Events for September 25, 2025 - September 25, 2025 › Talks

An Iconic Belfast Institution: The Belfast Charitable Society and its Pivotal Role in the Social, Economic and Political Life of Georgian and Victorian Belfast. Belfast Charitable Society are proud to announce the return of our Reconciliation Fund supported President’s Talk Series this year marking the 270th year of The First Great Charity of this Town. The lectures will be via Room and Zoom, taking place every Thursday evening at 7pm throughout February. Each lecture will last approximately 60 minutes followed by a Q&A session. ·         Thursday 2nd February 2023 - Child Welfare and Education in the Industrialising Town of Belfast – Olwen Purdue in Conversation with Lauren [...]

Belfast Charitable Society are proud to announce the return of our Reconciliation Fund supported President’s Talk Series this year marking the 270th year of The First Great Charity of this Town. The first lecture in the series will focus on Child Welfare and Education in the Industrialising Town of Belfast, and will be delivered by Professor Olwen Purdue and Lauren Smyth. Olwen Purdue is Professor of Modern Social History at Queen’s University Belfast, where she is also Director of the Centre for Public History. An expert on the social history of nineteenth and twentieth-century Ireland, Professor Purdue is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, [...]

Belfast Charitable Society are proud to announce the return of our Reconciliation Fund supported President’s Talk Series this year marking the 270th year of The First Great Charity of this Town. The second lecture in the series will focus on: ‘Doing the Needful’: Belfast Charitable Society and its Outdoor Relief Scheme, and will be delivered by Aaron McIntyre. Aaron McIntyre has undertaken extensive research in the Belfast Charitable Society’s archive, dating back to 1752, to develop a series of unique talks, tours and seasonal events to highlight the history of the charity, its people and its role in Belfast and beyond. Tickets for [...]

Belfast Charitable Society are proud to announce the return of our Reconciliation Fund supported President’s Talk Series this year marking the 270th year of The First Great Charity of this Town. The third Thursday lecture in the series will focus on: From New Orleans to Clifton Street: slavery and freedom in nineteenth century Belfast, and will be delivered by Dr Jonathan Wright. Jonathan Wright is a lecturer in history at Maynooth University. His current research has focused on Ulster and the Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution, and his recent publications include An Ulster Slaveowner in the Revolutionary Atlantic: The Life and [...]

Belfast Charitable Society are proud to announce the return of our Reconciliation Fund supported President’s Talk Series this year marking the 270th year of The First Great Charity of this Town. The last lecture in the series will focus on: The New Burying Ground, Père Lachaise and Belfast’s forgotten cemeteries, and will be delivered by John Ó Neill. John Ó Neill is Research Manager at Irish Archaeological Consultancy Ltd and a visiting research fellow in the School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University Belfast. Tickets for each talk are £6 for zoom access or £7.50 for room access (price inc complementary tea [...]

President’s Talks Series 2023 Making Croppies Lie Down: Loyalist Remembering and Forgetting of the 1798 Rebellion Ulster loyalism is known for its commemorative culture and yet the triumph over the United Irishmen in the 1798 rebellion does not feature prominently in unionist remembrance. Contrary to common assumptions, history is not always written by the victors, and sometimes it is even forgotten by them! The talk will unravel and interrogate this puzzling case of ‘self-forgetting’. Guy Beiner is the Sullivan Chair of Irish Studies at Boston College. His books Remembering the Year of the French: Irish Folk History and Social Memory (University of Wisconsin [...]

This panel discussion will centre around the current state of education in North Belfast, how schools are dealing with unprecedented levels of poverty, and the terrifying predictions recent cuts will have, longer-term, on an education system already under pressure. For centuries, The Belfast Charitable Society has been to the fore of educating the city’s impoverished, providing greater opportunities for them to build a better life. This session will take a very brief look back at what education was like in the Poor House in the 18th Century before concentrating on the outcomes of following two key reports* on the education system [...]

Since opening its doors 250 years ago, the Poorhouse was the first to offer free medical relief for the sick poor of Belfast. As the town grew, the role of the Belfast Charitable Society remained central to the expanding network of charities, institutions and hospitals providing different kinds of medical care. This talk explores how the Society treated the sick within its own walls and how it endeavoured to respond to various public health issues. The Society played a key role in the provision of maternity care and the establishment of a lunatic asylum as well as dealing with epidemics of [...]