KINDRED LINES: Morgue and coroners’ records

By Fiona Fitzsimons The Public Health (Ireland) Act, 1878, gave power to local authorities to establish mortuaries, and authorised any justice to order the removal of dead bodies to a […]

How the Central Powers were defeated, July–November 1918

By high summer of 1918, German forces on the Western Front had been fought to a standstill. Having expended their reserves in a series of offensives collectively known as the […]

REPUTATIONS: ‘Friend of the poor’: Dora Maguire

In R.M. Fox’s collection of biographical essays Rebel Irishwomen (1935), included alongside Maud Gonne MacBride, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington and Constance Markievicz is an obscure London-born nurse, Dora Maguire. Who was she […]

The Abergele mail train disaster, 1868

In the peaceful setting of St Michael’s churchyard in Abergele in north Wales, just off the busy A55 road, there is a memorial to the 33 victims of a horrific […]

Muirchú’s Life of St Patrick and the history of fifth-century Ulster

What can Muirchú’s Life of St Patrick (c. 688) tell us about the political history of late fifth-century Ulster, and in particular the hostile relationship between the Uí Néill and […]