RCSI Heritage Collections

If you strike us down now we shall rise again and renew the fight. You cannot conquer Ireland; you cannot extinguish the Irish passion for freedom. If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom then our children will win it by a better deed.  - Pádraig Pearse This day 100 years ago men, women and children gathered at Liberty Hall to take part in the 1916 Easter Rising and the fight for Ireland to rule herself and be declared a Republic. Just after midday Pádraig Pearse stood outside the General Post Office (GPO), Sackville Street (now O'Connell Street) and read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic to a bewildered crowd.  Proclamation of the Irish Republic Courtesy of TCD Unaware of what has to take place surgical, medical and nursing staff treated those who had been brought back injured from the battlefields of World War I. Within hours soldiers, rebels and civilians wounded from the intense fighting on the streets of Dublin would begin to pass throu...

On Sunday 17th April the exhibition Surgeons & Insurgents: RCSI and the Easter Rising closed after a triumphant, yet short, run of just over three weeks. But the closing of the College's front door does not mean the end of the exhibition. We are delighted to announce that it will be travelling to the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Lexicon Library situated on Haigh Terrace in Dún Laoghaire. RCSI exhibition Surgeons & Insurgents heads out to Dun Laoghaire next month The entwined lives of the nine surgeons and nine insurgents featured in the exhibition will continue to enthral and intrigue audiences from 2nd May until 3rd June 2016.   Visitors will also be able to attend two talks that relate to these surgeons and the ambulance staff that risked their lives to save soldier, rebel and civilians alike during that historic week. These talks will be delivered by Meadhbh Murphy, RCSI Archivist, and Padraig Allen, archivist in St John Ambulance. Dates and times for these talks c...

One of the many treats of RCSI's Surgeons & Insurgents exhibition is the remarkably detailed scale model of St Stephen's Green in Easter Week 1916. To add to the re-creation, Mary O'Doherty, Special Collections Librarian of the RCSI Library, has looked at Thom's Dublin City Directory 1916  to see who was living and working on the Green and surrounding streets 100 years ago. Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland building in the scale model created for ' Surgeons & Insurgents: RCSI and the Easter Rising ' exhibition, open to the public until 17th April 2016. Free entry, book place here . Image credit: Billy Cahill. St. Stephen's Green in 1916 was a fairly well-to-do part of the city having received a proper facelift in the 1870s from the gift of Sir Arthur Edward Guinness (later known as Lord Ardilaun), whose statue faces RCSI today. Sir Arthur purchased the Green, paid off its debts, returned it to the public and took an active part in the lan...