Ireland’s historical coordinates are shifting, prompting a re-examination of national narratives and of the assumptions and anxieties that have kept them in place. Increasingly, stories that disturb rather than coalesce with grand narratives are the focus of historical study, revealing the structural violence used to maintain societal order. This article argues that tending to bigger questions about power and smaller ones about human experience creates space for new and diverse histories. It explores the dynamics that shaped the grand narratives central to Irish history and proposes the idea of imagined and lived encounters as a way of thinking about differentiation, the relational nature of power and its impact on experience and everyday life. An analysis of the concept of respectability is used to probe how power functions. The article concludes with a consideration of the historical archive broadly defined, highlighting the benefits of embracing the ‘unreliable’ witness, listening and accounting for silences, touching the material, and considering imagination as a force constantly at play in the encounters that shape history. The acceptance of this dynamic instability in historical research creates possibilities for new voices and perspectives to emerge.

This article examines the Dublin House of Industry in the final decades of the eighteenth century. Established in 1773, the House of Industry was part of an effort to launch a nationwide system of workhouses and something like a poor law system for Ireland. By the 1790s however, there was a shift from the paternalistic governance of the founders of the house to a new way of managing the relief of the poor within the institution. During this decade, there emerged a new board of governors who adopted a supposed ‘scientific’ approach to philanthropy. Influenced by the ideas of such workhouse reformers as Count Rumford in Munich, the new governors attempted to enact a sweeping series of changes to transform life in the workhouse along ‘oeconomical’ lines. It argues that these transformations reflected broader patterns of social change in the capital, as well as shifts in attitudes to poor relief more generally.

An examination of the history of menageries in Ireland from 1790 to 1840 offers insights into how people related to and understood the animal world through exhibitions of exotic creatures. Menageries, featuring diverse collections of wild animals displayed in cages, were part of the broader entertainment scene at fairs and large social events in the early nineteenth century. Journeying across Ireland and Britain in horse-drawn caravans, these exhibitions evolved from modest attractions to significant commercial enterprises by the mid nineteenth century. While British menageries of the period have received considerable scholarly attention, Irish menageries have been largely overlooked. This article seeks to address that gap by exploring how the Irish public encountered exotic and rare animals in menageries during this period. Newspapers, advertisements for travelling menageries and contemporary accounts reveal that menageries played a meaningful role in bringing the wonders of the animal kingdom to the Irish populace, offering a glimpse into the exotic and the unknown.