Ciara Breathnach
Biographic Data
| ID | 1626765 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ciara Breathnach |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ciara |
| FAMILY NAME | Breathnach |
| SIGNATURE | BREATHNACH C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Limerick |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4065-0660 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Irish Cause-of-Death Data, 1864–1921
Historical Irish cause-of-death data have been digitized to varying standards, and while digital copies can facilitate greater access they are not research ready. Having suffered enormous destruction over the centuries through fire and inadequate storage, Irish records are very fragmented in nature, and under-registration occurs within extant data because of poor state/subject relations and confessional differences. To reconcile absences and prov…
Newspapers as Surrogate Archives: A Case Study of the Early Twentieth-Century Dublin City Coroner’s Court
Newspaper reporters routinely occupied the galleries of the adversarial and inquisitorial courts at the beginning of the twentieth century but whether their shorthand progressed to publication and into the public domain was sensitive to many factors. Newsworthy cases were self-selecting; headlines could be quickly constituted from verdicts and riders, and the verbatim replication of proceedings provided editors with ready content safe from libel.…
The Night of the Big Wind: Reticent Subjects and the Introduction of Old Age Pensions in Ireland
When the non-contributory old age pension was introduced in 1908, claimants had to provide written proof that they were at least seventy years of age and of limited means. A greater number of claims emerged than the Treasury predicted, but instead of recognizing the limitations of historical record-keeping the Irish authorities were accused of widespread fraud. This article explores the concept of reticent subjects, and how the Act occasioned ind…
Fine lines: Locating commercial sex work in official data, Dublin 1901 and 1911
Dublin at the turn of the nineteenth century had limited permanent employment opportunities compared to Belfast, and for poor families financial instability manifested in limited life expectancy. This article focuses on young adult cohorts in Dublin city. By cross-referencing names and addresses from death records with census, court and prison records, it casts new light on the lives of the city's most disadvantaged people. It applies a digital h…
Gender and History: Ireland, 1852–1922
Irish higher education in the mid-nineteenth century was designed to accommodate men of the upper and middle classes. The enduring strength of traditionalist Victorian social attitudes, dictating a separate and lesser role for women in society \nand the explicit relegation of women to the private and domestic setting, remained a formidable barrier to female participation in university education up to the early 1900s.1 The exclusion of women from …
Respiratory disease and death registration: Dublin 1900-1902
Depuis les années 1970, les historiens ont souligné la présence d’imprécisions dans les rapports de décès des registres nationaux dus aux maladies respiratoires. Au début du vingtième siècle, lorsque la tuberculose pulmonaire connaissait d’important niveaux de contagion en Irlande, les hauts fonctionnaires de santé publique comme les militants avaient parfaitement conscience que les décès dus à cette maladie étaient décrits sans précisions ou par…
Sexual assault and fatal violence against women during the Irish War of Independence, 1919–1921: Kate Maher’s murder in context
At the height of the Irish War of Independence, 1919-1921, 45-year-old Kate Maher was brutally raped. She subsequently died of terrible wounds, almost certainly inflicted by drunken British soldiers. This article discusses her inadequately investigated case in the wider context of fatal violence against women and girls during years of major political instability. Ordinarily her violent death would have been subject to a coroner's court inquiry an…
Capital Punishment in Irish Prisons, 1868–1901
Maternal Mortality, Dublin, 1864–1902
Using civil registration as a prism this article examines the complicated interface between the authorities, medical professionals, women in childbirth and the aftermath of delivery. It argues that Irish maternal mortality was underestimated and provides a number of arguments in relation to the complex socio-medical environment to explain why. Our research shows how a combination of cavalier attitudes towards cause of death classification and lib…
Infant life Protection and Medico-Legal Literacy in Early Twentieth-century Dublin
At the turn of the twentieth century, the infant mortality rate in Dublin city was higher than that of London, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Political concerns about the health of nations coupled with the work of child protection campaigners gave rise to a sense of panic across the Anglophone world and caused an increase in the surveillance of the body of the child. While a combination of poor sanitation and inadequate feeding cou…
Perspectives on patienthood, practitioners and pedagogy
This issue brings together scholars of philosophy, medicine, history, art history and psychiatry to consider the theme of ‘patienthood’, to ponder what being a patient means in historic and modern terms, to discuss the practitioner/patient relationship, to contribute to pedagogy and ongoing debates in the medical humanities.i By focusing on two main themes, narratives and pedagogy, this issue builds on the advances and responds to the ‘clarion ca…
Professional patienthood and mortality: Seán Ó Ríordáin's diaries 1974–1977
Unwieldy by nature, unsolicited diaries and their study, this article contends, have the potential to offer deeper insights into the experience of illness but only if they receive due consideration from scholars. This article uses a series of historic diaries to examine the concept of 'professional patienthood' or being a full-time patient, and, while it found the narrative medicine approach to be very useful, it also found it limiting. The recen…
A tale of two cities – infant mortality and cause of infant death, Dublin, 1864–1910
This article uses data extracted from General Register Office mortality registers to map the localization of infant mortality in Dublin city from 1864 to 1910. It traces how late nineteenth-century social inequalities were deeply rooted in the city's history. In order to contextualize the high infant mortality rates, we draw on a range of approaches to provide an overarching view of the causes of the public health problems cities like Dublin expe…
Handywomen and Birthing in Rural Ireland, 1851–1955
It is largely agreed among scholars of social history and history of medicine that the medicalisation of maternity was slow to evolve in Ireland as it was beleaguered by competing professional, denominational and political agendas. Such discourses have dominated Irish history of medicine and hindered the progress of the medicalisation debate. A notable feature of the birthing process in Ireland is that for centuries handywomen, or untrained midwi…
Indelible Characters’: Tattoos, Power and the Late Nineteenth-Century Irish Convict Body
Since the late nineteenth-century works of criminologists Lombroso and Lacassagne, tattoos in Europe have been commonly associated with deviant bodies. Like many other studies of tattoos of non-indigenous origin, the locus of our research is the convict body. Given the corporeal emphasis of prison records, we argue that tattoos form a crucial part of the power dynamic. Tattoos in the carceral context embody an inherent paradox of their being a co…
Scripting blame: Irish coroners' courts and unnamed infant dead, 1916–32
In the early morning of 5 January 1919 Minnie R.1 gave birth to a male child on Church Street in Ennis. She later recollected: ‘I became very ill and gave birth to a baby. Nobody came to my assista
The Dispossessed State: Narratives of ownership in 19th-century Britain and IrelandSara L. Maurer
Heavier the interval than the consummation’: Bronchial disease in Seán Ó Ríordáin's diaries
Narratives of the experience of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) are relatively rare in the Irish context. A scourge of the early twentieth century, TB was as much a social as a physically debilitating disease that rendered sufferers silent about their experience. Thus, the personal diaries and letters of Irish poet, Seán Ó Ríordáin, (1916-1977) are rare. This article presents translations of his personal papers in a historico-medical context to chron…
Irish Catholic Identity in 1870s Otago, New Zealand
This article outlines the progress made by Bishop Patrick Moran (1823–1895) in standardising doctrinal practices of Irish Catholic immigrants in New Zealand in the 1870s. The principal sources used are contemporary newspapers, some proceedings of the Otago Provincial Council and clerical correspondence. It revisits and builds on Hugh Laracy's biographical work on Moran and the increasing historiography of migration to address a few fundamental qu…
Registered ‘unknown’ infant fatalities in Ireland, 1916–32: Gender and power
The phenomenon of ‘unknown’ infant deaths addressed in this article was first explored in the course of research on fatalities arising from political violence during the Irish revolution of 1916–1921. Our data are derived from the General Register of Death Indices (G.R.D.I.), held in the General Register Office, Dublin, which are organised alphabetically, and which form an official record of deaths registered either by relatives of the deceased o…
Medicalizing the female reproductive cycle in rural Ireland, 1926-56: Medicalizing the female reproductive cycle in rural Ireland, 1926-56
Journal Article Medicalizing the female reproductive cycle in rural Ireland, 1926–56 Get access Ciara Breathnach Ciara Breathnach University of Limerick Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Historical Research, Volume 85, Issue 230, November 2012, Pages 674–690, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2281.2011.00585.x Published: 19 October 2012
Even ‘Wilder Workhouse Girls: The Problem of Institutionalisation among Irish Immigrants to New Zealand 1874
Studies of the Irish in New Zealand tend to focus predominantly on sectarian issues and respective ‘identities’. While class is explored to a lesser extent, it is mainly through the lens of occupational status. Overall, migrant poverty and criminality in that colonial setting has received the least attention from historians, because the socio-economic profile of the majority of Irish immigrants was generally of a higher status. This article trace…
An exploration of testamentary behaviour in twentieth-century Ireland
This article highlights trends in testamentary behaviour in modern Ireland derived from registers of probate cases. Primary findings show a consistently high level of intestacy in modern Ireland. It argues that such rates were more closely related to popular perceptions rather than an understanding of succession law. It also highlights that while real property was not normally divided pre-mortem transfer of non-fixed assets complicated efforts to…
Introduction: Ireland church, state and society 1900–1975
The articles in this collection arise primarily from a conference held at the University of Limerick in June 2007, entitled History of European Family: continuity and change. This conference provid
The Role of Women in the Economy of the West of Ireland, 1891-1923
The role of women in the rural economy in the West of Ireland altered dramatically in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.1 Joanna Bourke's important 1993 study, Husbandry to Housewifery: Women, Economic Change and Housework in Ireland 1890 - 1891, argues that Victorian reform agencies—specifically, the Congested Districts Board (CDB), the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society founded in 1894, and later, the Department of Agricult…
Even ‘Wilder Workhouse Girls: The Problem of Institutionalisation among Irish Immigrants to New Zealand 1874
Studies of the Irish in New Zealand tend to focus predominantly on sectarian issues and respective ‘identities’. While class is explored to a lesser extent, it is mainly through the lens of occupational status. Overall, migrant poverty and criminality in that colonial setting has received the least attention from historians, because the socio-economic profile of the majority of Irish immigrants was generally of a higher status. This article trace…
The Role of Women in the Economy of the West of Ireland, 1891-1923
The role of women in the rural economy in the West of Ireland altered dramatically in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.1 Joanna Bourke's important 1993 study, Husbandry to Housewifery: Women, Economic Change and Housework in Ireland 1890 - 1891, argues that Victorian reform agencies—specifically, the Congested Districts Board (CDB), the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society founded in 1894, and later, the Department of Agricult…
Sexual assault and fatal violence against women during the Irish War of Independence, 1919–1921: Kate Maher’s murder in context
At the height of the Irish War of Independence, 1919-1921, 45-year-old Kate Maher was brutally raped. She subsequently died of terrible wounds, almost certainly inflicted by drunken British soldiers. This article discusses her inadequately investigated case in the wider context of fatal violence against women and girls during years of major political instability. Ordinarily her violent death would have been subject to a coroner's court inquiry an…
A tale of two cities – infant mortality and cause of infant death, Dublin, 1864–1910
This article uses data extracted from General Register Office mortality registers to map the localization of infant mortality in Dublin city from 1864 to 1910. It traces how late nineteenth-century social inequalities were deeply rooted in the city's history. In order to contextualize the high infant mortality rates, we draw on a range of approaches to provide an overarching view of the causes of the public health problems cities like Dublin expe…
Handywomen and Birthing in Rural Ireland, 1851–1955
It is largely agreed among scholars of social history and history of medicine that the medicalisation of maternity was slow to evolve in Ireland as it was beleaguered by competing professional, denominational and political agendas. Such discourses have dominated Irish history of medicine and hindered the progress of the medicalisation debate. A notable feature of the birthing process in Ireland is that for centuries handywomen, or untrained midwi…
An exploration of testamentary behaviour in twentieth-century Ireland
This article highlights trends in testamentary behaviour in modern Ireland derived from registers of probate cases. Primary findings show a consistently high level of intestacy in modern Ireland. It argues that such rates were more closely related to popular perceptions rather than an understanding of succession law. It also highlights that while real property was not normally divided pre-mortem transfer of non-fixed assets complicated efforts to…
Introduction: Ireland church, state and society 1900–1975
The articles in this collection arise primarily from a conference held at the University of Limerick in June 2007, entitled History of European Family: continuity and change. This conference provid
The Role of Women in the Economy of the West of Ireland, 1891-1923
The role of women in the rural economy in the West of Ireland altered dramatically in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.1 Joanna Bourke's important 1993 study, Husbandry to Housewifery: Women, Economic Change and Housework in Ireland 1890 - 1891, argues that Victorian reform agencies—specifically, the Congested Districts Board (CDB), the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society founded in 1894, and later, the Department of Agricult…
Introduction: Ireland church, state and society 1900–1975
The articles in this collection arise primarily from a conference held at the University of Limerick in June 2007, entitled History of European Family: continuity and change. This conference provid
An exploration of testamentary behaviour in twentieth-century Ireland
This article highlights trends in testamentary behaviour in modern Ireland derived from registers of probate cases. Primary findings show a consistently high level of intestacy in modern Ireland. It argues that such rates were more closely related to popular perceptions rather than an understanding of succession law. It also highlights that while real property was not normally divided pre-mortem transfer of non-fixed assets complicated efforts to…
Even ‘Wilder Workhouse Girls: The Problem of Institutionalisation among Irish Immigrants to New Zealand 1874
Studies of the Irish in New Zealand tend to focus predominantly on sectarian issues and respective ‘identities’. While class is explored to a lesser extent, it is mainly through the lens of occupational status. Overall, migrant poverty and criminality in that colonial setting has received the least attention from historians, because the socio-economic profile of the majority of Irish immigrants was generally of a higher status. This article trace…
Registered ‘unknown’ infant fatalities in Ireland, 1916–32: Gender and power
The phenomenon of ‘unknown’ infant deaths addressed in this article was first explored in the course of research on fatalities arising from political violence during the Irish revolution of 1916–1921. Our data are derived from the General Register of Death Indices (G.R.D.I.), held in the General Register Office, Dublin, which are organised alphabetically, and which form an official record of deaths registered either by relatives of the deceased o…
Medicalizing the female reproductive cycle in rural Ireland, 1926-56: Medicalizing the female reproductive cycle in rural Ireland, 1926-56
Journal Article Medicalizing the female reproductive cycle in rural Ireland, 1926–56 Get access Ciara Breathnach Ciara Breathnach University of Limerick Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Historical Research, Volume 85, Issue 230, November 2012, Pages 674–690, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2281.2011.00585.x Published: 19 October 2012
Heavier the interval than the consummation’: Bronchial disease in Seán Ó Ríordáin's diaries
Narratives of the experience of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) are relatively rare in the Irish context. A scourge of the early twentieth century, TB was as much a social as a physically debilitating disease that rendered sufferers silent about their experience. Thus, the personal diaries and letters of Irish poet, Seán Ó Ríordáin, (1916-1977) are rare. This article presents translations of his personal papers in a historico-medical context to chron…
Irish Catholic Identity in 1870s Otago, New Zealand
This article outlines the progress made by Bishop Patrick Moran (1823–1895) in standardising doctrinal practices of Irish Catholic immigrants in New Zealand in the 1870s. The principal sources used are contemporary newspapers, some proceedings of the Otago Provincial Council and clerical correspondence. It revisits and builds on Hugh Laracy's biographical work on Moran and the increasing historiography of migration to address a few fundamental qu…
Scripting blame: Irish coroners' courts and unnamed infant dead, 1916–32
In the early morning of 5 January 1919 Minnie R.1 gave birth to a male child on Church Street in Ennis. She later recollected: ‘I became very ill and gave birth to a baby. Nobody came to my assista
The Dispossessed State: Narratives of ownership in 19th-century Britain and IrelandSara L. Maurer
Indelible Characters’: Tattoos, Power and the Late Nineteenth-Century Irish Convict Body
Since the late nineteenth-century works of criminologists Lombroso and Lacassagne, tattoos in Europe have been commonly associated with deviant bodies. Like many other studies of tattoos of non-indigenous origin, the locus of our research is the convict body. Given the corporeal emphasis of prison records, we argue that tattoos form a crucial part of the power dynamic. Tattoos in the carceral context embody an inherent paradox of their being a co…
Perspectives on patienthood, practitioners and pedagogy
This issue brings together scholars of philosophy, medicine, history, art history and psychiatry to consider the theme of ‘patienthood’, to ponder what being a patient means in historic and modern terms, to discuss the practitioner/patient relationship, to contribute to pedagogy and ongoing debates in the medical humanities.i By focusing on two main themes, narratives and pedagogy, this issue builds on the advances and responds to the ‘clarion ca…
Professional patienthood and mortality: Seán Ó Ríordáin's diaries 1974–1977
Unwieldy by nature, unsolicited diaries and their study, this article contends, have the potential to offer deeper insights into the experience of illness but only if they receive due consideration from scholars. This article uses a series of historic diaries to examine the concept of 'professional patienthood' or being a full-time patient, and, while it found the narrative medicine approach to be very useful, it also found it limiting. The recen…
A tale of two cities – infant mortality and cause of infant death, Dublin, 1864–1910
This article uses data extracted from General Register Office mortality registers to map the localization of infant mortality in Dublin city from 1864 to 1910. It traces how late nineteenth-century social inequalities were deeply rooted in the city's history. In order to contextualize the high infant mortality rates, we draw on a range of approaches to provide an overarching view of the causes of the public health problems cities like Dublin expe…
Handywomen and Birthing in Rural Ireland, 1851–1955
It is largely agreed among scholars of social history and history of medicine that the medicalisation of maternity was slow to evolve in Ireland as it was beleaguered by competing professional, denominational and political agendas. Such discourses have dominated Irish history of medicine and hindered the progress of the medicalisation debate. A notable feature of the birthing process in Ireland is that for centuries handywomen, or untrained midwi…
Maternal Mortality, Dublin, 1864–1902
Using civil registration as a prism this article examines the complicated interface between the authorities, medical professionals, women in childbirth and the aftermath of delivery. It argues that Irish maternal mortality was underestimated and provides a number of arguments in relation to the complex socio-medical environment to explain why. Our research shows how a combination of cavalier attitudes towards cause of death classification and lib…
Infant life Protection and Medico-Legal Literacy in Early Twentieth-century Dublin
At the turn of the twentieth century, the infant mortality rate in Dublin city was higher than that of London, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Political concerns about the health of nations coupled with the work of child protection campaigners gave rise to a sense of panic across the Anglophone world and caused an increase in the surveillance of the body of the child. While a combination of poor sanitation and inadequate feeding cou…
Capital Punishment in Irish Prisons, 1868–1901
Sexual assault and fatal violence against women during the Irish War of Independence, 1919–1921: Kate Maher’s murder in context
At the height of the Irish War of Independence, 1919-1921, 45-year-old Kate Maher was brutally raped. She subsequently died of terrible wounds, almost certainly inflicted by drunken British soldiers. This article discusses her inadequately investigated case in the wider context of fatal violence against women and girls during years of major political instability. Ordinarily her violent death would have been subject to a coroner's court inquiry an…
Gender and History: Ireland, 1852–1922
Irish higher education in the mid-nineteenth century was designed to accommodate men of the upper and middle classes. The enduring strength of traditionalist Victorian social attitudes, dictating a separate and lesser role for women in society \nand the explicit relegation of women to the private and domestic setting, remained a formidable barrier to female participation in university education up to the early 1900s.1 The exclusion of women from …
Respiratory disease and death registration: Dublin 1900-1902
Depuis les années 1970, les historiens ont souligné la présence d’imprécisions dans les rapports de décès des registres nationaux dus aux maladies respiratoires. Au début du vingtième siècle, lorsque la tuberculose pulmonaire connaissait d’important niveaux de contagion en Irlande, les hauts fonctionnaires de santé publique comme les militants avaient parfaitement conscience que les décès dus à cette maladie étaient décrits sans précisions ou par…
Fine lines: Locating commercial sex work in official data, Dublin 1901 and 1911
Dublin at the turn of the nineteenth century had limited permanent employment opportunities compared to Belfast, and for poor families financial instability manifested in limited life expectancy. This article focuses on young adult cohorts in Dublin city. By cross-referencing names and addresses from death records with census, court and prison records, it casts new light on the lives of the city's most disadvantaged people. It applies a digital h…
The Night of the Big Wind: Reticent Subjects and the Introduction of Old Age Pensions in Ireland
When the non-contributory old age pension was introduced in 1908, claimants had to provide written proof that they were at least seventy years of age and of limited means. A greater number of claims emerged than the Treasury predicted, but instead of recognizing the limitations of historical record-keeping the Irish authorities were accused of widespread fraud. This article explores the concept of reticent subjects, and how the Act occasioned ind…
Irish Cause-of-Death Data, 1864–1921
Historical Irish cause-of-death data have been digitized to varying standards, and while digital copies can facilitate greater access they are not research ready. Having suffered enormous destruction over the centuries through fire and inadequate storage, Irish records are very fragmented in nature, and under-registration occurs within extant data because of poor state/subject relations and confessional differences. To reconcile absences and prov…
Newspapers as Surrogate Archives: A Case Study of the Early Twentieth-Century Dublin City Coroner’s Court
Newspaper reporters routinely occupied the galleries of the adversarial and inquisitorial courts at the beginning of the twentieth century but whether their shorthand progressed to publication and into the public domain was sensitive to many factors. Newsworthy cases were self-selecting; headlines could be quickly constituted from verdicts and riders, and the verbatim replication of proceedings provided editors with ready content safe from libel.…
History (17 works) · History (14 works) · Political science (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Irish and British Studies (13 works) · Irish (12 works) · Law (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Genealogy (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works)