When it comes to local history there is much to explore. There are family, friends, and neighbors hidden in our past. There are mysteries to be solved and stories lost in the passages of time are waiting to be retold. If we are to understand our ancestors, we must, first of all, understand where and how they lived because without this information we are getting an incomplete picture. Like politics, all history is local because it ultimately comes back to an individual. The impact of political choices made at a national or international level is felt in communities, neighborhoods and the lives of individual families. Learning about history in school we are told about the big dramatic events that affect our nation or the world on a large scale. Occurrences such as industrialization, world wars, and economic depressions are examples of such things. This information is important but is only an overview. This is where local history finds its greatest purpose. It teaches us how our ancestors were affected by such events and choices and how these effects influence our lives. Limerick too has its stereotypical citizens. Historians are now realizing that the places in which we live plays a significant role in who we are and how we perceive the world and, in fact, stereotypes actually reflect something much deeper and shapes us in dramatic ways. In these pages, we zoom in closer to the day-to-day events that affected the people of Limerick in the 20th century. We have uncovered through the local, national and international newspaper archives many of the most controversial but now long forgotten stories and events that shape the people of our city. This is our hidden history and it best not forgotten and to give us a richer insight we must also take a closer look at Limerick through the images of the period. What unfolds as you read through these pages is the story of Limerick in the 20th Century, the story of us as Limerick people and how we got where we are today. After all, we are who we were.
About the Author: This series of 100 books published between September 2015 and January 2020 is compiled and edited by Limerick Historian, Archivist & Entrepreneur Gerard J. Hannan BA MBS. Limerick Gazette began life in September 2015 when Hannan began to gather 20,000 previously unpublished images of Limerick in the 20th Century. Using social media, he crowdsourced the images and built an online archive at www.limerickgazette.com where they will remain permanently archived for present and future generations of Limerick people worldwide. All of the images in the archive belong to the people of 20th Century Limerick and come from their own private home collections. These are images captured throughout the century by the people who lived their lives on the streets and lanes of Limerick and, as such, witnessed first-hand the history of their native city unfold and opted to capture it forever in photographic form. This fact makes the archive unique because what they captured was Limerick life from their perspective and their images show us their reality and what was important to them. In fact, unintentionally or otherwise, this is a pure, unbiased representation of historical fact as evidenced by the images themselves. However, it is not sufficient to just produce a book of images without trying to capture the social and economic environment in which these people lived. To achieve this Hannan has searched through local, national and international newspaper archives to ascertain what was important to the people of 20th Century Limerick. Using the basic measuring tool of the most controversial because it brought international attention to the city he searched global archives to find the hundreds of stories featured as they happened in every issue. The combination of images and text in each edition of Limerick Gazette will permit us to see and experience 20th Century Limerick in a way which, up until the current digital era, has never allowed before. All the profits from the sale of these books are used to support the project and help pay for day to day expenses involved in maintenance, technical costs, research, and development.