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25cm x 40cm Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain before he started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading. The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.
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40cm x 30cm Luke Kelly (17 November 1940 – 30 January 1984) was an Irish singer, folk musician and actor from Dublin, Ireland. Born into a working-class household in Dublin city, Kelly moved to England in his late teens and by his early 20s had become involved in a folk music revival. Returning to Dublin in the 1960s, he is noted as a founding member of the band The Dubliners in 1962. Becoming known for his distinctive singing style, and sometimes political messages, the Irish Postand other commentators have regarded Kelly as one of Ireland's greatest folk singers. Early life Luke Kelly was born into a working-class family in Lattimore Cottages at 1 Sheriff Street.His maternal grandmother, who was a MacDonald from Scotland, lived with the family until her death in 1953. His father who was Irish- also named Luke- was shot and severely wounded as a child by British soldiers from the King's Own Scottish Borderers during the 1914 Bachelor's Walk massacre.His father worked all his life in Jacob's biscuit factory and enjoyed playing football. The elder Luke was a keen singer: Luke junior's brother Paddy later recalled that "he had this talent... to sing negro spirituals by people like Paul Robeson, we used to sit around and join in — that was our entertainment". After Dublin Corporation demolished Lattimore Cottages in 1942, the Kellys became the first family to move into the St. Laurence O’Toole flats, where Luke spent the bulk of his childhood, although the family were forced to move by a fire in 1953 and settled in the Whitehall area. Both Luke and Paddy played club Gaelic football and soccer as children. Kelly left school at thirteen and after a number of years of odd-jobbing, he went to England in 1958.[6] Working at steel fixing with his brother Paddy on a building site in Wolverhampton, he was apparently sacked after asking for higher pay. He worked a number of odd jobs, including a period as a vacuum cleaner salesman.Describing himself as a beatnik, he travelled Northern England in search of work, summarising his life in this period as "cleaning lavatories, cleaning windows, cleaning railways, but very rarely cleaning my face".
Musical beginnings
Kelly had been interested in music during his teenage years: he regularly attended céilithe with his sister Mona and listened to American vocalists including: Fats Domino, Al Jolson, Frank Sinatra and Perry Como. He also had an interest in theatre and musicals, being involved with the staging of plays by Dublin's Marian Arts Society. The first folk club he came across was in the Bridge Hotel, Newcastle upon Tyne in early 1960.Having already acquired the use of a banjo, he started memorising songs. In Leeds he brought his banjo to sessions in McReady's pub. The folk revival was under way in England: at the centre of it was Ewan MacColl who scripted a radio programme called Ballads and Blues. A revival in the skiffle genre also injected a certain energy into folk singing at the time. Kelly started busking. On a trip home he went to a fleadh cheoil in Milltown Malbay on the advice of Johnny Moynihan. He listened to recordings of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. He also developed his political convictions which, as Ronnie Drew pointed out after his death, he stuck to throughout his life. As Drew also pointed out, he "learned to sing with perfect diction". Kelly befriended Sean Mulready in Birmingham and lived in his home for a period.Mulready was a teacher who was forced from his job in Dublin because of his communist beliefs. Mulready had strong music links; a sister, Kathleen Moynihan was a founder member of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, and he was related by marriage to Festy Conlon, the County Galway whistle player. Mulready's brother-in-law, Ned Stapleton, taught Kelly "The Rocky Road to Dublin".During this period he studied literature and politics under the tutelage of Mulready, his wife Mollie, and Marxist classicist George Derwent Thomson: Kelly later stated that his interest in music grew parallel to his interest in politics. Kelly bought his first banjo, which had five strings and a long neck, and played it in the style of Pete Seeger and Tommy Makem. At the same time, Kelly began a habit of reading, and also began playing golf on one of Birmingham's municipal courses. He got involved in the Jug O'Punch folk club run by Ian Campbell. He befriended Dominic Behan and they performed in folk clubs and Irish pubs from London to Glasgow. In London pubs, like "The Favourite", he would hear street singer Margaret Barry and musicians in exile like Roger Sherlock, Seamus Ennis, Bobby Casey and Mairtín Byrnes. Luke Kelly was by now active in the Connolly Association, a left-wing grouping strongest among the emigres in England, and he also joined the Young Communist League: he toured Irish pubs playing his set and selling the Connolly Association's newspaper The Irish Democrat. By 1962 George Derwent Thomson had offered him the opportunity to further his educational and political development by attending university in Prague. However, Kelly turned down the offer in favour of pursuing his career in folk music. He was also to start frequenting Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger's Singer Club in London.The Dubliners
In 1961 there was a folk music revival or "ballad boom", as it was later termed, in waiting in Ireland.The Abbey Tavern sessions in Howth were the forerunner to sessions in the Hollybrook, Clontarf, the International Bar and the Grafton Cinema. Luke Kelly returned to Dublin in 1962. O'Donoghue's Pub was already established as a session house and soon Kelly was singing with, among others, Ronnie Drew and Barney McKenna. Other early people playing at O'Donoghues included The Fureys, father and sons, John Keenan and Sean Og McKenna, Johnny Moynihan, Andy Irvine, Seamus Ennis, Willy Clancy and Mairtin Byrnes. A concert John Molloy organised in the Hibernian Hotel led to his "Ballad Tour of Ireland" with the Ronnie Drew Ballad Group (billed in one town as the Ronnie Drew Ballet Group). This tour led to the Abbey Tavern and the Royal Marine Hotel and then to jam-packed sessions in the Embankment, Tallaght. Ciarán Bourke joined the group, followed later by John Sheahan. They renamed themselves The Dubliners at Kelly's suggestion, as he was reading James Joyce's book of short stories, entitled Dubliners, at the time.Kelly was the leading vocalist for the group's eponymous debut album in 1964, which included his rendition of "The Rocky Road to Dublin". Barney McKenna later noted that Kelly was the only singer he'd heard sing it to the rhythm it was played on the fiddle. In 1964 Luke Kelly left the group for nearly two years and was replaced by Bobby Lynch and John Sheahan. Kelly went with Deirdre O'Connell, founder of the Focus Theatre, whom he was to marry the following year, back to London and became involved in Ewan MacColl's "gathering". The Critics, as it was called, was formed to explore folk traditions and help young singers. During this period he retained his political commitments, becoming increasingly active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Kelly also met and befriended Michael O'Riordan, the General Secretary of the Irish Workers' Party, and the two developed a "personal-political friendship". Kelly endorsed O'Riordan for election, and held a rally in his name during campaigning in 1965.In 1965, he sang 'The Rocky Road to Dublin' with Liam Clancy on his first, self-titled solo album. Bobby Lynch left The Dubliners, John Sheahan and Kelly rejoined. They recorded an album in the Gate Theatre, Dublin, played the Cambridge Folk Festival and recorded Irish Night Out, a live album with, among others, exiles Margaret Barry, Michael Gorman and Jimmy Powers. They also played a concert in the National Stadium in Dublin with Pete Seeger as special guest. They were on the road to success: Top Twenty hits with "Seven Drunken Nights" and "The Black Velvet Band", The Ed Sullivan Show in 1968 and a tour of New Zealand and Australia. The ballad boom in Ireland was becoming increasingly commercialised with bar and pub owners building ever larger venues for pay-in performances. Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger on a visit to Dublin expressed concern to Kelly about his drinking.[citation needed] Christy Moore and Kelly became acquainted in the 1960s.During his Planxty days, Moore got to know Kelly well. In 1972 The Dubliners themselves performed in Richard's Cork Leg, based on the "incomplete works" of Brendan Behan. In 1973, Kelly took to the stage performing as King Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar. The arrival of a new manager for The Dubliners, Derry composer Phil Coulter, resulted in a collaboration that produced three of Kelly's most notable performances: “The Town I Loved So Well”, "Hand me Down my Bible", and “Scorn Not His Simplicity”, a song about Phil's son who had Down Syndrome.Kelly had such respect for the latter song that he only performed it once for a television recording and rarely, if ever, sang it at the Dubliners' often boisterous events. His interpretations of “On Raglan Road” and "Scorn Not His Simplicity" became significant points of reference in Irish folk music.His version of "Raglan Road" came about when the poem's author, Patrick Kavanagh, heard him singing in a Dublin pub, and approached Kelly to say that he should sing the poem (which is set to the tune of “The Dawning of the Day”). Kelly remained a politically engaged musician, becoming a supporter of the movement against South African apartheid and performing at benefit concerts for the Irish Traveller community,and many of the songs he recorded dealt with social issues, the arms race and the Cold War, trade unionism and Irish republicanism, ("The Springhill Disaster", "Joe Hill", "The Button Pusher", "Alabama 1958" and "God Save Ireland" all being examples of his concerns).Personal life
Luke Kelly married Deirdre O'Connell in 1965, but they separated in the early 1970s.Kelly spent the last eight years of his life living with his partner Madeleine Seiler, who is from Germany.Final years
Kelly's health deteriorated in the 1970s. Kelly himself spoke about his problems with alcohol. On 30 June 1980 during a concert in the Cork Opera House he collapsed on the stage. He had already suffered for some time from migraines and forgetfulness - including forgetting what country he was in whilst visiting Iceland - which had been ascribed to his intense schedule, alcohol consumption, and "party lifestyle". A brain tumour was diagnosed.Although Kelly toured with the Dubliners after enduring an operation, his health deteriorated further. He forgot lyrics and had to take longer breaks in concerts as he felt weak. In addition following his emergency surgery after his collapse in Cork, he became more withdrawn, preferring the company of Madeleine at home to performing.On his European tour he managed to perform with the band for most of the show in Carre for their Live in Carre album. However, in autumn 1983 he had to leave the stage in Traun, Austria and again in Mannheim, Germany. Shortly after this, he had to cancel the tour of southern Germany, and after a short stay in hospital in Heidelberg he was flown back to Dublin. After another operation he spent Christmas with his family but was taken into hospital again in the New Year, where he died on 30 January 1984.Kelly's funeral in Whitehall attracted thousands of mourners from across Ireland.His gravestone in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, bears the inscription: Luke Kelly – Dubliner. Sean Cannon took Kelly's place in The Dubliners. He had been performing with the Dubliners since 1982,due to the deterioration of Kelly's health.Legacy
Sculpture of Luke Kelly on Sheriff Street by Vera Klute. Unveiled in 2019 -
46cm x 32cm Dublin Daniel Donnelly (March 1788 – 18 February 1820) was a professional boxing pioneer and the first Irish-born heavyweight champion. He was posthumously inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, Pioneers Category in 2008. Donnelly was born in the docks of Dublin, Ireland in March 1788. He came from a family of seventeen children.Donnelly grew up in poverty; his father was a carpenter, but suffered from chest complaints and was frequently out of work. As soon as he was able, Donnelly also went to work as a carpenter. On the streets of Dublin, Donnelly had a reputation of being a hard man to provoke, but was known to be "handy with his fists", and he became the district's new fighting hero.There are a number of anecdotes about Donnelly's life in this period, including his rescue of a young woman being attacked by two sailors at the dockside, leading to his arm being badly mangled. He was taken to the premises of the prominent surgeon Dr. Abraham Colles who saved Donnelly's arm from amputation, describing him as a "pocket Hercules". Another tale concerns Donnelly's insistence of carrying the body of an old lady who had died of a highly contagious fever to a local graveyard, where he buried the body himself in a grave that had been "reserved for a person of distinction".
Early boxing career
Donnelly was nearly six feet (1.83 m) tall and weighed almost 14 stone (196 lbs, 89 kg). He was described as "a courageous man". As news of his fighting exploits with Dublin's feuding gangs spread swiftly. He gained a reputation for keeping local criminals in check. One boxer, recognized as champion of the city, became jealous of Donnelly's reputation and took to following him around the local taverns demanding a fight. Eventually, Donnelly relented and the fight was staged on the banks of the Grand Canal. The event aroused a great deal of interest in Dublin, and a good crowd turned up. Right up to the time they took sparring positions, Donnelly tried to talk his rival out of fighting, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. As the fight dragged on, Donnelly gradually overcame his rival, and in a furious attack in the 16th round, beat him to the ground. Donnelly was declared the new champion of the city. Around this time, an Irish aristocrat was sitting in an English tavern. Captain William Kelly listened as a pair of English prize-fighters mocked Ireland's reputation as a nation of courageous men.Kelly considered this an affront to his native land and resolved to find a fighting Irishman to take up the challenge.His search eventually took him to Dublin and to Dan Donnelly.King of the Curragh
When prize fights were first introduced, it was the Fancy who tended to the boxers. The Fancy were aristocrats who followed the sport in the 18th and 19th centuries. They organized the training, the matches, and the finance. Donnelly's first big fight under the patronage of Captain Kelly, was staged at the Curragh in County Kildare on 14 September 1814. The spot was known at the time as Belcher's Hollow, a natural amphitheatre that was regularly used for big prize fights. Donnelly's opponent was a prominent English fighter, Tom Hall, who was touring Ireland, giving sparring exhibitions and boxing instruction. By one o'clock when the bout was due to start, an estimated 20,000 people packed onto the sides of the hollow, at the base of which a 22-foot (6.71 m) square had been roped off.Cooper's challenge
It was the summer of 1815, and while Ireland was at its weakest, England had never seemed stronger. Wellington had beaten Napoleon at Waterloo and Britanniacertainly ruled the waves. In the minds of the populace, Dan Donnelly epitomized the national struggle in an Ireland governed by mad old George III, championing their seemingly hopeless cause against the intransigent representatives of the Crown. In Irish folk tradition, the hero took center stage. That goes back to the storytelling tradition which still exists today. The hero is revered; he's someone who is willing to stand up and fight for himself and his people. Dan was synonymous with Ireland as he was a patriot. He lived and fought in the period after the 1798 Rebellion and the Act of Union, and during the Catholic Emancipation movement. Spirits and morale were good in Ireland at that time. As a patriotic man himself, the timing couldn't be better for Donnelly. The political climate between Ireland and Britain is better and more peaceful today than it has been in a very long time, but if a rugby or soccer game is held between the two countries, there is a certain amount of tension or jingoism. Dan Donnelly and his boxing matches embodied this mentality in the early 19th century. It's symbolic of how the Irish and the English fought their political battles on the football pitch and in the boxing ring. Donnelly was a national hero, but he was also broke. He drank away the purse from beating Tom Hall, but the chance of another big payday eventually presented itself. He was approached by George Cooper and Tom Molyneux, two leading prize-fighters who were touring Ireland on an exhibition tour to teach the art of boxing. These two came to Dublin, heard of Donnelly, and invited him to meet them in a local pub. They prevailed upon him to fight Molyneux originally, and he said no. He had no desire to fight a conquered man, because Molyneux had just been beaten by the other man of the company, George Cooper. Molyneux was hurt by this curt refusal, but he was calmed down by his companion. Arrangements were made for the fight with Cooper. The bout was set for 13 November 1815. Once again, it was to be staged at Donnelly's Hollow on the Curragh in County Kildare.News of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo was resounding around Europe. George Cooper was a hotter favorite than the Iron Duke had been in his bout with the Little Corporal. Cooper was a bargeman with a fearful reputation. He was of gypsy bloodand he was 10/1 on to batter Dan Donnelly. From early morning, crews began to converge on Donnelly's Hollow.They came from far and wide, using every horse-drawn contraption they could find, or on horseback. If they couldn't do so, they gladly walked the distance. There were 20,000 people packed in there on that day. Excitement was intense. Bets were made back then as is still customary to this day. Bets were made on the results of the fight, on who'd draw the first blood, or on who would score the first knockdown. There were rules, but they were designed to accommodate gambling, the public, and those who organized the fight. The boxers themselves were of no consequence. It was a fight that went one way then the other for a round. Again, Donnelly's strength would always tell in a bare-knuckle fight to the finish. In one round, Cooper used the cross-buttock tactic with Donnelly and severely winded him. The cross-buttock was more a wrestling maneuver than a boxing one, but it was legitimate under the rules of the time. A competitor gets, more or less, in front of his opponent, and throws his adversary over his hip, causing him to land with great force on the ground. If one popular story is to be believed, Donnelly, who was being badly beaten in the fifth round, was saved by the magical properties of a lump of sugar cane slipped to him by Captain Kelly's sister. She had been pleading with Dan to win, telling him she had bet her entire estate on the outcome. When Donnelly failed to respond, she slipped him a piece of the sugar cane, while urging him, "Now my charmer, give him a warmer!"The Irish champion was rejuvenated and the course of the fight changed. In the seventh round, he sent Cooper flat on his back on the turf and jumped on top of him, winding Cooper so badly he could hardly rise. He did rise for the next round, but in the eleventh, Donnelly finished him off with a tremendous right hand that smashed Cooper's jaw. The sound of the cheering was likened to the sound of artillery going off. The cheers could be heard in villages for miles around. Donnelly was the conquering hero. As Donnelly proudly strode up the hill towards his carriage, fanatical followers dug out imprints left by his feet. Leading from the monument which commemorates the scene of his greatest victory, "The Steps to Strength and Fame" are still to be seen in Donnelly's Hollow. Donnelly politely declined all invitations to celebrate his triumph in the taverns of County Kildare. He had promised his friends and family he would return to Dublin immediately after the fight. Newspapers in the 18th century had many references to boxing. However, this was bare-knuckle fighting, fighting that was severe and sometimes brutal. That type of boxing was at its most popular during Dan's time. Boxing champions in those days became well-renowned. He was aware that political conflict was very much to the fore then. He accepted that he was representing the Irish people in this area in which he was active. He was a patriot, who, if needed, would stand up for his beliefs.Later life
Donnelly became a publican, hoping his notoriety would entice extra customers eager to hear stirring tales of his prize-ring. He had a reputation for being a gambler, a womanizer and a drunkard. Donnelly was the proprietor of a succession of four Dublin pubs, all of them unprofitable. Fallon's Capstan Bar is the only one still in existence. In his third and final fight on 21 July 1819, he defeated Tom Oliver in 34 rounds on English turf, at Crawley Down in Sussex. A full fight report was filed by the foremost prizefighting chronicler of the period, Pierce Egan. Egan irately described the reception accorded to Donnelly during a benefit night (6 April 1819) as 'rather foul': 'It was very unlike the usual generosity of John Bull towards a stranger – It was not national – but savoured something like prejudice' (Boxiana, vol. III).This animosity was borne predominantly from concern over the Irishman's fighting prowess, and Egan underscored the combination of resentment and overwhelming interest when reporting Donnelly's fight with Oliver: 'The English amateurs viewed him as a powerful opponent [and...] jealous for the reputation of the "Prize Ring", clenched their fists in opposition, whenever his growing fame was chaunted' (Boxiana, vol. III) He died at Donnelly's Public House, the last tavern he owned, on 18 February 1820 at the age of 31. An oval wall plaquecommemorates the site of his death. A squat, weather-beaten, gray obelisk surrounded by a short iron fence marks the exact site of the Cooper bout. The inscription on the monument: DAN DONNELLY BEAT COOPER ON THIS SPOT 13 December 1815. The date inscribed was inaccurate, as the bout actually took place one month earlier, on 13 November 1815, as reported in the Freeman's Journal the following day.Donnelly's arm
Donnelly was laid to rest, albeit briefly, at Bully's Acre, one of the city's oldest cemeteries.After just a few nights, grave robbers put Donnelly's body in a sack and delivered him to an eminent surgeon who paid good money for cadavers for study. They may even have been working to order. Donnelly's admirers tracked the body to the home of a surgeon by the name of Hall and threatened him with death. There was a quick negotiation and he agreed to give the body back as long as he could keep the right arm, the one that slew the English champions, for medical observation.The arm was preserved in red lead paint, and traveled to a medical college in Scotland where it was used by medical students for a number of years to study how all the bones worked together. From an Edinburgh classroom, the arm became an exhibit in a Victorian travelling circus, and it journeyed around Britain many times. In the early 20th century, it finally came back to Ireland. In 1904, a Belfast bookmaker, Hugh "Texas" McAlevey, acquired the arm and displayed it in his pub. The publican got tired of it and thought the grisly-looking sight might be frightening off customers, so he stuck it up in an attic.A betting parlor employee remembers as a teenager being told not to go up in the attic—that Donnelly's ghost was up there. Donnelly's arm made it back to Kilcullen in the 1950s. Publican Jim Byrne came up with the idea of recreating Donnelly's fight with George Cooper in the Curragh. The fight was promoted by bringing Donnelly's arm back to where it defeated the English opponent. The pageant brought the historic contest alive again, rekindling the Dan Donnelly fire. It was An Tóstal, an Irish festival started at that time nationwide in an effort to promote tourism. Each region was encouraged to have some sort of festival to attract visitors. This was the genesis of the Dan Donnelly pageant. Kevin McCourt, an army officer, was picked to play George Cooper, the English champion; Jim Berney was chosen to portray Dan Donnelly, the Irish champion. George Cooper and Dan Donnelly, as played by McCourt and Berney, had a group of supporters as well, dressed up and cheering, carrying them down into the arena. Two "supporters" performed getting involved in a ruckus. Local sporting clubs and townspeople comprised the spectators. Donnelly's arm found a new home in Jim Byrne's pub, "The Hideout."It became a popular attraction in Kilcullen. It was on display there for 43 years until Jim Byrne died and the pub passed to his son, Desmond,who was unaware of the arms value, and in 1997 he eventually sold the pub.The arm sat in his and Josephine's basement piled under junk for almost a decade until an American relative, Thomas Donnelly, began a national search for the arm. After several radio interviews and articles, the nations intrigue began to grow again on the whereabouts of the arm. Des died in 2005. After the media search gained traction, Josephine revealed that they kept the arm during the sale and it was disrespectfully laying in their basement. Josephine wouldn't let the human limb that was almost 200 years old go into a cargo hold for transportation to America. One of Des's bandmates had been Henry Donohoe, then the chief pilot for Aer Lingus. She called him and asked how to get the arm to the States. He told her that he would take it in the cockpit with himself. Josephine sat in first class. A special box was made for the arm, crating around it to prevent it from getting banged around. It fit into the cockpit with two inches to spare. As the centerpiece of the Fighting Irishmen Exhibit, Donnelly's arm went on display at the Irish Arts Center in New York City, in the autumn of 2006. The show traveled across the city to the South Street Seaport Museum in 2007.Its next appearance was at Boston College's John J. Burns Library in 2008. The arm returned to Ireland in 2009 when the show arrived at the Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh. 2010 was a homecoming when the exhibition appeared at the Gaelic Athletic Association museum at Croke Park in Dublin.Legends
Almost two centuries after his death. Donnelly remains the subject of urban legend. One contends that he had the longest arms in boxing history, with the ability to touch his knees without bending down. Another claims that he was knighted by the Prince Regent. His arms were actually of normal length for a man of his size. No known documentation exists to support the latter. -
24cm x 40cm Thwaite’s Mineral Waters had been established by Dublin chemist Augustine Thwaite in the late 1700s. Thwaite’s would amalgamate with a number of other firms, including the Belfast firm of Cantrell & Cochrane, to form Mineral Water Distributers (from whence derives the name ‘MiWadi’) in 1927.
Truly one of humanity’s truly great inventions is – carbonated water. How dull our taste buds would be without it! How impossible would be hangovers (so I’m told!). How . . . well . . . flat life would be!
And all down to an 18th century English Protestant minister Rev Joseph Priestly who invented soda water by accident in 1769. (What results when carbon dioxide gas is dissolved in water under pressure.)
He published a paper on it titled, ahem, Impregnating Water with Fixed Air. As you do.
Along came German-Swiss watchmaker Johann Jacob Schweppe who took Priestly’s invention and manufactured bottled carbonated mineral water. In 1792 he moved to London to develop the Schweppes business there and, in 1799, Augustine Thwaites founded Thwaites’ Soda Water in the fair city of Dublin.
It was Thwaites who first used (and patented) the term “soda water” to describe the fizzy drink. That arose from noticing that adding sodium carbonate to water greatly facilitated the absorption of carbon dioxide. Which is where the American term “soda” came from.
Those bubbles harm nothing. The carbon dioxide is always with us. It is just squashed under pressure into water. Cheers!
Carbon, from Latin carbonem, for “a coal, glowing coal, charcoal”.
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42cm x 32cm Limerick The Jacobs Biscuit Bakery originated in Waterford in 1851,after being founded by William Beale Jacob and his brother Robert.It later moved to Bishop Street in Dublin with a further factory in Peters Row.Jacobs Bishop Street premises was occupied as a strategic location by rebels during the 1916 Easter Rebellion. W. & R. Jacob's were one the largest employers in the Dublin of 1916, and their factory was seized on Easter Monday by perhaps 100 members of the 2nd Battalion of the Dublin Brigade of the Irish Volunteers under Thomas MacDonagh. The factory itself was an enormous and formidable Victorian edifice located on the 'block' enclosed by Bishop St, Bride St, Peter's St and Peter's Row, and between St Patrick's Cathedral and St Stephen's Green. Its seizure helped to complete a loop of building cross the south inner city; the factory had two large towers that could act as observation points, while its location was very close to both Camden St and Patrick St: natural routeways for troops entering the city centre from Portobello Barracks in Rathmines and Wellington Barracks on the South Circular Road. There were only a few staff present in the building when the Volunteers broke into it; a number of smaller outposts were established in the area around the factory. While the garrison saw some fighting early in the week, their principal enemies proved to be boredom and the locals: the factory was surrounded by tenements, and the Volunteers were attacked and abused by residents, many of whom were Jacob's workers themselves. The families of servicemen were also quite hostile, but there may have been another reason for this hostility: Michael O'Hanrahan, who was in Jacob's, expressed his concern that the choice of location might endanger local residents if the British chose to attack. As it happens, the factory was largely by-passed, though it was fired upon intermittently throughout the week by troops in Dublin Castle and elsewhere. MacDonagh surrendered in nearby St Patrick's Park on Sunday 30 April; some of the factory was looted after the Volunteers had left. Three members of the Jacob's garrison were executed. Most of the factory was eventually demolished, though fragments of the ground storey and one of the towers are still visible on Bishop St between the DIT campus on Aungier St and the National Archives of Ireland.
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47cm x 37cm Limerick In 1791 James Power, an innkeeper from Dublin, established a small distillery at his public house at 109 Thomas St., Dublin. The distillery, which had an output of about 6,000 gallons in its first year of operation, initially traded as James Power and Son, but by 1822 had become John Power & Son, and had moved to a new premises at John's Lane, a side street off Thomas Street. At the time the distillery had three pot stills, though only one, a 500-gallon still is thought to have been in use. Following reform of the distilling laws in 1823, the distillery expanded rapidly. In 1827, production was reported at 160,270 gallons,and by 1833 had grown to 300,000 gallons per annum. As the distillery grew, so too did the stature of the family. In 1841, John Power, grandson of the founder was awarded a baronet, a hereditary title. In 1855, his son Sir James Power, laid the foundation stone for the O'Connell Monument, and in 1859 became High Sheriff of Dublin. In 1871, the distillery was expanded and rebuilt in the Victorian style, becoming one of the most impressive sights in Dublin.After expansion, output at the distillery rose to 700,000 gallons per annum, and by the 1880s, had reached about 900,000 gallons per annum, at which point the distillery covered over six acres of central Dublin, and had a staff of about 300 people.
The Still House at John's Lane Distillery, as it looked when Alfred Barnard visited in the 1800s.
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47cm x 37cm Limerick Arthur Guinness started brewing ales in 1759 at the St James Gate Brewery,Dublin.On 31st December 1759 he signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum for the unused brewery.Ten years later, on 19 May 1769, Guinness first exported his ale: he shipped six-and-a-half barrels to Great Britain before he started selling the dark beer porter in 1778. The first Guinness beers to use the term were Single Stout and Double Stout in the 1840s.Throughout the bulk of its history, Guinness produced only three variations of a single beer type: porter or single stout, double or extra and foreign stout for export. “Stout” originally referred to a beer’s strength, but eventually shifted meaning toward body and colour.Porter was also referred to as “plain”, as mentioned in the famous refrain of Flann O’Brien‘s poem “The Workman’s Friend”: “A pint of plain is your only man.” Already one of the top-three British and Irish brewers, Guinness’s sales soared from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 barrels in 1876.In October 1886 Guinness became a public company, and was averaging sales of 1,138,000 barrels a year. This was despite the brewery’s refusal to either advertise or offer its beer at a discount. Even though Guinness owned no public houses, the company was valued at £6 million and shares were twenty times oversubscribed, with share prices rising to a 60 per cent premium on the first day of trading. The breweries pioneered several quality control efforts. The brewery hired the statistician William Sealy Gosset in 1899, who achieved lasting fame under the pseudonym “Student” for techniques developed for Guinness, particularly Student’s t-distribution and the even more commonly known Student’s t-test. By 1900 the brewery was operating unparalleled welfare schemes for its 5,000 employees. By 1907 the welfare schemes were costing the brewery £40,000 a year, which was one-fifth of the total wages bill. The improvements were suggested and supervised by Sir John Lumsden. By 1914, Guinness was producing 2,652,000 barrels of beer a year, which was more than double that of its nearest competitor Bass, and was supplying more than 10 per cent of the total UK beer market. In the 1930s, Guinness became the seventh largest company in the world. Before 1939, if a Guinness brewer wished to marry a Catholic, his resignation was requested. According to Thomas Molloy, writing in the Irish Independent, “It had no qualms about selling drink to Catholics but it did everything it could to avoid employing them until the 1960s.” Guinness thought they brewed their last porter in 1973. In the 1970s, following declining sales, the decision was taken to make Guinness Extra Stout more “drinkable”. The gravity was subsequently reduced, and the brand was relaunched in 1981. Pale malt was used for the first time, and isomerized hop extract began to be used. In 2014, two new porters were introduced: West Indies Porter and Dublin Porter. Guinness acquired the Distillers Company in 1986.This led to a scandal and criminal trialconcerning the artificial inflation of the Guinness share price during the takeover bid engineered by the chairman, Ernest Saunders. A subsequent £5.2 million success fee paid to an American lawyer and Guinness director, Tom Ward, was the subject of the case Guinness plc v Saunders, in which the House of Lords declared that the payment had been invalid. In the 1980s, as the IRA’s bombing campaign spread to London and the rest of Britain, Guinness considered scrapping the Harp as its logo. The company merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form Diageo. Due to controversy over the merger, the company was maintained as a separate entity within Diageo and has retained the rights to the product and all associated trademarks of Guinness.
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24cm x 40cm From the double-takes by people currently walking down King’s Inn Street at the doors to Williams and Woods , you might be forgiven for thinking the former confectionary factory is returning in some Willy Wonka spectacular. The building’s distinctive corner sign has snuck it into the city’s collective memory, making it deeply exciting to see boards coming away from the windows and the glazing being repaired. Williams and Woods moved to Great Britain Street (now Parnell Street) in 1875, operating as confectionary manufacturers and wholesalers. The company acquired adjacent sites, including land across Loftus Lane, and had a factory complex that produced sweets, preserves, canned goods and vinegar. (There’s a history of acquisitions – including being bought by Cross and Blackwell in 1928 – that’s a bit involved for our purposes, but it brings in many well-known names such as Chef, Toblerone, Keiller Little Chip, The National Canning Company of Ireland and Silvermints.) This particular part of the factory seems to have been built around 1900, completely destroyed by fire in 1908, and built again by 1910 (a jam factory designed by Donnelly & Moore), though it’s a little difficult to determine which part of the block is referred to in news reports.