The sex lives of Presbyterians in 18th- and 19th-century Ulster were surprisingly colourful

By Leanne Calvert, Assistant Professor in Irish History, University of Limerick

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Presbyterians from Ulster in Northern Ireland had a somewhat surprising reputation for being especially – if not excessively – concerned with sex.

As the Ordnance Survey Memoirs Observer for the parish of Rashee in County Antrim candidly put it in 1835, while the Presbyterians of the north of Ireland “unhesitatingly” claimed for themselves a general character of “extreme morality”, they were “not the pious race so generally imagined”.

The records…

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