400 years on: Forget Southfork & Dallas, for family infighting check out the O’Doynes of the 1600s

Recently, inspired by Irish Culture Night, I bought a copy of the O’Doyne manuscript, published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission in the early 1980s. The manuscript itself is in Marsh’s Library, Ireland’s oldest public library, and is dominated by documents relating to the lengthy legal battle between Charles O’Doyne (Cathaoir Ó Duinn) and his older [...]

Breadcrumb history gets underway: So, who was “Bully” Egan?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about Dublin in the 1780s. While the whole idea of a suburb called ‘Hell’ was what got me writing, references to characters long since gone, such as “Bully” Egan and Yelverton, got me thinking: ‘What do we know about these guys? Can we bring them guys [...]

Dublin in the 1780s: It’s Hell, Jim, but not as we know it

Recently, as I trawled through Google Books archive looking for various tidbits that would service my twin Irish historical interests – economic history and genealogy – I stumbled across an edition of the Quarterly Review from 1852 which contained a fascinating lengthy article, essentially a proto-Lonely Planet for Dublin. I’m still going through it – [...]