Catholics of Consequence

O’Neill, Ciaran

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198707714.001.0001

Cited by 72 publications

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“…O'Neill notes that an elite higher education was regarded as a 'desirable goal for the aspiring middle class' in Catholic Ireland in this period. 25 Campbell estimates that something like 1,000 Catholics per year were graduating from Ireland's various higher education institutions from the 1880s onwards, which would suggest a 'pool' of perhaps 30,000 Catholic graduates by 1910, or something like 3.3 per cent of those Catholic men and women (aged 20 to 49 in 1911) who could have attended in this period. 26 Among the seventy-five children of M.P.s aged eighteen or over by 1910 for whom data exist, eight (11 per cent) had or were receiving a third-level education (mostly in Ireland, though only one at Trinity).…”

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“…If the marriage strategies adopted by these families did not centre around 'the jaded faux-grandeur of the Castle season' like the elite Catholics O'Neill has studied, marriage was nonetheless considered to be an important factor in influencing life chances. 35 Mary Sheehy's mother approved of her daughter's fiancé Tom Kettle because, as her grandson later noted, '[while] Bessie did not know words like "upward social mobility" and "rising national bourgeoisie"', she nonetheless 'intended, quite consciously I believe, to preside over the birth of a new ruling class: those who would run the country when Home Rule was won'. 36 While here (as elsewhere) it would be unwise to generalise from the experiences of the Sheehys, sociological analysis suggests that the 'social location' of a groom or bride was 'important in determining at what social level' they could marry in this period.…”

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‘Out in the cold’?: The children of the Irish Parliamentary Party and the Irish Free State

McConnel

2018

Ir. Hist. Stud.

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Drawing on the recent scholarly interest in 'generationism' and the revolutionary period, this article examines the life chances of the 247 children born to the last cohort of Irish Parliamentary Party M.P.s elected to Westminster between 1910 and1918. It employs a prosopographical approach to reconstruct their lives at specific points (1910 and 1948) in order to assess the impact that independence had on their fortunes longitudinally. While it problematises the idea that the Edwardian children of nationalist M.P.s formed part of a privileged elite in waiting, it does conclude that they enjoyed a degree of cultural and political capital that positioned them advantageously in advance of home rule The analysis advanced here suggests that despite experiencing some political disorientation, those scions of the old I.P.P. who lived through the revolutionary years re-oriented themselves relatively quickly, regrouped, and experienced considerable political and professional success during the following decades. As for those children who were born or achieved adulthood after 1922, there is little evidence to suggest that they were socially or politically ostracised, or that, in turn, they felt a sense of fundamental alienation from the new state. Ultimately, unlike those who had fought for the republic but ended up feeling as if they were among the losers, what the children of the I.P.P lost after 1918 should not obscure the fact that many of them were among the winners in the new Ireland 1850 -1900 (Oxford, 2014. 6Ireland which seemed at last to be within reach', the outbreak of the war in 1914 suggests that critics of the I.P.P. saw the children of the party as sharing in the political sins of their fathers. 12As such, if they were not viewed as a discrete group, they were clearly seen as auxiliaries of the I.P.P.. considerable success under the new regime. As for those children who were born or achieved adulthood after 1922, there is very little evidence to suggest that they were socially or politically ostracised, or that, in turn, they felt a sense of fundamental alienation from the new state. In short, the available evidence does not suggest that the life chances of these children were adversely affected by independence to a measurable extent. In its findingsWhether born before or after 1922, the success of the I.P.P. children in the professions, in business, in government service, and in civil society demonstrates the importance of the relatively high social, cultural, and political capital they inherited, which in many cases allowed That said, the fact that a degree was not necessary for a number of professional careers in Edwardian Ireland was probably also a consideration for families assessing the costs and benefits of university attendance.The educational profile of the children of late Edwardian M.P.s suggests that if attendance at elite schools and universities were cultural markers of Edwardian Ireland's aspirational Catholic middle class, then many Home Rule M.P.s and their children were se...

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%