The IRB (also known as the Fenians) stands for the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which was the semi-secret organization working for Irish Independence from Great Britain from 1858 to 1924. In 1916 the Brotherhood and the Irish Citizen Army merged to form the Irish Republican Army, a much larger organization, which had greater popular support,
Broadwick's public exhibition of electrocuting a goat parallels that of Thomas Edison in collusion with Harold Pitney Brown's 1888 public electrocutions of stray dogs and other animals, eventually leading to larger prey, including a horse and the infamously filmed murder of Topsy the Elephant at Coney Island in 1903.