The Irish Policeman 1822 1922

Download or read book The Irish Policeman, 1822-1922 written by Elizabeth Malcolm and published by Four Courts Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the working and domestic lives of the nearly 90,000 men who served in the Irish police between the establishment of a national constabulary in 1822 and the disbandment of the Royal Irish Constabulary in 1922. It is constructed as a collective biography, tracing the lives and careers of policemen from birth to death. The book draws upon a wide range of sources, some never used before. They include the results of the analysis of a random sample of 8,000 officers and men; unpublished police memoirs and other personal documents; and the letters of some 200 descendants of policemen. For over a century the Constabulary was the most powerful arm of British government in Ireland, yet after the Famine its members were overwhelmingly Catholic nationalists. The book considers how such men reconciled their Irish nationalism with their work for the British state and how their children and grandchildren dealt with being the descendants of policemen.