Donnybrook Fair (1859) by Erskine Nicol (above right) and featuring Erskine Nicol (left)

Early Funderland.

The National Gallery of Ireland writes:

Artists often include themselves in their own works, and there’s another fine example of it in this painting of Donnybrook Fair (1859) by Erskine Nicol, which is on loan to the National Gallery of Ireland from the Tate.

Nicol is clearly identifiable in the throngs at the centre of his magnum opus, walking with his wife Janet & another finely-dressed couple. He included himself as a way of declaring his status as gentleman observer & to demonstrate his familiarity with this subject in particular.

Donnybrook Fair (Tate)

A Magdalene laundry in Ireland in the 1950s

Today.

Daniel Boffey, in The Guardian, reports:

Nineteen women are suing a Dutch monastery and its Catholic order over claims they were subjected to forced labour and abuse by nuns between 1951 and 1979 during periods of virtual imprisonment as children or young adults.

The case against the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, which operates in 70 countries, concerns the treatment of women, aged 11 to 21 at the time, who had been placed in the nuns’ care by the courts or at the request of their parents or guardians.

The women, who are now in their 70s and 80s, say they were forced to work in laundries and sewing and ironing rooms under threat of punishment, against their will and without wages, for the order or for the benefit of outside organisations including the Dutch royal house.

…At least 15,000 girls and young women, accused of falling into “licentiousness”, were held in confinement and forced to work in the laundry and sewing rooms of the Catholic order of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in the Netherlands between 1860 and the early 1980s.

There you go now.

Women sue Dutch Catholic order over forced labour claims (The Guardian)

Previously: The Magdalene Report: A Conclusion

‘Based On The Findings Of The McAleese Report’

Not Forgotten

Just Saying No

Newly-elected UK Labour Party Leader Sir Keir Starmer

The Advent of Mr Nothing

All the messiahs safely crucified;
the choice again, as it should be,
between the Imp of All Lies
and Mr Nothing.

We’re again outside the padlocked gate.
Should anyone think of scaling the wall,
the garden is now patrolled
by wolves with orders to dine first,
be exonerated in the inquiry later.

Those who shouldn’t be in jail
are that bit more securely there.

Those who sleep in doorways
that bit more completely know their place;

those who own islands
are that bit more secure in theirs.

Celebrity paedophiles chuckle
to themselves in their graves.

And the Brigadier General
can unclench in the knowledge
his plans for the war after next –
nowhere you’ve heard of yet –
will be given a white-toothed
statesman-like Yes.

Kevin Higgins

Getty

Self isolators of the world unite!

A great and eerie video compilation of the global lockdown set to the melancholic strains of Morrisey singing Everyday is Like Sunday.

Come, Armageddon! Come!

Related: The Empty Streets Of San Francisco

Previously: Sunday Drivers

UPDATE:

Behold: NGC 1672 – one of many spiral galaxies (our own Milky Way included) to have a bar across their central core. To wit:

Prominently barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672  was captured in spectacular detail in an image taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. Visible are dark filamentary dust lanes, young clusters of bright blue stars, red emission nebulas of glowing hydrogen gas, a long bright bar of stars across the centre, and a bright active nucleus that likely houses a supermassive black hole. Light takes about 60 million years to reach us from NGC 1672, which spans about 75,000 light years across. NGC 1672, which appears toward the constellation of the Dolphinfish (Dorado), has been studied to find out how a spiral bar contributes to star formation in a galaxy’s central regions.

(Image: Hubble Legacy Archive, NASA, ESA; Processing & Copyright: Daniel Nobre)

apod

An image of Clare teenager Conor Wilmot, who died by suicide in May 2017, was used online falsely claiming he was the first boy to die from Covid-19 in the UK

Via The Clare Echo:

Conor Wilmot died by suicide in May 2017 following a twisted internet game, Blue Whale.

Now members of the Wilmot family have been disgusted following the publication of misinformation online.

Pictures of Conor have appeared on online articles claiming that he is Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab who was the first thirteen year old boy in the United Kingdom who is known to have died COVID-19.

Melanie Wilmot outlined her frustration at pictures of her younger brother being used in such fashion. “We’re devastated that they can do this, frankly had enough just let us be and leave Conor alone”.

She appealed to people to report such content if they came across it. “I have well and truly had enough of the news and their crap,” she added.

‘Leave us alone’ – Sixmilebridge family horrified at being falsely linked to UK COVID-19 death (Páraic McMahon, Clare Echo)

Previously: Conor Wilmot ‘found something on the internet that went wrong’ (Irish Times,  May 16. 2017)

Um.

This afternoon.

RTÉ’s Mary Regan tweetz:

Four out of five (82%) Irish adults agree that the Government is doing a good job in handing Covid-19 with “strong agreement” with this far higher among older people, according to Behaviours and Attitude-commissioned survey for RTÉ.

Meanwhile…

Earlier: Unknown Knowns

Broadsheet.ie