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


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Birth of William Thompson, Naturalist

William Thompson, Irish naturalist celebrated for his founding studies of the natural history of Ireland, especially in ornithology and marine biology, is born on December 2, 1805, in the booming maritime city of Belfast.

Thompson is the eldest son of William Thompson, a prosperous linen merchant, and Elizabeth Thompson (née Callwell). He has at least two older sisters and several younger brothers. His mother’s father is Robert Callwell, a printer, book-collector, partner in the Commercial Bank, Belfast, and one of the owners of the Northern Star newspaper.

After attending the Royal Belfast Academical Institution (RBAI) from 1818, Thompson is apprenticed in the linen business of William Sinclair in 1821. When his apprenticeship ends, he goes with his cousin George Langtry, later a wealthy shipowner, on a four-month tour (May–September 1826) of the Low Countries, the Rhine, Switzerland, and Italy. On his return to Belfast, he sets up his own business in linen bleaching. Despite early success, losses are incurred. As family and economic circumstances change, he increasingly concentrates on his natural history studies. By 1831 he has given up business. A self-taught naturalist, related by ties of kinship or friendship to most of the liberal and cultivated families of the “northern Athens,” he is shy and fastidious, but is persuaded in 1826 to join the Belfast Natural History Society by its founder, his friend James Lawson Drummond. He reads his first scientific paper, The Birds of the Copeland Islands, to the society on August 13, 1827. In that year he becomes a member of the Belfast Natural History Society’s council, and in 1833 he is chosen as one of the society’s vice-presidents. He is president from 1843 until his death.

Thompson becomes the most important naturalist in mid nineteenth-century Ireland. From 1827 to 1852 he contributes almost eighty papers on Irish natural history to the Magazine of Zoology and Botany and the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. From 1836 to 1851 he contributes to The Magazine of Natural History. Invited to travel to the Levant and the Aegean Sea in April–July 1841 with Edward Forbes, professor of natural history at the University of Edinburgh, on HMS Beacon, he observes twenty-three species of birds on migratory flights and publishes “Notice of migratory birds” in The Annals of Natural History. His authoritative observations add considerably to knowledge of the still-to-be-ascertained details of migratory patterns. Indeed, some people refuse to believe, even at that date, that birds do migrate. He publishes other papers in the same journal during 1841–43. At a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Glasgow in 1840 his Report on the fauna of Ireland (Vertebrata) attracts favourable notice. He presents and publishes a second and final part enumerating the invertebrates at the Cork meeting of the British Association in August 1843. The two reports form the most complete catalogue of Irish fauna yet published. Thanks to an assiduous correspondence with a network of informants, as well as his own extensive observations, he adds perhaps more than 800 species to Irish fauna lists.

Thompson’s chief work, The Natural History of Ireland, becomes the standard text in Irish zoology in the nineteenth century. The first three volumes, published between 1849 and 1851, deal with birds, particularly their habits and habitats rather than physical descriptions. He is one of the first naturalists to note the effects of industrialisation and other human activities on birdlife. He leaves instructions for his manuscripts on the remaining vertebrates and all the invertebrates to be prepared for publication by Robert Patterson and James Ramsey Garrett. Robert Ball and George Dickie also assist. His notes, though detailed and comprehensive, all require checking, and are found on tiny scraps of paper, even scribbled on the flaps of old envelopes. James Thompson of Macedon, Belfast, painstakingly gums them all into blank notebooks to facilitate the work of his brother’s literary executors, who preface the posthumous publication in 1856 with a lengthy memoir of their friend.

From about 1820 to 1852 Thompson lives with his mother at 1 Donegall Square West, Belfast, commuting from Holywood House, Holywood, County Down, during the summer. His daily routine begins with research, correspondence, or writing for publications for four hours after breakfast. After a two- or three-hour exercise period and dinner, he returns to work for a further two to three hours. He is president of the Belfast Literary Society (1837–39) and also an enthusiastic patron of the visual arts in the city. He enjoys hunting, wildfowling, shooting in Scotland, and gardening, though his health deteriorates from the 1840s.

Early in 1852 Thompson travels to London to make arrangements for that year’s Belfast meeting of the British Association. On February 15 he becomes ill, having suffered a minor stroke. He dies, unmarried, at his Jermyn Street lodgings on the day he is due to return home, February 17, 1852. He is buried in Clifton Street Cemetery, Belfast. He bequeaths his collection to the Belfast Natural History Society, and in March 1852 the Society adds a memorial Thompson Room to its museum, paid for by subscription.

Thompson is a corresponding member of natural history societies in Boston and Philadelphia and has many friends. He is known to assist many other researchers in Ireland, Britain, and the Continent. One of those who thinks highly of his work is Charles Darwin, with whom he corresponds. He also helps many local people, including the poet Francis Davis, with money and practical assistance. He is much loved, and his friends are deeply saddened by his death. His niece, Sydney Mary Thompson, later known by her married surname, Christen, who is born in Belfast, is an amateur naturalist, geologist, and artist, one of the first women to achieve distinction in geology.

(From: “Thompson, William” by Andrew O’Brien and Linde Lunney, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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The Battle of Modder River

The Battle of Modder River is an engagement in the Second Boer War, fought at Modder River, on November 28, 1899. A British column that includes Irish units under Lord Methuen, that is attempting to relieve the besieged town of Kimberley, forces Boers under General Piet Cronjé to retreat to Magersfontein, but suffers heavy casualties altogether.

When the war breaks out, one of the Boers’ early targets is the diamond-mining centre of Kimberley, which stands not far from the point where the borders of the Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, and the British-controlled Cape Colony meet. Although their forces surround the town, they do not press home any immediate assault. Nor do they attempt to cross the Orange River on this front to invade Cape Colony.

Meanwhile, British reinforcements are on their way to South Africa. Their commander, General Sir Redvers Buller, detaches the 1st Division under Lieutenant General Lord Methuen to relieve the Siege of Kimberley. This decision is made partly for reasons of prestige, as the capture of Kimberley, which contains the famous Imperialist and former Prime Minister of Cape Colony, Cecil Rhodes, would be a major propaganda victory for the British.

During November, Methuen’s force advances north along the Western Cape Railway. They fight and win two engagements against Boers from the Orange Free State under General Prinsloo at the Battle of Belmont and at the Battle of Graspan. At least one American, Lance Corporal Hollon Bush of the 7th Company, First Battalion Coldstream Guards is present and wounded at the Battle of Modder River. His journey to enlist from departure in New Orleans to England is not without many pitfalls before beginning service at the Tower of London, then on to Gibraltar and South Africa.

Methuen’s force consists of two infantry brigades, the Guards Brigade under Major-General Sir Henry Edward Colville and the 9th Brigade under Major-General Reginald Pole-Carew, two mounted regiments, three batteries of field artillery (18th, 62nd and 75th) and four guns of the Naval Brigade. Further reinforcements are arriving up the railway.

The British cavalry (the 9th Queen’s Royal Lancers and a unit recruited in Cape Town, Rimington’s Guides) make some attempts to scout the ground ahead of the army but fail entirely to detect General Koos de la Rey‘s trenches and other preparations. For example, the Boers had whitewashed stones on the veld or had placed biscuit tins as range markers. At 4:30 a.m. on November 28, Methuen’s force rouses itself, deploys into line and begins advancing toward the Modder River, with no plans other than to cross the river before having breakfast on the far side.

As the British troops come within 1,200 yards of the river, Methuen remarks to Colville, “They’re not here.” Colville replies, “They’re sitting uncommonly tight if they are.” At this point the Boers open fire. Most of the British troops are forced to throw themselves flat. Some try to advance in short rushes but can find no cover on the veld. Few British troops get closer than 1,000 yards to the Boers. The Guards try to outflank the Boer left but are unable to ford the Riet River. The British guns pound the buildings near Modder River Station and the line of poplar trees which mark the north bank of the Modder River, and entirely miss the enemy trenches on the south bank. Meanwhile, the Boer guns maintain a galling fire and are kept in action by repeatedly moving their positions.

The battle becomes a day-long stalemate. Most of the British infantry lay prone on the veld, tortured by heat and thirst, but safe from enemy fire unless they move. Many stoically smoke pipes or even sleep. Methuen gallops about the field trying to renew the advance and is himself wounded. At midday, some of Pole-Carew’s 9th Brigade find the open Boer right flank at Rosmead drift (ford) downstream. British infantry infiltrates across the ford and at about 1:00 p.m. drives the Boers out of Rosmead. The attack is disjointed and suffers casualties when a British field artillery battery which had just arrived on the field shells them by mistake. By nightfall, De la Rey has driven them back into a small insecure bridgehead.

Nevertheless, the Boers fear that they are now vulnerable to being outflanked and withdraw during the night.

Methuen reports that the battle had been “one of the hardest and most trying fights in the annals of the British army.” Although casualties are not cripplingly heavy (between 450 and 480), mainly because the Boers opened fire prematurely, it is clear that any simple frontal attack by infantry only against an enemy using bolt action rifles, is effectively impossible. The British are forced to pause for ten days, to evacuate their casualties, receive further reinforcements and repair their lines of communications. The delay allows the Boers to construct the entrenchments which they are to defend in the Battle of Magersfontein.

On the Boer side, there are about 80 casualties, including, Adriaan, the eldest son of Koos de la Rey, mortally wounded by a shell.

(Pictured: An illustration of the Battle of Modder River during the Second Boer War. This illustration is more dramatic than the actual battle, and is meant to amplify the British side of the war, Bacon’s South Africa War Prints, G. W. Bacon & Co. London)


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Birth of William Orpen, Irish-born Artist

Major Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen, KBE, RA, RHA, Irish artist who mainly works in London and is best known for his vigorously characterized portraits, is born on November 27, 1878, at Oriel, Grove Avenue, Stillorgan, County Dublin. He also works as an official war artist during World War I.

Orpen is the fourth and youngest son of Arthur Herbert Orpen (1830–1926), a solicitor, and his wife, Anne Caulfield (1834–1912), the eldest daughter of the Right Rev. Charles Caulfield (1804–1862), the Bishop of Nassau. Both his parents are amateur painters, and his eldest brother, Richard Caulfield Orpen, becomes a notable architect. His nieces are Bea Orpen and Kathleen Delap. The historian Goddard Henry Orpen is his second cousin. The family lives at “Oriel,” a large house with extensive grounds containing stables and a tennis court. He appears to have a happy childhood there.

Orpen is a naturally talented painter, and six weeks before his thirteenth birthday is enrolled at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art. During his six years at the college, he wins every major prize there, plus the British Isles gold medal for life drawing, before leaving to study at the Slade School of Fine Art in London between 1897 and 1899. At the Slade he masters oil painting and begins to experiment with different painting techniques and effects.

While at the Slade, Orpen becomes engaged to Emily Scobel, a model and the subject of his painting The Mirror (1900). She ends their relationship in 1901, and he marries Grace Knewstub, the sister-in-law of Sir William Rothenstein. He and Knewstub have three daughters together, but the marriage is not a happy one. By 1908, he has begun a long-running affair with Evelyn Saint-George, a well-connected American millionairess based in London, with whom he also has a child.

Orpen first exhibits at the New English Art Club (NEAC) in 1899, becoming a member in 1900. In 1901, he holds a solo exhibition at the Carfax Gallery in central London. His portraits, which establish his reputation, show the influence of the Realist artist Édouard Manet. He also becomes known as a painter of group portraits such as Homage to Manet (1909), in which he portrays members of the contemporary English art world sitting in conversation beneath a famous portrait by that artist.

At the start of World War I, a number of Irish people living in England return to Ireland to avoid conscription. Among them is Orpen’s studio assistant and former pupil, Seán Keating. Keating encourages him to do likewise, but he refuses and commits himself to supporting the British war effort. In December 1915, he is commissioned into the Royal Army Service Corps and reports for clerical duty at London’s Kensington Barracks in March 1916. Throughout 1916 he continues painting portraits, most notably one of a despondent Winston Churchill, but soon starts using both his own contacts and those of Evelyn Saint-George, to secure a war artist posting.

He is the official painter of the Paris Peace Conference after World War I. Throughout 1919 he paints individual portraits of the delegates to the Conference and these form the basis of his two large paintings, A Peace Conference at the Quai d’Orsay and The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors. In both pictures, the architecture overwhelms the gathered politicians and statesmen who’s political wranglings and vainglory diminish them in Orpen’s eyes.

Orpen is appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1918 and is elected an associate of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1919.

Orpen becomes seriously ill in May 1931, and, after suffering periods of memory loss, dies at the age of 52 on September 29, 1931, in South Kensington, London, of liver and heart failure. He is buried at Putney Vale Cemetery in southwest London. A stone tablet in the Island of Ireland Peace Park Memorial at Mesen, Belgium, commemorates him. He is posthumously regarded as a facile and prolific, but somewhat superficial, artist who nevertheless achieves great popularity in his day.

(Pictured: “Self-portrait” (1913), oil on canvas by William Orpen, Saint Louis Art Museum)


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Death of Francis Jack Needham, 1st Earl of Kilmorey

Francis Jack Needham, 1st Earl of Kilmorey, Anglo-Irish soldier and Member of Parliament, dies on November 21, 1832, at Shavington Hall, Shropshire, England.

Needham is born April 15, 1748, in County Down, third and youngest son of John Needham, 10th Viscount Kilmorey, and his wife Anne, daughter of John Hurleston of Newton, Cheshire, and widow of Geoffrey Shakerley of Cheshire. He enters the British Army as a cornet in the 18th Dragoons in 1762, exchanging into the 1st Dragoons in 1763. In 1773, he is promoted to lieutenant and, exchanging into the 17th Dragoons, is made captain in 1774. He serves throughout the American Revolutionary War and is engaged in the blockade of Boston and the New Jersey and Yorktown campaigns. Exchanging into the 76th Foot as a major, he is taken prisoner at the Siege of Yorktown, and at the peace of 1783 is placed on half-pay.

Returning to England, Needham purchases a majority in the 80th Foot and then in February 1783 a lieutenant-colonelcy in the 104th Foot. In April 1783, he exchanges into the 1st Foot Guards. Promoted to full colonel in 1793, he is appointed aide-de-camp to King George III and in 1794 serves with Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 2nd Earl of Moira, on the expedition to the Netherlands. He also serves with General Sir John Doyle in the expedition to Quiberon Bay and the Isle Dieu (1795). In February 1795, he is appointed third major of the 1st Foot Guards and promoted to major general, taking an appointment on the home staff in April 1795.

Needham then holds a staff appointment in Ireland, and during the Irish Rebellion of 1798 commands the crown forces at the Battle of Arklow on June 9, 1798. He places his approximately 1,600 troops in strong positions at the eastern and western ends of the town, where they can sweep the Arklow Rock Road and the Coolgreany Road with fire if the rebels approach along them. Ultimately, this is what the United Irish force, estimated at 5,000–9,000 strong, does, repeatedly attacking Needham’s right flank, which is in fact his strongest position. Estimates of the United Irish dead range from 200 to 1,000, and the failure of the attack ensures that the rebels lose the military initiative. He is also present at the Battle of Vinegar Hill on June 21, 1798, but his force arrives late, leaving a gap in the British line through which many rebels escape. This is later christened “Needham’s gap,” earning him the nickname of “the late General Needham” among his fellow officers.

Promoted to lieutenant-general in 1802, Needham is made colonel of the 5th Royal Veteran Battalion in 1804, entering House of Commons as MP for Newry in 1806. He is made full general in 1812, and, following the death of his two older brothers, succeeds as 12th Viscount Kilmorey in November 1818, resigning his parliamentary seat. On January 12, 1822, he is created 1st Earl of Kilmorey (Queen’s County) and Viscount Newry and Mourne. He dies on November 21, 1832, at the family seat, Shavington Hall, Shropshire, and is buried in St. Peter’s Church, Adderley.

Needham marries Anne Fisher, daughter of Thomas Fisher of Acton, Middlesex, on February 20, 1787. They have two sons, Francis Jack Needham, who succeeds as 2nd Earl, and the Hon. Francis Henry William Needham, lieutenant-colonel in the Grenadier Guards, and seven daughters. There are Needham letters in the Public Record Office (PRO), Kew, and in the Rebellion Papers in the National Archives of Ireland in Dublin.


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Birth of Lawrence Parsons, 4th Earl of Rosse

Lawrence Parsons, 4th Earl of Rosse, KP, FRS, a member of the Irish peerage and an amateur astronomer, is born at Birr Castle, Parsonstown, King’s County (now County Offaly), on November 17, 1840. His name is often given as Laurence Parsons.

Parsons is the son and heir of the astronomer William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, who built the “Leviathan of Parsonstown” reflecting telescope, largest of its day, and his wife, the Countess of Rosse (née Mary Field), an amateur astronomer and pioneering photographer. He succeeds his father in 1867 and is educated first at home by tutors, like John Purser, and after at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and the University of Oxford. He is the brother of Charles Algernon Parsons, inventor of the steam turbine.

Parsons serves as the eighteenth Chancellor of Trinity College Dublin between 1885 and 1908. His father serves as the sixteenth Chancellor. He is Lord Lieutenant of King’s County and Custos Rotulorum of King’s County from 1892 until his death. He is also a Justice of the Peace for the county and is appointed High Sheriff of King’s County for 1867–68. He is knighted KP in 1890.

Parsons also performs some preliminary work in association with the practices of the electrodeposition of copper sulfate upon silver films circa 1865 while in search of the design for a truly flat mirror to use in a telescope. However, he finds it impossible to properly electroplate copper upon these silver films, as the copper contracts and detaches from the underlying glass substrate. His note has been cited as one of the earliest confirmations in literature that thin films on glass substrates experience residual stresses. He revives discussion in his work Nature’s August 1908 edition after witnessing similar techniques used to present newly devised searchlights before the Royal Society.

Although overshadowed by his father (when astronomers speak of “Lord Rosse”, it is almost always the father that they refer to), Parsons nonetheless pursues some astronomical observations of his own, particularly of the Moon. Most notably, he discovers NGC 2, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Pegasus.

Parsons is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in December 1867 and delivers the Bakerian lecture there in 1873. He is vice-president of the society in 1881 and 1887. From 1896 he is President of the Royal Irish Academy. In May 1902 he is at Caernarfon to receive the honorary degree LL.D. (Legum Doctor) from the University of Wales during the ceremony to install the Prince of Wales (later King George V) as Chancellor of that university.

After some years of ill-health, Parsons dies on August 30, 1908, at Birr Castle and is buried in the local churchyard. He leaves a bequest to the Royal Society to establish the “Rosse Fund,” and a further £1,000 to the science school fund at TCD.


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Death of Thomas Addis Emmet, Lawyer & Politician

Thomas Addis Emmet, Irish and American lawyer and politician, dies at his home in New York on November 14, 1827, following a seizure while in court. He is a senior member of the revolutionary republican group Society of United Irishmen in the 1790s and Attorney General of New York 1812–1813.

Emmett is born in the Hammond’s Marsh area of Cork, County Cork, on April 24, 1764, the son of Dr. Robert Emmet from County Tipperary (later to become State Physician of Ireland) and Elizabeth Mason of County Kerry, both of whose portraits are today displayed at Cork’s Crawford Art Gallery. He is the elder brother of Robert Emmet, who is executed for leading the Irish Rebellion of 1803, becoming one of Ireland’s most famous republican martyrs. His sister, Mary Anne Holmes, holds similar political beliefs.

Emmet is educated at Trinity College, Dublin and is a member of the committee of the College Historical Society. He later studies medicine at the University of Edinburgh and is a pupil of Dugald Stewart in philosophy. After visiting the chief medical schools on the continent, he returns to Ireland in 1788. However, the sudden death of his elder brother, Christopher Temple Emmet (1761–1788), a student of great distinction, induces him to follow the advice of Sir James Mackintosh to forsake medicine for the law as a profession.

Emmet is a man of liberal political sympathies and becomes involved with a campaign to extend the democratic franchise for the Irish Parliament and to end discrimination against Catholics. He is called to the Irish bar in 1790 and quickly obtains a practice, principally as counsel for prisoners charged with political offenses. He also becomes the legal adviser of the Society of the United Irishmen.

When the Dublin Corporation issues a declaration of support of the Protestant Ascendancy in 1792, the response of the United Irishmen is their nonsectarian manifesto which is largely drawn up by Emmet. In 1795 he formally takes the oath of the United Irishmen, becoming secretary in the same year and a member of the executive in 1797. As by this time the United Irishmen had been declared illegal and driven underground, any efforts at peaceful reform of government and Catholic emancipation in Ireland are abandoned as futile, and their goal is now the creation of a non-sectarian Irish republic, independent from Britain and to be achieved by armed rebellion. Although Emmet supports this policy, he believes that the rebellion should not commence until French aid has arrived, differing from more radical members such as Lord Edward FitzGerald.

British intelligence infiltrates the United Irishmen and manages to arrest most of their leaders on the eve of the rebellion. Though not among those taken at the house of Oliver Bond on March 12, 1798, Emmet is arrested about the same time and is one of the leaders imprisoned initially at Kilmainham Gaol and later in Scotland at Fort George until 1802. Upon his release he goes to Brussels where he is visited by his brother Robert in October 1802 and is informed of the preparations for a fresh rising in Ireland in conjunction with French aid. However, at that stage France and Britain are briefly at peace, and the Emmets’ pleas for help are turned down by Napoleon.

Emmet receives news of the failure of his brother’s rising in July 1803 in Paris, where he is in communication with Napoleon. He then emigrates to the United States and joins the New York bar where he obtains a lucrative practice.

After the death of Matthias B. Hildreth, Emmet is appointed New York State Attorney General in August 1812 but is removed from office in February 1813 when the opposing Federalist Party obtains a majority in the Council of Appointment.

Emmet’s abilities and successes become so acclaimed, and his services so requested that he becomes one of the most respected attorneys in the nation, with United States Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story declaring him to be “the favourite counsellor of New York.” He argues the case for Aaron Ogden in the landmark United States Supreme Court case of Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824) relating to the Commerce and Supremacy clauses of the United States Constitution.

Emmet dies on November 14, 1827, while conducting a case in court regarding the estate of Robert Richard Randall, the founder of Sailors’ Snug Harbor, a home for needy seamen in Staten Island, New York. He is buried in St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery churchyard in the East Village, New York City, where a large white marble monument marks his grave.


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Birth of Harry Ferguson, Mechanic and Inventor

Henry George “Harry” Ferguson, a British mechanic and inventor who is noted for his role in the development of the modern agricultural tractor and its three-point linkage system, for being the first person in Ireland to build and fly his own aeroplane, and for developing the first four-wheel drive Formula One car, the Ferguson P99, is born on November 4, 1884, at Growell, near Dromore, County Down, in what is now Northern Ireland.

Ferguson is the son of a farmer. In 1902, he goes to work with his brother, Joe, in his bicycle and car repair business. While working there as a mechanic, he develops an interest in aviation, visiting air shows abroad. In 1904, he begins to race motorcycles.

In the 1900s Ferguson becomes fascinated with the newly emerging technology of powered human flight and particularly with the exploits of the Wright brothers, the American aviation pioneers who made the first plane flight in 1903 at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.

The first person to accomplish powered flight in the UK is Alliot Verdon Roe in June 1908, who also flies an aeroplane of his own design, but this has not yet been achieved in Ireland. Ferguson begins to develop a keen interest in the mechanics of flying and travels to several air shows, including exhibitions in 1909 at Blackpool and Rheims where he takes notes of the design of early aircraft. He convinces his brother that they should attempt to build an aircraft at their Belfast workshop and, working from his notes, they work on the design of a plane, the Ferguson monoplane.

After making many changes and improvements, they transport their new aircraft by towing it behind a car through the streets of Belfast up to Hillsborough Park to make their first attempt at flight. They are at first thwarted by propeller trouble but continue to make technical alterations to the plane. After a delay of nearly a week caused by bad weather, the Ferguson monoplane finally takes off from Hillsborough on December 31, 1909. Ferguson becomes the first Irishman to fly and the first Irishman to build and fly his own aeroplane.

After falling out with his brother over the safety and future of aviation, Ferguson decides to go it alone, and in 1911 founds a company selling Maxwell, Star and Vauxhall cars and Overtime Tractors. He sees at first hand the weakness of having tractor and plough as separate articulated units, and in 1917 he devises a plough that can be rigidly attached to a Ford Model T car — the Eros, which becomes a limited success, competing with the Fordson Model F.

In 1917 Ferguson meets Charles E. Sorensen while Sorensen is in England scouting production sites for the Fordson tractor. They discuss methods of hitching the implement to the tractor to make them a unit. In 1920 and 1921 he demonstrates early versions of his three-point linkage on Fordson tractors at Cork and at Dearborn, Michigan. He and Henry Ford discuss putting the Ferguson system of hitch and implements onto Fordson tractors at the factory, but no deal is struck. At the time the hitch is mechanical. Ferguson and his team of longtime colleagues, including Willie Sands and Archie Greer, soon develop a hydraulic version, which is patented in 1926. After one or two false starts, he eventually founds the Ferguson-Sherman Inc., with Eber and George Sherman.

The new enterprise manufactures the Ferguson plough, incorporating the patented “Duplex” hitch system mainly intended for the Fordson “F” tractor. Following several more years of development, Ferguson’s new hydraulic version of the three-point linkage is first seen on his prototype “Ferguson Black” or ‘Irish tractor’ as he calls it, now in the Science Museum, South Kensington, London. A production version of the “Black” is introduced in May 1936, made at one of the David Brown Engineering Ltd. factories in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, and designated Ferguson Model A tractor.

Ferguson’s interests are merged with those of David Brown junior to create the Ferguson-Brown Company.

In October 1938, Ferguson demonstrates his latest tractor to Henry Ford at Dearborn, and they make the famous “handshake agreement.” He takes with him his latest patents covering future improvements to the Ferguson tractor and it is these that lead to the Ford-Ferguson 9N introduction to the world on June 29, 1939.

Henry Ford II, Ford’s grandson, ends the handshake agreement on June 30, 1947, following unsuccessful negotiations with Ferguson, but continues to produce a tractor, the 8N, incorporating Ferguson’s inventions, the patents on almost all of which have not yet expired, and Ferguson is left without a tractor to sell in North America. His reaction is a lawsuit demanding compensation for damage to his business and for Ford’s illegal use of his designs. The case is settled out of court in April 1952 for just over $9 million. The court case costs him about half of that and a great deal of stress and ill health.

By 1952, most of the important Ferguson patents have expired, and this allows Henry Ford II to claim that the case had not restricted Ford’s activities too much. It follows that all the world’s other tractor manufacturers can also use Ferguson’s inventions, which they do. A year later Ferguson merges with Massey-Harris Limited to become Massey-Harris-Ferguson Co., later Massey Ferguson.

Ferguson dies at his home at Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, England, on October 25, 1960, as the result of a barbiturate overdose. The inquest is unable to conclude whether his death had been accidental or not.

A blue plaque commemorating Ferguson is mounted on the Ulster Bank building in Donegall Square, Belfast, the former site of his showroom. A granite memorial has been erected to Ferguson’s pioneering flight on the North Promenade, Newcastle, County Down, and a full-scale replica of the Ferguson monoplane and an early Ferguson tractor and plough can be seen at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum at Cultra, County Down. Today his name lives on in the name of the Massey Ferguson company.


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Birth of Edward Conor Marshall O’Brien, Ship Builder & Designer

Edward Conor Marshall O’Brien, Irish aristocrat and intellectual, is born in Cahirmoyle, County Limerick, on November 3, 1880. His views are republican and nationalist. He is also owner and captain of one of the first boats to sail under the tri-colour of the Irish Free State. He is the first amateur Irish sailor to sail around the world.

O’Brien is a ship builder and designer, and his notable boats include the Kelpie (used for gun running in 1914), the Saoirse (in which he circumnavigates the globe) and the Ilen (a Falkland Islands service ship).

O’Brien’s grandfather is William O’Brien who is a member of Young Ireland. His grandfather and his aunt Charlotte Grace O’Brien both play roles in social reform. Robert Donough, his uncle, is an architect, and the painter Dermod O’Brien is his brother. He is educated in England at Winchester College and the University of Oxford, and in Ireland at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). After his education he comes back to Ireland and starts practicing as an architect in 1903. According to the 1911 census he lives at 58 Mount Street, south County Dublin.

O’Brien is credited with two buildings in his lifetime: the Co-operative Hall in County Donegal and the People’s Hall in County Limerick. He is also known as a naval architect, having designed two ships, the Saoirse and the llen. He later captains both of these ships himself.

In Saoirse, a 20-ton, 42-foot ketch designed and built in 1922 in Baltimore, County Cork, he and three crew members circumnavigate the globe between 1923 and 1925 – the first recorded by an amateur skipper from west to east, the first yacht circumnavigation by way of the three great capes: Cape Horn, Cape of Good Hope and Cape Leeuwin, and the first boat flying the Irish tri-colour to enter many of the world’s ports and harbours. His voyage begins and ends at the Port of Foynes, County Limerick, where he lives. His account of the voyage, Across Three Oceans, (1927) becomes one of the classics of maritime literature.

Up until O’Brien’s circumnavigation, this route is the preserve of square-rigged grain ships taking part in the grain race from Australia to England via Cape Horn (also known as the clipper route).

O’Brien’s seagoing experiences are put to use in his design of the Ilen, which is built for the Falkland Islands as a service boat and launched in the spring of 1926. In 1998, Ilen returns to the site where she was first built, on the River Ilen near Baltimore, County Cork, where she undergoes a full restoration and is re-launched in May 2018. This task provides work-based learning for the students of the Ilen School.

O’Brien has some involvement with gun running in 1914 on behalf of the Irish Volunteers, for political reasons and because he has experience in sailing. On July 26, 1914, nine hundred guns are brought to Howth harbour aboard Erskine Childers‘ yacht Asgard. As part of the same operation, O’Brien transports arms on his yacht, Kelpie. The guns on Kelpie are transshipped to another yacht, Chotah, owned by Sir Thomas Myles, before being landed at Kilcoole in County Wicklow on August 1, 1914. After the gun running incidents, he serves in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.

O’Brien is a keen mountaineer as well as a sailor, known for climbing in bare feet. He climbs Mount Brandon in southwest Ireland and Snowdon in North Wales with George Mallory and Geoffrey Winthrop Young among others. Later, during his circumnavigation (1923–1925) he plans to climb Aoraki / Mount Cook in the Southern Alps in New Zealand‘s South Island. However, because of delays during his circumnavigation, he arrives in New Zealand too late.

In 1928, O’Brien marries a well-known artist, Kathleen Francis, the youngest daughter of Sir George Clausen, RA. The couple thereafter moves to Ibiza, where they live on the Saoirse until Kathleen’s death in 1936. They have no children. Relocating to Cornwall, where he lives with his sister, he writes books on sailing and works of fiction for children. Although too old for active service when war with Germany breaks out in 1939, he assists the British war effort by serving in the Small Ships Pool, which delivers support vessels across the Atlantic and brings food supplies from the United States in private yachts.

In 1940 O’Brien sells Saoirse to the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club. The boat remains in use until 1980, when it is lost off the Jamaican coast. After the war he retires to another sister’s home in Foynes, County Limerick, where he lives and continues to write books for children until his death on April 18, 1952.


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Birth of Gaelic Footballer Michael Hogan

Michael Hogan, Gaelic footballer and one-time captain of the Tipperary county football team, is born at Currasilla, Ninemilehouse, County Tipperary, on October 27, 1896. He is the only player shot dead, along with thirteen spectators, by British forces consisting of Black and Tans and Auxiliaries at Croke Park in Dublin on Bloody Sunday during the Irish War of Independence.

Hogan is one of four sons and three daughters of Patrick Hogan, farmer, and Margaret Hogan (née Galvin). His family are staunch nationalists who have been heavily involved in the land struggle. He is the brother of Major General Daniel (Dan) Hogan, who is Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces in the 1920s. On November 19, 1920, Hogan is elected company commander of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the Grangemockler area, where he is working on the family farm.

Hogan’s family are close friends of the Browne family, also from Grangemockler, that include the late Cardinal Michael Browne, Monsignor Maurice Browne (aka Joseph Brady), and Monsignor Pádraig de Brún.

A dedicated footballer, Hogan is the established full back on the Tipperary county football team. During the Irish War of Independence very few championships are completed, and challenge matches are the chief attraction. Following the success of a Kildare–Dublin challenge match, a challenge is organised between Tipperary and Dublin at Croke Park, Dublin, on November 21, 1920.

The day before the match, Hogan travels on the train with the other members of the team. A number of the players, including Hogan, become involved in a fight with soldiers from the Royal Lincolnshire Regiment before throwing them from the train. On arrival at (Kingsbridge) Heuston Station, they quickly go their separate ways anticipating arrest. Michael and Thomas “Tommy” Ryan, the two IRA members on the team, decide to stay at Philip Shanahan‘s pub in Monto that night, rather than Barry’s Hotel as planned. There they learn that “there is a ‘big job coming off” the following day but are unaware of the details.

On the morning of the match, fourteen members of the British intelligence service are assassinated by the IRA. This leads to concerns about the match and the safety of spectators, and the Dublin brigade of the IRA urges that the game be cancelled. Shanahan informs the team of the shooting of the British agents. Ryan claims that Dan Breen advised them it would be better not to attend the match, but instead to return to Tipperary. Leading Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) officials Jim Nowlan, Dan MacCarthy and Luke O’Toole decide the match should proceed, arguing that a postponement would associate the IRA’s activities with the GAA.

Dublin and Tipperary are two of the best teams in the country at the time (and later contest the 1920 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship final when it is eventually played in 1922), so despite the events of the morning, a large crowd of some 10,000 people are in attendance.

At 3:00 p.m., not long after the match has started, a British military plane flies over and drops a flare, signaling British forces to converge on the ground. Black and Tans enter Croke Park and open fire on the crowd.

Hogan drops to the ground and is crawling to safety when a bullet hits him in the mouth. Tom Ryan, a young spectator from Wexford, enters the pitch to pray beside the dying Hogan and is also fatally shot. Another player, Jim Egan, is wounded, but survives. In all, fourteen people are killed and dozens are wounded and injured. The events of that day come to be known as “Bloody Sunday.”

Hogan’s body is returned to Grangemockler for burial on November 24, 1920. A huge crowd attends the funeral. He is buried in his football colours in a coffin draped with the tricolour. The GAA commemorates him by naming the main stand at Croke Park after him and erecting a monument to his memory at Grangemockler. His football jersey is in the South Tipperary County Museum in Clonmel.


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Death of Thomas Mayne Reid, Irish American Novelist

Thomas Mayne Reid, Irish American novelist, who fights in the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), dies at Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire, England, on October 22, 1883.

Reid is born on April 4, 1818, in Ballyroney, a hamlet near Katesbridge, County Down, in present day Northern Ireland, the son of the Rev. Thomas Mayne Reid, a Presbyterian minister and later a senior clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, and his wife, a daughter of the Rev. Samuel Rutherford. He is educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. He rebels against his father’s plans for him and decides not to pursue a career in the church. He briefly runs a school at Ballyroney before emigrating to the United States in 1839. Arriving in New Orleans, Louisiana, he finds a job as a corn factor’s clerk in the corn market. After six months he leaves because he refuses to whip slaves. Travelling across America, he works as a teacher, a clerk and an Indian-fighter, and anonymously publishes his first poem in August 1843. Later that year he meets Edgar Allan Poe in Philadelphia and the two become close friends. Poe later admits that Reid was “a colossal but most picturesque liar,” but was impressed by his brilliant story-telling abilities.

With the outbreak of the Mexican-American War in 1846 Reid enlists in the 1st New York Infantry Regiment and is commissioned second lieutenant. Contributing a series of reports from the front under the pseudonym ‘Ecolier,’ he performs with great bravery in the Battle of Chapultepac on September 13, 1847. Wounded during the battle, he is promoted to first lieutenant three days later. Following his discharge from the army in 1848 he claims to have reached the rank of captain, but this is another of his inventions.

Reid’s first play, Love’s Martyr, is staged at the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, for five nights in October 1848, and the following year he publishes an embellished account of his experiences in Mexico entitled War Life. All of his works are published under the name ‘Captain Mayne Reid.’ In July 1849 he sails to England with a group of Hungarian radicals but decides against accompanying them to the Continent. Returning briefly to Ireland, he settles in London in 1850 and writes a novel, The Rifle Rangers. It is an immediate success and is followed quickly by The Scalp Hunters (1851), The Desert Home (1852), and The Boy Hunters (1853). While in England in 1851 he meets and falls in love with a 13-year-old girl, Elizabeth Hyde, daughter of his publisher, G. W. Hyde, an English aristocrat. When he discovers her age, he tells her that she is “getting old enough to have a lover, and you must have me.” Two years later he continues with his suit, and this time is successful as they marry in 1853. He is immensely proud of his young bride and later writes a semi-autobiographical novel The Child Wife (1868), based on their relationship.

Establishing a reputation as one of the most popular novelists of his generation, Reid does much to enhance the romantic image of the American West. His internationally successful books include The White Chief (1855), Bush Boys (1856), Oceola (1859), and The Headless Horseman (1865), and his novel about miscegenation, The Quadroon (1856), is later plagiarised by Dion Boucicault for The Octoroon (1859). A champion croquet player, he writes a treatise on the subject in 1863.

Disaster strikes in November 1866 when Reid is declared bankrupt. He had squandered all his money on the construction of “The Ranche,” a Mexican-style hacienda in England. To raise money, he returns to the United States and embarks on a successful lecturing tour. Settling at Newport, Rhode Island, he writes another novel, The Helpless Hand (1868), which is a huge success and alleviates some of his difficulties. His wife hates America, however, and after he is briefly hospitalised in 1870, they decide to return to England.

Ill health, artistic doubts, and financial insecurity plagued Reid’s final years. Diagnosed with acute depression, he is unable to recapture his earlier audience and, despite a pension from the U.S. government, he struggles for money. He dies at Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire on October 22, 1883, and is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery in London.

Although not regarded as an important novelist, Reid none the less has a significant influence on subsequent writers. The young Vladimir Nabokov is deeply impressed by his adventure stories, and one of his own first works is a poetic recreation of The Headless Horseman in French alexandrine. Both Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle are admirers, and politicians as diverse as Theodore Roosevelt and Leon Trotsky also make reference to his varied output. In total, Reid publishes over sixty novels, which are printed in ten languages.