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 […]
Tag: John Walsh
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 […]
exiles in england 