Sharing the History of the Four Courts, Dublin, Ireland

June 2020

  • Led to be Bled: The Painful Duty of Junior Counsel, 1899

    From the Freeman’s Journal, 19 August 1899: “The shooting of Dreyfus’s Counsel, Maitre Labori, reminds a writer in the ‘Liverpool Post’ that members of the Bar in England, and still more in this country, have from time to time been… Continue reading

  • The Terrifying Tale of the Tipstaff’s Niece, 1835

    The following story worthy of Dickens, or perhaps Wilkie Collins, was reported in the Dublin Morning Register, 4 September 1835, and the Leeds Times, 19 September 1835: “[Margaret Feltis], who is only 17 years of age, was left an orphan,… Continue reading

  • Briefless Barristers as Marriage Prospects, 1870

    From the Freeman’s Journal, 31 May 1870: “SIR – Can you kindly inform me why business people possess no social position in Dublin? This evil has increased latterly, commencing at the public school, where the children of a respectable trader… Continue reading

  • Gallant Liffey Rescue by Solicitor, 1872

    From the Freeman’s Journal, 12 August 1872: “At about 3 o’clock on Saturday afternoon a man, who apparently was under the influence of drink, leaped across the boundary wall into the Liffey, nearly opposite the Four Courts. His position was… Continue reading

  • A Most Offensive Stench: Court 3, 1831-54

    No one was ever quite sure what lay below the Four Courts, other than the following: the Dominican monks of the Priory of St Saviour’s were reputed to have installed an extensive network of subterranean passages, and a hidden river,… Continue reading