Brehons, Serjeants and Attoreys:
Studies in the history of the Irish legal profession

	Writer/ Edited by:	Year Published	No. of Pages	Price	Order No
	D Hogan and Professor WN Osborough	1990	287 pp	£27.50	071652466

This inaugural publication of the Society contains what a review in the Irish Times described as "a richly varied collection of essays on the history of Irish lawyers which ranges from the days of the brehons to the manoeuvrings for judicial preferment of their Victorian successors". It includes contributions from academic and practising lawyers as well as historians and others. The Irish Jurist remarked that "this elegantly produced book augurs well for the future of legal history in Ireland".

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King's Inns & the Kingdom of Ireland:
The Irish 'Inn of Court', 1541-1800

	Writer/ Edited by:	Year Published	No. of Pages	Price	Order No
	Dr Colum Kenny	1992	352 pp (including bibliography and index)	£32.50	0716524724

In this history of one of Ireland's oldest institution from its beginnings amidst the ruins of a Dominican friary on the site of the present Four Courts in Dublin, the author's objective is to show that the foundation and subsequent transactions of the society of King's Inns reflected both the aspirations and shortcomings of the constitutional kingdom of Ireland. He also seeks to discover what role the King's Inns played in contemporary professional and public life, to trace the architectural and organisational development of the society and to compare it with the inns of court in London. The interraction of benchers, barristers and attorneys are considered and set in the context of the social and political circumstances of the time. The author was fortunate in having unprecedented access to the records of King's Inns, some of which survive from 1607, and in finding many supplementary printed and manuscript sources in Ireland and abroad.

The Historical Journal remarked of this publication, the first on the subject since 1806, that it would "doubtless become a standard work of reference".

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Anglicising the Government of Ireland:
The Irish Privy Council and The Expansion of Tudorr Rule, 1556-1578

	Writer/ Edited by:	Year Published	No. of Pages	Price	Order No
	Dr Jon Crawford	1993	508 pp (including bibliography and index)	£37.50	0716500345

This is the first detailed, full-length study of the privy council in Ireland. The constitutional position of the council is examined, including its membership and organisation, its relationship to the crown and to the lord deputy, and the interplay of personality, politics and partronage on the council itself. Attention is devoted to the debates surrounding the policy of anglicisation, but the burden of the work concentrates on the gradual implementation of a constitutional framework within which English common law institutions could thrive in Ireland.

Described in Irish Historical Studies as a substantial work of scholarship, this is a significant contribution to 16th century history and in particular of Tudor administration in Ireland at the time. As the American Historical Review put it, "many recent interpretations of Tudor policy in Ireland ... are challenged by means of painstaking reconstruction and massive documentation". Recently reprinted, such is the demand.

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Explorations in Law and History

	Writer/ Edited by:	Year Published	No. of Pages	Price	Order No
	Professor WN Osborough	1995	191 pp (including index)	£24.95	0716525410

A collection of six addresses and lectures on miscellaneous legal historical themes, for the most part given by invitation to the annual meetings of the Society between 1988 and 1994 and subsequently revised for publication. The contents consist of the two papers by Dr Colum Kenny, The Four Courts at Christchurch, 1608-1796 and Irish ambition and English preference in chancery appointments, 1827-1841: the fate of William Conyngham Plunket; two papers by A R Hart, entitled The king's serjeants at law in Ireland and Audley Mervyn: Lawyer or politician? togethier with Dr Paul Brand, The judges of the lordship of Ireland, 1210-1377 and W D H Sellar, Marriage, divorce and the forbidden degrees; canon law and Scots law.

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Law and The Emergence of Modern Dublin

	Writer/ Edited by:	Year Published	No. of Pages	Price	Order No
	Professor WN Osborough	1996	225 pp (including index)	£24.95	071652583

This fascinating legal topography aims to reconstruct part of Dublin's past from source material of an unconventional and unfamiliar sort - accounts of lawsuits generated over the past 200 years or so by the evolving fortunes of the city and surrounding district. To enable the significance of these lawsuits to be better understood and to lend coherence to the narrative as a whole, additional explanatory material has been incorporated, drawn principally from general and specialist local histories. The author examines the physical setting of Dublin, its river, port and bay, and landmark buildings, the re-naming of Sackville street, recreation for Dubliners - and burying Dubliners. This unique volume is enhanced by more than a hundred illustrations of legal figures and scenes associated with the narrative.

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Tristram Kennedy and The Revival of Irish Legal Training, 1835-1885

	Writer/ Edited by:	Year Published	No. of Pages	Price	Order No
	Dr Colum Kenny	1996	269 pp (including index)	£30.00	0716525917

Dr Kenny describes the political and professional processes which led to the revival of legal training in the 19th century and the part played in that revival by Tristram Kennedy - an attorney who became a barrister, an MP and the founder of the Carrickmacross lace industry. Particular attention is paid to the Dublin Law Insitute which Kennedy founded in 1839 and which he ran with the active support of the great education reformer, Thomas Wyse MP. Special chapters are also devoted to the absence from the Irish Bar of a developed chambers system and to the experiences of those who finally succeeded in having repealed the long-standing requirement that would-be Irish barristers eat, as Daniel O'Connell is said to have put it, 'so many legs of mutton' at the English Inns.

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The Bulkies:
Police and Crime In Belfast, 1800-1865

	Writer/ Edited by:	Year Published	No. of Pages	Price	Order No
	Brian Griffin	1997	166 pp (including bibliography and index)	£16.50 32.50	(paperback) 0716526956 (hardback) 0716526700

This book tells the story of the 'forgotten force' of Irish police history, the Belfast Borough Police or 'Bulkies'. The author discusses the establishment of this force and describes what it was like to serve in its ranks, by focusing on such topics as the police disciplinary system, pay and pensions, and the force's relations with the Belfast public. His examination of how the Bulkies performed their duties includes a look at the way in which the force adapted to Belfast's rapidly changing circumstances. In the process, he throws new light on such topics as crime, public disorder and the social history of nineteenth-century Belfast. He concludes with a discussion of the factors which led to the force's abolition and replacement by the Royal Irish Constabulary.

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Irish Law and Lawyers In Modern Folk Tradition

	Writer/ Edited by:	Year Published	No. of Pages	Price	Order No
	Eanna Hekey	1999	pp (including index)	£30.00	185182460

Mr Hickey uses folklore material to create a vivid account of how the law was received and perceived by ordinary members of society in rural Ireland of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. This book eloquently illustrates the value of folk narrative as a means of understanding popular perceptions of law, lawyers and the courts, and make a convincing case for the author's belief that "what may seem to the legal mind to be the very defects of folklore - difficulties in translation, problems in placing folk material geographically and chronologically, the mixing of truth with half-truth and legend - can, when approached with patience and humility, be turned to striking advantage, as they force us to consider stale history anew."

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The Irish Serjeants at Law

Body text . . .

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FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS

Mysteries and Solutions In Irish Legal History

This second collection of papers arising from the work of the Society includes three Lectures given at the meeting held in Belfast in 1998 to celebrate its 10th Anniversary. As in the first collection (Explorations in Law and History) edited by Professor W N Osborough and published in 1995, the papers range over seven centuries and cover a fascinating variety of subjects from "the chief legal expert of Connacht and a well-versed general master in every other art" in the early 14th century to "a splendid lawyer" of Ulster in the 20th century who "knew every branch of the law". Each paper incorporates original research and the papers collectively provide valuable insights into many important facets of the history of law and legal institutions in Ireland from the 14th century.

Contents in detail: Fergus Kelly, A Fourteenth Century Legal Innovator: Giolla na Naomh MacAodhagáin; Jane Ohlmeyer, Legal Records of the Irish Central Courts 1603-1690: A Preliminary Report; John McCafferty, 'To Follow the Late Precedents in England': The First Irish Impeachment Proceedings in 1641; JH Baker, 'United and Knit to the Imperial Crown': An English View of the Anglo-Hibernian Constitution of 1670; R B McDowell, Edmund Burke and the Law; Richard McMahon, Manor Courts and the Law in Pre-Famine Galway; Daire Hogan, R R Cherry, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, 1914-1916; Lord Lowry, The Irish Lords of Appeal in Ordinary and WN Osborough, Mysteries and Solutions: Experiencing Irish Legal History.

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The Factories Acts In Ireland 1802-1914

Working conditions in Irish industry prior to 1914 were frequently harsh and dangerous, particularly for women and children. The large textile, shipbuilding and engineering works in the North were typical products of the industrial revolution, but the smaller factories and workshops located in other parts of the island also exposed workers to unfair terms and conditions of employment. Contrary to the prevailing philosophy of laissez faire, the Factory Acts sought to improve working conditions throughout the United Kingdom. In this book, the authors examine the development of this early health and safety legislation and its system of public inspection and assess its effectiveness in ameliorating the position of workers in factories and workshops thoughout Ireland.

Particular reference is made to the regulation of the health and safety of, and the fair payment of wages to, women and children working in the linen industry, the prevention of accidents to the men employed in shipbuilding and on the docks, and the inspection of working conditions in the industrial processing of agricultural products. The important role played in Ireland by lady inspectors, some of the earliest "women servants of the state", is examined, and case studies of particular attempts to enforce the Factory Acts in the magistrates' courts provide a fascinating insight into a hitherto neglected aspect of the administration of justice in 19th century Ireland. In their closing chapter the authors trace the development of the law governing the right of compensation for death and injury at work.

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