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It is frequently claimed that the EU gave us equality, and certainly it has helped to have Equal Pay and Equal Treatment Directives, but it was frequently women workers who forced the government to implement the improvements in their employment conditions to which new legislation entitled them. If laborious industrial relations procedures did not deliver for them, the women were quite prepared to take to the streets to insist that they be treated fairly.In the 1970s the public telephone exchanges could provide jobs with steady, albeit low pay and the expectation of a pension if a woman stayed until retirement. As it was generally expected at the time that marriage and child-bearing would be a woman’s primary role in life, the poor terms and conditions were not a deterrent if one was only thinking of being in the job for a few years.In the early 1970s, pay discrimination between men and women was institutionalised in both the public and private sectors. The government introduced the Employment (Equal Pay) Bill in 1973 but claimed that they could not enact it because it would cost too much. They appealed the Equal Pay Directive that came from the EU in 1975 but were told that they would have to pass the Anti-Discrimination (Pay) Act 1974, which the Minister for Finance had tried to defer until 1977. RTE’s Seven Days programme marked the introduction of equal pay with a report shown on 11 July 1975. They found that in the Civil Service and the Public Service the gap between male and female pay rates had actually increased, despite the Directive from the EU.The Post Office Workers’ Union (POWU) held an Equal Pay Telephonists Symposium in October 1976, which had its biggest ever attendance of female members. The largest delegation was from the Dublin Telephones section and the average age of the delegates was early to mid-20s. In March 1977 the POWU Executive gave authorisation for several two-day strikes in the Dublin Exchanges. Their intention was to draw maximum public attention to the way they were being treated without totally crippling the telephone service. By 1979, their claim had been recognised by the Labour Court but was still not implemented by the management.One of the notable aspects of the press coverage of the various industrial actions conducted by the telephonists was the involvement of journalists who reported extensively on the way the women were being treated. The journalists’ support elicited a lot of public sympathy for the telephonists because it meant that the unfairness of their treatment was revealed to people outside the exchanges. Irish Independent, 8.1.1979The Department of Posts & Telegraphs finally made the equal pay settlement in February 1979. There was a fairly widespread belief at the time that when a wider strike began within a week of that payment, that the Department did not expect the women to support their male colleagues in lower grades when they went on strike for a long overdue pay rise. That turned out to be a very wrong assessment. The telephonists went out en masse and remained out for the full nineteen weeks of the strike, although they had nothing to gain for themselves.Dublin Central Historian in Residence Dr. Mary Muldowney

Britain faced similar issues ruling Ireland and India: both had to be held to maintain British international credibility and independence movements in both were driven in large part by religion. Irish nationalists drew parallels between their own struggle and that in India, particularly the brutality of colonialism. The above below, from the satirical newspaper, The Lepracaun, compares British rule in the two countries: executions and burning of homesteads in Ireland, while India saw the brutal practice of execution by cannon, particularly associated with the British suppression of the rebellion of 1857. The cartoon is pointing out the dark side of British rule: the ‘Upas Tree’ of the title refers to a highly poisonous tree common to Asia, while the figure of John Bull piously reading the common book of prayer while surrounded by bones, death and destruction is an unsubtle reference to the hypocrisy of evangelical imperialism. 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. 

This year marks the centenary of the birth of Séamus Ennis, the renowned musician, singer, folklorist and broadcaster who left behind, to quote from one obituary, “a priceless heritage of Irish tradition to the nation”. Inspired by on-going centenary events taking place across Dublin and at the Séamus Ennis Arts Centre, this blog briefly examines Ennis’s final years and death. (The bronze statue of Séamus Ennis which was unveiled in Naul on 24th October 2001. Courtesy of the Séamus Ennis Arts Centre)In 1975 Ennis settled in The Naul to live out his remaining years on land which had once belonged to his grandparents. A countryman at heart, he felt a strong attachment for the area and christened the plot where he lived in a caravan ‘Easter Snow’ (after the slow air of that name which he was fond of playing). He played an important role in helping to revive interest in uilleann piping during the twentieth century. While he continued to perform across Ireland and sometimes further afield, Ennis’s health gradually deteriorated during the period and he underwent an operation for cancer of the throat. An able cook who could deal expertly with game, as his health continued failing it was noticed that he began to lose interest in food.On the afternoon of Tuesday, 5th October 1982, Ennis passed away at home during his sleep. He was 63 years old. No inquest was held into the death, with the post-mortem examination taking place the following day. On Thursday evening Ennis’s remains were then brought from St. Vincent’s Hospital, Elm Park, to the Church of the Nativity in Naul, with friends and neighbours standing in the rain for almost an hour to greet the cortege, which had been delayed in heavy traffic.The following morning Ennis was buried in the adjoining Naul Cemetery. Leading traditional musicians had crowded inside the tiny Naul church alongside neighbours for the funeral Mass performed by local curate Father Malachy J. Mahon, who also officiated at the graveside ceremony. After the recital of a decade of the Rosary in Irish, broadcaster Séan Mac Réamoinn delivered a bilingual funeral oration in which he spoke of Ennis’s sincerity, prowess as a piper, and fidelity to north County Dublin and Ireland. This was followed by a lament – “Cois Abhainn na Séad” – played by Liam O’Flynn (Liam Óg Ó Floinn) on a set of uilleann pipes given to him by his deceased friend and mentor. (An uilleann piper at a Dublin Street Carnival in College Green, 1984. Available at;http://digital.libraries.dublincity.ie/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:42327)Since his death efforts have been made to keep Ennis’s memory alive. These include the renaming of a section of Jamestown Road (Finglas) in his honour in 1994, and unveiling of a bronze statue of Ennis with uilleann pipes in hand beside the newly opened Séamus Ennis Cultural Centre (now the Séamus Ennis Arts Centre) in Naul seven years later. On Friday 3rd May, a new Dublin City Council ‘Séamus Ennis Commemorative Plaque’ will be unveiled in Finglas at the site of Burgess Galvin & Co. Ltd., Jamestown Road.Dr. James Curry, Historian in Residence, North West Area.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. 

This photograph (larger image below) from the Dublin City Library and Archive shows groups of women with their babies and young children outside St Monica’s Babies Club in St. Augustine Street, close to John’s Lane Church in the heart of Dublin’s Liberties.  This club, - one of about 170 set up throughout Ireland - opened in 1909 and aimed to educate mothers in the overall care of their infants by holding classes and appropriate lecture series on the premises.(St Monica's Baby Club)St. Monica’s Babies Club had been established by the Women’s National Health Association (WHNA).  This group was set up in Ireland in 1907 as part of the Irish International Exhibition, by Lady Aberdeen, wife of the Lord-Lieutenant who had a life-long interest in social and healthcare issues.  The WNHA focused on finding ways to eradicate tuberculosis within the general population, - a primary cause of early deaths in the adult population - by coordinating pasteurised milk distribution, and opening a range of healthcare centres with the support of government.  It also tried to address the social conditions and issues surrounding the extremely high infant mortality rates that existed in Ireland at the time.Catherine Scuffil, Historian in Residence, Dublin South Central.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.

This week I have had the great pleasure of visiting Massachusetts and presenting a paper at the annual national meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies held in Boston. It was my second time attending such a gathering, having also presented a paper on Dublin poet Maeve Cavanagh MacDowell two years ago, when ACIS met in Kansas City, Missouri. This time around I spoke about the life of Dora Maguire, another woman who happened to be profiled in R. M. Fox’s 1935 book of essays Rebel Irishwomen.Whereas the likes of Maud Gonne and Countess Markievicz became legends in their own lifetimes, Dora Maguire (1889-1931) was perhaps the most obscure of Fox’s dozen ‘Rebel Irishwomen’. A friend of the author, she died aged forty-one in February 1931 after years of ill-health. During my paper I spoke about Maguire’s upbringing in England and the north of Ireland, time spent in Blackburn and London during the First World War (when she worked as a nurse and developed suppressed diphtheria and tuberculosis), decision to move to Ireland around the time of the War of Independence, and employment at St. Ultan’s Children’s Hospital in Ranelagh during the 1920s.I then focused at length on her arrest in 1925 over an incident at the Princess Cinema in Rathmines. Evolving into an ardent republican during her adulthood, Maguire was indignant at the time about the screening across Dublin of short films concerning the Prince of Wales’ recent dominion tour of South Africa. Entering the “Prinner” – as the Princess Cinema was known to locals – on 6th August 1925 with an inkpot hidden on her person, Maguire stood up and hurled her makeshift missile over the heads of the theatre orchestra as soon as the offending picture was shown, causing considerable damage to the screen and generating newspaper headlines.Surviving foyer plaque from the Princess Cinema, the scene of Dora Maguire's arrest in August 1925. Known locally as "The Prinner", the cinema closed its doors in 1960 and was demolished in 1982 (Photograph courtesy of Carol Dunne, Dublin City Libraries).This incident is the focus of The Spirit of Dora Maguire, an historical comic strip by Dublin artist Aidan J Collins. Some artwork from this creation, which came about in 2018 following a talk I gave in Dublin on Maguire’s life the previous year, can be seen below:Blueprint still from an animated video by Aidan J Collins. This is based on one of the panels from his 2018 historical comic strip The Spirit of Dora Maguire (Courtesy of Aidan J Collins).On Monday 20th May 2019 I will be teaming up with Maeve Casserly (Historian in Residence, South East Area) for a joint talk about Dora Maguire and St. Ultan’s Children’s Hospital at Rathmines Public Library. The event starts at 6:30pm and all are welcome to attend.Dr. James Curry, Historian in Residence, North West Area.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 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. 

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.

The 1966 Irish history syllabus for secondary schools was consistent with the focus of the 50th anniversary celebrations. It highlighted the role of advanced nationalists and downplayed and even deliberately obscured the role of individuals and groups who might possibly undermine the conservative hegemony of the Irish state. These included the organised labour movement and several women’s organisations, who were described essentially as auxiliaries to the independence struggle.Thankfully historiography has broadened in scope and there is general recognition now that the story of the Irish state is not simply one of emergence from the oppression of British rule. While there has been welcome attention paid to the women who were involved in various organisations during the revolutionary period, much less interest has been shown in the extent to which female solidarity cut across class lines and challenged social hierarchies, particularly in trade union circles. Many members of the Irish Women’s Franchise League, for instance, were also active in the 1913 Lockout and were also to play a critical role in the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence, with many of them on the anti-Treaty side in the Civil W Irish Citizen Army on parade at Liberty Hall, 1915 Far from simply supporting the separatist agenda, in the early years of the revolutionary period it is arguable that labour, particularly trade union forces had the most clearly laid out ideas for the shape of the state that would emerge from a successful revolution. James Connolly visualised a very clear strategy of attempting to unite all the most progressive forces in Ireland around their own revolutionary labour-based force, which was centred on the Irish Citizen Army, primarily in Dublin. As far as the organised labour movement was concerned, the revolutionary period can be divided into two phases: the first culminating in the Rising and its catastrophic casualties, as well as the symbolism of the destruction of Liberty Hall. The second phase saw a certain retrenchment behind industrial relations issues in the aftermath of the Rising, albeit with some notable exceptions. Despite the post-Rising caution of the Irish Trade Union Congress, between 1918 to 1922 there were no less than three national general strikes, called for political rather than industrial reasons.Consideration of the revolutionary period must also include the impact of the First World War. The Irish Trade Union Congress and Labour Party (ITUCLP) had an affiliated membership of 110,000 in 1914, mainly comprised of craft unions but including the general workers of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU). From its earliest stages, the Irish trade unions warned that the war would not be in the best interests of Irish workers. The National Executive of the ITUCLP frequently reminded Irish men and women of how the British Empire had treated them in the past.In the spring of 1918 the Irish trade unions played a prominent and crucial part in successfully opposing the introduction of conscription into Ireland. The ITUCLP made frequent representations to the British government in the course of the War of Independence, but they had lost the opportunity to lead their members politically when the Irish Labour Party opted not to contest the 1918 General Election, leaving the field free for nationalist forces that were frequently antagonistic to the best interests of the working class. Liberty Hall in the aftermath of the Easter Rising, 1916Dr. 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. 

We are delighted to announce that Cathy Scuffil, Historian in Residence with Dublin City Council (South Central area) has been awarded a silver medal by the Old Dublin Society for her paper on the South Circular Road on the eve of the First World War.  Professor Frank Barry from Trinity College Dublin presented the medal to Cathy on 21st June and praised her research which she undertook initially for an MA in Local History from Maynooth University.  Cathy brings her knowledge and love of history to groups and schools all over the Crumlin, Ballyfermot, Dolphin’s Barn, Walkinstown, Kimmage and Dublin 8 areas of the city. Some information about the Old Dublin Society medal:The Old Dublin Society was founded in 1934. Ten years later, the President at the time, Dr George Little, gave a silver medal for the best paper read by a member at one of the Society's meetings and published in 'The Dublin Historical Record'. This was known as 'The President's Medal' and this continued until Dr Little’s resignation in 1955. The Council then decided to continue awarding the medal, but calling it 'The Society's Medal'. Since 2016 articles submitted for publication by non-members of the Society are now eligible for the award as long as they feature original research on aspects of the history of the city and county of Dublin. The medal is now awarded for the best paper published in 'The Dublin Historical Record' in a calendar year, the winner being decided by majority vote of the Council.