic Irish republicans. Denis, then a 14-year-old schoolboy home for the holidays […]
The organisation of arms for the 1916 Easter Rising was a complicated affair with arrangements to obtain the necessary weapons taking place years in advance. Shortly after the formation of the Ulster Volunteers and the Irish Volunteers in 1913, the British Parliament banned the importation of weapons into Ireland. In […]