seamus dubhghaill

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

Category Archives: Union with Great Britain (1801-1912)


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Birth of Composer Geoffrey Molyneux Palmer

Geoffrey Molyneux Palmer (Irish: Seathrún de Pámar), Irish composer, is born to Protestant Irish parents in Staines, Middlesex, England, on October 8, 1882. His compositions consist mainly of operas and vocal music, among them the first musical settings of poems by James Joyce.

Palmer grows up in South Woodford, an area of East London, where his father, Abram Smythe Palmer, is vicar at Holy Trinity Church. He studies at the University of Oxford where, in 1901, he is the youngest Bachelor of Music (BMus) in college history. Between 1904 and 1907 he studies composition with Charles Villiers Stanford at the Royal College of Music, London. He moves to Ireland in 1910 where he is initially active as a church organist in Dublin suburbs. From his early twenties he suffers from multiple sclerosis, which makes a professional independence increasingly difficult.

Palmer’s music includes at least three operas, a number of choral pieces and many songs. His strong interest in opera comes during a politically difficult period in Irish history. Ireland is struggling for independence, and cultural politicians often regard opera (and classical music in general) as alien to Irish culture. Initially, however, he is successful, his earliest stage work being Finn Varra Maa (a transliteration from the Gaelic meaning “good Finbar”), subtitled The Irish Santa Claus. It survives as a libretto only, published in a drama series by Talbot Press, Dublin, in 1917. Contrary to what the (sub-)title may suggest, the work is a political satire that is much criticised for its nationalism. Sruth na Maoile (“The Sea of Moyle”) is first performed in July 1923 and restaged by the O’Mara Opera Company in the cultural by-programme of the Tailteann Games in August 1924. Its story is based on the legend of the Children of Lir, while the music relies on numerous references to Irish traditional music, including the song Silent O Moylefrom Thomas Moore‘s Irish Melodies. A third work, Grania Goes (1924), conceived as a light, comic opera, cannot be performed in the years following Irish independence. The manuscript scores of the Sruth na Maoile and Grania Goes are in the National Library of Ireland.

Between 1925 and 1930, Palmer embarks on a cycle of three full-scale operas on the Cuchullain cycle to words by William Mervyn Crofton. In one of them, Deirdre of the Sorrows (1925), Crofton acknowledges Palmer’s “beautiful music.” Despite this, Palmer’s illness prevents the completion of the score, which is later handed over to the composer Staf Gebruers (1902–70), but they are never performed. The manuscript scores of the operas Cuchullain and Deirdre of the Sorrows composed by Gebruers are held by his son Adrian. Unfortunately, despite extensive searching, the score of The Wooing of Emer has not been located, though it is referenced in Gebruers’ own inventories and mentioned as being of three hours duration. In addition, there is a copy of The King’s Song, also composed by Gebruers with lyrics by Crofton and described as from Act 1 of The Black Hag, but whether or not this has any connection with Palmer is unknown.

Palmer is mainly known as the composer of light songs and ballads, often in a folkloristic style, that find publishers in England and are frequently performed. “They show a skilled hand with a talent for vocal harmony but little originality.” His choral music is mainly on a similar miniature scale, an exception being the early cantata The Abbot of Innisfallen (1909). There are some isolated examples of orchestral music performed by the orchestra of Radio Éireann, but the surviving references may not give a full picture of his output.

In the last decades of his life, Palmer was confined to a wheelchair and depends upon the care of his two sisters, who were running Hillcourt, a private girls’ boarding school in Glenageary, near their home in Sandycove (south Dublin). Palmer dies in Dublin on November 29, 1957.


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Death of Artist Samuel McCloy

Samuel McCloy, Irish artist who trains at Belfast School of Design and later at Somerset House, dies in Balham, South London, on October 4, 1904. He exhibits widely in group shows across the British Isles and is known for his watercolours, genre paintings, still life and landscapes. He is also a commercial designer, illustrator, and an educator who is for a time Master at Waterford School of Art.

Born on March 13, 1831, in Lisburn, County Antrim, McCloy is the youngest of five children, born to Peter McCloy, a painter, and his wife Martha Phelan. He studies at the School of Design in Belfast from 1850 to 1851 while serving an apprenticeship in engraving, with J and T Smyth. He then spende a year at the Central School, Somerset House in London before being appointed Master at the Waterford School of Art around 1853, when he also becomes a visiting instructor to several other institutions. In the spring of 1865 he marries his student, the Waterford artist Ellen Lucy Harris, the fourth daughter of a banker named Richard Harris. The dismembered corpse of McCloy’s mother is recovered from the River Suir in September of the same year. She had been missing since the previous November.

Between 1873 and 1891 McCloy shows nine works at the Royal Society of British Artists. Upon his return to Belfast around 1874, he works freelance designing greetings cards for Marcus Ward & Co., and in creating damask designs for linen manufacturers. He illustrates Lucy Sale-Barker‘s Sunny Childhood, published by Routledge in 1887, and he is for a time employed by The Illustrated London News.

McCloy shows just once at the Royal Academy of Arts with a work entitled The Haunt of Meditation in 1859. He exhibits infrequently at the Royal Hibernian Academy between 1862 and 1882, where he displays sixteen works in that time. He displays eleven works in the 1876 Industrial Exhibition at Belfast’s Ulster Hall. In 1880, he shows at Rodman and Company in London where the writer in the Belfast Telegraph indicates that McCloy is becoming a popular artist and is receiving extensive patronage.

Following his relocation to London in 1881, McCloy contributes works to numerous regional exhibitions, including the spring exhibition of the Derby Sketching Club in 1883, Nottingham Castle Museum’s autumn exhibition of 1888, and at Exeter‘s Eland Art Gallery in 1892. He exhibits with the Royal Scottish Academy in 1882 and with the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1887. He is also a member of the Belfast Art Society, an antecedent to the Royal Ulster Academy.

After a year-long illness that prevents him from working, McCloy dies in Balham, South London, on October 4, 1904. He is survived by his wife, Ellen, and nine daughters. The Lisburn Museum in his hometown offers a belated retrospective of his work in 1981 to mark the one-hundred fiftieth anniversary of his birth. The exhibition is the first known solo display of McCloy’s work and consists of 58 works. The catalogue for this show is written by Eileen Black and funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

McCloy’s work can be seen in many public collections including the Ulster Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, the National Gallery of Ireland, and in the Irish Linen Centre and Lisburn Museum.


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Birth of Annie Horniman, Theatre Patron & Manager

Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman CH, English theatre patron and manager, is born at Surrey Mount, Forest Hill, London, on October 3, 1860. She establishes the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and founds the first regional repertory theatre company in Britain at the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester. She encourages the work of new writers and playwrights, including W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and members of what become known as the Manchester School of dramatists.

Horniman, 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 German governess 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 moves to London where she keeps a flat in Portman Square. In 1933 she is made a Companion of Honour. She and Algernon Blackwood might be the only past or present members of an occult society to receive a United Kingdom honour.

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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Birth of Áine Ceannt, Revolutionary Activist & Humanitarian Leader

Áine Ceannt (née Ní Bhraonáin), Irish revolutionary activist and humanitarian leader, is born Frances Mary Brennan at 28 Upper Camden Street, Dublin, on September 23, 1880.

Brennan is the daughter of Francis Brennan, who himself is a Fenian earlier in his life, and sister of Lily O’Brennan and Kathleen O’Brennan. Her mother is Elizabeth Anne Butler. She is educated in the Dominican College, Eccles Street, and adopts the name Áine upon joining the Gaelic League. It is through her Irish language activism that she meets her future husband, Éamonn Ceannt, whom she marries on June 7, 1905. Their son, Ronan, is born in June 1906. A convinced republican, she joins Cumann na mBan on its foundation in 1914. She writes and delivers dispatches during the Easter Rising. Her husband is one of the signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic and is executed by the British at Kilmainham Gaol on May 8, 1916.

Newly widowed, Ceannt continues her republican activism, serving as Vice-President of Cumann na mBan and as a member of the Sinn Féin Standing Committee. She also plays a role in the development of the Sinn Féin Courts, a parallel legal system designed to offer an alternative to the British courts.

Ceannt is ardently opposed to the signature of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921. She is imprisoned by the Irish Free State government during the Irish Civil War in Mountjoy Prison for her anti-Treaty activity. Throughout the war, she serves at the highest levels within anti-Treaty Sinn Féin. In the years that follow, she spearheads efforts to secure state compensation for the widows and the children of those who had died in 1916 and in the Irish War of Independence. She serves as the head of the Children’s Fund of the Irish White Cross, an American-funded humanitarian organisation founded to assist victims of unrest in Ireland. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Irish Red Cross.

In her later years, Ceannt moves to Churchtown, Dublin. She dies on February 2, 1954, in her home, Inis Ealgan, and was buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery, situated in the suburban area of Deansgrange in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, County Dublin.

(Pictured: Photograph, circa 1917, of Áine and Ronan Ceannt, the family of Éamonn Ceannt, who is executed for his participation in the 1916 Easter Rising)


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Birth of Kathleen Behan, Irish Republican & Folk Singer

Kathleen Behan (née Kearney), Irish republican and folk singer, and mother of Irish authors Brendan, Brian and Dominic, is born on September 18, 1889, at 49 Capel Street, Dublin.

She is the fifth child and youngest daughter of pork butcher and grocer, John Kearney (1854–97), and his wife Kathleen Kearney (née McGuinness) (1860–1907). She has four brothers and two sisters. Her father is from Rosybrook, County Louth and her mother is from Rathmaiden, Slane, County Meath, both coming from prosperous farming families. Her father has a business on Lower Dorset Street, with a grocery, pub and a row of houses. Owing to his own poor management, by the time she is born he has a smaller business on Dolphin’s Barn Lane. Following his death in 1897, she and her sisters are placed in the Goldenbridge orphanage at Inchicore by their mother. She is there from 1898 to 1904 where she becomes an avid reader. When she leaves, she rejoins her family in a one-room tenement flat on Gloucester Street.

Her oldest sibling, Peadar Kearney, is an ardent republican who writes the lyrics to the song that becomes the Irish national anthem, ”Amhrán na bhFiann”(English: “The Soldier’s Song”). It is through him that she meets a printer’s compositor and member of the Irish Volunteers, Jack Furlong. They marry in 1916. She is an active member of Cumann na mBan, and serves as a courier to the General Post Office, Dublin and other outposts during the 1916 Easter Rising. At the same time, Furlong fights in the Jacob’s factory garrison. The couple has two sons: Roger Casement (Rory) Furlong (1917–87) and Sean Furlong (born March 1919). Sean is born six month’s after she is widowed when Furlong dies in the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. She lives with her mother-in-law, who is also a republican and seamstress who makes Irish Volunteer uniforms. She is arrested for running an Irish Republican Army (IRA) safe house. She works for a short time for Maud Gonne as a housekeeper, where she meets W. B. Yeats and Sarah Purser. A study painted of her by Purser (above) is now in the National Gallery of Ireland entitled The Sad Girl. From 1918 to 1922 she works as a clerk in the Dublin Corporation, while also a caretaker in the Harcourt Street branch of the Irish White Cross republican aid association.

In 1922 she marries Stephen Behan, house painter, trade unionist and fellow republican. The couple has four sons and one daughter: Brendan (b. 1923), Seamus (b. 1925), Brian (b. 1926), Dominic (b. 1928), and Carmel (b. 1932). Brendan is born while his father is imprisoned during the Irish Civil War, and Behan claims that Michael Collins gives her money while she is pregnant. Stephen’s mother owns three slum tenements, so the Behans live rent-free in a one-room basement flat at 14 Russell Street. Owing to her disdain at gossiping on the house steps, she is nicknamed “Lady Behan” by her neighbours. When Stephen’s mother dies in 1936, the Behans moved to a newly built council house in Crumlin, living at 70 Kildare Road. The family finds the new house far from work and school, and the local area devoid of community.

The family experiences extreme poverty frequently, owing to Stephen’s unemployment and during the nine month long building strike of 1936. Behan attempts to claim a pension as her first husband had served in 1916, but her application is rejected. She had said the exposure to flour had effected Furlong’s lungs negatively. It is declined as she had remarried before the enactment of the Army Pensions Act 1923. Despite their circumstances, the house attracts conversation, music, books and politics. The Behan’s republican, socialist, labour activist and anti-clericalism have a strong effect on their sons, particularly Brendan and Dominic. Such is the volume of radical meetings that take place at the Behan home, it is dubbed “the Kremlin” by their neighbours, and a “madhouse” by Stephen. During The Emergency of 1939 to 1945 she fights against local shopkeepers who ignore price controls, and is labelled as “red” for her anti-Franco and pro-Stalin sympathies. Her reply to the branding of her as such is “I’m not red, I’m scarlet.”

From the 1950s onwards, Behan shares international fame with her sons Dominic and Brendan. She often travels to London to see their plays, eventually appearing on British and Irish television and cultivating her own following. She is badly injured when she is struck by a motorcycle, a day before Stephen’s death in 1967. Owing to the effect of these injuries, she moves in 1970 to the Sacred Heart Residence of the Little Sisters of the Poor, Sybil Hill, Raheny.

In 1981, she records an album When All the World Was Young. Taped conversations of her reminiscences are made into an autobiographic book, Mother of all the Behans, by her son Brian in 1984. A one-woman stage adaptation of the book by Peter Sheridan and starring Rosaleen Linehan is acclaimed in Ireland, Britain and North America.

Behan dies in the nursing home in Raheny on April 26, 1984, and is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery.

(Pictured: Portrait of Kathleen Behan by Sarah Purser, National Gallery of Ireland)


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Birth of Fenian Leader Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa

Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, Irish Fenian leader and prominent member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), is born Jeremiah O’Donovan at Reenascreena, Rosscarbery, County Cork, on September 10, 1831.

Rossa becomes a shopkeeper in Skibbereen where, in 1856, he establishes the Phoenix National and Literary Society, the aim of which is “the liberation of Ireland by force of arms.” This organisation later merges with the IRB, founded two years later in Dublin.

In December 1858, Roosa is arrested and jailed without trial until July 1859. He is charged with plotting a Fenian rising in 1865, put on trial for high treason, and sentenced to penal servitude for life due to previous convictions. He serves his time in Pentonville, Portland, and Chatham prisons in England.

In an 1869 by-election, Roosa is returned to the British House of Commons for the Tipperary constituency, defeating the Liberal Catholic Denis Caulfield Heron by 1,054 to 898 votes. The election is declared invalid because Rossa is an imprisoned felon.

After giving an understanding that he will not return to Ireland, Rossa is released as part of the Fenian amnesty of 1870. Boarding the S.S. Cuba, he leaves for the United States with his friend John Devoy and three other exiles. Together they were dubbed “The Cuba Five.”

Rossa takes up residence in New York City, where he joins Clan na Gael and the Fenian Brotherhood. He organises the first ever bombings by Irish republicans of English cities in what is called the “dynamite campaign.” The campaign lasts through the 1880s and makes him infamous in Britain. The British government demands his extradition from America but without success.

In 1885, Rossa is shot outside his office near Broadway by an Englishwoman, Yseult Dudley, but his wounds are not life-threatening. He is allowed to visit Ireland in 1894, and again in 1904. On the latter visit, he is made a “Freeman of the City of Cork.”

Rossa is seriously ill in his later years and is finally confined to a hospital bed in St. Vincent’s Hospital, Staten Island, where he dies suddenly at the age of 83 on June 29, 1915. His body is returned to Ireland for burial and a hero’s welcome. The funeral at Glasnevin Cemetery on August 1, 1915, is a huge affair, garnering substantial publicity for the Irish Volunteers and the IRB at time when a rebellion, later to emerge as the Easter Rising, is being actively planned. The graveside oration given by Patrick Pearse remains one of the most famous speeches of the Irish independence movement stirring his audience to a call to arms.


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Death of Hedges Eyre Chatterton, Irish Conservative Party MP

Hedges Eyre Chatterton, Irish Conservative Party Member of Parliament (MP) in the Parliament of the United Kingdom and subsequently Vice-Chancellor of Ireland, dies on August 30, 1910.

Chatterton is born in 1819 in Cork, County Cork, the eldest son of Abraham Chatterton, a solicitor, and Jane Tisdall of Kenmare, County Kerry. He attends Trinity College Dublin (TCD), before being called to the Irish Bar in 1843. He becomes a Queen’s Counsel (QC) in 1858. He is Solicitor-General for Ireland from 1866 to 1867 and Attorney-General for Ireland in 1867. He is made a member of the Privy Council of Ireland on March 30, 1867. He is elected MP for Dublin University in 1867. He leaves the House of Commons on his appointment to the newly created judicial office of Vice-Chancellor of Ireland in 1867, an office which is abolished when he retires in 1904.

He marries firstly Mary Halloran of Cloyne, County Cork, in 1845. She dies in 1901. In the year of his retirement, he remarries Florence Henrietta Gore, widow of Edward Croker. He has no children. James Joyce remarks in Ulysses that his second marriage at the age of 85 infuriates his nephew, who had been waiting patiently for years to inherit his money.

Despite his many years of service on the Bench, Chatterton does not seem to be highly regarded as a judge. On his retirement the Bar pays tribute to his good qualities but adds several qualifications: “there might have been on the Bench lawyers more profound, reasoners more acute…” In his first decade on the Bench, Chatterton has to endure the continual denigration of Jonathan Christian, the Lord Justice of Appeal in Chancery. Christian is notoriously bitter-tongued, and while he despises most of his colleagues, he seems to have a particular dislike of Chatterton. He regularly votes on appeal to overturn his judgments, and frequently adds personal insults. Nor does he confine his attacks to the courtroom: there is controversy in 1870 when remarks of Christian that Chatterton is “lazy, stupid, conceited and so incompetent that he ought to be pensioned off” find their way into The Irish Times. The hint about pensioning off Chatterton is not taken up, no doubt because he enjoys the confidence of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Thomas O’Hagan, 1st Baron O’Hagan, who is also on bad terms with Christian. In an appeal from Chatterton in 1873, the two appeal judges clash publicly, with O’Hagan reprimanding Christian for insulting a judge who is not there to defend himself.

Chatterton becomes involved in controversy in 1885, over the first attempt to rename Sackville Street to O’Connell Street. Dublin Corporation votes for the name change, but it arouses considerable objections from local residents, one of whom seeks an injunction. Chatterton grants the injunction on the ground that the corporation has exceeded its statutory powers. Rather unwisely, he also attacks the merits of the decision, accusing the Corporation of “sentimental notions.” The corporation is angered by both the decision and the criticisms: while it may have been a coincidence, the fact that Temple Street is briefly renamed Chatterton Street is interpreted by some as an insult to the judge, since the street is much frequented by prostitutes. The controversy is short-lived as the corporation is granted the necessary statutory powers in 1890, and the new name becomes official in 1924, by which time it has gained popular acceptance.

Chatterton dies on August 30, 1910, and is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery in the suburban area of Deansgrange in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, County Dublin.


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Birth of Sidney Hatch, Member of the Irish American Athletic Club

Sidney Herbert Hatch, an American athlete and a member of the Irish American Athletic Club, is born in River Forest, Illinois, on August 18, 1883. He competes for the United States in the 1904 Summer Olympics held in St. Louis, Missouri, in the 4-mile team where he wins the silver medal with his teammates Jim Lightbody, Frank Verner, Lacey Hearn and Frenchman Albert Corey.

Hatch is also a well-known marathon runner. From 1904 through 1922 he runs more than 45 marathons with a score of victories including the Chicago Marathon in 1909 and the Yonkers Marathon in 1911, competing as a member of the Illinois State Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). In 1910, he finishes in 5th place in the Yonkers Marathon, competing as a member of the Chicago Irish American Athletic Club.

Hatch never fails to finish a marathon. He is a six-time (1906, 1907, 1908, 1911, 1914, and 1915) winner of the Missouri Athletic Club‘s All Western Marathon in St. Louis including the 1908 marathon that qualifies him for the 1908 Summer Olympics in London. He competes in the marathon in two Olympics, placing 8th in 1904 at St. Louis and 14th in 1908 in London. He wins a silver medal in the 1904 Olympics Four-Mile team event.

On January 8, 1909, Hatch finishes third behind Matthew Maloney and James Crowley in an indoor marathon before 5,000 “wildly cheering” spectators held within the second Madison Square Garden with a time of 3:03:29.4. Maloney is reported to have set a new indoor record for the event (2:54:45.4).

On November 27, 1909, Hatch finishes sixth in the third edition of the Yonkers Marathon with a time of 3:00:24. In July of the same year, he wins a 100-mile race in Chicago, Illinois.

In March 1912, Hatch is one of “twenty of the best distance runners in the middle west” scheduled to participate in a 20-mile indoor marathon at Riverview Rink in Chicago. He also qualifies for the 1912 Summer Olympics but does not compete. He places in the top 10 in the Boston Marathon several times with a second-placed finish in 1917. He finishes third in the Boston Marathon in 1915 and 1916. In October 1916, he sets a record in the 96-mile Milwaukee to Chicago Run, completing the race in 14 hours, 50 minutes and 30 seconds.

Hatch serves as a U.S. Army messenger in World War I and is decorated for “extraordinary heroism” under fire near Brieulles, France, October 11, 1918. He is awarded the Purple Heart and Distinguished Service Cross as well as the French Croix de Guerre. After World War I, he returns to run two more Boston Marathons before retiring from marathon running. He is a letter carrier in River Forest, Illinois, from 1923 to 1953, retiring at age 70. He and Gertrude Morris are married in 1921 and have three children, Herbert, and twin girls June and Jane.

Hatch dies in Maywood, Illinois, on October 17, 1966. He is buried at the Chapel Hills Gardens West Cemetery, Oak Brook Terrace, Illinois.


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Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903 Enacted

The Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903, also known as the Wyndham Land Act, is enacted on August 14, 1903, and allows for entire estates to be purchased by the occupying tenantry, subsidized by the state.

Under pressure from both government, United Irish League (UIL) and Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), the Chief Secretary for Ireland, George Wyndham, gives his backing to a Land Conference in December 1902, comprising four moderate landlord representatives led by Windham Wyndham-Quin, 4th Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl and four tenant representatives led by William O’Brien, the others John Redmond, T. W. Russell (who speaks for Ulster tenant farmers) and Timothy Harrington. They work out a new scheme for tenant land purchase, in which sale is to be made not compulsory, but attractive to both parties, based on the government paying the difference between the price offered by tenants and that demanded by landlords. This is the basis of the “Wyndham Act” – the Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903 – which O’Brien orchestrates through Parliament.

It differs from earlier legislation which initially advanced to tenants the sum necessary to purchase their holdings, repayable over a period of years on terms determined by an independent commission, while the Wyndham Act finishes off absentee landlords‘ control over tenants and makes it easier for tenants to purchase land, facilitating the transfer of about 9 million acres (36,000 km2) up to 1914. By then, 75% of occupiers are buying out their landlords under the 1903 Act and the later Irish Land Act 1909 of Augustine Birrell, which extends the 1903 act by allowing for the compulsory purchase of tenanted farmland by the Land Commission, but falls far short in its financial provisions. In all, under these pre-1921 Land Acts over 316,000 tenants purchase their holdings amounting to 11.5 million acres (47,000 km2) out of a total of 20 million acres (81,000 km2) in the country.

The Acts provide Irish tenant farmers with more rights than tenant farmers in the rest of the United Kingdom. Munster tenants avail of land purchase in exceptionally high numbers, encouraged by their Irish Land and Labour Association‘s leader D. D. Sheehan after he and O’Brien establish an Advisory Committee to mediate between landlords and tenants on purchase terms which produce a higher take-up of land purchase than in any other province.

Historian Robert K. Webb gives most of the credit for the Wyndham Act to Conservative leader Arthur Balfour. He says the Act is “a complete success. By the time the Irish Free State was created in 1922, the system of peasant proprietorship had become universal… A land problem more than a century old had been solved, though it had taken more than 30 years of educating Parliament and landlords to do it. The scheme was intended as well to ‘kill Home Rule by kindness.’”


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Opening of the Dublin to Carlow Branch of the GS&WR Line

The Great Southern & Western Railway (GS&WR) line between Dublin and Carlow opens on August 4, 1846.

The GS&WR is an Irish gauge (1,600 mm (5 ft. 3 in.)) railway company that operates in Ireland from 1844 until 1924. The GS&WR grows by building lines and making a series of takeovers, until in the late 19th and early 20th centuries it is the largest of Ireland’s “Big Four” railway networks. At its peak the GS&WR has an 1,100-mile (1,800 km) network, of which 240 miles (390 km) are double track.

The core of the GS&WR is the Dublin Kingsbridge – Cork main line, Ireland’s “Premier Line,” and still one of her most important main line railways. The company’s headquarters are at Kingsbridge station. At its greatest extent, the GS&WR includes, in addition to the Dublin – Cork main line, the Dublin – Waterford and Mallow – Waterford lines and numerous branch lines.

There are earlier attempts to set up main line railways into the south of Ireland, but the 1840s efforts of Peter Purcell, a wealthy landowner and mail coach operator, and his associates ultimately prove successful with the implementation of a bill passed on August 6, 1844, for the GS&WR. Purcell is actively assisted by engineer John Benjamin Macneill, who has done surveys for the London and Birmingham Railway and has connections in London. The GS&WR’s vision to provide a single railway for most of the south of Ireland finds favour with United Kingdom Prime Minister Robert Peel as having likely more profitably for wealthy investors and because a single company will be easier to control. These factors likely ease the passage of relevant legislation.

William Dargan, Ireland’s foremost railway contractor, builds much of the GS&WR’s main line and a number of its other routes.

The directors choose to begin by construction of the 32.5 mile (52.3 km) stretch of the Dublin – Cork main line as far as Cherryville Junction just west of Kildare and the 23.5 mile (37.8 km) branch to Carlow with contracts shared between McCormack and Dargan. Work begins in January 1845 with services commencing on August 4, 1846. Trains are scheduled to take about 2 hours, 35 minutes for the 56 mile (90 km) stretch to Carlow and coach connections are arranged to Kilkenny, Clonmel, Waterford and the evening mail coach for Cork.

In July 1848, the main line reaches Limerick Junction, where it meets the Waterford and Limerick Railway and thus links Dublin and Limerick by rail.

In October 1849, the main line reaches the outskirts of Cork, where the GS&WR opens a temporary terminus at Blackpool. The final 1-mile (1.6 km) of line from Blackpool to the centre of Cork includes a 1,355-yard (1,239 m) tunnel and is not completed for another six years. Services through the tunnel begin in December 1855, running to and from a second temporary terminus beside the River Lee. Finally, the present Cork terminus in Glanmire Road opens in July 1856.