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BACK PAGES:ON THE day that James Joyce picked to immortalise the Dublin of his youth, The Irish Timescarried the usual complement of reports about now obscure political controversies, court cases and concern over the funding of the Royal Hibernian Academy. The most dramatic report came from New York where a Sunday school outing turned into disaster: along with so much else, it was swept up into Joyce’s narrative.

Five hundred persons, mostly children, perished today by the burning of the steamer General Slocum, near Hell Gate, on the East River. The disaster is the most appalling that has ever occurred in New York Harbour, and the fact that the victims were almost entirely of a tender age or women renders it absolutely distressing.