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William Patrick Stuart-Houston (né Hitler; 12 March 1911 – 14 July 1987) was the half-nephew of Adolf Hitler. William Patrick was the son of Alois Hitler - Adolf Hitler's half brother, and his Irish wife Bridget Dowling and was born in Liverpool, Lancashire, England.His mother Bridget Dowling, met Alois when he was a waiter in the Shelbourne Hotel in 1909; in 1910 they eloped to London, where they married. William Patrick was born the following year.The story goes that the young Bridget Dowling spotted a dashing foreigner at the Dublin Horse Show. The handsome stranger in the Homburg hat at the RDS was none other than Alois Hitler, brother of the future leader of the Third Reich. Bridget, an innocent 17-year-old was just out of convent school, and said later: "I cannot deny that this stranger with his fine foreign manners made a great impression.'Romance blossomed and the pair went on dates to Dublin's National Gallery. Alois, the older half-brother of Adolf Hitler, made out he was a grand hotelier who was on a European tour studying the business in various countries. Bridget's family disapproved of the match. Their opposition to the relationship was proved right when they found out that Mr Hitler was not in fact a wealthy hotelier but a waiter in the Shelbourne Hotel.In the 1930s William Patrick Hitler lived in Germany.  Paddy Hitler showed himself to be an opportunist. He travelled over to Germany to exploit his connections after Hitler became Chancellor. The pair had a stormy relationship, but uncle Adolf found Paddy work in a bank. He later became a car salesman for Opel. He began to copy his uncle's mannerisms, including the Fuhrer's pose with crossed arms. He even grew a similar moustache.Paddy Hitler was in demand at society dinner parties in Germany. Adolf described him as his "loathsome nephew''. Patrick was reported to have made veiled threats to expose Adolf's Jewish ancestry, and demanded a more senior job. Hitler demanded that he become a German citizen if he wanted a top job. Fearing a trap, Patrick then fled Germany in a hurry. Back in England he wrote an article for Look magazine, "Why I hate my Uncle''. The Hitler name may have opened doors for Paddy in Berlin, but it wasn't flavour of the month in England as war broke out.However, by 1939 he and his mother had moved to the United States where he became a critic of his uncle. Paddy turned his colourful background into a sort of travelling freak show. He gave lectures, warning America that his uncle was a madman surrounded by "sexual perverts''.Adolf Hitler's nephew served in the US Navy in World War Two. William P. Hitler was sworn in on March 6, 1944 and went on to serve for three years as a pharmacist's mate receiving a Purple Heart medal for a wound he suffered. He received a shrapnel wound in the leg.Having cashed in on the Hitler name before and during World War Two, Bridget and Paddy then decided to drop out of public view completely. They vanished and assumed new identities as the Stuart-Houston family. They lived on Long Island, where Patrick ran a blood-analysis laboratory. Patrick married a German woman Phyllis and they had four sons. Although Patrick kept his identity secret until shortly before his death. He was still alive in 1977; but nothing further is known of him after that date.Bridget Dowling Hitler died in 1969 at the age of 78. Her son Patrick is buried beside her, having died suddenly in 1987. Their grave on Long Island offers no clues to their background. His sons Louis and Brian run a local landscaping business, while the oldest brother Alex is a former social worker. Hitler's last surviving relatives quietly decline interviews about their notorious grand-uncle.William Patrick’s story so fascinated British journalist David Gardner that he spent years attempting to find the last relative to bear the Hitler name. Gardner found that William Patrick died before the search started, but that his four sons had established a pact that, in order for Adolf Hitler’s genes to die with them, none of them would have children. He discovered too that the eldest son, Alex, also has a middle name.... Adolf! And that the family insist Adolf Hitler did visit Liverpool (and Ireland) before the First World War – a trip previously discounted by historians. The book, The Last of the Hitlers, contains previously unpublished FBI files and interviews with the surviving blood relatives, and is not just a history of the family, it is also the story of Gardner’s dedicated search.This book is on the shelf in Ballymun Library and you can email the branch at [email protected] if you would like to read it and we will send it on to a collection branch. Please include your email address and library card number and highlight your pick up branch for collection. Find out more about our new call and collect service. 

The world as we know it has changed rapidly since Ireland recorded its first cases of Covid-19. The pandemic made me think about various addresses I have lived at before; from digs to bedsits and flats. However, Joyce's addresses number far more. Seven St. Peter’s Terrace is the house where Joyce’s mother, May, died.

Charles Dickens, one of the most popular and accessible novelists died 150 years ago in June 1870. His novels are still popular and they have been adapted for television and cinema. They have been turned into popular musicals on stage and screen. Many novelists have acknowledged his influence and expressed admiration for his novels.At the age of twelve he was sent to work in a blacking factory by his affectionate but feckless parents. From these unpromising beginnings, he rose to scale all the social and literary heights, entirely through his own efforts. When he died, the world mourned, and he was buried - against his wishes - in Westminster Abbey. Yet the brilliance concealed a divided character: a republican, he disliked America; sentimental about the family in his writings, he took up passionately with a young actress; usually generous, he cut off his impecunious children.Dickens created an array of memorable characters - Miss Havisham dressed in her wedding finery every day since she was jilted at the altar in Great Expectations. The contrasting characters Mr. Micawber and Uriah Heep in David Copperfield. In David Copperfield, the novel he described as his favorite child, Dickens drew revealingly on his own experiences to create one of his most exuberant and enduringly popular works, filled with tragedy and comedy in equal measure. One of the most swiftly moving and unified of Charles Dickens’s great novels, Oliver Twist is also famous for its re-creation through the splendidly realized figures of Fagin, Nancy, the Artful Dodger, and the evil Bill Sikes of the vast London underworld of pickpockets, thieves, prostitutes, and abandoned children. Victorian critics took Dickens to task for rendering this world in such a compelling, believable way, but readers over the last 150 years have delivered an alternative judgment by making this story of the orphaned Oliver Twist one of its author’s most loved works.His novels were originally published in instalments in weekly or monthly magazines. This is the reason there are some dramatic “cliffhanger” scenes which made the reader want to know what happened in the next instalment. This helps to make them “pageturners” for modern readers. (It also allowed Dickens to get feedback from his readers about what they thought of his stories and characters before he had finished his novel!)There are 24 ebook and eaudiobook copies of Dickens’ novels available on Borrowbox and you will also find there an excellent biography of the author by Claire Tomalin.Claire Tomalin is the award-winning author of eight highly acclaimed biographies, including: The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft; Shelley and His World; Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life; The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens; Mrs Jordan's Profession; Jane Austen: A Life; Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self; Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man and, most recently, Charles Dickens: A Life. A former literary editor of the New Statesman and the Sunday Times, she is married to the playwright and novelist Michael Frayn.Submitted by Philip in Finglas Library.Access eBooks/eAudiobooks on your phone, tablet or reader. Once you have installed the app, search for Dublin in the ‘Library’ field provided and then sign in using your library membership card number and PIN. Watch our how to video on Borrowbox. Members of other library authorities will need to log in using a different link.

In this episode of the DCLA podcast, Jessica Fahy examines the choices made in the portrayal of significant Irish women by leading artists of the day.

On December 6, 1922, the Irish Free State came formally into existence after the Free State Act gave effect to the Anglo-Irish Treaty. It was exactly one year after the signing of the Treaty. Under the Free State Act, the Governor General would be the King’s representative in Ireland. The first holder of the post was former Irish Parliamentary Party MP Timothy Healy, who was sworn in at his home in Chapelizod.Opposite an undated portrait of Tim Healy (Dixon Slides Collection, DCLA)Healy was born in Bantry, Co. Cork in 1855. He worked in England as a railway clerk and then from 1878 in London as parliamentary correspondent of the Nation. He followed the family participation in Irish politics (his elder brother Thomas was a solicitor and Member of Parliament for North Wexford and his younger brother Maurice was a solicitor and MP for Cork City. After being arrested for intimidation in connection with the Land League, Tim was elected as MP for Wexford in 1880.In Parliament Healy became an authority on the Irish land question, and created the ‘Healy Clause’ of the Land Act of 1881, which protected tenant farmers’ agrarian improvements from rent increases imposed by landlords. This not only made him popular throughout nationalist Ireland but also won seats for the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) in Protestant Ulster. He was called to the Bar in 1884 and became a Queen’s Counsel in 1899In the IPP, Healy’s relations with Parnell were always strained and he finally broke with ‘the Chief’ in 1886 when the Kitty O’Shea divorce scandal became common knowledge. Although he was a strong supporter of Home Rule, he was not an admirer of Parnell’s successors in the IPP and he supported Sinn Féin after 1917.During the War of Independence, Healy recognised the futility of the insistence by the Ireland Secretary, Sir Hamar Greenwood that the IRA should surrender their arms before engaging in talks about a truce. He said:The point I gather, taken by the blessed Cabinet donkeys, was that the Shins should surrender arms before a truce. This is worthy of Gallipoli, Antwerp, Deniken, Wrangel and the cohort of cods. I am for doing business and making peace.Because he was regarded as an elder statesman by the British and Irish governments, both sides proposed him in 1922 as governor-general of the new Irish Free State. The Office of Governor-General was largely ceremonial but many Nationalists regarded the existence of the office as offensive to republican principles and a symbol of continued Irish involvement in the United Kingdom.The office's role was diminished over time by the Irish Government and it was officially abolished on 11 December 1936. The Irish government set the term of office for the Governor General at five years. Tim Healy died at his home in Chapelizod in March 1931, aged 75 years.Dublin Irish and Local Studies The Dublin and Irish Local Studies Collection includes new and second-hand material on Dublin City and County covering a range of books, newspapers, periodicals, photographs, maps, prints, drawings, theatre programmes, playbills, posters, ballad sheets, audiovisual materials and ephemera. Library and archive material cannot be borrowed or removed from the Reading Room. Collections can be accessed by filling out request forms and can be viewed in the Reading Room only.Blop post by: Dr Mary Muldowney, Dublin City Council Historian in Residence, Dublin Central. 

Welcome to the third entry in our blog series 'Lost in the Stacks' - recommendations by Dublin City Libraries staff exploring overlooked gems and helping you find your next read!Our entry today comes from one of our wonderful librarians, Jessica, and looks at some of the best essay collections in our libraries!Essay CollectionsIs there a greater joy than settling comfortably with a beverage of your choice and reading a well-crafted essay?There is a particular form of literary alchemy that takes place in the best essays - the fusion of the personal with social commentary combined with a stylistic elegance. Often offering a unique perspective on a cultural moment or a brief window into another world, a good essay has a habit of staying with you long after the pages have turned and the book is closed.Here is a selection of the very best essay collections for you to enjoy. If you'd like to borrow any of the books discussed below, simply click on the book cover or title to be taken to the reserves page, where you'll need your library card and PIN to request the book.1. Pulphead: dispatches from the other side of America by John Jeremiah SullivanPulphead is a fascinating collection of essays exploring pop culture and subcultures of American life fused with memoir and aspects from the writer’s own life. Written with a gentle wit and probing intelligence, it is hard to resist reading the entire collection in one go.2. Changing my mind: occasional essays by Zadie SmithThis is a fabulous collection of Zadie Smith’s book reviews, film reviews and non-fiction prose. Witty, honest and refreshing, it is a pleasure to dip in and out of.3. Naked by David SedarisDavid Sedaris has cornered the market in humorous memoir based essays. The stories here are sardonic, wry and darkly hilarious with a touch of pathos and just the right amount of hindsight and self-knowledge to balance the comic absurdity.4. Men explain things to me by Rebecca SolnitThe title essay of this book has gained iconic status since it was published but each of the essays in this book are powerful reminders of why we need feminism. Essential reading.5. This is the story of a happy marriage by Ann PatchettAnn Patchett is best known as a novelist but this book collects her earlier non-fiction articles. This is a fabulous collection of personal essays and memoir pieces that explore key moments in her life. Her writing is warm, engaging, and shining through with humour and kindness.

Strolling around the centre of St. Stephens Green, amongst the flowers, swans, tourists and lunchtime-time sandwich eaters, stands an unassuming seat which you might easily pass-by without noticing. Going in for a closer look, the curious onlooker will note that this bench is dedicated to one Anna and Thomas Haslam for their tireless work campaigning for equal rights for women. The seat, made from Kilkenny Limestone, was erected in 1923, five years after women over 30 received the vote in Britain and Ireland and a year after all men and women in the Irish Free State constitution over 21 could vote. Collection: Dublin City Gallery The Hugh LaneThe Haslams' work in the later part of the nineteenth century is a great example of the overlapping campaign for social reform that many of those involved in the suffrage movement were also a part of.Both Anna and Thomas were Quakers (members of The Society of Friends), a Christian sect first introduced into Ireland in 1654. Their fundamental belief was in equality between men and women and they were predominantly known for their help with the poor and their support for the anti-slavery campaign, prison reform and temperance.Ann Maria Fischer was born in April 1829 to a middle-class Quaker family in Youghal, County Cork. She was educated in Quaker boarding schools in Newtown (Waterford) and Newgate (York, England). In 1845 she returned from York to work with her parents in the soup kitchens organised by the Society of Friends Anna for the relief of the Great Famine. From her family kitchen in Youghal, Anna and her sister Deborah started up a workshop teaching young girls to knit and crotchet. Anna organised the sale of their work and the business began to flourish, ultimately employed over 100 young women in the area. After a number of successful years trading, the nuns of the Presentation Convent eventually took over and introduced lace-making which later established Youghal’s renowned lace industry.In 1853, when working at a teaching position in Ackworth School in Yorkshire, Anna met fellow teacher and Irish Quaker Thomas Haslam, who was originally from Mountmellick in County Laois. Thomas shared Anna’s belief in equality for women, and after returning to Ireland they married in 1854 in Cork. The Haslam’s left teaching and moved to Dublin when Thomas obtained a position as an accountant at Jameson, Pim & Co. Brewery, in Aughrim Street. They were extremely close and devoted to each other, which friends often referring to their marriage as idyllic. They moved to Rathmines in 1862, and in 1866 Thomas suffered ill health which was to afflict him the rest of his life. He was unable to work, so Anna became the breadwinner, running a small stationary business from their home at 125 Leinster Rd., Rathmines for the next forty years.Credit: National Archives of IrelandThe first campaign the Haslams were involved in was around better education for women; Anna had been among the reformers let by Anne Jellicoe, in the founding of the Irish Society for Training and Employment of Educated Women in 1861 and in 1866 the establishment of Alexandra College for the Higher Education of Women. Alexandra College was the first college in Ireland to provide university-type education for women and then in 1873 Alexandra High School for Girls. Anna also contributed to the Intermediate Education Act of 1879, which enabled girls to sit public school examinations, and the Royal University Act of 1879, which permitted women to study for degrees in the Royal University. Credit: Dublin City Library and ArchivesDespite his illness, Thomas continued to contribute to the campaign for women’s rights. In 1874 he published The Women’s Advocate, the first of three Irish suffrage pamphlets and the first to be published in Ireland supporting women’s suffrage. They contained invaluable information and practical advice on the organisation of suffrage activism and as well as debating in favour of the vote for women.In 1876, the first Irish suffrage society was founded by Anna and Thomas, called the Dublin Women’s Suffrage Association. Anna became secretary, a position she held for thirty-seven years. The DWSA sought reform for any discrimination against women, either on a legal or social level, and regularly sent petitions to the House of Commons and lobbied Irish MPs.In 1864, 1866 and 1869 parliament passed the Contagious Diseases Acts, where women suspected of prostitution living in garrison towns in Britain and Ireland were subject to compulsory checks for venereal disease. If they were found to be infected they could be forcibly detainment in a lock hospital for up to one year. Many felt the Acts were discriminative against women and maintained a sexual double standard. Anna and Isabella Tod, a prominent feminist from Belfast, were involved in the campaign to repeal the Acts from the beginning. Anna campaigned tirelessly, speaking at public meetings in Dublin and Belfast and lobbying Irish MPs. The long campaigned ended in 1886 when the acts were at last repealed, but Anna later wrote it set the suffrage campaign back by ten years as they were all so absorbed in it.Another success came in 1896 as the Women Poor Law Guardians Act was passed in Ireland. Poor Law Guardians were elected by magistrates and ratepayers, in Ireland women could vote but not be elected as Guardians unlike the rest of Britain. In 1897 there were thirteen women Poor Law Guardians, which increased to twenty-two the following year, opening the doors for women in local government. Anna and the DWSA continued to lobby Irish MPs and in 1898 the Local Government (Ireland) Act extended the local government vote to all women over thirty who satisfied the residential qualifications, and entitled them to be elected as local councillors. Thomas continued to work alongside Anna, publishing, Women’s Suffrage from a Masculine Standpoint, in 1904.The DWSA grew and extended beyond Dublin, becoming the Irishwomen’s Suffrage and Local Government Association (IWSLGA) in 1901. The turn of the twentieth century saw a more militant approach of which Anna disapproved. In 1908 two members of the IWSLGA, Margaret Cousins and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, frustrated by the limitations of the group established the Irish Women’s Franchise League (IWFL), an organisation prepared to break the law if necessary.The exclusion of women’s suffrage from the Home Rule Bill of 1912 brought further feelings of frustration and betrayal for many in the women’s movement. Some resorted to more drastic militant action by damaging government buildings such as the GPO and Dublin Castle. Those found guilty were given a prison sentence and some began hunger strike campaigns in prison. Anna disapproved of such methods in an open letter the Irish Citizen, (founded in 1912 by the Sheehy-Skeffingtons).The outbreak of the First World War brought a lapse in the activism of many in the suffrage movement, as many groups concentrating on contributing to the war effort. In 1916, at the age of ninety, Thomas Haslam published his last pamphlet, Some Last Words on Women’s Suffrage, he died a year later and didn’t live to see the Representation of the People Act brought into legislation in February 1918. This act finally gave women over the age of thirty, who met a property qualification, the right to vote in general elections.At the age of ninety, Anna voted at the Irish general election in December 1918. Despite their political differences, women from all organisations cheered her on the way to the polling booth, and presented her with a bouquet of flowers in suffrage colours.Anna died in 1922, just after the Irish Free State granted full suffrage to all adults over twenty-one. Her work, along with that of her husband’s, to campaigns for social reform and equality for women spanned decades of change in Irish and global society and she whose legacy is carried on my the successor of the IWSLGA, the National Women’s Council of Ireland. Maeve Casserly, Historian-in-Residence, Dublin City Council Additional Photo Credit:Bench: Flickr Commons William Murphy Further Reading (available from your local library!)Smashing Times, Rosemary Cullen OwenIrish Women and the Vote: Becoming Citizens, Louise Ryan and Margaret Ward (eds.)Rise up, Women! Diane Atkinson

This International Women's Day we remember the women of the 1916 Rising and their place in Irish history.  You can discover more about these women and their determined commitment to Ireland’s revolutionary movement in a new book Richmond Barracks 1916: We were there, 77 women of the Easter Rising.