Grosse Île, in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, acts as a quarantine station for Irish people fleeing the Great Famine between 1845 and 1849. It is believed that over 3,000 Irish people died on the island and over 5,000 are buried in the cemetery there.
In 1847, 100,000 Irish people travel to Grosse Île to escape starvation, unaware of the hardships they would encounter upon arrival. The first coffin ship – named for their crowded and deadly conditions – arrives on May 17, 1847, the ice still an inch thick on the river. Of that ship’s 241 passengers, 84 are stricken with fever and 9 have died on board. With the hospital only equipped for 150 cases of fever, the situation quickly spins out of control. More and more ships arrive at Grosse Île each day, sometimes lining up for miles down the St. Lawrence River throughout the summer. On these coffin ships the number of passengers stricken by fever increases exponentially.
Between 1832 and 1937, Grosse Île’s term of operation, the official register lists 7,480 burials on the island. In 1847 alone, 5,424 burials take place, the majority being Irish immigrants. In that same year, over 5,000 Irish people on ships bound for Canada are listed as having been buried at sea.
When the monument is unveiled in 1909, more than 60 years have passed since the more than 5,000 Irish men, women, and children were buried on the island, but the ancestors and relatives of those victims have not forgotten them. Through the hard work of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, thousands of dollars are collected to erect a fitting memorial to those innocent victims of man’s inhumanity to man. The symbol they choose to use is a Celtic cross. Designed by Jeremiah Gallagher, a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in Quebec, the cross is carved from granite and stands 48 feet high atop its pedestal.
The monument bears an inscription in Irish commemorating the victims of the epidemic and condemning colonial rule. In English, it reads: “Children of the Gael died in their thousands on this island having fled from the laws of foreign tyrants and an artificial famine in the years 1847-48. God’s blessing on them. Let this monument be a token and honor from the Gaels of America. God Save Ireland.”
To ensure that no one traveling up or down the St. Lawrence River fails to see the monument, it is placed on Telegraph Hill, the highest point on the island. The monument is unveiled by the Papal Legate before a crowd of 9,000, including several hundred French Canadians, some perhaps from families that had adopted one or more of the over 600 Irish orphans whose parents were left behind on Gross Île. The cross stands as a beacon to those who pass up and down the busy waterway, reminding them not only of the tragedy that once happened on that island but also of the ultimate triumph of those who survived.
Today, the island is a National Historic Site that serves as a Famine memorial. It is dedicated in 1996 after a four-year-long campaign to protect the mass gravesite.
Archer is born in Magherahamlet, County Down, on May 6, 1827 (some sources say 1830), the eldest son of Rev. Richard Archer, vicar of Clonduff, and his wife, Jane Matilda (née Campbell). Nothing is known of his education, although his two younger brothers attend Trinity College Dublin (TCD). He apparently becomes estranged from his family, as he is not mentioned by H. B. Swanzy, who does mention his brothers as second and third sons in Richard Archer’s family.
Archer moves to Dublin around 1846, where for many years he pursues a business career. He achieves fame as a naturalist, founding in 1849 with eleven others, the Dublin Microscopical Club, of which he is the secretary and moving spirit for many years. Between 1858 and 1885 he writes over 230 scientific papers in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, the vast majority being short notes on desmids collected in Ireland.
Archer is a member of the Dublin University Zoological Association. He is elected Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA) on January 10, 1870 and Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1875, on which occasion it is stated that he has “a knowledge of the minute freshwater organisms unparalleled among British naturalists and perhaps not surpassed for any other country.”
Archer begins a new career when he becomes librarian of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) in January 1877. The bulk of the Society’s library is being taken over by the state to form the National Library of Ireland. He becomes the chief librarian of the new institution and has the task of overseeing the changes. Most of the ideas put forward in his pamphlet, Suggestions as to public library buildings . . . with especial reference to the National Library of Ireland (Dublin, 1881), are used by Sir Thomas Newenham Deane in his design for tthe new building, which opens in August 1890. His adoption of the Dewey system of classification and the inception of a dictionary catalogue, both novel in his day, are to prove of lasting value to users of the library.
In poor health, Archer retires in 1895. He dies, unmarried, at his home, 52 Lower Mount Street, Dublin, on August 14, 1897. Archer is a shy, modest man, who declines professorships at the Royal College of Science for Ireland and at TCD, and who is nominated for membership of the Royal Irish Academy and the Royal Society without his knowledge.
Parker is born Dehra Kerr-Fisher, the only child of James Kerr-Fisher and his wife Annie. Her father, a native of Kilrea, County Londonderry, is a successful financier. She is educated in the United States, where her father holds extensive property holdings, and in Germany. The surname has been spelled, alternatively, as Ker-Fisher or Ker Fisher.
Parker is married twice. Her first husband is Lieutenant ColonelRobert Peel Dawson Spencer Chichester, MP, with whom she has one son and one daughter, Robert James Spencer Chichester (1902–1920) and Marion Caroline Dehra Chichester (1904–1976). She is predeceased by her son. On June 4, 1928, she marries her second husband, Admiral Henry Wise Parker (CB, CMG).
Parker’s promotion to the Cabinet at the age of 67 under Sir Basil Brooke (later created the 1st Viscount Brookeborough) is part of his so-called “reforming” premiership, his predecessor, J. M. Andrews, having been criticised for appointing elderly members to Cabinet. She is the first woman to serve in the Northern Ireland Cabinet.
Outside of parliamentary activities, Parker is a long-serving local councilor on Magherafelt District Council, president of both the Northern Ireland Physical Training Association and the Girls’ Training Corps, and chairman of the Ancient Monuments Advisory Committee. In 1944, she is appointed senior vice-chairman of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA NI), and in 1949 she succeeds Sir David Lindsay Keir as President for CEMA, a position she holds until 1960. She is made an honorary member of the Ulster Society of Women Artists in 1958.
Parker dies at her home, Shanemullagh House, Castledawson, in the south of County Londonderry, on November 28, 1963, at age 81. She is interred two days later in the grounds of Christ Church, Castledawson.
Whiteside is the son of William Whiteside, a clergyman of the Church of Ireland. His father is transferred to the parish of Rathmines but dies when his son is only two years old, leaving his widow in straitened circumstances. She schools her son personally in his early years. He is educated at Trinity College Dublin, enters the Middle Temple, and is called to the Irish bar in 1830.
Whiteside very rapidly acquires a large practice, and after taking silk in 1842 he gains a reputation for forensicoratory surpassing that of all his contemporaries and rivalling that of his most famous predecessors of the 18th century. He defends Daniel O’Connell in the state trial of 1843, and William Smith O’Brien in 1848. His greatest triumph is in the Yelverton case in 1861. He is elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Enniskillen in 1851, and in 1859 becomes an MP for Dublin University. In Parliament, he is no less successful as a speaker than at the bar, and in 1852 is appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland in the first administration of Prime MinisterEdward Smith-Stanley, becoming Attorney-General for Ireland in 1858, and again in 1866. In the same year he is appointed Lord Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench, having previously turned down offers of a junior judgeship. His reputation as a judge does not equal his reputation as an advocate, although he retains his great popularity. In 1848, after a visit to Italy, he publishes Italy in the Nineteenth Century. In 1870 he collects and republishes some papers contributed many years before to periodicals, under the title Early Sketches of Eminent Persons.
In July 1833, Whiteside marries Rosetta, daughter of William and Rosetta Napier, and sister of Sir Joseph Napier, Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Like his brother-in-law, Joseph, he is devoted to the Church of Ireland and strongly opposes its disestablishment.
Whiteside is universally well-liked, being noted for charm, erudition and a sense of humour. Barristers who practise before him say that his charm, courtesy and constant flow of jokes make appearing in his Court a delightful experience.
Whiteside’s last years on the bench ware affected by ill health. He dies on November 25, 1876, at Brighton, Sussex, England. His brother-in-law, from whom he is estranged in later years, is overcome with grief at his death and collapses at the funeral. He is buried at Mount Jerome Cemetery in Dublin.
(Pictured: Statue of James Whiteside by Albert Bruce-Joy on display in St. Patrick’s Cathedral)
The Electricity Supply Board (ESB; Irish: Bord Soláthair an Leictreachais), a state-owned electricity company operating in the Republic of Ireland, is established on August 11, 1927, by the fledgling Irish Free State government under the Electricity (Supply) Act 1927, to manage Ireland’s electricity supply after the successful Shannon hydroelectric scheme at Ardnacrusha and take over all existing projects for the electrification of Ireland. While historically a monopoly, the ESB now operates as a commercial semi-state concern in a “liberalised” and competitive market. It is a statutory corporation whose members are appointed by the government of Ireland.
The Shannon hydroelectric scheme at Ardnacrusha is Ireland’s first large-scale electricity plant and, at the time, it provides 80% of the total energy demands of Ireland. To give an idea of the growth in demand, the output of Ardnacrusha is now approximately two per cent of national peak demand for power.
By 1937, plans are being finalised for the construction of several more hydroelectric plants. The plans called for stations at Poulaphouca, Golden Falls, Leixlip (all in Leinster), Clady, Cliff and Cathaleen’s Fall (between Belleek and Ballyshannon in County Donegal), Carrigadrohid and Inniscarra (in County Cork). All these new plants are completed by 1949 and together harness approximately 75% of Ireland’s inland waterpower potential. Many of these plants are still in operation, however, as can be expected with continuing growth in demand, their combined capacity falls far short of Ireland’s modern needs.
With Ireland’s towns and cities benefiting from electricity, the new government pushes the idea of Rural Electrification. Between 1946 and 1979, the ESB connects in excess of 420,000 customers in rural Ireland. The Rural Electrification Scheme is described as “the Quiet Revolution” because of the major socio-economic change it brings about. The process is greatly helped in 1955 by the Electricity Supply Amendment Act, 1955.
In 1947, the ESB, needing ever more generation capacity, builds the North Wall station on a 7.5-acre site in Dublin‘s industrial port area on the north side of the River Liffey on the site of an old oil refinery. The original station consists of one 12.5 MW steam turbine that is originally purchased for a power station at Portarlington but instead used at North Wall. Other power stations built around this time include the peat fired stations at Portarlington, County Laois, and Allenwood, County Kildare.
Because of the risks of becoming dependent on imported fuel sources and the potential for harvesting and utilising indigenous peat, the ESB – in partnership with Bord na Móna – establishes those stations and ESB also builds Lanesboro power station in 1958. Located in County Longford, the plant burns peat, cut by Bord na Móna in the bogs of the Irish midlands. In 1965, the Shannonbridge station, located in County Offaly, is commissioned. The two stations have been replaced by new peat-fired stations near the same locations, and peat is also used to power the independent Edenderry Power Station in County Offaly.
As in most countries, energy consumption is low at night and high during the day. Aware of the substantial waste of night-time capacity, the ESB commissions the Turlough Hillpumped-storage hydroelectric station in 1968. This station, located in County Wicklow, pumps water uphill at night with the excess energy created by other stations, and releases it downhill during the day to turn turbines. The plant can generate up to 292 MW of power, but output is limited in terms of hours because of the storage capacity of the reservoir.
The 1970s bring about a continued increase in Ireland’s industrialisation and with it, a greater demand for energy. This new demand is to be met by the construction of the country’s two largest power stations – Poolbeg Generating Station in 1971 and Moneypoint Power Station in 1979. The latter, in County Clare, remains Ireland’s only coal-burning plant and can produce 915 MW, just shy of the 1015 MW capacity of Poolbeg. In 2002 and 2003, new independent stations, Huntstown Power (north Dublin) and Dublin Bay Power (Ringsend, Dublin), are constructed.
In 1991, the ESB establishes the ESB Archive to store historical documents relating to the company and its impact on Irish life.
On September 8, 2003, two of the last remaining places in Ireland unconnected to the national grid – Turbot Island and Inishturk Island (off the coast of County Galway)- are finally connected to the main supply. Some islands are still powered by small diesel-run power stations.
Sixty wind farms are currently connected to the power system and have the capacity to generate 590 MW of power, depending on wind conditions. These wind farms are mainly owned by independent companies and landowners.
On March 16, 2005, the ESB announces that it is to sell its ShopElectric (ESB Retail) chain of shops, with the exception of the Dublin Fleet Street and Cork Academy Street outlets, to Bank of Scotland (Ireland), converting them into main street banks. Existing staff are offered positions as bank tellers.
On March 27, 2008, the ESB announces a €22bn capital investment programme in renewable energy technology, with the aim to halve its carbon emissions within 12 years and achieve carbon net-zero by 2035.
Larchet is born on July 13, 1884, at Sandymount, Dublin, the son of John Edward Larchet, manager of a wine business, and his wife Isabella Emily (née Farmar). Educated at the Catholic University School in Leeson Street, Dublin, he subsequently commences study under Michele Esposito at the Royal Irish Academy of Music (RIAM) in Dublin, winning many prizes for composition, theory, harmony, and counterpoint from 1903 to 1912. As a student at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), he obtains his Bachelor of Music in 1915 and Doctor of Music in 1917 and comes to dominate the music profession in Dublin over the next forty years, moulding the composers, teachers, and conductors of the next generation, while developing an Irish school of music based on folk tradition but writing in the modern idiom. A senior professor at the RIAM by 1920, the following year he is appointed professor of music at University College Dublin (UCD), where he remains until 1958, successfully establishing music as a serious discipline within the university. He is director of music examinations for Irish secondary schools (1907–34) and succeeds in raising standards of teaching, particularly with regard to rectifying weakness in the teaching of the theory of music.
Along with Aloys Fleischmann and composer Frederick May, Larchet keeps discourse on music in the public domain during the 1930s and 1940s, frequently addressing the need for a national school of music and a system of music education that would raise standards of musical appreciation and nurture a school of Irish composers.
Appointed music director at the Abbey Theatre in 1907, he is closely associated with Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats, establishing a tradition of music at the theatre that delights critics. A popular myth at the time is that there are some who leave the theatre during the acts and return to enjoy Larchet’s music during the intervals. Appointed musical adviser to the army in 1923, he introduces a new philharmonic pitch, and serves as president of the Dublin Grand Opera Society for many years.
A fellow of the RIAM, Larchet also conducts the Dublin Amateur Orchestra Society, is choir master of the Jesuit church in Gardiner Street, Dublin, and organises annual orchestral concerts at the Royal Dublin Society (RDS). He is also involved in preparing a report for the commission on vocational organisation on behalf of the Musical Association of Ireland. The products of his own creative endeavour are mostly orchestral and choral works including An Ardglass Boat Song, Pádraic the Fiddler, and Diarmuid’s Lament.
Perhaps the main challenge facing Larchet in the 1920–50 period is the divide between “colonial” and “native” which has characterised the history of music in Ireland. A gentle-mannered, kindly man who is acutely aware of the lack of a national policy for music, he is a persuasive advocate of the European aesthetic and his main aim is said to have been “a reconciliation between the cultural chauvinism of Ireland as an emergent nation state and the central value (artistic as well as educational) of music as a vital dynamic in Irish cultural affairs.”
Although it can be argued that Larchet is not possessed of a uniquely original voice, with his authority coming rather from his enormous workload and his essential contribution as a teacher, it is no exaggeration to claim that the majority of Irish composers who emerge in the decades after the 1940s are influenced by his guidance, including Frank Llewellyn Harrison, Frederick May, Joan Trimble and Brian Boydell.
Larchet dies in Dublin on August 10, 1967. He is survived by his wife, Madeleine Moore, a well-known musician, and their two daughters and son, also musicians. His daughter, Sheila Larchet Cuthbert, is an Irish harpist and author. She publishes The Irish Harp Book: A Tutor and Companion (Dublin, 1975).
(From: “Larchet, John Francis” by Diarmaid Ferriter, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
On the morning of Monday, August 9, 1971, the security forces launch Operation Demetrius, the main focus of which is to arrest and intern suspected members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). The Parachute Regiment is selected to carry out the operation. The operation is chaotic and informed by poor intelligence, resulting in a number of innocent people being interned. By focusing solely on republicans, it excludes violence carried out by loyalistparamilitaries. Some nationalist neighbourhoods attempt to disrupt the army with barricades, petrol bombs and gunfire. In the Catholic district of Ballymurphy, ten civilians are shot and killed between the evening of August 9 and the morning of August 11, while another dies of heart failure.
Members of the Parachute Regiment state that they were shot at by republicans as they entered the Ballymurphy area and returned fire. The press officer for the British Army stationed in Belfast, Mike Jackson, later to become head of the British Army, includes a disputed account of the shootings in his autobiography, stating that those killed in the shootings were republican gunmen. This claim is strongly denied by the families of those killed in the shootings, including in interviews conducted during the documentary film The Ballymurphy Precedent. The claim is found to be without basis by a later coroner’s inquest, which establishes that those killed were “entirely innocent.”
The six civilians killed on August 9 are Francis Quinn (19), shot while going to the aid of a wounded man, Father Hugh Mullan (38), a Catholic priest, shot while going to the aid of a wounded man, reputedly while waving a white cloth to indicate his intentions, Joan Connolly (44), shot by three soldiers as she stands opposite the army base, Daniel Teggart (44), shot fourteen times mostly in the back as he lay injured on the ground, Noel Phillips (20) and Joseph Murphy (41), shot as they stand opposite the army base. Murphy is subsequently taken into army custody and after his release, as he is dying in hospital, he claims that he had been beaten and shot again while in custody. When his body is exhumed in October 2015, a second bullet is discovered in his body, which activists say corroborates his claim.
Edward Doherty (28), is shot and killed on August 10 while walking along Whiterock Road.
Another three civilians are shot on 11 August: John Laverty (20) and Joseph Corr (43) are shot at separate points at the top of the Whiterock Road. Laverty is shot twice, once in the back and once in the back of the leg. Corr is shot several times and dies of his injuries on August 27. John McKerr (49), is shot in the head by an unknown sniper while standing outside a Catholic church and dies of his injuries on August 20. While a number of eyewitnesses state that soldiers were seen shooting toward the area, the 2021 inquest cannot establish who had killed him. The coroner notes that a more specific finding is not possible, in large part, due to an “abject failing by the authorities to properly inquire into the death of [McKerr at the time].”
Paddy McCarthy (44), an eleventh civilian, dies on August 11 following an altercation with a group of soldiers. His family allege that an empty gun is put in his mouth and the trigger pulled, he suffers a heart attack and dies shortly after the alleged confrontation.
In February 2015, the conviction of Terry Laverty, younger brother of John Laverty, one of those killed, is quashed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. He had been convicted of riotous behaviour and sentenced to six months on the eyewitness evidence of a private in the Parachute Regiment. The case is referred to court because the sole witness retracts his evidence.
In 2016, Sir Declan Morgan, the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, recommends an inquest into the killings as one of a series of “legacy inquests” covering 56 cases related to the Troubles. These inquests are delayed, as funding has not been approved by the Northern Ireland Executive. The Stormont first minister, Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), defers a bid for extra funding for inquests into historic killings in Northern Ireland, a decision condemned by the human rights group Amnesty International. Foster confirms she has used her influence in the devolved power-sharing executive to hold back finance for a backlog of inquests connected to the conflict. The High Court says her decision to refuse to put a funding paper on the Executive basis is “unlawful and procedurally flawed.”
In January 2018, the coroner’s office announces that the inquest will begin in September 2018. On May 11, 2021, this coroner’s inquest finds that the ten civilians killed were innocent and that the use of lethal force by the British Army was “not justified.” The circumstances of the 11th death are not part of the inquest since Paddy McCarthy died from a heart attack, allegedly after being threatened by a soldier. Following the inquest verdict, Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, apologises for the deaths at Ballymurphy in a phone call to Foster and deputy First MinisterMichelle O’Neill. The lack of public apology is criticised by some relatives of the victims and Northern Irish politicians.
In May 2021, families of those shot dead by British soldiers in Ballymurphy urge the Irish government to oppose any attempt to prevent the prosecution of British soldiers alleged to have committed crimes during the Troubles.
The killings are the subject of the August 2018 documentaryThe Ballymurphy Precedent, directed by Callum Macrae and made in association with Channel 4.
In London, developing his interest in the theatre, Johnston abandons plans for a legal and political career.
Johnston is a protégé of W. B. Yeats and George Bernard Shaw, and has a stormy friendship with Seán O’Casey. He is a pioneer of television and war reporting. He works as a lawyer in the 1920s and 1930s before joining the BBC as a writer and producer, first in radio and then in the fledgling television service. His broadcast dramatic work includes both original plays and adaptation of the work of many different writers.
Johnston’s first play, The Old Lady Says “No!”, helps establish the worldwide reputation of Dublin’s Gate Theatre. His second play, The Moon in the Yellow River, has been performed around the globe in numerous productions featuring such storied names as James Mason, Jack Hawkins, Claude Rains, Barry Fitzgerald, James Coco and Errol Flynn. Later plays deal with the life of Jonathan Swift, the 1916 Rebellion, the pursuit of justice, and the fear of death. He writes two opera libretti and a pageant.
“Passionate in his radical skepticism and loathing of what he saw as the pernicious influence of the Roman Catholic Church,” at the end of 1933, Johnston joins the trade unionistJohn Swift, the Dublin novelistMary Manning, and fellow northerner, the libertarian socialistJack White, in forming The Secular Society of Ireland. “Convinced that clerical domination in the community is harmful to advance,” the society seeks “to establish in this country complete freedom of thought, speech and publication, liberty for mind, in the widest toleration compatible with orderly progress and rational conduct.” Among other things it aims to terminate the clerically-dictated ban on divorce, the Censorship of Publications Act and the system of clerical management, and consequent sectarian teaching, in schools.
This is at a time of heightened clerical militancy and as soon the meeting place of the Society (from which it distributed the British journal The Freethinker) is exposed, it has to shift to private houses outside of Dublin. In 1936, Johnston and the other members disband the society and donate the proceeds to the government of the beleaguered Spanish Republic. He has become a recognised man of the left. In 1930 he joins the Irish Friends of Soviet Russia, and though never a party member, until as late as the 1950s he professes faith in a communist future.
Johnston dies on August 8, 1984, at Ballybrack, County Dublin, and is buried in St. Patrick’s Cathedralclose. His epitaph is a quotation from The Old Lady Says “No!” – Emmet’s lines praising Dublin “the strumpet city.”
The Denis Johnston Playwriting Prize is awarded annually by Smith College Department of Theatre for the best play, screenplay or musical written by an undergraduate at Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, Amherst College, Hampshire College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The prize is endowed by his former student at Smith, Carol Sobieski.
Father and son, both accounted “notorious womanizers,” have a bitter relationship. His father once challenges him to a duel, but he declines, observing that his father is not a gentleman.
With the support of the Grafton ministry and of the Court, in 1769 Luttrell stands in Middlesex against John Wilkes, the radical and popular figure who had already been the constituency’s three-time democratic choice. He loses the poll (1,143 votes to 269) but is seated in Parliament, Wilkes having once again been barred as an adjudged felon. As a result of the affair, for some months, Luttrell dares not appear in the street and is “the most unpopular man in the House of Commons.”
The government rewards Luttrell by appointing him Adjutant General for Ireland in 1770. He continues to sit in the Commons, where he describes the Whigs in their opposition to the conduct of the American War, as “the abetters of treason and rebellion combined purposely for the ruin of their country.”
In 1788, Luttrell is publicly accused in Dublin of the rape of a 12-year-old girl. Having been paid to deliver a message, Mary Neal claims she is bundled into a brothel and there assaulted throughout the night by Luttrell. The keeper of the house, Maria Llewellyn, is charged in a case marked by accusations of witness tampering, the death in prison of Mary’s mother and newborn baby sister and by the insinuation that Mary was already working as a prostitute. The affair becomes a cause célèbre with the public intervention of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, later a founding member of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen. To clear Mary’s name he brings her to Dublin Castle to see the Lord Lieutenant, John Fane, 10th Earl of Westmorland. Westmorland, unmoved, pardons Llewellyn and sets her at liberty. Luttrell is never asked to answer for raping Mary Neal. In 1790 he re-enters the British Parliament as Member for Plympton Erle.
In 1791 and 1792, Luttrell helps vote down bills to abolish the slave trade. Negroes, he proposes, only want “to murder their masters, ravish their women, and drink all their rum.” At the same time, he opposes lifting civil disabilities on Roman Catholics by abolishing the Test Act in Scotland and speaks scathingly of parliamentary reform.
In October 1793, a younger brother, Temple Simon Luttrell, is arrested in Boulogne and, until February 1795, is held in Paris where, on the strength of their sister Anne Luttrell being married to Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland, he is publicly exhibited as the brother of the king of England.
In 1795, Luttrell is entrusted with the breakup and disarming of Defenders, the agrarian semi-insurgency, in Connacht. His proceedings and impressment of some 1,300 “rebels” into the British navy elicits criticism in otherwise loyal circles.
In 1796, with the leaders of the democratic party, the United Irishmen, preparing for a French-assisted insurrection, Luttrell is given overall command of the Crown forces in Ireland. He demonstrates still greater ruthlessness in attempting to “pacify” the country and suppress the eventual rising in the summer of 1798. His command has the unusual distinction of being upbraided by his successor as Commander in Chief, Sir Ralph Abercromby, for an army “in a state of licentiousness, which must render it formidable to everyone but the enemy.”
Luttrell is seen by his critics as having “fanned the flame of disaffection into open rebellion” by “the picketings, the free quarters, half hangings, flogging and pitch-cappings” he directs.
In July 1799, Luttrell sells his Irish property and by his own later account, he takes no part in the Acts of Union. He claims to be “disgusted at the scene that was passing before me”, and to abandon Ireland because, under a “cowardly” government, he sees “the country likely to become Catholic.” When the Dublin Post of May 2, 1811, erroneously reports his death, he demands a retraction which they print under the headline Public Disappointment.
Luttrell purchases an estate at Painshill Park in Surrey and lives for several years in relative obscurity. From 1813 he harries the government of Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, with the claim that George III had promised him a secure seat in the Commons. In June 1817, five weeks short of his eightieth birthday, he finds his own way back to Parliament as Member for Ludgershall and revenges himself, in the four years remaining to him, by voting with the opposition. This, however, does not extend to joining in the attacks on the domestic spy system in 1818 nor to voting for parliamentary reform in 1819. Moreover, in the wake of the Peterloo Massacre, he supports the government, lauding the use of deadly force against “the Radicals and their system.”
Horniman is born at Surrey Mount, Forest Hill, London, on October 3, 1860, the elder child of Frederick John Horniman and his first wife Rebekah (née Emslie). Her father is a tea merchant and the founder of the Horniman Museum. Her grandfather is John Horniman who founds the family tea business of Horniman and Company. She and her younger brother Emslie are educated privately at their home. Her father is opposed to the theatre, which he considers sinful, but their Germangoverness takes her and Emslie secretly to a performance of The Merchant of Venice at The Crystal Palace when she is fourteen years old.
Horniman’s father allows her to enter the Slade School of Fine Art in 1882. Here she discovers that her talent in art is limited but she develops other interests, particularly in the theatre and opera. She takes great pleasure in Richard Wagner‘s Der Ring des Nibelungen and in Henrik Ibsen‘s plays. She cycles in London and twice over the Alps, smokes in public and explores alternative religions. The “lonely rich girl” has become “an independent-minded woman.” In 1890 she joins the occult society, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where she remains a member until disagreements with its leaders lead to her resignation in 1903. During this time she meets and becomes a friend of W. B. Yeats, acting as his amanuensis for some years. Their friendship endures. Frank O’Connor recalls that on the day Yeats hears of her death, he spends the entire evening speaking of his memories of her.
Horniman’s first venture into the theatre is in 1894 and is made possible by a legacy from her grandfather. She anonymously supports her friend Florence Farr in a season of new plays at the Royal Avenue Theatre, London. This includes a new play by Yeats, The Land of Heart’s Desire, and the première of George Bernard Shaw’s play Arms and the Man. In 1903 Yeats persuades her to go to Dublin to back productions by the Irish National Theatre Society. Here she discovers her skill as a theatre administrator. She purchases a property and develops it into the Abbey Theatre, which opens in December 1904. Although she moves back to live in England, she continues to support the theatre financially until 1910. Meanwhile, in Manchester she purchases and renovates the Gaiety Theatre in 1908 and develops it into the first regional repertory theatre in Britain.
At the Gaiety, Horniman appoints Ben Iden Payne as the director and employs actors on 40-week contracts, alternating their work between large and small parts. The plays produced include classics such as Euripides and Shakespeare, and she introduces works by contemporary playwrights such as Ibsen and Shaw. She also encourages local writers who form what becomes known as the Manchester School of dramatists, the leading members of which are Harold Brighouse, Stanley Houghton and Allan Monkhouse. The Gaiety company undertakes tours of the United States and Canada in 1912 and 1913. Horniman becomes a well-known public figure in Manchester, lecturing on subjects which include women’s suffrage and her views about the theatre. In 1910 she is awarded the honorary degree of MA by the University of Manchester. During World War I the Gaiety continues to stage plays but financial difficulties lead to the disbandment of the permanent company in 1917, following which productions in the theatre are by visiting companies. In 1921 she sells the theatre to a cinema company.
As a result of her tea connection, Horniman is known as “Hornibags.” She holds court at the Midland Hotel, wearing exotic clothing and openly smoking cigarettes, which is considered scandalous at the time. She introduces Manchester to what is called at the time “the play of ideas.” The theatre critic James Agate notes that her high-minded theatrical ventures have “an air of gloomy strenuousness” about them.
Horniman dies, unmarried, on August 6, 1937, while visiting friends in Shere, Surrey. Her estate amounts to a little over £50,000. The Annie Horniman Papers are held in the John Rylands Research Institute and Library at the University of Manchester. Her portrait, painted by John Butler Yeats in 1904, hangs in the public area of the Abbey Theatre.
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