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Quick Link | Mass murder now suspected of Irishmen at Duffy’s Cut | IrishCentral

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

This is an interesting story the story of the Mass Grave at Duffy’s Cut. As I recall an Irish production company made a film about this a few years ago. UPDATE: Yup it was Tile Films and there’s a video too.

In the summer of 1832 a group of 57 Irish immigrants came to the area west of Philadelphia to work on the construction of the railway line. Within six weeks the men, mainly from Donegal, Tyrone and Derry, were all dead and anonymously buried in a mass grave outside the town of Malvern.

For some time it was thought that the mass grave was due to an outbreak of a dangerous disease such as cholera and this was simply a way of dealing with infection. However, the new evidence paints a different picture. While the two skulls found more recently show signs of violence and a bullet hole the previous skulls unearthed also showed trauma.

via Mass murder now suspected of Irishmen at Duffy’s Cut – SEE VIDEO | Irish News | IrishCentral.

UPDATE: There’s a video of the Documentary:

A Note on Peter Hart And A Link To Mike Cosgrave's Thoughts

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

A very fair note on Peter Hart who died at the very young age of 46 this week.

Having dealt with Peter while working at Mercier, I have to say I found him very professional and exceptionally courteous.  While I didn’t always agree with his perspective and felt he had serious questions to answer on a number of points, I nonetheless thought he also raised some valid and searching questions about our history that warranted answering.

One less questioning voice in Irish History.

The problem of his ‘revisionist’ interpretation of the War of Independence in Cork still rouses amateur historians to fury. Ireland being a small country, many of his critics are related to the men whose motivation Hart criticised. Sometimes, I think his critics protest too much� – just or not, the War of Independence was a nasty and unpleasant terrorist war in which men on both sides were shot down in night and died in the cold wet ditches.� Hart’s interpretation may have swung too far, but there are still many people in Ireland who are not comfortable admitting how our state was born. Dealing with our past – and in the case of Northern Ireland, our recent past – is part of the contribution we can make to understanding and resolving conflict in the world.

via Peter Hart « Mike Cosgrave.

Quick Link | Top 5 Irish people who almost changed history « Irish History Podcast

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

The Irish History podcast is a great resource. Another smashing post today!

In true European colonial style Daniel paid as much attention to the nearly 2,500 year old accounts of Herodotus as he did to local knowledge. His journey from the outset was plagued by disasters. Firstly African Merchants tried to kill him as they could foresee the threat posed by European trade and after escaping with his life he subsequently lost all his baggage in a fire.

via Quick Link | Top 5 Irish people who almost changed history « Irish History Podcast.

Thomas Francis Meagher: Man of distinction

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

In between, a remarkable life that carried Meagher to four of the world’s seven continents, earned him hero status from the Irish and a sentence of death from the British, then a last-second reprieve and lifetime banishment to Tasmania, which was followed by his escape to New York City, and American careers that ran the gamut from newspaper editor, to South American adventurer, to lecturer, to brave brigadier general who led his troops into some of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles.

via Man of distinction.

Taoiseach – TV3's new series

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

I have to say, I didn’t expect this of TV3. I missed the news that it was running and so missed the first episode on one of the most interesting men t hold the office, WT Cosgrave (whom we’ve mentioned here before).

The Independent carries a fine piece by John-Paul McCarthy about the series:

Cosgrave was in many ways an essentially theocratic politician, a deeply devout Catholic who once proposed that an ecclesiastical commission vet parliamentary legislation for theological deviance as soon as the statutes emerged from the Dail print shop.

And yet he held office under a classically liberal constitution, complete with an American-style establishment clause banning preferential treatment for a state church and an essentially British division of competences between an executive, a lower house and an upper house possessed of some interesting delaying powers. The Catholic Gulliver was thus immobilised for 15 years by these delicate constitutional chains. Cosgrave was also mild-mannered, unambitious personally and prone on occasion to diplomatic illnesses which allowed him to avoid contentious cabinet tussles between his headstrong subordinates. (He was formally ill during the Army Mutiny crisis in 1924 and sought to direct events from hospital.) And yet, circumstances forced Cosgrave to become arguably the most ruthless civilian chief executive the Irish State has ever produced.

Looking forward to catching up and watching the rest!
Eoin