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.

It was by chance that John Morrogh (1849–1901) became an imperial player. Leaving Ireland as an almost penniless young man moulded by the Catholic nationalism of the Christian Brothers, he joined the early diamond rush to Kimberley, South Africa, and returned home twenty years later a director of Cecil Rhodes’s De Beers Consolidated Diamond Mines. He joined the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) and his diamond fortune eased his path to a seat in the House of Commons. As the IPP fragmented, he took the side of the anti-Parnellite, Tim Healy, until he resigned his seat and returned to Cork where he became an influential figure in business and local government. This article traces the fortunes and sensibilities of an Irish migrant who in many ways exemplifies Ireland’s ‘ambivalent heritage’ of nationalism and empire.1