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


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Birth of Sir Shane Leslie, 3rd Baronet

Sir John Randolph Leslie, 3rd Baronet, Anglo-Irish diplomat and writer commonly known as Sir Shane Leslie, is born in Glaslough, County Monaghan, on September 24, 1885. He is a first cousin of Sir Winston Churchill. In 1908, he becomes a Roman Catholic and supports Irish Home Rule.

Leslie is born into a wealthy Anglo-Irish landowning family. His father is Sir John Leslie, 2nd Baronet, and his mother, Leonie Jerome, is the sister of Winston Churchill’s mother, Jennie. Both are daughters of Leonard W. Jerome. His ancestor, The Right Reverend John Leslie, Bishop of the Isles, moves from Scotland to Ireland in 1633 when he is made Bishop of Raphoe in County Donegal and is made Bishop of Clogher in 1661. Bishop Leslie is a vocal opponent of Oliver Cromwell.

Together with his brother Norman, Leslie’s early education begins at home where a German governess, Clara Woelke, is their first teacher. As children the brothers have more contact with servants than they have with their parents. His own daughter, Anita, says, “In my parents’ view schools performed the same functions that kennels did for dogs. They were places where pets could be conveniently deposited while their owners travelled.”

Leslie is educated at Ludgrove School, then Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge University he becomes a Roman Catholic and a supporter of Irish Home Rule. He adopts an anglicised Irish variant of his name (“Shane”). Not overly impressed by Eton, as a lower boy he and his roommates occupy “an old, battered warren betwixt the chapel cemetery and Wise’s horse yard … [T]he food was wretched and tasteless … As for thrashings which tyrannised rather than disciplined our house, they were excessive. Bullying was endemic and Irish boys were ridiculed, especially on St Patrick’s Day.”

Leslie refuses to send his own sons to Eton. They are educated at Roman Catholic Benedictine schools: Jack at Downside School and Desmond at Ampleforth College.

In the January 1910 United Kingdom general election Leslie stands as the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) candidate for the Londonderry City constituency, losing by just 57 votes. In the second general election later that year he is again narrowly defeated by the Unionist candidate.

Before World War I, Leslie travels extensively and in 1912 he marries Marjorie Ide, the youngest daughter of Henry Clay Ide, then United States ambassador to Spain and former Governor-General of the Philippines. His parents and other family members move temporarily to London at the outbreak of war.

During the war Leslie is in a British Ambulance Corps, until invalided out. He is then sent to Washington, D.C. to help the British Ambassador, Sir Cecil Spring Rice, soften Irish American hostility toward England and obtain American intervention in the war in the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin and the execution of its leaders. But he also looks to Ireland for inspiration when writing and edits a literary magazine that contains much Irish verse. He becomes a supporter of the ideals of Irish nationalism, although not physical force republicanism.

In the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, the Irish Parliamentary Party loses massively to Sinn Féin, putting an end to Leslie’s political career, but as the first cousin of Winston Churchill he remains a primary witness to much that is said and done outside the official record during the negotiation of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. Disappointed, he feels unwanted in Ireland and abandoned by the British. Like many members of the landed gentry from the 1880s who were obliged to turn to other occupations, he can no longer rely on income from landholdings.

Leslie writes extensively, in a wide range of styles, in verse, prose, and polemic, over several decades. His writings include The End of a Chapter (1916), while hospitalised during World War I, The Oppidan (1922), a roman à clef about his life and contemporaries at Eton, an edition of the Letters of Herbert Cardinal Vaughan to Lady Herbert of Lea (1942), and a biography Mrs. Fitzherbert: a life chiefly from unpublished sources (1939), together with an edition of her letters (with Maria Anne Fitzherbert), The letters of Mrs. Fitzherbert and connected papers; being the second volume of the life of Mrs. Fitzherbert (1944). He also writes Mark Sykes: His Life and Letters (1923), a biography of the English traveler, Conservative Party politician and diplomatic advisor. He advises budding novelist Scott Fitzgerald on the title of his first novel, they share correspondence with the future Mnsg. William A. Hemmick, who is Fitzgerald’s teacher at the Newman School.

A passionate advocate of reforestation, Leslie finds the business of running an estate uncreative and boring, and transfers the estate entailed to him to his eldest son, John Norman Leslie, who succeeds as the 4th Baronet. He transfers St. Patrick’s Purgatory on Lough Derg to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Clogher, Eugene O’Callaghan.

The wealth of the Leslies wanes by the 1930s following the Wall Street crash of 1929 and a farm that is loss making. In his unpublished memoirs, Leslie writes “a gentleman’s standing in his world was signalled by his list of clubs and it was worth paying hundreds of pounds in subs.” They continue to maintain their lifestyle, involving attendance at the London season and the entertainment of distinguished visitors, including Anthony Eden at Glaslough. At the outbreak of World War II in 1939 he joins the Home Guard. He spends the remainder of his life between Glaslough and London.

Leslie’s first wife, Marjorie, dies on February 8, 1951. On May 30, 1958, at the Catholic Church of St. Peter & Edward, Westminster, he marries Iris Carola Frazer, who is the daughter of Charles Miskin Laing and Etheldreda Janet Laing.

Leslie dies at the age of 85 at 15b Palmeira Court, Hove, East Sussex, on April 14, 1971. A Requiem Mass is held for him in Westminster Cathedral on October 12, 1971.


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Birth of Thomas Sinclair, Businessman & Politician

Thomas Sinclair, Ulster Scots businessman and politician who drafted the Ulster Covenant, is born in Belfast on September 23, 1838.

Sinclair’s parents are Thomas (1811–1867), merchant and ship-owner, and Sarah Sinclair (née Archer) (1800–1849). His father goes into business with his brother John (1808–1856), setting up a provisions and general merchant store at 5–11 Tomb Street, Belfast. John marries Eliza Pirrie, a relative of the prominent ship builder William Pirrie, 1st Viscount Pirrie. After the death of his father in 1867, Sinclair inherits £35,000 as his mother, brother and sister are all deceased.

In 1876, Sinclair marries Mary Duffin of Strandtown Lodge, Belfast. They have a daughter, Frances Elizabeth Crichton, and a son. She dies in 1879. He marries Elizabeth Richardson in 1882. She is the niece of John Grubb Richardson and the widow of Sinclair’s cousin, John M. Sinclair. They have three sons and two daughters.

Sinclair attends Royal Belfast Academical Institution and Queen’s College Belfast, graduating with a BA with gold medal for mathematics in 1856, and an MA with gold medals in logic, political economy, and English literature in 1859. After his father’s death, he takes over running the family business. He expands and grows it by merging it with another large provisions business with American branches, Kingan & Co. He is related to the Kingans through his cousin Sarah, who is married to the owner, Samuel Kingan.

Despite numerous requests, Sinclair never stands for parliament, instead serving as deputy lieutenant, justice of the peace, president of the Ulster chamber of commerce in 1876 and 1902, and privy councilor in 1896. Having been a supporter of William Ewart Gladstone, he joins the Ulster Liberal Party in 1868, supporting the land acts of 1870 and 1881. Following the home rule bill of 1886, he convenes a meeting in the Ulster Hall of liberals on April 30, 1886, which passes a resolution in condemnation of the bill. Forming the Ulster Liberal Unionist Association, of which he is chair, he organises the Ulster Convention in Belfast. Held on June 17, 1892, it sees 11,879 Ulster unionists meet to protest home rule. Nine months after the convention, he is appointed to the executive committee of the new unionist clubs, which are founded to protect the union. The defeat of the British Liberal Party in 1895 significantly decreases the threat of home rule, leading to the unionists’ clubs being suspended, and Sinclair returning to his activities in liberal reform. He is the leading Ulster member of the recess committee from 1895, which is founded by Horace Plunkett. He supports Plunkett’s backing of T. P. Gill as secretary of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS) in 1899, in the face of strong protest by conservative unionists.

Despite his unionist politics, Sinclair is nonsectarian, and during his time as chairman of the convocation of the Queen’s University he defends the core non-sectarian principles of the institution and refuses to allow any form of denominational teaching. Through his work with the recess committee, he ensures that the new Department of Agriculture’s vocational and technical education will remain secular.

By 1904 and the devolution crisis, Sinclair sides with conservative unionists, being of the 30 members of the standing committee of the Ulster Unionist Council on its foundation in December 1904. He proposes that all suspended unionist clubs be reestablished in January 1911, with the purpose of increasing their membership and responsibilities. This results in the clubs taking up arms, with over 80 groups drilling by April 1911, which goes on to form the core of the Ulster Volunteers. On September 25, 1911, he is appointed to a five-man commission tasked with writing a constitution for a provisional government of Ulster. He is one of the contributors to the 1912 collection of essays from the unionist party, Against home rule. He identifies the six county Ulster, proffering the idea of a two-nation island, warning that Ulster will never form part of an independent Ireland. Later in 1912, he is tasked with drafting Ulster’s Solemn League and Covenant, a pledge for signatories to oppose and defeat home rule and never recognise an Irish parliament.

Sinclair dies from kidney failure on February 14, 1914, at his home, Hopefield House, Belfast. His funeral procession on February 18 is headed by 200 UVF officers. The Ulster Museum holds a portrait of Sinclair by Frank McKelvey, and QUB holds one by Henrietta Rae (pictured above). A memorial window at Church House, the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church, is unveiled in his memory on June 8, 1915, and there is a Sinclair Memorial Hall opened in his honour on September 10, 1915. A blue plaque is erected to him on the Duncairn Centre for Arts & Culture.

The Sinclair Ward in the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, is originally funded by Sinclair’s father, in honour of his wife Sarah under the Sinclair Memorial Fund. The surgeon and politician Thomas Sinclair is also a relative.


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Birth of Lucy Gwynn, First Woman Registrar of Trinity College Dublin

Lucy Penelope Gwynn, the first woman registrar of Trinity College Dublin (TCD), is born in County Donegal on September 22, 1865.

Gwynn’s father, John Gwynn, is a Syriacist and Regius Professor of Divinity at TCD. Her mother is Lucy O’Brien, daughter of MP William Smith O’Brien. Her eight brothers include the author and politician Stephen Gwynn, the academic Edward Gwynn, the career soldier Major General Sir Charles Gwynn, the cricketers Lucius Gwynn and Arthur Gwynn, the academic cleric and social reformer Robert (Robin) Gwynn, the Indian civil servant and journalist John Tudor (Jack) Gwynn and the Irish civil servant Brian Gwynn. She has one sister, Mary Gwynn, the wife of Henry Bowen and stepmother of the writer Elizabeth Bowen. She is a niece of Harriet Monsell.

Gwynn is appointed first lady registrar of Trinity College Dublin in February 1905. Women had only been admitted to the university the previous year. Despite coming from a family of academics, she had been unable to get a university education herself. She is 39 years old when appointed to her position in the university.

Students describe Gwynn as a pioneer. Her role as women’s registrar is described by one of her charges as “to control our movements to some extent and to protect the college and the students from criticism.”

In 1907, Gwynn is summoned before the Fry Commission on Dublin University to defend the position of women at Trinity. She is supported by the parents of the students. The result is that the commission endorses the principle of women’s admission to the university.

In 1922, the Dublin University Women Graduates’ Association is founded, under Gwynn’s presidency.

Gwynn never marries. As an eldest daughter she is required to assist in the management of her parents’ household and attend to them in their old age. From her mother’s brother, architect Robert Donough O’Brien, she inherits the house he had designed and built at Parteen-a-Lax in County Clare, close to Limerick. It is there that she retires at the end of her working life. Her hobby is tending its beautiful garden which lay next to the River Shannon.

Gwynn dies in County Clare in 1947.

Founded, by subscription, in 1948 in memory of Lucy Gwynn, the Lucy Gwynn Memorial Prize is awarded annually in the Michaelmas term to a Junior Sophister woman student for distinction in her course. The award is made by two women on the university staff nominated by the Board, and one of the female tutors. The value of the prize is €1,207.


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Birth of Paddy Killoran, Fiddle Player & Bandleader

Patrick J. Killoran, Irish traditional fiddle player, bandleader and recording artist is born on September 21, 1903, in Emlaghgissan (also spelled “Emlagation”), a townland in the civil parish of Emlaghfad near the town of Ballymote, County Sligo. He is regarded, along with James Morrison and Michael Coleman, as one of the finest exponents of the south Sligo fiddle style in the “golden age” of the ethnic recording industry of the 1920s and 1930s.

Killoran’s father Patrick plays the flute and his mother Mary the concertina, but he is also influenced by local fiddle master Philip O’Beirne, who had earlier tutored Michael Coleman. As a teenager, he is a volunteer with the Ballymote-based 3rd Battalion of the south Sligo Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence.

In 1925, Killoran emigrates to New York City, arriving on May 19 on the Cunard liner Scythia. Within a few months, he officially declares his intention to become a citizen of the United States, listing his address as 227 East 126th Street in east Harlem and his occupation as “laborer.” He later lodges with fellow Sligo fiddler James Morrison in a Columbus Avenue apartment on Manhattan‘s Upper West Side. A 1927 newspaper ad for “Morrison’s Orchestra” offers “Irish music by P. Killoran and J. Morrison, celebrated violinists,” giving 507 West 133d Street in west Harlem as the contact address. He soon launches his own career as a soloist and bandleader. A publicity photo of his quartet c. 1928 includes button accordionist D. Casey, tenor banjo player Richard Curran and second fiddler Denis Murphy. By the next year, he is performing on a weekly radio program sponsored by the Pride of Erin Ballrooms, located at the corner of Bedford and Atlantic Avenues in Brooklyn. He also tries another side occupation as his 1931 naturalization petition lists his occupation as “Music store owner.”

At the Pride of Erin, and later at the Sligo Ballroom at 125th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem, Killoran’s “Irish Orchestra” provides music for Irish dancing, while Jack Healy, another Ballymote native, leads a group for “American” dancing. Healy, as a singer and tenor saxophone player, also performs and records with Killoran’s group, the membership of which over the course of the 1930s includes fiddler Paddy Sweeney, another Sligo native, fiddle and clarinet player Paul Ryan, Ryan’s brother Jim on the C Melody saxophone, pianists Eileen O’Shea, Edmund Tucker and Jim McGinn, drummer Mickey Murphy, button accordionists Tommy Flanagan and William McElligott and tenor banjo/tenor guitar player Michael “Whitey” Andrews.

Killoran’s band is variously billed as his “Pride of Erin Orchestra,” “Radio Dance Orchestra,” “Sligo Ballroom Orchestra,” “Lakes of Sligo Orchestra” and “Irish Barn Dance Boys.” The group is a popular choice for county association functions, particularly those of Sligo and Roscommon. In 1932, he leads a band that accompanies Cardinal William Henry O’Connell of Boston to the Eucharistic Congress in Ireland and briefly bills his group as the “Pride of Erin Eucharistic Congress Orchestra.” He regularly performs at Irish beach resorts on the Rockaway peninsula and in East Durham in the Catskill Mountains.

Uniquely among the major New York Irish musicians of the pre-World War II era, Killoran continues his musical career through the 1950s. He issues new recordings, including duets with flute player Mike Flynn and some fiddle-and-viola sides with Paul Ryan, and leads an active dance band. Age and illness eventually force him to retire, and in 1962 he turns over leadership of the band, a fixture at the City Center Ballroom, to button accordionist Joe Madden, father of Cherish the Ladies flute player Joanie Madden.

In 1956, Killoran is a co-founder of the Dublin Recording Company, later better known simply as Dublin Records, which is organized to record new Irish discs in New York.

Killoran is a founding member of the Emerald Irish Musicians Benevolent Society, a group that stages “Night of Shamrocks” concerts to raise money for the benefit of sick and deceased Irish musicians in New York. He is also a member of the Irish Musicians Association of America, and a New York branch of that organization, which later merges with Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Eireann, is named for him.

In addition to the 1932 trip to the Eucharistic Congress, Killoran returns to Ireland at least twice. In 1949, he plays on a Radio Éireann program hosted by piper and folklorist Séamus Ennis. Some selections from that broadcast are recorded on a private disc and are later released on CD. On a 1960 visit, he visits Sligo and Clare and performs at a concert in County Longford.

Killoran is married twice. His first wife, Anna Gorman, a native of County Roscommon, dies in 1935. His second wife is Betty (Bridget) Hayes, an immigrant from Shanaway West, County Clare, who survives him. He dies in New York City on April 24, 1965.

A “Paddy Killoran Traditional Festival” is celebrated in the third week of June in Ballymote, where a monument in Killoran’s honor is erected in 2012.


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The Battle of Chickamauga

On September 19, 1863, the 5th Confederate Infantry, consisting of a large number of Irish from Memphis, fight in one of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War at Chickamauga, Georgia. One of the commanders is Cork-born Patrick Cleburne whom historians universally recognize as one of the most capable officers on either side during the awful conflict, although Chickamauga might not have been his finest hour. Cleburne is known as the “Stonewall of the West.” He is one of six Confederate generals to die in the Battle of Franklin.

The Battle of Chickamauga marks the end of a Union Army offensive, the Chickamauga campaign, in southeastern Tennessee and northwestern Georgia. It is the first major battle of the war fought in Georgia, the most significant Union Army defeat in the Western Theater, and involves a high number of casualties, second only to the casualties suffered at the Battle of Gettysburg.

The battle is fought between the Army of the Cumberland, one of the principal Union armies in the Western Theater, under Major General William Rosecrans and the Confederate Army of Tennessee under General Braxton Bragg and is named for Chickamauga Creek. The West Chickamauga Creek meanders near and forms the southeast boundary of the battle area and the park in northwest Georgia. The South Chickamauga ultimately flows into the Tennessee River about 3.5 miles northeast of downtown Chattanooga.

After his successful Tullahoma campaign, Rosecrans renews the offensive, aiming to force the Confederates out of Chattanooga. In early September, he consolidates his forces scattered in Tennessee and Georgia and forces Bragg’s army out of Chattanooga, heading south. The Union troops follow it and brush with it at Davis’s Cross Roads. Bragg is determined to reoccupy Chattanooga and decides to meet a part of Rosecrans’s army, defeat it, and then move back into the city. On September 17 he heads north, intending to attack the isolated XXI Corps. As Bragg marches north on September 18, his cavalry and infantry fight with Union cavalry and mounted infantry, which are armed with Spencer repeating rifles. The two armies fight at Alexander’s Bridge and Reed’s Bridge, as the Confederates try to cross the West Chickamauga Creek.

Fighting begins in earnest on the morning of September 19. Bragg’s men strongly assault but cannot break the Union Army line. The next day, Bragg resumes his assault. In late morning, Rosecrans is misinformed that he has a gap in his line. In moving units to shore up the supposed gap, Rosecrans accidentally creates an actual gap directly in the path of an eight-brigade assault on a narrow front by Confederate Lieutenant General James Longstreet, whose corps has been detached from the Army of Northern Virginia. In the resulting rout, Longstreet’s attack drives one-third of the Union Army, including Rosecrans himself, from the field.

Union Army units spontaneously rally to create a defensive line on Horseshoe Ridge (“Snodgrass Hill“), forming a new right wing for the line of Major General George H. Thomas, who assumes overall command of remaining forces. Although the Confederates launch costly and determined assaults, Thomas and his men hold until twilight. Union forces then retire to Chattanooga while the Confederates occupy the surrounding heights, besieging the city.

Thomas withdraws the remainder of his units to positions around Rossville Gap after darkness falls. The Army of Tennessee camps for the night, unaware that the Union Army has slipped from their grasp. Bragg is not able to mount the kind of pursuit that would be necessary to cause Rosecrans significant further damage. Many of his troops had arrived hurriedly at Chickamauga by rail, without wagons to transport them, and many of the artillery horses had been injured or killed during the battle. The Tennessee River is now an obstacle to the Confederates and Bragg has no pontoon bridges to affect a crossing. Bragg’s army pauses at Chickamauga to reorganize and gather equipment lost by the Union Army. Although Rosecrans had been able to save most of his trains, large quantities of ammunition and arms are left behind.

Army of Tennessee historian Thomas L. Connelly has criticized Bragg’s performance, claiming that for over four hours on the afternoon of September 20, he missed several good opportunities to prevent the Union escape, such as by a pursuit up the Dry Valley Road to McFarland’s Gap, or by moving a division to the north to seize the Rossville Gap or McFarland’s Gap via the Reed’s Bridge Road.

The battle is damaging to both sides in proportions roughly equal to the size of the armies: Union losses are 16,170 (1,657 killed, 9,756 wounded, and 4,757 captured or missing), Confederate losses are 18,454 (2,312 killed, 14,674 wounded, and 1,468 captured or missing). Among the dead are Confederate generals Benjamin Hardin Helm (husband of Abraham Lincoln‘s sister-in-law), James Deshler, and Preston Smith, and Union general William H. Lytle. Confederate general John Bell Hood, who had already lost the use of his left arm from a wound at Gettysburg, is severely wounded with a bullet in his leg, requiring it to be amputated. Although the Confederates are technically the victors, driving Rosecrans from the field, Bragg did not achieve his objectives of destroying Rosecrans or of restoring Confederate control of East Tennessee, and the Confederate Army suffers casualties that they can ill afford.


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Birth of Sir Thomas Drew, Anglo-Irish Architect

Sir Thomas Drew, Anglo-Irish architect, is born in Victoria Place, Belfast, on September 18, 1838.

Drew is the son of the Rev. Thomas Drew, son of a Limerick grocer, and Isabella Drew (née Dalton), daughter of a Dublin attorney. He is one of four sons and eight daughters of the couple, although most of the children die young. His sister, Catherine Drew, is a prominent London journalist and an early champion of women’s rights.

Drew is trained under Sir Charles Lanyon before moving to work in Dublin, where he becomes principal assistant to William George Murray. In 1865, he becomes the diocesan architect of the united dioceses of Down, Connor and Dromore, and from that point forward Church architecture is his principal activity. He is consulting architect for both St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin.

Drew marries Adelaide Anne, sister of William George Murray, in 1871.

Among other projects, Drew is responsible for the design of the Ulster Bank on Dame Street, Rathmines Town Hall (completed 1899) and the Graduates Memorial Building at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). He takes an interest in historic buildings and is the first to draw serious attention to the architectural and historic importance of the St. Audoen’s Church, Dublin’s oldest parish church, in 1866. He produces detailed plans of the church for which he wins an award from the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI), carries out excavations and draws up a paper on the church and its history.

From 1885 to 1892, Richard Orpen works with Drew as a managing assistant. Drew’s most significant work in Belfast is St. Anne’s Cathedral, completed in 1899.

Drew is knighted in the 1900 Birthday Honours and is inaugural president of the Royal Society of Ulster Architects, serving from 1901 to 1903. In addition, he is president of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI), the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (RSAI) and the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) and holds the chair in architecture at the National University of Ireland. He lives in Gortnadrew, Monkstown, County Dublin.

Drew dies on March 13, 1910, a month after an unsuccessful operation for appendicitis. He is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery.

Selected works:


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Birth of Liam Ó Briain, Irish Language Expert & Political Activist

Liam Ó Briain, Irish language expert and political activist, is born at 10 Church Street, North Wall, Dublin, on September 16, 1888.

Christened as William O’Brien, the seventh child of Arthur O’Brien, clerk, and Mary O’Brien (née Christie), who is from County Meath, Ó Briain takes an interest in the Irish language from an early age and begins learning Irish by himself from a grammar book, as it is not encouraged by his teachers at the Christian Brothers’ O’Connell School nor spoken by his parents. While still at the O’Connell School, he starts using the Irish version of his name. He also attends meetings of the Gaelic League, then attends University College Dublin (UCD) on a scholarship, where he studies French, English and Irish, receiving a BA (1909) and an MA (1910).

UCD decides to start awarding one annual scholarship for overseas travel in 1911, and Ó Briain wins the first one, using it to visit Germany and study under Kuno Meyer and Rudolf Thurneysen. After three years, he returns home, where he rejoins the Gaelic League and begins teaching French at UCD. He also joins the Irish Volunteers then, the following year, Seán T. O’Kelly convinces him to join the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).

During the 1916 Easter Rising, Ó Briain sees action with the Irish Citizen Army. He comes into conflict with his commander, Michael Mallin, as he wants to pursue a strategy without the Dublin brigade being “cooped up in the city.” However, Mallin overrules him and insists they should focus on taking Dublin Castle. He spends two months in Wandsworth Prison in London and six months in Frongoch internment camp in Wales before being released to discover that he has been fired from his job. However, he quickly obtains a professorship in Romance languages at University College Galway (UCG).

Around this time, Ó Briain joins Sinn Féin, and he stands unsuccessfully for the party in Mid Armagh at the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, taking 5,689 votes. His campaign leads, indirectly, to his arrest and three months in jail in Belfast. In 1920, following his release, he is appointed a judge in the then-illegal republican court system in Galway, and visits both France and Italy to try to source weapons for the Irish Republican Army (IRA). In November 1920, he is arrested in the UCG dining room by Black and Tans, and is imprisoned for thirteen months, first in Galway and then in the Curragh camp in County Kildare, thereby missing the conclusion of the Irish War of Independence. By the time he is released, the Anglo-Irish Treaty has been signed. He supports the treaty and takes no further part in militant activity.

In the newly independent Ireland, Ó Briain remains a professor at Galway. He also stands in the 1925 Seanad election, although he is not successful. He is the founding secretary of the Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe theatre, also acting in many of its productions, and spends much time translating works from English and the Romance languages into Irish. He stands to become president of UCG in 1945, but is not elected, and in the 1940s and 1950s is best known for his many appearances on television and radio.

From his retirement in 1959, Ó Briain lives in Dublin. In 1974, the National University of Ireland (NUI) confers an honorary doctorate on him. He dies on August 12, 1974, at St. Gabriel’s Hospital, Cabinteely, County Dublin. His funeral to Glasnevin Cemetery is almost a state occasion, with a huge attendance of public figures, and a military firing party at the graveside, where the oration is given by Micheál Mac Líammóir and a lesson is read by Siobhán McKenna. For days after his death, the newspapers carry tributes to his many-sided career and personality. On the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, Proinsias Mac Aonghusa and Art Ó Beoláin write commemorative articles in Feasta.

On September 1, 1921, Ó Briain marries Helen Lawlor, of Dublin, who dies two years before him. The couple’s only child is Eibhlín Ní Bhriain, who is a journalist for The Irish Times and other periodicals.


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Birth of Janet McNeill, Novelist & Playwright

Janet McNeill, prolific Irish novelist and playwright, is born on September 14, 1907, in Dublin. Author of more than 20 children’s books, as well as adult novels, plays, and two opera libretti, she is best known for her children’s comic fantasy series My Friend Specs McCann.

McNeill is born to Rev. William McNeill, a minister at Adelaide Road Presbyterian Church, and Jeannie Patterson (Hogg) McNeill. In 1913, the family moves to Birkenhead, Merseyside, England, where her father becomes minister at Trinity Road Church. She attends public school in Birkenhead and studies classics at the University of St. Andrews in St. Andrews, Scotland, completing a MA degree in 1929. While at university, she is involved in writing and acting with the College Players. In 1924, the family returns to Ireland due to her father’s failing health, and Rev. McNeill becomes the minister of a village church in Rostrevor, County Down, Northern Ireland, while Janet joins the Belfast Telegraph as a secretary.

In 1933, McNeill marries Robert Alexander, the chief engineer in the Belfast city surveyor’s department, and the couple settles in Lisburn, where they raise their four sons. One son is the zoologist Professor Robert McNeill Alexander, CBE, FRS. Though she plans to write her first novel early on, she finds it impossible to write seriously until the children grow up, saying, “It was four years before I had a baby and twenty-five before I produced the book.”

In 1946, McNeill wins a prize in a BBC competition for her play Gospel Truth. She begins writing radio dramas, which are broadcast by the BBC. She suffers an intracerebral hemorrhage in 1953. During her recovery, she begins writing novels both for adults and children, producing a large body of work between 1955 and 1964. Her popular children’s character, Specs McCann, who debuts in a 1955 book and makes several reappearances, also inspires a newspaper cartoon strip by Rowel Friers, a Belfast artist and friend of hers.

Her 1944 novel The Maiden Dinosaur is her first to be published in the United States, twenty-two years later. She also has three writing credits on television with series and plays. Several of her plays are staged at the Ulster Group Theatre.

In 1964, McNeill’s husband retires, and the couple moves to Bristol, South West England. She writes one more novel after she leaves Northern Ireland but continues to write children’s books for another decade. During this time, she writes her only children’s play, published as Switch On, Switch Off, and other plays (1968), which presents different moral themes in scenes set in “domestic and workplace settings in contemporary England.” Her children’s book The Battle of St. George Without is televised by the BBC in 1969.

In her adult fiction, McNeill focuses on the lifestyle and social mores of Belfast and Ulster in the mid-twentieth century. Her characters are primarily “menopausal, middle-aged, middle-class Protestants.” She depicts the “dreary, Ulster religiosity” of ministers and laymen alike, and the class conventions and sexual repression of middle-aged, upper-middle-class women. The theme of suppressing self-identity and goals, both by wives in deference to their husbands and parents on behalf of their children, pervades her adult novels.

McNeill has a number of health problems and dies in Bristol in October 1994.


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Death of Edward Pennefather, Barrister & Lord Chief Justice of Ireland

Edward Pennefather, PC, KC, Irish barrister, Law Officer and judge of the Victorian era, who holds office as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, dies on September 6, 1847, in Dunlavin, County Wicklow.

Pennefather is born at Darling Hill, Knockevan, County Tipperary, on October 22, 1773, the second son of William Pennefather of Knockevan, member of the Irish House of Commons for Cashel, and his wife Ellen Moore, daughter of Edward Moore, Archdeacon of Emly. He goes to school in Clonmel and graduates from Trinity College Dublin. He is called to the Irish Bar in 1795. He lives at Rathsallagh House, near Dunlavin, County Wicklow.

His brother, Richard Pennefather, has a longer and more successful career as a judge. Appointed a Baron of the Court of Exchequer in 1821, he serves for nearly 40 years and is held in universal regard. With the general support of the profession, he remains on the Bench until shortly before his death at eighty-six, by which time he is blind. Edward and Richard, “the two Pennefathers,” are leading practitioners in the Court of Chancery (Ireland).

Pennefather is generally regarded as more gifted, a master of the law of equity and also a skilled libel lawyer. In 1816, he is one of the lead counsels in the celebrated libel case of Bruce v. Grady, which arises from the publication of a scurrilous poem called “The Nosegay,” written by a barrister, Thomas Grady, about his former friend, the notably eccentric banker George Evans Brady of Hermitage House, Castleconnell, County Limerick. The quarrel is said to arise from a dispute over money which Bruce had loaned to Grady. The plaintiff claims £20000 but the jury awards £500.

Pennefather is made a King’s Counsel by 1816. He is very briefly Attorney-General for Ireland in 1830 and is made Third Serjeant-at-law (Ireland) in the same year. He becomes Second Serjeant and First Serjeant in the two following years. He is Solicitor-General for Ireland in the first Peel ministry in 1835 and again in the second Peel ministry in 1841. In the latter year, he is appointed Lord Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench for Ireland and holds the position until he resigns on health grounds in 1846.

According to Elrington Ball, Pennefather is considered to be one of the greatest Irish advocates of his time, and one with few rivals in any age, but he does not live up to expectations as a judge, due largely to his age and increasing ill-health. As a judge he is remembered mainly for presiding at the trial of Daniel O’Connell in 1843 for sedition, where his alleged bias against the accused damages his reputation: he is accused of acting as prosecutor rather than judge, and his summing-up is described as simply an extra speech for the prosecution. Further damage to his reputation is done by the majority decision of the House of Lords quashing the verdict in the O’Connell case: while many of the errors were the fault of the prosecution, the Law Lords do not spare Pennefather for his conduct of the proceedings, and in particular for his summing-up. The Law Lords comment severely that the course of the trial, if condoned, will make a mockery of trial by jury in Ireland.

The related trial of Sir John Gray descends into farce when the Attorney-General, Sir Thomas Cusack-Smith, who is noted for his hot temper, challenges one of the defence counsel, Gerald Fitzgibbon, to a duel, for having allegedly accused him of improper motives. Pennefather tells the Attorney-General severely that a man in his position has no excuse for such conduct, whereupon the Attorney-General agrees to let the matter drop. The public notes with interest that Fitzgibbon’s wife and daughter are present in Court during the contretemps.

Following a long illness, Pennefather dies in Dunlavin, County Wicklow, on September 6, 1847. He is buried in Christ Church Cemetery, Delgany, County Wicklow.

In January 1806, Pennefather marries Susannah Darby, eldest daughter of John Darby of Leap Castle, County Offaly, and his wife Anne Vaughan, and sister of John Nelson Darby, one of the most influential of the early Plymouth Brethren. They have ten children, including Edward, the eldest son and heir; Richard, Auditor General of Ceylon; Ellen, who marries James Thomas O’Brien, Bishop of Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin, and Dorothea, who marries in 1850, as his second wife, James Stopford, 4th Earl of Courtown, and has three sons. Two of Dora’s sons, General Sir Frederick Stopford, commander at the Landing at Suvla Bay, and Admiral Walter Stopford, become famous.


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Birth of Vincent Fovargue, IRA Officer & British Army Spy

Vincent Patrick Fovargue, a company officer in the Dublin brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence, is born on August 22, 1900, at 2 Rutland Place, Clontarf, Dublin, to Robert Fovargue, an engineer/fitter, and Elizabeth (Lillie) Larkin.

An intelligence officer with the 4th Battalion of the Dublin Brigade of the IRA in the Ranelagh area, Fovargue is captured by the British Army in Dublin. Under interrogation, he allegedly leaks information that results in the arrest of the other members of his unit a few days later. In return for this information, the Intelligence Corps allegedly allows him to escape during a staged ambush in Dublin’s South Circular Road.

This attempted ruse however does not go unnoticed by Michael Collins‘s many moles inside the Crown’s security forces. On the night of the escape, Detective Constable David Neligan of the Dublin Metropolitan Police‘s G Division is on duty in Dublin Castle when a telephone message on a police form is passed to him. The message, issued by the British Military Headquarters, states that a “Sinn Féin” suspect named Fovargue has escaped from three Intelligence Corps officers in a car while en route to prison. It gives a description of his appearance and asks that the British Army be notified in the event of his recapture by the Dublin Metropolitan Police.

Joe Kinsella is the I/O of the 4th Battalion. He is temporarily transferred to take care of munitions under Seán Russell for a few weeks and Fovargue is put in his place. From Joe Kinsella’s own statement to the Irish Bureau of Military History:

“From the outset I personally did not place a lot of trust in him, because on the morning that he took over from me he appeared to me, to be too inquisitive about the movements of Michael Collins and the G.H.Q. staff generally. He wanted to know where they could be located at any time. He said that he had big things in view, and that it would be to the advantage of the movement generally if he was in a position to get in touch with the principal men with the least possible delay. From his attitude I there and then formed the opinion, rightly or wrongly, that he was inclined to overstep his position. I did not feel too happy about him and I discussed him with Sean Dowling. It transpired that my impressions of this man were correct. I told him of two meeting places of Intelligence staff, one of Company Intelligence held at Rathmines Road and one of Brigade Intelligence held at Saville Place. A short time after giving him this information both these places were raided…I was now confirmed in my suspicions that Fovargue was giving away information. He was later shot in England by the IRA.”

Neither was Neligan fooled by this, as he explains:

“Now if they had said that this man (who was completely unknown to both of us) had escaped from one I.O. it might have sounded reasonable enough. But to tell us that an unarmed man had escaped out of a motorcar in the presence of three presumably armed men was imposing a strain on our credulity. Both of us thought this story too good to be true.”

The two men retype the message and pass it to Collins the following day. Meanwhile, Fovargue has been sent to England where he adopts the alias of Richard Staunton. He has in fact been sent to England by Intelligence Corps Colonel Ormonde Winter to infiltrate the IRA in Britain.

Sean Kavanagh, a Kilkenny IRA man, claims that Fovargue is put in a cell with him in Kilmainham Gaol in 1921 in order to try to extract information from him.

On April 2, 1921, a boy walking on the golf links of the Ashford Manor Golf Club in Ashford, Middlesex discovers the body of Fovargue, who had been shot through the chest. Discovered near the corpse is a small piece of paper on which has been scribbled in blue pencil the words “Let spies and traitors beware – IRA.”

In the Neil Jordan film Michael Collins, Fovargue’s assassination is depicted onscreen. Fovargue is tracked down while working out at the golf course, allowed to say the Act of Contrition, and then fatally shot by Liam Tobin (Brendan Gleeson).

(Pictured: Dublin Brigade IRA officer’s cap badge in white metal, “FF” (Fianna Fáil) at centre, surrounded by a garter bearing the motto “Drong Átha Cliath” (Dublin Brigade), all on an eight-pointed rayed star)