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James Camlin Beckett 1912-1996

Professor J.C. Beckett, who died in a Belfast nursing home on 12 February, was one of Ireland’s most eminent historians. He belonged to that distinguished pleiad of ‘30s graduates who […]

‘Moral Neutrality’ censorship in Emergency Ireland

The average Dubliner’, according to an anonymous letter-writer to the Irish Times, commenting on the revelations about the Nazi Holocaust at the end of the Second World War, ‘would not […]

The Boundary Commission Debacle 1925, aftermath & implications.

The story of the ill-fated Boundary Commission has often been told: how it was established under Article XII of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty to determine the extent of the North/South […]

The American Civil War & Irish Nationalism

It is well known that Irish emigrants to the United States played a significant role in the American Civil War of 1861-65. Individuals such as Patrick Cleburne for the Confederacy, […]

‘Charity begins at Home’ The United States government & Irish Famine relief 1845-1849

‘No imagination can conceive —no tongue express—no brush paint—the horrors of the scenes which are daily exhibited in Ireland’, observed Senator Henry Clay in 1847. Calling upon the support of […]

April 18

1952 Edmund O’Brien (71), County Limerick-born author and yachtsman who in 1923 circumnavigated the globe in his ketch Saoirse, died.
1870 Robert Noonan, house-painter, sign-writer and author, notably of The ragged-trousered philanthropists (1914), born Robert Croker, the illegitimate son of an RIC officer, at 37 Wexford Street, Dublin.
1949 Under the terms of the Republic of Ireland Act (December 1948), designed by John A. Costello’s coalition government to ‘take the gun out of Irish politics’, Ireland formally left the Commonwealth and became a republic.
1918 The Mansion House conference, called by the lord mayor of Dublin, Laurence O’Neill, on the day the Military Service Bill became law, was attended by all shades of nationalist opinion. An anti-conscription pledge, drafted by Éamon de Valera, was issued.
1870 Robert Tressell, nom de plume of Robert Croker, latterly Robert Noonan, author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (first unabridged edition published in 1955), was born in Dublin, the illegitimate son of RIC inspector and later magistrate Sir Samuel Croker.
2019 The journalist Lyra McKee (29) was shot dead by a New IRA gunman who opened fire on PSNI officers monitoring disturbances in Derry’s Creggan area. President Michael D. Higgins and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar attended her funeral.

James Camlin Beckett 1912-1996

‘Moral Neutrality’ censorship in Emergency Ireland

The Boundary Commission Debacle 1925, aftermath & implications.

The American Civil War & Irish Nationalism

‘Charity begins at Home’ The United States government & Irish Famine relief 1845-1849

Personal Histories

On this Day

April 18