Irish Minister of Culture to Prioritise Archives

Source: The Irish Times - Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Minister to prioritise archives

ALISON HEALY

MINISTER FOR Culture Mary Hanafin has acknowledged criticism of the lack of
foresight of successive governments in providing proper accommodation for
the National Archives.

She said she would prioritise spending in this area in the coming years. “I
accept that there is a major responsibility on Government to preserve all of
those documents and to do it properly.

“I can assure you that I will put it as one of my top priorities . . . that
we not only improve the current conditions but try to move to a situation
where we can have much more accessible accommodation and also much more
top-quality accommodation.”

She was speaking at the launch last night of a special volume of the Irish
Archives journal, which marks the 40th anniversary of the Irish Society for
Archives.

A journal article, by former Dublin diocesan archivist David Sheehy,
criticises the Government’s prevarication for nearly two decades in
providing adequate accommodation for the archives.

The great Irish painting that turned up on eBay

The Irish Times - Saturday, October 2, 2010

The great Irish painting that turned up on eBay

Source: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2010/1002/1224280192787.html

Niamh O’Sullivan is professor of visual culture at the National College of Art Design


Lost for almost a century, John Mulvany’s ‘ The Battle of Aughrim ’ re-emerged on the online auction site, put up for sale by a dealer who believed it to be an American battle scene. For NIAMH O’SULLIVAN , who had spent years searching for the painting, it was a heart-stopping moment

IN IT WAS A 21ST-CENTURY moment when a once-celebrated painting that had been missing for almost 100 years turned up – and not in an attic, under generations of dust, but on eBay.

The Battle of Aughrim was last seen in Denver, in the US, in 1914. In 2003 I travelled there, to try to track it down, but to no avail. Earlier this year I saw the painting on eBay, for sale as an American military painting. I knew immediately what it was. Seeing something flash before you that you have been searching for over seven years is a heart-stopping moment.

Many years ago, in a dark recess of the Battle of Aughrim Interpretative Centre, in Co Galway, I had come across a black-and-white photogravure entitled The Cavalry Fight at Urachree, 12 July 1691. When I saw the painting on eBay I knew immediately that it was the original and that I had struck gold.

I contacted Anne Weber, the great-grandniece of the artist, with whom I had been working on the Mulvany project for some time. She jumped on a plane to the dealer in San Francisco. When she saw the painting she was quite overcome: here was the painting that was closest to her great-granduncle’s heart, and it was spectacular.
One hundred and thirty five years later the painting was on its return journey, this time from California to the Gorry Gallery, on Molesworth Street, around the corner from where it was first exhibited in Dublin, on Grafton Street, in 1885.

That year, when the Fenian and Irish National Land League founder Michael Davitt saw the barely-dry Battle of Aughrim he declared: “If I were a wealthy man it should never leave Ireland.” But the painting was promised, and its artist, John Mulvany (c1839-1906), took it to the US, where it was last recorded in 1914. The rediscovery of the painting marks an exciting moment in Irish art history.

There is a common assumption that Irish artists of the late 19th century transcended the harsh realities of political and economic life either by emigrating and assimilating or by staying put but avoiding subjects that might mirror or create discontent. Mulvany’s The Battle of Aughrim , however, places visual art at the centre of an emergent nationalism traditionally perceived as the preserve of poets and playwrights, journalists and politicians.

Mulvany chose a propitious moment for the action of the painting, the momentary victory by Jacobite forces over the Williamite army at Urraghry on July 12th, 1691, before their subsequent calamitous defeat on the Hill of Aughrim, in Co Galway. By showing the weakest link in the Jacobite position Mulvany illustrates the bravery of the Irish as they took on the superior forces of William. But when the Jacobite commander Lieut Gen St Ruth was decapitated by a cannonball, near victory became a rout. In a striking prefiguration, the painting depicts a Williamite soldier, in the centre of the picture, staggering backwards as his head is severed from his neck.
The myth of Aughrim is largely built on the randomness of the defeat – the decapitation of St Ruth – as one stray cannonball consigns Ireland to another 200 years of subjugation. As if to emphasise this, the decapitation of the British soldier in the painting signals, in its one-on-one combat, the valour of the Irish by comparison with the contingency of the British victory. From near triumph to resounding defeat, the story of Aughrim was subsequently reclaimed in Irish cultural memory as an enduring symbol of entitlement, a site for future resurgence.

According to the Gaelic American of March 6th, 1909, Mulvany was “of an imaginative and inquiring mind, his teacher’s favourite . . . They both loved Ireland and hated the Sassenach.” As a Famine child Mulvany emigrated from Moynalty, in Co Meath, to the US, where, according to the Nation of January 15th, 1887, “he became an infant phenomenon as a colourist . . . and was soon earning thousands of dollars a month”. Notwithstanding the hyperbole of late-19th-century art criticism, the reviews of his work bordered on the ecstatic.

When the Irish-American Club in Chicago wanted Irish pictures, it consulted Mulvany. He explained that the wealthy Irish had little time for national art, that nationalists could not afford to buy art and that painters could not live by ideals alone. Following the remarkable success of his epochal Custer’s Last Rally (1881) – the first major painting of another celebrated defeat – Mulvany was at the peak of his artistic powers, and pledged himself to the cause of his homeland.
But why did he select Aughrim as his plumb line to the past? In the late 19th century radical nationalism was focused not only on peasant proprietorship but also on political independence. Such boldness required representation on a large scale: galvanising, iconic images that had the power to incite action. Mulvany began Aughrim only 15 years after the 1867 insurrection and six years after the formation of the Irish National Land League, and the bicentenary of the battle was less than 10 years away.

This was no incidental exercise in nostalgia, then, but a purposeful, positioning image, designed to press powerful memories into a contemporary political use. If out of violence and trauma comes renewed resolve, The Battle of Aughrim may be seen as an exemplification of Ireland’s glorious past and a call to arms in the present. And by creating Aughrim for the diaspora, Mulvany was able to reach international audiences.
Aughrim was one of the bloodiest battles fought in Ireland, with 7,000 slain out of the 40,000 engaged in the confrontation. Following the defeat, Galway and Limerick fell fast. For these reasons Aughrim rather than the Boyne can be considered the decisive battle of the Williamite wars in Ireland.

In its subsequent mythic versions the battle functioned much as the loss of Meagher’s Irish Brigade at Fredericksburg, or Pickett’s men charging to their deaths at Gettysburg, celebrated defeats resounding to the credit to the losers. Indeed, the characterisation of Aughrim as the Gettysburg of Ireland would have not displeased the Irish-American Mulvany, himself a Civil War artist and an ardent Irish nationalist. Inevitably, it was also likened to Ireland’s Little Big Horn.

MULVANY WENT OVER the battleground meticulously. He went to London to research the uniforms and arms but had difficulty gaining access to the Tower of London, as his republican views and associates were known. The early 1880s in London were characterised by violence, instigated by the dynamiting campaign funded by Clan na Gael in the US. That January there was an explosion at London Bridge. Mulvany, a member of Clan na Gael, fled to Paris with the painting; he believed that, if he had not, he would have spent the rest of his life in an English prison. In Paris the famous Goupil engraved it, and Mulvany then took the painting back to Ireland.
In Dublin the Freeman’s Journal of July 11th, 1885, announced that “no one but an artist of genius could possibly have produced such a masterly and realistic picture . . . The work may be said to be of the school of De Neuville – the manipulation is broad, rapid, and consequently singularly effective, the drawing is perfect, and the colour masterly.” Contemporary reviewers also compared Mulvany to Landseer and Vernet. Stylistically, the composition of Aughrim is circular, cyclonic and sweeping: full of verve, dynamism and energy.

But Mulvany’s associations with Clan na Gael began to catch up with him. Chicago was a major centre of the organisation. Alexander Sullivan, its leading light, had forged connections between Irish nationalism and the shady side of machine politics, turning on ward “healers”, thugs and liquor dealers. In 1885 there was a move to curb Sullivan. Dr Patrick Henry Cronin, a prominent member of Clan na Gael, initially friends with Sullivan, became his enemy when Cronin accused Sullivan of embezzlement. Anticipating his assassination, Cronin entrusted Thomas Tuite, a friend of Mulvany, with his “evidence” to implicate Sullivan. And, sure enough, in 1889 Cronin’s death followed suit.

Although The Battle of Aughrim had been rapturously received, there was a sudden froideur. As a supporter of Cronin, Mulvany was to be taught a lesson, and the sale of the painting fell through. And the postscript is indeed macabre. The trials that followed Cronin’s murder were inconclusive.

Everyone knew who committed the murder, but convictions proved impossible. Around 1901 Mulvany began work on The Anarchists, a painting that showed a group of men cutting a pack of cards to see who would commit murder. As if life imitated art, Mulvany was soon found dead, face down in the Hudson River, his own death as enigmatic as the fate of his painting.
Missing for a century

It’s a mystery how a painting that measures 198cm by 89cm could vanish for so long, but The Battle of Aughrim had been missing since 1914. Then, earlier this year, a San Francisco dealer put it up on eBay.

Although its painter, John Mulvany, is relatively well known, the painting’s subject had been mistaken as an American military scene. Put up for sale twice, with the price varying between $50,000 and $100,000, it was stumbled upon by Prof Niamh O’Sullivan.

James Gorry of Dublin’s Gorry Gallery, which specialises in repatriating Irish art from abroad, stepped in, and the painting was bought in a private sale. It arrived back in Ireland a week ago and is in very good condition, although its original frame has been replaced. Once it has been reframed it will go on view at the Gorry Gallery, on Molesworth Street, Dublin 2, from December 1st to 15th.
The battle and the war: the background

In the conflict between the Protestant William of Orange and the Catholic James II the crown of England, Scotland and Ireland was at stake, as part of the wider European wars of the 17th century. James was supported by Catholic Jacobites in Ireland and France; William was supported by English, Scottish, Dutch, Danish, French Huguenots and Ulster Protestants; the Dutch Republic was at war with France; and the Stuarts were allies of the Catholic Louis XIV.

When James’s wife gave birth to a son in 1688 the prospect of an enduring Catholic Stuart dynasty impelled parliament to issue an invitation to William of Orange to take the throne with his wife, Mary, daughter of James. The Catholics of Ireland were prepared to fight for James in the hope of regaining political and religious lands and freedoms. Although there was no love between them, James looked to Ireland to regain his kingdoms. He landed in Kinsale in 1689. Louis XIV sent Lieut Gen St Ruth to Ireland with officers, troops and supplies. William needed to quell the Jacobite opposition in Ireland to secure British dominance and the Protestant Settlement, whose power was based on land ownership.

Following a series of defeats, notably at the Boyne, St Ruth managed to regroup 20,000 men on the Hill of Aughrim. On July 12th, 1691, when the Dutch commander Baron de Ginkel came through the pass at Urraghry, the Jacobites put up a valiant fight, and briefly it looked as if they might win. This moment was short-lived, but it is perpetuated for future generations in Mulvany’s The Battle of Aughrim . Like the battle, the painting itself was lost, but, true to its subject matter, has come back to enjoy an unexpected afterlife in the new century.

Ancestry.com Inc. to Acquire iArchives

Ancestry.com Inc. to Acquire iArchives

8:00 AM ET 9/23/10 | GlobeNewswire

Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq:ACOM) announced today it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire iArchives, Inc. and its branded Web site, Footnote.com, a leading American History Web site, for approximately $27 million in a mix of Ancestry.com stock, cash and assumption of liabilities. This acquisition will provide the company with a complementary consumer brand, expanded content offerings, and enhanced digitization and image-viewing technologies.

iArchives digitizes and delivers high-quality images of American historical records of individuals involved in the Revolutionary War, Continental Congress, Civil War, and other U.S. historical events to Footnote.com subscribers interested in early American roots. iArchives has digitized more than 65 million original source documents to date through its proprietary digitization process for paper, microfilm and microfiche collections.

"Footnote.com is highly complementary to Ancestry.com's online family history offering," said Tim Sullivan, President and Chief Executive Officer of Ancestry.com. "By promoting Footnote to our Ancestry audience, we hope to expand its reach among researchers who care about early American records. iArchives also brings outstanding image-viewing technology and content digitization capabilities that will improve our leadership position in bringing valuable historical records to the market. We welcome the iArchives team to the Ancestry.com family."

Upon completion of the transaction, iArchives will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ancestry.com. As part of the transaction, Ancestry.com currently expects to issue approximately 1.0 million shares of common stock. The transaction is subject to various closing conditions and is expected to close early in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Ancestry.com also announced today that its Board of Directors has approved a share repurchase program of up to approximately $25 million of its common stock. Under the authorization, share repurchases may be made by the Company from time to time in the open market or through privately negotiated transactions depending on market conditions, share price and other factors and may include accelerated or forward or similar stock repurchases and/or Rule 10b5-1 plans. Part of the rationale for the repurchase is to offset dilution of equity resulting from the iArchives acquisition. No time limit was set for the completion of this program. The share repurchase program may be modified or discontinued at any time by the Board of Directors.

About Ancestry.com

Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq:ACOM) is the world's largest online family history resource, with approximately 1.3 million paying subscribers. More than 5 billion records have been added to the site in the past 13 years. Ancestry users have created more than 19 million family trees containing over 1.9 billion profiles. Ancestry.com has local Web sites directed at nine countries, including its flagship Web site at www.ancestry.com.

About iArchives

iArchives is a leading digitization service provider that also operates Footnote.com, a subscription Web site that features searchable original documents, providing over 35,000 paying subscribers with a view of the events, places and people that shaped the American nation and the world. At Footnote.com, all are invited to come share, discuss, and collaborate on their discoveries with friends, family, and colleagues. For more information, visit www.footnote.com.

Ancestor Network Family History Research Services Audio Clip

Irish person's genetic code sequenced for the first time

Source: The Irish Times - Tuesday, September 7, 2010
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2010/0907/1224278367050.html

EOIN BURKE-KENNEDY

SCIENTISTS HAVE sequenced the complete genetic code of an Irish person for the first time. The 3.1 billion sub-units of DNA that comprise the human genome were mapped by a team from the Conway Institute at University College Dublin, using advanced sequencing technology.

The landmark study, due to be published in the online journal Genome Biology, provides the first complete genetic picture of the Irish branch of the European ancestral tree.

Scientists are reading the genomes of many species to understand how life forms differ from each other, and why they become diseased. Unravelling the differences between the Irish genome and other population groups may yield vital clues as to why Irish people are more susceptible to certain diseases, such as cystic fibrosis.
The UCD team, led by professor of comparative genomics Brendan Loftus, used DNA from an anonymous Irish male with a confirmed Irish ancestry of three generations.
Prof Loftus said the choice of individual to sequence was also made on the basis of prior genetic work with this individual that “showed variation typical of the island”.

“We have a better chance of understanding disease biology and susceptibility if we can stratify different populations on the basis of their genes,” he said.

The study uncovered some three million genetic variants in the Irish genome compared to a reference genome. Though most of the variation has been seen in other population groups, some 13 per cent, corresponding to about 300,000 variations in genome steps, had not been recorded before.

The big question is how much of this variation is specific to the individual and how much is representative of an “Irish genetic signature”, said Prof Loftus.

His team has already made one important discovery, identifying a variation in the sequence that disrupts a gene associated with inflammatory bowel disease, which affects about 15,000 people in Ireland.

The first full sequence of human DNA was
published in the US in 2003, after some 13 years of research, costing $2.7 billion. The six-man UCD team took little over a year to sequence the first complete Irish human genome, at a cost of €30,000.

A book review of 'Tracing your Mayo Ancestors'

Brian Smith, Tracing Your Mayo Ancestors, 2nd edition, 160 pages, Flyleaf Press, Dublin 2010, ISBN 978-0-9563624-3-8, retail price €13

A book review by John Hamrock, Ancestor Network Limited, 4 September 2010

As an avid family historian whose paternal grandfather hailed from County Mayo, and as a professional genealogist helping clients trace their Mayo roots, I highly recommend Brian Smith’s Tracing Your Mayo Ancestors. This compact and well organised guide serves as an indispensible tool for both new and experienced Mayo family history researchers.

The cover illustration appropriately depicts the poignant scene of an emigrant ship leaving the shores of Mayo for North America or Australia watched by silent onlookers. Mayo was a Connacht county badly impacted by the Great Famine of 1845-1847, its population devastated by starvation, disease and emigration. A new table introduced in this second edition shows the population decline of each barony by decade from 1841 through to 1891. In 1841 the total population of County Mayo stood at 388,887. By 1891 the population had fallen to 219,034.

Each chapter is dedicated to a particular area of research such as civil registrations, church records, census returns, wills and administrations, and land records. The introduction provides a concise, but excellent history of the county describing that Mayo families were a mixture of native peoples who arrived in the Neolithic period, Gaelic families, Cambro-Norman, English, and Scottish settlers. There is also a chapter devoted to the 1798 Rebellion in County Mayo.

The chapter on church records shows that in the 1861 Census of Ireland, 96.8% of the Mayo population was reported to be Roman Catholic and 2.6% belonging to the Church of Ireland. It provides detailed information on each parish’s extant baptism, marriage and burial records. There is also a chapter devoted to Mayo surnames, family names and histories. One useful map shows by barony the 20 most numerous surnames which occur in the Primary Valuation of Ireland, also known as Griffith’s Valuation (1855/1857).

Of particular help to less experienced researchers, this book contains numerous extracted reproductions from works such as Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, the ‘Ordnance Survey Field Name books’, the 1851 ‘Townland Index of Ireland’, maps showing the individual Baronies and Civil Parishes, birth and marriage registers, extracts from estate tenant rental ledgers, an extract from the Tithe Applotment Composition Book, evicted tenants notices, census returns, and other historical documents.

The author also provides detailed information about the available primary and secondary source material and where these source documents are located, whether online or in archives or libraries. The font size and line spacing layout makes it easy on the eyes and like the original edition, it contains a comprehensive index.

I highly recommend Tracing Your Mayo Ancestors for both amateur and professional genealogists. It is a meticulously researched and attractively presented book. The extracted document and manuscript illustrations presented throughout the book help the reader to envisage what they can expect to find through their own research. It is a reliable companion whether one is researching from home via the internet or in a library or archive. It is a must have for serious genealogists on the quest for Mayo ancestors.

Celebrity chef with a recipe for the Famine

The Irish Times - Saturday, August 28, 2010



Controversial: Alexislin kitchen, which had a gala opening in 1847, served a soup whose nutritional value was criticised. Illustration courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

MAGGIE ARMSTRONG

A French cook who catered for high society in 19th-century London came to Ireland with a scheme to help feed the starving population. Britons regarded him as a saviour. But his vats of soup went down less well here, despite his efforts to put his scientific methods to good use

WHETHER IT is as a boon to our diets or just as an outlet for a bombastic personality, we think of the celebrity chef as a modern phenomenon. But the breed is not new. During the Famine a star performer set out to revolutionise catering for the destitute. A French genius named Alexis Soyer, culinary darling of London, came to Dublin in April 1847 to set up a huge soup kitchen.

Born in 1809 in Meaux-en-Brie – home of the cheese – the cook who came to Ireland’s aid had a frugal boyhood. His grocer parents thought he was best suited for the church, but at the age of 11 he left school to try his skill in the kitchens of Paris, where he moved steadily up the ranks.

When he was 21 Soyer arrived in England, where he landed a job with the Duke of Cambridge. In 1837 he became the founding chef de cuisine of the Reform Club, an elite London meeting ground for Whigs and radicals. After their long days campaigning, these male ideologues dined lavishly on Soyer’s breaded lamb cutlets and fish en papillotte .

Soyer was a walking contradiction. He straddled two worlds, one of reformist concern for the poor, the other of serving the appetites of the rich. Married to Emma Jones, an artist, widowed early and then linked romantically with a ballerina, he was a popular and charismatic dandy. He dressed flamboyantly, with crimson velvet waistcoats, diamonds, a hunter’s hat, a neckerchief and a gilt cane. A contemporary described his “voluminous lapels”, glossy boots and “gloves the colour of beurre frais ”.

He was the quintessential celebrity chef and the toast of London society. He catered for 2,000 at Queen Victoria’s coronation breakfast and made decadent suppers and 30-course banquets for dignitaries and royalty, including King Albert and the Turkish pasha.

Soyer’s shrewd self-publicity, vanity and wealth were matched by immense communitarian efforts. A chef who kept a spotless public profile – things have changed since – Soyer began in January 1837 to write letters to the influential Times newspaper.

He was concerned about Ireland’s “dreadful calamity of starvation”. It was the second failure of the potato crop, and disease – typhus, yellow fever, tuberculosis, scurvy – was spreading. After a particularly bleak winter labourers were either dying or rioting while Lord Russell’s government fruitlessly pondered what to do.

The Soup Kitchen Act of 1847 called for food to be distributed under Sir Robert Peel’s Relief Commission. But with British taxpayers unwilling to pay for Irish needs, the government was overly dependent on private benevolence. Quaker soup kitchens were rarely productive or efficient enough. But Soyer believed he had devised a palatable soup that was easy to prepare, “of trifling expense” and, if properly administered, capable of helping to arrest the crisis.

The key word was “palatable” – the poor were believed to have simpler alimentary needs than the rich – so the soup required only a leg of meat, dripping, flour, root vegetables, pearl barley and fresh herbs to revitalise. Soyer published his “receipts”, meticulously calculating the price of each ingredient and the measurement needed to minimise waste: 100 tons, he promised with bravura, could be made for just £1.

More than willing to shift responsibility elsewhere, the government sponsored Soyer to set up a soup kitchen in Dublin. In keeping with the philanthropic fashion of the time, so well parodied in Dickens’s novels, Soyer offered an advance of £30 from his own pocket. Donations then flowed from the public.

On April 5th, 1847, the gala launch took place on the esplanade of the Royal Barracks (now the National Museum at Collins Barracks) in Dublin. The soup kitchen was a temporary hall of wooden boards, its centrepiece a towering 1,100-litre steam cauldron and glaze pan fitted with wheels, surrounded by bains-marie, a monumental bread oven and coal fires, chopping tables, tubs on wheels, meat blocks, water basins and tables with spoons chained on, plus a pantry for bread and biscuits that each abject soul would get on leaving.

The press reported “a large and brilliant assemblage” invited to approve the soup and explore the kitchen. These gentry, unaffected by blights or food shortages, could marvel abstractly at the ingenuity, command and flair of Soyer, who held forth magisterially.

Then the paupers were brought in. First they lined up outside the tent in a zigzag passage designed to prevent contamination. In a dehumanising conveyor-belt system, the bell was rung and 100 paupers at a time entered, said grace, ate, cleaned their bowls and left with a biscuit. They were allowed six minutes to eat.
One spectator, Sir John Burgoyne, likened this method of eating to watching chained animals. But the experiment was declared a success. The aim was to have 1,000 diners
per hour and 5,000 per day, but soon the kitchen was serving 8,750 meals per day. A further 3,000 portions were delivered by donkey carts to remoter parish cottages. The Relief Commissioners retained use of the kitchen until harvest time, when distribution stopped.

Although the British press presented Soyer as a messianic saviour, Irish journalists reviled him. The Freeman’s Journal mentioned his “wealthy and inappropriate air of celebration” among “a public parade of wretchedness”. The angry consensus was that the British had sent, in Soyer, a propaganda emissary with the blinding razzmatazz of an entrepreneur to detract from the real crisis of impoverishment.

Furthermore, the soup wasn’t good enough. The minuscule amount of meat it contained would barely keep the starving labourer alive, while the liquid base was for many unpalatable. The archbishop of Tuam referred to it as a “worthless mass of roots and warm water” while Punch lampooned it as “economical grog” made by “a broth of a boy”.
Soyer defended his creation, saying that “the poor do not want fattening – they want feeding”. This was Soyer’s dictum: that people can nourish themselves decently and cheaply. Coinciding with the opening of his kitchen, he published The Poorman’s Regenerator , a cookery pamphlet. The other day I found a copy, a yellowed tome the size of my hand. Although sentences such as “the mendicant eats with the greatest pleasure a piece of brown bread or a potato” make it unclear who it was written for, it shows a remarkably modern, ecological slant on how to reduce food miles and eat from local sources.

In his pamphlet Soyer urges people to “use and not abuse nature’s productions” – a fastidious critic even in dire circumstances, he describes other Irish soups as burnt, tasteless and unevenly cooked – and lists the wealth of ingredients available in Ireland, including buckwheat, oats, peas, lentils, yams, potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, parsnips, celery, kelp, Irish moss, dillisk, spinach and sorrel.

Soyer didn’t linger. After a magnificent farewell party on April 10th at Freemasons’ Hall on College Green, he disappeared from Ireland and travelled to the Crimean War to tackle the unsanitary conditions of hospital kitchens and malnourishment in the military. While he was there he collaborated with Florence Nightingale and wrote another cookbook.

When he returned from the war he died of apoplexy, in August 1858, aged 48, having worked himself to the end.

Soyer may have been a problematic figure when he came to Ireland in 1847. His genius lay in his economy, his resourcefulness and the productivity he achieved through scientific adaptation. Without modern marketing he couldn’t, in the style of a Jamie Oliver, teach people how to grow food or to cook. Still, he was a prodigious inventor, designing kitchens suited to everyone from soldier to gastronome, plus a “magic stove” and gadgets whose models remain, with his cookbooks, the relics of his public works – as well as patented bottled sauces that, in the spirit of a modern billionaire chef, bore his winking image on the label.