The Shelbourne Hotel was founded in 1824 by Martin Burke, a native of County Tipperary, when he acquired three adjoining townhouses overlooking Stephen's Green, Europe's largest garden square.

[6] In the late 19th century, the ability for a wealthy gentleman to be able to "handle the ribbons" of his own coach was popular for a time, according to a 1947 article in the Dublin Historical Record.

All four statues are wearing gold coloured anklets, and are draped, with jewellery picked out in gilt while supporting a torch with a frosted glass flambeau shade.

Kyle Leyden, lecturer in Early Modern Architecture and Visual Culture at the Courtauld Institute, pointed out that the statues were mass-produced decorative arts items chosen by the builder of the hotel from a trade catalogue which did not identify them as representing slaves, instead referring to them as women of Egypt and Sub-Saharan Africa.

[23] After an examination by Paula Murphy, an art historian at University College Dublin, concluded that the statues were not representations of slaves, it was announced that they would be restored to their plinths.

[25] In James Joyce's Ulysses, Leopold Bloom remembers the Shelbourne as where "Mrs Miriam Dandrade", a "Divorced Spanish American" sold him "her old wraps and black underclothes".