'Reduced to privation': the civilian victims of the 1916 Rising and the issue of compensation

Thursday, November 16, 2017 - 18:00 to 19:00
An Foras Feasa Seminar Room (First Floor, Iontas Building, North Campus)

ABSTRACT: The historiography of the Easter 1916 Rising has emphasised its profound political impact and the role of various combatants. By contrast, the devastation of civilian lives occasioned by the Rising has been little researched and several basic questions remain unanswered. What was the profile of civilian casualties in terms of age and gender? What were the circumstances of their death or injury?  Did the dead leave behind dependants and how did those families survive? Did wounds blight the lives of the injured? What efforts were made to seek official redress by those rendered fatherless, widowed, blind or lame? Drawing on new archival material, this paper assesses the human cost of the 1916 Rising borne by civilians and the mechanism by which the British government awarded compensation to the bereaved and injured. 
 
BIO: Daithí Ó Corráin is a lecturer in the School of History & Geography, DCU. His research interests include the aftermath of the 1916 Rising, the Irish Revolution, Irish political violence, and twentieth-century ecclesiastical history. He is the author of Rendering to God and Caesar: the Irish Churches and the two states in Ireland, 1949-73 (2006) and The Dead of the Irish Revolution, 1916-21 (forthcoming, with Eunan O’Halpin). He is co-editor with Professor Marian Lyons of The Irish Revolution, 1912-23 monograph series of county histories published by Four Courts Press, and is currently completing the first history of the Irish Volunteers.