TaoiseachBertie Ahern officially inaugurates the institute on April 7, 2000. The college uses Tipperary Institute as its trading name. In 2010 the Irish government introduces rationalization measures to cut costs of third level bodies, and commences a merger between Tipperary Institute and Limerick Institute of Technology. The formal integration of Tipperary Institute into LIT on September 1, 2011, sees the two campuses become LIT Tipperary.
The college has two academic departments: Business, Education and Social Science and Technology, Media and Science. It is fully accredited by the Higher Education and Training Awards Council (HETAC) and offers National Framework of Qualifications Level 7 and Level 8 full-time degree courses, as well as a number of part-time and evening courses. The college also facilitates the joint-run BSc (Hons) in Strength & Conditioning (level 8) in conjunction with online sports college Setanta College.
The Queen, the first ship delivering Irish convicts, arrives at the penal settlement of Botany Bay in New South Wales, Australia on September 26, 1791. About 30% of all Australians are of Irish birth or descent. Many emigrated freely but many are descended from convicts transported there in the early years of the colony.
Britain has a policy of transportation. Up until the American Revolution most are sent to the American colonies or the West Indies. By the 1780s, Britain badly needs prison space. Petty criminals are housed on overcrowded prison ships anchored on the River Thames. In 1786, the government decides to start a prison settlement in the new colony at Botany Bay.
The transportation is arranged by a private company and those convicts who arrive there are actually the lucky ones, as conditions on the journey are horrendous and many die en route. The organisers of the transportation ships operate on a contract basis. They are paid a certain amount per head and the less provisions they give the prisoners the more profit they make.
The first two fleets of convict ships sail from England. The first ship to sail directly from Ireland is the Queen, which leaves Cork in April 1791 and joins the third fleet sailing from England. On board are 133 male convicts, 22 females and three children. The youngest on the ship is two-week-old Margaret, daughter of convict Sarah Brennan. The youngest convicts are 11-year-old David Fay and 12-year-old James Blake, convicted for stealing a pair of buckles. The oldest convict is 64-year-old Patrick Fitzgerald from Dublin, who is sentenced to seven years for stealing clothes. Seven men and one woman die on the voyage and within a year, half the men who had sailed on the Queen are dead. Young James Blake dies within a few months of landing.
The last convict ship sails from Ireland to Australia in 1853 and over the course of 60 years, 30,000 men and 9,000 women are transported for a minimum of seven years. While a good number of them are patriots and rebels – United Irishmen and Young Irelanders – the majority are transported for petty crimes.
Transportation continues for more than 60 years and is followed by assisted emigration. More than 100,000 travel on assisted passage during the 1850s alone. Some are assisted on their journey by charitable organisations in an effort to relieve distress. The last transportation ship, the Phoebe Dunbar, sails from Dún Laoghaire in 1853, bound for Perth.
Ashe is born in Lispole, County Kerry, on January 12, 1885. He enters De La Salle Training College, Waterford in 1905 and begins a teaching career as principal of Corduff National School, Lusk, County Dublin, in 1908.
Ashe plays a major part in the 1916 Easter Rising outside the capital city commanding the Fingal battalion of the Irish Volunteers. He is commandant of the 5th battalion of the Dublin brigade, a force of 60–70 men engaging British forces around north County Dublin during the rising. They are armed only with a few rounds, about a dozen service rifles, a dozen Mausers, and a dozen Martini carbines. Some of Ashe’s men are armed only with a shotgun against the well-equipped army regulars.
Ashe’s battalion wins a major victory in Ashbourne, County Meath, where they engage a much larger force. They capture a significant quantity of arms and up to twenty Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) vehicles. Eleven RIC members, including County Inspector Alexander Gray, and two volunteers are killed during the 5-1/2-hour battle. Twenty-four hours after the rising collapses, Ashe’s battalion surrenders on the orders of Patrick Pearse. On May 8, 1916, Ashe and Éamon de Valera are court-martialled and sentenced to death. The sentences are commuted to penal servitude for life. Ashe is imprisoned in Frongoch internment camp and Lewes Prison in Lewes, East Sussex, England.
De Valera, Ashe, and Thomas Hunter lead a prisoner hunger strike on May 28, 1917. With accounts of prison mistreatment appearing in the Irish press and mounting protests in Ireland, Ashe and the remaining prisoners are freed on June 18, 1917, by David Lloyd George as part of a general amnesty.
Upon his release, Ashe returns to Ireland and begins a series of speaking engagements. In August 1917, he is arrested and charged with sedition for a speech that he makes in Ballinalee, County Longford, where Michael Collins is also speaking. He is detained at the Curragh but is then transferred to Mountjoy Prison in Dublin. He is convicted and sentenced to two years hard labour. Ashe and other prisoners, including Fionán Lynch and Austin Stack, demand prisoner of war status.
On September 20, 1917, Ashe again goes on hunger strike. He dies at Mater Misericordiae Hospital on September 25, 1917, after being force fed by prison authorities. At the inquest into his death, the jury condemns the staff at the prison for the “inhuman and dangerous operation performed on the prisoner, and other acts of unfeeling and barbaric conduct.” His body lies in state at Dublin City Hall and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.
The Ashe Memorial Hall built in 1928, housing the Kerry County Museum, in Tralee is named after him while Nelson Street, also in Tralee, is renamed Ashe Street. Ashe is a relative of Catherine Ashe, the paternal grandmother of American actor Gregory Peck, who emigrates to the United States in the 19th century.
Eavan Boland, Irish poet, author and professor who has been active since the 1960s and helped develop feminist publishing company Arlen House, is born in Dublin on September 24, 1944. She is currently a professor at Stanford University, where she has taught since 1996. Her work deals with the Irish national identity and the role of women in Irish history. A number of poems from Boland’s poetry career are studied by Irish students who take the Leaving Certificate.
Boland’s father, Frederick Boland, is a career diplomat and her mother, Frances Kelly, is a noted post-expressionist painter. When she is six, her father is appointed Irish Ambassador to the United Kingdom. The family follows him to London, where she has her first experiences of anti-Irish sentiment. Her dealing with this hostility strengthens her identification with her Irish heritage. She speaks of this time in her poem “An Irish Childhood in England: 1951.”
At 14, she returns to Dublin to attend Holy Child School in Killiney. She publishes a pamphlet of poetry, 23 Poems, in her first year at Trinity College, Dublin in 1962. She earns a BA with First Class Honors in English Literature and Language from Trinity in 1966. Since then, she has held numerous teaching positions and published poetry, prose criticism and essays. She marries the novelist Kevin Casey in 1969 and has two daughters. Her experiences as a wife and mother influence her to write about the centrality of the ordinary, as well as provide a frame for more political and historical themes.
Boland has taught at Trinity College, Dublin, University College Dublin, and Bowdoin College, and was a member of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. She was also writer in residence at Trinity College, Dublin, and at the National Maternity Hospital, Dublin. In the late 1970s and 1980s, she teaches at the School of Irish Studies in Dublin. Since 1996 she has been a tenured Professor of English at Stanford University where she is currently Bella Mabury and Eloise Mabury Knapp Professor in the Humanities and Melvin and Bill Lane Professor for Director of the Creative Writing program. She divides her time between Palo Alto, California and her home in Dublin.
In 2015, Boland says that Trinity College, Dublin not only “influenced her career,” but “determined her career.”
The Battle of Ardnaree, a battle in the Tudor conquest of Ireland, is fought at Ardnaree, now a suburb of Ballina, County Mayo, on September 23, 1586. The result is a victory for the English over the Mac Philbins and Burkes. The conflict is a part of the political and military struggle, involving the English and occasionally the Scots, for control of northern Ireland. The anglicised version of the name Ardnaree can be translated to Árd na ríogh, meaning the hill of the kings.
Sir Richard Bingham, governor of Connacht, follows the mercenary force to Ardnaree, where the mercenary force has camped on the east bank of the River Moy. Bingham’s forces surround the camp at night and attack the occupants. During the battle 1,000 mercenaries are killed, including Donnell Gorm MacDonnell of Carey and Alexander Carragh MacDonnell of Glenarm. Also slaughtered are some 1,000 men, women and children in the camp.
Richard Bingham goes on to hang the leaders of the Burkes, with the former lands of Mac Philbins and Mayo Burkes given to English settlers.
(Pictured: Sir Richard Bingham, governor of Connacht)
Robert “Bobby” Ballagh, artist, painter and designer, is born in Dublin on September 22, 1943. His painting style is strongly influenced by pop art. He is particularly well known for his hyperealistic renderings of well-known Irish literary, historical or establishment figures.
In 1991, he co-ordinates the 75th anniversary commemoration of the 1916 Easter Rising, during which he claims he is harassed by the Special Branch of the Garda Síochána.
He is the president of the Ireland Institute for Historical and Cultural Studies, which promotes international republicanism. It is based at the new Pearse centre at 27 Pearse Street, Dublin, which is the birthplace of Pádraig Pearse in 1879.
In July 2011 it is reported that he might consider running for the 2011 Irish Presidential election with the backing of Sinn Féin and the United Left Alliance. A Sinn Féin source confirms there has been “very informal discussions” and that Ballagh’s nomination is “a possibility” but “very loose at this stage.” However, on July 25 Ballagh rules out running in the election, saying that he has never considered being a candidate. His discussions with the parties had been about the election “in general” and he has no ambitions to run for political office.
That same month, Ballagh breaks ranks with his colleagues in the travelling production of Riverdance in their decision to perform in Israel. He is an active member of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which insists that artists and academics participate in boycotts of Israeli businesses and cultural institutions.
In July 2012, Ballagh says he is “ashamed and profoundly depressed” at the en masse closure of Irish galleries and museums. He cites an example of some Americans and Canadians on holiday in Ireland. “They described most of the National Gallery as being closed along with several rooms in the Hugh Lane Gallery. I’m glad they didn’t bother going out to the Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham because that’s closed too. At the point I met them, they were returning from Galway where they had found the Nora Barnacle Museum closed too.” He condemns the hypocrisy of political leaders, saying, “I know arts funding is not a big issue for people struggling to put food on the table, but we are talking about the soul of the nation.”
Thomas James Carr, British artist who is associated with the Euston Road School in the 1930s and has a long career as a painter of domestic scenes and landscapes, is born in Belfast to a well-to-do family on September 21, 1909.
Although essentially a realist painter, Carr is included in the 1934 Objective Abstractionists exhibition at Zwemmer’s Gallery. In 1937, he shares an exhibition with Victor Pasmore and Claude Rogers at the Storran Gallery and subsequently becomes associated with the representational style of the Euston Road School. Starting in 1940, at Georges Wildenstein‘s gallery, he holds a series of one-man exhibitions at various galleries including at the Leicester Galleries, The Redfern Gallery and also at Thomas Agnew & Sons.
After the war, Carr teaches at the Belfast College of Art and moves to Belfast in 1955. After the death of his wife in 1995, he moves to Norfolk, England to be nearer one of his three daughters and her family. He continues to paint into old age and tends to concentrate on landscape painting.
Emmet is born at 109 St. Stephen’s Green, in Dublin on March 4, 1778, the youngest son of Dr. Robert Emmet, a court physician, and his wife, Elizabeth Mason. He attends Oswald’s school, in Dopping’s-court, off Golden-lane and enters Trinity College, Dublin in October 1793, at the age of fifteen. He becomes secretary of a secret United Irish Committee in college and is expelled in April 1798 as a result. That same year he flees to France to avoid the many British arrests of nationalists that are taking place in Ireland.
After the 1798 rising, Emmet is involved in reorganising the defeated Society of United Irishmen. In April 1799 a warrant is issued for his arrest. He escapes and soon after travels to the continent in the hope of securing French military aid. His efforts are unsuccessful, as Napoleon is concentrating his efforts on invading England.
Emmet returns to Ireland in October 1802 and, along with fellow revolutionaries Thomas Russell and James Hope, begins preparations for another uprising in March of the following year. A premature explosion at one of Emmet’s arms depots forces him to advance the date of the rising before the authorities’ suspicions are aroused.
Emmet is unable to secure the help of Michael Dwyer‘s Wicklow rebels. Many rebels from Kildare turn back due to the scarcity of firearms they had been promised, but the rising proceeds in Dublin on the evening of July 23, 1803. Failing to seize Dublin Castle, which is lightly defended, the rising amounts to a large-scale disturbance in the Thomas Street area. He sees a dragoon pulled from his horse and piked to death, the sight of which prompts him to call off the rising to avoid further bloodshed, but he has no control over of his followers. Sporadic clashes continue into the night until finally quelled by British military forces.
Emmet flees into hiding but is captured on August 25 and taken to Dublin Castle, then removed to Kilmainham Gaol. He is tried for treason on September 19. The Crown repairs the weaknesses in its case by secretly buying the assistance of Emmet’s defence attorney, Leonard McNally, for £200 and a pension. McNally’s assistant Peter Burrowes cannot be bought, and he pleads the case as best he can. Emmet is found guilty of high treason.
Chief Justice John Toler, 1st Earl of Norbury sentences Emmet to be hanged, drawn and quartered, as is customary for conviction of treason. The following day, September 20, Emmet is executed in Thomas Street near St. Catherine’s Church. He is hanged and beheaded once dead. As family members and friends of Emmet had also been arrested, including some who had nothing to do with the rebellion, no one comes forward to claim his remains out of fear of arrest.
Emmet’s remains are first delivered to Newgate Prison and then back to Kilmainham Gaol, where the jailer is under instructions that if no one claims them, they are to be buried in a nearby hospital’s burial grounds. A later search there finds no remains. It is speculated that Emmet’s remains were secretly removed from the site and reinterred in St. Michan’s Church, a Dublin church with strong United Irish associations, though it is never confirmed. It is later suspected that they are buried secretly in the vault of a Dublin Anglican church. When the vault is inspected in the 1950s a headless corpse was found, suspected of being Emmet’s, but cannot be identified. Widely accepted is the theory that Emmet’s remains were transferred to St. Peter’s Church in Aungier St. under cover of the burial of his sister, Mary Anne Holmes, in 1804. In the 1980s the church is deconsecrated, and all the coffins are removed from the vaults. The church has since been demolished.
Parnell is elected president of Michael Davitt‘s newly founded Irish National Land League in Dublin on October 21, 1879, signing a militant Land League address campaigning for land reform. During the summer of 1880, the Land League, goes into decline but its fortunes are transformed when the House of Lords rejects a moderate measure of land reform. The movement is transformed into a national movement as it spreads into Munster and Leinster. As the movement spreads, crime increases especially in the West. Parnell, who had been elected leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party in May, is very worried about this violence and hopes that the Land League can deflect tenants away from the traditional violence associated with land agitation. He advocates a policy of “moral force” where tenants are to deny all social or commercial contact with anyone who is believed to oppose the aims of the League.
During his speech at Ennis, Parnell asks his audience, “What are you to do with a tenant who bids for a farm from which another has been evicted?” Several voices reply “Shoot him!” and “Kill him!” Parnell responds, “I wish to point out to you a very much better way, a more Christian and charitable way, which will give the lost man an opportunity of repenting. When a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted, you must shun him on the roadside when you meet him, you must shun him in the streets of the town, you must shun him in the shop, you must shun him on the fair green and in the market place, and even in the place of worship, by leaving him alone, by putting him in moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of the country, as if he were the leper of old – you must show him your detestation of the crime he committed.”
This type of “moral Coventry” is used in the cast of Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott, a County Mayoland agent, who is isolated by the local people until his nerve breaks. This leads to a new word entering into the English language – boycotting.
Darley is educated at Dungannon College in County Tyrone. His uncle, the Reverend John Darley, is headmaster of the college. In July 1847 he commences studying at Trinity College, Dublin, and he graduates in July 1851 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA). He is called to the English bar at the King’s Inn in January 1853 but returns to Ireland and practises there for about nine years on the Munster circuit. He meets Sir Alfred Stephen when Stephen is on a visit to Europe and is told that there are good prospects for him in Australia.
Darley marries Lucy Forest Browne at Hunsdon, Hertfordshire, on December 13, 1860. Lucy is the sister of novelist Rolf Boldrewood (Thomas Alexander Browne) who is best known for the book Robbery Under Arms. They have two sons and four daughters.
Darley decides to emigrate to Australia and arrives in Sydney in 1862. He is admitted to the NSW Bar on June 2, 1862, and is later appointed a Queens Counsel (QC) in 1878. In September 1868 he is nominated to the New South Wales Legislative Council. In November 1881 he becomes vice-president of the executive council in the third Henry Parkes ministry. In November 1886 Darley is offered the position of Chief Justice of New South Wales in succession to Sir James Martin. He does not desire the office and to accept it would mean a considerable monetary sacrifice. As a barrister, he is likely earning more than twice the amount of the salary offered. He declines the position, and it is accepted by Julian Salomons who subsequently resigns a few days later.
Darley is again approached and this time he accepts the position. He is sworn in on December 7, 1886. He carries out his duties with great distinction, although he is not an exceptional jurist. On the retirement of Sir Alfred Stephen in November 1891, Darley is appointed Lieutenant-Governor of New South Wales, and he administers the government seven times in that capacity. When the position of Governor of New South Wales becomes vacant in 1901, there are many suggestions that Darley should be given the post, but it is given to Sir Harry Rawson.
Darley’s longest period administering the government is from November 1, 1900, to May 27, 1902, a significant period in Australia’s political history with the lead up to and the aftermath of federation of the then Australian colonies. But his anxiety for New South Wales’s supremacy possibly contributes to the “Hopetoun Blunder.” Darley’s private assessment in 1902 is that “Australian Federation is so far a pronounced failure.”
Darley is knighted in 1887, created a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (KCMG) in 1897, and receives the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (GCMG) on May 15, 1901, in preparation of the forthcoming royal visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York (later King George V and Queen Mary).
Darley visits England in 1902 and is appointed a member of the royal commission on the South African war. He is also appointed a member of the privy council in 1905. He dies in London on January 4, 1910.
The Tipperary Rural & Business Development Institute (TRBDI), a college of higher education, development agency and research centre founded by the Irish Government in 1998, opens in Thurles, County Tipperary on September 27, 1999. It is one of the five constituent schools of Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT).
seamus dubhghaill 