Irish History Podcast

In the summer of 1907, the Irish Crown Jewels were stolen from the heart of British power in Ireland, under the noses of the police, the military and the political establishment. Worth £50,000 at the time, their disappearance made headlines around the world. It was also deeply humiliating for the British authorities, coming just days before King Edward VII was due to visit Dublin.

On the surface, it seemed like the perfect crime. The jewels were never recovered, and more than a century later, it remains unclear exactly when the theft even took place.
But behind the mystery lay something even more explosive. Within days, detectives uncovered a scandal the British government could not afford to make public. This would lead to a major cover-up.

In this episode, I take you back to Edwardian Dublin to explore Ireland’s most infamous unsolved crime: a story of privilege, scandal and secrecy at the heart of British rule in Ireland.

Sound by Kate Dunlea

Support the podcast: patreon.com/Irishpodcast.

Sources:
Myles Dungan, The stealing of the Irish Crown Jewels: an unsolved crime https://www.amazon.com/stealing-Irish-Crown-Jewels-unsolved-ebook/dp/B00C80K09G/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.bOREnIOZl9l8Nl9OFsawFw.NpvKSTSvbFr7u5uAzCkP6Ex_SzFeGsfO5PF1fPu5Bsg&dib_tag=se&keywords=9781860591822&linkCode=qs&qid=1781869038&s=books&sr=1-1
F. Bamford & Viola Banks Vicious circle; the case of the missing Irish crown jewels https://archive.org/details/viciouscircle0000unse/page/202/mode/2up
Bulmer Hobson Burean of Military History Witness Statement https://bmh.militaryarchives.ie/reels/bmh/BMH.WS1089.pdf#page=2
Sean Murphy A Centenary Report on the Theft of the Irish Crown Jewels in 1907
https://www.academia.edu/9802230/A_Centenary_Report_on_the_Theft_of_the_Irish_Crown_Jewels_in_1907
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Irish republicans had many natural allies during the War of Independence. Irish communities in the United States offered vital support, while revolutionaries in India and Egypt were also fighting for freedom from the British Empire. But the search for allies also led Irish republicans into far more complicated territory.

Across the British Empire, they courted support not from colonised peoples, but from European settlers and their descendants in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, many of them with Irish roots. In Europe, they looked to the Vatican, despite the Catholic Church’s long-standing suspicion of republicanism and revolution. Most controversially, Irish republicans also sought contact with Benito Mussolini, who was on his way to becoming Europe’s first fascist dictator

In this final episode of Brothers in Pain, Dr Brian Hanley explores the uncomfortable history of Irish republican alliances abroad. From South Africa to the Papacy and fascist Italy, this episode asks why Irish revolutionaries sought support in such unlikely places, what they gained, and what these choices reveal about the Irish Revolution, empire and the wider world after the First World War.

This is the final episode of Brothers in Pain a groundbreaking Global history of the Irish War of Independence by Dr Brian Hanley
Written, Researched & Narrated by Dr Brian Hanley.

Check out Brian's publications here https://www.tcd.ie/history/staff/brian-hanley.php
Producer: Fin Dwyer
Sound: Kate Dunlea

Note from Brian :
In researching these episodes I have been indebted to the work of the following scholars;
Anna Lively, Sam McGrath, Bruce Nelson, John Belchem, Terry Dunne, David Brundage, Niamh Coffey, Gerard Shannon, Maurice Casey, Kelly Anne Reynolds, Chris McNickle, Joe Doyle, Liz Gillis, FM Carroll, Patrick Mannion, Jimmy Yann, Niall Cullen, Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc, Keith Jeffrey, Arthur Mitchell, John Borgonovo, Kate O’Malley, Michael Doorley, Robin Adams, Kevin Kenny, Fearghal McGarry, Catherine M. Burns, Síobhra Aiken, Patrick J. Mahony, Darragh Gannon, Matthew Pratt Guterl and James R. Barrett.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Liverpool and New York haunt the story of Irish independence in a way few other places do. Though separated by more than 5,000 kilometres of ocean, both ports were part of a wider Atlantic world in which Ireland occupied a central place.
By the 1920s Liverpool and New York were among the most Irish cities on the planet. Both had been transformed by generations of Irish migration and in both cities Irish politics shaped everyday life.

During the War of Independence, these communities became crucial to the republican movement. Money, weapons, propaganda and people moved through the ports, while IRA networks operated on both sides of the Atlantic. But this was not simply a story of support for Irish independence. In Liverpool and New York, Irish politics were fiercely contested.

Supporters of the Republic organised, fundraised and agitated, while opponents of independence also made their voices heard. Anti-Irish politics, loyalism, class tensions and divisions within the diaspora all shaped how the conflict was understood abroad.

In this episode of Brothers in Pain, Dr Brian Hanley explores the role of Liverpool and New York in the Irish War of Independence, revealing how two great port cities helped shape the revolution, and how Ireland’s struggle in turn reshaped politics across the Atlantic world.

This is the second last episode of Brothers in Pain a groundbreaking Global history of the Irish War of Independence by Dr Brian Hanley
Written, Researched & Narrated by Dr Brian Hanley. Check out Brian's publications here https://www.tcd.ie/history/staff/brian-hanley.php
Producer: Fin Dwyer
Sound: Kate Dunlea
Note from Brian :
In researching these episodes I have been indebted to the work of the following scholars;
Anna Lively, Sam McGrath, Bruce Nelson, John Belchem, Terry Dunne, David Brundage, Niamh Coffey, Gerard Shannon, Maurice Casey, Kelly Anne Reynolds, Chris McNickle, Joe Doyle, Liz Gillis, FM Carroll, Patrick Mannion, Jimmy Yann, Niall Cullen, Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc, Keith Jeffrey, Arthur Mitchell, John Borgonovo, Kate O’Malley, Michael Doorley, Robin Adams, Kevin Kenny, Fearghal McGarry, Catherine M. Burns, Síobhra Aiken, Patrick J. Mahony, Darragh Gannon, Matthew Pratt Guterl and James R. Barrett.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ogham is Ireland’s oldest known writing system, dating back more than 1,500 years. If you have ever seen strange lines carved along the edge of an old stone, you may have been looking at ogham.
But what did those marks mean? Who carved them? Were they gravestones, boundary markers, family claims to lands or something else entirely?
In this episode, I speak with ogham expert Dr Nora White about how this ancient writing system worked, where it came from and what it reveals about early Ireland. These short inscriptions preserve some of the earliest evidence of the Irish language, along with names, ancestors, territories and hints of a society changing through migration, Christianity and contact with Britain and the wider world.
Ogham may look simple, but it opens a window onto one of the most fascinating and mysterious periods in Irish history.

Support the show www.patreon.com/irishpodcast

Dr Nora White is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Early Irish at Maynooth University. She
is currently leading a Research Ireland-funded project: Early Medieval Irish Scripts on Stone
(EMISoS). She previously worked on the Ogham in 3D project at the Dublin Institute for Advanced
Studies and subsequently (2021-2025) on the joint Maynooth University and University of Glasgow
OG(H)AM project (https://ogham.glasgow.ac.uk/).
Digital corpus (in progress) of ogham in Ireland and Britain: https://ogham.celt.dias.ie/list

Sound by Kate Dunlea
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

'We are doing this because you are doing it in Ireland'.
These were the words of an IRA volunteer in Manchester explaining attacks in Britain during the Irish War of Independence.
During the conflict, Britain and particularly England became a major battlefield. Britain was not only geographically close to Ireland, it was also home to large Irish communities in many major cities. Between 1919 and 1922, the IRA made sustained efforts to bring the conflict across the Irish Sea, carrying out hundreds of attacks, most of them in England.
This forgotten front of the war included major attacks on the Liverpool docks, the targeting of Black and Tans in Britain and several high-profile incidents, most notably the killing of the British field marshal Sir Henry Wilson.
The war also consumed and divided British politics in a way few other issues did until Brexit nearly a century later. Political parties, trade unions and communities were split over what should happen in Ireland, while massive and sometimes violent demonstrations swept across Britain.

In this episode of Brothers in Pain, a global history of the Irish Revolution, Dr Brian Hanley explores the IRA’s campaign in Britain and how the wider question of Irish independence dominated British politics at the time.

This is the eight episode in the Brothers in Pain Series a groundbreaking Global history of the Irish War of Independence by Dr Brian Hanley

Written, Researched & Narrated by Dr Brian Hanley. Check out Brian's publications here https://www.tcd.ie/history/staff/brian-hanley.php
Producer: Fin Dwyer
Sound: Kate Dunlea

Note from Brian :
In researching these episodes I have been indebted to the work of the following scholars;
Anna Lively, Sam McGrath, Bruce Nelson, John Belchem, Terry Dunne, David Brundage, Niamh Coffey, Gerard Shannon, Maurice Casey, Kelly Anne Reynolds, Chris McNickle, Joe Doyle, Liz Gillis, FM Carroll, Patrick Mannion, Jimmy Yann, Niall Cullen, Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc, Keith Jeffrey, Arthur Mitchell, John Borgonovo, Kate O’Malley, Michael Doorley, Robin Adams, Kevin Kenny, Fearghal McGarry, Catherine M. Burns, Síobhra Aiken, Patrick J. Mahony, Darragh Gannon, Matthew Pratt Guterl and James R. Barrett.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.