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The Soloheadbeg Ambush in January 1919 did not lead to a wide scale conflict immediately. For much of 1919, the Irish Volunteers embarked on a mainly defensive campaign, primarily searching for arms. As a result, some skirmishes broke out leading to some deaths.Isolated deaths of RIC men occurred in Limerick, Clare, Mayo and Tipperary. The shortage of arms was the main problem posed. Gun shops and private homes were raided for arms. In March 1919, all such premises were raided in the North-East of Dublin city.The most successful arms raid throughout the whole war occurred at Collinstown Aerodrome, present day site of Dublin Airport, on 20th March 1919. As the Aerodrome was heavily guarded by the British Military, according to Patrick Houlihan, a Volunteer and employee at the Aerodrome, the local Volunteers had to submit plans to the Irish Volunteers General Headquarters (GHQ) for approval. Once it was granted, two guard dogs at the Aerodrome were poisoned the afternoon before the raid, 19th March, calculated to kill them some hours later, to prevent an alarm being raised. That night the raiding party, numbering about 25, were dressed in khaki and masks, supplied by GHQ. Some volunteers engaged in disarming and tying up the sentries, 20 in number, whilst others collected all the arms and ammunition they could. The haul was transported away in two cars. To prevent a chase, over 20 cars in the military garage were demolished with sledgehammers. Acting in almost total silence to capture the sentries and sticking clearly to their well thought out plans, was key to the raid’s success.75 rifles and 5,000 rounds of ammunition were secured. There were no casualties nor prisoners taken. It was the largest loss of weapons by the British army from a single operation throughout the whole conflict. Many of the arms captured that day ended up in the IRA arms dump at the Naul in North Dublin. The British decided to punish the locals, a trend they would continue throughout the war, a foolish move which brought more and more support for the Volunteers. All 800 workers were sacked on the Collinstown site and replaced by military personnel. It was an act of collective punishment, recognised and resented as such. Cormac Moore, Historian in Residence, Dublin City Library and Archive.Dublin City Council Historians in Residence are available to meet groups and schools, give talks, walks etc, run history book clubs and advise on historical research.

Last month I was in the King’s Inns building for the launch of a remarkable short film. Trish McAdams directed and wrote Confinement for the Grangegorman Development Agency, who asked her to create a public art project. The film’s 30-minute running time evokes three hundred years of the history of the King’s Inns, Henrietta Street and the Grangegorman Asylum. The story is told through the imagined voice of Tony Rudenko, an artist who lived in Henrietta Street until his death in 2014, who was also a friend of the director.(Poster for Dublin International Film Festival showing of Confinement)The film opens with animated maps of the Henrietta Street area in the early 18th century.  It tells how the beautiful houses in the street were built originally for the wealthy, eventually accommodating the poor, and recently seeing many of them currently undergoing restoration to former glory. This is a history well told by the Tenement Museum at 14 Henrietta Street.The King’s Inns was built with its back to Henrietta Street and its magnificent frontage facing in the direction of Grangegorman, which was at various times since the late 18th century the site of a workhouse, a prison and an asylum for the mentally ill.(The King’s Inns building seen from Constitution Hill)By the early 19th century, the workhouse and prison had been merged into the hospital, which was added to over the years until its peak in the early 20th century, when it had over 2,000 patients. During the cholera epidemic of 1832, the hospital was used to isolate patients and was referred to as the Dublin Cholera Hospital for the duration of the epidemic.(Surviving gate to the asylum buildings at Grangegorman)For the film, McAdams animated her own wonderful drawings that are based on actual photographs of the inmates of the asylum, contained in the inmate records.  The site is now part of the huge development in the Grangegorman area, which hosts the DIT campus of the new Technological University Dublin. Dr. Mary Muldowney, Historian in Residence, Dublin City Library and Archive.Dublin City Council Historians in Residence are available to meet groups and schools, give talks, walks etc, run history book clubs and advise on historical research. 

Gerald Crofts (1888–1934) was one of a small group of musicians and lyricists who made a huge contribution to the Irish independence movement in the early 20th century. He came from Capel Street originally, where his family had a shop and he was a popular singer. His brother Joseph was a composer who arranged the words and music for this marching song, which was dedicated to Crofts.Gerald had joined the Irish Volunteers in 1914 and he was a close friend of some of the leaders of the Rising. He was imprisoned in Dartmoor and Lewes prisons in England and suffered poor health for the rest of his life. Crofts continued his republican activities after his release from prison although he was curtailed in what he could do by a problem with his hands, which meant he could not hold weapons. Family papers suggest that he was involved in intelligence work with Michael Collins. In the later years of his life he was well known for singing his friend Constance Markiewicz’s anthem 'A Battle Hymn’ (dedicated to the Irish Citizen Army) at political gatherings and concerts. He died on 14th November 1934. History Document of the MonthEvery month the Dublin City Council Historians in Residence will be highlighting a document from Dublin City Public Libraries and Archives Digital Repository.  An image of the selected document will be on display in branch libraries during the month.Historians in Residence are available to meet groups and schools, give talks, walks etc, run history book clubs and advise on historical research.

Dublin supported James II at the Battle of the Boyne, but following his defeat by William III, a protestant ascendancy resumed control of the city and began to forge links with the new and successful monarchy. This process intensified after the death of Mary II in 1695 left William III as sole monarch. Dublin Corporation added William’s arms to the City Sword; in 1697 and in the following year, the king presented a chain of office to the Lord Mayor of Dublin, carrying the monarch’s bust on a medallion, which is in use to this day.

As the world commemorates the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx, it may come as some surprise to hear that both Marx and Fredrich Engels, authors of The Communist Manifesto and creators of modern-day Marxist thought, were both strong proponents of Irish independence.

On Friday 17 May 1918 the British government ordered the arrest and imprisonment of all leading members of Sinn Fein. They claimed they were involved in a plan to import arms from Germany. Among those arrested were Countess Markievicz, Eamon de Valera, Arthur Griffith and W.T. Cosgrave. They were quickly removed from Dublin and lodged in prisons across Wales and England. The arrests did dislocate Sinn Fein’s organisation but did not paralyse it; for example, Michael Collins was one of those who avoided capture.Following on from the conscription crisis in April 1918, the German Plot arrests provided another issue for the republican movement to rally around, particularly the injustice of the prisoners being held without charge.On the 27th of September 1918, Áine Ceannt presided over a protest meeting at the Mansion House. Addressing it in both Irish and English, Áine called for the government to release the prisoners at once. She was a founder member of Cumann na mBan, deeply involved in the Irish language movement and republican politics and was the widow of the executed 1916 leader Eamon Ceannt. The meeting was a remarkable cross-section of the nationalist movement and illustrated the continuing high profile of women in the politics of the time. Letters of support from the Bishop of Killaloe and Irish Parliamentary Party MP Timothy Healy were read out while William Smith O’Brien, Cathal O’Shannon, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, Eoin MacNeill, Countess Josephine Plunkett, George Gavin Duffy, Muriel MacSwiney and Alderman Thomas Kelly were all in attendance.De Valera escaped from Richmond prison in February 1919 and the British government finally bowed to public pressure, releasing the remaining prisoners in March. By then, the war of independence had broken out and Ireland was gripped by the insurgency that the government had hoped to avoid by arresting the leaders in the first place. Bernard Kelly, Historian in Residence, Dublin City Library and Archive.Dublin City Council Historians in Residence are available to meet groups and schools, give talks, walks etc, run history book clubs and advise on historical research. 

Mellows bridge, situated towards the Heuston Station end of the quays, sits on the site of one of the oldest bridges in Dublin city. The original was built in 1688, was named Arran bridge and it collapsed in 1763. Its replacement, completed in 1768, was known as the Queen’s Bridge and has been renovated several times since. In the post-independence rush to rebrand structures with imperial connections, the Dublin Municipal Council renamed the bridge after Queen Maeve of Connacht in 1922. In 1942, the National Graves Association successfully petitioned to change the name to Mellows bridge, marking both the death of Barney Mellows in February 1942 and the 20th anniversary of the execution of his brother Liam. Born in Manchester in 1892, William Mellows was the son of a British army sergeant and his family moved to Ireland in the early 1900s. He attended the Hibernian Military School in Dublin but soon both Mellows brothers became heavily involved in the republican movement, starting with Na Fianna, before graduating to the Volunteers and the IRB. William soon abandoned his first name, choosing the more appropriately Gaelic Liam, and lead the Galway Volunteers during the 1916 Rising. After returning from the US in 1920, he chose the anti-Treaty side and was captured in the Four Courts in June 1922. While being held in Mountjoy Prison he was appointed Minister for Defence in de Valera’s shadow cabinet but was one of four prisoners executed in reprisal for the killing of TD Sean Hales in December 1922.   On 25 May 1942, following a procession from St Stephen’s Green, members of the National Graves Association and the Old Fianna Association assembled to hear a speech from Nora Connolly, daughter of James. Connolly pointedly remarked that Mellows’ vision of Irish independence was freedom from ‘foreign oppression and domestic exploitation’. A plaque was also unveiled on the bridge, dedicated to ‘Liet-General Liam Mellows’, reflecting his high status in the republican movement. Mellows bridge remains the oldest bridge over the Liffey and commemorates one of the most fascinating characters of the revolutionary period in Ireland.Bernard Kelly, Historian in Residence, Dublin City Library and Archive.Dublin City Council Historians in Residence are available to meet groups and schools, give talks, walks etc, run history book clubs and advise on historical research.

The following political cartoons come from the United Ireland and the Weekly Freeman and the National Press, Irish nationalist newspapers that commented on the last few decades of nineteenth-century Ireland. These cartoons illustrate Irish nationalist sentiments at the time by commenting on political events and figures, in particular the Home Rule Movement, the Land War, and the 1892 General Election.

This flyer is an extract from a speech given by Fr. Michael O’Flanagan to 10,000 people at Ballyjamesduff, Co. Cavan on Sunday May 26, 1918. O’Flanagan mentions the arrest of De Valera, the suppression of Arthur Griffith’s newspaper, and the ‘poison-gas of lies’ spun by ‘the Little Welsh spider’ (Prime Minister David Lloyd George) against the Irish people in the ‘German Plot’.Over 70 members of Sinn Féin had been arrested that month as part of this alleged plot. They were accused of conspiring with the German Empire to stage an armed rebellion in Ireland. O'Flanagan's clerical status exempted him from the round-up and in the second half of 1918 he operated as acting leader of Sinn Féin's political activities. The censor refused to allow even one word of the speech to be published, but it was later printed and distributed by Sinn Féin from their office at 6 Harcourt Street. History Document of the MonthEvery month the Dublin City Council Historians in Residence will be highlighting a document from Dublin City Public Libraries and Archives Digital Repository.  An image of the selected document will be on display in branch libraries during the month.Historians in Residence are available to meet groups and schools, give talks, walks etc, run history book clubs and advise on historical research. 

It is fitting on International Nurses Day 2018 to remember one of the most notable figures in Irish nursing before and during the First World War. Katherine Elizabeth Middleton Curtis was born in London in 1860 and married to the noted Engineer and Merchant William Charles Middleton Curtis. Moving to Ireland, she became a member of the Blackrock Nursing Division of the St John Ambulance Brigade in Dublin and was a regular contributor to the Irish Times on nursing and medical matters. Always an innovator, Kate was involved in various public initiatives to raise public awareness of hygiene and health; she ran first aid courses for women from 1911 and was also involved in Kingstown ‘Health Week’, held in April 1913. Kate was one of the best-known members of St John Ambulance and noted in her diary on 20 October 1914 that she was also ‘the oldest ambulance lady in Ireland.’Kate was matron of the Convalescent Home for Soldiers and Sailors at Temple Hill House in Blackrock, taking up the post in October 1914. She remained in place until April 1915, when it was converted into an Auxiliary Hospital for Service personnel. Temple Hill was one of 70 such centres in Ireland during the war and it specialised in orthopaedic services for injured service personnel. Originally it had 20 beds but was later expanded to 36 and over 500 patients passed through the building during the war. Kate kept an autograph book of her time in Temple Hill which was signed by many of the soldiers she cared for.Kate Middleton Curtis died on 29 January 1918 of appendicitis, aged 58. Her legacy lived on after the war in the Kate Middleton Curtis Cup, awarded annually to winner of the St John Ambulance First Aid competition. Her personal papers were donated to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Archive at Dublin City Library and Archive and can be consulted in the reading room in Pearse Street.The Kate Middleton Curtis collection can be view online at Digital Repository Ireland.Bernard Kelly, Historian in Residence, Dublin City Library and Archive.Dublin City Council Historians in Residence are available to meet groups and schools, give talks, walks etc, run history book clubs and advise on historical research. See Also: Listen back to Women of the Brigade: Pádraig Allen, St John Ambulance Ireland discusses some women of St John Ambulance who contributed to the war effort during the First World War.