Thompson is the youngest child of the social historians and peace activists E. P. Thompson and Dorothy Towers. She has lived in Ireland since 1981 and many of her books are set there. She trains racehorses in the UK and United States and travels extensively in India before settling in 1984 in Inagh, County Clare, in the west of Ireland with her partner Conor Minogue. They have two daughters, Cliodhna and Dearbhla. She is an accomplished fiddler with an interest in Irish traditional music, which is reflected in The New Policeman (2005).
In September 1914 Cregan goes to Dublin to study music in the Leinster School of Music, under Madame Coslett Heller. It is while she is in Dublin that she becomes friends with the Ryan family, who are strong nationalists as well as interested in the Gaelic League and Sinn Féin. She begins to sing for concerts which are fundraisers for the Irish Volunteers. The last concert is just two weeks before the Easter Rising.
During Easter week Cregan is sent to Tralee with “automatics and ammunition” by Seán Mac Diarmada. While she is carrying a violin case of munitions, she is also carrying details for the wireless technology needed for communicating with the SS Aud, the boat which is carrying more weapons for the rebellion. The communications with the SS Aud go wrong when the car carrying the Volunteers goes off a pier and the occupants are drowned. She is still in the area to assist with the surviving Volunteer, who unfortunately knows nothing of the details for the SS Aud. She is not easily able to get back to Dublin, because owing to the Rising the city is cut off. By the time she gets back, her friends have been arrested.
When Cregan is going to school in Dublin she is also working in a school in Rathmines. Like many of the teachers, she loses her job after the rising because of her connection to the rebels. However, she is able to get new positions over the next few years in both Ballyshannon and Portstewart until she marries. In Ballyshannon she experiences the early expressions of support and sympathy, but Portstewart is a Unionist enclave with many houses flying union flags on polling day in 1918.
Cregan is a member of Cumann na mBan and with them is active during the Irish War of Independence. She is given a medal for her participation. On July 23, 1919, she marries Dr. James Ryan in Athenry, County Galway. His entire family had been deeply involved in the Easter Rising, as well as the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. They have three children, Eoin, who becomes a Senator, Nuala (Colgan) and Seamus.
The family is initially based in Wexford during the War. The house is often raided when the British soldiers are looking for her husband and Cregan herself is arrested in February 1921 for refusing to put up martial law posters. Later the family sells the house and remains mobile while she works for the Sinn Féin government, and her husband is in prison. It is during this time that she works as a courier to the continent and to London. After the war, they purchase Kindlestown House in Delgany, County Wicklow, where they remain for the rest of their lives.
Cregan’s first book for children is Old John and gains her considerable international success and attention. Sean Eoin is also published in Irish and is illustrated by Jack Butler Yeats. Her work is also aired on the BBC and RTÉ. Rathina wins the Downey Award in the United States in 1943. She also writes two plays: Hunger strike (1933), based on experience of her husband’s involvement in such a strike, which is broadcast on Radio Éireann on May 5, 1936, and Curlew’s call (1940).
Cregan dies on November 9, 1975, in St. Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin, and is buried in Redford cemetery near her home in County Wicklow.
(Pictured: Máirín Cregan and her husband, Dr. James Ryan)
Blaney is first elected to Dáil Éireann for the Donegal East constituency in a by-election in December 1948, following the death of his father from cancer. He also becomes a member of the Donegal County Council. He remains on the backbenches for a number of years before he is one of a group of young party members handpicked by Seán Lemass to begin a re-organisation drive for the party following the defeat at the 1954 Irish general election. Within the party he gains fame by running the party’s by-election campaigns throughout the 1950s and 1960s. His dedicated bands of supporters earn the sobriquet “the Donegal Mafia,” and succeed in getting Desmond O’Malley and Gerry Collins elected to the Dáil.
Following Fianna Fáil’s victory at the 1957 Irish general election, Éamon de Valera, as Taoiseach, brings new blood into the Cabinet in the shape of Blaney, Jack Lynch, Kevin Boland and Mícheál Ó Móráin. Blaney is appointed Minister for Posts and Telegraphs however he moves to the position of Minister for Local Government at the end of 1957 following the death of Seán Moylan. He retains the post when Lemass succeeds de Valera as Taoiseach in 1959. During his tenure it becomes possible to pay rates by installment and he also introduces legislation which entitles non-nationals to vote in local elections.
In 1966 Lemass resigns as Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader. The subsequent leadership election sees Cork politician Jack Lynch become party leader and Taoiseach. In the subsequent cabinet reshuffle Blaney is appointed Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries.
In 1969, when conflict breaks out in Northern Ireland, Blaney is one of the first to express strong Irish republican views, views which contradict the policy of the Irish Government, in support of Northern nationalists. From around late 1968 onwards, he forms and presides over an unofficial Nationalist group in Leinster House popularly known as “the Letterkenny Table.” The group is dominated by Blaney up until his death.
There is general surprise when, in an incident known as the Arms Crisis, Blaney, along with Charles Haughey, is sacked from Lynch’s cabinet amid allegations of the use of the funds to import arms for use by the IRA. Lynch asks for their resignations but both men refuse, saying they did nothing illegal. Lynch then advises President de Valera to sack Haughey and Blaney from the government. Haughey and Blaney are subsequently tried in court but are acquitted. However, many of their critics refuse to recognise the verdict of the courts. Although Blaney is cleared of wrongdoing, his ministerial career is brought to an end.
Lynch subsequently moves against Blaney so as to isolate him in the party. When Blaney and his supporters try to organise the party’s national collection independently, Lynch acts and in 1972 Blaney is expelled from Fianna Fáil for “conduct unbecoming.”
Following his expulsion from Fianna Fáil, Kevin Boland tries to persuade Blaney to join the Aontacht Éireann party he is creating but Blaney declines. Instead, he contests all subsequent elections for Independent Fianna Fáil – The Republican Party, an organisation that he built up. Throughout the 1970s there are frequent calls for his re-admittance to Fianna Fáil but the most vocal opponents of this move are Fianna Fáil delegates from County Donegal.
MacHale is born in Tubbernavine, near Lahardane, County Mayo on March 6, 1791, to Patrick and Mary Mulkieran MacHale. He is so feeble at birth that he is baptised at home by Father Andrew Conroy. By the time he is five years of age, he begins attending a hedge school. Three important events happen during his childhood: the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the landing at Killala of French troops, whom the boy, hidden in a stacked sheaf of flax, watches marching through a mountain pass to Castlebar, and a few months later the brutal hanging of Father Conroy on a false charge of high treason.
With his friend and ally, Daniel O’Connell, MacHale takes a prominent part in the important question of Catholic emancipation, impeaching in unmeasured terms the severities of the former penal code, which had branded Catholics with the stamp of inferiority. During 1826 his zeal is omnipresent. He calls on the Government to remember how the Act of Union in 1800 was carried by William Pitt the Younger on the distinct assurance and implied promise that Catholic emancipation, which had been denied by the Irish Parliament, should be granted by the Parliament of the Empire.
Oliver Kelly, Archbishop of Tuam, dies in 1834, and the clergy selects MacHale as one of three candidates, to the annoyance of the Government who despatches agents to induce Pope Gregory XVI not to nominate him to the vacant see. Disregarding their request, the pope appoints MacHale Archbishop of Tuam. He is the first prelate since the Reformation who has received his entire education in Ireland. The corrupt practices of general parliamentary elections and the Tithe War cause frequent rioting and bloodshed and are the subjects of denunciation by the new archbishop, until the passing of a Tithes bill in 1838. He also leads the opposition to the ProtestantSecond Reformation, which is being pursued by evangelical clergy in the Church of Ireland, including the Bishop of Tuam, Killala and Achonry, Thomas Plunket.
The repeal of the Acts of Union 1800, advocated by O’Connell, enlists MacHale’s ardent sympathy and he assists the Liberator in many ways, and remits subscriptions from his priests for this purpose. In his zeal for the cause of the Catholic religion and of Ireland, so long downtrodden, but not in the 1830s, he frequently incurs from his opponents the charge of intemperate language, something not altogether undeserved. In his anxiety to reform abuses and to secure the welfare of Ireland, by an uncompromising and impetuous zeal, he makes many bitter and unrelenting enemies, particularly British ministers and their supporters.
The Great Famine of 1846–47 affects his diocese more than any. In the first year he announces in a sermon that the famine is a divine punishment on his flock for their sins. Then by 1846 he warns the Government as to the state of Ireland, reproaches them for their dilatoriness, and holds up the uselessness of relief works. From England as well as other parts of the world, cargoes of food are sent to the starving Irish. Bread and soup are distributed from the archbishop’s kitchen. Donations sent to him are acknowledged, accounted for, and disbursed by his clergy among the victims.
The death of O’Connell in 1847 is a setback to MacHale as are the subsequent disagreements within the Repeal Association. He strongly advises against the violence of Young Ireland. Over the next 30 years he becomes involved in political matters, particularly those involving the church. Toward the end of his life, he becomes less active in politics.
MacHale attends the First Vatican Council in 1869. He believes that the favourable moment has not arrived for an immediate definition of the dogma of papal infallibility. Better to leave it a matter of faith, not written down, and consequently he speaks and votes in the council against its promulgation. Once the dogma had been defined, he declares the dogma of infallibility “to be true Catholic doctrine, which he believed as he believed the Apostles’ Creed“. In 1877, to the disappointment of the archbishop who desires that his nephew should be his co-adjutor, Dr. John McEvilly, Bishop of Galway, is elected by the clergy of the archdiocese, and is commanded by Pope Leo XIII after some delay, to assume his post. He had opposed this election as far as possible but submits to the papal order.
Every Sunday MacHale preaches a sermon in Irish at the cathedral, and during his diocesan visitations he always addresses the people in their native tongue, which is still largely used in his diocese. On journeys he usually converses in Irish with his attendant chaplain and has to use it to address people of Tuam or the beggars who greet him whenever he goes out. He preaches his last Irish sermon after his Sunday Mass, April 1881. He dies in Tuam seven months later, on November 7, 1881, and is buried in the cathedral at Tuam on November 15.
On November 6, 1929, Conradh na Gaeilge (English: Gaelic League) announces expulsion for anyone who attends “foreign jazz dances.”
Conradh na Gaeilge, a cultural organisation which promotes the Irish language, implements a ban against all forms of jazz music. Taken by the executive of the Conradh na Gaeilge, it is an issue, which has festered for many months prior to the ban and will for some time afterward.
It is claimed that jazz music has taken hold in Ireland in the wake of World War I and has spread from Dublin to the music halls which have sprung up in towns and villages across the country. Detractors claim that jazz music and dancing is just a “passing phase” and that it is the “natural reaction” to the post-war phase that Ireland finds itself in.
All branches of Conradh na Gaeilge are sent a warning as to their conduct going forward with particular regard to attending or promoting jazz. The idea is to follow the Gaelic Athletic Association’s bans on the playing of foreign games, something which has proved popular across the country. While the debate had begun earlier in 1929 in Wexford and other centres, it is in Leitrim that the most vocal opponents of jazz are to be found. Here the parish priest of Cloone, Fr. Conferey, openly criticises jazz from the pulpit and tells the people that they should sing Irish songs only. In nearby Mohill it is reported that 3,000 people demand that jazz be banned and they carry banners with slogans such as “Down with Jazz” and “Out with paganism.”
Ultimately, the ban sparks outrage across the country but it speaks volumes about post-independent Ireland and attitudes towards culture and pastimes, which are not Irish.
(From: Gaelic League Bans ‘Jazz’ – 6 November 1929, Sunday Independent, Irish Newspaper Archives, http://www.irishnewsarchives.com, November 10, 1929)
Father Des Wilson, Irish Catholic priest and church dissident who in the course of the Northern IrelandTroubles embraces ideas and practice associated, internationally, with liberation theology, dies in his native Belfast on November 5, 2019. He believes the Word of God can never be silent in the face of oppression, injustice and suffering. He seeks to apply the ideas of liberation theology to the North, supporting and empowering marginalised communities, and acting as a voice for the voiceless.
Wilson is born in Belfast on July 8, 1925, the youngest of five sons to William Wilson, a publican and native of County Cavan, and his wife Emma (née McAvoy), a native of south County Down. He spends his earliest years above his father’s pub in Belfast, before the family moves to a house in the suburbs.
Wilson attends primary school locally, then receives secondary education at St. Malachy’s College. During his time there Belfast is blitzed in April and May 1941. Almost 1,000 are killed. The carnage he sees is a factor in his deciding on the priesthood.
After ordination Wilson serves as chaplain in Belfast’s Mater Infirmorum Hospital, then spends 15 years in St. Malachy’s as spiritual director. Former pupils remember him as fair, and able to play jazz excellently on the organ.
Wilson lives out his beliefs, spending half a century in Belfast’s Ballymurphy estate, among the North’s most deprived, and one of the areas which suffers worst from the Troubles. There he plays a role in community development, establishing projects to provide employment in the area. He suffers, finding himself for years outside the official Catholic Church.
Wilson plays a significant role in providing adult education. He wants an education that does not just provide qualifications and open career paths but is psychologically liberating.
Life changes in 1966 when Wilson is moved to St. John’s Parish in West Belfast as a curate. Having come from a comfortable background in Ballymurphy, he is shocked by the poverty, the poor housing and the treatment of women. Unusual for a priest at the time, he moves into a terraced house in the estate. He finds the Catholic Church unable to respond to the multiple problems people are facing. That inability worsens as the Troubles erupt.
Wilson’s personal probity is so recognised that he is accepted as a mediator in feuds between the Provisional Irish Republican Army and Official Irish Republican Army in the 1970s and is able to broker permanent peace. He also helps bring about the ceasefires in the 1990s.
Wilson does not shirk unpopular stances. In the 1970s he refuses to condemn the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Later he says the conviction of former Real Irish Republican Army leader Michael McKevitt for directing terrorism is unsafe. He also publicly visits and supports a Ballymurphy couple which has a very bitter falling out with Sinn Féin, leading to a picket on their home.
By 1975 relations with his bishop has broken down and Wilson resigns but continues ministering in Ballymurphy. Forbidden to say Mass in a church, his pay cut off, he says Mass in his house. He suffers hardship, living from savings, some earnings from writing, broadcasting and lecturing, and help from Quaker and Presbyterian friends. By the early 1980s his Ballymurphy home becomes too small for the many classes he organises. His classes are rehoused and expanded as the Conway Education Centre in a vacant mill. He is able to offer a range of vocational and non-vocational courses with almost 1,000 students. In the mid-1980s his relationship with the Dioceses of Down and Connor is re-established, and he is allowed to continue his ministry.
Personally, Wilson has great gifts of head and heart and is incapable of rancour. A strong belief is that it is important to share food to talk, as happened in Biblical times. Thus, a lunch would last an afternoon.
Wilson dies on November 5, 2019, in Belfast. Instead of wreaths, he asks mourners to donate to the Ballymurphy Massacre Memorial Garden. The garden is dedicated to the victims of the Ballymurphy massacre of August 1971, which saw the killing in the district of eleven civilians by soldiers of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment. The victims include Fr. Hugh Mullan, who had been a student of Wilson’s at St. Malachy’s. He was shot while going to the aid of a wounded man.
Ferguson is the son of a farmer. In 1902, he goes to work with his brother, Joe, in his bicycle and car repair business. While working there as a mechanic, he develops an interest in aviation, visiting air shows abroad. In 1904, he begins to race motorcycles.
The first person to accomplish powered flight in the UK is Alliot Verdon Roe in June 1908, who also flies an aeroplane of his own design, but this has not yet been achieved in Ireland. Ferguson begins to develop a keen interest in the mechanics of flying and travels to several air shows, including exhibitions in 1909 at Blackpool and Rheims where he takes notes of the design of early aircraft. He convinces his brother that they should attempt to build an aircraft at their Belfast workshop and, working from his notes, they work on the design of a plane, the Ferguson monoplane.
After making many changes and improvements, they transport their new aircraft by towing it behind a car through the streets of Belfast up to Hillsborough Park to make their first attempt at flight. They are at first thwarted by propeller trouble but continue to make technical alterations to the plane. After a delay of nearly a week caused by bad weather, the Ferguson monoplane finally takes off from Hillsborough on December 31, 1909. Ferguson becomes the first Irishman to fly and the first Irishman to build and fly his own aeroplane.
After falling out with his brother over the safety and future of aviation, Ferguson decides to go it alone, and in 1911 founds a company selling Maxwell, Star and Vauxhall cars and Overtime Tractors. He sees at first hand the weakness of having tractor and plough as separate articulated units, and in 1917 he devises a plough that can be rigidly attached to a Ford Model T car — the Eros, which becomes a limited success, competing with the Fordson Model F.
In 1917 Ferguson meets Charles E. Sorensen while Sorensen is in England scouting production sites for the Fordson tractor. They discuss methods of hitching the implement to the tractor to make them a unit. In 1920 and 1921 he demonstrates early versions of his three-point linkage on Fordson tractors at Cork and at Dearborn, Michigan. He and Henry Ford discuss putting the Ferguson system of hitch and implements onto Fordson tractors at the factory, but no deal is struck. At the time the hitch is mechanical. Ferguson and his team of longtime colleagues, including Willie Sands and Archie Greer, soon develop a hydraulic version, which is patented in 1926. After one or two false starts, he eventually founds the Ferguson-Sherman Inc., with Eber and George Sherman.
The new enterprise manufactures the Ferguson plough, incorporating the patented “Duplex” hitch system mainly intended for the Fordson “F” tractor. Following several more years of development, Ferguson’s new hydraulic version of the three-point linkage is first seen on his prototype “Ferguson Black” or ‘Irish tractor’ as he calls it, now in the Science Museum, South Kensington, London. A production version of the “Black” is introduced in May 1936, made at one of the David Brown Engineering Ltd. factories in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, and designated Ferguson Model A tractor.
In October 1938, Ferguson demonstrates his latest tractor to Henry Ford at Dearborn, and they make the famous “handshake agreement.” He takes with him his latest patents covering future improvements to the Ferguson tractor and it is these that lead to the Ford-Ferguson 9N introduction to the world on June 29, 1939.
Henry Ford II, Ford’s grandson, ends the handshake agreement on June 30, 1947, following unsuccessful negotiations with Ferguson, but continues to produce a tractor, the 8N, incorporating Ferguson’s inventions, the patents on almost all of which have not yet expired, and Ferguson is left without a tractor to sell in North America. His reaction is a lawsuit demanding compensation for damage to his business and for Ford’s illegal use of his designs. The case is settled out of court in April 1952 for just over $9 million. The court case costs him about half of that and a great deal of stress and ill health.
By 1952, most of the important Ferguson patents have expired, and this allows Henry Ford II to claim that the case had not restricted Ford’s activities too much. It follows that all the world’s other tractor manufacturers can also use Ferguson’s inventions, which they do. A year later Ferguson merges with Massey-Harris Limited to become Massey-Harris-Ferguson Co., later Massey Ferguson.
Ferguson dies at his home at Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, England, on October 25, 1960, as the result of a barbiturate overdose. The inquest is unable to conclude whether his death had been accidental or not.
A blue plaque commemorating Ferguson is mounted on the Ulster Bank building in Donegall Square, Belfast, the former site of his showroom. A granite memorial has been erected to Ferguson’s pioneering flight on the North Promenade, Newcastle, County Down, and a full-scale replica of the Ferguson monoplane and an early Ferguson tractor and plough can be seen at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum at Cultra, County Down. Today his name lives on in the name of the Massey Ferguson company.
O’Brien is a ship builder and designer, and his notable boats include the Kelpie (used for gun running in 1914), the Saoirse (in which he circumnavigates the globe) and the Ilen (a Falkland Islands service ship).
O’Brien is credited with two buildings in his lifetime: the Co-operative Hall in County Donegal and the People’s Hall in County Limerick. He is also known as a naval architect, having designed two ships, the Saoirse and the llen. He later captains both of these ships himself.
In Saoirse, a 20-ton, 42-foot ketch designed and built in 1922 in Baltimore, County Cork, he and three crew members circumnavigate the globe between 1923 and 1925 – the first recorded by an amateur skipper from west to east, the first yacht circumnavigation by way of the three great capes: Cape Horn, Cape of Good Hope and Cape Leeuwin, and the first boat flying the Irish tri-colour to enter many of the world’s ports and harbours. His voyage begins and ends at the Port of Foynes, County Limerick, where he lives. His account of the voyage, Across Three Oceans, (1927) becomes one of the classics of maritime literature.
Up until O’Brien’s circumnavigation, this route is the preserve of square-rigged grain ships taking part in the grain race from Australia to England via Cape Horn (also known as the clipper route).
O’Brien’s seagoing experiences are put to use in his design of the Ilen, which is built for the Falkland Islands as a service boat and launched in the spring of 1926. In 1998, Ilen returns to the site where she was first built, on the River Ilen near Baltimore, County Cork, where she undergoes a full restoration and is re-launched in May 2018. This task provides work-based learning for the students of the Ilen School.
O’Brien has some involvement with gun running in 1914 on behalf of the Irish Volunteers, for political reasons and because he has experience in sailing. On July 26, 1914, nine hundred guns are brought to Howth harbour aboard Erskine Childers‘ yacht Asgard. As part of the same operation, O’Brien transports arms on his yacht, Kelpie. The guns on Kelpie are transshipped to another yacht, Chotah, owned by Sir Thomas Myles, before being landed at Kilcoole in County Wicklow on August 1, 1914. After the gun running incidents, he serves in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.
In 1928, O’Brien marries a well-known artist, Kathleen Francis, the youngest daughter of Sir George Clausen, RA. The couple thereafter moves to Ibiza, where they live on the Saoirse until Kathleen’s death in 1936. They have no children. Relocating to Cornwall, where he lives with his sister, he writes books on sailing and works of fiction for children. Although too old for active service when war with Germany breaks out in 1939, he assists the British war effort by serving in the Small Ships Pool, which delivers support vessels across the Atlantic and brings food supplies from the United States in private yachts.
In 1940 O’Brien sells Saoirse to the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club. The boat remains in use until 1980, when it is lost off the Jamaican coast. After the war he retires to another sister’s home in Foynes, County Limerick, where he lives and continues to write books for children until his death on April 18, 1952.
Charles Jervas, Irish portrait painter, translator, and art collector of the early 18th century, dies at his home at Cleveland Court, London, on November 2, 1739.
Born in Shinrone, County Offaly, around 1675, Jervas is one of seven children (five sons and two daughters) of John Jervas of Clonlisk, Shinrone, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Captain John Baldwin, High Sheriff of County Offaly, of Shinrone. He studies in London as an assistant under Sir Godfrey Kneller between 1694 and 1695.
After selling a series of small copies of the Raphael Cartoons around 1698 to Dr. George Clarke of All Souls College, Oxford, the following year, he travels to Paris and Rome (while financially supported by Clarke and others) remaining there for most of the decade before returning to London in 1709 where he finds success as a portrait painter.
Painting portraits of the city’s intellectuals, among them such personal friends as Jonathan Swift and the poet Alexander Pope, both of which are now in the National Portrait Gallery, London, Jervas becomes a popular artist often referred to in the works of literary figures of the period.
Jervas gives painting lessons to Pope at his house in Cleveland Court, St. James’s, which Pope mentions in his poem, To Belinda on the Rape of the Lock, written in 1713 and published in 1717 in Poems on Several Occasions.
Pope’s verse Epistle to Mr. Jervas, written around 1715, is published in the 1716 edition of John Dryden‘s 1695 translation of Fresnoy’s Art of Painting (Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy‘s De arte graphica, 1668). In it, Pope refers to Jervas’s skill as an artist:
O, lasting as those colours may they shine, Free as they stroke, yet faultless as thy line; New graces yearly like thy works display, Soft without weakness, without glaring gay!
With his growing reputation, Jervas succeeds Kneller as Principal Painter in Ordinary to King George I in 1723, and subsequently King George II. In 1727 he marries Penelope Hume, a wealthy widow with a supposed fortune of £20,000, and moves to Hampton, London. He continues to live in London until his death on November 2, 1739.
Jervas’s translation of Miguel de Cervantes‘s novel Don Quixote, published posthumously in 1742 as being made by Charles “Jarvis” due to a printer’s error, has since come to be known as “the Jarvis translation.” He is first to provide an introduction to the novel including a critical analysis of previous translations of Don Quixote. It has been highly praised as the most accurate translation of the novel up to that time, but also strongly criticised for being stiff and humourless, although it goes through many printings during the 19th century.
As principal portraitist to the King of England, Jervas is known for his vanity and luck, as mentioned in the Imperial Biographical Dictionary, “He married a widow with $20,000; and his natural self-conceit was greatly encouraged by his intimate friend [Alexander] Pope, who has written an epistle full of silly flattery.”
According to one account, after comparing a painting he had copied from Titian, Jervas is said to have stated, “Poor little Tit, how he would starve!”
Upon being told that Jervas had set up a carriage with four horses, Godfrey Kneller replies, “Ach, mein Gott, if his horses do not draw better than he does, he will never get to his journey’s end.”
Eileen Quinn, age 24 and within two months of the birth of her fourth child, is shot by Galway police on November 1, 1920, during the Irish War of Independence (1919-21), while holding her nine-month-old child in her arms and sitting on the lawn in front of her farmhouse at Kiltartan near Gort, bleeding to death later that night. She leaves three children, the eldest of whom is not yet four years old.
Afraid of ambushes, police have begun to “reconnoiter by fire,” shooting blindly into woods and possible ambush sites. Quinn is near one such site when the police open fire, and she is hit by a stray bullet.
At the time of the shooting, her husband Malachy Quinn, who is a farmer, is in Gort. Another messenger going to Ardrahan for Dr. Foley is, it is reported, wounded by a bullet. Uniformed men pass into Gort subsequently firing shots. When the lorry passes the house where the dying woman lay, the terror-stricken occupants flee by the back way.
Rev. Fr. John Considine, C.C., Gort, gives a graphic description of Quinn’s last moments.
“It is too awful, too inhuman, to contemplate.” These are Father Considine’s opening remarks concerning the tragedy. Pressed to explain what occurred, he says, “I have read of Turkish atrocities; I have read of the death of Joan of Arc; I have read of the sufferings of Nurse Cavell, and as I read those things I often felt my blood boil and I often prayed that the good God might change the minds and hearts of those cruel monsters.”
“Little did I then dream that I should witness a tragedy, an atrocity more hideous, more revolting, more frightful, more brutal, more cruel than any of those things, and here in our own little peaceful parish of Gort. My God, it is awful! About three o’clock on Tuesday, Malachy Quinn weeping bitterly, called for me. Father, says he, ‘I have just heard that my wife had been shot. Will you run down immediately?’ I procured a motor car and hurried to the scene. At the gateway there we beheld a large pool of blood. In the yard another pool, and the porch leading to the kitchen was covered with blood. I entered the room. Oh, God! what a sight. There lay the poor woman, the blood oozing out through her clothes.”
“She turned her eyes towards me and said, ‘Oh, Father John, I have been shot.’ ‘Shot!’ I exclaimed. ‘Yes,’ she replied. By whom, I asked. ‘Police’ she answered.”
Quinn then becomes weaker, Father Considine explains, and on rallying exclaims, “Father John, will you do something for me?” He tries to console her and administers the Last Sacrament.
“When I finished, she whispered to me, bring me Malachy, bring him to me, I hear him crying. I have something to tell him. I did so. What a scene. Then she became weak and fainted off. Gradually she became worse.”
“I sent word immediately to the Head Constable at Gort. He arrived with police and military. All seemed shocked at the tragedy. I asked him to go in and see the woman. He and his men felt the trial too much, as he answered, ‘I cannot.’ No trace of the bullet could be found.”
Continuing, Father Considine says Quinn is sitting on the lawn with her child when the lorry passes from which the fatal shot is fired. The bullet pierces her stomach and the child she is holding falls from her arms. She crawls over the wall into the yard, and then crawls to the porch to tell her servant that she has been shot. “Take in the little children!” she exclaims.
From 3:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. she lingers on in pain. Occasionally she clasps Father Considine’s hand and pulls him toward her, and says, “I’m done, I’m done!” At 10:30 her condition becomes worse, and they kneel by her bedside to recite the Rosary and prayers for the dying. She tries to join but is too weak.
At 10:45 p.m. the little children begin to cry, and with them the crowded house bursts into tears. As Father Considine reads the last prayer of the Ritual she looks around, then closes her eyes and dies.
Irish public opinion is outraged when a military court of inquiry subsequently returns a verdict of “death by misadventure.” Soon afterward, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) Headquarters and the Chief of Police issue orders against wild firing from motor vehicles.
seamus dubhghaill 