The Leading Manufacturing Firms in 1920s Dublin

I am giving a public lecture to the Old Dublin Society in Pearse Street Library at 6pm tomorrow (Wednesday) on the above topic.

Details available at:
http://olddublinsociety.ie/index.php/meetings-outings/

Free admission. All welcome.

6 replies on “The Leading Manufacturing Firms in 1920s Dublin”

Should be interesting ….

From the link I note the upcoming presentation on Thomas Ashe

…One hundred years ago Thomas Ashe became the first Irish Republican to die on hunger strike. Ashe was imprisoned in Mountjoy Jail in Dublin for delivering a ‘seditious speech’ to a public gathering in County Longford. On the 20th of September Ashe decided to go on hunger strike when he was denied the status of political prisoner. Five days later on September 25th he was dead.
Although Ashe is considered the first Irish Republican prisoner to die on hunger strike, his death was not the direct result of starvation, instead it was caused by force feeding. [,,,]

The act of refusing food is a powerful weapon used by those who have nothing else left to fight with. This tool of protest against injustice was first used in the early 1900s by imprisoned British and Irish suffragettes. It was also the first time force feeding was used to break a hunger strike.

In 1912 Suffragettes Gladys Evans and Mary Leigh became the first prisoners in Ireland to hunger strike for political status and receive the treatment of force feeding. They were jailed along with Lizzie Barter who flung a hatchet at British Prime minister Herbert Asquith while he was visiting Dublin. She missed Asquith but hit Irish Home Rule leader John Redmond instead!

Barter evaded arrested but was apprehended the next day when she was involved in a  disturbance at Dublin’s Theatre Royal where the British PM was due to speak. Barter hurled a burning chair into the orchestra pit while Leigh and Evans were caught at the same venue attempting to set fire to the royal box.
The Suffragettes were jailed in Mountjoy for “having commited serious outrages at the time of the visit of the British Prime Minister”. Leigh and Evans went on hunger strike and were force fed until they were released months later.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/08/death-of-an-irish-hunger-striker/

It’s interesting how the once significant Jacob’s brand lives on today in the ownership of 3 companies : Valeo in Ireland ; W&R Jacob established a separate British company in Liverpool in 1922 and that is now owned by United Biscuits. A spin-out from the US-owned Kraft Foods called Mondelez also sells Jacob’s cream crackers.

Most consumers wouldn’t be aware of the Irish connection which dates from 1851 in Waterford.

Great lecture last night – and to a packed house! Not to be too grandiose about it, but the whole event was a perfect example of how experts can engage in communicating their research to an interested public to the creative benefit and cultural enrichment of all; the sort of two-way street ‘impact’ that appears to be consistently undervalued by research and political authorities here.

Meanwhile, what salves would you recommend for those who, having attended your lecture, keep bumping into poles in consequence of their distraction in seeking out interesting manhole covers on Dublin footpaths and ghost signs of old manufacturing firms on the fronts and sides of buildings?

Look forward to your post of the lecture in due course.

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