Titanic ticket found in USA

Illinois native Margaret Hallem was checking up on her Irish roots at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington DC when she mentioned her grandmother, who had been due to sail […]

The Kenny Family 1911

In 1911 Edward Kenny and his wife Anne lived with their four children, Elleanor (17 years), Josephine (14), Anne (6) and baby Edward (‘1 and 6/12’!), in No.1a Whitefriar Place, […]

Census and sensibility

The film Goodbye Mr Chips (the 1939 version, please) has much to recommend it, not least the delightfully heavy-handed way it has of signalling important dates and historical landmarks as […]

‘The Widow’s Mite’: private relief during the Great Famine

During earlier food shortages in Ireland, including in 1822 and 1831, charitable bodies had been set up to provide relief at a local level, and some of these were revived […]

A Rough Guide to Revolutionary Paris: Wolfe Tone as an accidental tourist

On a cold day in March 1796 Aristide Du Petit Thouars, a ci-devant French aristocrat and naval officer just returned from exile in America, visited the Panthéon in the heart […]