BOOKWORM
Published in Book Reviews, Issue 6 (November/December 2015), Reviews, Volume 23Seán Beattie, Donegal in transition: the impact of the Congested Districts Board (Merrion Press, €21.95 pb, 298pp, ISBN 9781908928306).
Fergus Whelan, God-provoking demo-crat: the remarkable life of Archibald Hamilton Rowan (New Island, €16.99 pb, 292pp, ISBN 9781848404601).
Anthony Russell, John Mitchel and Jenny Verner: between two flags (Merrion, €19.99 pb, 267pp, ISBN 9781785370007).
Tadhg O’Keeffe, Medieval Irish buildings, 1100–1600 (Four Courts Press, €24.95 hb, 320pp, ISBN 9781846822483).
Niamh Nic Ghabhann, Medieval ecclesiastical buildings in Ireland, 1789–1915: building on the past (Four Courts Press, €55 hb, 256pp, ISBN 9781846825088).
Eleanor Fitzsimons, Wilde’s women: how Oscar Wilde was shaped by the women he knew (Gerald Duckworth & Co., £20 hb, 248pp, ISBN 9780715649367).
K. McPhilips, Belfast black taxis, hackneys, and more (Belfast, 2015, pb, 54pp).
Dublin Historical Record 68 (1), Spring/Summer 2015 (€35 annual sub., pb, 134pp, ISSN 00126861).
E.E. O’Donnell SJ, Father Browne’s Dublin photographs 1925–1950 (Messenger Publications, €14.99 pb, 96pp, ISBN 9781910248126).
Gerry Kearney, The Church of Ireland Unions of Killinane and Kilconickny, Loughrea, County Galway: a history (Kearney Books, €25 pb, 310pp, ISBN 9781910179390).
Few governmental agencies have made the impact of the Congested Districts Board (CDB) on the social and economic life of the west of Ireland. Established in 1891 by Arthur Balfour as a regional development agency, the CDB set out to raise living standards and alleviate the persistent poverty of the west. Seán Beattie’s new study, Donegal in transition: the impact of the Congested Districts Board, examines the legacy of the board in a single county. Beattie concludes that the agency made a significant impact on the county in terms of improving economic and social conditions and the promotion of self-help.
Fergus Whelan’s God-provoking democrat: the remarkable life of Archibald Hamilton Rowan explores the life of a champion of the poor and oppressed, and a founding member of the United Irishmen. Born into an Anglo-Irish landowning class, Rowan (1751–1832) survived several duels, exile and numerous ill-fated affairs with married women, all the while plotting to overthrow the state and establish a republic in Ireland. He endured eleven years of hardship on both sides of the Atlantic before managing to return to Ireland in 1806.
Anthony Russell’s John Mitchel and Jenny Verner: between two flags examines the lives and relationship of Young Irelander John Mitchel and his loyal wife, Jenny Verner. Destined to be separated by death in different continents, the couple’s relationship withstood revolutionary upheaval, separation, exile and, ultimately, heartbreak. Arrested for treason and sentenced to fourteen years in Tasmania, Mitchel escaped in 1853 and was given a hero’s welcome in San Francisco. The couple’s children’s untimely deaths, their support of slavery and their experience of the American Civil War are examined in detail.
Medieval Ireland continues to be well documented in Irish historiography, and by Four Courts Press in particular. Tadhg O’Keeffe’s Medieval Irish buildings, 1100–1600 has just been published as part of the Maynooth Research Guides for Irish Local History. This volume is the eighteenth in the series and consists of an astounding chronicling of the architectural legacy of the medieval world, from early ecclesiastical buildings to the Anglo-Normans and the plantations. The volume includes hundreds of images, drawings, plates and figures and represents a remarkable contribution to the period.
Taking the baton from Tadhg O’Keeffe, Niamh Nic Ghabhann’s Medieval ecclesiastical buildings in Ireland, 1789–1915: building on the past is the first full-length study of the perception and treatment of Gothic architecture in the period between 1789 and 1915. It considers three main areas: the perception of Gothic architecture; the development of the tradition of scholarship on the topic; and the social and legal framework for changes wrought to the fabric of these buildings.
As editor of Woman’s World (1887–9), Oscar Wilde commissioned articles by leading progressive female writers and ensured that the magazine examined ‘not merely what women wear, but with what they think, and what they feel’. Eleanor Fitzsimons’s Wilde’s women: how Oscar Wilde was shaped by the women he knew is a comprehensive account of the leading women in Wilde’s life, including his mother, Lady ‘Speranza’ Jane Wilde, and his wife Constance, an active member of a number of feminist groups.
A rich tapestry of local studies continues to be handsomely produced, ensuring a vibrant local historical publishing scene. The people of Belfast have become so accustomed to the presence of black taxis on their streets that it has become easy to overlook the wider significance of the trade. Belfast black taxis, hackneys, and more by K. McPhilips provides an overview of the evolution of the taxi trade, its social significance and political origins. It is based on interviews with people employed in the trade and examines its unique and troubled history.
The Dublin Historical Record is now in its 68th volume, and the Spring/Summer 2015 edition includes nine valuable essays on various aspects of the history of ‘Strumpet City’, including Brendan Grimes on the patrons and architects of Catholic churches in the nineteenth century, Seán Magee on the Sweetman breweries in the eighteenth century and Raymond Refaussé on the Church of Ireland graveyards of the nineteenth century.
E.E. O’Donnell’s Father Browne’s Dublin photographs 1925–1950 is the latest edition of the Browne collection to be published and is a treasury of outstanding images of the capital. Fr Francis Browne is best known for his pictures taken on board the ill-fated Titanic, and he was later gassed on five occasions while serving as a chaplain on the Western Front. His collection of photographs consists of 35,000 images, of which 4,500 were taken in Dublin. These 100 or so images focus on the lives of ordinary working people and the poor and represent an outstanding contribution to the social history of Dublin.
Gerry Kearney’s The Church of Ireland Unions of Killinane and Kilconickny, Loughrea, County Galway: a history will be of great interest to genealogists and researchers of eccl-esiastical history. The book includes a chronological list and history of the bishops of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh from 1400 to the present; lists of clergy from the parishes; transcripts and extracts of parish and vestry records; and graveyard inscriptions.
Personal Histories
On this Day
April 24
- 1951 Enda Kenny, TD for Mayo West (1975–97) and Mayo (1997–2020), leader of Fine Gael (2002–17) and taoiseach (2011–17), born in Derrycoosh, Islandeady, near Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
- 1945
Above: The steamship Monmouth Coast—torpedoed by a German U-boat near Tory Island on 24 April 1945. (Paul Johnson Collection)
During the last week of the Second World War, the Monmouth Coast, an unescorted steamship en route from Sligo to Liverpool with a cargo of barytes ore from the mines of Ben Bulben, was torpedoed by a German U-boat some seven miles north-east of Tory Island. The captain and fifteen crewmen (including two Irishmen) lost their lives, but one managed to survive, thanks to two locals from Arranmore. Two days later, whilst beachcombing on the north-eastern coast of the island, they spotted a life-raft floating in a remote sandy inlet; they rowed out to it and lifted the tarpaulin, to discover a wide-eyed teenager, Derek Cragg (17) from Liverpool, the mess-room boy from the Monmouth Coast. He explained that the ship had gone down very quickly and that those of the crew who managed to leap clear were sucked down after it. He, too, was dragged down but somehow managed to make it back to the surface, where he spotted the life-raft and clambered on board. He was given every assistance by the islanders and safely repatriated, but had the north-easterly wind that drove him 25 miles blown him into the adjoining inlet, his raft would have been smashed to pieces. Over 30,000 Allied merchant seamen, of every nationality, lost their lives during the war. Despite our neutrality, Irish Shipping lost two ships. The Irish Pine was torpedoed off Greenland in November 1942 with the loss of all 33 on board, and the Irish Oak was sunk in the North Atlantic in May 1943, though her entire crew was rescued by a sister-ship, the Irish Plane.
- 1912 Justin McCarthy (82), Home Rule politician, leader of the anti-Parnellite faction (1891–6), historian and novelist, died.
- 1916 The Easter Rising began.Sir Ernest Shackleton and five of his crew set out on their epic 720-nautical-mile rescue mission in the James Caird, from Elephant Island to South Georgia.
- 1974 The Electricity Supply Board (ESB) announced that Carnsore Point, Co. Wexford, would be the site of its planned nuclear power station.
May 19
- 1935
Above: ‘Lawrence of Arabia’—his father was in fact Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath.
T.E.—Thomas Edward—Lawrence (46), the legendary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, died as a result of a motorcycle accident in Dorset. For much of his adult life Lawrence was a troubled man. Though his key role in the British-inspired Arab revolt (1916) against Ottoman Turkish rule earned him international celebrity, he was torn by guilt over Britain’s post-war betrayal of the Arabs with the implementation at Versailles of the notorious Sykes–Picot Agreement. Then there was the issue of identity. At the tender age of ten he discovered that his parents were not married, meaning that he and his four brothers were illegitimate. Later he was to learn that ‘Mr Lawrence’, his father, was, in fact, Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath, who, though married with four daughters, had fled with their governess, Sarah Lawrence, first to Wales—where ‘Ned’ was born—and finally to London. He was eventually to find himself increasingly drawn to his father’s homeland. A close friend of George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte—GBS had helped him to edit his major work, Seven pillars of wisdom (1926)—he mentioned his desire in his surviving letters to visit Ireland and often referred to the works of Seán O’Casey, James Joyce and J.M. Synge. Indeed, he hoped to write a biography of Sir Roger Casement. It seems that he never did try to make contact with his half-sisters. In 1954, almost twenty years after his death, some of his old friends visited the two surviving ones, who were living at 39 Northumberland Road, Dublin. They told them that they had followed their half-brother’s career with great interest but likewise had made no attempt to contact him.
- 1870 The Home Government Association of Ireland was founded by Isaac Butt with the aim of establishing a federal system for the United Kingdom, which would grant Ireland a parliament responsible for national affairs. Succeeded by the Home Rule League (1873).
- 1868 Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, son of Arthur Guinness (1725–1803), brewer and writer who restored St Patrick’s Cathedral (1860), died.