‘Remembering the stories’ at the Clare Museum

The Clare Museum will be hosting a number of public talks titled ‘Remembering the stories’, a series of free public talks in conjunction with the exhibition on WWI and II and to mark the start of the Decade of Commemoration during November 2012. The first talk on November 8 will be by Olive Carey and will be titled ‘An Officer and a Gentleman: Brigadier-General Cuthbert Lucas’. Brigadier General Cuthbert Henry Tindall Lucas was captured by the I.R.A. while on a fishing expedition near Fermoy on 26th June 1920. The month that followed saw the largest manhunt ever mounted on Irish soil for a serving British officer, while the captors eluded discovery by moving the World War I veteran through a series of 'safe houses' in Counties Clare and Limerick, from where he made his escape. The story made international headlines and featured in newspapers such as the New York and the Singapore Times. Back on English soil the General's only public comment on the affair was that 'he had been treated as a gentleman by gentlemen', a view he maintained even in the face of possible court martial. Olive Carey, co-ordinator of the Hastings Farmhouse Conservation Project will give a summary of the General's World War I military career and of the events of his capture and escape during the summer of 1920. On the 15th November, Jakub Kacprzak, a Polish national and an intern at the Clare Museum will give an illustrated lecture called ‘Uprising 1944’, telling the story of the uprising of the people of Warsaw against their Nazi occupiers, an event that impacted on the family histories of many of Polish immigrants living in County Clare. The final talk by Rosemary Power on the 29th November is titled ‘Living with the enemy - Japan's Burma railway and the human aftermath’. Rosemary draws on accounts she heard in her youth from survivors of the Far East prisoner of war camps, and is a historian, folklorist, member of CAMPS at NUIG, and a minister in Clare. John Rattigan of Clare Museum is also encouraging anybody with artefacts that could be included in the exhibition to contact him. ‘While there has been a good response to the appeal for artefacts, the museum still has space for objects, photos or documents that members of the public may wish to include; he stated. All of these talks will be held at Clare Museum at 8pm on their respective nights and admission will be Free. All are welcome.