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    Original,framed Wartime era pieces of Commercial Ephemera from Co Kerry-John Barringtons,James Ashe

    €50.00
    Original 1940s invoice from John Barringtons Dublin,James Ashe Dingle .These unique artefacts of old Irish commercial life will make superb decorative item for any discerning Irish pub or home bar with a  distinctive Irish theme.What makes these items of even more historical value and interest is the fact that the majority of them date from the World War 2 Era or what was known as the Emergency in Ireland as its remained somewhat controversially neutral under DeValera's leadership.We can see vividly through these unique items  how ordinary people and both small and large businesses alike were presented with an unprecedented set of challenges -rationing,increaseed regulation  and of decreased supply and increased demand created by a world in turmoil. Presented in antique frames, these are the real deal after a number were found in an old suitcase bought at auction. If interested in buying a number of these charming pieces of Irish commercial ephemera, please contact us directly at irishpubemporiu@gmail.com for a special deal !   Dingle Co Kerry  27 cm x 23cm

    A short history of Ireland during the Second World War, by John Dorney.

    The Second World War was the defining event of the twentieth century. It saw, as well as the deaths of tens of millions and devastation of two continents, the defeat of Hitler and Nazism, the decline of the once dominant European empires and the rise to superpower status of the United State and the Soviet Union. In the Irish state, popularly known throughout the war years as ‘Eire’ it was also a crucial event, though more for what did not happen than what did. Ireland did not join the war, but declared neutrality. Indeed the world war, in Ireland, was not referred to as a war at all, but as ‘The Emergency’. In staying neutral, despite British and latterly American pleas to join the war, Ireland, under Eamon de Valera, successfully asserted the independence of the new state. However, Irish neutrality was a fraught affair – a delicate balancing act between neutrality and secretly aiding the Allied powers.  

    Background, incomplete independence

     
    Eamon de Valera.
    The independence struggle of 1916-1921 had not resulted, as Irish Republicans had dreamed, in a fully independent all-Ireland Republic. Instead, the Treaty settlement of 1921 left two states in Ireland. One, the Irish Free State, in 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties was a self-governing dominion of the British Empire. The other 6 counties, Northern Ireland, was a unionist dominated autonomous region of the United Kingdom. While the Free State was much more independent than Northern Ireland, it was not completely so. As well as symbolic ties to Britain – an oath of fidelity members of parliament had to take to the British monarch and Governor General who represented the King as head of state in Ireland, the British retained three naval bases around the Irish coast, at Cobh, Bearhaven and Lough Swilly. The acceptance of this settlement tore the unity of the Irish nationalist movement apart, in a bitter Civil War in 1922-23, won by the pro-Treaty faction.  
    The Irish state stayed neutral during the War to assert its independence from Britain.
      The anti-Treaty Republicans never fully accepted their defeat however. What was left of the guerrilla army that had fought British and the Civil War, the IRA, never accepted the Free State. In 1932, the major political party that emerged from the anti-Treaty movement, Fianna Fail, came to power by election. Under Eamon de Valera, they set about dismantling the Treaty, abolishing the oath to the British monarchy, the Governor General and the Senate and introducing a new constitution in 1937. They also initiated a tariff war with Britain by refusing to pay back the Land Annuities that Britain had granted to subsidise land reform in Ireland in the early twentieth century. While this satisfied many of de Valera’s supporters, the IRA continued to oppose anything short of a fully independent Irish Republic. De Valera had legalised the organisation in 1933, but he banned them again in 1936, as they would not give up their arms or illegal methods. De Valera’s new constitution removed the name Irish Free State and stated that the country’s name was ‘Eire, or in the English language Ireland’. The name ‘Eire’ stuck abroad to distinguish the former Free State from Northern Ireland. By 1938, however, both de Valera and the British government of Neville Chamberlain, were eager to normalise relations with each other. De Valera agreed to pay a lump sum towards the land annuities and in return, Chamberlain lift the onerous tariffs on Irish agricultural imports. Most importantly though, the British agreed to return to Ireland the three ‘Treaty ports’ on the Atlantic Coast. The British analysis was that the ports had not been well-maintained, required investment and would be difficult to defend in wartime should the Irish ever try to take them back. But the British thought they were being returned to Ireland on the implicit understanding that British naval forces would be allowed to use them in the event of a European war. De Valera, on the other hand, had insisted that the return of the ports be unconditional and when war broke out, refused the British request to use the ports as anti-submarine bases.  

    The Treaty ports and Irish unity

     
    The location of the Treaty Ports. 
    Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, causing Britain and France to declare war on Germany. Ireland immediately declared neutrality. By the summer of 1940, however the situation had changed dramatically and to the peril of neutral Ireland. German forces had rolled over most of western Europe, occupying Denmark, Norway the Netherlands, Belgium and most importantly, France. The British Army had only barely escaped annihilation at Dunkirk. Britain now faced a fight for its life, with the Atlantic Ocean and trade with America as it last lifeline. Now it again desperately needed the use of Atlantic Ports that it had returned to Ireland in 1938, to safeguard the convoys of merchant ships that crossed the Atlantic with food and arms.  
    Winston Churchill had to be persuaded not to invade Ireland to take Ireland’s Atlantic ports.
      At this point Neville Chamberlain was replaced as British Prime Minister by Winston Churchill, who took a far less conciliatory position on Irish neutrality than his predecessor. Churchill was one of the architects of the Anglo-Irish Treaty back in 1921 and considered that the Irish state only existed as agreed under the Treaty, ‘under the [British] Crown’. He therefore considered Irish neutrality as a breach of the Treaty and that Britain would be within its rights to re-occupy the territory of the Irish Free State. On numerous occasions he had to be talked out of unilaterally taking back the ‘Treaty Ports’ in Ireland by military action by his cabinet Churchill however also attempted to lure de Valera into the war by offering him the prospect of Irish unity in return for an end to the policy of neutrality. In popular consciousness this is often held to have been confined to a late night note Churchill fired off to de Valera in which he wrote ‘now or never, a nation once again’. In reality however, the British offer of a united Ireland was far more concrete than is widely understood. Irish and British teams negotiated for months, and the British under Neville Chamberlian offered de Valera of formal offer of unity on June 28 1940, in return for British troops, planes and ships being allowed to garrison the Treaty Ports. What decided de Valera against accepting the offer, apart from the innate fears of entering the war, was that a prospective united Ireland would have to be approved in the Northern Ireland Parliament. As long as this was dominated by unionists, this meant that no British offer of unity was likely to come to pass. Ireland and her ports stayed out of the war. Northern unionists, meanwhile, were outraged at the prospect of a united Ireland negotiated behind their backs between London and Dublin.

    Neutral?

     
    The Irish Army in 1930s German style helmets. They were re-kitted with British pattern gear during the War.
    Because of Ireland’s stance, many in Britain claimed that Ireland was secretly pro-Axis and rumours, mostly unfounded, abounded of German u-boats docking on Ireland’s west coast. Pressure increased on Ireland to join the war after the entry of the United State in 1941. The American consul in Dublin David Gray, was extremely hostile to Irish neutrality and consistently reported, erroneously, that Irish neutrality was pro-Axis. This meant that Ireland had to aid the Allies in order placate Britain, avoid a possible British invasion and to avoid American hostility. At the start of the war, De Valera secretly agreed with the British to share naval and marine intelligence with them. Dan Bryan, the head of Irish military intelligence, developed particularly close relations with his British counterparts during the war. The standard practice for neutral countries was to intern any belligerent personnel who landed there. At the start of the war, Ireland followed this practice and detained both Allied and German airmen who crash landed in Ireland.  
    Despite its neutrality, in practice Ireland aided the Allies in many ways.
      However, in 1943, Ireland quietly released all its 33 Allied internees while keeping the Germans incarcerated. About 260 German military, air force and naval personnel, who had mostly crashed landed in Ireland, were interned in Ireland during the war From this point onwards, when allied airplanes crashed in Irish territory, their surviving crews were secretly escorted across the border, back into British territory. And where possible, their machines were also repaired and returned. The official justification for this was that all allied planes over Ireland were on training missions, whereas the Germans were on combat missions. From 1941 onwards, Ireland also permitted allied planes to fly over Irish air space in an ‘air corridor’ over County Donegal into Northern Ireland. In 1944, in the run up to the Normandy Landings in France, Irish weather stations provided the allies with secret weather reports that helped the invasion of Europe to go ahead Northern Ireland, meanwhile, became a major staging post for the United State military, with a naval and Marine Corps base in Derry and thousands of American military personal, including five Army divisions, garrisoned there ahead of the invasion of Europe.  

    The role of the IRA

     
    The aftermath of an IRA bomb in Coventry in August 1939 that killed 5 civilians.
    One of the major headaches for those trying to safeguard Irish neutrality was the IRA, which was determined to get German military aid to overthrow both states in Ireland, north and south. As well as defying Irish law, the IRA’s actions threatened to undermine Ireland’s neutrality in the war and bring about a confrontation with Britain. IRA Chief of Staff Sean Russell tried to make contact with the Germans as early as 1936 and IRA leader Tom Barry was brought to Germany as a guest of German intelligence in 1937 and asked about the possibility of the IRA carrying out sabotage against Britain in the event of war.  
    The IRA sought German aid during the War but was harshly repressed on both sides of the border.
      In 1939, starting before war broke out between Britain and Germany, Russell launched a bombing campaign in England, targeting power stations and factories but also cinemas and post offices. The logic of Russell’s campaign was that while Britain was engaged in a world war it might be forced to leave Northern Ireland in order to stop the bombing campaign at home. Seven English civilians were killed in the bombing campaign. The most dramatic event was a bomb in attack in Coventry that killed five people, for which two IRA members were later hanged. In Ireland the IRA was also involved in intermittent anti-state activities. In December 1939 they stole one million rounds of ammunition from the Irish Army’s depot at the Magazine Fort in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. They also bombed Garda (police) headquarters at Dublin Castle and shot a number of Garda detectives in various incidents, killing five detectives over the course of the war In response, the de Valera government interned over 500 IRA members at the Curragh and jailed another 100 for the duration of the war. The Irish government also executed six IRA members between 1940 and 1944 for shooting Gardai or soldiers. In Northern Ireland, the IRA carried out some attacks from 1942 onwards, killing over the course of the war, six RUC policemen. There too, internment was introduced, 300 IRA men were imprisoned and one IRA man, Tom Williams, was hanged by the Northern government for the killing of an RUC constable in 1942.  

    German and IRA collaboration

     
    Hermann Goertz, the German agent sent to Ireland to liaise with the IRA.
    There was an on-off partnership between the IRA and German military intelligence during the war. Essentially the Germans wanted two things from Ireland during the Second World War. The first and most important was that Eire would remain neutral and deny the British use of the Treaty Ports on Ireland’s western coast. Because of this they discouraged the IRA from attacks south of the border. Their secondary objective and reason for cooperating with the IRA, was to foment a rebellion by nationalists in Northern Ireland to divert British resources from war fronts elsewhere. In 1940 the Germans also considered invading the south coast of Ireland, in plan known as Operation Green. This would have been intended as a diversionary attack during an invasion of Britain itself. However this never got beyond the planning stage. Alternatively if the British invaded Eire in order to take the Atlantic ports, Hitler thought that de Valera might ask for German assistance, in which case Germany would invade in support of Irish forces. In fact, while de Valera rebuffed the offers of military aid from the German ambassador Hempel, he did make a working agreement to invite British troops into Ireland in the event of a German invasion.  
    The Germans wanted to use the IRA to launch an insurrection in Northern Ireland.
      Sean Russell, the IRA leader who had pioneered cooperation with Nazi Germany, died of a burst ulcer aboard a u-boat on his way back to Ireland in August 1940. However this was far from the end of the IRA‘s contacts with German intelligence. The Germans landed over dozen agents in Ireland during the war, the most important of whom was Hermann Goertz, a military intelligence officer, whose job it was to liaise with the IRA. Stephen Hayes, the IRA Chief of Staff, had a plan drawn up ‘Plan Kathleen’ for a German invasion of Northern Ireland, involving a landing in Derry, which the IRA would have supported through an attack over the border from County Leitrim. Goertz discussed the plan with Stephen Hayes but was not impressed either with Hayes, the IRA’s capabilities or with the details of the plan. In fact, the German agent concluded that the IRA was all but useless to German war aims and instead began trying to create a network of informants based on far-right wing sympathisers such as Niall MacNeill, an Irish Army intelligence officer and former Blueshirt leader Eoin O’Duffy After 18 months in Ireland, Goertz was arrested in November 1941, more or less ending the overt collaboration of the IRA with Nazi Germany. Despite the Germans’ on-off dealings with the IRA, the Eamon de Valera and the Irish government generally had a cordial relationship with the German ambassador, Eduard Hempel, who was regarded as dealing more respectfully with neutral Ireland than did the British or American representatives in Dublin. For this reason de Valera consistently refused Allied demands that the German ambassador be expelled.

    Bombing

     
    The aftermath of the North Strand bombing.
    One of the main reasons for Irish neutrality, apart from the demonstration of independence from Britain it allowed, was that the country would be defenceless against aerial bombing. And certainly the southern state was spared the fate of Northern Ireland during the war. Belfast in particular was systematically targeted by German bombers in April and May 1941 due to its possession of shipyards and war industries. During the ‘Belfast Blitz’ – consisting of three large air raids – over 1,000 people were killed and thousands more injured and made homeless.  
    Dublin was bombed accidentally but Belfast was systematically bombed and over 1,000 civilians were killed.
      Southern fire engines were sent north to aid the Northern authorities in the aftermath of the bombings. While it did not see concerted bombing of that kind, on a number of occasions, the 26 county Irish state was indeed bombed by the Germans, most notably the North Strand area of Dublin in May 1941, in which 28 people were killed. The Germans later apologised for the bombing and paid compensation While it has been speculated that such bombings were a veiled threat from the Germans as to what would happen if Ireland abandoned neutrality, historian Michael Kennedy judges that they were in fact the result of German bombers dumping their bombs on return flights from unsuccessful mission in Northern Ireland

    End of the War

     
    Destruction in Belfast after the Blitz there in 1941.
    Germany surrendered to the Allies on May 8 1945 after Adolf Hitler’s suicide. Very controversially, Eamon de Valera paid a courtesy visit  to the German ambassador Hempel’s residence to offer his condolences on the death of the Nazi leader. De Valera maintained that he was merely observing the standard diplomatic protocols on the death of a foreign head of state. Ireland survived the war more or less unscathed. Strict rationing had to be applied and there were severe shortages of items such as coal and petrol during the war years. Still, this was insignificant compared to the devastation that had been wrought in much of the rest of Europe. However its neutral stance during the war left it somewhat isolated in the immediate postwar years. For instance, while other western European countries received free American aid under the Marshall Plan in the 1940s, the Americans queried why neutral Ireland either deserved or needed such aid. In the end Ireland got a loan of £36 million The sharp contrast between the experience of the war north and south of the border also tended to reinforce the partition of Ireland in the coming decades.  
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  • Original,framed Wartime era pieces of Commercial Ephemera from Co Kerry-Irish American Oil Company

    €50.00
    Original 1940s letter from the Irish American Oil Company (Esso). .These unique artefacts of old Irish commercial life will make superb decorative item for any discerning Irish pub or home bar with a  distinctive Irish theme.What makes these items of even more historical value and interest is the fact that the majority of them date from the World War 2 Era or what was known as the Emergency in Ireland as its remained somewhat controversially neutral under DeValera's leadership.We can see vividly through these unique items  how ordinary people and both small and large businesses alike were presented with an unprecedented set of challenges -rationing,increaseed regulation  and of decreased supply and increased demand created by a world in turmoil. Presented in antique frames, these are the real deal after a number were found in an old suitcase bought at auction. If interested in buying a number of these charming pieces of Irish commercial ephemera, please contact us directly at irishpubemporiu@gmail.com for a special deal !   Dingle Co Kerry  27 cm x 23cm

    A short history of Ireland during the Second World War, by John Dorney.

    The Second World War was the defining event of the twentieth century. It saw, as well as the deaths of tens of millions and devastation of two continents, the defeat of Hitler and Nazism, the decline of the once dominant European empires and the rise to superpower status of the United State and the Soviet Union. In the Irish state, popularly known throughout the war years as ‘Eire’ it was also a crucial event, though more for what did not happen than what did. Ireland did not join the war, but declared neutrality. Indeed the world war, in Ireland, was not referred to as a war at all, but as ‘The Emergency’. In staying neutral, despite British and latterly American pleas to join the war, Ireland, under Eamon de Valera, successfully asserted the independence of the new state. However, Irish neutrality was a fraught affair – a delicate balancing act between neutrality and secretly aiding the Allied powers.  

    Background, incomplete independence

     
    Eamon de Valera.
    The independence struggle of 1916-1921 had not resulted, as Irish Republicans had dreamed, in a fully independent all-Ireland Republic. Instead, the Treaty settlement of 1921 left two states in Ireland. One, the Irish Free State, in 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties was a self-governing dominion of the British Empire. The other 6 counties, Northern Ireland, was a unionist dominated autonomous region of the United Kingdom. While the Free State was much more independent than Northern Ireland, it was not completely so. As well as symbolic ties to Britain – an oath of fidelity members of parliament had to take to the British monarch and Governor General who represented the King as head of state in Ireland, the British retained three naval bases around the Irish coast, at Cobh, Bearhaven and Lough Swilly. The acceptance of this settlement tore the unity of the Irish nationalist movement apart, in a bitter Civil War in 1922-23, won by the pro-Treaty faction.  
    The Irish state stayed neutral during the War to assert its independence from Britain.
      The anti-Treaty Republicans never fully accepted their defeat however. What was left of the guerrilla army that had fought British and the Civil War, the IRA, never accepted the Free State. In 1932, the major political party that emerged from the anti-Treaty movement, Fianna Fail, came to power by election. Under Eamon de Valera, they set about dismantling the Treaty, abolishing the oath to the British monarchy, the Governor General and the Senate and introducing a new constitution in 1937. They also initiated a tariff war with Britain by refusing to pay back the Land Annuities that Britain had granted to subsidise land reform in Ireland in the early twentieth century. While this satisfied many of de Valera’s supporters, the IRA continued to oppose anything short of a fully independent Irish Republic. De Valera had legalised the organisation in 1933, but he banned them again in 1936, as they would not give up their arms or illegal methods. De Valera’s new constitution removed the name Irish Free State and stated that the country’s name was ‘Eire, or in the English language Ireland’. The name ‘Eire’ stuck abroad to distinguish the former Free State from Northern Ireland. By 1938, however, both de Valera and the British government of Neville Chamberlain, were eager to normalise relations with each other. De Valera agreed to pay a lump sum towards the land annuities and in return, Chamberlain lift the onerous tariffs on Irish agricultural imports. Most importantly though, the British agreed to return to Ireland the three ‘Treaty ports’ on the Atlantic Coast. The British analysis was that the ports had not been well-maintained, required investment and would be difficult to defend in wartime should the Irish ever try to take them back. But the British thought they were being returned to Ireland on the implicit understanding that British naval forces would be allowed to use them in the event of a European war. De Valera, on the other hand, had insisted that the return of the ports be unconditional and when war broke out, refused the British request to use the ports as anti-submarine bases.  

    The Treaty ports and Irish unity

     
    The location of the Treaty Ports. 
    Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, causing Britain and France to declare war on Germany. Ireland immediately declared neutrality. By the summer of 1940, however the situation had changed dramatically and to the peril of neutral Ireland. German forces had rolled over most of western Europe, occupying Denmark, Norway the Netherlands, Belgium and most importantly, France. The British Army had only barely escaped annihilation at Dunkirk. Britain now faced a fight for its life, with the Atlantic Ocean and trade with America as it last lifeline. Now it again desperately needed the use of Atlantic Ports that it had returned to Ireland in 1938, to safeguard the convoys of merchant ships that crossed the Atlantic with food and arms.  
    Winston Churchill had to be persuaded not to invade Ireland to take Ireland’s Atlantic ports.
      At this point Neville Chamberlain was replaced as British Prime Minister by Winston Churchill, who took a far less conciliatory position on Irish neutrality than his predecessor. Churchill was one of the architects of the Anglo-Irish Treaty back in 1921 and considered that the Irish state only existed as agreed under the Treaty, ‘under the [British] Crown’. He therefore considered Irish neutrality as a breach of the Treaty and that Britain would be within its rights to re-occupy the territory of the Irish Free State. On numerous occasions he had to be talked out of unilaterally taking back the ‘Treaty Ports’ in Ireland by military action by his cabinet Churchill however also attempted to lure de Valera into the war by offering him the prospect of Irish unity in return for an end to the policy of neutrality. In popular consciousness this is often held to have been confined to a late night note Churchill fired off to de Valera in which he wrote ‘now or never, a nation once again’. In reality however, the British offer of a united Ireland was far more concrete than is widely understood. Irish and British teams negotiated for months, and the British under Neville Chamberlian offered de Valera of formal offer of unity on June 28 1940, in return for British troops, planes and ships being allowed to garrison the Treaty Ports. What decided de Valera against accepting the offer, apart from the innate fears of entering the war, was that a prospective united Ireland would have to be approved in the Northern Ireland Parliament. As long as this was dominated by unionists, this meant that no British offer of unity was likely to come to pass. Ireland and her ports stayed out of the war. Northern unionists, meanwhile, were outraged at the prospect of a united Ireland negotiated behind their backs between London and Dublin.

    Neutral?

     
    The Irish Army in 1930s German style helmets. They were re-kitted with British pattern gear during the War.
    Because of Ireland’s stance, many in Britain claimed that Ireland was secretly pro-Axis and rumours, mostly unfounded, abounded of German u-boats docking on Ireland’s west coast. Pressure increased on Ireland to join the war after the entry of the United State in 1941. The American consul in Dublin David Gray, was extremely hostile to Irish neutrality and consistently reported, erroneously, that Irish neutrality was pro-Axis. This meant that Ireland had to aid the Allies in order placate Britain, avoid a possible British invasion and to avoid American hostility. At the start of the war, De Valera secretly agreed with the British to share naval and marine intelligence with them. Dan Bryan, the head of Irish military intelligence, developed particularly close relations with his British counterparts during the war. The standard practice for neutral countries was to intern any belligerent personnel who landed there. At the start of the war, Ireland followed this practice and detained both Allied and German airmen who crash landed in Ireland.  
    Despite its neutrality, in practice Ireland aided the Allies in many ways.
      However, in 1943, Ireland quietly released all its 33 Allied internees while keeping the Germans incarcerated. About 260 German military, air force and naval personnel, who had mostly crashed landed in Ireland, were interned in Ireland during the war From this point onwards, when allied airplanes crashed in Irish territory, their surviving crews were secretly escorted across the border, back into British territory. And where possible, their machines were also repaired and returned. The official justification for this was that all allied planes over Ireland were on training missions, whereas the Germans were on combat missions. From 1941 onwards, Ireland also permitted allied planes to fly over Irish air space in an ‘air corridor’ over County Donegal into Northern Ireland. In 1944, in the run up to the Normandy Landings in France, Irish weather stations provided the allies with secret weather reports that helped the invasion of Europe to go ahead Northern Ireland, meanwhile, became a major staging post for the United State military, with a naval and Marine Corps base in Derry and thousands of American military personal, including five Army divisions, garrisoned there ahead of the invasion of Europe.  

    The role of the IRA

     
    The aftermath of an IRA bomb in Coventry in August 1939 that killed 5 civilians.
    One of the major headaches for those trying to safeguard Irish neutrality was the IRA, which was determined to get German military aid to overthrow both states in Ireland, north and south. As well as defying Irish law, the IRA’s actions threatened to undermine Ireland’s neutrality in the war and bring about a confrontation with Britain. IRA Chief of Staff Sean Russell tried to make contact with the Germans as early as 1936 and IRA leader Tom Barry was brought to Germany as a guest of German intelligence in 1937 and asked about the possibility of the IRA carrying out sabotage against Britain in the event of war.  
    The IRA sought German aid during the War but was harshly repressed on both sides of the border.
      In 1939, starting before war broke out between Britain and Germany, Russell launched a bombing campaign in England, targeting power stations and factories but also cinemas and post offices. The logic of Russell’s campaign was that while Britain was engaged in a world war it might be forced to leave Northern Ireland in order to stop the bombing campaign at home. Seven English civilians were killed in the bombing campaign. The most dramatic event was a bomb in attack in Coventry that killed five people, for which two IRA members were later hanged. In Ireland the IRA was also involved in intermittent anti-state activities. In December 1939 they stole one million rounds of ammunition from the Irish Army’s depot at the Magazine Fort in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. They also bombed Garda (police) headquarters at Dublin Castle and shot a number of Garda detectives in various incidents, killing five detectives over the course of the war In response, the de Valera government interned over 500 IRA members at the Curragh and jailed another 100 for the duration of the war. The Irish government also executed six IRA members between 1940 and 1944 for shooting Gardai or soldiers. In Northern Ireland, the IRA carried out some attacks from 1942 onwards, killing over the course of the war, six RUC policemen. There too, internment was introduced, 300 IRA men were imprisoned and one IRA man, Tom Williams, was hanged by the Northern government for the killing of an RUC constable in 1942.  

    German and IRA collaboration

     
    Hermann Goertz, the German agent sent to Ireland to liaise with the IRA.
    There was an on-off partnership between the IRA and German military intelligence during the war. Essentially the Germans wanted two things from Ireland during the Second World War. The first and most important was that Eire would remain neutral and deny the British use of the Treaty Ports on Ireland’s western coast. Because of this they discouraged the IRA from attacks south of the border. Their secondary objective and reason for cooperating with the IRA, was to foment a rebellion by nationalists in Northern Ireland to divert British resources from war fronts elsewhere. In 1940 the Germans also considered invading the south coast of Ireland, in plan known as Operation Green. This would have been intended as a diversionary attack during an invasion of Britain itself. However this never got beyond the planning stage. Alternatively if the British invaded Eire in order to take the Atlantic ports, Hitler thought that de Valera might ask for German assistance, in which case Germany would invade in support of Irish forces. In fact, while de Valera rebuffed the offers of military aid from the German ambassador Hempel, he did make a working agreement to invite British troops into Ireland in the event of a German invasion.  
    The Germans wanted to use the IRA to launch an insurrection in Northern Ireland.
      Sean Russell, the IRA leader who had pioneered cooperation with Nazi Germany, died of a burst ulcer aboard a u-boat on his way back to Ireland in August 1940. However this was far from the end of the IRA‘s contacts with German intelligence. The Germans landed over dozen agents in Ireland during the war, the most important of whom was Hermann Goertz, a military intelligence officer, whose job it was to liaise with the IRA. Stephen Hayes, the IRA Chief of Staff, had a plan drawn up ‘Plan Kathleen’ for a German invasion of Northern Ireland, involving a landing in Derry, which the IRA would have supported through an attack over the border from County Leitrim. Goertz discussed the plan with Stephen Hayes but was not impressed either with Hayes, the IRA’s capabilities or with the details of the plan. In fact, the German agent concluded that the IRA was all but useless to German war aims and instead began trying to create a network of informants based on far-right wing sympathisers such as Niall MacNeill, an Irish Army intelligence officer and former Blueshirt leader Eoin O’Duffy After 18 months in Ireland, Goertz was arrested in November 1941, more or less ending the overt collaboration of the IRA with Nazi Germany. Despite the Germans’ on-off dealings with the IRA, the Eamon de Valera and the Irish government generally had a cordial relationship with the German ambassador, Eduard Hempel, who was regarded as dealing more respectfully with neutral Ireland than did the British or American representatives in Dublin. For this reason de Valera consistently refused Allied demands that the German ambassador be expelled.

    Bombing

     
    The aftermath of the North Strand bombing.
    One of the main reasons for Irish neutrality, apart from the demonstration of independence from Britain it allowed, was that the country would be defenceless against aerial bombing. And certainly the southern state was spared the fate of Northern Ireland during the war. Belfast in particular was systematically targeted by German bombers in April and May 1941 due to its possession of shipyards and war industries. During the ‘Belfast Blitz’ – consisting of three large air raids – over 1,000 people were killed and thousands more injured and made homeless.  
    Dublin was bombed accidentally but Belfast was systematically bombed and over 1,000 civilians were killed.
      Southern fire engines were sent north to aid the Northern authorities in the aftermath of the bombings. While it did not see concerted bombing of that kind, on a number of occasions, the 26 county Irish state was indeed bombed by the Germans, most notably the North Strand area of Dublin in May 1941, in which 28 people were killed. The Germans later apologised for the bombing and paid compensation While it has been speculated that such bombings were a veiled threat from the Germans as to what would happen if Ireland abandoned neutrality, historian Michael Kennedy judges that they were in fact the result of German bombers dumping their bombs on return flights from unsuccessful mission in Northern Ireland

    End of the War

     
    Destruction in Belfast after the Blitz there in 1941.
    Germany surrendered to the Allies on May 8 1945 after Adolf Hitler’s suicide. Very controversially, Eamon de Valera paid a courtesy visit  to the German ambassador Hempel’s residence to offer his condolences on the death of the Nazi leader. De Valera maintained that he was merely observing the standard diplomatic protocols on the death of a foreign head of state. Ireland survived the war more or less unscathed. Strict rationing had to be applied and there were severe shortages of items such as coal and petrol during the war years. Still, this was insignificant compared to the devastation that had been wrought in much of the rest of Europe. However its neutral stance during the war left it somewhat isolated in the immediate postwar years. For instance, while other western European countries received free American aid under the Marshall Plan in the 1940s, the Americans queried why neutral Ireland either deserved or needed such aid. In the end Ireland got a loan of £36 million The sharp contrast between the experience of the war north and south of the border also tended to reinforce the partition of Ireland in the coming decades.  
    Add to cart Details

  • Original,framed Wartime era pieces of Commercial Ephemera from Co Kerry-Thomas McKenna Dingle

    €50.00
    Original 1940s letter from Thomas McKenna Green St Dingle,which was a General Merchant,Miller,Ironmonger and Timber Importer. .These unique artefacts of old Irish commercial life will make superb decorative item for any discerning Irish pub or home bar with a  distinctive Irish theme.What makes these items of even more historical value and interest is the fact that the majority of them date from the World War 2 Era or what was known as the Emergency in Ireland as its remained somewhat controversially neutral under DeValera's leadership.We can see vividly through these unique items  how ordinary people and both small and large businesses alike were presented with an unprecedented set of challenges -rationing,increaseed regulation  and of decreased supply and increased demand created by a world in turmoil. Presented in antique frames, these are the real deal after a number were found in an old suitcase bought at auction. If interested in buying a number of these charming pieces of Irish commercial ephemera, please contact us directly at irishpubemporiu@gmail.com for a special deal !   Dingle Co Kerry  27 cm x 23cm

    A short history of Ireland during the Second World War, by John Dorney.

    The Second World War was the defining event of the twentieth century. It saw, as well as the deaths of tens of millions and devastation of two continents, the defeat of Hitler and Nazism, the decline of the once dominant European empires and the rise to superpower status of the United State and the Soviet Union. In the Irish state, popularly known throughout the war years as ‘Eire’ it was also a crucial event, though more for what did not happen than what did. Ireland did not join the war, but declared neutrality. Indeed the world war, in Ireland, was not referred to as a war at all, but as ‘The Emergency’. In staying neutral, despite British and latterly American pleas to join the war, Ireland, under Eamon de Valera, successfully asserted the independence of the new state. However, Irish neutrality was a fraught affair – a delicate balancing act between neutrality and secretly aiding the Allied powers.  

    Background, incomplete independence

     
    Eamon de Valera.
    The independence struggle of 1916-1921 had not resulted, as Irish Republicans had dreamed, in a fully independent all-Ireland Republic. Instead, the Treaty settlement of 1921 left two states in Ireland. One, the Irish Free State, in 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties was a self-governing dominion of the British Empire. The other 6 counties, Northern Ireland, was a unionist dominated autonomous region of the United Kingdom. While the Free State was much more independent than Northern Ireland, it was not completely so. As well as symbolic ties to Britain – an oath of fidelity members of parliament had to take to the British monarch and Governor General who represented the King as head of state in Ireland, the British retained three naval bases around the Irish coast, at Cobh, Bearhaven and Lough Swilly. The acceptance of this settlement tore the unity of the Irish nationalist movement apart, in a bitter Civil War in 1922-23, won by the pro-Treaty faction.  
    The Irish state stayed neutral during the War to assert its independence from Britain.
      The anti-Treaty Republicans never fully accepted their defeat however. What was left of the guerrilla army that had fought British and the Civil War, the IRA, never accepted the Free State. In 1932, the major political party that emerged from the anti-Treaty movement, Fianna Fail, came to power by election. Under Eamon de Valera, they set about dismantling the Treaty, abolishing the oath to the British monarchy, the Governor General and the Senate and introducing a new constitution in 1937. They also initiated a tariff war with Britain by refusing to pay back the Land Annuities that Britain had granted to subsidise land reform in Ireland in the early twentieth century. While this satisfied many of de Valera’s supporters, the IRA continued to oppose anything short of a fully independent Irish Republic. De Valera had legalised the organisation in 1933, but he banned them again in 1936, as they would not give up their arms or illegal methods. De Valera’s new constitution removed the name Irish Free State and stated that the country’s name was ‘Eire, or in the English language Ireland’. The name ‘Eire’ stuck abroad to distinguish the former Free State from Northern Ireland. By 1938, however, both de Valera and the British government of Neville Chamberlain, were eager to normalise relations with each other. De Valera agreed to pay a lump sum towards the land annuities and in return, Chamberlain lift the onerous tariffs on Irish agricultural imports. Most importantly though, the British agreed to return to Ireland the three ‘Treaty ports’ on the Atlantic Coast. The British analysis was that the ports had not been well-maintained, required investment and would be difficult to defend in wartime should the Irish ever try to take them back. But the British thought they were being returned to Ireland on the implicit understanding that British naval forces would be allowed to use them in the event of a European war. De Valera, on the other hand, had insisted that the return of the ports be unconditional and when war broke out, refused the British request to use the ports as anti-submarine bases.  

    The Treaty ports and Irish unity

     
    The location of the Treaty Ports. 
    Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, causing Britain and France to declare war on Germany. Ireland immediately declared neutrality. By the summer of 1940, however the situation had changed dramatically and to the peril of neutral Ireland. German forces had rolled over most of western Europe, occupying Denmark, Norway the Netherlands, Belgium and most importantly, France. The British Army had only barely escaped annihilation at Dunkirk. Britain now faced a fight for its life, with the Atlantic Ocean and trade with America as it last lifeline. Now it again desperately needed the use of Atlantic Ports that it had returned to Ireland in 1938, to safeguard the convoys of merchant ships that crossed the Atlantic with food and arms.  
    Winston Churchill had to be persuaded not to invade Ireland to take Ireland’s Atlantic ports.
      At this point Neville Chamberlain was replaced as British Prime Minister by Winston Churchill, who took a far less conciliatory position on Irish neutrality than his predecessor. Churchill was one of the architects of the Anglo-Irish Treaty back in 1921 and considered that the Irish state only existed as agreed under the Treaty, ‘under the [British] Crown’. He therefore considered Irish neutrality as a breach of the Treaty and that Britain would be within its rights to re-occupy the territory of the Irish Free State. On numerous occasions he had to be talked out of unilaterally taking back the ‘Treaty Ports’ in Ireland by military action by his cabinet Churchill however also attempted to lure de Valera into the war by offering him the prospect of Irish unity in return for an end to the policy of neutrality. In popular consciousness this is often held to have been confined to a late night note Churchill fired off to de Valera in which he wrote ‘now or never, a nation once again’. In reality however, the British offer of a united Ireland was far more concrete than is widely understood. Irish and British teams negotiated for months, and the British under Neville Chamberlian offered de Valera of formal offer of unity on June 28 1940, in return for British troops, planes and ships being allowed to garrison the Treaty Ports. What decided de Valera against accepting the offer, apart from the innate fears of entering the war, was that a prospective united Ireland would have to be approved in the Northern Ireland Parliament. As long as this was dominated by unionists, this meant that no British offer of unity was likely to come to pass. Ireland and her ports stayed out of the war. Northern unionists, meanwhile, were outraged at the prospect of a united Ireland negotiated behind their backs between London and Dublin.

    Neutral?

     
    The Irish Army in 1930s German style helmets. They were re-kitted with British pattern gear during the War.
    Because of Ireland’s stance, many in Britain claimed that Ireland was secretly pro-Axis and rumours, mostly unfounded, abounded of German u-boats docking on Ireland’s west coast. Pressure increased on Ireland to join the war after the entry of the United State in 1941. The American consul in Dublin David Gray, was extremely hostile to Irish neutrality and consistently reported, erroneously, that Irish neutrality was pro-Axis. This meant that Ireland had to aid the Allies in order placate Britain, avoid a possible British invasion and to avoid American hostility. At the start of the war, De Valera secretly agreed with the British to share naval and marine intelligence with them. Dan Bryan, the head of Irish military intelligence, developed particularly close relations with his British counterparts during the war. The standard practice for neutral countries was to intern any belligerent personnel who landed there. At the start of the war, Ireland followed this practice and detained both Allied and German airmen who crash landed in Ireland.  
    Despite its neutrality, in practice Ireland aided the Allies in many ways.
      However, in 1943, Ireland quietly released all its 33 Allied internees while keeping the Germans incarcerated. About 260 German military, air force and naval personnel, who had mostly crashed landed in Ireland, were interned in Ireland during the war From this point onwards, when allied airplanes crashed in Irish territory, their surviving crews were secretly escorted across the border, back into British territory. And where possible, their machines were also repaired and returned. The official justification for this was that all allied planes over Ireland were on training missions, whereas the Germans were on combat missions. From 1941 onwards, Ireland also permitted allied planes to fly over Irish air space in an ‘air corridor’ over County Donegal into Northern Ireland. In 1944, in the run up to the Normandy Landings in France, Irish weather stations provided the allies with secret weather reports that helped the invasion of Europe to go ahead Northern Ireland, meanwhile, became a major staging post for the United State military, with a naval and Marine Corps base in Derry and thousands of American military personal, including five Army divisions, garrisoned there ahead of the invasion of Europe.  

    The role of the IRA

     
    The aftermath of an IRA bomb in Coventry in August 1939 that killed 5 civilians.
    One of the major headaches for those trying to safeguard Irish neutrality was the IRA, which was determined to get German military aid to overthrow both states in Ireland, north and south. As well as defying Irish law, the IRA’s actions threatened to undermine Ireland’s neutrality in the war and bring about a confrontation with Britain. IRA Chief of Staff Sean Russell tried to make contact with the Germans as early as 1936 and IRA leader Tom Barry was brought to Germany as a guest of German intelligence in 1937 and asked about the possibility of the IRA carrying out sabotage against Britain in the event of war.  
    The IRA sought German aid during the War but was harshly repressed on both sides of the border.
      In 1939, starting before war broke out between Britain and Germany, Russell launched a bombing campaign in England, targeting power stations and factories but also cinemas and post offices. The logic of Russell’s campaign was that while Britain was engaged in a world war it might be forced to leave Northern Ireland in order to stop the bombing campaign at home. Seven English civilians were killed in the bombing campaign. The most dramatic event was a bomb in attack in Coventry that killed five people, for which two IRA members were later hanged. In Ireland the IRA was also involved in intermittent anti-state activities. In December 1939 they stole one million rounds of ammunition from the Irish Army’s depot at the Magazine Fort in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. They also bombed Garda (police) headquarters at Dublin Castle and shot a number of Garda detectives in various incidents, killing five detectives over the course of the war In response, the de Valera government interned over 500 IRA members at the Curragh and jailed another 100 for the duration of the war. The Irish government also executed six IRA members between 1940 and 1944 for shooting Gardai or soldiers. In Northern Ireland, the IRA carried out some attacks from 1942 onwards, killing over the course of the war, six RUC policemen. There too, internment was introduced, 300 IRA men were imprisoned and one IRA man, Tom Williams, was hanged by the Northern government for the killing of an RUC constable in 1942.  

    German and IRA collaboration

     
    Hermann Goertz, the German agent sent to Ireland to liaise with the IRA.
    There was an on-off partnership between the IRA and German military intelligence during the war. Essentially the Germans wanted two things from Ireland during the Second World War. The first and most important was that Eire would remain neutral and deny the British use of the Treaty Ports on Ireland’s western coast. Because of this they discouraged the IRA from attacks south of the border. Their secondary objective and reason for cooperating with the IRA, was to foment a rebellion by nationalists in Northern Ireland to divert British resources from war fronts elsewhere. In 1940 the Germans also considered invading the south coast of Ireland, in plan known as Operation Green. This would have been intended as a diversionary attack during an invasion of Britain itself. However this never got beyond the planning stage. Alternatively if the British invaded Eire in order to take the Atlantic ports, Hitler thought that de Valera might ask for German assistance, in which case Germany would invade in support of Irish forces. In fact, while de Valera rebuffed the offers of military aid from the German ambassador Hempel, he did make a working agreement to invite British troops into Ireland in the event of a German invasion.  
    The Germans wanted to use the IRA to launch an insurrection in Northern Ireland.
      Sean Russell, the IRA leader who had pioneered cooperation with Nazi Germany, died of a burst ulcer aboard a u-boat on his way back to Ireland in August 1940. However this was far from the end of the IRA‘s contacts with German intelligence. The Germans landed over dozen agents in Ireland during the war, the most important of whom was Hermann Goertz, a military intelligence officer, whose job it was to liaise with the IRA. Stephen Hayes, the IRA Chief of Staff, had a plan drawn up ‘Plan Kathleen’ for a German invasion of Northern Ireland, involving a landing in Derry, which the IRA would have supported through an attack over the border from County Leitrim. Goertz discussed the plan with Stephen Hayes but was not impressed either with Hayes, the IRA’s capabilities or with the details of the plan. In fact, the German agent concluded that the IRA was all but useless to German war aims and instead began trying to create a network of informants based on far-right wing sympathisers such as Niall MacNeill, an Irish Army intelligence officer and former Blueshirt leader Eoin O’Duffy After 18 months in Ireland, Goertz was arrested in November 1941, more or less ending the overt collaboration of the IRA with Nazi Germany. Despite the Germans’ on-off dealings with the IRA, the Eamon de Valera and the Irish government generally had a cordial relationship with the German ambassador, Eduard Hempel, who was regarded as dealing more respectfully with neutral Ireland than did the British or American representatives in Dublin. For this reason de Valera consistently refused Allied demands that the German ambassador be expelled.

    Bombing

     
    The aftermath of the North Strand bombing.
    One of the main reasons for Irish neutrality, apart from the demonstration of independence from Britain it allowed, was that the country would be defenceless against aerial bombing. And certainly the southern state was spared the fate of Northern Ireland during the war. Belfast in particular was systematically targeted by German bombers in April and May 1941 due to its possession of shipyards and war industries. During the ‘Belfast Blitz’ – consisting of three large air raids – over 1,000 people were killed and thousands more injured and made homeless.  
    Dublin was bombed accidentally but Belfast was systematically bombed and over 1,000 civilians were killed.
      Southern fire engines were sent north to aid the Northern authorities in the aftermath of the bombings. While it did not see concerted bombing of that kind, on a number of occasions, the 26 county Irish state was indeed bombed by the Germans, most notably the North Strand area of Dublin in May 1941, in which 28 people were killed. The Germans later apologised for the bombing and paid compensation While it has been speculated that such bombings were a veiled threat from the Germans as to what would happen if Ireland abandoned neutrality, historian Michael Kennedy judges that they were in fact the result of German bombers dumping their bombs on return flights from unsuccessful mission in Northern Ireland

    End of the War

     
    Destruction in Belfast after the Blitz there in 1941.
    Germany surrendered to the Allies on May 8 1945 after Adolf Hitler’s suicide. Very controversially, Eamon de Valera paid a courtesy visit  to the German ambassador Hempel’s residence to offer his condolences on the death of the Nazi leader. De Valera maintained that he was merely observing the standard diplomatic protocols on the death of a foreign head of state. Ireland survived the war more or less unscathed. Strict rationing had to be applied and there were severe shortages of items such as coal and petrol during the war years. Still, this was insignificant compared to the devastation that had been wrought in much of the rest of Europe. However its neutral stance during the war left it somewhat isolated in the immediate postwar years. For instance, while other western European countries received free American aid under the Marshall Plan in the 1940s, the Americans queried why neutral Ireland either deserved or needed such aid. In the end Ireland got a loan of £36 million The sharp contrast between the experience of the war north and south of the border also tended to reinforce the partition of Ireland in the coming decades.  
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  • Original Oil Painting of Bunratty Castle Co Clare

    €200.00
    Original oil on canvas painting of Bunratty Castle. 45cm x 55cm  Limerick Bunratty -Caisleán Bhun Raithe, meaning "Castle at the Mouth of the Ratty") is a large 15th-century tower house in County Clare, Ireland. It is located in the centre of Bunratty village (Irish: Bun Ráite), by the N18 road between Limerick and Ennis, near Shannon Town and its airport. The castle and the adjoining folk park are run by Shannon Heritage as a major tourist attraction The name Bunratty, Bun Raite (or possibly, Bun na Raite) in Irish, means "river basin" of the 'Ratty' river. This river, alongside the castle, flows into the nearby Shannon estuary.

    An Irish language plaque at Bunratty Castle
    Bunratty Castle Plaque in English
    The first recorded settlement at the site may have been a Norsemen settlement/trading camp reported in the Annals of the Four Masters to have been destroyed by Brian Boru in 977. According to local tradition, such a camp was located on a rise south-west of the current castle. However, since no actual remains of this settlement have yet been found, its exact location is unknown and its existence is not proven. Around 1250, King Henry III of England granted the cantred or district of Tradraighe (or Tradree) to Robert De Muscegros, who in 1251 cut down around 200 trees in the King's wood at Cratloe. These may have been used to construct a motte and bailey castle, which would have been the first castle at Bunratty, but again the exact position of this is unknown. A later reference in the state papers, dating to 1253 gives de Muscegros the right to hold markets and an annual fair at Bunratty. It has thus been assumed that the site was the centre of early Norman control in south-eastern Clare. Early 19th-century scholars put the structure to the north-west of the current castle. However, when a hotel was constructed there in 1959, John Huntexcavated the area and thought the remains to be that of a gun emplacement from the Confederate Wars (see below).
    South solar in Bunratty Castle
    These lands were later handed back to (or taken back by) King Henry III and granted to Thomas De Clare, a descendant of Strongbow in 1276. De Clare built the first stone structure on the site (the second castle). This castle was occupied from 1278 to 1318 and consisted of a large single stone tower with lime white walls. It stood close to the river, on or near the site of the present Bunratty Castle. In the late 13th century, Bunratty had about 1,000 inhabitants. The castle was attacked several times by the O'Briens (or O'Brians) and their allies. In 1284, while De Clare was away in England, the site was captured and destroyed. On his return, in 1287, De Clare had the site rebuilt and a 140-yard (130 m) long fosse built around it. The castle was again attacked but it did not fall until 1318. In that year a major battle was fought at Dysert O'Dea as part of the Irish Bruce Wars, in which both Thomas De Clare and his son Richard were killed. Lady De Clare, on learning this, fled from Bunratty to Limerick after burning castle and town. The De Clare family never returned to the area and the remains of the castle eventually collapsed. As the stones were likely used for other local construction works, no traces remain of this second castle In the 14th century, Limerick was an important port for the English Crown. To guard access via the Shannon estuary against attacks from the Irish, the site was once again occupied. In 1353, Sir Thomas de Rokeby led an English army to conquer the MacNamaras and MacCarthys. A new castle (the third) was built at Bunratty, but once again, its exact location is unknown. Local tradition holds that it stood at the site where the Bunratty Castle Hotel was later constructed. However, the new structure was hardly finished before being captured by the Irish. Documents show that in 1355, King Edward III of England released Thomas Fitzjohn Fitzmaurice from prison in Limerick. He had been charged with letting the castle fall into the hands of Murtough O’Brien whilst serving as a Governor (Captain) of Bunratty.

    The fourth castle, the present structure, was built by the MacNamara family after around 1425. Its builder may have been one Maccon Sioda MacNamara, chieftain of Clann Cuilein (i.e. the MacNamaras). He died before the castle was completed which happened under his son Sean Finn (died in 1467). At around 1500, Bunratty Castle came into the hands of the O'Briens (or O'Brians), the most powerful clan in Munster and later Earls of Thomond. They expanded the site and eventually made it their chief seat, moving it there from Ennis. In 1558, the castle—now noted as one of the principal strongholds of Thomond—was taken by Thomas Radclyffe, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland from Donal O'Brien of Duagh, last King of Thomond (died 1579), and given to Donal's nephew, Connor O'Brien. Donogh O'Brien, Conor's son, may have been the one to move the seat of the family from Clonroad (Ennis) to Bunratty. He made various improvements to the castle including putting a new lead roof on it. During the Confederate Wars set off by the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Lord Forbes, commanding forces of the English Long Parliament, was allowed by the then Lord Barnabas O'Brien to occupy Bunratty in 1646. Barnabas did not want to commit to either side in the struggle, playing off royalists, rebels and roundheads against each other. He left for England, where he joined King Charles. Defence of the castle, whose position allowed those holding it to blockade maritime access to Limerick (held by the Confederates) and the river Shannon, was in the hands of Rear-Admiral Penn, the father of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania. After a long siege, the Confederates took the castle. Penn surrendered but was allowed to sail away to Kinsale. Barnabas O'Brien died in 1657, but had apparently leased out the castle to one "John Cooper", possibly the same person married to Máire ní Mahon of Leamaneh Castle, widow of another O'Brien, Conor (died 1651). Bunratty Castle remained property of the O'Briens and in the 1680s the castle was still the principal seat of the Earls of Thomond. In 1712, Henry, the 8th and last Earl of Thomond (1688–1741) sold Bunratty Castle and 472 acres (191 ha) of land to Thomas Amory for £225 and an annual rent of £120. Amory in turn sold the castle to Thomas Studdert who moved in ca. 1720. The Studdert family left the castle (allowing it to fall into disrepair), to reside in the more comfortable and modern adjacent "Bunratty House" they had built in 1804. The reasons for the move are bound up in family arguments over the eldest son marrying his first cousin. For some time in the mid-19th century, the castle was used as a barracks by the Royal Irish Constabulary. In 1894, Bunratty was once again used by the Studdert family, as the seat of Captain Richard Studdert. In the late 19th century, the roof of the Great Hall collapsed. In 1956, the castle was purchased and restored by the 7th Viscount Gort, with assistance from the Office of Public Works.He reroofed the castle and saved it from ruin. The castle was opened to the public in 1960, sporting furniture, tapestries and works of art dating to around 1600.

    Rose Cottage at the Folk Park
    Today, the castle is a major tourist attraction, along with "Bunratty Folk Park". Both the castle and Bunratty House are open to the public. The castle is famous for its medieval banquets, offered since 1963, at which the "Bunratty Castle Entertainers" perform today. "Bunratty Folk Park" is an open-air museum featuring around 30 buildings, including the Ardcroney Church Of Ireland church, which moved here and reopened in 1998. Recently and controversially the Armada table of the O’Briens, princes of Thomond, was  sold at auction for the princely sum of €360,000. Made from the timbers of a ship from the Spanish Armada which was wrecked off the coast of Co Clare in 1588 it had been placed for sale with Adam’s auction house yesterday, guiding between €100,000 and €200,000. In the end it sold to an undisclosed Irish buyer for €360,000.

    “The good news is, it will be staying in Ireland, ” says the managing director of Adam’s auction house, James O’Halloran. “That’s all we’ve been allowed to say for the moment, but we’re hoping that more information will be released fairly soon.” It’s understood that the State was outbid for the table and that the new owner is a private buyer.

    Bidding on the table started at €70,000 but with one online bidder, three on the phone and one person in the room, it didn’t take long to sail past its lowest guide of €100,000, followed quickly by its top estimate of €200,000. “It got to €360,000 quite quickly,” O’Halloran says. “We thought it would do reasonably well, but because there was nothing to compare it to, we didn’t really know what to expect.”

    The three-metre-long table was the property of Lord Inchiquin. Its rectangular top sits on a frieze of a dozen carved heads, with four carved heraldic lion corner supports and two figures of Hope and Charity, which would originally have been found on the stern of a galleon. It spent 300 years at Dromoland Castle before moving to Bunratty, where its elaborate series of carved masks became a key attraction.

    When it was announced that the table – described by the Knight of Glin, Desmond FitzGerald, as “one of the most important and earliest pieces of Irish furniture” – was to be sold at Adam’s Country House Collections sale at Townley Hall, near Drogheda, Co Louth, there were calls for it to be kept in Ireland as it represents part of our cultural heritage. The only question now is, where will the table find its new home?

    Origins :Co Limerick Dimensions :30cm x 36cm
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  • The Limerick Hell Fire Club (James Worsdale 1692-1767 National Gallery of Ireland )

    €160.00

    cm x cm  Askeaton Co Limerick

    ‘Our seducers were our accusers’: the lurid tales of members of Askeaton Hellfire Club

    The ruins of Askeaton Hellfire Club on an island in the River Deel, with the ruins of the Desmond Castle in the background (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017) Patrick Comerford The ruins of Limerick Hellfire Club stand beside the ruins of the Desmond Castle on the island in the middle of the River Deel. As the fast-flowing waters of the river thunder past, making their way under the old narrow bridge, these ruins appear like a benign presence in the heart of the town, especially in the early evening as the sun sets behind them and the rooks and herons hover above the remains of this centuries-old crumbling structures. The ruins of the Hellfire Club stand within the bailey of Askeaton Castle. They date from 1636-1637, when this building was first erected as a detached barracks or tower. The barracks or tower was built by the builder and designer, Andrew Tucker, for Richard Boyle (1566-1643), the 1st Earl of Cork, who had recently acquired Askeaton Castle. The tower was built with battered walls with cut stone quoins, and the remains of a three-bay was built on top of the battered base later, some time in the mid-18th century. There is a bow to the south elevation of the house and a shallow projecting end-bay to the north elevation. The house is roofless, with a limestone eaves course. The course rubble limestone walls have tolled quoins, a brick stringcourse and brick quoins to the upper floors. There are square-headed door openings to the north elevation, a square-headed window opening to the bow with a brick architrave, and camber-headed window openings to the west, with brick voussoirs. The round-headed window opening to the east elevation has a brick surround, flanked by round-headed niches with brick surrounds and a continuous brick sill course. By 1740, the building belonged to the St Leger family, who may have engaged John Aheron to design the bow-sided house which was built on top of the base of the barracks. By then, this was the meeting place of the Askeaton Hell Fire Club, and the building was probably used by the club until the end of the 18th century. The club in Askeaton traced its origins to the first Hellfire Club, formed in 1719 by Philip Wharton (1698-1731), 1st Duke of Wharton. Wharton was a rake who gamble away Rathfarnham Castle in Dublin and most of his inheritance. In 1726, he married Maria Theresa O’Beirne (sometimes known as Maria Theresa Comerford). When he was in the advanced stages of alcoholism, the couple moved to a Cistercian abbey in Catalonia, where he died in 1731. His widow returned to London, and after his will was proved in court she lived comfortably in London society. The club continued long after Wharton’s death, and the club in Askeaton was founded around 1736-1740. Known as a satirical gentlemen’s club, the revelries of its members shocked their neighbours and the outside world. The two other clubs in Ireland were based on Montpelier Hill, south of Tallaght, and near Clonlara, Co Clare. In his recent book Blasphemers & Blackguards, The Irish Hellfire Clubs (2012), David Ryan examines the stories of these clubs. But, while local folklore recalls lurid tales of outrageous rituals, there is little actual information or evidence of the activities of the Askeaton Hellfire Club, and the name and supposedly lurid activities may have been opportunities to slight the church and to snub clerical authority, or mere excuses to hide their debauchery during evenings of wine, women and song.
    James Worsdale’s painting of the members of the Askeaton Hellfire Club One tradition recalls how a member of the club was thrown from one of the windows into the River Deel below during the course of a ‘drunken frolic.’ Evidence of the club and its members survives in a painting by James Worsdale (1692-1767) from sometime between 1736 and 1740. This painting shows a group of club members in Askeaton drinking, smoking and in conversation. Bottles of wine sit on a rack in the foreground, and there is a large bowl of punch on the table. Eleven men and one woman, as well as a boy, fill the painting. Some of the figures that have been identified include: Edward Croker of Ballingarde, his son John (died 1804); Wyndham Quin of Adare, father of the 1st Earl of Dunraven; Thomas Royce of Nantenan, near Askeaton; John Bayley of Debsborough, Nenagh, Co Tipperary; and Henry Prittie, father of Henry Prittie (1743-1801), father of Lord Dunalley. Worsdale, who was a founding member of the Dublin Hellfire Club, is on the far left of the painting, trying to attract the attention of the only woman in the painting. Most critics identify this woman as Margaret Blennerhassett, who was known as Celinda and who was the wife of Arthur Blennerhassett, a magistrate, of Riddlestown Park, Rathkeale. She was born Margaret Hayes, the eldest daughter of Jeremiah Hayes of Cahir Guillamore, Bruff. Celinda is said to have been the only woman who ever became a member of the Askeaton Hellfire Club. The story is told that in her curiosity she tried to find what the men did during their meetings at the club. She hid herself in the meeting room before the members arrived, and when they discovered her she was formally inducted as a member to ensure her silence. Later, her husband drowned in a boating tragedy in the Lakes of Killarney in 1775. Some critics, however, have identified the woman in this painting as Laetitia Pilkington, alongside her husband, the Revd Matthew Pilkington (1701-1774), one-time friends of Jonathan Swift, Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. This would date the painting from some time before 1738. Matthew Pilkington moved to London, where he became friends with the painter James Worsley, led a dissolute life, divorced Laetitia, and was jailed in 1734. When he returned to Ireland, he enjoyed the patronage of Archbishop Michael Cobbe of Dublin and the Cobbe family of Newbridge House, Donabate. Laetitia Pilkington (1709-1750), was the daughter of a Dublin obstetrician, Dr John van Lewen. After Matthew fabricated the circumstances that led to their divorce, she was arrested for a debt of £2 and ended up in a debtors’ prison in London. If she was forced into discreet prostitute to earn a living later in life, she was also scathingly critical of the clergy of day. Speaking probably from the experience of her husband’s own lifestyle, she said ‘the holiness of their office gives them free admittance into every family’ and they abuse this so that ‘they are generally the first seducers of innocence.’ ‘Our seducers were our accusers,’ she wrote.
    The monument in Saint Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, Dublin, commemorating Laetitia Pilkington (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017) When Laetitia Pilkington died in 1750, a monument was erected in Saint Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, Dublin, with clear references to the sufferings she had endured at the hands of her merciless husband. Less than a month after her death, Matthew Pilkington married his mistress Nancy Sandes. In 1811, an evangelical magazine published an obituary of Captain Perry, a carousing individual and likely member of a Hellfire Club. After a short lifetime of excessive living and radical thinking, he died an early death as he struggled to repent. It was a warning to readers of the dangers of being involved in such circles. The building was abandoned by the club sometime around 1840, and the club is inaccessible to the public, as the Office of Public Works continues work at stabilising the building. The Limerick Leader in May 1958 that James Worsdale’s painting of the members of the Askeaton Hellfire Club was being offered for sale to Limerick City Council for £350. It is now in the National Gallery of Ireland. Although the ruins of the Askeaton Hellfire Club have fallen into disrepair, the overall original form of this building is easily discerned, as are features such as the door and window openings. It retains many well-crafted features such as the brick window surrounds and limestone battered walls, and the high roof and the tall chimneys are of interest. The building has a curved bow at one side of each of the building’s two principal fronts, and one of them has a Venetian window. If, as is possible, the house dates from the 17th century, then this could be one of the earliest known examples of a Venetian window on a curve, not just in Ireland but anywhere else in Europe – which could just make it a far more interesting building than the myths and legends surrounding its rakish revellers.
    Sunset at Askeaton Castle and Hellfire Club, seen from Saint Mary’s Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
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  • Arkle drinking Guinness with Head Lad Paddy Murray

    €100.00
    Great picture of a recuperating Arkle getting his lunch washed down by a bottle of Guinness by his head lad Paddy Murray. Ratoath Co Meath.    50cm x 40cm Arkle (19 April 1957 – 31 May 1970) was an Irish Thoroughbred racehorse. A bay gelding by Archive out of Bright Cherry, he was the grandson of the unbeaten (in 14 races) flat racehorse and prepotent sire Nearco. Arkle was born at Ballymacoll Stud, County Meath, by Mrs Mary Alison Baker of Malahow House, near Naul, County Dublin. He was named after the mountain Arkle in Sutherland, Scotland that bordered the Duchess of Westminster’s Sutherland estate. Owned by Anne Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster, he was trained by Tom Dreaper at Greenogue, Kilsallaghan in County Meath, Ireland, and ridden during his steeplechasing career by Pat Taaffe. At 212, his Timeform rating is the highest ever awarded to a steeplechaser. Only Flyingbolt, also trained by Dreaper, had a rating anywhere near his at 210. Next on their ratings are Sprinter Sacre on 192 and then Kauto Star and Mill House on 191. Despite his career being cut short by injury, Arkle won three Cheltenham Gold Cups, the Blue Riband of steeplechasing, and a host of other top prizes. On 19th April, 2014 a magnificent  1.1 scale bronze statue was unveiled in Ashbourne, County Meath in commemoration of Arkle.In the 1964 Cheltenham Gold Cup, Arkle beat  Mill House (who had won the race the previous year) by five lengths to claim his first Gold Cup at odds of 7/4. It was the last time he did not start as the favourite for a race. Only two other horses entered the Gold Cup that year. The racing authorities in Ireland took the unprecedented step in the Irish Grand National of devising two weight systems — one to be used when Arkle was running and one when he was not. Arkle won the 1964 race by only one length, but he carried two and half stones more than his rivals. The following year's Gold Cup saw Arkle beat Mill House by twenty lengths at odds of 3/10. In the 1966 renewal, he was the shortest-priced favourite in history to win the Gold Cup, starting at odds of 1/10. He won the race by thirty lengths despite a mistake early in the race where he ploughed through a fence. However, it did not stop his momentum, nor did he ever look like falling. Arkle had a strange quirk in that he crossed his forelegs when jumping a fence. He went through the season 1965/66 unbeaten in five races. Arkle won 27 of his 35 starts and won at distances from 1m 6f up to 3m 5f. Legendary Racing commentator Peter O'Sullevan has called Arkle a freak of nature — something unlikely to be seen again. Besides winning three consecutive Cheltenham Gold Cups (1964, 1965, 1966) and the 1965 King George VI Chase, Arkle triumphed in a number of other important handicap chases, including the 1964 Irish Grand National (under 12-0), the 1964 and 1965 Hennessy Gold Cups (both times under 12-7), the 1965 Gallagher Gold Cup (conceding 16 lb to Mill House while breaking the course record by 17 seconds), and the 1965 Whitbread Gold Cup(under 12-7). In the 1966 Hennessy, he failed by only half a length to give Stalbridge Colonist 35 lb. The scale of the task Arkle faced is shown by the winner coming second and third in the two following Cheltenham Gold Cups, while in third place was the future 1969 Gold Cup winner, What A Myth. In December 1966, Arkle raced in the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park but struck the guard rail with a hoof when jumping the open ditch, which resulted in a fractured pedal bone; despite this injury, he completed the race and finished second. He was in plaster for four months and, though he made a good enough recovery to go back into training, he never ran again. He was retired and ridden as a hack by his owner and then succumbed to what has been variously described as advanced arthritis or possibly brucellosis and was put down at the early age of 13. Arkle became a national legend in Ireland. His strength was jokingly claimed to come from drinking 2 pints of Guinness  a day. At one point, the slogan Arkle for President was written on a wall in Dublin. The horse was often referred to simply as "Himself", and he supposedly received items of fan mail addressed to 'Himself, Ireland'. The Irish government-owned Irish National Stud, at Tully, Kildare, Co. Kildare, Ireland, has the skeleton of Arkle on display in its museum. A statue in his memory was erected in Ashbourne Co Meath in 2004.     Dimensions : 55cm x 60cm
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  • Murphy’s Irish Bar Framed Poster

    €120.00
    67cm x 50cm.  Sydney Australia Murphys Irish Bar Poster also advertising its own Whiskey.
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  • Vintage WW1 Recruitment Poster-The Call To Arms.

    €150.00
    Superb vintage WW1 recruitment poster imploring the young men of Ireland to join the British Army.The poster depicts a lone piper with the famous mascot of the Royal Irish Regiment ,an Irish Wolfhound. 47cm x 38cm  Nenagh  Co Tipperary
    The British Army was a volunteer force when war broke out in 1914, and within weeks thousands of Irishmen had signed up to serve 'King and Country'. Ireland had a strong military tradition in the British armed forces, dating back to at least the early 1500s, and when war was declared on August 4, 1914, there were some 20,000 Irishmen already serving from a total army strength of some 247,000. In addition, there were another 30,000 in the first-line reserve, from a total of 145,000. But more were quickly needed. Secretary for War Lord Kitchener told the British cabinet that it would be a three-year conflict requiring at least one million men, meaning a recruitment drive was immediately undertaken. Posters quickly appeared across the country, focused on attracting men from all background
      Some appealed to a sense of duty and honour, but appeared to be aimed at British-born nationals rather than Irishmen.
    "Surely you will fight for your king and country. Come along boys, before it is too late", one read. Another said: "An appeal to you. Give us a hand old man!" There were widespread reports of a rampaging invading force raping women and killing priests in Catholic Belgium during the early days of the war, and so posters were aimed at those outraged by the alleged horrors of the German war machine. "Have you any women-folk worth defending? Remember the women of Belgium. Join today," another said, with numerous examples of these appeals to "gallant Irishmen". There was also a sense that not signing up somehow meant you were a coward. One poster depicted a battleship ablaze, with a woman chastising a man – "For the glory of Ireland, will you go or must I" she scolds.
    For the men of a nationalist bent, agitating for Home Rule or an independent Ireland, a specific appeal was made – one depicted a woman with a harp, with the text: "Will you answer the call? Now is the time, and the place is the nearest recruitment office." Another featuring John Redmond simply stated: "Your first duty is to take your part in ending the war. Join an Irish regiment today." Irish men immediately answered the call, with 80,000 enlisting in the first 12 months – 50,107 alone between August and February 1915. Over the course of the four-year conflict, some 140,000 signed up. There were a variety of reasons for doing so. A belief that helping secure victory would result in Home Rule, a sense of duty to fight the German invader, and the prospect of embarking on a grand adventure. But there were also harsh economic reasons. Many of the population lived in abject poverty, and the wages on offer – between one shilling and one pence for a private in the infantry and one shilling and nine pence a day for privates in the cavalry – were undoubtedly an attraction. There were eight Irish regiments based in the 26 counties, which drew recruits from surrounding areas. For example, the Royal Irish Regiment, based in Clonmel, drew from Tipperary, Wexford, Waterford and Kilkenny. The Galway-based Connaught Rangers drew from Galway, Roscommon, Mayo, Sligo and Leitrim, while the Naas-based Royal Dublin Fusiliers attracted men from Dublin, Wicklow, Carlow and Kildare. In Kildare alone, some 6,264 people were engaged in "defence of the country", according to the 1911 Census – almost one in 10 of its population. As Kildare County Council's Collections and Research Services notes, the county was "expected to shine" and provide additional men. In particular the middle class and farmers were targeted, as their numbers were not as high as those from the labouring classes who had joined in vast numbers. Farmers prospered during the war, due to price increases, and there was little prospect of them joining. As the 'Kildare Observer' reported in February 1916 following a recruitment meeting in Monasterevin: "The labouring classes have done remarkably well, and the gentry have also done their bit. But there are two classes still that did not do their bit – the farmers' sons and the young commercial men". The numbers signing up began to slacken off from February 1916, with a fall after the Easter 1916 Rising. Between August 1916 and February the following year, just 8,178 enlisted. However, it is worth noting that in the last three months of the war, some 9,843 signed up – the highest number since before the Rising. Of course, the fighting men weren't solely drawn from Irish regiments. Many joined English, Scottish and Welsh regiments, the Flying Corps, Medical Corps and Royal Navy. In addition, women served as nurses in the Voluntary Aid Detachment in the front line, while emigrants enlisted in the armies of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and the United States.    
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  • 1916 Executed Rebel Leaders Framed Miniature Prints-Thomas Kent

    €50.00
    Beautiful and poignant collection of four of the 1916 Easter Rising Rebel Leaders who were executed by the British Crown Forces at Kilmainham Jail a few weeks later.Featured here are Padraig Pearse,Thomas Clarke,James Connolly,Thomas Kent Thomas Kent (Irish: Tomás Ceannt; 29 August 1865 – 9 May 1916) was an Irish nationalist who was court-martialled and executed following a gunfight with the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) on 9 May 1916, in the immediate aftermath of the Easter Rising.

    Easter Rising

    Kent was part of a prominent nationalist family who lived at Bawnard House, Castlelyons, County Cork. They were prepared to take part in the Easter Rising, but when the mobilisation order was countermanded, they stayed at home. The rising nevertheless went ahead in Dublin, and the RIC was sent to arrest well-known sympathizers throughout the country, including known members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Sinn Féin, and the Irish Volunteers. When the Kent residence was raided they were met with resistance from Thomas and his brothers Richard, David and William. A gunfight lasted for four hours, in which an RIC officer, Head Constable William Rowe, was killed and David Kent was seriously wounded. Eventually the Kents were forced to surrender, although Richard made a last minute dash for freedom and was fatally wounded.

    Trial and execution

    Thomas and William Kent were tried by court martial on the charge of armed rebellion. William was acquitted, but Thomas was sentenced to death. David Kent was brought to Dublin where he was charged with the same offence, found guilty and sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted and he was sentenced to five years penal servitude. Thomas Kent was executed by firing squad in Cork on 9 May 1916, the only person outside of Dublin to be shot for his role in the events surrounding Easter Week (Roger Casement was hanged for treason in London). Kent was buried in the grounds of Cork Prison, formerly the Military Detention Barracks at the rear Collins Barracks, Cork (formerly Victoria Barracks). The former army married quarters to the rear of Collins Barracks are named in his honour.

    State funeral

    Taoiseach Enda Kenny offered a state funeral to the Kent family early in 2015, which they accepted. Kent's remains were exhumed from Cork prison in June 2015 after being buried for 99 years. The analysis of Kent's remains, which had been found in a shallow, quicklime-filled grave, involved the State Pathologist's Office, the National Forensic Coordination Office at the Garda Technical Bureau, Forensic Science Ireland, and scientists from University College Dublin, and the scientific team was led by Dr. Jens Carlsson from the University of California-Davis. The State funeral was held on 18 September 2015 at St Nicholas' Church in Castlelyons. Kent lay in state at Collins Barracks in Cork the day before. The requiem mass was attended by President Michael D. Higgins, with Enda Kenny delivering the graveside oration.

    Memorials

    Bust of Kent at Cork Kent railway station by sculptor James MacCarthy.
    The main railway station in Cork, Kent Station was named after Thomas Kent in 1966. The bridge over the River Blackwater in Fermoy, Co. Cork, where Thomas Kent was detained following his arrest, was named after him and his brothers in 2016.    
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  • 1916 Executed Rebel Leaders Framed Miniature Prints-James Connolly

    €50.00
    Beautiful and poignant collection of four of the 1916 Easter Rising Rebel Leaders who were executed by the British Crown Forces at Kilmainham Jail a few weeks later.Featured here are Padraig Pearse,Thomas Clarke,James Connolly,Thomas Kent. James Connolly (5 June 1868 – 12 May 1916) was an Irish republican and socialist leader. Connolly was born in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland, to Irish parents. He left school for working life at the age of 11. He also took a role in Scottish and American politics. He was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World and founder of the Irish Socialist Republican Party. With James Larkin, he was centrally involved in the Dublin lock-out of 1913, as a result of which the two men formed the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) that year. He opposed British rule in Ireland, and was one of the leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916. He was executed by firing squad following the Rising.

    Early life

    Connolly was born in an Edinburgh slum in 1868, the third son of Irish parents John Connolly and Mary McGinn.His parents had moved to Scotland from County Monaghan, Ireland, and settled in the Cowgate, a ghetto where thousands of Irish people lived. He spoke with a Scottish accent throughout his life. He was born in St Patrick's Roman Catholic parish, in the Cowgate district of Edinburgh known as "Little Ireland". His father and grandfathers were labourers.He had an education up to the age of about ten in the local Catholic primary school. He left and worked in labouring jobs. Owing to the economic difficulties he was having, like his eldest brother John, he joined the British Army. He enlisted at age 14, falsifying his age and giving his name as Reid, as his brother John had done. He served in Ireland with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Scots Regiment for nearly seven years, during a turbulent period in rural areas known as the Land War.He would later become involved in the land issue. He developed a deep hatred for the British Army that lasted his entire life.When he heard that his regiment was being transferred to India, he deserted. Connolly had another reason for not wanting to go to India; a young woman by the name of Lillie Reynolds. Lillie moved to Scotland with James after he left the army and they married in April 1890.They settled in Edinburgh. There, Connolly began to get involved in the Scottish Socialist Federation,[17] but with a young family to support, he needed a way to provide for them. He briefly established a cobbler's shop in 1895, but this failed after a few monthsas his shoe-mending skills were insufficient.He was strongly active with the socialist movement at the time, and prioritized this over his cobbling.

    Socialist involvement

    After Ireland is free, says the patriot who won't touch Socialism, we will protect all classes, and if you won't pay your rent you will be evicted same as now. But the evicting party, under command of the sheriff, will wear green uniforms and the Harp without the Crown, and the warrant turning you out on the roadside will be stamped with the arms of the Irish Republic.
    James Connolly, in Workers' Republic, 1899
    In the 1880s, Connolly became influenced by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx and would later advocate a type of socialism that was based in Marxist theory.[21] Connolly described himself as a socialist, while acknowledging the influence of Marx. He became secretary of the Scottish Socialist Federation. At the time his brother John was secretary; after John spoke at a rally in favour of the eight-hour day, however, he was fired from his job with the Edinburgh Corporation, so while he looked for work, James took over as secretary. During this time, Connolly became involved with the Independent Labour Party which Keir Hardie had formed in 1893. At some time during this period, he took up the study of, and advocated the use of, the neutral international language, Esperanto. His interest in Esperanto is implicit in his 1898 article "The Language Movement", which primarily attempts to promote socialism to the nationalist revolutionaries involved in the Gaelic Revival. By 1892 he was involved in the Scottish Socialist Federation, acting as its secretary from 1895. Two months after the birth of his third daughter, word came to Connolly that the Dublin Socialist Club was looking for a full-time secretary, a job that offered a salary of a pound a week. Connolly and his family moved to Dublin,where he took up the position. At his instigation, the club quickly evolved into the Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP).The ISRP is regarded by many Irish historians as a party of pivotal importance in the early history of Irish socialism and republicanism. While active as a socialist in Great Britain, Connolly was the founding editor of The Socialist newspaper and was among the founders of the Socialist Labour Partywhich split from the Social Democratic Federation in 1903. Connolly joined Maud Gonne and Arthur Griffith in the Dublin protests against the Boer War. A combination of frustration with the progress of the ISRP and economic necessity caused him to emigrate to the United States in September 1903, with no plans as to what he would do there.While in America he was a member of the Socialist Labor Party of America (1906), the Socialist Party of America (1909) and the Industrial Workers of the World, and founded the Irish Socialist Federation in New York, 1907. He famously had a chapter of his 1910 book Labour in Irish History entitled "A chapter of horrors: Daniel O’Connell and the working class." critical of the achiever of Catholic Emancipation 60 years earlier. On Connolly's return to Ireland in 1910 he was right-hand man to James Larkin in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. He stood twice for the Wood Quay ward of Dublin Corporation but was unsuccessful. His name, and those of his family, appears in the 1911 Census of Ireland - his occupation is listed as "National Organiser Socialist Party".In 1913, in response to the Lockout, he, along with an ex-British officer, Jack White, founded the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), an armed and well-trained body of labour men whose aim was to defend workers and strikers, particularly from the frequent brutality of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. Though they only numbered about 250 at most, their goal soon became the establishment of an independent and socialist Irish nation. He also founded the Irish Labour Party as the political wing of the Irish Trades Union Congress in 1912 and was a member of its National Executive. Around this time he met Winifred Carney in Belfast, who became his secretary and would later accompany him during the Easter Rising. Like Vladimir Lenin, Connolly opposed the First World War explicitly from a socialist perspective. Rejecting the Redmondite position, he declared "I know of no foreign enemy of this country except the British Government."

    Easter Rising

    Connolly and the ICA made plans for an armed uprising during the war, independently of the Irish Volunteers. In early 1916, believing the Volunteers were dithering, he attempted to goad them into action by threatening to send the ICA against the British Empire alone, if necessary. This alarmed the members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, who had already infiltrated the Volunteers and had plans for an insurrection that very year. In order to talk Connolly out of any such rash action, the IRB leaders, including Tom Clarke and Patrick Pearse, met with Connolly to see if an agreement could be reached. During the meeting, the IRB and the ICA agreed to act together at Easter of that year. During the Easter Rising, beginning on 24 April 1916, Connolly was Commandant of the Dublin Brigade. As the Dublin Brigade had the most substantial role in the rising, he was de factocommander-in-chief. Connolly's leadership in the Easter rising was considered formidable. Michael Collins said of Connolly that he "would have followed him through hell." Following the surrender, he said to other prisoners: "Don't worry. Those of us that signed the proclamation will be shot. But the rest of you will be set free."

    Death

    Location of Connolly's execution at Kilmainham Gaolin Dublin
    Connolly was not actually held in gaol, but in a room (now called the "Connolly Room") at the State Apartments in Dublin Castle, which had been converted to a first-aid station for troops recovering from the war. Connolly was sentenced to death by firing squad for his part in the rising. On 12 May 1916 he was taken by military ambulance to Royal Hospital Kilmainham, across the road from Kilmainham Gaol, and from there taken to the gaol, where he was to be executed. While Connolly was still in hospital in Dublin Castle, during a visit from his wife and daughter, he said: "The Socialists will not understand why I am here; they forget I am an Irishman." Connolly had been so badly injured from the fighting (a doctor had already said he had no more than a day or two to live, but the execution order was still given) that he was unable to stand before the firing squad; he was carried to a prison courtyard on a stretcher. His absolution and last rites were administered by a Capuchin, Father Aloysius Travers. Asked to pray for the soldiers about to shoot him, he said: "I will say a prayer for all men who do their duty according to their lights."Instead of being marched to the same spot where the others had been executed, at the far end of the execution yard, he was tied to a chair and then shot. His body (along with those of the other leaders) was put in a mass grave without a coffin. The executions of the rebel leaders deeply angered the majority of the Irish population, most of whom had shown no support during the rebellion. It was Connolly's execution that caused the most controversy.Historians have pointed to the manner of execution of Connolly and similar rebels, along with their actions, as being factors that caused public awareness of their desires and goals and gathered support for the movements that they had died fighting for. The executions were not well received, even throughout Britain, and drew unwanted attention from the United States, which the British Government was seeking to bring into the war in Europe. H. H. Asquith, the Prime Minister, ordered that no more executions were to take place; an exception being that of Roger Casement, who was charged with high treasonand had not yet been tried.

    Family

    James Connolly and his wife Lillie had seven children. Nora became an influential writer and campaigner within the Irish-republican movement as an adult. Roddy continued his father's politics. In later years, both became members of the Oireachtas (Irish parliament). Moira became a doctor and married Richard Beech. One of Connolly's daughters Mona died in 1904 aged 13, when she burned herself while she did the washing for an aunt. Three months after James Connolly's execution his wife was received into the Catholic Church, at Church St. on 15 August.

    Legacy

     
    Statue of James Connolly in Dublin
    Connolly's legacy in Ireland is mainly due to his contribution to the republican cause; his legacy as a socialist has been claimed by a variety of left-wing and left-republican groups, and he is also associated with the Labour Party which he founded. Connolly was among the few European members of the Second International who opposed, outright, World War I. This put him at odds with most of the socialist leaders of Europe. He was influenced by and heavily involved with the radical Industrial Workers of the World labour union, and envisaged socialism as Industrial Union control of production. Also he envisioned the IWW forming their own political party that would bring together the feuding socialist groups such as the Socialist Labor Party of America and the Socialist Party of America.Likewise, he envisaged independent Ireland as a socialist republic. His connection and views on Revolutionary Unionism and Syndicalism have raised debate on if his image for a workers republic would be one of State or Grassroots socialism.For a time he was involved with De Leonism and the Second International until he later broke with both. In Scotland, Connolly's thinking influenced socialists such as John Maclean, who would, like him, combine his leftist thinking with nationalist ideas when he formed the Scottish Workers Republican Party.
    Statue of James Connolly in Belfast
    The Connolly Association, a British organisation campaigning for Irish unity and independence, is named after Connolly. In 1928, Follonsby miners' lodge in the Durham coalfield unfurled a newly designed banner that included a portrait of Connolly on it. The banner was burned in 1938, replaced but then painted over in 1940. A reproduction of the 1938 Connolly banner was commissioned in 2011 by the Follonsby Miners’ Lodge Banner Association and it is regularly paraded at various events in County Durham ('Old King Coal' at Beamish Open Air museum, 'The Seven men of Jarrow' commemoration every June, the Durham Miners' Gala every second Saturday in July, the Tommy Hepburn annual memorial every October), in the wider UK and Ireland. There is a statue of James Connolly in Dublin, outside Liberty Hall, the offices of the SIPTU trade union. Another statue of Connolly stands in Union Park, Chicago near the offices of the UE union. There is a bust of Connolly in Troy, New York, in the park behind the statue of Uncle Sam. In March 2016 a statue of Connolly was unveiled by Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure minister Carál Ní Chuilín, and Connolly's great grandson, James Connolly Heron, on Falls Road in Belfast. In a 1972 interview on The Dick Cavett Show, John Lennon stated that James Connolly was an inspiration for his song, "Woman Is the Nigger of the World". Lennon quoted Connolly's 'the female is the slave of the slave' in explaining the feminist inspiration for the song. Connolly Station, one of the two main railway stations in Dublin, and Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown, are named in his honour. In a 2002, BBC television production, 100 Greatest Britons where the British public were asked to register their vote, Connolly was voted in 64th place. In 1968, Irish group The Wolfe Tones released a single named "James Connolly", which reached number 15 in the Irish charts. The band Black 47 wrote and performed a song about Connolly that appears on their album Fire of Freedom. Irish singer-songwriter Niall Connolly has a song "May 12th, 1916 - A Song for James Connolly" on his album Dream Your Way Out of This One(2017).  
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  • 1916 Executed Rebel Leaders Framed Miniature Prints-Padraig Pearse

    €50.00
    Beautiful and poignant collection of four of the 1916 Easter Rising Rebel Leaders who were executed by the British Crown Forces at Kilmainham Jail a few weeks later.Featured here are Padraig Pearse,Thomas Clarke,James Connolly,Thomas Kent.   Patrick Pearse, in full Patrick Henry Pearse, Patrick also spelled in Irish Pádraic, (born November 10, 1879, Dublin, Ireland—died May 3, 1916, Dublin), Irish nationalist leader, poet, and educator. He was the first president of the provisional government of the Irish republic proclaimed in Dublin on April 24, 1916, and was commander in chief of the Irish forces in the anti-British Easter Rising that began on the same day.The son of an English sculptor and his Irish wife, Pearse became a director of the Gaelic League (founded 1893 for the preservation of the Irish language) and edited (1903–09) its weekly newspaper, An Claidheamh Soluis (“The Sword of Light”). To further promote the Irish language as a weapon against British domination, he published tales from old Irish manuscripts and a collection (1914) of his own poems in the modern Irish idiom. He founded St. Enda’s College (1908), near Dublin, as a bilingual institution with its teaching based on Irish traditions and culture. On the formation of the Irish Volunteers (November 1913) as a counterforce against the Ulster Volunteers (militant supporters of the Anglo-Irish union), Pearse became a member of their provisional committee, and he contributed poems and articles to their newspaper, The Irish Volunteer. In July 1914 he was made a member of the supreme council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). After the Irish Volunteers split (September 1914), he became a leader of the more extreme nationalist section, which opposed any support for Great Britain in World War I. He came to believe that the blood of martyrs would be required to liberate Ireland, and on that theme he delivered a famous oration in August 1915 at the burial of Jeremiah O’Donovan, known as O’Donovan Rossa, a veteran of Sinn Féin.
    As early as spring 1915 Pearse, as an IRB supreme council member, helped to plan the Easter Rising. On Easter Monday he proclaimed the provisional government of the Irish republic from the steps of Dublin General Post Office. On April 29, when the revolt was crushed, he surrendered to the British. After a court-martial, he was shot by a firing squad. More than any other man, Pearse was responsible for establishing the republican tradition in Ireland.
    Pearse’s Collected Works appeared in 1917–22 (3 vol.) and again in 1924 (5 vol.), and his Political Writings and Speeches appeared in 1952.
     
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  • John Philpott Curran Framed Print (after R.M Hodgetts)

    €70.00
    Pair of tastefully framed portraits (after the paintings by R.M Hodgetts)  of one of the greatest  statesmen, orators and wits in Irish  history -John Philpott Curran     28cm x 25cm John Philpot Curran (24 July 1750 – 14 October 1817) was an Irish orator, politician, wit, lawyer and judge, who held the office of Master of the Rolls in Ireland.

    Career

    Born in Newmarket, County Cork, he was the eldest of five children of James Curran, seneschal of the Newmarket manor court, and Sarah, née Philpot. The Curran family were said to have originally been named Curwen, their ancestor having come from Cumberland as a soldier under Cromwell; Curran's grandfather was from Derry, but settled in Cork. The Philpots were Irish judges, bishops and noblemen.[ A friend of the family, Rev. Nathaniel Boyse, arranged to have Curran educated at Midleton College, County Cork. He studied law at Trinity College, Dublin (he was described as "the wildest, wittiest, dreamiest student") and continued his legal studies at King's Inns and the Middle Temple. He was called to the Irish Bar in 1775. Upon his first trial, his nerves got the better of him and he couldn't proceed. His short stature, boyish features, shrill voice and a stutter were said to have impacted his career, and earned him the nickname "Stuttering Jack Curran". However, he could speak passionately in court on subjects close to his heart. He eventually overcame his nerves, and got rid of his speech impediment by constantly reciting Shakespeare and Bolingbroke in front of a mirror, and became a noted orator and wit. His occasional tendency of challenging people to duels (he fought five in all) rather than compromise his values, along with his skilful oratory, quick wit and his championing of popular Irish causes such as Catholic Emancipation and the enlargement of the franchise, made him one of the most popular lawyers in Ireland. He also could speak Irish, still the language of the majority at that time. He wrote a large amount of humorous and romantic poetry. The case which cemented Curran's popularity was that of Father Neale and St Leger St Leger, 1st Viscount Doneraile at the County Cork Assizes in 1780. Father Neale, an elderly Catholic priest in County Cork, criticised an adulterous parishioner. The adulterer's sister was mistress to Lord Doneraile, a cruel Protestant landlord. Doneraile demanded that Neale recant his criticism of his mistress' brother. When the priest stood by his principles, Doneraile horse-whipped him, secure in the confidence that a jury of the time would not convict a Protestant on charges brought forward by a Catholic. Curran, who had a passion for lost causes, represented the priest and won over the jury by setting aside the issue of religion. The jury awarded Curran's client 30 guineas. Doneraile challenged Curran to a duel, in which Doneraile fired and missed. Curran declined to fire. The year 1796 saw Curran again attacking the character of a peer, the Earl of Westmeath, in a civil case. The circumstances were very different from the Doneraile case: Curran was defending another aristocrat, Augustus Bradshaw, allegedly the lover of Lady Westmeath, in a criminal conversationaction. For once his eloquence went for nothing and despite his attacks on the characters of both Lord and Lady Westmeath, the jury awarded the enormous sum of £10000. He earned the nickname "The little Jesuit of St. Omer"from wearing a brown coat outside a black one, and making pro-Catholic speeches. Started in 1780, his drinking club "The Order of St. Patrick" also included Catholic members along with liberal lawyers (who then had to be Protestant). The Club members were called The Monks of the Screw, as they appreciated wine and corkscrews. Curran was its "Prior" and consequently named his Rathfarnham home "The Priory". The club had no link to the Order of St. Patrick established in 1783.

    Political cases and views

    A liberal Protestant whose politics were similar to Henry Grattan, he employed all his eloquence to oppose the illiberal policy of the Government, and also the Union with Britain. Curran stood as Member of Parliament (MP) for Kilbeggan in 1783. He subsequently represented Rathcormack between 1790 and 1798 and served then for Banagher from 1800 until the Act of Union in 1801, which bitterly disappointed him; he even contemplated emigrating to the United States. He also visited France in the 1780s and in 1802 at the time of the Treaty of Amiens, and considered that an Ireland ruled by the United Irishmen under French protection would be as bad as, if not worse than, British rule. However, he defended several of the United Irishmen in prominent high treason cases in the 1790s. Among them were the Revd. William Jackson, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Wolfe Tone, Napper Tandy, The Sheares Brothers, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, William Orr and William Drennan. His difficulty in defending treason cases was that the Dublin administration could rely upon one witness to secure a conviction, while in England the law required that the prosecution had to use two or more witnesses. Consequently, his success depended on his lengthy examination of a single witness to try to find an inconsistency. He used this technique to great effect in the case of Patrick Finney, a Dublin tobacconist charged with treason in 1798, largely on the evidence of one James O'Brien. Curran destroyed O'Brien's credit and the judges, for once in sympathy with the accused, virtually ordered an acquittal. In the same year he unsuccessfully defended the journalist Peter Finnerty for seditious libel in publishing an attack on the judges who heard the William Orr case, and the Lord Lieutenant. Despite an eloquent speech by Curran, Finnerty was found guilty and sentenced to two years imprisonment. In 1797 he was condemned as "the leading advocate of every murderer, ruffian and low villain". In 1802, Curran won damages from Major Sirr, who in 1798 had arrested Irish revolutionaries Lord Edward FitzGerald, Thomas Russell and Robert Emmet. Curran spoke for a Protestant, who had volunteered against the Rebellion but had happened to cross Sirr by convincing a jury of the "infamous" character of Sirr's witness in a treason trial, so causing Sirr's case to collapse. Sirr and his colleague were alleged then to have used wrongful arrest, imprisonment incommunicado, and condemnation to hanging as means to extortion and personal satisfaction. Curran implied that these were typical of their methods and of the methods used to suppress the Rebellion. Niles' Register of 24 March 1821 describes Sirr as "this old sinner, given to eternal infamy by the eloquence of Curran'" He was appointed Master of the Rolls in Ireland in 1806, following Pitt's replacement by a more liberal cabinet.

    Death

    He retired in 1814 and spent his last three years in London. He died in his home in Brompton in 1817. In 1837, his remains were transferred from Paddington Cemetery, London to Glasnevin Cemetery, where they were laid in an 8-foot-high classical-style sarcophagus. In 1845 a white marble memorial to him, with a carved bust by Christopher Moore,was placed near the west door of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.

    Private life

    He married in 1774, to his cousin Sarah Creagh (1755–1844), the daughter of Richard Creagh, a County Cork physician. His eldest daughter Amelia was born in 1775, and eight more children resulted from the union, but his marriage disintegrated, his wife eventually deserting him and eloping with Reverend Abraham Sandys, whom Curran sued afterwards for criminal conversation in 1795. His youngest daughter Sarah's romance with the rebel Robert Emmet, who was hanged for treason in 1803, scandalised Curran, who had tried to split them up. He was arrested and agreed to pass their correspondence on to Standish O'Grady, 1st Viscount Guillamore, the Attorney General for Ireland. In the circumstances he could not defend Emmet. He was suspected with involvement in Emmet's Rebellion, but was completely exonerated. However, his friend Lord Kilwarden was killed by the rebels, and he lost any faith in the beliefs of the United Irishmen. He disowned Sarah, who died of tuberculosis five years later. In Dublin, he was a member of Daly's Club.

    Quotations

    A restated version of John Curran's quote is engraved into a statue in Washington D.C.
    • "I have never yet heard of a murderer who was not afraid of a ghost." - A retort to a unionist MP who spoke of how he shuddered each time he passed the now-empty Parliament House, Dublin. The MP had voted in favour of the Act of Union which abolished the Irish Parliament.
    • "Assassinate me you may; intimidate me you cannot."
    • "His smile is like the silver plate on a coffin."
    • "In this administration, a place can be found for every bad man."
    • "Twenty four millions of people have burst their chains, and on the altar erected by despotism for public slavery, have enthroned the image of public liberty" – Speaking of the French Revolution, 4 February 1790.
    • "It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." – John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election for Lord Mayor of Dublin, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.) as quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
    • "No matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted on the altar of slavery, the moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains which burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation." – (Curran's speech in defence of James Somersett, a Jamaican slave who declared his freedom upon being brought to Britain [where slavery was banned] by his master; quoted extensively by US abolitionists such as Harriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Chapter 37. Frederick Douglass always recited this speech on stage when playing Curran.)
    • "Evil prospers when good men do nothing." (Also attributed to Edmund Burke; the quote cannot be definitely traced to either man.)
    • Judge: (whose wig was awry, to Curran) Curran, do you see anything ridiculous in this wig?
    Curran: Nothing but the head, my lord!
    • "My dear doctor, I am surprised to hear you say that I am coughing very badly, as I have been practising all night."
    • "When I can't talk sense, I talk metaphor."
    • "Everything I see disgusts and depresses me: I look back at the streaming of blood for so many years, and everything everywhere relapsed into its former degradation – France rechained, Spain again saddled for the priests, and Ireland, like a bastinadoed elephant, kneeling to receive the paltry rider." – Written in a letter, after the exile of Napoleon Bonaparte.
    • "If sadly thinking, with spirits sinking,
    Could more than drinking my cares compose,
    A cure for sorrow my sighs would borrow
    And hope tomorrow would end my woes.
    But as in wailing there's naught availing
    And Death unfailing will strike the blow
    And for that reason, and for a season,
    Let us be merry before we go.
    To joy a stranger, a wayworn ranger,
    In every danger my course I've run
    Now hope all ending, and death befriending,
    His last aid lending, my cares are done.
    No more a rover, or hapless lover,
    My griefs are over – my glass runs low;
    Then for that reason, and for a season,
    Let us be merry before we go." – ("The Deserter's Meditation")
    • "O Erin how sweetly thy green bosom rises,
    An emerald set in the ring of the sea,
    Each blade of thy meadows my faithful heart prizes,
    Thou queen of the west, the world's cushla ma chree."

    His witticisms

    One night, Curran was dining with Justice Toler, a notorious "hanging judge".
    Toler: Curran, is that hung-beef?
    Curran: Do try it, my lord, then it is sure to be!
    A wealthy tobacconist, Lundy Foot, asked Curran to suggest a Latin motto for his coach. "I have just hit on it!', exclaimed Curran. "It is only two words, and it will explain your profession, your elevation, and your contempt for the people's ridicule; it has the advantage of being in two languages, Latin and English, just as the reader chooses. Put up "Quid Rides" upon your carriage!" (A quid was a lump of tobacco to be chewed, and also slang for a sovereign (stg£1); "rides" is Irish slang for "has sexual intercourse"; in Latin "Quid rides" means: "so you may laugh"). Curran hated the Act of Union, which abolished the Parliament of Ireland and amalgamated it with that of Great Britain. The parliament had been housed in a splendid building in College Green, Dublin, which faced an uncertain future. "Curran, what do they mean to do with this useless building? For my part, I hate the very sight of it!" said one lord, who was for the Act of Union. "I do not wonder at it, my lord", said Curran contemptuously. "I have never yet heard of a murderer who is not afraid of a ghost." Curran arrived at court late one morning. The judge, Viscount Avonmore, demanded an explanation. "On my way to court, I passed through the market—" "Yes, I know, the Castle Market," interrupted Lord Avonmore. "Exactly, the Castle Market, and passing near one of the stalls, I beheld a brawny butcher brandishing a sharp gleaming knife. A calf he was about to slay was standing, awaiting the deathstroke, when at that moment—that critical moment—a lovely little girl came bounding along in all her sportive mirth from her father's stall. Before a moment had passed the butcher had plunged his knife into the breast of—" "Good God! His child!" sobbed the judge, deeply affected. Curran carried on: "No, the calf, but your Lordship often anticipates." A prosecutor, infuriated by Curran's insults, threatened to put him in his pocket. "If you do that," replied Curran, "you will have more law in your pocket than you ever had in your head." In debate with John Fitzgibbon, 1st Earl of Clare, Fitzgibbon rebutted one of Curran's arguments by saying "If that be the law, Mr. Curran, I shall burn all my law books." To which he replied "You had better read them first, my lord." On another occasion Fitzgibbon objected that Curran was splitting hairs- surely the words "also" and "likewise" have exactly the same meaning ? "Hardly, my Lord". Curran replied. "I remember when the great Lord Lifford presided over this Court. You also preside here, but you certainly do not preside likewise".

    Appreciation

    Lord Byron said, after the death of Curran, "I have heard that man speak more poetry than I have seen written", and, in a letter to Thomas Moore, 1 October 1821, "I feel, as your poor Curran said, before his death, 'a mountain of lead upon my heart, which I believe to be constitutional, and that nothing will remove it but the same remedy.'". An engraved portrait of Curran by J.J. Wedgwood was published in volume one of the first Irish biographical dictionary, Biographia Hibernica, a Biographical Dictionary of the Worthies of Ireland, from the earliest periods to the present time, (London, 1819: Richard Ryan (biographer)). In Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1832, Letitia Elizabeth Landon includes an illustrative poem to the engraved portrait therein. Karl Marx recommended to Friedrich Engels that he read the speeches of John Philpot Curran in a letter of 10 December 1869: "You must get Curran's Speeches edited by Davies [i.e. Thomas Davis] (London: James Duffy, 22, Paternoster Row). .... I consider Curran the only great lawyer (people's advocate) of the eighteenth century and the noblest personality, while Grattan was a parliamentary rogue, but because you will find quoted there all the sources for the United Irishmen. "  
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