City Hall Lunchtime Lecture Series 2021
Published on 30th March 2021
The City Hall lectures started in September 2001, initially to mark the first anniversary of the restoration of that building and afterwards, to support the standing exhibition there, The Story of the Capital. Lectures are held twice-yearly and are free of charge; the venue is ordinarily the Council Chamber, and the Councillors have always been very supportive. The format is that lectures take place at lunchtime, each Tuesday in April and October, and a specific Dublin-related theme is chosen for each month. 2021 marks the 34th lecture series.
This year, however, the series will, for the first time, be taking place online. The great advantage to this is that people from all around the country, and indeed, the world, can tune in and listen to the talks.
The uplifting theme chosen this year is Death and Disease in Dublin, and we have a brilliant line-up of speakers covering a whole host of macabre topics, which will hopefully tickle people’s morbid curiosity.
Our first speaker, on the 6th April, will be Dr Ida Milne, a history lecturer in Carlow College. She has written extensively about Spanish influenza in Ireland, and her book which deals with this topic, Stacking the Coffins, Influenza, war and revolution in Ireland 1918-1919, was published in 2018.
Dr Milne will be speaking about the ‘Spanish’ flu (1918/19), the largest killing pandemic of influenza on record. As it spread through the city, communities would go silent, public buildings and schools were closed, trade stilled, events were cancelled and sports fixtures postponed. It struck at the core of families, often flattening every member and sometimes killing multiple members of one family. During this talk, Dr Milne will look back to that event, and compare it with the Covid-19 pandemic, and reflect on how the city’s chief medical officer at the time, Sir Charles Cameron, and other authorities reacted to reduce the impact.
Then, on the 13th of April, we’ll be joined by Professor Brendan Kelly, Professor of Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin and Consultant Psychiatrist at Tallaght University Hospital, Dublin. He is the author of several books including "Hearing Voices: The History of Psychiatry in Ireland". Professor Kelly will be speaking about the fascinating history of psychiatric hospitals in Dublin. He’ll be examining why, in the mid-1900s, Ireland had proportionately more people in psychiatric hospitals than any other country in the world. This talk looks at the place of "Grangegorman Mental Hospital" (St Brendan's) in this history, alongside St Patrick's, St Ita's (Portrane) and Dublin's other psychiatric hospitals.
Our penultimate talk of the series, on the 20th April will see Dr Susannah Riordan speaking about Venereal Disease in her lecture, entitled ‘Soldiers and Sex-Workers: Venereal Disease in Early 20th Century Ireland’. Dr Riordan is a history lecturer in UCD, and in this talk, will look at the spread of Venereal Disease in Ireland. The title refers to the fact that initially, the blame for this problem was placed on relationship between prostitutes and the British military, but investigation suggested that it was in fact rampant in the civilian population throughout the country. In this talk, Dr Riordan assesses the efforts of the first independent Irish governments to detect, prevent, and treat these diseases in the national army and, subsequently, in the civilian population, in the contexts of military exigency, medical politics, and moral judgement.
Finally, we’ll be hearing all about the Black Death in Dublin, in a talk given by Dr Simon Egan of Trinity College, Dublin. The plague arrived on Ireland’s more heavily settled eastern seaboard in 1348 and quickly spread across most the island. This talk will explore the arrival and consequences of the Black Death in Ireland’s colonial capital, Dublin. It will consider how plague impact upon urban society but also look at how the plague reshaped Irish politics during the mid-to-late fourteenth century. Places for these events can be booked on Eventbrite.