seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Author Archives: Jim Doyle


by Leave a comment

Death of Concertina Player Elizabeth “Lizzie” Crotty

Elizabeth “Lizzie” Crotty (née Markham), concertina player better known as Mrs. Crotty, dies in Kilrush, County Clare, from angina pectoris on December 27, 1960.

Markham is born on January 8, 1886, at Gower, Cooraclare, County Clare, the youngest in the large family of Michael Markham, farmer, and Margaret Markham (née Keane). She attends national school in Cooraclare from 1893 to 1899. Although she does not speak or understand the Irish language, as do her father and likely her mother, the Rosary is recited in Irish at home. She and a sister are the only siblings not to emigrate. Her mother plays the fiddle, while her older sister Margaret (Maggie) plays the concertina and probably influences her to do likewise. She has no single teacher and acquires tunes and her style of playing from neighbours and family friends. She begins to play a two-row German-type concertina at house dances throughout west Clare and becomes very much in demand.

In 1914, Markham marries Michael (Miko) Crotty from Gowerhass, the townland next to Gower. Miko had been in the United States for a couple of years and uses the money earned there to buy a public house on the Market Square in Kilrush, now known as “Crotty’s Pub.” They live in the Square in Kilrush and Miko bottles his own whiskey. The pub is an important venue for Irish traditional music, especially for those who wish to hear Crotty play. She remains relatively unknown outside of Clare until the early 1950s, and there are a relatively small number of recordings of her playing the concertina. The broadcaster Ciarán Mac Mathúna conducts recording sessions in her house in 1955 and she is to be heard on A Job of Journeywork, his programme on Radio Éireann. She possesses a number of concertinas, but the Lachenal that she purchases in the 1950s is her favourite and the one with which she is most closely identified. In 1954, she is a founder member and the first president of the Clare branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann. During her time as president, the All Ireland Fleadh is held in Ennis in 1956.

Crotty often sings the traditional song “An draighneán donn,” which is one of her favourites. Among tunes she enjoys playing are the “Ewe reel,” the “Dublin reel,” and “The maid of Mount Cisco,” along with “The wind that shakes the barley.” Her straight style of playing for dancing and dancers increases her popularity. Seán Ó Riada regards her as one of the finest concertina players he ever heard. Although she does not read or write staff notation, she creates a written code for herself by giving the concertina keys a number and by using a symbol for the press or draw movement on the concertina keys.

Crotty suffers from severe angina which necessitates visits for medical treatment to Dublin, where she becomes friends with fiddle player Kathleen Harrington (née Gardiner). They attend the Pipers’ Club in Thomas Street, play together on Radio Éireann, and travel together to fleadhanna.

Crotty dies on December 27, 1960, of an anginal attack while at her home. She is buried in (old) Shanakyle cemetery. She loses her first three children, and a son drowns in the River Shannon in 1945. Another son, Thomas, becomes a priest. A festival, ‘Éigse Mrs Crotty’, is held in her memory each summer in Kilrush. Her son Paddy gives three perpetual trophies for presentation at the All-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil.

(From: “Crotty, Elizabeth (‘Lizzie’)” by Ríonach uí Ógáin, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


by Leave a comment

Birth of Composer Ian Wilson

Irish composer Ian Wilson is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on December 26, 1964. He has written over one hundred and fifty works, including chamber operas, concertos, string quartets, a range of orchestral and chamber music and multi-media pieces.

Wilson studies violin and piano, graduating with a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in composition from Ulster University at Jordanstown in 1990, where he is a research fellow from 2000 to 2003. He is a composer-in-residence with Leitrim County Council and is music director of the Sligo New Music Festival from 2003 to 2011. He receives the Macaulay Fellowship from the Arts Council of Ireland in 1992. In 1998, he is elected to Aosdána, Ireland’s academy of creative artists. Since 2009, he has been a post-doctoral research fellow at Dundalk Institute of Technology, investigating aspects of traditional (ethnic) Irish performance practice as basis for new works of art music.

Wilson’s compositions have been performed and broadcast on six continents, and presented at festivals including the BBC Proms, Venice Biennale, ISCM World Music Days, Frankfort Book Fair and the Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival and at venues such as New York City’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Royal Albert Hall and Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw and Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, Vienna’s Wiener Musikverein and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall. His music has been performed by such diverse groups as the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the London Mozart Players, the Irish Chamber Orchestra (ICO), the pianist Hugh Tinney and many others.

There are commercially available recordings of over fifty of Wilson’s works on labels including Diatribe Records, Riverrun, RTÉ Lyric fm, Black Box, Timbre, Guild, Meridian and Chandos Records. His music is published by Ricordi (London) and Universal Edition.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Sir John Greer Dill, Irish-born British Army Officer

Sir John Greer Dill, senior British Army officer with service in both World War I and World War II, is born on December 25, 1881, at Lurgan, County Armagh. From May 1940 to December 1941, he is the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), the professional head of the British Army, and subsequently serves in Washington, D.C., as Chief of the British Joint Staff Mission and then Senior British Representative on the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS).

Dill is the only son of John Dill, bank manager, and Jane Dill (née Greer). He is educated at Cheltenham College in England before entering the Royal Military College (RMC), Sandhurst. Commissioned as a second lieutenant, he joins the Prince of Wales’s Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians) in May 1901 and serves in South Africa for the remainder of the Second Boer War. Promoted to captain in 1911, he is a student at the Staff College, Camberley, at the outbreak of World War I. He holds several important staff appointments during the war, including brigade major of 25th Brigade (8th Division) and General Staff Officer (Grade 2) to the Canadian Corps. Present at the battles of Neuve Chapelle, Aubers Ridge, Arras, and Third Ypres, at the end of the war he is serving as chief of operations branch at GHQ with the temporary rank of brigadier general. He is awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) (1915), the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG) (1918), the French Legion of Honour and the Belgian Order of the Crown.

Remaining active during the interwar years, Dill serves as chief assistant to the commandant of the Staff College (1919–22) before commanding the Welsh Border Brigade, TA (1922–23), and 2nd Infantry Brigade at Aldershot (1923–26). In late 1926, he is appointed army instructor at the newly established Imperial Defence College. A period in India follows as general staff officer of the Western Command (1929–31), based at Quetta. On return to England, he is promoted to major general and made commandant of the Staff College. Appointments as commander of the British forces in Palestine and Transjordan (1936–37) and the Aldershot Command (1937–39) follow. During this period, he shows a remarkable ability to both train and inspire those under his command. Most of his colleagues expect him to become the new chief of the Imperial General Staff and are surprised when Major General Lord Gort, junior to Dill in both rank and seniority, is appointed to the post.

At the outbreak of World War II Dill commands I Corps British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France and is made a full general. In April 1940, he is made vice-CIGS and in May takes over as CIGS. His initial period in office is not a happy one, and he has to inform the public of setbacks in both Norway and France. His workload is enormous, and after the evacuation at Dunkirk in late May he devotes himself to preparing the defences of Britain against invasion. He clashes with Winston Churchill throughout 1941, advocating a more cautious and realistic approach to the situations in North Africa, Greece, and Crete.

The workload begins to affect his health adversely, and in November 1941 it is announced that he will resign as CIGS on reaching the age of 60 and serve as governor-designate of Bombay with the rank of field marshal. He seeks to be more actively involved in the war effort, however, and in December 1941 he visits the United States with Churchill, remaining there as head of the British joint staff mission in Washington, D.C. He plays a significant role in promoting Anglo–American military cooperation and attends the Casablanca, Quebec, and Tehran conferences.

In late 1944 his health again breaks down and he dies from aplastic anemia on November 4, 1944, at the Walter Reed General Hospital, Washington, D.C. After a memorial service at Washington National Cathedral, he is buried with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia. President Franklin D. Roosevelt later pays tribute to him as a great soldier and friend, “the most important figure in the remarkable accord which has been developed in the combined operations of our two countries.”

Dill first marries (1907) Ada Maud Le Mottée, daughter of Col. William Le Mottée of the 18th Regiment. Their son, Major John de Guerin Dill, serves as an artillery officer throughout World War II. In October 1941, Dill marries Nancy Isabelle Charrington, widow of Brigadier Denis Walter Furlong. Dill’s honours include a GCB (1942), an honorary degree from Princeton University (1944), the Howland Memorial Prize of Yale University (1944), and a posthumous Distinguished Service Medal (DSM) from the United States government. There are portraits of him in Cheltenham College and the Imperial War Museum, and a statue in Washington, D.C.

(From: “Dill, Sir John Greer” by David Murphy, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: Sir John Greer Dill, bromide print, 1932, by Walter Stoneman, National Portrait Gallery, London)


by 2 Comments

Hugh O’Neill’s Army Defeated at the Battle of Kinsale

On December 24, 1601, Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and his Spanish and Irish allies are defeated by the English at the Battle of Kinsale, one of the most important battles in Irish history. With the able assistance of his main ally, Hugh Roe “Red” O’Donnell, he is fighting to defend Gaelic Ireland against the forces of Elizabeth I of England.

O’Neill, along with O’Donnell, train an army and before long they find a powerful ally, King Phillip III of Spain. King Phillip is more than keen to help the Irish for two reasons. Firstly, he wants revenge for the famous defeat of his Spanish Armada in 1588 and secondly, he sees Ireland as a terrific foundation from which he can invade England.

King Phillip agrees to the request of O’Neill and O’Donnell to send a large army to help them defeat the English. For several years prior they had held the English at bay from the strongholds in Ulster, beating them at Yellow Ford in 1598 and Moyry Pass in 1600. But if they are to ever drive the English back across the Irish Sea, they have to come out from the hills and passes and meet them in open battle. King Phillip eventually sends his army of 4,800 men to Kinsale in County Cork, thirteen miles south of Cork, arriving on September 21, 1601. They are surrounded by the English army, led by Charles Blount, 8th Baron Mountjoy, and George Carew, 1st Earl of Totnes, the President of Munster.

The landing of the Spanish army is not where O’Neill would have hoped as he and O’Donnell are located in the northern county of Donegal. He had sent a message asking them to land further north, so they might join forces and march against the English, but that message either never arrives or arrives too late. Now O’Neill and O’Donnell face a long march to join with their allies, and the English are much closer to Kinsale than they.

Before the Irish can get there, Mountjoy’s army has laid siege to the Spaniards at Kinsale. To leave their northern strongholds holds many dangers for the Irish chieftains, but leave they do, marching their army 250 miles to Kinsale to put the future of Gaelic Ireland to the test on the battlefield, a march which many say is one of the greatest marches to date in Irish History.

On the morning of December 24, O’Neill moves to attack Mountjoy’s army. There is no coordination between O’Neill’s army and the Spanish in Kinsale, under Don Juan del Águila. The Spaniards make no attempt to attack in force or even create a diversion. O’Neill’s army, especially his cavalry, which perform badly, are not ready to meet the English in this sort of combat. The battle lasts only an hour, with Irish losses of 1,200 soldiers whereas the English lose only twenty. The critical battle of the Nine Years’ War has been lost.

Afterwards, O’Donnell flees to Spain where he lives comfortably until he dies a few months later, said to have been poisoned by a spy of Carew’s named Blake.

Hugh O’ Neill surrenders to the English in 1603 and later returns to Ulster, where Lord Mountjoy treats him respectively well. However, most of his lands and authority are non-existent. In 1607, he goes to Spain with a number of family members and supporters, most of whom are lesser chieftains, and this becomes famously known as the Flight of the Earls. The power of the Gaelic chiefs in Ireland become a thing of the past.


by Leave a comment

Éamon de Valera’s Trip to the United States Ends

Éamon de Valera returns to Ireland on December 23, 1920, ending his trip to the United States.

In June 1919, de Valera arrives in the United States for what is to be an 18-month visit. He has recently escaped from Lincoln Gaol in England in sensational fashion, after a duplicate key is smuggled into the jail in a cake and he escapes dressed as a woman. A few months later he is a stowaway aboard the SS Lapland from Liverpool bound for America.

De Valera’s plan is to secure recognition for the emerging Irish nation, tap into the huge Irish American community for funds, and to pressurize the U.S. government to take a stance on Irish independence. Playing on his mind is the upcoming Versailles conference where the nascent League of Nations is preparing to guarantee “existing international borders” – a provision that will imply Ireland remaining within the United Kingdom.

De Valera also has a challenge in winning over President Woodrow Wilson, who is less than sympathetic to Ireland’s cause.

De Valera’s interest in America is of course personal. He is born in New York City on October 14, 1882, and his U.S. citizenship is one of the reasons he is spared execution after the 1916 Easter Rising.

At first de Valera keeps a low profile in America. Though he is greeted by Harry Boland and others when he docks in New York City, he first goes to Philadelphia and stays with Joseph McGarrity, the County Tyrone-born leader of Clan na Gael and a well-known figure in Irish America. He also quietly pays a visit to his mother in Rochester, New York.

De Valera’s first major engagement is on June 23, 1919, when he is unveiled to the American public at a press conference in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City. Crowds throng the streets around the hotel, and de Valera proclaims, “I am in America as the official head of the Republic established by the will of the Irish people in accordance with the principle of self-determination.”

De Valera then embarks upon a tour across America. Vast crowds turn out to see the self-proclaimed “president of the Irish republic.” In Boston an estimated crowd of 70,000 people hear him talk in Fenway Park. In San Francisco he unveils a statute of Irish revolutionary hero Robert Emmet in Golden Gate Park.

Later in the year, de Valera holds a huge rally in Philadelphia, where he is welcomed by the mayor at Independence Hall. He also visits smaller towns and cities across the United States, and his trip garners huge press coverage – an invaluable boon for his campaign to heighten awareness of the Irish issue in America.

But difficulties soon emerged during de Valera’s visit. He becomes embroiled in a bitter split among Irish Americans. He finds himself at odds with Judge Daniel Cohalan and John Devoy, central figures in the Friends of Irish Freedom (FOIF) association. Part of the dispute centers around money. De Valera had settled on an idea for a bond sale as a way of raising money for the cause – investors would be given bond certificates that would be exchangeable for bonds of the Irish Republic once it gets international recognition. But Cohalan and Devoy, who have already raised thousands through the Friends of Irish Freedom, are opposed, concerned about the scheme’s legality for one.

De Valera’s claim in an interview that Irish-British relations can be analogous to the relationship between Cuba and America also enrages the Cohalan-Devoy camp, who accuse him of surrendering the idea of full Irish sovereignty.

De Valera’s increasingly acrimonious relationship with Cohalan and Devoy spills over into the 1920 Republican and Democratic conventions. Against the advice of Cohalan and Devoy, he advances a resolution about Irish independence which is rejected 12-1 at the Republican convention in June of that year. A rival resolution by Cohalan squeezes through but ultimately is overturned. Similarly, he fails to secure the inclusion of the Irish issue in the Democratic Party’s policy platform during the Democrats’ convention in San Francisco.

De Valera leaves the United States in December 1920 with mixed results. Though he has raised millions of dollars through the bond sale, he has made little progress in co-opting official America to Ireland’s cause. Much as division is to characterise the next chapter of his political career in Ireland, de Valera’s sojourn in America leaves Irish America more divided than it has ever been.

(From: “Éamon de Valera’s US trip that left Irish America divided” by Suzanne Lynch, The Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com, June 1, 2019 | Pictured: Éamon de Valera (center) in New York with Friends of Irish Freedom’s Judge Daniel Cohalan and John Devoy in July 1919, Topical Press Agency/Getty)


by Leave a comment

Death of Professional Golfer Harry “The Brad” Bradshaw

Harry Bradshaw, a leading Irish professional golfer of the 1940s and 1950s, dies on December 22, 1990, in St. Vincent’s hospital, County Dublin.

Bradshaw is born on October 9, 1913, in Killincarrig, County Wicklow, eldest among four sons and two daughters of Edward ‘Ned’ Bradshaw, golf caddie and later golf professional, and Elizabeth Bradshaw (née Walsh) of Killincarrig. He is educated locally. A golf prodigy, he has a hole-in-one at the age of ten on an 80-yard par three at Delgany Golf Club, County Wicklow. He joins Delgany Golf Club, where he progresses from caddie to assisting his father, who is the club’s professional. As a teenager, he tends to hook the ball wildly, before he develops a grip that allows him to hit with great accuracy. Thereafter, he concentrates on honing his peerless approach play from within 100 yards of the hole. Another feature of his game is what is called his “hit and hark” approach to putting: he never lifts his head to follow the ball until he hears it drop.

Bradshaw plays in his first tournament as a professional in 1932, the same year he shoots a course record 68 at Delgany. In 1938, he wins his first professional tournament, the Bromford-Adgey Cup at Skerries Golf Club, County Dublin. In 1941, he is appointed golf professional at Kilcroney, County Wicklow, and in 1950 he begins his long association with Portmarnock Golf Club, County Dublin, when he is appointed golf professional there. By then he has already made his mark on domestic Irish golf, having won the Irish Open in 1947 and 1949. In Ireland he wins the Irish Dunlop Trophy three times, the Willie Nolan Trophy eleven times, the Moran Cup twelve times and the Irish Professional Championship ten times, the last a record later equaled by Christy O’Connor Snr.

Bradshaw is not well known outside of Ireland prior to the famous “bottle” incident at the 1949 Open Championship at Royal St. George’s Golf Club in Sandwich, Kent, England. Having headed the qualifiers and shooting an opening 68, he continues his good form into the second round when his drive at the par four fifth hole just misses the fairway and lands in a beer bottle that is standing upright with the neck and shoulder broken off. The rules are unclear on whether the bottle constitutes a hazard, and he elects to play the ball where it lay, judging (correctly) that he is not entitled to a free drop. Closing his eyes and turning his head away, he swings, shattering the bottle and advancing the ball about twenty-five yards. He is shaken and records a lacklustre round of 77. Back to his best in the next two rounds, he would win the title had his putt on the last not stopped just short. Instead, he ties with the South African Bobby Locke who defeats him by twelve strokes in the thirty-six-hole play-off with superlative rounds of 67 and 68. As a result of his experience with the broken bottle, the rules are changed to cater for the possibility of such an incident recurring. It is the closest a golfer from the Republic of Ireland comes to winning the Open Championship until Pádraig Harrington’s victory in 2007.

Bradshaw subsequently revenges himself on Locke by narrowly beating him to the Irish Open title the following month. He is then one of four British and Irish golfers to participate in a sixteen-week tour of South Africa from December 1950 to March 1951 during which he engages in further jousts with Locke, deepening their new-found friendship.

Establishing himself on the international golf circuit, Bradshaw goes on to win the Dunlop British Masters on two occasions (1953, 1955), and in 1958 he becomes the first Irishman to win the PGA Close Championship. He had also won the Dunbar Open Tournament in Scotland in 1953 and the Gleneagles Hotel Foursomes Tournament pro-am with Joe Carr in 1955. The highlight of his career comes in Mexico City in 1958, when, in partnership with Christy O’Connor Snr, he wins the Canada Cup, later known as the World Cup, for Ireland, also losing a play-off for the individual title. His performance is particularly impressive, given that he is forty-five and carrying weight while competing at altitude in oppressive heat. He and O’Connor are fêted upon their return home, and their victory is considered to play the determining role in popularising golf in Ireland. He caps a memorable year by receiving the Association of Golf Writers’ Trophy for 1958.

Bradshaw appears on three Ryder Cup teams. At the Wentworth Club in 1953, he wins his foursomes match partnering Fred Daly and his singles match against Fred Haas, but in 1955 he loses both his foursomes and singles matches at the Thunderbird Country Club in California. In 1957, he is a member of the side that defeats the American team 7–4 at Lindrick Golf Club in South Yorkshire, only the third victory by the Britain and Ireland side in the twelve matches played up to that time. He holes a five-footer to tie his match with U.S. Open champion Dick Mayer after a classic encounter. In 1963, he takes on Billy Casper, one of America’s top golfers, in a match at Portmarnock televised as part of the prestigious Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf series. Bradshaw’s three-stroke victory earns him $3,000, which is then considered a bonanza in golfing terms.

Bradshaw remains the golf professional at Portmarnock until 1983, latterly spending most of his day in the club shop. Even after his formal retirement, he remains on the payroll at Portmarnock as an informal ambassador for the club. Nicknamed “the Brad,” he is extremely popular with amateur and professional alike, is a great raconteur and tremendous company, and is noted for his lack of rancor towards, or criticism of, other players.

Bradshaw dies on December 22, 1990, at St. Vincent’s hospital, County Dublin, and is buried in St. Fintan’s Cemetery, Sutton, Dublin.

Bradshaw marries Elizabeth Foley from Carlow in 1944 and they have four children. His three brothers, Eddie, Hughie and Jimmy, are all professional golfers.

(From: “Bradshaw, Harry” by Jim Shanahan, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, November 2022)


by Leave a comment

Birth of Daniel F. Cohalan, Irish American Lawyer & Politician

Daniel Florence Cohalan, American lawyer and politician of Irish descent, is born December 21, 1867, in Middletown, Orange County, New York, the eldest of five sons of Timothy E. Cohalan and Ellen Cohalan (née O’Leary), both Irish immigrants.

Cohalan graduates from Manhattan College in 1885, takes a master’s degree in 1894, and is given an honorary LL.D. in 1911. He is admitted to the bar in 1888, and practices law in New York City. In September 1889, he removes to the Bronx, practices law there, and enters politics, joining Tammany Hall, becoming an adviser to party boss Charles F. Murphy and later to John F. Curry. He is Grand Sachem of the Tammany Society from 1908 to 1911.

Cohalan is active in Democratic Party politics by 1900, drafting state party platforms and serving as a delegate to the national conventions in 1904 and 1908.

On May 18, 1911, Cohalan is appointed by Gov. John Alden Dix to the New York Supreme Court, to fill the vacancy caused by the election of James Aloysius O’Gorman as U.S. Senator from New York. In November 1911, he is elected to succeed himself. On December 28, 1923, he tenders his resignation, to become effective on January 12, 1924, claiming that the annual salary of $17,500 is not enough to provide for his large family.

Cohalan is a close associate of Irish revolutionary leader John Devoy and is influential in many Irish American societies including Clan na Gael. He helps to form the Sinn Féin League in 1907 and is a key organiser of the Irish Race Convention and the Friends of Irish Freedom (FOIF) on March 4-5, 1916. He is involved with the financing and planning of the Easter Rising in Dublin and is instrumental in sending Roger Casement to Germany in 1914. He is Chairman of the Irish Race Convention held in Philadelphia on February 22-23, 1919, and active in the Friends of Irish Freedom (1916–34).

When the United States enters World War I, Cohalan’s earlier work to obtain German assistance for Ireland becomes a liability, but he urges Irish Americans to support the war effort and to insist that self-determination for Ireland be included among the war aims. He opposes the peace treaty and the League of Nations and leads an Irish American delegation to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearings, contributing to the defeat of the treaty in the Senate.

Cohalan strongly opposes President Woodrow Wilson‘s proposals for the League of Nations, on the basis that the Irish Republic had been denied a policy of self-determination at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. In 1920, he works for the nomination of Hiram W. Johnson as the Republican Party candidate for president. His quarrels with Franklin D. Roosevelt begin in 1910, and he fights Roosevelt’s nomination for president in 1932 and 1936. He breaks with both Éamon de Valera and Irish American leader Joseph McGarrity in late 1919 on Irish American political direction.

In the aftermath of the Anglo–Irish Treaty, Cohalan and the FOIF back Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins and the Irish Free State. He visits Ireland in 1923 and supports William T. Cosgrave in the election of that year.

Cohalan dies at his home in Manhattan, New York, on November 12, 1946, and is buried on November 15 at the Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, Queens, New York. The Daniel F. Cohalan papers are in the possession of the American Irish Historical Society, New York.

State Senator John P. Cohalan (1873–1950) is one of Cohalan’s eleven siblings, and church historian Monsignor Florence Daniel Cohalan (1908–2001) is one of his nine children.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Michael J. Browne, Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh

Michael J. Browne, an Irish prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, is born in Westport, County Mayo, on December 20, 1895. He serves as Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh for almost forty years from 1937 to 1976.

Browne is an important and outspoken member of the Irish hierarchy. His time as Bishop has been described by the historian James S. Donnelly Jr. as “far-reaching and … controversial,” while the historian of Irish Catholicism John Henry Whyte claims that Browne’s “readiness to put forward his views bluntly is welcome at least to the historian.”

Browne is ordained to the priesthood on June 20, 1920, for the Archdiocese of Tuam. He later serves as professor of moral theology at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

On August 6, 1937, at the relatively young age of 41, Browne is appointed Bishop of Galway and Kilmacduagh by Pope Pius XI, receiving his episcopal consecration from Archbishop Thomas Gilmartin on the following August 10. He supports Taoiseach Éamon de Valera‘s defence of arrests and police searches for cached Irish Republican Army (IRA) arms, declaring, “Any Irishman who assists any foreign power to attack the legitimate authority of his own land is guilty of the most terrible crime against God’s law, and there can be no excuse for that crime – not even the pretext of solving partition or of securing unity.”

In 1939, Browne is selected by Éamon de Valera to chair the Commission on Vocational Organisation.

Browne is attentive to the state of public morality in the diocese, and James S. Donnelly Jr. has noted his role in directing episcopal and clerical censorship of newsagents and county librarians. He is also concerned about public intoxication and other misconduct at the Galway Races, controversies over dancing and the commercial dance halls, as well as immodesty in dress and the closely related issue of so-called “mixed bathing” in Galway and Salthill.

Like other members of the Irish Catholic hierarchy, Browne regularly condemns communism in his pastoral letters. When Cardinal József Mindszenty is detained by Hungary‘s post-war communist government, Browne in 1949 forwards protest resolutions from Galway Corporation, Galway County Council and the University College Galway student body to Pope Pius XII. He also frequently condemns the Connolly Association, an Irish republican socialist group in Britain close to the Communist Party of Great Britain.

In 1957, in response to a growing tension between Catholics and Protestants at Fethard-on-Sea, including the Fethard-on-Sea boycott, Browne says, “non-Catholics do not protest against the crime of conspiring to steal the children of a Catholic father, but they try to make political capital when a Catholic people make a peaceful and moderate protest.”

The most enduring monument or physical legacy of Browne’s time as Bishop is the Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St Nicholas, commonly known as Galway Cathedral, which is dedicated in 1965 by Cardinal Richard James Cushing of Boston, Massachusetts. The site of the old jail had come into the possession of the diocese in 1941 and Browne leads the campaign to construct a new Cathedral. This includes a 1957 audience with Pope Pius XII where the plans are approved.

Browne attends the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965 and retires in 1976. He dies four years later, at the age of 84, on February 24, 1980.

Browne is parodied in Breandán Ó hÉithir`s novel Lig Sinn i gCathu, which fictionalises late 1940s Galway as “Baile an Chaisil” and Browne as “An tEaspag Ó Maoláin.”

The Irish cabinet minister Noël Browne (no known relation) in his 1986 memoir Against the Tide describes the physical attributes of his episcopal namesake:

“The bishop had a round soft baby face with shimmering clear cornflower-blue eyes, but his mouth was small and mean. Around his great neck was an elegant glinting gold episcopal chain with a simple pectoral gold cross. He wore a ruby ring on his plump finger and wore a slightly ridiculous tiny scullcap on his noble head. The well-filled semi-circular scarlet silk cummerbund and sash neatly divided the lordly prince into two.”


by Leave a comment

Land League Organizer Michael Davitt Released from Dartmoor Prison

Michael Davitt, Irish republican and agrarian agitator, is paroled from Dartmoor Prison on December 19, 1877, having served seven and a half years of a fifteen-year sentence, following pressure from the Home Rule League for an amnesty for all Irish political prisoners.

Davitt is born in Straide, County Mayo, on March 25, 1846. He is the founder of the Irish National Land League, which organizes resistance to absentee landlordism and seeks to relieve the poverty of the tenant farmers by securing fixity of tenure, fair rent, and free sale of the tenant’s interest.

Davitt is the son of an evicted tenant farmer. After their eviction, the family emigrates to England. In 1856, at the age of 10, he starts work in a cotton mill, where he loses an arm in a machinery accident a year later. In 1865, he joins the revolutionary Fenian Brotherhood, an international secret society that seeks to secure political freedom for Ireland. He becomes secretary of its Irish analogue, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), in 1868. Arrested in Paddington Station in London for sending firearms to Ireland on May 14, 1870, he is sentenced to 15 years in Dartmoor Prison and there lays plans to link Charles Stewart Parnell’s constitutional reform with Fenian activism to achieve political-agrarian agitation.

Paroled from prison in 1877, Davitt rejoins the IRB and goes to the United States, where the Fenian movement originated. There he is deeply influenced by Henry George’s ideas about the relationship between land monopoly and poverty.

Back in Ireland, using funds raised by John Devoy and Clan na Gael in the United States, Davitt wins Parnell’s cooperation in organizing the Land League in 1879, which leads, however, to his expulsion from the supreme council of the IRB in 1880. He is elected member of Parliament for North Meath in 1882 but is disqualified as he is a convict. He is also imprisoned for seditious speeches in 1881 and 1883.

Because of his public championing of Henry George’s theories of land reform, Parnell repudiates him. Davitt actively defends the Nationalists before the Parnell Commission, which meets between 1887 and 1889. When the Irish party splits in 1890 over Parnell’s involvement in Capt. William Henry O’Shea’s divorce case, Davitt is among the first to oppose Parnell’s continuance as leader.

Davitt is elected to Parliament in 1892 and 1893 but is unseated in both cases. He is elected again, for South Mayo in 1895, but resigns in 1899 in protest against the Second Boer War.

Davitt dies in Elphis Hospital, Dublin on May 30, 1906, at the age of 60, from blood poisoning. The fact that the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland attends his funeral is a public indication of the dramatic political journey this former Fenian prisoner has taken. There is no plan for public funeral, and hence Davitt’s body is brought quietly to the Carmelite Friary, Clarendon Street, Dublin. However, the next day over 20,000 people file past his coffin. His remains are taken by train to Foxford, County Mayo, and buried in the grounds of Straide Abbey at Straide, near his place of birth.

Davitt’s book, The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland (1904), is a valuable record of his time.


by 1 Comment

The 1973 Westminster Bombing

The 1973 Westminster bombing is a car bomb that explodes at about 8:50 a.m. on Thorney Street, off Horseferry Road, in Millbank, London, on December 18, 1973.

The explosion injures up to 60 people. The bomb is planted in a car, which is known to have been stolen in London the previous night. It is parked outside Horseferry House, a building occupied by the Home Office, and opposite Thames House, which is mainly occupied by the Department of Trade and Industry, when it explodes. Both buildings, and others nearby, are extensively damaged.

Two warnings are given prior to the bombing. The first is by means of an anonymous telephone call to the offices of The Evening News at 8:22 a.m. The caller says that there is a bomb in Horseferry Road and Marshall Street and that these streets should be cleared immediately. It is presumed that the caller must have meant Marsham Street and not Marshall Street. The police are informed and start their search in these streets. While the search is in progress there, the bomb explodes in Thorney Street.

The second warning, also anonymous, is received by the telephone operator in Horseferry House at 8:45 a.m., saying that there is a car bomb outside, timed to explode in half an hour. Precautionary action is being taken when the bomb explodes only about five minutes later.

The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) claims responsibility for the attack, which is assumed to be in retaliation for the jailing of the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade members who bombed the Old Bailey earlier in the year. The day before the Westminster bombing, the IRA sends two parcel bombs that target two politicians.

The Westminster bombing is one of many IRA car bombings in Northern Ireland and England during the almost 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles.

In the week following the Westminster car bombing, several more IRA bombs explode in London. On December 19, the day after the Westminster bombing, one person is injured when an IRA letter bomb explodes at a London postal sorting office. Five days later, on Christmas Eve 1973, the IRA bombs two London pubs, first the North Star public house, where six people are injured, and secondly at the Swiss Cottage Tavern, in which an unspecified number of people are injured. The last bombs explode on Boxing Day, December 26, 1973, when the Stage Door public house is bombed, injuring one person, and another bomb explodes at the Sloane Square tube station where there are no injuries.