5 November 1946: The start of the Rural Electrification Scheme in the Irish Free State on this day. This major project began in a field at Kilsallaghan in north county Dublin[above].  Kilsallaghan was the 1st rural area in Ireland out of 792 so designated to receive electricity under the scheme. The Rural Electrification Scheme employed up to 40 separate units of 50-100 workers, spread across 26,000 square miles. By November 1961 280,000 rural premises were connected, at a cost of over £30,000,000. 

The purpose was to roll out the benefits of electricity to every household and farm in the State. The task was entrusted to the Electricity Supply Board (established 1927) and the mammoth task entailed the purchase over one million wooden poles from Finland. Over 75,000 miles of wire were also needed. 

‘The electrification of rural Ireland had been envisaged since work first began on the Shannon Scheme in 1925. Dr Thomas McLaughlin, the founding father of ESB, believed that rural electrification represented ‘the application of modern science and engineering to raise the standard of rural living and to get to the root of the social evil of the “flight from the land”.
‘However, the financial resources were not available to extend electricity to rural Ireland in the first days of the newly formed Irish free state and in the 1920s and 1930s. Electricity from the Shannon Scheme was supplied to roughly 240,000 premises in towns and cities only, leaving over 400,000 rural dwellings without power. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, ESB and the government began working on broad plans for rural electrification, and the state agreed to subsidise its roll out. However, the outbreak of World War II in 1939 delayed the process, and work could not start on the scheme until after its end in 1945.’...The last area to receive electricity was the remote area of Blackvalley, Co. Kerry, in 1978.
https://esbarchives.ie/2016/03/23/life-before-and-after-rural-electrification/

The benefits of electricity was of course huge. It was something that just about every home and farmstead in the State wanted with only the very odd one refusing to be connected. Up until then the managing of a household or farm had been a hugely labour intensive operation for both men and women. Everything from cooking to washing to heating was pure manual work.

‘Activity on the farm and in rural households was dictated by the availability of daylight. After dark, limited lighting was provided by oil lamps or candles. Water had to be drawn from a well, and carried home by foot or by cart. Clothes had to be washed by hand, or with a hand-powered ‘wringer washer’. Heating and cooking depended on solid fuel, such as timber and turf, often cut and harvested by the family. Cooking was confined to an open hearth or range. Food safety was difficult to ensure without any form of refrigeration, a particular difficulty on the farm and in the dairy. Industrial development was not feasible without a supply of electricity.’
https://esbarchives.ie/2016/03/23/life-before-and-after-rural-electrification/

Today we live in a world where the lack of electricity in our daily lives is unthinkable. But there are still Irish households today where the oil lamp is not a source of curiosity but a memento of time when they could not make their way about their house after dark without one.

4 November 1846: The Great Irish Famine/An Gorta Mor swept across the land of Ireland. The direct cause of the calamity that the Country experienced in those times was the failure of the Potato crop, whose tubers were left rotten by a blight. However an Act of Nature was compounded by acts of folly and nay indifference by those acting on behalf of the British Administration here.

By November 1846 it was clear that the poorest of the people faced another Winter of complete hardship as the blight returned to haunt the land. The effects of prolonged malnutrition on weakened bodies proved too much for many of those so afflicted by the want of necessities to sustain human life. The deaths of two such unfortunates was reported in the Cork Examiner on this day.

November 4, 1846

TWO MORE DEATHS FROM STARVATION.

IN the letter of an "Out-Door Pauper" from Macroom, will be found the recital of the death at Sleaven, from famine, of a poor woman, returning from the Workhouse, where she and her children had received their daily meal. The Tallow Relief Committee, in a resolution just forwarded to the Lord LIEUTENANT and which we give elsewhere, announce the death of another man, named KEEFFE, of Kilbeg, who also perished for want of food.

We know not what to say. We have already expressed, with the most indignant vehemence, our horror of the negligence which permitted our fellow beings to perish in the midst of us. We leave these last instances to speak for themselves-- for murder speaks with a most miraculous organ-- and these are scarcely less than a murder. We trust in GOD we shall be shocked no more by such recitals. There is a promise of general employment, at last; and to this we turn from the prolonged horror of Irish suffering and despair.

Cork Examiner

4 November 1918: The death of Widow Catherine Heatley [27] in the Liberties of Dublin on this day from the Spanish Flu. She was the mother of three young boys. That Winter this virulent Global Pandemic was sweeping through the City as thousands fell victim to its deadly effects. 
It seemed to have reached the shores of Ireland in May that year through the port of Cobh or Queenstown as it was then known - probably by US sailors returning from a port in France.

 The first wave while deadly was not seen as particularly threatening to the general population. It then returned in full strength in the autumn and early winter of that year, and reappeared for a final deadly bout in the early months of 1919. It received the description ‘Spanish Flu’ from the outbreak in Spain where the lack of wartime censorship of the newspapers meant that it was freely reported. King Alfonso himself was struck down and that really brought it to International attention - but he survived.

Eventually it was too big to ignore and it was soon obvious that the World was dealing with a vast and deadly plague that swept across numerous States and Nations killing millions of people. After four years of World War when many people, especially those in the Armed Forces of the belligerent Powers were thrown together in crowded circumstances and food was limited for the general populace in many countries then conditions were ripe for a virus to grow and spread rapidly.

By late Autumn it was ravaging urban quarters in Ireland and in particular the younger and healthier folk were the worst effected. In Ireland 20,057 people were reported as having died of influenza in 1918 and 1919. In 1918, 22.7% of all deaths from influenza in Ireland were of people aged between 25 and 35; in 1919 the figure for this age group was 18.95%. In fact these figures are almost certainly conservative estimates. Many people were swept away whose names were never remembered as having ‘died of the Great Flu’ but whose general health had been seriously undermined by its depilating effects.


Individuals employed in occupations involving close contact with the general public were more likely to contract influenza. Doctors and nurses were particularly exposed. The high number of Dublin teachers suffering from influenza in October 1918 led to the closure of schools in the city. Absence owing to influenza depleted police forces throughout Ireland. Public transport employees were also vulnerable, and in Belfast 100 tramway employees were absent with influenza during July 1918, and 120 in November. Priests and clergymen were also in the front line, and a lot of them died. Staff illness forced the closure of shops, with many shopkeepers and assistants dying.
https://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/greatest-killer-of-the-twentieth-century-the-great-flu-of-1918-19/

But these are facts and statistics that don't catch the pathos and tragedy of the deaths of so many people to this deadly Virus - especially those in the prime of Life.
The death of Catherine Heatley nee Moran was one particularly tragic case. In 1910 when she was 19 years of age she married Charles Heatley [also 19] and they had three children together - all boys. In 1914 the Great War broke out and Charles joined the local Regiment - the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. After service at Gallipoli he was posted to France and was lost on 1 July 1916 eventually listed as ‘Missing Presumed Dead’.

 Catherine was left to rear three young lads on her own. She was fortunate that she had a good two room flat in Bride St in the City Centre and that her own parents lived nearby & that she was in receipt of a War Widows Pension. However when the Great Flu struck in late 1ate 1918 she fell victim to it and it carried her away. She died at her parents place in Nicholas St in Dublin City Centre. It is said that her three sons were at her bedside when she finally succumbed.

For years her grave in Glasnevin Cemetery laid unmarked but her grandson has now erected a gravestone over where she lays buried. Thus her name is saved from oblivion while her husband remains are beneath the soil somewhere in Picardy unknown to anyone. His name though is recorded on the Memorial at Thiepval on the site of the Somme battlefield.

3 November 1815: The birth of the Patriot John Mitchel on this day. He was born near Dungiven Co Derry. His father was a Clergyman. In 1830 he entered Trinity College, Dublin, with the encouragement of his tutor Dr Henderson. He took his degree in 1834 before entering a solicitor's office in Newry, Co Down. He later practised in Banbridge, Co Down. He took cases defending the rights of Catholics in the town and became increasingly attached to seeing Ireland break free from English Rule.

Mitchel began writing for the Nationalist paper The Nation, and when Thomas Davis died in 1845, Charles Gavan Duffy invited Mitchel to join the newspaper. In 1846, Mitchel and other Young Irelanders broke with Daniel O'Connell, rejecting the doctrine of 'moral force', and founded ‘The Irish Confederation’. 

More impatient than Duffy, Mitchel soon left The Nation and the Confederation, and in February 1848 published the first issue of The United Irishman. It openly preached revolt and in May 1848 Mitchel was convicted of ‘treason felony’ by the British and sentenced to fourteen years' transportation. 

Sent to Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), Mitchel escaped in 1853 to America, where he published his famous Jail Journal.

Mitchel launched several newspapers in America, and as editor of the Richmond Examiner championed slavery. His sons fought in the War for the Confederacy. He was imprisoned for several months after the Civil War ended. In 1867, he founded the Irish Citizen in New York, but angered Fenians by suggesting they should give allegiance to their new country. In 1875, he was returned unopposed as MP for Tipperary, but was disqualified as a convicted felon. Returning to Ireland, he was again elected, but died at Dromalane, Newry, on 20 March 1875 before he could be unseated.

While today his stance on Slavery would be looked on with askance his posthumous claim to fame is undoubtedly his masterly ‘Jail Journal’ which is still in print today and in this he describes his imprisonment and Transportation to Van Diemen's Land in a British prison ship.

May 27, 1848 -  On this day, about four o’clock in the afternoon, I, John Mitchel, was kidnapped, and carried off from Dublin, in chains, as a convicted “Felon.”...

Nov. 7th, 1848 - In my cell, "Dromedary" Hulk. - This evening, after dusk, as I sat at my window, looking drearily on the darkening waters, something was thrown from the door of my cell, and lighted at my feet. I heard a quick noiseless step leaving the door. Picking up the object, I found it to be a London paper. The Halifax mail has arrived – I long for the hour when my cell is to be locked, and carefully hide my treasure till then.

At last the chief mate has locked and bolted me up for the night. I light a candle, and with shaking hands spread forth my paper.

Smith O’Brien has been found guilty, and sentenced to be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution and hanged. The other trials pending.

2 November 1920: Private James Daley [above] was executed by a British firing squad in India on this day. Daley had been one of the leaders of the so-called ‘India Mutiny’. A member of one of the oldest Irish Regiments in the British Army – the Connaught Rangers – he and his comrades had been angered about reports from home of the conduct of the Crown Forces there during the War of Independence.

The Mutiny in the Regiment had started at Jullundur in the Punjab, India at the end of June that year but then spread to the hill station of Solan. It was here that Daly was based. He played a leading part in the protest but after two of their comrades, Privates Patrick Smythe of Drogheda and Peter Sears of Neale, County Mayo were shot dead the men surrendered. They were all arrested and over 70 men were court-martialled. After handing down heavy sentences 14 men were sentenced to death but all bar one of these were commuted to life imprisonment. James Daley was the only soldier whose capital punishment was carried out.In his final letter to his mother he wrote:

It is all for Ireland, I am not afraid to die.

He was executed at Daghshai Prison, Solan and buried in India. In 1970 his remains and those of Privates Smythe and Sears and were returned to Ireland. James Daley was re-interred in his hometown of Tyrellspass, County Westmeath.

2 November 1815: George Boole Professor of Mathematics University College Cork 1849-1864 & father of digital thought was born on this day. He was a child prodigy, self-taught linguist and practical scientist, philosopher and teacher.
He was born in Lincoln, England, the son of a struggling shoemaker. Boole was forced to leave school at the age of sixteen and never attended a university. He taught himself languages, natural philosophy and mathematics. After his father’s business failed he supported the entire family by becoming an assistant teacher, eventually opening his own boarding school in Lincoln. He began to produce original mathematical research and, in 1844, he was awarded the first gold medal for mathematics by the Royal Society.
Boole was deeply interested in the idea of expressing the workings of the human mind in symbolic form, and his two books on this subject, The Mathematical Analysis of Logic (1847) and An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854) form the basis of today’s computer science and electronic circuitry. Much of the ‘new mathematics’ now studied originated in his ground breaking studies – set theory, binary numbers and Boolean algebra were areas where he led the way.
In 1849, Boole was appointed first professor of mathematics in Ireland’s new Queen’s College (now University College) Cork and taught and worked there until his tragic and premature death in 1864.
Boole was a creative and unorthodox thinker who found a way to write logical questions as algebraic equations. He thought of himself as a logician rather than a mathematician yet, in a series of publications in the 1840s and 1850s, he opened a whole new direction for mathematics.
A century later, the American mathematician and engineer Claude Shannon, himself acknowledged as the ‘father of information theory’, used Boole’s concepts, and especially his ‘Boolean algebra’, to design the first digital circuits. By reducing answers tox and y as set out by Boole it was possible for Shannon to develop the concepts to build the first digitally based machines. Today these are more commonly known as 0 & 1 binary numbers which are used to reflect true or false values in computer systems.
However in late 1864 Boole one day walked for miles in the pouring rain to get to the Cork College and came down with pluersy. His wife tried to help but made matters worse by pouring cold water over him to cure him! He died on 8 December of that year.
Boole’s funeral took place on December 12th, to St Michael’s Church of Ireland in Ballintemple, Co Cork and according to a report in the Cork Examiner the following day, his cortege was followed by “serried files of students” in their gowns and caps.
Today, UCC lays claim to be Boole’s academic home. There’s a library named in Boole’s honour and, in the Aula Maxima, a fine stained-glass window erected in his memory by public subscription shortly after his death.
As one of the most important scientists to have ever worked in Ireland, Boole effectively laid the foundations of the entire Information Age while working from UCC. So it’s fair to say that without George Boole, there’d be no Google!
https://www.google.com/doodles/george-booles-200th-birthday

1‭ ‬November 1920: Execution of IRA Volunteer Kevin Barry on this day. Betrayed by a local after the shooting dead a British soldier he was tried and sentenced to death. A Medical 1‭ November 1920: Execution of IRA Volunteer Kevin Barry on this day. Betrayed by a local after the shooting dead a British soldier he was tried and sentenced to death. A Medical student in UCD he was just 18 years old when he was hanged in Mountjoy Prison. ‬His brave stance under torture and through his ordeal gained the admiration of many and his death became the subject of the famous ballad that bares his name.‭

He was a Volunteer of the Dublin Brigade IRA when on‭ ‬20 September his Company ambushed an army bread van on Queens Street in the City Centre. In the ensuing gun battle a British soldier was shot dead. Two more died of their injuries. The Volunteers withdrew from the scene when British reinforcements arrived. They escaped except for Barry who was captured while hiding under a lorry. While it is believed Barry’s pistol jammed in the attack there is no evidence that he fired any of the fatal shots. He was court-martialled and sentenced to death by the British on 20 October. Despite widespread pleas from many people and organisations for a stay of execution on the morning of November 1 1920 at 8.30 am he was led out to the gallows and executed by hanging.

Barry spent the last day of his life preparing for death. His ordeal focused world attention on Ireland. According to Sean Cronin, author of a biography of Barry (Kevin Barry), he hoped for a firing squad rather than the gallows, as he had been condemned by a military court. A friend who visited him in Mountjoy prison after he received confirmation of the death sentence, said:
He is meeting death as he met life with courage but with nothing of the braggart. He does not believe that he is doing anything wonderfully heroic. Again and again he has begged that no fuss be made about him.
He reported Barry as saying "It is nothing, to give one's life for Ireland. I'm not the first and maybe I won't be the last. What's my life compared with the cause?”
Practically his last words before being led out to his place of execution were:
The only message I have for anybody is hold on and stick to the Republic

Kevin Barry was buried in the yard of Mountjoy Prison but in October‭ 2001 his remains along with nine other executed prisoners were transferred by the Irish Government to Glasnevin Cemetery Dublin and re interred in a specially prepared plot. His grave is near the entrance and along with his comrades is one of the most frequented places in that vast cemetery.