Limerick Through the Years
This Week In History
Week 32
August 3rd to August 9th
Explore articles and photographs connected with Week 32, covering August 3rd to August 9th, throughout Limerick’s history. This weekly collection brings together events, people, places, decisions, celebrations, conflicts, workplaces, sporting occasions and everyday experiences recorded during the same seven calendar dates across different years. Reading these stories together reveals how one week can carry many meanings for successive generations. Local developments are placed within their wider Irish and international setting, while archive images help visitors recognise changing streets, communities and landmarks. As additional material is researched and published, this page will continue expanding Limerick’s shared historical record for Week 32.
6 archive items found: 6 articles and 0 images.
Archive Records
Terry Wogan
Terry Wogan was born in Elm Park, Limerick, on 3 August 1938 and grew up in a city shaped by rivers and markets. He also attended local schools before joining the fledgling national broadcaster RTÉ in the early 1960s. At RTÉ he worked in radio and presented television light entertainment including Jackpot, gaining experience that led to offers from the BBC. His subsequent move to London opened a career spanning radio and television where his conversational style, dry humour and accessible warmth made him a household name across Britain and Ireland, yet he always acknowledged his Limerick origins with pride.
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Peter Tait
Peter Tait was born in Lerwick, Shetland, on 8 August 1828 and emigrated to Limerick in the 1850s where he established himself in the clothing trades. With experience in garment manufacture, he founded the Limerick Clothing Factory to meet demand for ready made garments and military clothing. The factory adopted mechanised production, employed hundreds of local workers, and drew on skilled operatives from Scotland and England. Tait’s enterprise helped diversify Limerick’s nineteenth century economy beyond port trade. He married into an established local family and rose in civic and commercial circles, becoming locally respected. His firm became a prominent employer.
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Farming Department
The newly established Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland has begun assuming responsibility for agricultural development, scientific instruction and several services previously divided among different public bodies. Created by legislation passed in 1899, the Department is intended to bring greater organisation to farming, fisheries, rural industries and technical education. Its emergence is being closely watched in County Limerick, where farmers, labourers, teachers and local representatives hope that practical instruction and improved scientific knowledge will strengthen agricultural production and create opportunities beyond traditional methods inherited within families.
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Western Hardship
Congestion, fragmented holdings and poor soil continue to govern the lives of thousands of families throughout western Ireland. In large districts of Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Donegal, Kerry and western Cork, households depend upon small and scattered plots that cannot reliably support those working them. A family may cultivate several separate strips divided by neighbours’ land, bog or rocky ground, making improvement difficult and wasting valuable time. Similar hardship is familiar in poorer coastal and upland parts of Munster, where limited employment and uncertain harvests leave communities dependent upon fishing, seasonal labour, credit and remittances from relatives abroad.
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Hospital Funding
Limerick’s municipal financial records preserve valuable evidence about hospitals serving the city before modern national healthcare systems developed. Presentment applications came from Bedford Row Lying-In Hospital, Barrington’s Hospital, Saint John’s Fever Hospital and the Limerick District Lunatic Asylum. These institutions could submit details of annual income, expenditure and numbers of patients treated when seeking Corporation support. Their records connect local taxation with childbirth, infectious disease, general treatment and mental healthcare. They also show that Limerick Corporation’s responsibilities extended beyond streets and administration into institutions caring for sick and vulnerable residents throughout the city and surrounding district during this important period.
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Surrender Refused
Limerick formally entered a state of siege on 9 August 1690 when William III’s army moved from its camp near Cahirconlish and established itself before the city. William sent a summons demanding surrender to Alexandre de Rainier de Droué, Marquis de Boisseleau, the French officer entrusted with commanding the Jacobite infantry within Limerick. The decision placed the city’s inhabitants, soldiers and defences at the centre of the war following the Boyne. William expected the remaining Jacobite resistance to collapse, but Limerick’s position behind the Shannon and the presence of a substantial garrison offered the defenders a final opportunity to continue the campaign.
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