Murphy is born on June 19, 1914, at Lisheen, Gneeveguilla, County Kerry, part of an area in west Munster known as Sliabh Luachra. Her father Bill plays flute, fife and fiddle, and has a fife and drum band. Both she and her brother Denis Murphy, also a musician, are taught the fiddle by the noted traveling fiddler and fiddle teacher from the same area, Padraig O’Keeffe.
Clifford, her brother, O’Keeffe, and other musicians from the Sliabh Luachra area are regarded as a significant influence on Irish traditional music and have given rise to the term Sliabh Luachra style.
In the late 1930s Murphy emigrates to Scotland and then to London where she works as a hotel maid before marrying John Clifford in 1941. He is an accordion player, also from Kerry, and they had two sons, John and Billy. In the 1940s they play the Irish dance halls in London. In the 1950s they return to Ireland for a time, living in Newcastle West in County Limerick. They perform in the Star of Munster Ceili Band with which they make radio recordings.
Back in London, Clifford enjoys greater popularity with the onset of the 1960s folk boom. In 1968, Claddagh Records records her and brother Denis on an album of Kerry music, The Star Above the Garter.
Rediscovered by the British folk club scene of the 1970s, Topic Records in 1977 issues an earlier recording of Clifford with her brother and Padraig O’Keeffe, Kerry Fiddles (Music from Sliabh Luachra). This is followed by two LPs featuring a range of music from various periods played by her, her husband and her son Billy, a flute player.
The wider appreciation of the music of Sliabh Luachra – particularly its Kerry slides and polkas – come late in life for Clifford. The Cliffords live in a small council flat in Hackney in East London before being rehoused in Thetford, Norfolk in the late 1970s.
In the 1980s and 1990s Clifford’s reputation grows, being invited to perform at folk clubs and festivals. She performs on trips back to Ireland and is introduced to television audiences. She also visits the United States. Many young players who seek her out to learn tunes and styles from her Kerry repertoire find her generous and encouraging.
Clifford’s husband John dies in 1981. She dies on June 18, 1997, one day before her 84th birthday, and is buried in Norfolk.
As part of the 2008 Cork Midsummer Festival, 1,100 volunteers gather on the grounds of Blarney Castle in the early hours of Tuesday, June 17, 2008, and strip naked to have their picture taken at the famous location.
The occasion is the first shoot in Ireland by the American photographic artist Spencer Tunick, who has already made quite a name for himself shooting large groups of naked people in public spaces in New York City, Montreal, London and Amsterdam.
Like many of Tunick’s projects, the event in Cork comes about by invitation. “It was Mary McCarthy, the art curator at Dublin Docklands, who contacted me first,” says Tunick, via Zoom from his office in New York, of the organiser who is director of the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork. “Mary thought to make it a two-city project, in Cork and Dublin, and brought Cork Midsummer Festival on board. People think I can choose where I want to work, but it’s not as if I can get up and say, ‘hmm, I want to photograph 1,000 people in a volcanic crater in Hawaii.’ In reality, I need a team on the other side, helping me. And it was Mary who established that team in Ireland.”
McCarthy’s crew works with Tunick on selecting locations for his shoots. Blarney Castle appeals to Tunick. “When you think of a castle, you think of swords, you think of dreams, you think of battle and war,” he says. “But you might also think of the rose. I tried to combine a lot of different ideas or fantasies about the castle and connect them to the body. But there were also a lot of grounds around the castle, so I could have different set-ups and positions to shoot in.”
When Cork Midsummer Festival puts out a call for volunteers, it is inundated with applications. Those chosen are of all ages, and from all walks of life. “I think sometimes people associate my live works with young people. But there’s often a lot of people over 50, and into their 80s, at this great unifying event that touches on the idea of group photo gatherings from the 1920s. When you see a big haul of people lined up, undressed of course, it combines group portraiture with abstraction and the naked body.”
At Blarney Castle, beginning around 5:30 a.m., he shoots the crowd in a variety of poses on the castle lawns, facing toward and away from the camera, then lying on their backs as they each held a single rose aloft (pictured above), red for the women and white for the men. He then photographs a small number on their knees in the river that runs through the grounds, and a smaller number again kissing the Blarney Stone. Some participants see the photo shoot as an opportunity to challenge the general disapproval of nakedness that prevails in the Ireland of their youth. Others see it as a way to make peace with their body image.
Later that morning, Tunick photographs about 50 naked volunteers covered in foam at White Street Carpark in Cork city centre. “As a kid, I was always fascinated by the bubble scene in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the film,” says Tunick. “So, I wanted, in a whimsical and surreal way, to amplify my memories of that. But I also wanted to work with the history of the area, so I infused Murphy’s beer into four bubble machines and created a snow globe effect with the nudes. That was beautiful.”
Looking back on the photographs, one is struck by how most of the bodies are white. If it is true that Cork has become far more ethnically diverse city since that day in 2008, one must also wonder if Tunick’s call for volunteers appealed to a certain demographic. “I always ask the organisers to do community outreach in different areas, so we can get more colour and ethnicities into the work,” he says. “But sometimes it doesn’t really resonate, and sometimes the population is not there, you know. And often, where that population exists, it might not be connected to the body in contemporary art. But I’ve always tried, and now I insist that the organisers make an extra effort.”
Tunick’s shoots at Blarney Castle and White Street attract lavish coverage in the media, a reflection perhaps on how they coincide with a change in the public perception of nudity. The project would almost certainly have caused an uproar even twenty years previously. Participants describe a sense of joy and liberation. “This was definitely pre-Instagram, right? And now when we’re on Instagram, we think the whole world is accepting of nudity in public, but back then, there was not that same outlet for my images. But there was that documentation by the press, and through that, I think people realised that something had happened that went against the grain in a positive way.”
Four days later, Tunick photographs 2,500 naked volunteers on the South Wall in Dublin. Again, the event attracts headlines, but already, it seems, the culture has moved on, and there is not quite that same element of surprise and delight as there had been in Cork.
Tunick has done many projects since. Some of his favourites include those in Kingston upon Hull in 2016 and on the Dead Sea in 2011 and again in 2021. “I like working with props. In Cork, I used roses and beer foam. But now I like working with body paint. In Hull, we covered around 4,000 people in four shades of blue. The blues were those of the water I saw in a number of paintings in the Maritime Museum in the city. I asked Pantone to replicate the colours, and those were the blues we used. Not many people know that.”
“My projects in the Dead Sea were partly about showing how the salt in the water could elevate the body. That created a very interesting, otherworldly effect in the photographs. But they also aimed to raise awareness of how the Dead Sea is disappearing because of irrigation to serve the need for drinking water by adjoining countries such as Israel and Jordan. It’s a very difficult situation.”
Many photographers find their work curtailed by pandemic restrictions of the early 2020s. Tunick too is forced to postpone photographing groups of people on location, but he does find a way to go on creating. “An art collective called Studio 333 in Mexico asked me if I wanted to do group works on video chats, and offered to manage it technically. So we started making group works with people from all walks of life, all around the world. We had someone in Saudi Arabia posing with someone in Israel. We had people in Australia, people in Europe, people all over the world. I think the only place we weren’t able to work with was Antarctica, but who knows? Maybe that’s in the future.” The resulting images are published online, on Tunick and Studio 333’s websites and social media accounts, under the collective title ”Stay Apart Together.”
As for the future, Tunick would love to work in Ireland again, he says. “It’s always been my dream to do a work in Northern Ireland, maybe with 100 or 200 people on the Giant’s Causeway? I can’t have too many, because then you wouldn’t see the rocks. Northern Ireland, the Giant’s Causeway… that project’s been on my mind for a long time, so hopefully some museum or curator will invite me to do it.”
(From: “Cork in 50 Artworks, No 49: Spencer Tunick’s nude installation at Blarney Castle” by Marc O’Sullivan, Irish Examiner, http://www.irishexaminer.com, April 11, 2022 | Pictured: Blarney Castle with the crowd assembled by Spencer Tunick)
Downey’s tenure sees the construction and dedication of the crypt of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, built to a design by Sir Edwin Lutyens, although the Cathedral itself is never completed as he had envisaged. A picture of Lutyens proposed cathedral is printed on postcards sold to raise funds.
In 1929, before the actual construction begins, Downey states, “Hitherto all cathedrals have been dedicated to saints. I hope this one will be dedicated to Christ himself with a great figure surmounted on the cathedral, visible for many a mile out at sea.” He also declares that while the Cathedral will not be medieval and Gothic, neither will it be as modern as the works of Jacob Epstein, a statement somewhat at odds with the design that is finally realised after his death.
Downey dies in Liverpool at the age of 72 on June 16, 1953, having served as Liverpool’s archbishop for twenty-four years. His remains are interred in a crypt at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, Liverpool.
On June 15, 1988, an unmarked military van carrying six British Army soldiers is blown up by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) at Market Place in Lisburn, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. The explosion takes place at the end of a charity marathon run in which the soldiers had participated. All six soldiers are killed in the attack – four outright, one on his way to hospital and another later on in hospital.
Lisburn is the headquarters of the British Army in Northern Ireland. Four of the dead are from the Royal Corps of Signals while the other two are from the Green Howards and the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. A booby trap bomb is hidden under the Ford Transit van in which the soldiers are traveling, and is designed in such a way that the blast goes upward to cause maximum damage to the vehicle. Eleven civilian bystanders are injured, including a two-year-old child and 80-year-old man. The bombing is sometimes referred to as the Lisburn “Fun Run” bombing.
On Wednesday, June 15, 1988, at 8:50 p.m., an unmarked blue Ford Transit van carrying six off-duty British soldiers in civilian clothes drives off from a leisure centre carpark in Lisburn. The soldiers have just taken part in the “Lisburn Fun Run”, a 13-mile (21 km) charity half marathon held in the town. They leave the van unattended in the car park, which is the start and finish point for the run. It is there that an IRA active service unit (ASU), who has been following the van, hides a bomb underneath the vehicle. The half marathon and shorter “fun runs” are organised by Lisburn Borough Council, together with the YMCA, to raise funds for the disabled. There are 4,500 participants that day and at least 200 British Army personnel have been given leave to participate in the event.
Nine minutes later, the van stops at traffic lights at Market Place, in Lisburn’s town centre. As the van moves on, the seven-pound (3.2 kg) bomb detonates, turning the van into a massive fireball and instantly killing four of the soldiers as the vehicle disintegrates with the force of the blast. The Semtex device has been designed in a cone shape to channel the blast upward, thereby causing maximum damage to the vehicle and the soldiers inside. The area around Market Place is crowded with onlookers, including many teenagers and families with young children, although the biggest crowd is at the carpark. In all, about 10,000 onlookers have attended the charity run. There is pandemonium as frightened parents search for their children, while others rush to give aid to the dead and dying soldiers before fire engines and ambulances arrive.
Eleven civilian bystanders are injured in the attack, including a two-year-old child and an 80-year-old man. Another soldier dies on the way to hospital while a sixth soldier dies later that night after undergoing surgery for severe head injuries. The dead soldiers are stationed at Ebrington Barracks in Derry and are returning to base when the bomb goes off. Four of the men – Sergeant Michael Winkler (31), Signalman Mark Clavey (24), Lance Corporal Graham Lambie (22), and Corporal William Patterson (22) – are from the Royal Corps of Signals, while the other two – Corporal Ian Metcalf (36) and Lance Corporal Derek Green (20) – are from the Green Howards and Royal Army Ordnance Corps respectively.
Lisburn is a mainly Ulster Protestant town, 14 miles (23 km) southwest of Belfast. It serves as the garrison headquarters of the British Army in Northern Ireland. Six months before the van bombing, a booby trap bomb planted by the IRA kills Ulster Defence Association (UDA) leader John McMichael in the town.
The van bombing results in the greatest loss of life suffered by the British Army since eleven soldiers were killed in the Droppin Well Disco bombing on December 6, 1982.
On June 16, the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade claims responsibility for the bombing, promising to wage “unceasing war” against the British security forces in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams allegedly says that the IRA’s killing of the six soldiers is “vastly preferable” to killing members of the (locally recruited) Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) or Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The leisure centre is forced to remain shut for a time after the loyalistProtestant Action Force (a cover-name of the UVF) issues a warning that they regard Catholic staff working there as “legitimate targets,” inferring that they may have had a hand in the bombing. Lisburn mayor Councillor William Bleakes condemns the threats by the PAF.
That same day, Tom King, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, travels to Lisburn where he holds a meeting with Lieutenant General Sir John Waters, the British Army Commander in Northern Ireland, and senior RUC officers. They discuss the attack and proposals for heightened security. The soldiers had failed to follow proper security procedures, as they had left their vehicle unguarded for over two hours and had then driven off without having checked under it beforehand. After the Lisburn meeting, King flies to London where he reports directly to British Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher, who describes the attack as a “terrible atrocity.” However, she rejects demands from Conservative members of Parliament to bring back internment, regarding the proposal as “a very serious step.”
In his statement to the House of Commons, Tom King suggests that there would have been a much higher death toll had the bomb exploded in the carpark, where thousands of people had gathered after the run.
The Republic of Ireland‘s government also strongly condemns the killings and extends its sympathy to the families of the dead soldiers. The bombing is a topic of debate in the Seanad Éireann on June 16, 1988. Bishop Cahal Daly of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Down and Connor denounces the bombers and the killings in the “strongest possible terms.”
Questions are raised as to how the IRA knew the soldiers were attending the charity run in Lisburn, how they recognised their unmarked van, and how the unit was able to plant a bomb in the predominantly loyalist town without being spotted, despite the number of people in the carpark. The RUC believes that the bombers may have been wearing sports gear as they mingled with the crowd that evening. They appeal to onlookers who had attended the event to hand over any film they may have taken of the “fun run” in an attempt to identify the IRA bombers.
The following Saturday, between 1,000 and 2,000 people gather in Lisburn town centre to attend a remembrance service for the six soldiers. A book of condolences is also opened.
Antisell is born in Dublin on January 16, 1817, the youngest son of Thomas Christopher Antisell KC (home circuit) and Margaret (née) Daly. He attends the Dublin School of Medicine, the Apothecaries’ Hall of Ireland, and the Royal College of Surgeons of England in London, graduating from the latter with an MD in November 1839. He studies chemistry in Paris and Berlin in 1844. Upon his return to Dublin in 1845, he secures a lectureship in botany at the Peter St. School of Medicine, teaching there until 1848. After this, he opens a clinic at his residence of 25 Richmond Street, Portobello. He works as an assistant to Robert Kane, and between 1845 and 1847, produces textbooks on Irish geology and chemistry. He becomes a member of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) in 1844.
Antisell is a member of the Young Ireland movement of the 1840s, and joins the Irish Confederation in 1847. With a group of five friends in the republican movement, including Richard D’Alton Williams and Kevin O’Doherty, he sets up a short-lived revolutionary newspaper, The Irish Tribune, in June 1848 to take the place of the suppressed United Irishman, founded by John Mitchel. The paper is closed down on the grounds of sedition in July 1848 after just five issues. Following the closure of the paper, he emigrates to the United States, arriving in New York City on November 22, 1848. Some sources claim this departure is to evade arrest or charges relating to sedition. Although he is no longer politically active following his departure from Ireland, he is a close friend of John Mitchel and his family. He marries his first wife, Eliza Ann Nowlan, in 1841. She dies shortly after their arrival in the United States.
Antisell sets up and operates a clinic and medical laboratory in New York City from 1848 to 1854, while also lecturing in chemistry in a number of medical colleges in Massachusetts and Vermont. He takes up a post as expedition geologist and botanist on state surveys in southern Arizona, New Mexico, and California, working primarily with Lt. John Parke investigating the proposed routes for the Southern Pacific Railroad from 1854 to 1856. His work on the geology of the region adds to greater understanding of the science in America. In 1856, he is employed as chief examiner in the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C., with responsibility for chemical inventions. This work allows him to also lecture in chemistry at Georgetown University, eventually covering other subjects such as toxicology, military surgery, physiology, hygiene, and pathology, over the periods 1858 to 1869, and 1880 to 1882.
Breaking with Mitchel who, as defender of slavery, supports the southern secessionist cause, Antisell serves in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He is a brigade surgeon in the United States Volunteers from 1861, and later the medical director of the 12th army corps. He concludes his service as surgeon-in-charge of Harewood Hospital, Washington, D.C., in October 1865, being granted a brevet commission as colonel. From 1866 to 1871, he is chief chemist in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He marries his second wife, Marion Stuart Forsyth from Detroit, in 1854. They go on to have twelve children, six daughters and six sons.
Antisell is one of several scientists that are hired in 1871 as foreign government advisors to work in Hokkaido in northern Japan under Horace Capron. He is selected for his strong background in chemistry coupled with geology. However, he disagrees with Capron on whether or not Hokkaido’s severe winter climate will hinder development, and he also comes into conflict with the Japanese government over his salary. As a result, Hokkaido Colonisation Office hires another geologist, and Antisell’s report is excluded in the 1875 compilation of official reports. He serves his remaining time in Japan as a chemist for the Ministry of Finance, where he develops inks used for the printing of paper currency. For his services, he is awarded the Order of the Rising Sun by Emperor Meiji before his departure in 1876.
Upon returning to the United States, Antisell is conferred with a PhD in 1876 by Georgetown University, and once again takes up duties at the Patent Office, remaining there until his retirement. He publishes widely in numerous journals on topics such as agricultural chemistry, botany, oceanography, city sanitation, and animal disease, but he does not publish a significant treatise.
Antisell dies in Washington, D.C., on June 14, 1893, and is buried in the Congressional Cemetery.
Stoney is the younger son of George Stoney and Anne Blood, second daughter of Bindon Blood of Cranagher and Rockforest, County Clare. His brother is the physicistGeorge Johnstone Stoney, known for coining the term electron for the fundamental unit of electricity. He is also the uncle of another Irish physicist George Francis FitzGerald, the son of his sister Anne Frances. His nieces are Edith Anne Stoney, a pioneer medical physicist, and Florence Stoney, the first female radiologist in the United Kingdom. Both serve in hospitals near the front line during World War I.
Stoney is privately educated at home while his father’s properties lose value in the post-Napoleonic depression and are sold during the famine of 1845–49. He then attends Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where in 1850 he obtains his BA and a diploma in civil engineering with distinction. He marries Susannah Frances Walker on October 7, 1879; they have four children.
Bindon’s career in engineering commences when he works on surveys for the Aranjuez to Almansa railway in Spain from 1852 to 1853. Upon returning to Ireland in 1854, he is appointed as resident engineer under James Barton on the Boyne railway viaduct until its completion in 1855. This viaduct claims to have the longest span in the world and has the world’s longest girders at the time.
Bindon’s groundbreaking work building a metal bridge with a span of such dimensions using shock-absorbent wrought-iron latticed bars instead of a continuity of plate with Barton is possibly the first of its kind. It is the basis for his later two-volume publication The theory of strains in girders and similar structures, with observations on the strength and other properties of materials (1866), nicknamed “Stoney on strains” and reproduced in two further editions.
Bindon becomes an associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) in January 1858 and a full member in November 1863.
In 1856, Bindon is appointed as assistant engineer to George Halpin, Jr. at the Ballast Board on Westmoreland Street and in 1859 he is appointed as Executive Engineer. He is ambitious and an engineering innovator who comes up with a cheap way to develop the Dublin Port – something appreciated by the board but they also do not want to upset Halpin. When Halpin retires, Stoney becomes the new inspector of works and in 1868, becomes the first chief engineer of the newly constituted Dublin Port and Docks Board.
Bindon designs a large dredging plant and rebuilds nearly 7,000 feet of quay walls along both north and south banks of the River Liffey, replacing the tidal berths by deep water berths. Additionally, the northern quays are lengthened eastward and the formation of Alexandra Basin begins in 1871 and is partially completed by 1885. In addition to harbour works, he is in charge of the design and construction of two major bridges that cross the River Liffey. In 1872–1875 he largely rebuilds Essex Bridge, designed in the 1750s by George Semple to his own flamboyant design. It is renamed Grattan Bridge after Henry Grattan. In 1877–80 he redesigns the 1790s Carlisle Bridge of James Gandon, renamed O’Connell Bridge after Daniel O’Connell, to provide a crossing linking Sackville (later O’Connell) Street with the converging streets to the south. He builds a new iron swing bridge in 1877–1879, just west of The Custom House named Beresford Bridge.
Stoney invents a diving bell, and means to use precast concrete. Toward the end of his career, he erects the North Bull Lighthouse (1877–80) to replace the inadequate light on the Bull Wall marking the northern side of the Dublin port channel entrance opposite Poolbeg Lighthouse before finally retiring in 1898.
Born into relative poverty, Naughton moves to Bolton, Lancashire, England, in 1914 as a child. There he attends Saint Peter and Paul’s School, and works as a weaver, coal-bagger and lorry driver before he starts writing with his wife, Erna.
Naughton’s stage play, Alfie, adapted for the 1966 film starring Michael Caine in the eponymous role, originates in a radio play, Alfie Elkins and His Little Life, first broadcast on the BBC Third Programme in 1962, which becomes a production at the Mermaid Theatre in 1963. It transfers to the West End theatre before a very brief run on Broadway. He is a prolific writer of plays, novels, short stories and children’s books. His preferred environment is working class society, which is reflected in much of his written work.
In addition to Alfie, two of Naughton’s other plays have been made into feature films, All in Good Time (1963), filmed as The Family Way (1966), starring John Mills, and Spring and Port Wine (1970), starring James Mason in the role of Rafe Crompton, an adaptation of a play first performed in 1959.
Naughton’s novel Alfie Darling, the sequel to his earlier novel and play, was also filmed, with Alan Price succeeding Michael Caine in the lead role. Both Alfie and Alfie Darling are drawn upon for the 2004 film with Jude Law in the eponymous role.
Naughton’s work also includes the novel One Small Boy (1957), and the collection of short stories The Goalkeeper’s Revenge And Other Stories (1961). His 1977 children’s novel My Pal Spadger is an account of his childhood in 1920s Bolton. His wife dies in 2014 ant the age of 85.
Many of Naughton’s plays are performed at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton. An 85-seat adaptable studio theatre within the Octagon is named after him.
During his lifetime, Naughton receives the following awards: Screenwriters Guide Award (1967 and 1968), Italia Prize for Radio Play (1974), Children’s Rights Workshop Other Award (1978), Portico Literary Prize (1987) and The Hon. Fellowship, Bolton Institute of Higher Education (1988).
Naughton dies on January 9, 1992, aged 81, in Ballasalla on the Isle of Man. A “Bill Naughton Short Story Competition,” administered by The Kenny/Naughton Autumn School, is named in his honour.
Gwynn excels academically as well as on the sporting field. The most outgoing of the Gwynn brothers at Trinity College, he cuts a handsome and dashing figure. He graduates from Trinity College in 1896, taking a double first in his finals.
Gwynn makes his debut for Ireland in a match against W. H. Laverton’s XI, scoring one run in the only Irish innings. The following year, he plays twice for Ireland, against I Zingari and South Africa. He scores 62 in the second innings against South Africa, his top score for Ireland.
May 1895 sees Gwynn make his first-class debut, playing for Dublin University against the Marylebone Cricket Club on May 20. This is followed three days later by a match for Ireland against the same opponents. He plays three further first-class matches that year, two against Cambridge University and one against Leicestershire. He scores 130 in the final match against Cambridge University, his highest first-class score.
In all matches for Ireland, Gwynn scores 220 runs at an average of 36.67. He takes six catches and one stumping.
After completing the induction course for the Indian Civil Service in the autumn of 1897, Gwynn travels to Burma for his first tour of duty. Tragically his promising career comes to an abrupt end a few months later. He dies in Rangoon of septicemia resulting from a tooth infection on February 14, 1898.
McNamara and Newman are particularly outspoken on the issue of a proposed anti-abortion amendment to the Constitution of Ireland. While other bishops advocate people vote with their conscience in the referendum on the issue, McNamara and Newman instruct Catholics that they have a duty to “vote yes” to the referendum.
In 1984, the Archdiocese of Dublin becomes vacant when Archbishop Ryan is given a senior appointment in the Roman Curia. Ryan is expected to be made a cardinal as a result of the appointment but dies suddenly in office before a consistory can be held. McNamara’s selection to replace the more liberal Ryan in Dublin creates media reports linking his appointment to the ongoing tensions between the papal nuncio in Ireland, Archbishop Gaetano Alibrandi, and the liberal Fine Gael–Labour Partycoalition under Garret FitzGerald. Relations between Alibrandi and the coalition break down, with the government requesting that Alibrandi be removed because of his suspected closeness to Irish republicans in Sinn Féin and to the opposition Fianna Fáil party and in particular its leader, Charles Haughey. Critics accused Alibrandi of engineering McNamara’s appointment in the belief that the outspoken McNamara can help derail the coalition’s liberal policies on divorce and contraception.
McNamara, as expected, takes a far more outspoken stance of issues than had Ryan previously. While the coalition succeeds in liberalising the law on contraception, its efforts to amend the constitution on divorce are defeated.
McNamara’s service in Dublin is short-lived. Already suffering from what proves to be terminal cancer, he dies on April 8, 1987 after a three year battle with the disease, months after the Fine Gael minority government is defeated in the 1987 Irish general election. He is succeeded as archbishop by a university lecturer, Desmond Connell.
In the early 2000s, amid growing scandals within the Catholic Church in Ireland about clerical sex abuse, it is revealed that as archbishop McNamara had sought legal advice as to the Church’s liability arising from such abuse.
John Dudley Digges, Irish stage actor, director, and producer as well as a film actor, is born in Ranelagh, Dublin, on June 9, 1879. Although he gains his initial theatre training and acting experience in Ireland, the vast majority of his career is spent in the United States, where over the span of 43 years he works in hundreds of stage productions and performs in over 50 films.
Digges is the child of James Digges and Catherine Forsythe. He becomes acquainted with theatre directors William and Frank Fay and takes an interest in acting. He joins W. G. Fay’s Irish National Dramatic Company, along with others including Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh, James H. Cousins, Frederick Ryan and Maire Quinn (who becomes his wife). Their first production, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, with Maud Gonne in the lead role, and Déirdre, is on April 2, 1902. The company, which has no funds to speak of, acquires a couple of bare rooms at 34 Lower Camden Street, which with the help of friends from Irish-revival societies they turn into a small theatre. However, this proves too small for the plays they are planning to stage. They rehearse at the Coffee Palace in Westmoreland Street and also use the Molesworth Hall for productions.
In 1903, the playwrights and most of the actors and staff from these productions go on to form the Irish National Theatre Society, which has its registered offices in Camden Street. The society founds the Abbey Theatre.
Digges goes to the United States with a group of fellow-actors in 1904, and becomes successful as both actor and producer. He is stage manager for a time to both Charles Frohman and George Arliss, and by the 1920s he has become a notable performer on Broadway. One of his best-known roles there is as Ficsur in the original 1921 production of Ferenc Molnár‘s Liliom (later adapted into the musical Carousel by Rodgers and Hammerstein). In 1924, in Woodstock, New York, he founds the Maverick Theater with the assistance of Hervey White, who had established the Maverick Arts Colony. He is also artistic director of a company that includes Helen Hayes and Edward G. Robinson.
Digges expands his career into films by 1929, and over nearly two decades he performs in more than 50 films, including the original pre-Hays Code adaptation of The Maltese Falcon (1931). He Is cast in that feature as Casper Gutman, the character later portrayed by Sydney Greenstreet in the 1941 version. In The Invisible Man (1933) he plays the Chief Detective who plots to capture the title character, opposite the unseen Claude Rains. He plays the role of the Heavenly Examiner in both the original Broadway production and the 1930 screen version of Sutton Vane‘s Outward Bound. He also works as a director on Broadway.
Digges marries only once, to Irish actress Maire Quinn. The couple wed on August 27, 1907, in New York City and remain together until Maire’s death in August 1947. On October 24, 1947, just two months after his wife’s death, he dies of a stroke in his Manhattan apartment at 1 West 64th Street. He is survived by three siblings, all living in Ireland: a sister, Mrs. Mai Gannen, and two brothers, James and Ernst. Following a requiem mass at Blessed Sacrament Roman Catholic Church on October 28, he is buried next to his wife at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.
(Pictured: Digges as Boss Mangan in the 1920 Broadway production Heartbreak House, which he also directs)
seamus dubhghaill 