Theatrical advertising poster for "The way to Kenmare".
Andrew Mack, born William Andrew McAloon, (July 25, 1863 – May 21, 1931) was an American vaudevillian, actor, singer and songwriter of Irish descent.A native of Boston, Massachusetts, he began his career at an early age in 1876 using the stage name Andrew Williams. He began in minstrel shows, and was especially associated with the song "A Violet From Mother's Grave".In 1892, he debuted in vaudeville.
He composed songs for himself to sing. In 1899, he composed the popular song "The Story of the Rose (Heart of My Heart)" which became a standard of barbershop quartets.
Lovely,limited edition commemorative poster celebrating the bicentennial anniversary of the 1798 United Irishmen Rebellion.
78cm x 57cm
The 1798 United Irishmen Rebellion led by Theobald Wolfe Tone was ill fated from the outset.Inspired by the recent successful American and French Revolutions,the Rebels leadership became fragmented and the revolt was only sporadically successful .This poster captures the portraits of such notable United Irishmen as Henry Joy McCracken,Napper Tandy and Wolfe Tone himself.
The united Irish crest.An overview of the insurrection of 1798, by John Dorney.
The 1798 rebellion was an insurrection launched by the United Irishmen, an underground republican society, aimed at overthrowing the Kingdom of Ireland, severing the connection with Great Britain and establishing an Irish Republic based on the principles of the French Revolution.
The rebellion failed in its aim to launch a coordinated nationwide uprising. There were instead isolated outbreaks of rebellion in county Wexford, other Leinster counties, counties Antrim and Down in the north and after the landing of a French expeditionary force, in county Mayo in the west.
The military uprising was put down with great bloodshed in the summer of 1798. Some of its leaders, notably Wolfe Tone were killed or died in imprisonment, while many others were exiled.
The 1798 rebellion was failed attempt to found a secular independent Irish Republic.
The 1790s marked an exceptional event in Irish history because the United Irishmen were a secular organisation with significant support both among Catholics and Protestants, including Protestants in the northern province of Ulster.
However, the unity of Catholics and Protestants was far from universal and the fighting itself was marked in places by sectarian atrocities.
As a result of the uprising, the Irish Parliament, which had existed since the 13th century, was abolished and under the Act of Union (1800) Ireland was to be ruled directly from London until 1922.
Background
The Irish Parliament on Dublin’s College Green.
In the 18th century, Ireland was a Kingdom in its own right, under the Kings of England. Executive power was largely in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary, appointed by the British prime minister.
However, Ireland also had its own parliament, which throughout the century, lobbied for greater control over trade and law making in Ireland. The Irish parliament was subservient to the British parliament at Westminster, but increasingly, as the century wore on, agitated for greater autonomy.
In 1782, the Irish parliament managed to free itself from subservience to the Lord Lieutenant and, to an extent, from the British parliament through the passage of laws that enabled it to make its own laws for the first time without reference to Westminster.
Ireland in the 18th century had its own parliament but the majority of the population was excluded from political participation on religious and property grounds.
However, membership of the parliament was confined to members of the Anglican Church of Ireland, which, allowing for some conversions, was overwhelmingly composed of descendants of English settlers. The parliament was not a democratic body; elections were relatively infrequent, seats could be purchased and the number of voters was small and confined to wealthy, property-owning Protestants.
Under the Penal Laws, enacted after the Catholic defeat in theJacobite-Williamite war of the 1690s, all those who refused to acknowledge the English King as head of their Church – therefore Catholic and Presbyterians – were barred not only from the parliament but from any public position or service in the Army.
United Irish leader Theobald Wolfe Tone.
Catholic owned lands were also confiscated for alleged political disloyalty throughout the 17th century. Catholics, to a large extent the descendants of the pre-seventeenth century Irish population, also suffered from restrictions on landholding, inheritance, entering the professions and the right to bear arms.
Presbyterians, mostly descendants of Scottish immigrants, while not excluded as rigorously as Catholics from public life, also suffered from discrimination – marriages performed by their clergy were not legally recognised for instance.
Although some of the Penal Laws were relaxed in 1782, allowing new Catholic churches and schools to open, and allowing Catholics into the professions and to purchase land, the great majority of the Irish population was still excluded from political power, and to a large extent from wealth and landholding also, as the last decade of the 18thcentury dawned.
Discontent among Catholics was exacerbated by economic hardship and by tithes, compulsory taxes that people of all religions had to pay, for the upkeep of the established, Protestant Church.
Initially the United Irishmen, founded, mainly by Presbyterians in Belfast in 1791, campaigned merely for reform, lobbying for the vote to be extended to Catholics and to non-property holders. The United Irishmen had a determinedly non-sectarian outlook, their motto being, as their leading member Theobald Wolfe Tone put it, ‘to unite Catholic Protestant and Dissenter under the common name of Irishman’.
The United Irishmen, inspired by the American and French revolutions, initially lobbied for democratic reform.
They were greatly inspired by the events of the American and French revolutions (1776 and 1789 respectively) and hoped to eventually found a self-governing, secular Irish state on the basis of universal male suffrage. The leadership of the United Irishmen was largely Protestant or Presbyterian at the start and it recruited men of all sects, mainly in the richer, more urban, eastern half of the country.
Some of their early demands were granted by the Irish parliament, for example Catholics were given the right to vote in 1793, as well as the right to attend university, obtain degrees and to serve in the military and civil service.
However the reforms did not go nearly as far as the radicals wished. Catholics still could not sit in the Parliament for example, nor hold public office and the vote was granted only to holders of property worth over forty shillings a year.
Radicalisation
A contemporary depiction of the ‘the mob’ during the French Revolution.
The United Irishmen did not remain an open reformist organisation for long. The French revolution took a radical turn in 1791. In the following two years it deposed King Louis XVI and declared a Republic. Britain and revolutionary France went to war in 1793.
In Ireland, the United Irishmen, who supported the French Republic, were banned and went underground in 1794. Wolfe Tone went into exile, first in America and then in France, where he lobbied for military aid for revolution in Ireland.
The United Irishmen now stated that their goal was a fully independent Irish Republic.
At the same time, popular discontent was growing, as the government dispatched troops to suppress the United Irishmen and other ‘seditious’ groups. The government also announced that men had to serve in the militia which would maintain internal security in Ireland during the war with France. Resistance to impressment into the militia led to fierce rioting in 1793 that left over 200 people dead.
Repression of United Irish suspects, in this case a ‘half hanging’.
Having been driven underground, the United Irishmen in Ireland began organising a clandestine military structure. In an effort to recruit more foot soldiers for the hoped-for revolution, they made contact with a Catholic secret society, the Defenders, who had been engaged in low level fighting, especially in the north, with Protestant groups such as the so called Peep of Day Boys and the newly founded Orange Order.
As a result, while the majority of the United Irishmen’s top leadership remained Protestant, their foot soldiers, except in north east Ulster, became increasingly Catholic.
That said, the Catholic Church itself was opposed to the ‘atheistical’ Republicans and was, for the first time, courted by the authorities, being granted the right to open a college for the education of priests in Maynooth in 1795.
In 1796 revolutionary France dispatched a large invasion fleet, with nearly 14,000 troops, and accompanied by Wolfe Tone, to Ireland. By sheer chance, invasion was averted when the fleet ran into storms and part of it was wrecked off Bantry Bay in County Cork. Battered by the weather and after losing many men drowned, they had to return to France.
The United Irishmen were banned after Britain went to war with France in 1793 and went underground.
The government in Dublin, startled by the near-invasion, responded with a vicious wave of repression, passing an Insurrection Act that suspended habeas corpus and other peacetime laws.
Using both British troops, militia and a newly recruited, mostly Protestant and fiercely loyalist, force known as the Yeomanry, government forces attempted to terrorise any would-be revolutionaries in Ireland who might aid the French in the event of another invasion. The Crown forces’ methods including burning of houses and Catholic churches, summary executions and the practice of ‘pitch-capping’ whereby lit tar was placed on a victim’s scalp.
By the summer of 1798, the United Irishmen, under severe pressure from their own supporters to act, planned a co-ordinated nationwide uprising, aimed at overthrowing the government in Dublin, severing the connection with Britain and founding an Irish Republic.
The Rebellion breaks out
Edward Fitzgerald is shot dead during arrest in Dublin.
The rebellion was intended to be signalled by the stopping of all mail coaches out of Dublin on May 23, 1798.
However, the authorities in Dublin were aware of the plans and on the eve of the rebellion arrested most of the senior United Irishmen leadership. Their most senior leader in Ireland, Edward Fitzgerald was shot and mortally wounded during his arrest.
While mail coaches were stopped in some areas, other areas had no notice of the planned insurrection and with the United Irish leadership mostly in prison or in exile, the rising flared up in in a localised and uncoordinated manner.
Large bodies of United Irishmen rose in arms in the counties around Dublin; Kildare, Wicklow, Carlow and Meath, in response to the stopping of the mail coaches, but Dublin city itself, which was heavily garrisoned and placed under martial law, did not stir.
The Rising was uncoordinated as most of the United Irish leaders had been imprisoned.
The first rebellions resulted in some sharp fighting but the poorly armed (they mostly had home-made pikes) and poorly led insurgents were defeated by British, militia and Yeomanry troops. In many cases, captured or surrendering rebels were massacred by vengeful government forces.
Wexford, Ulster and Kilalla Bay
The battle of Vinegar Hill.
Only in County Wexford did the United Irishmen meet with success. There, after rising on May 27, the insurgents defeated some militia and Yeomanry units and took the towns of Enniscorthy and Wexford.
The leadership of the Wexford rebels was both Catholic and Protestant (the leader was the Protestant Harvey Bagenal), but included some Catholic priests such as father John Murphy and the rank and file were largely Catholic, in many cases enraged by the sectarian atrocities committed in the previous months by the Yeomonary.
The rebels failed to take the towns of New Ross and Arklow despite determined and costly assaults and remained bottled up in Ireland’s south eastern corner. In response to the government forces’ killing of prisoners at New Ross, the rebels killed over 100 local loyalists at Scullabogue and another 100 at Wexford Bridge. The fighting in the rebellion was marked by an extreme ideological and, increasingly, sectarian, bitterness. Prisoners on both sides were commonly killed after battle.
The rebels in Wexford held most of the country for a month before being defeated at Vinegar Hill.
The Wexford rebellion was smashed about a month after it broke out, when over 13,000 British troops converged on the main rebel camp at Vinegar Hill on June 21, 1798 and broke up, though failed to trap, the main rebel army. Guerrilla fighting continued, but the main rebel stronghold had fallen.
A depiction of the Battle of Antrim 1798 at which the Ulster Irish uprising was crushed.
In the north, the mainly Presbyterian United Irishmen there launched their own uprising in support of Wexford in early June, but again, after some initial success, were defeated by government troops and militia. Their leaders, Henry Joy McCracken and Henry Munro, were captured and hanged.
The last act of the rebellion came in August 1798, when a small French expeditionary force of 1,500 men landed at Killalla Bay in county Mayo.
Led by General Humbert, they defeated a British force at Castlebar, but were themselves defeated and forced to surrender at Ballinamuck. While the French soldiers were allowed to surrender, the Irish insurgents who accompanied them were massacred.
Another, final, French attempt to land an expeditionary force in Ireland, accompanied by United Irish leader Wolfe Tone, was intercepted and defeated in a sea battle by the Royal Navy near Tory Island off the Donegal coast in October. Tone was captured along with over 2,000 French servicemen. Sentenced to death, Tone took his own life in prison in Dublin.
Lord Cornwallis, the Lord Lieutenant, tried to end the bloodshed and reprisals by government forces by forgoing execution of the other imprisoned United leaders in return for their telling what they knew of the clandestine United Irish organisation. An amnesty and pardon was also declared for rank and file United Irishmen.
Aftermath
Cornwallis, the Lord Lieutenant who oversaw the Act of Union.
The fighting in the 1798 rebellion lasted just three months, but the deaths ran into the tens of thousands. A high estimate of the death toll is 70,000 and the lowest one puts it at about 10,000.
Thousands more former rebels were exiled in Scotland, transported to penal colonies in Australia and others such as Miles Byrne went into exile serving in the French revolutionary and Napoleonic armies until 1815.
A brief rebellion led by Robert Emmet, younger brother of one of the 1798 United Irish leaders, in 1802 achieved little beyond Emmet’s own death by execution.
In 1800 the Irish parliament, under pressure from the British authorities, voted itself out if existence and Ireland was ruled directly from London from then until 1922.
The Irish parliament was abolished in 1800 and Ireland ruled directly from London until 1922.
While the radicals of the 1790s had hoped that religious divisions in Ireland could be made a thing of the past, the fierce sectarian violence that took place on both sides during the rebellion actually hardened sectarian animosities. Many northern Presbyterians began to see the British connection as less potentially dangerous for them than an independent Ireland.
The United Irishmen’s hope of founding a secular, independent, democratic Irish Republic therefore ended in total defeat.
Fantastic print depicting all the main protagonists of the United Irishmen Movement of 1798,
60cm x 52cm Ballina Co Mayo
The 1798 United Irishmen Rebellion led by Theobald Wolfe Tone was ill fated from the outset.Inspired by the recent successful American and French Revolutions,the Rebels leadership became fragmented and the revolt was only sporadically successful .This atmospheric and original print represents the camaraderie of the United Irish.This classic print captures the portraits of such notable United Irishmen as Robert Emmett,Mathew Teeling and Wolfe Tone himself.
The united Irish crest.An overview of the insurrection of 1798, by John Dorney.
The 1798 rebellion was an insurrection launched by the United Irishmen, an underground republican society, aimed at overthrowing the Kingdom of Ireland, severing the connection with Great Britain and establishing an Irish Republic based on the principles of the French Revolution.
The rebellion failed in its aim to launch a coordinated nationwide uprising. There were instead isolated outbreaks of rebellion in county Wexford, other Leinster counties, counties Antrim and Down in the north and after the landing of a French expeditionary force, in county Mayo in the west.
The military uprising was put down with great bloodshed in the summer of 1798. Some of its leaders, notably Wolfe Tone were killed or died in imprisonment, while many others were exiled.
The 1798 rebellion was failed attempt to found a secular independent Irish Republic.
The 1790s marked an exceptional event in Irish history because the United Irishmen were a secular organisation with significant support both among Catholics and Protestants, including Protestants in the northern province of Ulster.
However, the unity of Catholics and Protestants was far from universal and the fighting itself was marked in places by sectarian atrocities.
As a result of the uprising, the Irish Parliament, which had existed since the 13th century, was abolished and under the Act of Union (1800) Ireland was to be ruled directly from London until 1922.
Background
The Irish Parliament on Dublin’s College Green.
In the 18th century, Ireland was a Kingdom in its own right, under the Kings of England. Executive power was largely in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary, appointed by the British prime minister.
However, Ireland also had its own parliament, which throughout the century, lobbied for greater control over trade and law making in Ireland. The Irish parliament was subservient to the British parliament at Westminster, but increasingly, as the century wore on, agitated for greater autonomy.
In 1782, the Irish parliament managed to free itself from subservience to the Lord Lieutenant and, to an extent, from the British parliament through the passage of laws that enabled it to make its own laws for the first time without reference to Westminster.
Ireland in the 18th century had its own parliament but the majority of the population was excluded from political participation on religious and property grounds.
However, membership of the parliament was confined to members of the Anglican Church of Ireland, which, allowing for some conversions, was overwhelmingly composed of descendants of English settlers. The parliament was not a democratic body; elections were relatively infrequent, seats could be purchased and the number of voters was small and confined to wealthy, property-owning Protestants.
Under the Penal Laws, enacted after the Catholic defeat in theJacobite-Williamite war of the 1690s, all those who refused to acknowledge the English King as head of their Church – therefore Catholic and Presbyterians – were barred not only from the parliament but from any public position or service in the Army.
United Irish leader Theobald Wolfe Tone.
Catholic owned lands were also confiscated for alleged political disloyalty throughout the 17th century. Catholics, to a large extent the descendants of the pre-seventeenth century Irish population, also suffered from restrictions on landholding, inheritance, entering the professions and the right to bear arms.
Presbyterians, mostly descendants of Scottish immigrants, while not excluded as rigorously as Catholics from public life, also suffered from discrimination – marriages performed by their clergy were not legally recognised for instance.
Although some of the Penal Laws were relaxed in 1782, allowing new Catholic churches and schools to open, and allowing Catholics into the professions and to purchase land, the great majority of the Irish population was still excluded from political power, and to a large extent from wealth and landholding also, as the last decade of the 18thcentury dawned.
Discontent among Catholics was exacerbated by economic hardship and by tithes, compulsory taxes that people of all religions had to pay, for the upkeep of the established, Protestant Church.
Initially the United Irishmen, founded, mainly by Presbyterians in Belfast in 1791, campaigned merely for reform, lobbying for the vote to be extended to Catholics and to non-property holders. The United Irishmen had a determinedly non-sectarian outlook, their motto being, as their leading member Theobald Wolfe Tone put it, ‘to unite Catholic Protestant and Dissenter under the common name of Irishman’.
The United Irishmen, inspired by the American and French revolutions, initially lobbied for democratic reform.
They were greatly inspired by the events of the American and French revolutions (1776 and 1789 respectively) and hoped to eventually found a self-governing, secular Irish state on the basis of universal male suffrage. The leadership of the United Irishmen was largely Protestant or Presbyterian at the start and it recruited men of all sects, mainly in the richer, more urban, eastern half of the country.
Some of their early demands were granted by the Irish parliament, for example Catholics were given the right to vote in 1793, as well as the right to attend university, obtain degrees and to serve in the military and civil service.
However the reforms did not go nearly as far as the radicals wished. Catholics still could not sit in the Parliament for example, nor hold public office and the vote was granted only to holders of property worth over forty shillings a year.
Radicalisation
A contemporary depiction of the ‘the mob’ during the French Revolution.
The United Irishmen did not remain an open reformist organisation for long. The French revolution took a radical turn in 1791. In the following two years it deposed King Louis XVI and declared a Republic. Britain and revolutionary France went to war in 1793.
In Ireland, the United Irishmen, who supported the French Republic, were banned and went underground in 1794. Wolfe Tone went into exile, first in America and then in France, where he lobbied for military aid for revolution in Ireland.
The United Irishmen now stated that their goal was a fully independent Irish Republic.
At the same time, popular discontent was growing, as the government dispatched troops to suppress the United Irishmen and other ‘seditious’ groups. The government also announced that men had to serve in the militia which would maintain internal security in Ireland during the war with France. Resistance to impressment into the militia led to fierce rioting in 1793 that left over 200 people dead.
Repression of United Irish suspects, in this case a ‘half hanging’.
Having been driven underground, the United Irishmen in Ireland began organising a clandestine military structure. In an effort to recruit more foot soldiers for the hoped-for revolution, they made contact with a Catholic secret society, the Defenders, who had been engaged in low level fighting, especially in the north, with Protestant groups such as the so called Peep of Day Boys and the newly founded Orange Order.
As a result, while the majority of the United Irishmen’s top leadership remained Protestant, their foot soldiers, except in north east Ulster, became increasingly Catholic.
That said, the Catholic Church itself was opposed to the ‘atheistical’ Republicans and was, for the first time, courted by the authorities, being granted the right to open a college for the education of priests in Maynooth in 1795.
In 1796 revolutionary France dispatched a large invasion fleet, with nearly 14,000 troops, and accompanied by Wolfe Tone, to Ireland. By sheer chance, invasion was averted when the fleet ran into storms and part of it was wrecked off Bantry Bay in County Cork. Battered by the weather and after losing many men drowned, they had to return to France.
The United Irishmen were banned after Britain went to war with France in 1793 and went underground.
The government in Dublin, startled by the near-invasion, responded with a vicious wave of repression, passing an Insurrection Act that suspended habeas corpus and other peacetime laws.
Using both British troops, militia and a newly recruited, mostly Protestant and fiercely loyalist, force known as the Yeomanry, government forces attempted to terrorise any would-be revolutionaries in Ireland who might aid the French in the event of another invasion. The Crown forces’ methods including burning of houses and Catholic churches, summary executions and the practice of ‘pitch-capping’ whereby lit tar was placed on a victim’s scalp.
By the summer of 1798, the United Irishmen, under severe pressure from their own supporters to act, planned a co-ordinated nationwide uprising, aimed at overthrowing the government in Dublin, severing the connection with Britain and founding an Irish Republic.
The Rebellion breaks out
Edward Fitzgerald is shot dead during arrest in Dublin.
The rebellion was intended to be signalled by the stopping of all mail coaches out of Dublin on May 23, 1798.
However, the authorities in Dublin were aware of the plans and on the eve of the rebellion arrested most of the senior United Irishmen leadership. Their most senior leader in Ireland, Edward Fitzgerald was shot and mortally wounded during his arrest.
While mail coaches were stopped in some areas, other areas had no notice of the planned insurrection and with the United Irish leadership mostly in prison or in exile, the rising flared up in in a localised and uncoordinated manner.
Large bodies of United Irishmen rose in arms in the counties around Dublin; Kildare, Wicklow, Carlow and Meath, in response to the stopping of the mail coaches, but Dublin city itself, which was heavily garrisoned and placed under martial law, did not stir.
The Rising was uncoordinated as most of the United Irish leaders had been imprisoned.
The first rebellions resulted in some sharp fighting but the poorly armed (they mostly had home-made pikes) and poorly led insurgents were defeated by British, militia and Yeomanry troops. In many cases, captured or surrendering rebels were massacred by vengeful government forces.
Wexford, Ulster and Kilalla Bay
The battle of Vinegar Hill.
Only in County Wexford did the United Irishmen meet with success. There, after rising on May 27, the insurgents defeated some militia and Yeomanry units and took the towns of Enniscorthy and Wexford.
The leadership of the Wexford rebels was both Catholic and Protestant (the leader was the Protestant Harvey Bagenal), but included some Catholic priests such as father John Murphy and the rank and file were largely Catholic, in many cases enraged by the sectarian atrocities committed in the previous months by the Yeomonary.
The rebels failed to take the towns of New Ross and Arklow despite determined and costly assaults and remained bottled up in Ireland’s south eastern corner. In response to the government forces’ killing of prisoners at New Ross, the rebels killed over 100 local loyalists at Scullabogue and another 100 at Wexford Bridge. The fighting in the rebellion was marked by an extreme ideological and, increasingly, sectarian, bitterness. Prisoners on both sides were commonly killed after battle.
The rebels in Wexford held most of the country for a month before being defeated at Vinegar Hill.
The Wexford rebellion was smashed about a month after it broke out, when over 13,000 British troops converged on the main rebel camp at Vinegar Hill on June 21, 1798 and broke up, though failed to trap, the main rebel army. Guerrilla fighting continued, but the main rebel stronghold had fallen.
A depiction of the Battle of Antrim 1798 at which the Ulster Irish uprising was crushed.
In the north, the mainly Presbyterian United Irishmen there launched their own uprising in support of Wexford in early June, but again, after some initial success, were defeated by government troops and militia. Their leaders, Henry Joy McCracken and Henry Munro, were captured and hanged.
The last act of the rebellion came in August 1798, when a small French expeditionary force of 1,500 men landed at Killalla Bay in county Mayo.
Led by General Humbert, they defeated a British force at Castlebar, but were themselves defeated and forced to surrender at Ballinamuck. While the French soldiers were allowed to surrender, the Irish insurgents who accompanied them were massacred.
Another, final, French attempt to land an expeditionary force in Ireland, accompanied by United Irish leader Wolfe Tone, was intercepted and defeated in a sea battle by the Royal Navy near Tory Island off the Donegal coast in October. Tone was captured along with over 2,000 French servicemen. Sentenced to death, Tone took his own life in prison in Dublin.
Lord Cornwallis, the Lord Lieutenant, tried to end the bloodshed and reprisals by government forces by forgoing execution of the other imprisoned United leaders in return for their telling what they knew of the clandestine United Irish organisation. An amnesty and pardon was also declared for rank and file United Irishmen.
Aftermath
Cornwallis, the Lord Lieutenant who oversaw the Act of Union.
The fighting in the 1798 rebellion lasted just three months, but the deaths ran into the tens of thousands. A high estimate of the death toll is 70,000 and the lowest one puts it at about 10,000.
Thousands more former rebels were exiled in Scotland, transported to penal colonies in Australia and others such as Miles Byrne went into exile serving in the French revolutionary and Napoleonic armies until 1815.
A brief rebellion led by Robert Emmet, younger brother of one of the 1798 United Irish leaders, in 1802 achieved little beyond Emmet’s own death by execution.
In 1800 the Irish parliament, under pressure from the British authorities, voted itself out if existence and Ireland was ruled directly from London from then until 1922.
The Irish parliament was abolished in 1800 and Ireland ruled directly from London until 1922.
While the radicals of the 1790s had hoped that religious divisions in Ireland could be made a thing of the past, the fierce sectarian violence that took place on both sides during the rebellion actually hardened sectarian animosities. Many northern Presbyterians began to see the British connection as less potentially dangerous for them than an independent Ireland.
The United Irishmen’s hope of founding a secular, independent, democratic Irish Republic therefore ended in total defeat.
25cm x 35cm Limerick
The Irish National Land League was an Irish political organisation of the late 19th century which sought to help poor tenant farmers. Its primary aim was to abolish landlordism in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on. The period of the Land League's agitation is known as the Land War. Historian R. F. Foster argues that in the countryside the Land League "reinforced the politicization of rural Catholic nationalist Ireland, partly by defining that identity against urbanization, landlordism, Englishness and—implicitly—Protestantism."Foster adds that about a third of the activists were Catholic priests, and Archbishop Thomas Croke was one of its most influential champions.
Background
Following the founding meeting of the Mayo Tenants Defence Association in Castlebar, County Mayo on 26 October 1878 the demand for The Land of Ireland for the people of Ireland was reported in the Connaught Telegraph 2 November 1878.
The first of many "monster meetings" of tenant farmers was held in Irishtown near Claremorris on 20 April 1879, with an estimated turnout of 15,000 to 20,000 people. This meeting was addressed by James Daly (who presided), John O'Connor Power, John Ferguson, Thomas Brennan, and J. J. Louden.
The Connaught Telegraph's report of the meeting in its edition of 26 April 1879 began:
Since the days of O'Connell a larger public demonstration has not been witnessed than that of Sunday last. About 1 o'clock the monster procession started from Claremorris, headed by several thousand men on foot – the men of each district wearing a laural leaf or green ribbon in hat or coat to distinguish the several contingents. At 11 o'clock a monster contingent of tenant-farmers on horseback drew up in front of Hughes's hotel, showing discipline and order that a cavalry regiment might feel proud of. They were led on in sections, each having a marshal who kept his troops well in hand. Messrs. P.W. Nally, J.W. Nally, H. French, and M. Griffin, wearing green and gold sashes, led on their different sections, who rode two deep, occupying, at least, over an Irish mile of the road. Next followed a train of carriages, brakes, cares, etc. led on by Mr. Martin Hughes, the spirited hotel proprietor, driving a pair of rare black ponies to a phæton, taking Messrs. J.J. Louden and J. Daly. Next came Messrs. O'Connor, J. Ferguson, and Thomas Brennan in a covered carriage, followed by at least 500 vehicles from the neighbouring towns. On passing through Ballindine the sight was truly imposing, the endless train directing its course to Irishtown – a neat little hamlet on the boundaries of Mayo, Roscommon, and Galway.
Evolving out of this a number of local land league organisations were set up to work against the excessive rents being demanded by landlords throughout Ireland, but especially in Mayo and surrounding counties.
From 1874 agricultural prices in Europe had dropped, followed by some bad harvests due to wet weather during the Long Depression. The effect by 1878 was that many Irish farmers were unable to pay the rents that they had agreed, particularly in the poorer and wetter parts of Connacht. The localised 1879 Famine added to the misery. Unlike many other parts of Europe, the Irish land tenure system was inflexible in times of economic hardship.
League founded
National Land League plaque Imperial Hotel in Castlebar
The Irish National Land League was founded at the Imperial Hotel in Castlebar, the County town of Mayo, on 21 October 1879. At that meeting Charles Stewart Parnell was elected president of the league. Andrew Kettle, Michael Davitt and Thomas Brennan were appointed as honorary secretaries. This united practically all the different strands of land agitation and tenant rights movements under a single organisation.
The two aims of the Land League, as stated in the resolutions adopted in the meeting, were:
..."first, to bring about a reduction of rack-rents; second, to facilitate the obtaining of the ownership of the soil by the occupiers".
That the object of the League can be best attained by promoting organisation among the tenant-farmers; by defending those who may be threatened with eviction for refusing to pay unjust rents; by facilitating the working of the Bright clauses of the Irish Land Act during the winter; and by obtaining such reforms in the laws relating to land as will enable every tenant to become owner of his holding by paying a fair rent for a limited number of years".
Charles Stewart Parnell, John Dillon, Michael Davitt, and others then went to the United States to raise funds for the League with spectacular results. Branches were also set up in Scotland, where the Crofters Party imitated the League and secured a reforming Act in 1886.
The government had introduced the first Land Act in 1870, which proved largely ineffective. It was followed by the marginally more effective Land Acts of 1880 and 1881. These established a Land Commission that started to reduce some rents. Parnell together with all of his party lieutenants, including Father Eugene Sheehyknown as "the Land League priest", went into a bitter verbal offensive and were imprisoned in October 1881 under the Irish Coercion Act in Kilmainham Jail for "sabotaging the Land Act", from where the No-Rent Manifesto was issued, calling for a national tenant farmer rent strike until "constitutional liberties" were restored and the prisoners freed. It had a modest success In Ireland, and mobilized financial and political support from the Irish Diaspora.
Although the League discouraged violence, agrarian crimes increased widely. Typically a rent strike would be followed by eviction by the police and the bailiffs. Tenants who continued to pay the rent would be subject to a boycott, or as it was contemporaneously described in the US press, an "excommunication" by local League members.Where cases went to court, witnesses would change their stories, resulting in an unworkable legal system. This in turn led on to stronger criminal laws being passed that were described by the League as "Coercion Acts".
The bitterness that developed helped Parnell later in his Home Rule campaign. Davitt's views as seen in his famous slogan: "The land of Ireland for the people of Ireland" was aimed at strengthening the hold on the land by the peasant Irish at the expense of the alien landowners.Parnell aimed to harness the emotive element, but he and his party were strictly constitutional. He envisioned tenant farmers as potential freeholders of the land they had rented.
In the Encyclopedia Britannica, the League is considered part of the progressive "rise of fenianism".
In the United States
The Land League had an equivalent organization in the United States, which raised hundreds of thousands of dollars both for famine relief and also for political action.The Clan na Gael attempted to infiltrate the Land League, with limited success.
Land war
William Gladstone under pressure of Land League. Caricature circa 1880s.
From 1879 to 1882, the "Land War" in pursuance of the "Three Fs" (Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure and Free Sale) first demanded by the Tenant Right League in 1850, was fought in earnest. The League organised resistance to evictions, reductions in rents and aided the work of relief agencies. Landlords' attempts to evict tenants led to violence, but the Land League denounced excessive violence and destruction.
Irish land League poster
dating from the 1880s
Withholding of rent led on to evictions until "Ashbourne's Act" in 1885 made it unprofitable for most landlords to evict.By then agricultural prices had made a recovery, and rents had been fixed and could be reviewed downwards, but tenants found that holding out communally was the best option. Critics noted that the poorer sub-tenants were still expected to pay their rents to tenant farmers.
The widespread upheavals and extensive evictions were accompanied by several years of bad weather and poor harvests, when the tenant farmers who were unable to pay the full arrears of rents resorted to a rent strike. A renewed Land War was waged under the Plan of Campaign from 1886 up until 1892 during which the League decided on a fair rent and then encouraged its members to offer this rent to the landlords. If this was refused, then the rent would be paid by tenants to the League and the landlord would not receive any money until he accepted a discount.
The first target, ironically, was a member of the Catholic clergy, Canon Ulick Burke of Knock, who was eventually induced to reduce his rents by 25%. Many landlords resisted these tactics, often violently and there were deaths on either side of the dispute. The Royal Irish Constabulary, the national police force, largely made up of Irishmen, were charged with upholding the law and protecting both landlord and tenant against violence. Originally, the movement cut across some sectarian boundaries, with some meetings held in Orange halls in Ulster, but the tenancy system in effect there Ulster Custom was quite different and fairer to tenants and support drifted away.
As a result of the Land War, the Irish National Land League was suppressed by the authorities. In October 1882, as its successor Parnell founded the Irish National League to campaign on broader issues including Home Rule.Many of the Scottish members formed the Scottish Land Restoration League. In 1881, the League started publishing United Ireland a weekly newspaper edited by William O'Brien, which continued until 1898.
Outcomes
Within decades of the league's foundation, through the efforts of William O'Brien and George Wyndham (a descendant of Lord Edward FitzGerald), the 1902 Land Conference produced the Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903 which allowed Irish tenant farmers to buy out their freeholds with UK government loans over 68 years through the Land Commission (an arrangement that has never been possible in Britain itself). For agricultural labourers, D.D. Sheehanand the Irish Land and Labour Association secured their demands from the Liberal government elected in 1905 to pass the Labourers (Ireland) Act 1906, and the Labourers (Ireland) Act 1911, which paid County Councils to build over 40,000 new rural cottages, each on an acre of land. By 1914, 75% of occupiers were buying out their landlords, mostly under the two Acts. In all, under the pre-UK Land Acts over 316,000 tenants purchased their holdings amounting to 15 million acres (61,000 km2) out of a total of 20 million acres (81,000 km2) in the country. Sometimes the holdings were described as "uneconomic", but the overall sense of social justice was manifest.
The major land reforms came when Parliament passed laws in 1870, 1881, 1903 and 1909 that enabled most tenant farmers to purchase their lands, and lowered the rents of the others. From 1870 and as a result of the Land War agitations and the Plan of Campaign of the 1880s, various British governments introduced a series of Irish Land Acts. William O'Brien played a leading role in the 1902 Land Conference to pave the way for the most advanced social legislation in Ireland since the Union, the Wyndham Land Purchase Act of 1903. This Act set the conditions for the break-up of large estates and gradually devolved to rural landholders, and tenants' ownership of the lands. It effectively ended the era of the absentee landlord, finally resolving the Irish Land Question.
‘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)
The most haunting and poignant image of Irish involvement in the first World War is at the centre of an unsolved art mystery.
The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue du Bois – a painting long presumed lost – depicts soldiers of the Royal Munster Fusiliers regiment receiving “general absolution” from their chaplain on the eve of battle in May 1915. Most of them died within 24 hours.
The painting, by Italian-born war artist Fortunino Matania, became one of the most famous images of the war when prints of it were published in illustrated weekly newspapers.
Copies hung in houses & pubs throughout Ireland, and especially Munster, but, as Irish public opinion towards the war changed, the picture gradually disappeared from view.A copy still hangs in the famous pub Larkins of Garrykennedy Co Tipperary to this day.
Centenary commemorations of the first World War have prompted renewed interest in the whereabouts of the original painting among art and military historians.
A widely held theory that the painting was lost when archives were destroyed in a fire during the blitz of London in 1940 is “very much” doubted by English historian Lucinda Gosling, who is writing a book about the artist.
She told The Irish Times there was no definitive proof to confirm this theory and it was possible the original painting was still “out there”.
The painting could, conceivably, be in private hands or, more improbably, be lying forgotten or miscatalogued in a museum’s storage area. Matania’s work occasionally turns up at art auctions, but there has been no known or publicly-documented sighting of the original Munsters painting.
Ms Gosling described Matania as an artist “able to work at great speed, producing pictures that were unnervingly photographic in their realism”.
His pictures, she said, had “reached and influenced millions” and “he combined skill and artistry with a strong streak of journalistic tenacity”.
Wayside shrine
The painting is based on an event that took place on Saturday evening, May 8th, 1915.
Soldiers from the Second Battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers, commanded by Lieut-Col Victor Rickard, paused beside a wayside shrine near the village of Rue du Bois in northwest France. The following day, they were due to go into battle, in what became known as the Battle of Aubers Ridge.
The painting is imbued with a sense of impending doom.
In Catholic canon law, a priest may grant general absolution of sin to a gathering of the faithful where there is imminent danger of death and no time for individual confessions.
The ritual was used on September 11th, 2001, in New York to grant general absolution to police officers and firefighters about to enter the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre.
In the painting, the Irish chaplain Fr Francis Gleeson is shown blessing the men: “Misereatur vestri omnipotens Deus; et dimissis omnibus peccatis vestris, perducat vos Iesus Christus ad vitam aeternam” (May Almighty God have mercy on you, and having forgiven all your sins, may Jesus Christ bring you to life everlasting).
The men then sang the hymns Te Deum and Hail Glorious St Patrick.
The artist was not present at the scene but based his painting on a written account by Lieut- Col Rickard’s widow, Jessie, who is believed to have commissioned the painting in memory of her husband.
She had gathered eye-witness accounts from survivors and wrote: “There are many journeys and many stopping- places in the strange pilgrimage we call life, but there is no other such journey in the world as the journey up a road on the eve of battle, and no stopping- place more holy than a wayside shrine.”
She noted among the troops were “lads from Kerry and Cork, who, a year before, had never dreamed of marching in the ranks of the British army”.
After Fr Gleeson’s blessing, she wrote: “The regiment moved on, and darkness fell as the skirl of the Irish pipes broke out, playing a marching tune.
“The Munsters were wild with enthusiasm; they were strong with the invincible strength of faith and high hope, for they had with them the vital conviction of success, the inspiration that scorns danger – which is the lasting heritage of the Irish; theirs still and theirs to remain when great armaments and armies and empires shall be swept away, because it is immovable as the eternal stars.”
Mown down
The following morning, Sunday May 9th, most of the Irish soldiers were mown down by German gunfire and shelling.
On a catastrophic day for the British army – over 11,000 casualties – the Royal Munster Fusiliers suffered dreadful losses. Exact estimates vary, but one account records 800 Munsters went into battle and only 200 assembled that evening.
Mrs Rickard concluded : “So the Munsters came back after their day’s work; they formed up again in the Rue du Bois, numbering 200 men and three officers. It seems almost superfluous to make any further comment.”
The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue du Bois
The Painting
The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue du Bois shows some of the hundreds of soldiers from the second battalion of the Royal Munster Fusiliers who gathered at a shrine near the village of Rue du Bois on the western front on Saturday, May 8th, 1915.
The image was published in the London illustrated weekly newspaper The Sphere in November 1916, and in 1917 in the Weekly Freeman’s, an Irish publication. There are copies of the print in various museums and in private ownership in Ireland and Britain.
The Artist
Fortunino Matania, (1881- 1963) was born in Naples and was a well-known artist and illustrator in Italy before moving to London in 1902. He worked for The Sphere – an illustrated weekly newspaper – and became famous for depicting the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.
He was an official war artist in the first World War and his graphic illustrations of trench warfare were highly renowned.
The Location
Rue du Bois is located near the village of Neuve Chapelle in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France close to the border with Belgium. According to the Royal Munster Fusiliers Association, the original shrine has long gone.
The Chaplain
Depicted on horseback, with hand raised granting general absolution, is Fr Francis Gleeson, a native of Templemore, Co Tipperary. He was ordained a priest in Maynooth in 1910 and volunteered to serve as a chaplain in the army at the outbreak of the war. He was assigned to the Royal Munster Fusiliers and served with distinction. He survived the war and returned to Ireland where he worked as priest in Dublin and died in 1959.
The Commanding Officer
Lieut-Col Victor Rickard, the other man on horseback, was born in Englandto an Irish father and English mother.
He was the commander of the battalion. He died in action the next day, aged 40.
The Patron
Lieut-Col Rickard’s widow Jessie, who is believed to have commissioned the painting, was the daughter of a Church of Ireland clergyman who spent her youth in Mitchelstown, Co Cork. She became a well-known novelist and published some 40 books.
After the war she converted to Catholicism under the guidance of another former chaplain in the British army in the first World War – Fr Joseph Leonard, who later befriended Jackie Kennedy.
Mrs Rickard died at Montenotte, Cork, in 1963, aged 86.
We were very fortunate to acquire this very famous poster-The Bogs of Ireland.A collage of some very interesting toilets recorded for eternity by the renowned photographer John Morris.This poster is now completely out of print and is difficult to acquire.Makes a wonderful addition to anyone's favourite sanctuary and place of solitude!
Each poster is individually numbered.
Dimensions : 65cm x 45cm
An extraordinary piece of Irish Rugby memorabilia .A team photo of the 'Blarney Boys-Irish International Rugby XV' taken by Jim Grier from Granard Co Longford,who was an RAF pilot incarcerated in Stalag VIIIB Prisoner of War Camp in Lamsdorf,East Germany from 1942 to 1945.This amazing photograph was taken by the resident German Camp Photographer and presented to Jim.
36cm x 50cm
Jim captained the Irish Team which was assembled during the summer of 1943 when the prisoners organised their own international rugby tournament comprising of the various nationalities incarcerated there.The Irish Team were mainly Army men.Their coach was the remarkable 'Pop' Press -50 years old and a Great War Veteran and Royal Marine (seen in the photo back row on left ).All teams were assigned full playing kit by their hosts with their country's emblem emblazoned on each.
Stalag 344 was a large German P.O.W Camp ,100 miles south of Breslau and held between 12 & 15000 British troops, most of them taken prisoner at Dunkirk in 1940,Canadian & RAF Aircrew.
The competition was limited to 12 a side as the pitches were small.Not surprisingly ,a New Zealand team emerged victorious who competed against the Home Nations.
Framed photo of an iconic moment as the Beatles arrive in Dublin,pistured outside the old Dublin Airport Terminal in
47cm x 60cm Dublin
November 7, 1963, one of the wildest phenomenons of the 20th century hit Dublin.... a Liverpudlian revolution named The Beatles!
All these years later, according to The Irish Times, a plaque will be placed at the site of the event, the Adelphi Cinema on Middle Abbey Street in Dublin.
The tribute honors a world-changing British rock and roll group who the columnist Quidnunc in the Times described as “four hairy youngsters. [They] appeared onstage to be greeted with shrieks and whistles. Three of them walloped electric guitars which appeared to be amplified to the decibel limit, the fourth walloped a set of drums.“They all opened their mouths and made noises that sounded to me like: ‘Mew; Me-oh, me-ooh, me-ooh-ooh!’”
The Beatles had come to town for two sold-out shows at the Adelphi. Ireland would never be quite the same again
Fifteen days later JFK would be assassinated. The old innocent age drew to a close.
The newspapers all reported on a strange phenomenon called Beatlemania. “It’s happening everywhere,” declared the Daily Mirrorworriedly.
What was significant was that it was young girls who were screaming their heads off, crying, scratching to get near and touch the Beatles. Female sexuality was a completely new phenomenon in Holy Catholic Ireland, and their honors the bishops were not long in weighing in
What happened in Dublin was a riot. The 3,000 pumped up crowd for the first show came streaming out only to run full tilt into the 3,000-second show patrons.
Neither crowd gave way, and pushing and shoving ensued. Then it turned nasty.
A commotion described as a riot took place. The Times lead ran"
“Many arrested as city crowds run riot.”“Cars were overturned in Abbey Street and O’Connell Street, at least 50 people were treated for minor injuries, while three people were taken to hospital with fractured legs and arms.”
A young man was also hospitalized after being stabbed. Two hundred police and three fire brigades arrived. Buses and taxis were halted in the melee.
Only the ringing of the fire bells seemed to settle down the crowd, but soon more crowds arrived and fights began anew.
“One group of youths pushed a parked car into half a dozen policemen who were trying to get them out of the street,” reported the Times. “St John’s Ambulance men treated men and women on the footpaths while the crowds swirled around them.”
The Beatles did not hang around. John, Paul, George, and Ringo escaped in a newspaper van to the nearby Gresham Hotel. Later, two of them went to Drumcondra to see relatives, the Times reported.
The Times’ reviewer at the gig could hear nothing but the sound of “ecstatic, joyful, hysteric, demented” screams from Dublin teenagers. He wrote:
“A pity, this, because the Beatles, in spite of their theatrical gimmicks, their long locks, and ‘with-it’ suits, have a great act…God knows, Dublin has never seen anything like the Beatles.”
Indeed they had not. Nor would they ever see their likes again. Despite their multiple Irish connections, the four lads would never be back, and more’s the pity.
Framed photo of an iconic moment as the Beatles arrive in Dublin,pistured outside the old Dublin Airport Terminal in
47cm x 60cm Dublin
November 7, 1963, one of the wildest phenomenons of the 20th century hit Dublin.... a Liverpudlian revolution named The Beatles!
All these years later, according to The Irish Times, a plaque will be placed at the site of the event, the Adelphi Cinema on Middle Abbey Street in Dublin.
The tribute honors a world-changing British rock and roll group who the columnist Quidnunc in the Times described as “four hairy youngsters. [They] appeared onstage to be greeted with shrieks and whistles. Three of them walloped electric guitars which appeared to be amplified to the decibel limit, the fourth walloped a set of drums.“They all opened their mouths and made noises that sounded to me like: ‘Mew; Me-oh, me-ooh, me-ooh-ooh!’”
The Beatles had come to town for two sold-out shows at the Adelphi. Ireland would never be quite the same again
Fifteen days later JFK would be assassinated. The old innocent age drew to a close.
The newspapers all reported on a strange phenomenon called Beatlemania. “It’s happening everywhere,” declared the Daily Mirrorworriedly.
What was significant was that it was young girls who were screaming their heads off, crying, scratching to get near and touch the Beatles. Female sexuality was a completely new phenomenon in Holy Catholic Ireland, and their honors the bishops were not long in weighing in
What happened in Dublin was a riot. The 3,000 pumped up crowd for the first show came streaming out only to run full tilt into the 3,000-second show patrons.
Neither crowd gave way, and pushing and shoving ensued. Then it turned nasty.
A commotion described as a riot took place. The Times lead ran"
“Many arrested as city crowds run riot.”“Cars were overturned in Abbey Street and O’Connell Street, at least 50 people were treated for minor injuries, while three people were taken to hospital with fractured legs and arms.”
A young man was also hospitalized after being stabbed. Two hundred police and three fire brigades arrived. Buses and taxis were halted in the melee.
Only the ringing of the fire bells seemed to settle down the crowd, but soon more crowds arrived and fights began anew.
“One group of youths pushed a parked car into half a dozen policemen who were trying to get them out of the street,” reported the Times. “St John’s Ambulance men treated men and women on the footpaths while the crowds swirled around them.”
The Beatles did not hang around. John, Paul, George, and Ringo escaped in a newspaper van to the nearby Gresham Hotel. Later, two of them went to Drumcondra to see relatives, the Times reported.
The Times’ reviewer at the gig could hear nothing but the sound of “ecstatic, joyful, hysteric, demented” screams from Dublin teenagers. He wrote:
“A pity, this, because the Beatles, in spite of their theatrical gimmicks, their long locks, and ‘with-it’ suits, have a great act…God knows, Dublin has never seen anything like the Beatles.”
Indeed they had not. Nor would they ever see their likes again. Despite their multiple Irish connections, the four lads would never be back, and more’s the pity.
34cm x 54cm
Spectacular print of the Co Kildare Hunt in full cry including a stylish lady riding side saddle.
The Kildare Hunt Club was formally born in 1804, with Sir Fenton Aylmer of Donadea as its first master. Hunting had flourished in the 17th century but became a more formal entity by 1726 when the Ponsonbys of Bishopscourt established what might well constitute the original ‘Kildare Hunt’. The Conollys of Castletown House and the Kennedy’s of Johnstown both had a private pack of foxhounds by the 1760s.There were also packs at Castlemartin, Ballynure, Castlewarden, Donadea and Straffan. The Leinster Harriers were established at Kilmorony House near Athy in 1812 while the Naas Harriers were kennelled at Jigginstown from 1920 until 2000. Another keen hunting family were the Burghs of Oldtown, Naas; TJ and Ulick Burgh both took part in the cavalry charge at the battle of Tel el Kebir in Egypt in 1882.In the early 19th century, hunt members simply ‘improvised some modest little meeting at which gentlemen and farmers alike could indulge their taste for riding over a typical bit of Kildare country’. And yet the sport transcended religion and class to such an extent that, in the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin, it was said that hunting amongst the Catholic clergy was widespread.
Speaking to the Irish Times in 2007 about the Rolling Stones’s 1982 concert, Slane Castle owner Lord Henry Mount Charles said Ireland had never seen anything like it before.
“The weather was beautiful, the show was magic. Mick Jagger came down the Thursday before the show and had dinner in the castle and the production crew slept in the drawing room of the castle the night before the show. It had an almost gypsy-like quality about it.”
Some 70,000 music fans paid £12 each for a ticket in 1982. Thousands arrived the night before to camp out wherever they could find a pitch around the village. Fans complained of being charged £5 for a six-pack of beer and £1 for a can of Coke, with one newspaper report at the time remarking that “every kind of huckster, three-card-trick man and itinerant salesman had a stall in Slane”.
The day of the concert, July 24th, saw brilliant sunshine, with those who weren’t sprayed by two massive water hoses taking advantage of the lack of security to swim in the River Boyne.
After the warm-up acts, which included the Chieftains, the Rolling Stones bounded on, with Mick Jagger proclaiming: “It’s great to be back in Dublin. After 16 years, it’s very nice of you to come, so let’s spend the night together.” Jagger showed a hazy knowledge of Irish geography and also of the band’s own history. They had last played Ireland in 1965.
Aerial view of the 80,000-strong crowd at the Rolling Stones in Slane, July 1982. Photograph: Tom Lawlor
Concert report, Slane, 1982, by Maev Kennedy
They were a pretty audience. They brought their babies and some of them brought their mammies.In the interminable gaps between the live music they shinned over the 10-foot fence to leap into the Boyne and every mother’s son and daughter of them was decently clothed. Some stripped down to pants, some modestly leaped in fully clothed.
A ferocious, savage, vicious, terrifying gang of Hell’s Angels, from the badlands of Waterford, sat in a reeking huddle on the grass, shunned by 20 yards by the rest of the crowd. Hunched menacingly in their colours, they were eating Choc-Ices.
The crowd got younger all the way into the centre. Half way down were the 20-year-olds, sprawled out on rugs with their wine, in plastic bottles as per instructions, and their dope. The worst crime they committed was to fall sound asleep in the hot sun, and some slept right through the Stones.
Only in the first 10 rows, damped down by fire hoses and at one ecstatic moment sprayed with fire hose by Mick Jagger HIMSELF was there that wild dangerous electric excitement the media associates with huge rock concerts. They leaped and shrieked and held up imploring arms.
“You’re all right!” Mick Jagger yelled at them. “You’re not too bad yourself!” they shouted back.
Up at the top of the hill, up at the top of a 60 foot pine tree, a lunatic fan leaped up and down hysterically.
“It’s great to be back in Dublin,” Jagger assured them. Nobody had the heart to correct him.
By the last chords of the opening Under My Thumb a steady stream of denim was pouring up the slopes and out the gate. They’d waited 10 hours to see the Rolling Stones, and they’d seen the Rolling Stones; they knew exactly what they were going to play, so they left, perfectly happy.
People kept comparing the Stones concert to the Pope’s visit, but nobody ever left a Papal gig before the Last Blessing.
Returning after 25 years to Slane Castle, Mick Jagger performs to a crowd of 70,000 on Saturday 18th August, 2007. Photograph: Kate Geraghty
Concert report, Slane, August 2007
“Is it a bit much?” Mick Jagger asked while the central section of the massive stage, on which the Rolling Stones stood, levitated away from their backing band and moved through the awestruck crowd.
Excess is a term that has long been associated with the Stones, and their hi-tech, high energy performance seemed to strike the right chord with fans.
Concert goers who had paid some €60 extra for “Gold Circle” tickets, which entitled them to a standing space at front of the stage, most certainly got their money’s worth, as they stood a hair’s breadth away from their idols. Eventually the stage retracted and the show continued as before.
However, for some fans, the moment they stood beside the Rolling Stones will live long in memory.
Mick Jagger remains a remarkably competent frontman, with an impressive swagger, and his banter during the interludes had the crowd hanging on his every word.
He gave fans an obligatory few words “as Gaeilge” and to his credit, and much to the fans’ delight, his diction was spot on.
Another big cheer came when Jagger introduced guitarist Ronnie Wood to the crowd, describing him as a man from Naas, where Wood now has a home. Wood grabbed the microphone from his mate and bellowed “come on the Royals”, to a somewhat mixed reaction.
Dave Fanning spoke to The Irish Times in 2007: “I remember the first Slane, standing backstage and watching Phil Lynott arrive by helicopter. There wasn’t such a big vibe about hanging around the castle – everyone was either in the crowd or backstage.
“1987 was memorable because I was seeing one of my favourite people fail miserably: David Bowie. That was also the year I got my binoculars nicked.
“The Rolling Stones in 1982 was like a great big circus, and the stage had these two big catwalks that spread right out into the crowd like a pair of wings. When Keith Richards walked down one of the catwalks, he was standing just 50 yards from us, and that was cool.
“Bruce was the biggest thing going in 1985, but Slane was the biggest crowd he had played to up till then. Bob Dylan did a solid enough gig in ’84, but he played as if he was in the Baggot.
“Queen was the first Slane where it rained, and there was a bad vibe with the crowd down the front, because there were so many people there.”
Returning after 25 years to Slane Castle, Mick Jagger performs to a crowd of 70,000 on Saturday 18th August, 2007. Photograph: Kate Geraghty
BP Fallon: 1982 wasn’t a patch on 2007
BP Fallon spoke to The Irish Times in 2007 about his memories of 1980s Slane: “Dylan was the most memorable one for me – he had a great band which included Mick Taylor (ex-Rolling Stones) and Ian McLagan (ex-Faces).
“The worst Slane was definitely David Bowie – all that Glass Spider rubbish and those dancers. Terrible. I didn’t go to Queen on principle, because they had played in South Africa during the apartheid regime. I saw The Rolling Stones gig, but it wasn’t a patch on the [2007] tour.”
Nice retro 1980's Rothmans Cigarettes digital advertising clock in perfect working order.
Dublin 45cm x 25cm x 10cm
Rothmans International plc was a British tobacco manufacturer. Its brands included Rothmans, Player's and Dunhill. Its international headquarters were in Hill Street, London, and its international operations were run from Denham Place in Denham Village, Buckinghamshire.
The company was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, but it was acquired by British American Tobacco in 1999.Its business was strongest in Europe, and it specialised in premium brands.The company was founded by Louis Rothman in 1890 as a small kiosk on Fleet Street in London. In 1900 Rothman opened a small showroom in Pall Mall, from where he launched his famous Pall Mall cigarette brand. His reputation was such that King Edward VII granted Rothmans a royal warrant in 1905. Rothmans was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1929.
In 1954 the Rembrandt Tobacco Company acquired a controlling interest in Rothmans. Rembrandt was expanding and in 1958 acquired Carreras, who in turn took a 51% stake in Alfred Dunhill in 1967.
In the 1970s Rothmans became involved in sponsorships, sponsoring the British Olympic team in 1972 and the inaugural Hong Kong Sevens in 1976. They also sponsored Rothmans Football Yearbook, an annual football reference book, from 1970 until 2002.
In Malaysia, Rothmans was one of the popular brands of cigarette, so much so that one of the roundabouts in Petaling Jaya was named 'Rothmans Roundabout' owing to its proximity to the former headquarters of Rothmans of Pall Mall Malaysia (now British American Tobacco Malaysia). It has since converted to a 4-way junction.[3]
In 1988 Lord Swaythling became chairman and chief executive.[4]
In January 1996 the Rembrandt Group and Richemont merged their tobacco business under the "Rothmans International" name.[5] Then in 1999 Rothmans was acquired by British American Tobacco.[1] The takeover resulted in the closure of the Rothmans Spennymoor and Darlington manufacturing plants in 2000 and 2001 respectively, with production moved to a larger plant at Southampton.
Sponsorship of motorsports[edit]
Holden VL Commodore SS Group A of Allan Moffat & John Harvey, winner of the 1987 Monza 500, on display at the Historic Sandown 2009Rothmans was an active promoter of motorsports in the 1980s and 1990s.From 1982 onwards, Rothmans supported the factory Porsche sports car racing effort, winning the 1982 24 Hours of Le Mans with a 1-2-3 finish with their Porsche 956. They would win the event a further three times in the 1980s. Rothmans-Porsche also won the 1985 World Sportscar Championship before the team officially pulled out of the championship in 1987. Rothmans sponsorship also extended to rallying, where they sponsored Walter Röhrl's 1982 World Rally Championship-winning Opel Ascona 400. In 1984 Porsche produced the 911 SC RS rally car specifically for Rothmans with the car being run by David Richards and the newly formed Prodrive. Rothmans also sponsored the winning Porsche team at the 1986 Paris-Dakar rally.
When the Porsche involvement in rallying ended at the end of the Group B days, Rothmans transferred its association to the Subaru rally team, also run by Prodrive. Coincidentally, Richards was sponsored by Rothmans when he was co-driving Ari Vatanen to his privateer 1981 World Drivers' Championship success aboard the Ford Escort RS1800. The association with Prodrive would last until 1992, when their sponsorship was replaced by sister brand State Express 555.
Between 1985 and 1993, Rothmans supported the works Honda team in Grand Prix motorcycle racing. Rothmans then transferred their association to Williams during the World Championship from 1994 until 1997. However, their time with Williams was marred when Ayrton Senna, considered by many to be the greatest Formula 1 driver of all time, died behind the wheel of the Rothmans-Williams during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. Damon Hill won the 1996 title and Jacques Villeneuve in 1997. Sponsorship was transferred in 1998 to Winfield, another sister brand.
Rothmans was also the naming rights sponsor for Australian team Allan Moffat Racing in the early rounds of the inaugural World Touring Car Championship in 1987 (the Moffat team lad a long association with Rothmans who sponsored the team's Mazda RX-7s in the early-mid 1980s in Australian Touring car racing through their Peter Stuyvesant brand). Driving a V8 powered Holden VL Commodore SS Group A, team boss Allan Moffat and co-driver John Harvey won the first ever WTCC race, the 1987 Monza 500. The pair would later drive the Rothmans sponsored car to outright 4th place in the 1987 Spa 24 Hours.
48cm x 35cm
Aer Lingus was founded on 15 April 1936, with a capital of £100,000. Its first chairman was Seán Ó hUadhaigh.Pending legislation for Government investment through a parent company, Aer Lingus was associated with Blackpool and West Coast Air Services which advanced the money for the first aircraft, and operated with Aer Lingus under the common title "Irish Sea Airways". Aer Lingus Teoranta was registered as an airline on 22 May 1936.The name Aer Lingus was proposed by Richard F O'Connor, who was County Cork Surveyor, as well as an aviation enthusiast.
A DH.84 Dragon, repainted in the livery of Aer Lingus' original aircraft "Iolar".
On 27 May 1936, five days after being registered as an airline, its first service began between Baldonnel Airfield in Dublin and Bristol (Whitchurch) Airport, the United Kingdom, using a six-seater de Havilland DH.84 Dragon biplane (registration EI-ABI), named Iolar (Eagle).
Later that year, the airline acquired its second aircraft, a four-engined biplane de Havilland DH.86 Express named "Éire", with a capacity of 14 passengers. This aircraft provided the first air link between Dublin and London by extending the Bristol service to Croydon. At the same time, the DH.84 Dragon was used to inaugurate an Aer Lingus service on the Dublin-Liverpool route.
The airline was established as the national carrier under the Air Navigation and Transport Act (1936). In 1937, the Irish government created Aer Rianta (now called Dublin Airport Authority), a company to assume financial responsibility for the new airline and the entire country's civil aviation infrastructure. In April 1937, Aer Lingus became wholly owned by the Irish government via Aer Rianta.
The airline's first General Manager was Dr J.F. (Jeremiah known as 'Jerry') Dempsey, a chartered accountant, who joined the company on secondment from Kennedy Crowley & Co (predecessor to KPMG as Company Secretary in 1936 (aged 30) and was appointed to the role of General Manager in 1937. He retired 30 years later in 1967 at the age of 60.
In 1938, a de Havilland DH.89 Dragon Rapide replaced Iolar, and the company purchased a second DH.86B. Two Lockheed 14s arrived in 1939, Aer Lingus' first all-metal aircraft.
In January 1940, a new airport opened in the Dublin suburb of Collinstown and Aer Lingus moved its operations there. It purchased a new DC-3 and inaugurated new services to Liverpool and an internal service to Shannon. The airline's services were curtailed during World War II with the sole route being to Liverpool or Barton Aerodrome Manchester depending on the fluctuating security situation.
Post-war expansion
On 9 November 1945, regular services were resumed with an inaugural flight to London. From this point Aer Lingus aircraft, initially mostly Douglas DC-3s, were painted in a silver and green livery. The airline introduced its first flight attendants.
In 1946, a new Anglo-Irish agreement gave Aer Lingus exclusive UK traffic rights from Ireland in exchange for a 40% holding by British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) and British European Airways (BEA). Because of Aer Lingus' growth the airline bought seven new Vickers Viking aircraft in 1947, however, these proved to be uneconomical and were soon sold.
In 1947, Aerlínte Éireann came into existence to operate transatlantic flights to New York City from Ireland. The airline ordered five new Lockheed L-749 Constellations, but a change of government and a financial crisis prevented the service from starting. John A Costello, the incoming Fine GaelTaoiseach (Prime Minister), was not a keen supporter of air travel and thought that flying the Atlantic was too grandiose a scheme for a small airline from a small country like Ireland.
A Vickers Viscount 808 in "green top" livery at Manchester Airport in 1963.
During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Aer Lingus introduced routes to Brussels, Amsterdam via Manchester and to Rome. Because of the expanding route structure, the airline became one of the early purchasers of Vickers Viscount 700s in 1951, which were placed in service in April 1954. In 1952, the airline expanded its all-freight services and acquired a small fleet of Bristol 170 Freighters, which remained in service until 1957.
Prof. Patrick Lynch was appointed the chairman of Aer Lingus and Aer Rianta in 1954 and served in the position until 1975. In 1956, Aer Lingus introduced a new, green-top livery with a white lightning flash down the windows and the Irish flag displayed on the fin.
First transatlantic service
A Boeing 720 in Aer Lingus-Irish International livery in 1965.
On 28 April 1958, Aerlínte Éireann operated its first transatlantic service from Shannon to New York.In 1960, Aerlínte Éireann was renamed Aer Lingus.
Aer Lingus bought seven Fokker F27 Friendships, which were delivered between November 1958 and May 1959. These were used in short-haul services to the UK, gradually replacing the Dakotas, until Aer Lingus replaced them in 1966 with secondhand Viscount 800s.
The airline entered the jet age on 14 December 1960 when it received three Boeing 720 for use on the New York route and the newest Aer Lingus destination Boston.
In 1963, Aer Lingus added Aviation Traders Carvairs to the fleet. These aircraft could transport five cars which were loaded into the fuselage through the nose of the aircraft. The Carvair proved to be uneconomical for the airline partly due to the rise of auto ferry services, and the aircraft were used for freight services until disposed of.
The Boeing 720s proved to be a success for the airline on the transatlantic routes. To supplement these, Aer Lingus took delivery of its first larger Boeing 707 in 1964, and the type continued to serve the airline until 1986.
Jet aircraft
A Fokker F27 Friendship at Manchester Airport in 1965. The F27 was used on short-haul services between 1958 and 1966.
Conversion of the European fleet to jet equipment began in 1965 when the BAC One-Eleven started services on continental Europe.The airline adopted a new livery in the same year, with a large green shamrock on the fin. In 1966, the remainder of the company's shares held by Aer Rianta were transferred to the Minister for Finance.
In 1966, the company added routes to Montreal and Chicago. In 1968, flights from Belfast, in Northern Ireland, to New York City started, however, it was soon suspended due to the beginning of the Troubles.Aer Lingus introduced Boeing 737s to its fleet in 1969 to cope with the high demand for flights between Dublin and London. Later, Aer Lingus extended the 737 flights to all of its European networks.
In 1967, after 30 years of service, General Manager Dr J.F. Dempsey signed the contract for the airline's first two Boeing 747 aircraft before he retired later that year.
45cm x 34cm
Aer Lingus was founded on 15 April 1936, with a capital of £100,000. Its first chairman was Seán Ó hUadhaigh.Pending legislation for Government investment through a parent company, Aer Lingus was associated with Blackpool and West Coast Air Services which advanced the money for the first aircraft, and operated with Aer Lingus under the common title "Irish Sea Airways". Aer Lingus Teoranta was registered as an airline on 22 May 1936.The name Aer Lingus was proposed by Richard F O'Connor, who was County Cork Surveyor, as well as an aviation enthusiast.
A DH.84 Dragon, repainted in the livery of Aer Lingus' original aircraft "Iolar".
On 27 May 1936, five days after being registered as an airline, its first service began between Baldonnel Airfield in Dublin and Bristol (Whitchurch) Airport, the United Kingdom, using a six-seater de Havilland DH.84 Dragon biplane (registration EI-ABI), named Iolar (Eagle).
Later that year, the airline acquired its second aircraft, a four-engined biplane de Havilland DH.86 Express named "Éire", with a capacity of 14 passengers. This aircraft provided the first air link between Dublin and London by extending the Bristol service to Croydon. At the same time, the DH.84 Dragon was used to inaugurate an Aer Lingus service on the Dublin-Liverpool route.
The airline was established as the national carrier under the Air Navigation and Transport Act (1936). In 1937, the Irish government created Aer Rianta (now called Dublin Airport Authority), a company to assume financial responsibility for the new airline and the entire country's civil aviation infrastructure. In April 1937, Aer Lingus became wholly owned by the Irish government via Aer Rianta.
The airline's first General Manager was Dr J.F. (Jeremiah known as 'Jerry') Dempsey, a chartered accountant, who joined the company on secondment from Kennedy Crowley & Co (predecessor to KPMG as Company Secretary in 1936 (aged 30) and was appointed to the role of General Manager in 1937. He retired 30 years later in 1967 at the age of 60.
In 1938, a de Havilland DH.89 Dragon Rapide replaced Iolar, and the company purchased a second DH.86B. Two Lockheed 14s arrived in 1939, Aer Lingus' first all-metal aircraft.
In January 1940, a new airport opened in the Dublin suburb of Collinstown and Aer Lingus moved its operations there. It purchased a new DC-3 and inaugurated new services to Liverpool and an internal service to Shannon. The airline's services were curtailed during World War II with the sole route being to Liverpool or Barton Aerodrome Manchester depending on the fluctuating security situation.
Post-war expansion
On 9 November 1945, regular services were resumed with an inaugural flight to London. From this point Aer Lingus aircraft, initially mostly Douglas DC-3s, were painted in a silver and green livery. The airline introduced its first flight attendants.
In 1946, a new Anglo-Irish agreement gave Aer Lingus exclusive UK traffic rights from Ireland in exchange for a 40% holding by British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) and British European Airways (BEA). Because of Aer Lingus' growth the airline bought seven new Vickers Viking aircraft in 1947, however, these proved to be uneconomical and were soon sold.
In 1947, Aerlínte Éireann came into existence to operate transatlantic flights to New York City from Ireland. The airline ordered five new Lockheed L-749 Constellations, but a change of government and a financial crisis prevented the service from starting. John A Costello, the incoming Fine GaelTaoiseach (Prime Minister), was not a keen supporter of air travel and thought that flying the Atlantic was too grandiose a scheme for a small airline from a small country like Ireland.
A Vickers Viscount 808 in "green top" livery at Manchester Airport in 1963.
During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Aer Lingus introduced routes to Brussels, Amsterdam via Manchester and to Rome. Because of the expanding route structure, the airline became one of the early purchasers of Vickers Viscount 700s in 1951, which were placed in service in April 1954. In 1952, the airline expanded its all-freight services and acquired a small fleet of Bristol 170 Freighters, which remained in service until 1957.
Prof. Patrick Lynch was appointed the chairman of Aer Lingus and Aer Rianta in 1954 and served in the position until 1975. In 1956, Aer Lingus introduced a new, green-top livery with a white lightning flash down the windows and the Irish flag displayed on the fin.
First transatlantic service
A Boeing 720 in Aer Lingus-Irish International livery in 1965.
On 28 April 1958, Aerlínte Éireann operated its first transatlantic service from Shannon to New York.In 1960, Aerlínte Éireann was renamed Aer Lingus.
Aer Lingus bought seven Fokker F27 Friendships, which were delivered between November 1958 and May 1959. These were used in short-haul services to the UK, gradually replacing the Dakotas, until Aer Lingus replaced them in 1966 with secondhand Viscount 800s.
The airline entered the jet age on 14 December 1960 when it received three Boeing 720 for use on the New York route and the newest Aer Lingus destination Boston.
In 1963, Aer Lingus added Aviation Traders Carvairs to the fleet. These aircraft could transport five cars which were loaded into the fuselage through the nose of the aircraft. The Carvair proved to be uneconomical for the airline partly due to the rise of auto ferry services, and the aircraft were used for freight services until disposed of.
The Boeing 720s proved to be a success for the airline on the transatlantic routes. To supplement these, Aer Lingus took delivery of its first larger Boeing 707 in 1964, and the type continued to serve the airline until 1986.
Jet aircraft
A Fokker F27 Friendship at Manchester Airport in 1965. The F27 was used on short-haul services between 1958 and 1966.
Conversion of the European fleet to jet equipment began in 1965 when the BAC One-Eleven started services on continental Europe.The airline adopted a new livery in the same year, with a large green shamrock on the fin. In 1966, the remainder of the company's shares held by Aer Rianta were transferred to the Minister for Finance.
In 1966, the company added routes to Montreal and Chicago. In 1968, flights from Belfast, in Northern Ireland, to New York City started, however, it was soon suspended due to the beginning of the Troubles.Aer Lingus introduced Boeing 737s to its fleet in 1969 to cope with the high demand for flights between Dublin and London. Later, Aer Lingus extended the 737 flights to all of its European networks.
In 1967, after 30 years of service, General Manager Dr J.F. Dempsey signed the contract for the airline's first two Boeing 747 aircraft before he retired later that year.
40cm x 37cm
Michael Collins (16 October 1890 – 22 August 1922) was an Irish revolutionary, soldier and politician who was a leading figure in the early-20th century struggle for Irish independence.During the War of Independence he was Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and a government minister of the self-declared Irish Republic. He was then Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State from January 1922 and commander-in-chief of the National Army from July until his death in an ambush in August 1922, during the Civil War.
Collins was born in Woodfield, County Cork, the youngest of eight children. He moved to London in 1906 to become a clerk in the Post Office Savings Bank at Blythe House. He was a member of the London GAA, through which he became associated with the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Gaelic League. He returned to Ireland in January 1916 and fought in the Easter Rising. He was taken prisoner and held in the Frongoch internment camp as a prisoner of war, but he was released in December 1916.
Collins subsequently rose through the ranks of the Irish Volunteers and Sinn Féin. He was elected as a Teachta Dála for South Cork in December 1918. Sinn Féin's elected members formed an Irish parliament, the First Dáil, in January 1919 and declared the independence of the Irish Republic. Collins was appointed Minister for Finance. In the ensuing War of Independence, he was Director of Organisation and Adjutant General for the Irish Volunteers, and Director of Intelligence of the IRA. He gained fame as a guerrilla warfare strategist, planning many successful attacks on British forces together with 'the Squad', such as the "Bloody Sunday" assassinations of key British intelligence agents in November 1920.
After the July 1921 ceasefire, Collins was one of five plenipotentiaries sent by the Dáil cabinet at the request of Éamon de Valera, to negotiate peace terms in London. The resulting Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed in December 1921, would establish the Irish Free State but depended on an oath of allegiance to the Crown. This was the clause in the treaty de Valera and other republican leaders found hardest to accept. Collins viewed the treaty as offering "the freedom to achieve freedom", and helped persuade a majority of the Dáil to ratify the treaty. A provisional government was formed under his chairmanship in early 1922. During this time he secretly provided support for an IRA offensive in Northern Ireland. It was soon disrupted by the Irish Civil War, in which Collins was commander-in-chief of the National Army. He was shot and killed in an ambush by anti-Treaty forces on 22 August 1922
Extremely rare,interesting print of the Irish Benches of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the House of Commons in 1885,with all members identified by name and number.
Gort Co Galway 45 cm x 60cm
The Irish Parliamentary Party or more commonly called the Irish Party or the Home Rule Party) was formed in 1874 by Isaac Butt, the leader of the Nationalist Party, replacing the Home Rule League, as official parliamentary party for Irish nationalist Members of Parliament (MPs) elected to the House of Commons at Westminster within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland up until 1918. Its central objectives were legislative independence for Ireland and land reform. Its constitutional movement was instrumental in laying the groundwork for Irish self-government through three Irish Home Rule bills.Instrumental to the party's rise and fall was the iconic statesman,Charles Stewart Parnell.
33cm x 30cm Tralee Co Kerry
Roger David Casement (1 September 1864 – 3 August 1916), known as Sir Roger Casement, CMG, between 1911 and 1916, was a diplomat and Irishnationalist. He worked for the British Foreign Office as a diplomat, becoming known as a humanitarian activist, and later as a poet and Easter Rising leader. Described as the "father of twentieth-century human rights investigations",he was honoured in 1905 for the Casement Report on the Congo and knighted in 1911 for his important investigations of human rights abuses in the rubber industry in Peru.
In Africa as a young man, Casement first worked for commercial interests before joining the British Colonial Service. In 1891 he was appointed as a British consul, a profession he followed for more than 20 years. Influenced by the Boer War and his investigation into colonial atrocities against indigenous peoples, Casement grew to mistrust imperialism. After retiring from consular service in 1913, he became more involved with Irish republicanism and other separatist movements. During World War I, he made efforts to gain German military aid for the 1916 Easter Rising that sought to gain Irish independence.
He was arrested, convicted and executed for high treason. He was stripped of his knighthood and other honours. Before the trial, the British government circulated excerpts said to be from his private journals, known as the Black Diaries, which detailed homosexual activities. Given prevailing views and existing laws on homosexuality, this material undermined support for clemency for Casement. Debates have continued about these diaries: a handwriting comparison study in 2002 concluded that Casement had written the diaries, but this was still contested by some.
30cm x 30cm
Philip Parris Lynott (20 August 1949 – 4 January 1986) was an Irish singer, musician, and songwriter. His most commercially successful group was Thin Lizzy, of which he was a founding member, the principal songwriter, lead vocalist and bassist. He was known for his imaginative lyrical contributions including working class tales and numerous characters drawn from personal influences and Celtic culture.
Lynott was born in the West Midlands of England, but grew up in Dublin with his grandparents. He remained close to his mother, Philomena, throughout his life. He fronted several bands as a lead vocalist, including Skid Row alongside Gary Moore, before learning the bass guitar and forming Thin Lizzy in 1969. After initial success with "Whiskey in the Jar", the band had several hits in the mid-1970s such as "The Boys Are Back in Town", "Jailbreak" and "Waiting for an Alibi", and became a popular live attraction combining Lynott's vocal and songwriting skills with dual lead guitars. Towards the end of the 1970s, Lynott embarked upon a solo career, published two books of poetry, and after Thin Lizzy disbanded, he assembled and fronted the band Grand Slam.
In the 1980s, Lynott increasingly suffered drug-related problems, particularly an addiction to heroin. In 1985, he had a final chart success with Moore, "Out in the Fields", followed by the minor hit "Nineteen", before his death in 1986. He remains a popular figure in the rock world, and in 2005, a statue in his memory was erected in Dublin.
45cm x 35cm. Dublin
Iconic b&w photograph of legendary Actor & Bon Viveur Peter O'Toole outside one of his favourite Dublin Watering Hole's-Toners of Baggott Street.
Peter Seamus O'Toole ( 2 August 1932 – 14 December 2013) was a British stage and film actor of Irish descent. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began working in the theatre, gaining recognition as a Shakespearean actor at the Bristol Old Vic and with the English Stage Company. In 1959 he made his West End debut in The Long and the Short and the Tall, and played the title role in Hamlet in the National Theatre’s first production in 1963. Excelling on the London stage, O'Toole was known as a "hellraiser" off it.
Making his film debut in 1959, O'Toole achieved international recognition playing T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) for which he received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He was nominated for this award another seven times – for playing King Henry II in both Becket (1964) and The Lion in Winter (1968), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), The Ruling Class (1972), The Stunt Man (1980), My Favorite Year (1982), and Venus (2006) – and holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations for acting without a win. In 2002, O'Toole was awarded the Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements. He was additionally the recipient of four Golden Globe Awards, one BAFTA Award for Best British Actor and one Primetime Emmy Award.
Brought up in Leeds, England in a Yorkshire Irish family, O'Toole has appeared on lists of greatest actors from publications in England and Ireland. In 2020, he was listed at number 4 on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
Situated on Baggot Street, Toners is one of Dublin’s oldest and most famous traditional pubs. To prove this, we were the overall winners of “Best Traditional Pub” in the National Hospitality Awards 2014. In September 2015 we also won Dublin Bar of the Year at the Sky Bar of the Year Awards. Original features in the pub take visitors back in time, including the old stock drawers behind the bar from when Toners first opened in 1818 as a bar and grocery shop. The interior details like the glazed cabinets filled with curio, elaborate mirrors, the brass bar taps and flagstone floors to mention a few, makes you feel like you are stepping in to a museum… A museum in which you can drink in!
Frequented by many of Ireland’s literary greats, including Patrick Kavanagh, the pub was also a favourite spot of W.B. Yeats and the snug is said to be the only place he would drink when he took an occasional tipple.
History of Toners Pub
Acquired first License by Andrew Rogers 1818 – 1859.
William F. Drought 1859 – 1883, Grocer, Tea, Wine & Spirit Merchant
John O’Neill 1883 – 1904, Tea, Wine & Spirit Merchant
James M Grant 1904 – 1923, Grocer, Tea, Wine & Spirit Merchant
Ned & Patricia Dunne & Partner Tom Murphy 1976 – 1987
Frank & Michael Quinn 1987 – Present
Snug of the Year 2010
Toners won “Snug of the Year” 2010, a competition hosted by Powers Whiskey. 110 pubs across Ireland were shortlisted, and after counting the public’s votes Toners was announced the winner. A snug is a private area separated within a pub and is a timeless feature in a traditional Irish pub. Like the one in Toners, it typically has its own door, a rugged bench and is completely private. Back in the day it was where the likes of policemen, lovers and the Irish literati met up.
Toners Yard
Since Toners opened its doors to the yard in 2012 it has been a very popular spot with both locals and tourists. The beer garden is ideal for sunny days as it gets the sun from morning until evening, and if it is a bit chillier the heaters will keep you warm.
Mumford & Sons – Arthurs Day 2012 in Toners Yard
Arthurs Day, the annual celebration of all things Guinness, has been hugely successful since it launched in 2009. Diageo launched a “vote for your local” competition for Arthurs Day 2012.
The public got a chance to vote and help bring a headline artist to their local pub. Toners, serving the best pint of Guinness in Dublin, got so much support from everyone and ended up being one of the winning pubs. The winning pubs were kept a secret until the night of Arthurs Day and to everyone’s delight, Mumford & Sons walked in to Toners Yard and played an amazing set.
Beautiful example of WW1 sweetheart artwork -an embroidered regimental crest for the Royal Irish Kings Hussars
34cm x 34cm Birr Co Offaly
Origins
Raised as a dragoon unit in 1693, this regiment was originally formed from Protestants living in Ireland. This was only two years after supporters of the deposed King James II had been decisively defeated at the Battle of Aughrim, so the new regiment remained in Ireland on policing duties.
In 1704, it was posted to Portugal and Spain during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14). It remained there until its capture at Brihuega in 1710.
Following a prisoner exchange, the regiment returned to Ireland, where it disbanded in April 1714. However, the First Jacobite Rebellion triggered its re-formation in July 1715. It went on to fight against both Jacobite Rebellions, but otherwise remained in Ireland from 1715 until 1794.
The regiment was designated the 8th Regiment of Dragoons in 1751. It became a light dragoon unit in 1775 and gained the ‘King’s’ prefix two years later.
Flintlock pistol used by Lieutenant-General Richard St George, Colonel of the 8th Dragoons, c1750
Quiz
Which of the following was a nickname of the 8th Hussars?
The cross bows
The cross swords
The cross belts
War with France
In 1794, the regiment was posted to the Low Countries during the French Revolutionary War (1793-1802). From 1796, it garrisoned the Cape of Good Hope before sending a detachment to join General Sir Ralph Abercrombie’s force in Egypt in 1801.
India
In 1802, it sailed to India, where it stayed for 22 years, fighting in the Second and Third Maratha Wars (1803-05, 1817-18), as well as campaigning against Meer Khan in 1812 and in Nepal in 1814.
In 1822, just after its return to Britain, it was renamed and re-equipped as a hussar regiment, keeping order in England and Ireland for the next 30 years.
Crimea
It fought against the Russians at Silistra on the Danube, en route to the main theatre of the Crimean War (1854-56). There, it served at the Alma (1854) and took part in the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava (1854). The charge was led by the Earl of Cardigan, who had been an officer in the 8th Hussars from 1824 to 1830.
Officers and men of the 8th (The King's Royal Irish) Light Dragoons (Hussars), 1855
Return to India
Only 154 members of the regiment returned from the Crimea in 1856. They were in Ireland for less than a year before being dispatched to deal with the Indian Mutiny (1857-59).
One of the regiment’s squadrons fought at Gwalior, where four of its soldiers won the Victoria Cross and a fifth killed the Rani of Jhansi.
It then formed part of India’s garrison until 1864, and again from 1878 to 1889, guarding lines of communication between Kabul and Peshawar during the Second Afghan War (1878-80) and fighting against the Shinwarrie tribe.
It spent the rest of the 19th century in England and Ireland. And from there, it sailed to the Boer War (1899-1902) in 1900, taking part in the anti-guerrilla operations.
Tanks of the 8th King's Royal Irish Hussars in Hamburg, May 1945
World Wars
The regiment spent the First World War (1914-18) on the Western Front, fitting in several engagements including Givenchy (1914) the Second Battle of Ypres (1915) and the Somme(1916). It made its last mounted charge there in 1917.
In 1919, it was posted to Iraq and then to Germany in 1926, before moving to Egypt and Palestine from 1933 to 1939. During this period, it was also converted to armoured cars and then light tanks.
During the Second World War (1939-45), the regiment saw a lot of action in North Africa(1940-42) and Greece (1941). The former campaign included the Battles of Sidi Barrani, Bardia, Beda Fomm and Sidi Rezegh in 1941, the Gazala battles of May-June 1942 and El Alamein in October 1942.
The regiment then returned to Britain to prepare for the invasion of Europe. It landed with its Cromwell tanks two days after D-Day (June 1944), fighting throughout the North West Europecampaign before ending the war near Hamburg. It then joined the occupation forces.
A tank crew from the 8th (King’s Royal Irish) Hussars make a meal on the Imjin front, 1951
Legacy
The regiment’s final campaign was in Korea between 1950 and 1952, which included service on the Imjin River. It then moved to Germany to join the British Army of the Rhine.
Due to heavy losses in 1942, the regiment had temporarily merged with the 4th Queen's Own Hussars. This amalgamation was enacted again in October 1958 - this time permanently - to form The Queen's Own Royal Irish Hussars.
49cm x 38cm
William Clarke & Son was a tobacco company that was founded in 1830 at South Main Street, Cork, Ireland.
In January 1924, following the formation of the Irish Free State, the United Kingdom trade of William Clarke & Son was transferred to Dublin and taken over by Ogden's.
William Clarke & Son, Dublin
William Clarke was founded in 1830 at South Main Street in Cork, however by 1870 the manufacturing side of the business had all been transferred to Hare Place, Scotland Road, Liverpool, with only depots remaining in Ireland.
Following the formation of the Irish Free State in 1926, the Liverpool based operation was taken over by Ogden’s, while a new factory was set up at South Circular Road in Dublin to produce tobacco and snuff under the William Clarke & Son brand. In 1929 William Clarke was amalgamated with Wills’s Irish branch, which resulted in Wills’s Irish production being integrated into the new South Circular Road factory in Dublin, though senior management were based in Wills’s Bristol operations and the Irish entity ultimately reported back into Bristol.
A beautiful original porcelain example of an Irish Mist Decanter bottle ,the iconic Irish soldier dressed in the traditional Irish Brigade of the Austrian Army uniform of 1750.
cm x cm x cm
Irish Mist is a brown Whiskey Liqueur produced in Dublin, Ireland, by the Irish Mist Liqueur Company Ltd. In September 2010 it was announced that the brand was being bought by Gruppo Campari from William Grant, only a few months after Grants had bought it from the C&C Group. It is made from aged Irish whiskey, heather and cloverhoney, aromatic herbs, and other spirits, blended to an ancient recipe claimed to be 1,000 years old.Though it was once 80 US proof (40% alcohol per volume), Irish Mist is now 35% or 70 US proof. The bottle shape has also been changed from a "decanter" style to a more traditional whiskey bottle shape. It is currently available in more than 40 countries.
Irish Mist was the first liqueur to be produced in Ireland when commercial production began in 1947 at Tullamore, County Offaly. Tullamore is the hometown of the Williams family who were the original owners of Irish Mist. The company history goes back to 1829 when the Tullamore Distillery was founded to produce Irish whiskey. In the mid-1940s Desmond E. Williams began the search for an alternative yet related product, eventually deciding to produce a liqueur based on the ancient beverage known as heather wine.In 1985 the Cantrell & Cochrane Group purchased the Irish Mist Liqueur Company from the Williams family. In the summer of 2010 Irish Mist and the entire spirit division of C&C was bought by William Grant of Scotland. In September 2010 they in turn sold Irish Mist to Gruppo Campari.Irish Mist is typically served straight up or on ice, but also goes with coffee, vodka, or cranberry juice. Per the makers, Irish Mist's most popular recipe is Irish Mist with Cola and Lime. A Rusty Mist is an ounce of Irish Mist with an ounce of Drambuie Scotch whisky liqueur.A Black Nail is made from equal parts Irish Mist and Irish whiskey.
Origins :Co Offaly
Dimensions : 50cm x 15cm 4kg
Toners won “Snug of the Year” 2010, a competition hosted by Powers Whiskey. 110 pubs across Ireland were shortlisted, and after counting the public’s votes Toners was announced the winner. A snug is a private area separated within a pub and is a timeless feature in a traditional Irish pub. Like the one in Toners, it typically has its own door, a rugged bench and is completely private. Back in the day it was where the likes of policemen, lovers and the Irish literati met up.
