Charles
Grant rented a flat, 18 Earlsfort Terrace, from Mrs Allingham. It was a beautifully
furnished home, and they were comfortable and happy there. Alan Grant was born
at a nursing home on
The first electrical measurement of starlight was made in Ireland over 100 years starsago by William Henry Stanley Monck. He was a lawyer and philosopher but it is his astronomical achievement of measuring starlight which is commemorated on a plaque at 16 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2. onck's interest in astronomy may have been due to the fact that he grew up near Borris-in-Ossory, Co Laois and as a boy could have seen Lord Rosse's great telescope. He had a 7½-inch refracting telescope in his garden observatory at 16 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin. It was there, on 28 August 1892, that Monck and his neighbour Stephen M. Dixon made the first electrical measurement of starlight. The detectors were photoelectric cells of selenium made by George M. Minchin, a TCD graduate who was a mathematics professor in London.
On Sunday 21st November 1920 Sgt. John J. Fitzgerald, born 15 March 1898 at Cappagh, age 22, of the Royal Irish Constabulary, alias "Captain Fitzgerald" or "Fitzpatrick," whose father was a doctor from Co. Tipperary, was shot and killed at 28 Earlsfort Terrace while recovering from an arm injury. He had survived a previous assassination attempt when the bullet only grazed his head. This time he was shot twice in the head. He was the son of a Tipperary man. At this address, according to the assassins report, the documentation found detailed the movements of senior IRA members, proving that the British Secret Service was planning an operation similar to the IRA's of that morning. On the morning of Sunday 21 November 1920, the IRA carried out one of its most successful counter intelligence operations. The British Cairo Gang (so-called probably because they used the Cairo Cafe near TCD for meetings) had been established because of Sir Henry Wilson’s demand that the IRA’s Intelligence Department be eliminated. Living unobtrusively in boarding houses in Dublin, the British agents prepared a hit list of known republicans for assassination. But the IRA’s intelligence network was a step ahead. Frank Thornton obtained the names and addresses of all the senior British secret service men sent over to Dublin. An IRA agent in the DMP stationed at Donnybrook, Sergeant Mannix, was the source. The operation had been carefully planned by many of the IRA’s most senior activists, including Michael Collins. They may have got the wrong man with Fitzgerald.