The Cratloe and Meelick Dispensary was formed on 6 January 1835 to provide healthcare for the underprivileged in East Clare within the Limerick poor-law union. The Dispensary’s work was supported partly through private subscriptions and partly through public funding. Surgeon Thomas Kane of Cecil Street, Limerick acted as the medical attendant. Initially, treatment was provided free of charge to patients in receipt of vouchers distributed by subscribers. However, the voucher system was vulnerable to abuse and from 1840 onwards a small fee was charged from all except the most destitute. The Dispensary remained active throughout the famine years, but by 1850 struggled to find funding. Its subsequent fate is unknown.
Former member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and one of the kidnappers of the industrialist Tiede Herrema in Limerick in 1975.
Cork City Ballet is one of only two professional ballet companies in Ireland. It was formed in 1991 by Alan Foley to address the void left by the closure of the Cork-based Irish National Ballet in 1989 due to a lack of funding. Cork City Ballet presented its first public performance at the Everyman Palace Theatre on 27 March 1992 and continues to operate under the artistic directorship of Alan Foley, who also acted as the ballet’s principal male dancer until his retirement in that capacity in 2007.
An amateur ballet company founded by Joan Denise Moriarty in 1947.
The Coote family’s association with Ireland began with Sir Charles Coote (1581-1642), who in 1621 was granted one of the first baronetcies in Ireland for his military service to the crown during the Nine Years War. In 1628, he founded the town of Mountrath in county Laois. His son and namesake was created Earl of Mountrath in 1660. The title became extinct in 1802 on the death of Charles Henry Coote, 7th Earl of Mountrath. However, the title Baron Castlecoote, granted to Charles Henry in 1800 for his support of the Act of Union, passed to his distant cousin and namesake, Charles Henry Coote (1754-1823) of Leopardstown Park, county Dublin, eldest son of the Very Reverend Charles Coote, Dean of Kilfenora. Along with the title, he also inherited the 7th Earl’s Irish properties. This title, too, became extinct on the death of Eyre Tilson Coote (1793-1827), the third baron, but his widow, Barbara née Meredyth, retained ownership of the Coote estate. Following her death in 1874, the estate passed to Sir Eyre Coote (1857-1925) of West Park, Hampshire, grandson of the younger brother of the second Baron Castlecoote. The Coote Papers reflect this rather complex network of family relationships and resulting problems of succession.
Niamh Condron was born in Dublin in 1976 and gained a BA in Dance from the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, Leeds, in 1999. She has worked as a dancer with Scott Wells & Dancers Company (San Francisco), Justin Morrison (San Diego), Irish Modern Dance Theatre (Dublin), Sioned Hews Dance Company (Belgium), Earthfall Physical Theatre (Wales), The Curve Foundation (Scotland), and Dance Theatre of Ireland (Dublin). In 2001, Condron won a scholarship for emerging dance artists to train at the Impulstanz Festival, Vienna, and in the same year founded the This Torsion Dance Theatre to explore movement and performance, combining dance, music, and voice. Condron performs with the company at theatres, festivals, and alternative performance spaces in Ireland and abroad. In 2006, she founded the Vibrate Dance Festival and acted as its Artistic Director until 2008.
Frances Condell was born Frances Eades on 29 June 1916 in Limerick. She married Robert Condell in 1936, and by him had one child, Alan, born in 1937. Condell worked as a teacher in Villiers School from 1955 until 1959, when she was appointed welfare officer for the Shannon Free Airport Development Company. In 1964, she was appointed public relations officer for Guinness Ireland on a part-time basis. Condell entered local politics in 1960, when she was elected as a non-political and first ever female Councillor to Limerick City Council. She was nominated and elected mayor of Limerick in 1962, the first woman ever to be officially voted into this position in Ireland. She was re-elected as mayor in 1963, during which term she was to host several visiting dignitaries, most notably President John F. Kennedy, Senator Edward Kennedy, President Kaunda of Zambia, Cardinal Browne and ‘Lady Bird’ Johnson, wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Condell withdrew from political life in 1967 owing to health problems. Throughout her life, Condell also worked as a journalist and was a regular contributor of articles and poetry to the Limerick Echo, The Church of Ireland Gazette, Woman’s Way and The Irish Independent. She died after a long illness on 10 November 1986 in Limerick.