The Royal Hibernian Military School
Established in 1767 as a private, charitable institution, the Royal Hibernian Military School, Phoenix Park, Dublin, was one of two army boarding schools in the United Kingdom for children of soldiers. The other school, the Duke of York's Military Asylum, Chelsea, London, was established by the state in 1801.
The Royal Hibernian Society for Soldiers' Children, founded in 1765, was a Protestant charity that cared for destitute children of Irish soldiers. In 1767, it provided care for 20 children and in 1768, 140. In 1769, the Society received a royal charter and King George III donated 3 acres in Phoenix Park to the Society as site for a boarding school. Funds for construction were provided by the Irish Parliament and individual donors. The Royal Hibernian "Hospital" received its first resident pupils in 1770.
n/ In the eighteenth century, asylums were termed "hospitals" though they were not primarily facilities for medical treatment. The term was derived from the word "hospitality."
The school was open to all children of serving Irish soldiers but orphans received admission preference. The facility became known as "The Royal Hibernian School."
Watson's Gentleman's and Citizen's Almanack, 1772
Though operated by a private charity, the school was quasi-governmental. It received funding from the Irish Parliament and King George III. Furthermore, the Society's president was, by its charter, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and its vice president the Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of the Church of Ireland. A good number of the Society's members were officers of the army staff in Ireland and the Dublin garrison.
During the eighteenth century the Royal Hibernian School "operated as a typical Ascendancy charity school and although admissions were not restricted to Protestants, all the children were educated according to the principles of the established Protestant church in Ireland with the objective of placing them as apprentices or servants with Protestant tradesmen and families."
n/ Clarke, "The Royal Hibernian Military School in Dublin."
Indeed, the Society's petition for a royal charter states that its objective for destititute, soldiers' children is "to preserve such Objects from Popery, Beggary and Idleness and to train them up so as to become usefull Industrious Protestant Subjects."
In 1803, a new facility was built on additional land in Phoenix Park provided by the British government. Behind the new 33-acre site, the government cleared the ground of trees to provide the schoolboys with a playing field. That land was known as "The Fifteen Acres" and is mentioned by Joyce in Ulysses and Dubliners.
n/ Ulysses (Gabler) 18:400; Dubliners, "The Dead."
6-Inch Map, Ordnance Survey of Ireland, 1907-08 Rev.
In 1808, the Society received a new charter that gave it authority to place leaving children into apprenticeships, and for boys, the army. The vice-president was no longer the Primate of the Church of Ireland having been replaced by the commander of His Majesty's forces in Ireland. Shortly thereafter, the school was called "The Royal Hibernian Military School." Ten years later, the charter was amended to allow vocational instruction from tradesmen and the sale of property received as donations, so long as the proceeds were invested in government securities.
While in form the school was an institution of a private charity, in substance it was an agency of the military establishment. The titles of the school's principal officers indicate that it was foremost a military organization: Commandant, Adjutant, Quartermaster, Sergeant-Major of Instruction. Schoolmasters (mostly retired soldiers), were called "sergeant-instructors" and were paid £30 annually plus allowances: A food allowance of £22 15s. and an allowance for coal and candles to heat and light one room. They also were given 14 pounds of potatoes weekly. Schoolmistresses received the same total remuneration (which was highly unusual at the time), plus 26 pounds of soap annually. Apparently, the authorities were not too concerned about the cleanliness of male instructors.
n/Sixth Report of the Commissioners of Irish Education Inquiry, 1826-27, H.C. Sess. Papers, No. 441.
Beginning in 1832, the school's funding requests to Parliament came from the Secretary-at-War, and not Dublin Castle. In the Parliamentary Estimates, these requests were grouped with those for wholly state institutions such as the two army retirement homes and the Royal Military Asylum in London. In 1846, the Society's charter was again amended. The charity's name changed to "The Royal Hibernian Military School" and the membership, reduced to 25, was limited to officers of the army staff in Ireland and the Dublin garrison, plus a few senior officers of the Royal Irish Constabulary. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, a civilian; however, remained as president.
Children of Catholic Soldiers
Throughout the first sixty-five years of the eighteenth century, the British government barred Catholics from the army, though many Catholic Irishmen professed to the established church simply to enlist. In 1765, Westminster lifted the ban on Catholic recruits but generally required that they serve abroad. By the 1790s, there were no religious restrictions on service in the British armed forces and "the army, the navy, and the militia were crowded with Catholics."
n/ Lecky, A History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, Vol. 3, 338.
During the French Revolutionary Wars, over 50,000 Irishmen served in the British Army; during the Napoleonic Wars 90,000. After the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo and the subsequent reduction in the British Army, from 30% to 40% of the remaining soldiers were Irish. These men were overwhelmingly of the Catholic faith, yet children of Catholic Irish soldiers at the RHMS received Protestant religious instruction and were prohibited from leaving the school grounds to attend mass.
In 1841, the War Office removed from the school's charter the requirement for Protestant religious instruction. In 1847, pursuant to a new charter, the RHMS appointed a Catholic chaplain and three years later, opened a Catholic chapel. Note that between January 1, 1840 and May 17, 1844 the RHMS admitted 188 children of Protestants but only 70 of Catholics.
n/ Royal Hibernian Military School, Return of Admitted Pupils and Their Religions, 1844, H.C. Accounts & Papers, No. 363.
During those three and one-half years, when Catholics accounted for only 27% of new pupils, over 80% of Irish soldiers were Catholic.
School Life and Discipline
At first, discipline was no different than that at similar civilian institutions. There were many rules of behavior and infractions resulted in canings. As the institution became more militarized, the rules multiplied. Children were disciplined for laughing or talking at inappropriate times, inattention to lessons, and bedwetting. Punishments were similar to those in the army and serious infractions led to several days of solitary confinement in an unlighted cell and a diet of bread and water. Boys were even flogged.
Beginning in the 1860s, discipline relaxed somewhat but remained far harsher than that at civilian boarding schools. In 1881, "brutal discipline" at the school was questioned in Parliament. It wasn't until the 1890s that discipline and punishment were at private, civil school standards.
Quality of Education
Education standards varied considerably over the years. Throughout the 1880s the quality of an RMHS education declined. In 1889, only 20% of pupils met the civil academic standard for their age; 17% were one level below standard; 63% two or more levels below standard.
n/ Annual Report of the Director-General of Military Education, 1889, [C. 5805].
In the 1890s the War Office compelled the boarding schools to increase the amount of academic instruction and make the curriculum more rigorous. In 1896, half the pupils were at or above the civilian standard for their age, compared to one-fifth ten years earlier.
n/ Annual Report of the Director-General of Military Education, 1896, [C. 8421].
In the early twentieth-century the military boarding schools, overall, were inferior to comparable, state primary schools.
n/ Alan Ramsay Skelley, The Victorian Army at Home (London: Croom Helm, 1977), 111.
Apprenticeships and Army Enlistment
During the school's first ten years of operation only 7% of the leaving boys entered the army.
n/ Seventh Report from the Commissioners of the Board of Education, in Ireland, Hibernian School in Phoenix Park, 1810 H.C. Sess. Papers, No. 177.
Beginning in the 1850s, after the War Office took full control of the RHMS, boys and their parents were pressured by the staff to opt for army enlistment on leaving the school at age 14, rather than take a civilian apprenticeship. By the 1890s, two-thirds of leaving boys enlisted.
The Navy and Army Illustrated, January 14, 1899
Upon Irish independence in 1922, the War Office relocated the school to the army camp of Shorncliffe in Kent, England, and handed the Phoenix Park property to the new Irish state. The Irish government converted the facility to an army hospital.
In 1948, the government transferred the hospital to the Dublin Health Authority. The former school is now St. Mary's Hospital, a geriatric hospital and nursing home.
St. Mary's Hospital
© 2020 Google Imagery, Infoterra Ltd., and Bluesky Maxar Technologies.
n/ Sources: Howard R. Clarke, "The Royal Hibernian Military School in Dublin," Journal of the Genealogical Society of Ireland 13 (2012): 16-29; Howard R. Clarke, "The Royal Hibernian Military School," Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 85, no. 341 (Spring 2007): 85-87; Arthur W. Cockerill, Sons of the Brave (London: Secker & Warburg, 1984), 57-58, 95; W.E. Lecky, A History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, Vol 3 (London: Longmans, Green, 1909); Edward M. Spiers, "Army organisation and society in the nineteenth century," in A Military History of Ireland, edited by Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffery (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996); Website of the UCD School of Medicine (St. Mary's page will open in a new browser window).
The Religion Problem
Throughout its history, religion caused problems for the school as it was founded as a Protestant charity for Irish soldiers who were overwhelmingly Catholic. One issue of lasting endurance was coercion of children to change their stated religion from Catholic to Protestant. Several times during the nineteenth century charges of forced religious conversions were brought up in Parliament.
In 1843, a Dublin barrister, Rikard O'Connell, wrote to the Commandant of the RHMS complaining that two brothers, Edward and William Cashen, were coerced into changing their religion from Roman Catholic to Protestant. The writer was a nephew of Daniell O'Connell, "the Liberator." His cousin Maurice was Member of Parliament for Tralee, Co. Kerry. Naturally, O'Connell's letter was forwarded promptly to the Board of Governors. The governors determined there was no coercion and that the boys' mother, no longer living with their father, favored the change in religious status. Maurice O'Connell, MP demanded a full accounting of the matter which was made by the school in May 1844. Included in the school's Return to Parliament, was a statement that in the past four years sixteen children changed their stated religion (2-3% of Catholic pupils each year).
n/ Royal Hibernian Military School, Return Re: Religion and Two Pupils Named Cashen, 1844, H.C. Accounts & Papers, No. 363.
Though under the 1846 charter the RHMS became officially non-sectarian, suspicion remained in Ireland that the school's governors favored admission of Protestant soldiers' children and that the school's staff proselytized and discriminated against Catholics. In 1864, only 31% of pupils were Catholic and in 1879 42%, remarkably low numbers for an institution to aid children of Irish soldiers.
n/ RHMS, Return of Children and Staff, 1879, H.C. Accounts & Papers, No. 90; RHMS, Return of Children and Staff, 1864, H.C. Accounts & Papers, No. 302.
In 1864, the matter of Catholic under-representation at the RHMS was brought up in the Parliamentary committee for army funding. John Maguire, MP for Dungarven, Co. Waterford, stated as follows:
"For a public institution in a Catholic country this is a most unjust and unsatisfactory state of things, and for which I find it impossible to account on any reasonable ground. Considering the class and creed from which the army is recruited in Ireland, the proportion between Catholic and Protestant children is most unfair. I cannot understand why the children of Catholic soldiers are not as much entitled to sympathy and protection as the children of Presbyterian or Protestant soldiers; for no one will deny that the Catholic soldiers are as brave and devoted as those of any other creed, or that they shed their blood as lavishly in defence of the flag under which they serve."
Maguire, in 1865, caused the RHMS to account for the change in religion of Joseph Callaghan, son of a deceased, Irish-Catholic sergeant. The matter was somewhat similar to the Cashen incident of twenty years earlier.
n/ RHMS, Returns of the Royal Hibernian Military School, re: Callaghan, inter alia, 1866, H.C. Accounts & Papers, No. 308.
In 1879, Catholics were also under-represented among the school's staff. Half the schoolmasters were Catholic (3 of 6); only 30% of the student-teachers (7 of 30). One of the three Catholic schoolmasters was the singing instructor. Of the military personnel assigned to the school, 23% were Catholic (7 of 30). All the commissioned officers and senior NCOs were Protestant.
n/ RHMS, Return of Children and Staff, 1879, H.C. Accounts & Papers, No. 90.
Admission Closed to Girls and Emigration to Australia
In the 1840s, the War Office began to view the two army boarding schools more as training grounds for future NCOs and less as a benefit of enlisted service. Beginning in 1840, girls were no longer accepted at the Royal Military Asylum in England and the Hibernian School followed suit in January 1848 after the charter revision of 1846. The school's governors ended admission of girls at the request of LTG Edward Blakeney, General-Officer-Commanding, Ireland and ex officio Vice President of the RHMS. Girls always posed a problem for the institution as no more than half of the 14-year old females could be placed into apprenticeships. Many girls remained in school until age 18 blocking admission of younger children. Overaged girls were often placed with farm families as live-in, general laborers.
The school became boys-only because its raison d'etre was to provide the army with boy apprentices though the army's statement of record for ending admission of girls was the difficulty of employment placement and refusal of the Australian colonies to accept further Irish, girl immigrants.
n/ RHMS Correspondence, re: Girls, UK National Archives, WO 43/724.
The closure of the school to girls came during the Irish Famine. As part of famine relief, Henry George Grey (3rd Earl Grey), Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, instituted a program for orphaned girls in workhouses to emigrate to Australia as domestic servants. The Australian authorities would only accept "girls imbued with religion and morally pure, preferably between the ages of 14-18, in good health and possessing industrial skills (which would not be possible given the level of education and training provided to workhouse females)." Between June 1848 and May 1850, when the last emigrant ship sailed, 4,175 girls volunteered for the program. The Earl Grey Scheme ended at the request of the Australian authorities as many, if not most, Australian employers found the girls unsuitable for domestic service. "While lack of skills and 'morality' was an issue, the major reason for the reduced demand for Irish women was religion. Prejudice against Catholics was leveled by the Scottish and Northern Irish Presbyterians who had already settled in the host country, along with other Protestant emigrants who arrived later."
n/ Shelly Mitchell, "The Female Orphan Scheme to Australia in the 1840s," website of the Women's Museum of Ireland (will open in a new browser window).
In 1848, twenty-four of the girls at the school were accepted into the program and left for Australia. Twenty-one sailed on the S.S. Pemberton (link to a page from the A. W. Cockerill material on the Delta Tech website. Page will open in a new window). After the emigrants left, fifty-one girls remained at the school.
n/ Second Annual Report of the Commissioners for Administering the Laws for Relief of the Poor in Ireland, 1849, [1118], at 184; Belfast News-Letter, May 18, 1848; RHMS Correspondence, re: Girls, UK National Archives, WO 43/724.
For more on the Earl Grey Scheme and accounts of some of the emigrant girls, see the website of the Sydney Irish Famine Memorial (will open in a new browser window - may load slowly) and Kay Moloney Caball's book, The Kerry Girls (Dublin: History Press Ireland, 2014).
On July 5, 1850, 43 girls were still resident at the school; 24 age fourteen and older. To facilitate their placement as domestic servants, the commandant sought War Office permission to increase the bonus paid to employers from £5 to £10.
n/ RHMS Correspondence, re: Girls, UK National Archives, WO 43/724.
Inspections by the Civil Authority
1809 Inspection
The school was first inspected by the Board of Education in Ireland in 1809. No inquiry was made into the academic progress of the pupils but the inspectors noted that pupils were instructed in reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion (Protestant).
The school had on average 300 boys and 150 girls in residence. The teaching staff consisted of a headmaster, six schoolmasters, a headmistress, and three schoolmistresses. The inspectors noted that the schoolmasters were competent to teach the three R's but were "totally ignorant of the simplest principles of the Christian Religion." They expressed regret that the children did not take the annual Catechetical Examinations established by the Society for Discountenancing of Vice and Promoting the Knowledge and Practice of the Christian Religion. Class size was 30 and the children received instruction three days a week. The other three days boys worked on the school vegetable garden and dairy farm (30 head of cattle), tailoring shop, or shoemaking shop; girls in the clothing shop which made all the school clothing.
The inspection report stated that "In decency of manners and regularity of conduct, the Children of the Hibernian School are not inferior to those in any of our public institutions, while in the appearance of health and vigour, they seem to posses a decided superiority."
n/ Seventh Report from the Commissioners of the Board of Education, in Ireland, Hibernian School in Phoenix Park, 1810 HC Sess. Papers, No. 177.
1826 Inspection
As in 1809, no inquiry was made into the academic progress of the pupils. English and Irish history were added to the curriculum as well as geometry for the older boys. Each week the children spent four days in class and two days working. Daily classroom instruction totaled 6.5 hours. Pupils in residence totaled 400 boys and 200 girls.
The teaching staff consisted of a headmaster, five schoolmasters, a headmistress, and two schoolmistresses. There were also two vocational instructors (carpentry and masonry) and a music teacher (an army bandmaster).
The inspectors found the buildings in good repair and as for the pupils, said "We have in no other school observed such decided appearances of health, activity, and animation amongst the children."
n/ Sixth Report of the Commissioners of Irish Education Inquiry, The Hibernian Society for the Care of Soldiers Children, etc., 1827, HC Sess. Papers, No. 442.
1857 Inspection
In 1857, the school was inspected under the statutory program of state inspection of schools supported in whole or in part by endowments. The RHMS fell within this category as it held 12 acres of land and £6,185 in government bonds that together generated £240 annually. The Parliamentary grant for 1857 was £8,000 so only 2.9% of the school's income was from its endowment.
The inspectors found the state of instruction "very satisfactory" but noted that the curriculum was too limited. Academic subjects taught were reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, English history, and algebra. Overall, "the state of instruction and general order in the school were remarkably good" and the boys examined showed "a high degree of proficiency." At the time, the school had an enrollment of 400 boys.
n/ Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners appointed to inquire into the endowments, funds, and actual condition of all Schools Endowed for the Purpose of Education In Ireland, 1857-58, [2336-I, II, III, IV].
The Contentious 1880 Inspection
In January 1879, the Commission to Inquire into Endowed Schools in Ireland sent the RHMS a notice of intent to inspect the school and requested that the staff complete several questionnaires. Having received no response, the Commission sent its request again in June. To this second request the school's commandant, the notorious disciplinarian, Colonel Lynch Stapleton Cotton, responded brusquely that the "institution is not an Endowed school. Being a military establishment, its expenditure is provided for by the annual Parliamentary vote." The Commission replied that the school was inspected in 1857 and that it remains within the Commission's remit as the RHMS has an endowment of at least £8,000. Colonel Cotton placed the matter before the school's Board of Governors.
The governors agreed to the inspection so long as it was limited to assessment of the educational attainments of the pupils and the condition of the school premises. They also directed Cotton to comply with some of the Commission's information requests, but not all, and would not give the Commission's inspector full access to school documents. For example, the RHMS would not disclose the religion of its pupils. The school's refusal to allow a full inspection was brought before the Secretary of State for War who backed the Board of Governors' position. The Commission appealed the War Office's ruling to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland but received no satisfaction from that quarter. A truncated inspection of the RHMS was made in March 1880.
The inspector found the premises well managed and scrupulously clean and the level of the boys' education satisfactory. He noted that each day three hours were devoted to academic instruction and three hours to vocational instruction. Nearly all the work formerly done by servants was now done by the 410 boys, outside of their six hours of daily instruction.
For 1881, the Parliamentary grant was £9,375 while endowment income was £403, (4.1% of total income). The academic teaching staff consisted of a headmaster, three schoolmasters, and student-teachers from the Army Normal School (schoolmaster academy) at Chelsea. Academic subjects taught were reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and English history. Also taught were drawing, music, telegraphy, tailoring, shoemaking, carpentry, and musketry. Religious instruction was provided by the respective chaplains and not the schoolmasters.
n/ Report of the Commissioners appointed by His Exellency, The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, to inquire into the endowments, funds, and actual condition of all Schools Endowed for the Purpose of Education In Ireland, 1881, [C. 2831].
"An Émeute at the Hibernian Military School"
In 1881, a disciplinary scandal at the school was reported throughout the United Kingdom. It became known as the Hibernian School Mutiny.
On May 1, 1879 the War Office appointed Major Lynch Stapleton Cotton commandant of the RHMS. Cotton had purchased his commission in 1846 and in 1879 was retired on half-pay. His appointment and return to full-time service came with promotion to Lieutenant-Colonel.
Cotton was not suited for the position of boy's school head and his newly instituted, overly harsh, disciplinary regime came to the attention of Irish Members of Parliament in late 1880. Early in 1881, the Secretary of State for War, Hugh Childers, appointed a committee to look into the matter of discipline at the RHMS. Among the many persons interviewed was the school's adjutant who stated that "the sergeants knocked the boys about a good deal, and the pupil teachers did the same." The War Office committee finished its investigation in July and concluded that undue severity existed at the school. Childers did not remove Cotton from his position but noted that "the Colonel was on the point of retiring, and a fresh appointment will shortly be made." The committee's written report was never presented to Parliament.
In August 1881, Cotton brought charges in Police Court against three boys for malicious damage to school property. He took such action as he thought it "necessary to make an example" of them. The eldest boy, Patrick Aspel, was convicted and sentenced to 14 days in jail to be followed by a 5-year term at the Glencree Reformatory. The other two boys the Court "discharged with a caution." One week after the court hearing, the school's governors asked the Lord Lieutenant's office to remit Aspel's sentence. Shortly thereafter, the Chief Secretary for Ireland ordered the boy released from jail and returned to his family in England.
That same month, August 1881, the Dublin press reported that three or four boys absconded from the school and were brought back by police within a few hours. A former headmaster, not present at the time; however, claimed that "many of the boys broke out of the School and some of them got as far a field as the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains in the vicinity of Rathfarnham. Many were away several days until they were brought back by escorts or hunger."
On September 6th, the boys, after their evening, outdoor play period, were ordered by the staff to the dormitories. The boys refused to do so and assembled on the parade ground from which they refused to budge. Colonel Cotton didn't know how to handle this mass insubordination and contacted the general commanding British forces in Ireland. General Steele sent to the school several officers of the Dublin Metropolitan Police supported by a detachment of soldiers from the Scots Guards. The soldiers carried their rifles with bayonets affixed. The boys yielded to this show of force and sullenly retired to their dormitories. Cotton blamed the whole affair on the school's student-teachers and caused the dismissal of two of them as an example to both staff and pupils.
In October, Cotton left the school and again went on the half-pay, retired list. The next year he returned to full-time service in the near sinecure position of territorial district commander. In March 1882, he was promoted to full colonel, given command of the 47th Territorial District (Loyal North Lancashire Regiment), and sent to its depot at Preston, situated between Blackpool and Manchester.
n/ Sources: Howard R. Clarke, A New History of the Royal Hibernian Military School (Yarm-on-Tees, UK: Clarke, 2011), 409-14; London Gazette - September 8, 1846, May 16, 1879, March 17, 1882; Irish Times, February 4, 1881, Dublin Daily Express, July 22, 1881; Freeman's Journal - August 30, 1881, September 8, 1881, September 10, 1881; Hart's New Annual Army List, 1884.
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RHMS_Charter_1808.pdf (152 kb).RHMS_Charter_1818.pdf (120 kb). Effectively, an amendment of the 1808 charter.RHMS_Charter_1846.pdf (7.5 mb). Manuscript charter issued by the High Court of Chancery in Ireland, 2 December 1846, UK National Archives, WO 43/714.Cashen_Return_HC_1844_No363.pdf (255 kb).
Return to Parliament requested by Maurice O'Connell, MP concerning change of religion at RHMS.
Notice to War Office: Admission Closed to GirlsLetter_RHMS_Girls.pdf (39 kb).Letter from General-Officer-Commanding in Ireland, to Secretary-at-War, January 21, 1848. UK National Archives, WO 43/714. The author was LTG Edward Blakeney who was President of the RHMS, ex officio. As noted above, he instigated the change in admission policy.HC_Committee_5Aug1881.pdf (119 kb). 264 Parl. Deb. (3d ser.) (1881) 1031-34.
Hugh Childers: Secretary of State for WarGarrett Michael Byrne: MP for County WexfordArthur Otway: MP for Kent (Rochester)Arthur O'Connor: MP for Queen's County
Freemans_RHMS_Mutiny.pdf (154 kb).
The article and letter reference “The Siege of Tim Quinlan’s Castle" which was “one of the more ludicrous but also iconic incidents of the so-called Land War of the early 1880s” and involved soldiers of the Scots Guards and Coldstream Guards. The guardsmen sent to the school were from 1/Scots Guards. Paul A. Townend, The Road to Home Rule (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2016), xvi; Hart’s New Annual Army List, 1881.
RHMS_NavyArmy_1899.pdf (1,048 kb).
RHMS_Orders_1908.pdf (6.0 mb).
Links to Other Websites
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Material by the historian Arthur W. Cockerill on the website Delta Tech Systems.
From Eye on the Past, a blog by Frank Taaffe, Athy, Co. Kildare, Ireland.
Documents on Other Websites
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Note the military nature of the school's operation. These regulations were promulgated shortly after the Society's new charter was amended in 1818. From the Internet Archive.
Badge of the RHMS
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