Sugarhouse Entry, running between Waring Street and High Street, and home to the Muddlers’ Club of the United Irishmen, was closed in 1972 as part of the “ring of steel” securing Belfast city centre (DC Tours) and for fifty years served only as a back alley to various businesses between Waring Street and High Street; there was talk in 2022 of reopening it (Irish News) and again in 2023 (BelTel). It has now (August, 2024) been refurbished and reopened (BelTel | UTv includes interview with Sean Napier | Belfast City Council video on youtube).

Peter Strain (web) produced illustrations for a number of entries in 2020 and 2022, including one from 2022 for Sugarhouse Entry. It quotes United Irishman Thomas Russell as saying, “Every time I look at a lump of sugar, I see a drop of African blood”.

The precise source of the quote is unknown (please comment/get in touch if you know it); towards the end of Russell’s 1796 Letter To The People Of Ireland, in which he exhorts Irish people to develop a national spirit and take an interest in politics, he takes as a present-day example refraining from supporting the Crown in the French Revolutionary Wars by serving in the army or by buying taxed goods (such as sugar): “Are the Irish nation aware that this contest involves the question of the slave trade, the one now of the greatest consequence on the face of the earth? Are they willing to employ their treasure and their blood in support of that system, because England has 70 or 7000 millions engaged in it, the only argument that can be adduced in its favour, monstrous as it may appear? Do they know that that horrid traffic spreads its influence over the globe; that it creates and perpetuates barbarism and misery, and prevents the spreading of civilization and religion, in which we profess to believe? Do they know that by it thousands and hundreds of thousands of these miserable Africans are dragged from their innocent families … transported to various places, and there treated with such a system of cruelty, torment, wickedness and infamy, that it is impossible for language adequately to express its horror and guilt, and which would appear rather to be the work of wicked demons than of men. If this trade is wrong, is it right for the Irish nation to endeavour to continue it? And does not every man who contributes to the war contribute to its support?” (archive.org p. 22)

(Other pieces by Strain in the entries can be seen in Handsome, Easy-Going, And Utterly Untrustworthy | The Blots On The Page Are So Black | As You Lived You Must Die | Trust Women.)

See also: the Visual History page on the Belfast Entries Project.

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Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
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