Working closely with historians Aisling Tierney and David Ryan, Manifold identified several documents detailing the activities of Hellfire clubs in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. One discovery, an evangelical magazine of 1811, contained an obituary of Captain Perry, a carousing individual and likely member of a Hellfire Club. He suffered the perils of excessive living and radical thinking, an early death and a desperate fight for repentance. Ryan (author of Blasphemers & Blackguards: The Irish Hellfire Clubs, Merrion Books, 2012) considers the article to be written from a moralistic standpoint, acting as a warning to readers of the dangers of being involved in such circles. The article became a point of departure for Manifold to produce a mise-en-scène - an aftermath of a local Hellfire meeting. Using a scripted voiceover, shot in Cagney’s Bar with members of the local drama group and employing special effects to feature the River Deel, A Man of Pleasure (HD video, 4 minutes 15 seconds) acts as a speculative representation of morality and decadence, given the scant evidence of what might have occurred at the Askeaton Hellfire.
