Hello and welcome to the Irish History Podcast, my name is Finn DuWarrer. In the 1880s,

the politician Charles Stewart Parnell was an almost legendary figure in Ireland. Known

as the Uncrowned King, his reputation was well established across the world. While he

was the most famous Irish person of the age, however, his downfall was truly spectacular.

In 1890, Parnell became embroiled in a sex scandal that gripped the English-speaking world.

The sensational story of this scandal that broke at the height of the Victorian era is

the fascinating story covered in this episode. To explain this scandal, I'm joined by

Dr. Lloyd Maeve Houston. Lloyd is an academic and their book, Irish Modernism and the Politics

of Sexual Health, looks at the pivotal role this incident played in Irish society and

formed ideas around sexual health. You can read articles written by Lloyd at their website

lmheuston.co.uk. There's lots of content there, I've linked to it in the show notes below,

but that link is lmheuston.co.uk. As I say, it's well worth checking out.

But to begin our conversation, I asked Lloyd to give you a background to Parnell. As you

will hear, Parnell's backstory is crucial in terms of understanding the scandal.

To give the most whistle-stopter of Parnell that I can, he's born in 1846 in Avendale

House in County Wicklow, to an angler's father and an American mother who meet and marry

in New York. They're a sort of well-liked, albeit sort of debt-ridden landlord family.

They're seen to be good landlords. They have a family history of involvement in liberal

politics, which is not all that surprising for people of their background. But what is

perhaps more surprising is there's also sort of anti-English or there's a national

sentiment in the last few generations of their family leading up to Parnell that also

shapes his political thinking. It looks like he's all set to follow in this tradition

...