I forgot to mention that the slogan "Home Rule" is not a maker's mark
but a form of decoration, clearly one intended to appeal to
Republican sentiments among Irish and Irish immigrants.  We also had
a Wolf Tone pipe, Wolf Tone being the famous martyr of the Republican
cause.

Our pipes were found in contexts easily associated with the presence
of single, male, Irish immigrants, are are just one element of many
aspects of Irish political activism in 19th-century Lowell.  People
had a choice of what pipes to buy; the Home Rule and Wolf Tone pipes
were, like the more typical late 19th-century TD pipes, at the most
affordable end of the price range as well, falling into a category
sometimes called (and even labeled) Dhudheen, an Irish Gaelic term.
So while most of these were probably made in Glasgow or Bristol, they
were surely targeted for a specialty market.  I strongly recommend
Lauren Cook's exhaustive analysis of pipes, power, ethnicity, gender,
class, etc., in the Lowell report series Volume III.

Cheers,
Mary B.

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Mary C Beaudry
Associate Professor
Department of Archaeology
Boston University
675 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215 USA

tel. 617-358-1650
fax 617-353-6800