Cruise O’Brien follows his cousin Owen into Sandford Park School, which has a predominantly Protestant ethos despite objections from Catholic clergy. He subsequently attends Trinity College Dublin (TCD) before joining the Irish diplomatic corps.
Although he is a fierce advocate of his homeland, Cruise O’Brien is a strong critic of Irish Republican Army (IRA) violence and of what he considers the romanticized desire for reunification with Northern Ireland. His collection of essays Maria Cross: Imaginative Patterns in a Group of Modern Catholic Writers (1952; written under the pseudonym Donat O’Donnell) impresses UN Secretary-GeneralDag Hammarskjöld, who in 1961 appoints him UN special representative in the Congo, later the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He orders UN peacekeeping forces into the breakaway Katanga province, and the resulting scandal forces him out of office. Despite UN objections, he writes To Katanga and Back (1963) to explain his actions.
After serving as vice-chancellor of the University of Ghana (1962–65) and Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at New York University (1965–69), Cruise O’Brien enters Irish politics. He holds a Labour Party seat in Dáil Éireann from 1969 to 1977 and then in the Senate from 1977 to 1979, representing Trinity College, of which he is pro-chancellor (1973–2008).
In 1979, Cruise O’Brien is named editor in chief of the British Sunday newspaper The Observer, but he leaves after three tumultuous years. He remains an active newspaper columnist, especially for the Irish Independent until 2007. His books include States of Ireland (1972) and On the Eve of the Millennium (1995), as well as perceptive studies of Charles Stewart Parnell, Edmund Burke, and Thomas Jefferson.
In early July 1996, in the period of Cruise O’Brien’s involvement as a UK Unionist Party (UKUP) representative in talks at Stormont, he suffers a mild stroke. He recovers well, but is left with anxiety about his recall of names. His last public appearance is on September 7, 2006, to deliver an address on the ninetieth anniversary of the death of Tom Kettle, in the old House of Lords chamber of the Bank of Ireland on College Green.
Born in Limerick in 1844, Sheehy is the son of Richard Sheehy and Johanna Shea, and is the brother of Mary Sheehy and Fr. Eugene Sheehy. He is a student for the priesthood at the Irish College in Paris, but leaves due to a cholera epidemic and later marries Bessie McCoy. In his youth he is a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and is active in the Irish National Land League. He is imprisoned on six occasions for his part in the Land War.
The two factions of the Irish Parliamentary Party reunite for the general election in 1900, but Sheehy does not stand again and is out of parliament for the next three years. After the death in August 1903 of James Laurence Carew, the Independent Nationalist MP for South Meath, he is selected as the Irish Parliamentary Party candidate in the resulting by-election in October 1903. Carew had allegedly been elected in 1900 as a result of a series of errors in nominations, and his predecessor John Howard Parnell stands again, this time as an Independent Nationalist. Sheehy wins with a majority of more than two to one, and holds the seat until he stands down at the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland.
Sheehy and his wife, Bessie, have seven children, of whom six survive to adulthood. One of his daughters, Mary (born 1884), marries the MP Tom Kettle and has one daughter, Betty (1913–1996). Hanna (born 1877), becomes a teacher and marries the writer Francis Skeffington. They have one son, Owen, who is seven years old when his father is murdered by the Captain Bowen-Colthurst in Portobello Barracks, Rathmines, during the 1916 Easter Rising. Kathleen marries Freeman’s Journal and Irish Independentjournalist Frank Cruise O’Brien. The contrarian politician and writer Conor Cruise O’Brien is their son. Margaret (born 1879), an elocutionist, actress and playwright, marries solicitor Frank Culhane. They have four children. After his death she marries her godson, the poet Michael Casey. Sheehy’s two sons, Richard and Eugene, are barristers.
The writer James Joyce, who lives nearby as a youth, often visits the family home, 2 Belvedere Place, where musical evenings and theatricals take place every Sunday evening. Joyce entertains the family with Italian songs. In 1900, Margaret writes a play in which the Sheehys and their friends, including Joyce, act. Joyce takes a particular liking to Eugene and has a long-lasting but unrequited crush on Mary. Joyce’s novel Ulysses wittily describes an encounter between Sheehy’s wife, Bessie, and Father John Conmee, SJ, rector of Clongowes Wood College. Their daughter Mary is the spéirbhean longingly pursued by the protagonist in the story “Araby” in Joyce’s collection Dubliners. Another daughter, Kathleen, is possibly the model for the mockingly nationalist Miss Ivors in the story “The Dead“, which concludes Dubliners.
When Sheehy dies at the age of 88 in Dublin on December 17, 1932, it is reported that he has been the oldest surviving member of the Irish Parliamentary Party.
Since the beginning of its campaign in 1970, the Provisional IRA has carried out many improvised land mine and roadside bomb attacks on British forces in the region. In September 1972, three British soldiers are killed when their armoured vehicle is blown up by an IRA land mine at Sanaghanroe, near Dungannon. In March 1974, two IRA members are killed on the Aughnacloy Road near Dungannon when a land mine they are planting explodes prematurely.
The Dungannon attack occurs just months after the Warrenpoint ambush on August 27, 1979, where the IRA kills eighteen British soldiers with roadside bombs in south County Down — the deadliest single attack on British forces during The Troubles.
On December 16, 1979, two armoured British Army Land Rovers are driving along Ballygawley Road, about two miles outside Dungannon. A unit of the IRA had planted a 600–1,000-pound (270–450 kg) improvised land mine in a culvert under the road at Glenadush. When the second vehicle reaches the culvert, the land mine is detonated by remote control from a concealed location, showcasing their evolving tactics in guerrilla warfare and ambush strategy. The blast is powerful enough to launch the armoured Land Rover into the air and killing four soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Artillery outright: William Beck (23), Keith Richards (22), Simon Evans (19), and Allan Ayrton (23).
Maolra Seoighe (English: Myles Joyce), is an Irish man who is wrongfully convicted and hanged on December 15, 1882. He is found guilty of the Maumtrasna Murders and is sentenced to death. Though he can only speak Irish, the case is heard in English without any translation service. He is posthumously pardoned in 2018.
Seoighe is the most prominent figure in a controversial trial in 1882 that takes place while Ireland is part of the United Kingdom. Three Irish language speakers are condemned to death for the murder of a local family (John Joyce, his wife Brighid, his mother Mairéad, his daughter Peigí and son Mícheál) in Maumtrasna, on the border between County Mayo and County Galway. It is presumed by the authorities to be a local feud connected to sheep rustling and the Land War. Eight men are convicted on what turns out to be perjured evidence and three of them condemned to death: Maolra Seoighe (a father of five children), Pat Casey and Pat Joyce.
Covering the incident, The Spectator writes the following:
“The Tragedy at Maumtrasna, investigated this week in Dublin, almost unique as it is in the annals of the United Kingdom, brings out in strong relief two facts which Englishmen are too apt to forget. One is the existence in particular districts of Ireland of a class of peasants who are scarcely civilised beings, and approach far nearer to savages than any other white men; and the other is their extraordinary and exceptional gloominess of temper. In remote places of Ireland, especially in Connaught, on a few of the islands, and in one or two mountain districts, dwell cultivators who are in knowledge, in habits, and in the discipline of life no higher than Maories or other Polynesians.”
The court proceedings are carried out in a language the accused do not understand (English), with a solicitor from Trinity College Dublin (TCD), who does not speak Irish. The three are executed in Galway by William Marwood for the crime in 1882. The role of John Spencer, 5th Earl Spencer, who is then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, is the most controversial aspect of the trial, leading most modern scholars to characterise it as a miscarriage of justice. Research carried out in The National Archives by Seán Ó Cuirreáin, has found that Spencer “compensated” three alleged eyewitnesses to the sum of £1,250, equivalent to €157,000 (by 2016 rates).
As of 2016, nobody has issued an apology or pardon for the executions, though the case has been periodically taken up by various political figures. The then MP for Westmeath, Timothy Harrington, takes up the case, claiming that the Crown Prosecutor for the case George Bolton, had deliberately withheld evidence from the trial. In 2011, two sitting members of the House of Lords, the Liberal Democrat life peers David Alton and Eric Lubbock, request a review of the case. Crispin Blunt, ToryParliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Prisons and Youth Justice, states that Seoighe was “probably an innocent man,” but he does not seek an official pardon.
Seoighe’s final words are: “Feicfidh mé Iosa Críost ar ball beag – crochadh eisean san éagóir chomh maith. … Ara, tá mé ag imeacht … Go bhfóire Dia ar mo bhean agus a cúigear dílleachtaí.” (I will be seeing Jesus Christ soon – he too was also unjustly hanged … I am leaving … the blessings of God on my wife and her five orphans.)
On April 4, 2018, Michael D. Higgins, the President of Ireland, issues a pardon on the advice of the government of Ireland saying “Maolra Seoighe was wrongly convicted of murder and was hanged for a crime that he did not commit”. It is the first presidential pardon relating to an event predating the foundation of the state in 1922 and the second time a pardon has been issued after an execution. Seoighe’s case is not an isolated one, and there are strong similarities with the case of Patrick Walsh who was hanged in the Galway jail on September 22, 1882, just three months before Seoighe for the murders of Martin and John Lydon. The same key players and political factors are active in both cases and his conviction is just as questionable as that of Seoighe.
In September 2009, the story is featured on RTÉ‘s CSI programme under an episode entitled CSI Maamtrasna Massacre. A dramatised Irish language film regarding the affair, entitled Murdair Mhám Trasna, produced by Ciarán Ó Cofaigh is released in 2017.
Traynor is born in Dublin on March 21, 1886, into a strongly nationalist family. He is educated by the Christian Brothers. In 1899, he is apprenticed to John Long, a famous woodcarver. As a young man he is a noted footballer and tours Europe as a goalkeeper with Belfast Celtic F.C. whom he plays with from 1910 to 1912. He rejects claims soccer is a foreign sport calling it “a Celtic game, pure and simple, having its roots in the Highlands of Scotland.”
When the Irish Civil War breaks out in June 1922, Traynor takes the Anti-Treaty IRA side. The Dublin Brigade is split, however, with many of its members following Michael Collins in taking the pro-Treaty side. During the Battle of Dublin, he is in charge of the Barry’s Hotel garrison, before making their escape. He organises guerilla activity in south Dublin and County Wicklow, before being captured by Free State troops in September. He is then imprisoned for the remainder of the war.
In 1936, Traynor is first appointed to the Cabinet as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. In September 1939, he is appointed Minister for Defence and holds the portfolio to February 1948. In 1948, he becomes President of the Football Association of Ireland, a position he holds until his death. He serves as Minister for Defence in several Fianna Fáil governments and as Minister for Justice, where he is undermined by his junior minister, and later Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, before he retires in 1961.
Traynor dies in Dublin at the age of 77 on December 14, 1963. He has a road named in his memory, running from the Malahide Road through Coolock to Santry in Dublin’s northern suburbs.
Byrne is born on November 23, 1900, in the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, Dublin, the elder among one son and one daughter of Vincent Byrne, carpenter, of 33 Denzille Street (now Fenian Street), and his wife Margaret (née White). By 1911 the family is living with maternal relatives at 1 Anne’s Lane. Educated at St. Andrew’s national school, Westland Row, he is apprenticed as a cabinet maker under Thomas Weafer, a company captain in the Irish Volunteers, who is subsequently killed in the 1916 Easter Rising. At the age of fourteen, he joins the Irish Volunteers in January 1915, and is posted to the 2nd Battalion of the Dublin Brigade. His training includes lectures on street fighting by James Connolly. During the 1916 rising he serves with the 2nd Battalion in Jacob’s biscuit factory under Thomas MacDonagh. At the surrender he is slipped out a factory window to safety by a priest who is acting as an intermediary. Arrested in his home a week later, he is held in Richmond Barracks with other youngsters, all of whom are released after an additional week. Active in the post-rising reorganisation of the Dublin Brigade, he claims to have voted twenty times for Sinn Féin candidates in the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland.
In November 1919, Byrne is recruited to an elite counter-intelligence squad of the Dublin Brigade, whose primary mission is the assassination of plainclothes detectives of the Dublin Metropolitan Police’s (DMP) political (‘G’) division. He participates in the attempted ambush of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, John French, at Ashtown, Dublin, on December 19, 1919, a combined operation of the Dublin and the 3rd Tipperary brigades. In March 1920, he leaves his civilian employment with the Irish Woodworkers, Crow Street, when the squad is constituted as a full-time, paid, GHQ guard, under direct orders from Michael Collins. Dubbed “The Twelve Apostles,” the squad also includes James Slattery, a workmate of Byrne since their apprenticeships. For the duration of the Irish War of Independence, Byrne takes part in the stakeouts and killings of police detectives and military intelligence agents. His witness statement to the Bureau of Military History recounts his participation in some fifteen such operations. On Bloody Sunday he commands an IRA detail that kills two of the “Cairo Gang“ agents in their boarding house at 38 Upper Mount Street on November 21, 1920. He takes part in The Custom House raid on May 25, 1921.
Owing largely to his devoted allegiance to Collins, Byrne supports the Anglo–Irish Treaty of December 1921, regarding it as a stepping stone to complete independence. Enlisting in the National Army, he serves in the Dublin Guard. Promoted five times from January 1922 to February 1923, he rises in rank from company sergeant to commandant. He is OC of the guard at the handover of Dublin Castle from British to Irish authority on January 16, 1922. During ensuing months he commands guard details at government buildings and the Bank of Ireland, College Green, Dublin. In March 1922, he foils an attempt by Anti-Treaty forces to seize the bank with the aid of mutinous soldiers within the building’s guard. Having displayed courage and presence of mind throughout the incident, he is promoted captain in the field. Resenting the role given to ex-British-army officers in the National Army, and feeling that the political elite of the Free State are betraying the national interest, he is among the group of officers involved in the failed army mutiny of 1924, and accordingly is forced to resign his commission on March 21. He then works as a carpenter on the industrial staff of the Office of Public Works (OPW), and in the post office stores, St. John’s Road, Kilmainham, Dublin, until his retirement.
Byrne is a founding member of both the Association of Dublin Brigades and the 1916–1921 Club. Long lived, and a willing raconteur with a colourful turn of phrase, he becomes probably the best known of Collins’s squad (of which he is the last surviving member), granting many interviews to journalists and historians. He expresses no misgivings about his role as a revolutionary hit man, arguing the necessity of the ruthless methods employed, which deterred potential informers, and eventually won the struggle by crippling British intelligence.
Byrne lives in Dublin at 59 Blessington Street, and later at 227 Errigal Road, Drimnagh. His last address is 25 Lein Road, Artane. His wife Eileen predeceases him. He dies on December 13, 1992, survived by two daughters and one son. He is buried at Balgriffin Cemetery, Balgriffin, County Dublin.
(From: “Byrne, Vincent (‘Vinnie’)” by Lawrence William White and Pauric J. Dempsey, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Simpson signs for Rangers from Linfield for a sum of £11,500 in 1950. He spends nine years (1950–59) at Rangers making 239 appearances and scoring 163 goals. He wins three championship medals and a Scottish Cup winners medal with Rangers to add to the two Northern Ireland Football League and two Irish Cups he wins with Linfield. He leaves Ibrox Stadium in 1959 and spends the last couple of years of his career with Stirling Albion, Partick Thistle and (then non-league) Oxford United.
As an illustration of his popularity, in the fictional song “A Trip to Ibrox,” Simpson is credited with scoring twice in a “Ne’erday” Old Firm Derby at Ibrox. Whereby Rangers are 1-0 down at halftime, and Simpson inspires his team to a second half comeback after Willie Waddell has scored an equaliser.
In recognition of his service to that club, Simpson is made a member of the Rangers F.C. Hall of Fame.
Simpson makes his debut for Northern Ireland in 1951 against Wales, scoring in the process. He represents his country twelve times in total between 1951 and 1958, scoring five goals. He is selected in Northern Ireland’s squad for the 1958 FIFA World Cup in Sweden but a late injury ensures he does not play at all during the finals.
In April 2015, the feature-length documentarySpirit of ’58 is screened as part of the Belfast Film Festival. It features Simpson prominently alongside the other surviving players (Billy Bingham, Peter McParland, Jimmy McIlroy and Harry Gregg) as it tells the story of Northern Ireland’s journey throughout the 1950s under the managership of Peter Doherty, culminating in the 1958 World Cup.
Luttrell was a captain in the Royal Navy but retires in 1789. He is returned to Parliament for Stockbridge in 1774, a seat he holds until 1775, and again between 1780 and 1785. Between 1785 and 1826 he is a commissioner of HM Customs and Excise. He succeeds his elder brother to the earldom in 1821. This is an Irish peerage and does not entitle him to an automatic seat in the House of Lords.
In 1766, Lord Carhampton marries the Honorable Elizabeth Olmius (1742-97), daughter of John Olmius, 1st Baron Waltham. In 1787, out of respect after the death of his father-in-law, he assumes by Royal Licence the additional surname of “Olmius.” In 1798, he sells the Olmius family seat of Newhall to the founding nuns of New Hall School. There are three children from his first marriage (however only his daughter survives to adulthood):
Lady Frances Maria Luttrell (b. 1768), married Sir Simeon Stuart, 4th Baronet
James Luttrell (d. 1772)
John Luttrell (d. 1769)
Lord Carhampton marries secondly Maria Morgan, daughter of John Morgan, in 1798. They have one child:
Lady Maria Anne Luttrell (1799–1857), married Lieutenant-Colonel Hardress Robert Saunderson
Marrinan becomes ill with infantile paralysis at the age of five, and as a result is tutored privately. He has no formal training in art but is largely influenced by his reading matter, particularly the American comic strips of Bud Fisher. The variety of facial expressions that Fisher can achieve, with only a pencil, intrigues and inspires him. Likewise, the images evoked by Celtic mythology and religious art also contributes to his visual language, and many hours are spent in the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery studying the paintings in their collection.
Marrinan exhibits with the Ulster Academy of Arts from an address at 524 Donegall Road, Belfast, entering “The Wee Gate, Earl Street, Belfast” (1931) and “The Painter’s Father” and the “Apache” (1934), which is judged “picture of the year.” He last exhibits with a landscape, “Connemara,” along with four other works in 1949.
Marrinan paints and sketches portraits of many notable Irish figures, among which is the charcoal drawing of northern Fenian Robert Johnston (1934; National Gallery of Ireland) and a sketch of the Donegal storyteller Niall Duffy (University College Dublin). His literary portraits include one of Brian Friel. He holds a one-man show in 1951 at 55a Donegall Place, Belfast, where he exhibits a bust of John McLaverty. He takes an interest in sculpture although painting and drawing remain his preferred form of expression. Important commissions are for a memorial portrait (completed 1952) of Éamonn Ceannt for Ceannt Barracks officers’ mess, Curragh Camp, County Kildare, and for a portrait of Vice-brigadier Peadar Clancy for Clancy Barracks, Dublin. He paints two memorial portraits of PresidentJohn F. Kennedy, one of which is in the Irish Club, London.
Marrinan is an honorary member of the Royal Ulster Academy and exhibits with them every year from 1950 onward, showing a portrait of Mrs. Padraig Marrinan in 1967 (no other details of his marriage are known). He is preparing for an exhibition to be held at the Irish Club, London, in 1974, but dies on October 25, 1973, at Tyrone County Hospital in Omagh. He is then living at James Street, Omagh.
(From: “Marrinan, Padraig H.” by Ruth Devine, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: “The River Lee, Cork City, Ireland” by Padraig Marrinan, oil on canvas)
Blanchflower is born on February 10, 1926, in the Bloomfield district of Belfast, the first of five children born to John and Selina Blanchflower. He is educated at Ravenscroft public elementary school and is awarded a scholarship to Belfast College of Technology. He leaves school early to become an apprentice electrician at Gallaher’s cigarette factory in Belfast. He also joins the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) and, in 1943, joins the Royal Air Force after lying about his age. By 1946, after a trainee navigator course at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and further training in Canada, he is back at Gallaher’s in Belfast and building a reputation as an outstanding footballer.
Blanchflower signs with Glentoran F.C. in 1946 before crossing the Irish Sea and signing with Barnsley F.C. for £6000 in 1949 at the age of 23. He transfers from Barnsley to Aston Villa F.C. for a fee of £15,000 and makes his First Division debut in March 1951. He makes 155 senior appearances for Villa before being bought by Tottenham Hotspur F.C. in 1954 for a fee of £30,000. During his ten years playing at White Hart Lane he makes 337 League appearances and 382 total appearances.
The highlight of Blanchflower’s time with the Spurs comes in the 1960–61 season, while serving as captain, the Spurs win their first 11 games and eventually win the league by 8 points. They beat Leicester City F.C. in the final of the FA Cup, becoming the first team in the 20th century to win the League and Cup double and a feat not achieved since Aston Villa in 1897.
In 1962, Blanchflower again captains the Spurs team to victory in the FA Cup in 1962, narrowly missing out on a second double when they finish a close third in the league behind Ipswich Town F.C. and Burnley F.C. In 1963, he captains the team to victory over Atlético Madrid in the final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup, making Spurs the first English team to win a European trophy.
Between 1949 and 1963, Blanchflower earns 56 caps for Northern Ireland, often playing alongside his brother Jackie until the younger Blanchflower’s playing career is cut short as a result of injuries sustained in the Munich air disaster of February 1958. In 1958, he captains his country when they reached the quarter-finals of the FIFA World Cup.
On December 4, 1957, Blanchflower captains the Northern Ireland team against Italy in Belfast in a bad tempered game that comes to be known as the “Battle of Belfast.” He attempts to keep the peace as the game turns nasty.
Blanchflower announces his retirement as a player on April 5, 1964, having played nearly 400 games in all competitions for the Spurs and captains them to four major trophies.
Following his retirement as a player, Blanchflower coachs for the Spurs for a number of years. Manager Bill Nicholson intends for Blanchflower to be his successor but, when Nicholson resigns in 1974, Blanchflower is passed over in favour of Terry Neill. He leaves the Spurs and becomes manager of Northern Ireland for a brief spell in 1978 before being appointed boss of Chelsea F.C. The team wins only three of fifteen games under his charge and he leaves the team in September 1979.
On May 1, 1990, Tottenham holds a testimonial match for Blanchflower at White Hart Lane, but at this point he is in the early stages of what is later diagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. He is eventually placed in a nursing home in Staines-upon-Thames where he dies as a result of pneumonia on December 9, 1993, at the age of 67.
Blanchflower’s hometown of Belfast has honoured him with an Ulster History Circle plaque, located at his childhood home at 49 Grace Avenue, recognising the late sportsman as one of the greatest players in the history of Tottenham Hotspur FC.
seamus dubhghaill 