In 1938, Dr Mark Ryan, who had joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Lancashire in 1865, declared in the foreword to his book ‘Fenian Memories’, that ‘next to my religion, Fenianism has been the greatest thing in my life’. Not all Irish nationalists, however, who had enthusiastically embraced Fenianism as young men remained loyal to […]
Tag: Fenians
Terence MacSwiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, died in Brixton prison on 25 October 1920 on the seventy-fourth day of his hunger strike, and was buried the following Sunday afternoon in his home city.[1] That same afternoon, in ‘scenes unparalleled in the history of Newcastle’, a symbolic funeral procession for the ‘Great Irish Patriot and Christian […]
One hundred and fifty years ago, rival Irish gangs of Fenians and Hibernians fought for supremacy in the village of Witton Park in County Durham. This post will explore the turbulent history of that time. On 21 November 1870, ‘two respectable-looking men’, John Walsh and Thomas Boucher, were arrested by police at Manchester’s Victoria railway […]
All but forgotten today, the National Brotherhood of St Patrick set the pattern for nationalist celebrations of St Patrick’s Day on Tyneside. But was it really a front for the Irish Republican Brotherhood rather than just a social club? This post will tell the story of this organisation and explore its relationship with the Fenians. […]
Introduction.[1] The story of Mary Gunn and the Irish Labour Party has featured in a previous post on this website Mary Gunn: Gateshead’s Irish nationalist and Labour activist.[2] This post sets that story against the background of Irish Catholic settlement in Gateshead from the mid-nineteenth century, and shows how, by the late 1920s, the Labour […]
Before the Great War, Irish audiences across the North East of England packed local theatres to enjoy nationally-themed plays such as The Wearing of the Green, Robert Emmet, and Erin go Bragh, written by nationally-minded playwrights. This post will examine this phenomenon and consider what impact these plays may have had on the North East […]
Was Middlesbrough’s John Walsh part of the conspiracy that planned and executed the brutal Phoenix Park killings that so shocked Britain and Ireland in 1882? This post will examine the life of this ‘extreme Irish nationalist’, who died in exile in New York in 1891. The assassination of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Lord Frederick […]
This post will explore the short and turbulent history of Middlesbrough’s Irish Literary Association, the first to open in the North East of England, and show how the clash between Fenians and Catholic priests led to its early closure. Founded 150 years ago in April 1871, Newcastle’s Irish Literary Institute is still remembered both for […]
This post was originally given as a paper entitled ‘An analysis of advanced nationalist activity amongst the Irish diaspora in the North East of England during the 1890s’ at ‘The Irish Diaspora and Revolution 1845-1945’ conference organised in 2012 by the Department of History, National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Some small changes have been made […]
This post looks at the life of Michael Kelly, headmaster of the first Catholic secondary school for boys in Newcastle and ‘an ardent Fenian’, who moved to the United States in 1883 in the aftermath of the Phoenix Park killings. In February 1869, police in Liverpool arrested Michael James Kelly, a young Irish picture dealer […]
exiles in england 