Jacob’s is remembered by many Dubliners as a benevolent employer. The firm’s concern with welfare, while relatively innovative, was nevertheless paternalist and profit-driven, with a view to forging a loyal and healthy workforce in a city where housing and sanitation were notoriously poor. One of Ireland’s top three manufacturing firms for some time after independence, women and girls consistently made up two-thirds of its staff. This talk will explore the female experience of work at Jacob’s, covering issues of social class, gendered discipline, and discrimination in preference of

The Irish Potato Famine was the most catastrophic event in Ireland's turbulent history. It is also regarded as being one of the worst Famines in history (deaths as a proportion to population). The use of the word 'Famine' in this context is controversial, for Ireland at the time was part of the richest Empire in the World (the British Empire). There was sufficient food in the country throughout the 'Famine' years, yet over a million people died from starvation and disease, and millions more were forced to flee. This Exhibition tells the story of what happened during those horrific years. W

The scale and ambition of the Irish censorship regime is preserved in a blacklist of over 12,000 publications. From 1930 to 2016, the censorship board banned all manner of printed material. Sex education manuals, pulp fiction, nineteenth-century pornography, celebrity memoirs, and newspapers and magazines appear alongside literature from the greatest twentieth-century writers. This state censorship emerged from the report of the Committee on Evil Literature (1926), which gathered opinions from churchmen of all persuasions, newsagents, charities, trade unions and civil servants. The moral attit