James Clarence Mangan’s reputation saw a significant revival in the early twentieth century, and another around the bicentenary of his birth in 2003. Today he is seen as prefiguring some of the great poets of the later nineteenth century and is frequently read as something of a proto-modernist voice.

Many of the prescriptions and proscriptions of the Catholic church – in the days when it was able to lay down the law – appeared to make some kind of sense, while others were more mysterious. None more so than the disapproval of long engagements.

A number of cases of bigamy which came before the courts in Edwardian Dublin demonstrate that the crime could be entered upon for a variety of motives, not all ignoble.

The wives of many of the Dublin poor received an unexpected bonus during the First World War while their husbands were away at the front in the form of ‘separation money’. For many this was the first regular payment they’d ever had. Unfortunately not all of them spent it wisely.

It is quite well known that the supposed solidarity felt between the working classes of different nations melted away fairly quickly on the declaration of the First World War. So too, apparently, did English suffragettes’ sympathy for the aspiration to Irish independence.

Volunteer Gerald Keogh was shot dead outside Trinity College on Easter Tuesday 1916. He was one of three brothers involved in the Rising. Another brother, Augustus, was a noted theatre manager, who promoted the works of Shaw in Dublin.

James Joyce, whose birthday we celebrate today, may not have been familiar with the term ‘sexual harassment’ but he knew the phenomenon. The most common victims in Edwardian Dublin were young women in service, preyed on my middle class men.

A painful case of 1926, which came to the attention of the Dublin courts, seemed to illustrate the wide gap between Irish middle class morality and the easier and more indulgent ways of the French bourgeoisie.