Ryan is Professor of Oriental Languages at University College Dublin before his appointment by Pope Paul VI as Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland on December 29, 1971. Maintaining his connection and interest in oriental studies, he serves as chairman of the trustees of the Chester Beatty Library from 1978 to 1984.
During his term, Ryan consolidates much of the expansion of the archdiocese which had taken place during the term of his predecessor. He also oversees the fuller implementation of the reforms of Vatican II. He is particularly interested in liturgical reform.
Ryan also takes a traditional stand on social issues, including poverty, family life and opposition to abortion. He strongly promotes the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland in 1983, granting the equal right to life to mother and unborn.
As Archbishop, Ryan gives the people of Dublin a public park on a site earmarked by his predecessors for a proposed cathedral. It is named “Archbishop Ryan Park” in his honour. The land, at Merrion Square, is a gift from the archbishop to the city of Dublin.
Ryan dies at the age of 60 in Rome on February 21, 1985, following a heart attack. He is buried in St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral.
Lynch is called to the bar in 1949, and becomes a senior counsel in 1970. His practice is centered on the Midland circuit.
Lynch becomes a judge of the High Court in 1984. In December 1984, he is appointed the sole member of the tribunal into the Kerry Babies case. He is among three judges who sit in a divisional High Court which hears an unsuccessful challenge by Des Hanafin to result of the 1995 divorce referendum. He hears the High Court hearing of Bula Ltd v Tara Mines Ltd (No 6) in 1996 which runs for 277 days.
Lynch is appointed to the Supreme Court of Ireland in April 1996. He is delayed from first sitting on the court as the Bula case has not yet completed. He retires in December 1999.
Lynch is married to Bernadette, with whom he has five children. He dies at the age of 85 on October 31, 2013, in a nursing home near Croom, County Limerick.
As this is not a state visit, there is no formal welcome for President McAleese or official functions at the White House as there was for President Mary Robinson‘s state visit two years earlier. McAleese arrives the previous day by government jet, accompanied by her husband, Dr. Martin McAleese, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, David Andrews, and his wife. The McAleese’s son, thirteen-year-old Justin McAleese, travels to the United States separately and joined his parents in Washington, D.C..
Within hours of her arrival, McAleese attends a reception in the Four Seasons Hotel mainly for the Irish American community and hosted by the Irish ambassador, Sean O Huiginn, and his wife. In her remarks to the several hundred guests, President McAleese praises the role of President Clinton in the Northern Ireland peace process and of former Senator George Mitchell. She says Clinton’s contribution has been “remarkable.” She says, “He was prepared to take risks for peace: without his courage and leadership we could not have made the progress we have.”
McAleese says many of those present “have descended from some of the first settlers of the early colonies – some of whom, like myself, come from the northern part of the island of Ireland. I am deeply honoured that all of you have retained such a close bond and pride in your Irish heritage and that you demonstrated your affection by the strength of the many vibrant organisations in this area.”
McAleese says when our forebears crossed the Atlantic Ocean they retained a yearning that someday the Ireland they left would be a better place. “Regrettably, they did not live to see a new Ireland but it is now a reality in the economic, cultural and social progress of the last number of years.” Arranging the meeting at the White House is a problem for U.S. and Irish officials because of Clinton’s extremely busy schedule, as he prepares for his China visit. But the fact that he makes time for it is an indication of the importance he attaches to U.S.-Irish relations.
In the evening, McAleese attends a dinner in her honour at the Irish Embassy residence, to which leading political and administration figures are invited. On June 24, following a press conference at the National Press Club and a lunch on Capitol Hill with members of Congress, she flies to New York. There she pays a courtesy visit on the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, and later attends a trade show organised by the Irish Business Organisation. In the evening she attends the “Dreamer of Dreams” awards ceremony organised by the Irish Voice newspaper.
On Thursday, June 25, McAleese has more engagements and prior to her return to Ireland on Friday, June 26.
(From: “McAleese for courtesy call on Clinton today” by Joe Carroll, The IrishTimes, http://www.irishtimes.com, July 23, 1998)
Campbell is born in Belfast on July 15, 1879, into a Catholic and Irish nationalist family from County Down. He is educated at St. Malachy’s College, Belfast. After working for his father he teaches for a while. He travels to Dublin in 1902, meeting leading nationalist figures. His literary activities begin with songs, as a collector in Antrim, County Antrim and working with the composer Herbert Hughes. He is then a founder of the Ulster Literary Theatre in 1904. He contributes a play, The Little Cowherd of Slainge, and several articles to its journal Uladh edited by Bulmer Hobson. The Little Cowherd of Slainge is performed by the Ulster Literary Theatre at the Clarence Place Hall in Belfast on May 4, 1905, along with Lewis Purcell’s The Enthusiast.
Campbell moves to Dublin in 1905 and, failing to find work, moves to London the following year where he is involved in Irish literary activities while working as a teacher. He marries Nancy Maude in 1910, and they move shortly thereafter to Dublin, and then later to County Wicklow. His play Judgement is performed at the Abbey Theatre in April 1912.
Campbell takes part as a supporter in the Easter Rising of 1916, doing rescue work. The following year he publishes a translation from Irish of the short stories of Patrick Pearse, one of the leaders of the Rising.
Campbell becomes a Sinn FéinCouncillor in Wicklow in 1921. Later in the Irish Civil War he is on the Republican side, and is interned in 1922-23. His marriage breaks up, and he emigrates to the United States in 1925 where he settles in New York City. He lectures at Fordham University, and works in academic Irish studies, founding the University’s School of Irish Studies in 1928, which lasts four years. He is the editor of The Irish Review (1934), a short lived “magazine of Irish expression.” The business manager is George Lennon, former Officer Commanding of the County WaterfordFlying Column during the Irish War of Independence. The managing editor is Lennon’s brother-in-law, George H. Sherwood.
Campbell returns to Ireland in 1939, settling at Glencree, County Wicklow. He dies at Lacken Daragh, Enniskerry, County Wicklow on June 6, 1944.
Chicago May, the nickname of Mary Anne Duignan, an Irish-born criminal who becomes notorious in the United States, United Kingdom and France, dies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May 30, 1929. She refers to herself as the “queen of crooks” and sometimes uses the name May Churchill.
Duignan is born in Edenmore, Ballinamuck, County Longford, on December 26, 1871. In 1890, at the age of 19, she steals the proceeds earned by her parents from a recent cattle fair and runs away to Liverpool, England where she buys new clothes and books a ticket to America. Upon arrival in New York City she supports herself by prostitution and picking pockets.
She moves to Chicago to take advantage of the large influx of visitors at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. She teams up with another prostitute. One robs customers while the other is having sex with them. She returns to New York City, where she works as a dancer, but is soon arrested for stealing a wallet, earning her first jail sentence. She briefly marries friend Jim Sharpe but the couple soon separates. After this, she calls herself May Churchill Sharpe. She soon establishes herself with the local criminal underworld, becoming involved in various crimes, mostly of a petty nature, including fraud, assault, brawling, drunk and disorderly behaviour, beggary and pickpocketing.
Duignan has various criminal lovers, but she graduates from petty criminality to major crime when she meets Eddie Guerin, who organises a robbery of the American Express office in Paris. She is imprisoned for her role in the crime. She operates her schemes on four continents and in nine countries. She reaches the height of her career in England when she is taken up by aristocrat Sir Sidney Hamilton Gore, who supposedly proposes marriage to her, shortly before he shoots himself.
After Guerin escapes from a French prison island, he makes his way to London where he meets Duignan again, but the relationship turns sour. She takes up with a burglar named Charley Smith. In 1907, during an altercation with Guerin, Smith shoots him, wounding him in the foot. Smith and Duignan are both accused of attempted murder. She is convicted and sentenced to 15 years. She is released in 1917, and returns to the United States.
By the 1920s, Duignan is living in Detroit and has become destitute. No longer young, she is reduced to propositioning men on the streets and is repeatedly arrested for soliciting and common prostitution. She hopes to make money from her former notoriety by writing magazine articles and an autobiography with the help of a journalist, which is published in 1928 as Chicago May, Her Story, by the Queen of Crooks. Her former lover Guerin publishes his own life story at the same time, under the title I Was a Bandit. She dies at the age of 58 in Philadelphia on May 30, 1929.
Ffrench-Mullen is born on December 30, 1880, in Malta, where her father, St. Lawrence ffrench-Mullen, a Royal Navy surgeon, is stationed. She has two brothers, St. Lawrence Patrick Joseph (1890–1891) and Douglas (1893–1943).
Ffrench-Mullen’s interest in politics starts young. Her father is a committed Parnellite and their Dundrum home is a campaign headquarters. She is a radical feminist and republican during her life. Like many others of the time, she regards it as a woman’s right to vote. She joins the suffrage movement, and meets women with a similar worldview and values. The women’s suffrage movement is included in the Movements of Extremists reports of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. Ffrench-Mullen goes on to join Inghinidhe na hÉireann, a radical nationalist women’s group founded by Maud Gonne in 1900. The organisation develops into Cumann na mBan in 1913. Suffragist values are central to Cumann na mBan’s goal of standing side-by-side with men in the fight for the Irish Republic. Some members see this as women regaining the rights that had belonged to them in pre-invasion Gaelic civilisation. She is on the socialist wing of the moment, holding to the ideals of universal social equality of the syndicalist James Connolly and the Irish Citizen Army (ICA).
During the 1916 Easter Rising, ffrench-Mullen serves as a lieutenant in the Irish Citizen Army. She sees action with the St. Stephen’s Green and Royal College of Surgeons garrison. In St. Stephen’s Green she is in command of the 15 Citizen Army women who set up a medical station and field kitchen. While occupying St. Stephen’s Green, she and her comrades come under sustained heavy fire from the Shelbourne Hotel and buildings on the north side of the Green. After the surrender of the College of Surgeons garrison, ffrench-Mullen is one of the 77 women who had fought in the Rising who are imprisoned, among them her life partner Kathleen Lynn. While in captivity ffrench Mullen is moved three times, spending time in Richmond Barracks, Kilmainham Gaol and Mountjoy Prison. She is released on June 5, 1916.
Ffrench-Mullen meets Kathleen Lynn through Inghinidhe na h-Éireann. In 1915, she moves into Lynn’s home in Belgrave Road, Rathmines, where they live together for thirty years, until ffrench-Mullen’s death in 1944.
Ffrench-Mullen records in her prison diary in 1916 that she can face prison without fear once Lynn (whom she refers to as “the Doctor”) and she are together. Katherine Lynch of the Women’s Studies Centre at University College Dublin (UCD) describes them as partners, calling them part of a network of lesbians living in Dublin—which includes Helena Molony, Louie Bennett and Elizabeth O’Farrell—who meet through the suffrage movement and later become involved with the national and trade union movement. These women are featured, along with Eva Gore-Booth and others, in a 2023 TG4 documentary about “the radical queer women at the very heart of the Irish Revolution”: Croíthe Radacacha (Radical Hearts).
In 1919, Madeleine ffrench-Mullen and Kathleen Lynn establish Saint Ultan’s Children’s Hospital, also known as Teach Ultan, which is a female-run hospital for infants at 37 Charlemont Street, Dublin. The hospital focuses on children’s health and wellbeing, an area that is perceived at the time as women’s concern. In the aftermath of World War I many health problems have arisen including a rise in venereal diseases such as syphilis, carried from soldiers returning home from war. Many of Ireland’s infants of the time suffer from congenital syphilis (inherited disease from mother at birth), and this is a driving factor in the opening of St Ultan’s hospital. Tuberculosis is endemic in Ireland during its time as a British colony. Against steadfast opposition by the State and the Catholic Church, Lynn and ffrench-Mullen establish a vaccination project, vaccinating thousands of impoverished children who would have died of tuberculosis without their vaccines. Their success leads to the foundation of Ireland’s BCG vaccine programme, which has vaccinated all babies since the 1950s.
Ffrench-Mullen dies at the age of 63 in a Dublin nursing home on May 26, 1944. She is interred with her parents as well as her younger brothers (whom she outlives) in the ffrench-Mullen family plot in Glasnevin Cemetery. Her funeral takes place on the same day as the 1944 Irish general election.
In 2004, Bacik’s book Kicking and Screaming: Dragging Ireland into the 21st Century, is published by The O’Brien Press.
In 2007, she contested the Seanad Éireann elections for the third time in the Dublin University constituency, and is elected to the third seat, behind sitting Independent senators Shane Ross and David Norris. She initially sits as an Independent senator.
In February 2009, Bacik is included in an ‘All Star Women’s Cabinet’ in the Irish Independent. In March 2009, she confirmed claims made on a TV programme that she had taken two voluntary pay cuts of 10% in addition to a pension levy. In June 2009, she is the Labour Party candidate for the Dublin Central by-election. She comes in third with 17% of the first preference votes. She joins the Labour Party group in the Seanad in September 2009, and becomes Labour Party Seanad spokesperson for both Justice and Arts, Sports and Tourism. In November 2009, a feature by Mary Kenny of the Irish Independent includes Bacik in a list of women who “well deserved their iconic status.”
In May 2010, Bacik seeks Labour’s nomination to contest the next election in the Dublin South-East constituency but is not selected. In December 2010, she is added to the ticket as the second candidate beside Labour Party leader, Eamon Gilmore, in the Dún Laoghaire constituency for the 2011 Irish general election. Gilmore tops the poll, with Bacik receiving 10.1% of first preference votes but she is not elected. She is re-elected to Seanad Éireann at the subsequent election, after which she becomes Deputy Leader of the Seanad. She holds her seat in the Seanad in 2016 and in 2020.
On April 27, 2021, after the resignation of Eoghan Murphy from his Dáil seat in Dublin Bay South, Bacik announces her intention to stand in the upcoming by-election. She campaigns with an emphasis on providing affordable housing, as well as improving healthcare and childcare, tackling climate change, and achieving “a true republic in which church and state are separated.” During the campaign, she describes herself as having “more bills passed into law than any other Senator, on issues such as workers’ conditions, women’s health rights, and LGBT equality”. She also campaigns on increasing the number of sports amenities for children in the area, calling for unused Defence Forces football fields at the Cathal Brugha Barracks to be freed up for local sports, with the suggestion rejected by Fine GaelMinister for DefenceSimon Coveney. Fine Gael complains to RTÉ after she features prominently on National Treasures, a prime-time TV show broadcast by RTÉ during the campaign. RTÉ has strict rules about fair coverage of candidates during campaigns. The national broadcaster blames an “inadvertent error” for the programme being shown three days before the election. A steering group within the broadcaster tells Fine Gael that “the broadcast should not have happened.” Consequentially, RTÉ has to show a special report on the by-election on Prime Time to “ensure fair coverage is given to all candidates.”
Bacik wins this election, receiving 8,131 (30.2%) first-preference votes. It is her fourth attempt as a Labour candidate, and she expresses her delight at the success at the count centre in the RDS. Following the election, she is described by The Irish Times as “a formidable activist and public intellectual” and that Fine Gael’s perceived antipathy towards their former TD, Kate O’Connell, may have contributed to the surge in support to Bacik from women voters. The newspaper claims that her election is “a long overdue morale boost” for Labour.
In March 2022, Bacik confirms she will run to succeed Alan Kelly as Labour Party leader. Kelly states that he believes that Bacik will succeed him. On March 24, 2022, she is confirmed as Labour Party leader unopposed at a party conference in Dublin. In a speech, she says she will focus on the rising cost of living and the serious and global problems facing the country. She pledges that Labour will fight the next election as a “standalone party” rather than joining any left-wing alliance.
He returns to England to be brigade major of the 2nd Infantry Brigade at Aldershot in 1886. He becomes deputy assistant adjutant general at Horse Guards in 1892, and deputy assistant adjutant general at Aldershot in 1894. He takes part in the Fourth Anglo-Ashanti War in 1895 and becomes assistant adjutant general at Horse Guards in 1897.
Stopford takes part in the Second Boer War as military secretary to General Sir Redvers Buller and later military secretary to the general officer commanding Natal, for which he is knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George in November 1900. After his return to Britain, he is appointed deputy adjutant general at Aldershot in 1901, and chief staff officer for I Corps with the temporary rank of brigadier general, on April 1, 1902. Two years later, he is appointed director of military training at Horse Guards. Promoted to major general in February 1904, he is Major-General commanding the Brigade of Guards and general officer commanding (GOC) of the London District from 1906. He is promoted to lieutenant general in September 1909.
On August 5, 1914, a day after the British entry into World War I, he is appointed GOC First Army, part of Home Forces, a position he holds until he takes command of IX Corps the following year.
As GOC of IX Corps, Stopford is blamed for the failure to attack following the landing at Suvla Bay in August 1915, during the Gallipoli campaign. He chose to command the landing from HMS Jonquil, anchored offshore, but sleeps as the landing is in progress. He is quickly replaced on August 15 by Major-General Sir Julian Byng.
After almost 50 years of military service, Stopford retires from the army in 1920.
Stopford dies at the age of 75 on May 4, 1929, at Marylebone, City of Westminster, Greater London, England. He is buried in the Holy Trinity and St. Andrew’s Churchyard in Ashe, Basingstoke and Deane borough, Hampshire, England.
Thrift was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England, on February 28, 1870, one of at least two sons and two daughters of Henry George Thrift, civil servant, and Sarah Anne Thrift (née Smith). The family moves in his childhood to Dublin, where his father is an officer in the Inland Revenue.
He is educated at The High School, Dublin, and enters Trinity College Dublin in 1889 with a second sizarship in mathematics, and commences a highly distinguished university career, scoring firsts in several examinations and winning numerous prizes. Elected fellow in mathematics and experimental science, and in mental and moral philosophy in 1896, he becomes Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at TCD from 1901 to 1929. He is awarded a Doctor of Science (DSc) in 1936. He is appointed Provost of Trinity College Dublin in 1937, serving until his death in 1942.
While rarely speaking on controversial issues, Thrift opposes the 1925 legislation banning divorce, which he describes as an infringement of individual and minority rights, and a betrayal of commitments made by Arthur Griffith during the Anglo-Irish Treaty debates. His capable service on various Dáil committees is recognised by his election as Leas-Ceann Comhairle (deputy speaker). A long-serving council member of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) (1902–42), he is a commissioner of charitable donations and bequests, and financial adviser to the General Synod of the Church of Ireland. He sits on the governing boards of the Erasmus Smith schools and of the Incorporated Society for Promoting Protestant Schools in Ireland.
Thrift’s portrait is painted by Leo Whelan. He marries Etta Robinson, a daughter of C. H. Robinson, a medical doctor, and they have three sons and three daughters. He dies at the provost’s house, Trinity College Dublin, on April 23, 1942. He is buried at Mount Jerome Cemetery, Harold’s Cross, County Dublin.
Coogan’s particular focus is on Ireland’s nationalist/independence movement in the 20th century, a period of unprecedented political upheaval. He blames the Troubles in Northern Ireland on “Paisleyism.”
In 2000, Irish writer and editor Ruth Dudley Edwards is awarded £25,000 damages and a public apology by the High Court in London against Coogan for factual errors in references to her in his book Wherever Green is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora (2000). In the book, he writes that Dudley Edwards had “groveled to and hypocritically ingratiated herself with the English establishment to further her writing career.” He also alleges that Dudley Edwards “had abused the position of chairwoman of the British Association for Irish Studies (BAIS) by trying to impose her political views on it” and that her commission to write True Brits had been awarded because of political favouritism.
When TaoiseachEnda Kenny causes confusion following a speech at Béal na Bláth by incorrectly claiming Michael Collins had brought Lenin to Ireland, Coogan comments, “Those were the days when bishops were bishops and Lenin was a communist. How would that have gone down with the churchyard collections?”
Coogan has been criticised by the Irish historians Liam Kennedy and Diarmaid Ferriter, as well as Cormac Ó Gráda, for a supposed lack of thoroughness in his research and bias:
“Well, I waited in this book to hear some great revelation, and it just isn’t there. It’s anticlimactic. I could not see the great plot, and indeed there is no serious historian who … I can’t think of a single historian who has researched the Famine in depth – and Tim Pat has not researched it in depth” (The Famine Plot).
“Coogan is not remotely interested in looking at what others have written on 20th-century Irish history…. he does not appear interested in context and shows scant regard for evidence. He does not attempt to offer any sustained analysis in relation to the challenges of state building, the meaning of sovereignty, economic and cultural transformations, or comparative perspectives on the evolution of Irish society. There is no indication whatsoever that Coogan has engaged with the abundant archival material relating to the subject matter he pronounces on. There is no rhyme or reason when it comes to the citation of the many quotations he uses; the vast majority are not referenced. For the 300-page text, 21 endnotes are cited and six of them relate to Coogan’s previous books, a reminder that much of this tome consists of recycled material…. Tim Pat Coogan… he is a decent, compassionate man who has made a significant contribution to Irish life. But he has not read up on Irish history; indeed, such is the paucity of his research efforts that this book amounts to a travesty of 20th-century Irish history” (1916: The Mornings After).
seamus dubhghaill 