The city of Dublin is no stranger to bombs, from the British assault in 1916 to the removal of Lord Nelson’s statue in 1966 on the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising. Yet one that has largely been forgotten occurred 78 years ago in 1941 during WWII, referred to as ‘the Emergency’ in Ireland. The story began in April when German air raids bombed Belfast. The Belfast Blitz consisted of four German air raids on strategic targets in the city of Belfast causing high casualties. The first was on the night of 7–8 April 1941, a small attack which probably took place only to test Belfast's defenses … [Read more...] about DUBLIN BOMBED
Historical Happenings
CHARLOTTE GRACE O’BRIEN
Charlotte Grace O’Brien was born 23 November 1845 in Cahirmoyle, County Limerick. Her father, William Smith O’Brien, took part in the aborted rising of 1848 for which he was exiled to Tasmania when Charlotte was 9-years old. Charlotte’s mother died when she was 16 and the 19-year-old Charlotte went to live with her brother, Edward and his wife, Mary. Following Mary’s death in 1868, Charlotte remained with Edward to raise his three children, then aged 4, 3 and 2-years old. In 1870 she found her voice as a writer. Her first book was Dominick’s Trials: An Irish Story, but her 1878 novel about the … [Read more...] about CHARLOTTE GRACE O’BRIEN
SPERANZA
Jane Frances Agnes Elgee was born in Dublin at about 1821 and grew up in a deeply conservative family. She was a gifted linguist and published several translations of French and German works which were reprinted in America. Her first volume of poetry also contained translations from several European languages. In 1845, impressed by the size of the funeral of Young Irelander, Thomas Davis, she began to read his poetry in The Nation, an extremely nationalist newspaper published by Davis, Charles Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon, which awakened her to Irish nationalism. After Davis’s … [Read more...] about SPERANZA
THE MOST DEFINING MOMENT IN IRISH HISTORY, II
Last month, we presented the circumstances that led up to the most defining moment in Irish history. They included growing nationalism, extending voting privilege to all men over 21 and women over 30 (from 701,475 registered in 1910 to 1,936,673 in 1918) and then, the UK General election on 14 December 1918. In the Irish part of that election, Sinn Fein won 73 of the 105 contested seats to the Irish Parliamentary Party’s 6 and Unionist’s 22. It was the last all-Ireland election; it was also the first to allow women to vote, the first to elect a woman (Countess Markievicz) to the British … [Read more...] about THE MOST DEFINING MOMENT IN IRISH HISTORY, II
THE MOST DEFINING MOMENT IN IRISH HISTORY
As 2018 ends, we recall that a century ago was a time of great change in Ireland. The Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) goal of Home Rule, an Irish parliament under the Crown, was supported by many before 1916, but Britain’s reaction to the Rising struck them like an Irish Pearl Harbor. The British secretly court-martialed and murdered the leaders who should have been treated as prisoners of war; they unleashed nation-wide Martial Law treating every Irishman as a rebel and Loyalists convinced Lloyd George to break off a piece of Ireland and give it to them. The reaction was predictable – no … [Read more...] about THE MOST DEFINING MOMENT IN IRISH HISTORY