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 P. S. O’Hegarty, Writer, Editor & Historian

Patrick Sarsfield O’Hegarty (Irish: Pádraig Sáirséal Ó hÉigeartaigh), Irish writer, editor and historian and a member of the Supreme Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, is born on December 29, 1879, at Carrignavar, County Cork.

O’Hegarty is born to John and Katherine (née Hallahan) Hegarty. His parents’ families emigrate to the United States after the Great Famine, and his parents are married in Boston, Massachusetts. His father is a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).

O’Hegarty is educated at North Monastery CBS, where he forms an enduring friendship with Terence MacSwiney. In 1888, his father dies of tuberculosis at the age of 42. Left destitute, his mother pawns her wedding ring to pay for an advertisement looking for work, and eventually becomes a cook.

O’Hegarty joins the postal service in Cork in 1897. Along with J. J. Walsh, he plays on the Head Post Office hurling team. He joins the IRB and represents Munster on the IRB Supreme Council. He starts writing for Arthur Griffith‘s United Irishman and The Shan Van Vocht, a periodical established by Alice Milligan and Ethna Carbery.

O’Hegarty serves at the main Postal Sorting Office in Mount Pleasant, London, from 1902 to 1913. Along with J. J. Walsh, he spends three years at King’s College London, studying for the Secretary’s Office. While he succeeds in his studies, Walsh does not and returns to Ireland. O’Hegarty becomes the IRB representative for South East England and joins the Gaelic League and Sinn Féin and becomes a strong advocate of the Irish language. In 1905, he is elected secretary of the local Dungannon Club, which draws in as members Robert Lynd, Herbert Hughes and George Cavan. In 1907, as Sinn Féin’s London Secretary, he approves and signs the membership card of Michael Collins, later becoming friend and mentor to Collins.

O’Hegarty has to return to Ireland for a break due to overwork in 1909 and gives up some of his work for the Gaelic League. However, he takes over as editor of the IRB publication, Irish Freedom. It is in this publication that he famously writes, concerning the visit of King George V to Ireland in 1911: “Damn your concessions, England: we want our country!” In 1912, at the height of the Playboy riots, he writes four articles entitled “Art and the Nation” in Irish Freedom, which take a very liberal and inclusionist approach to Anglo-Irish literature and art in general but invokes the wrath of many of the paper’s readers.

In 1913, he is re-posted to Queenstown (present-day Cobh) as postmaster. He continues editing nationalist newspapers such as Irish Freedom (founded in 1910 and suppressed in December 1914 on account of its seditious content) and An tÉireannach and joins the Irish Volunteers. At the outbreak of war he is moved to Shrewsbury, probably on account of his political activities. In 1915, he marries Wilhelmina “Mina” Smyth, a schoolteacher and suffragist, and is then moved to Welshpool, Montgomeryshire. In the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising, he is opposed to physical force. In 1918, he refuses to take the British Oath of Allegiance and resigns his position in the Post Office.

O’Hegarty feels that the Abbey Theatre is “doing good for Ireland” and supports W. B. Yeats against attacks from Arthur Griffith and like-minded Nationalists. He opposes the extremist views of D. P. Moran, who seeks a Roman Catholic Irish-speaking Ireland.

O’Hegarty is Secretary of the Irish Department of Post and Telegraphs from 1922 to 1945. He is elected a member of the Irish Academy of Letters in 1954.

O’Hegarty’s son, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, is a founder of the Irish-language publishing house Sáirséal agus Dill. His daughter Gráinne, a harpist, marries Senator Michael Yeats, son of W. B. Yeats.

O’Hegarty dies on December 17, 1955.

O’Hegarty’s papers are acquired by the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas. This includes an outstanding collection of books, pamphlets and periodicals of W. B. Yeats.

(Pictured: “P. S. O’Hegarty, 1929,” pastel on paper by Harry Kernoff, RHA, property from the Yeats family)


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Birth of William Francis Deegan, Architect & American Legion Organizer

William Francis Deegan, architect, organizer of the American Legion, major in the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and Democratic political leader in New York City, is born in the Bronx, Bronx County, New York, on December 28, 1882, to Irish immigrants.

Deegan studies architecture at Cooper Union. He marries Violet Secor (1889-1969) and has one son, William Secor Deegan (1909-85). At the age of 35 he serves in World War I as a staff officer in the 105th Field Artillery, rising to the rank of major.

Deegan later joins the United States Army Corps of Engineers as a major, where he supervises the construction of military bases in the New York area under the command of General George Washington Goethals. After the war he helps organize the American Legion in 1919, advancing to State Commander in 1921. In 1922 he is considered a strong candidate to become national commander of the Legion at their convention in New Orleans but is defeated due to his strong advocacy for admitting Black veterans into the organization. Advocacy for the rights of Black people is a strong theme throughout Deegan’s career, including during his position as Tenement House Commissioner.

Deegan works as an architect at a number of distinguished firms, including McKim, Mead & White, Post, Magnicke and Franke, and Starrett and van Vleck. Later in life he holds a number of political positions, most of them in the Bronx. He is President of the Bronx Chamber of Commerce until the chamber grows critical of Mayor Jimmy Walker, at which point he resigns. In 1928, Mayor Walker appoints him Tenement House Commissioner of New York City, a post he holds for the rest of his life, and in 1930, chairman of the Mayor’s Committee on Receptions to Distinguished Guests, or “official greeter,” a job in which he is preceded by his friend Rodman Wanamaker and eventually succeeded by Grover Whalen.

Deegan dies in Manhattan, New York County, New York, on April 3, 1932, of complications following an appendectomy. He is buried at Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Hawthorne, Westchester County, New York. After his death, his widow, Violet, marries Albert W. Crouch (1882-1954).

At the time of his death, a new road is being built from the Triborough Bridge (now the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge) to the Grand Concourse. This is renamed and expanded in 1956 into the Major Deegan Expressway section of Interstate 87 in the Bronx, which retains his name.


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Birth of Victoria Cross Recipient William Kenealy

Lance Sergeant William Stephen Kenealy VC, recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces, is born in Wexford, County Wexford, on December 26, 1886.

Kenealy’s father, John, is a colour sergeant in the Royal Irish Regiment. When his father retires from the army, the family moves to the district of Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire, where his father works as a check-weigher at Bryn Hall Colliery. Kenealy becomes a coal miner at age 13. Ten years later, he enlists into the army, signing up for seven years. He joins the 1st Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers, British Army, as a private during World War I.

On April 25, 1915, west of Cape Helles, Gallipoli, Ottoman Empire, Kenealy is 28 years old when he performs an act of bravery for which he is awarded the Victoria Cross. Three companies, and the Headquarters of the 1st Bn. Lancashire Fusiliers, in effecting a landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula to the west of Cape Helles, are met by a very deadly fire from hidden machine guns which causes a great number of casualties. The survivors, however, rush up to and cut the wire entanglements, notwithstanding the terrific fire from the enemy, and after overcoming supreme difficulties, the cliffs are gained and the position is maintained. Among the many very gallant officers and men engaged in this most hazardous undertaking, Capt. Willis, Serjt. Richards, and Pte. Kenealy are selected by their comrades as having performed the most signal acts of bravery and devotion to duty.

Kenealy is one of the six members of the regiment elected by their colleagues in the regiment for the award, and described in the press as “six VC’s before breakfast.” Lieutenant-General Sir Ian Hamilton, the overall Allied army commander at Gallipoli, orders that the beach be renamed Lancashire Landing because of his conviction that “no finer feat of arms has ever been achieved by the British Soldier – or any other soldier – than the storming of these beaches.”

The other five members of the regiment who receive the award as a result of the landing are Cuthbert Bromley, John Elisha Grimshaw, Alfred Joseph Richards, Frank Edward Stubbs and Richard Raymond Willis.

Shortly afterward, Kenealy is promoted to corporal and then lance sergeant. He is seriously wounded in the Battle of Gully Ravine on June 28, 1915, and dies the following day. He is buried at Lancashire Landing Cemetery on the Gallipoli Peninsula.


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Death of Maolra Seoighe, Wrongly Convicted & Hanged

Maolra Seoighe (English: Myles Joyce), is an Irish man who is wrongfully convicted and hanged on December 15, 1882. He is found guilty of the Maumtrasna Murders and is sentenced to death. Though he can only speak Irish, the case is heard in English without any translation service. He is posthumously pardoned in 2018.

Seoighe is the most prominent figure in a controversial trial in 1882 that takes place while Ireland is part of the United Kingdom. Three Irish language speakers are condemned to death for the murder of a local family (John Joyce, his wife Brighid, his mother Mairéad, his daughter Peigí and son Mícheál) in Maumtrasna, on the border between County Mayo and County Galway. It is presumed by the authorities to be a local feud connected to sheep rustling and the Land War. Eight men are convicted on what turns out to be perjured evidence and three of them condemned to death: Maolra Seoighe (a father of five children), Pat Casey and Pat Joyce.

Covering the incident, The Spectator writes the following:

“The Tragedy at Maumtrasna, investigated this week in Dublin, almost unique as it is in the annals of the United Kingdom, brings out in strong relief two facts which Englishmen are too apt to forget. One is the existence in particular districts of Ireland of a class of peasants who are scarcely civilised beings, and approach far nearer to savages than any other white men; and the other is their extraordinary and exceptional gloominess of temper. In remote places of Ireland, especially in Connaught, on a few of the islands, and in one or two mountain districts, dwell cultivators who are in knowledge, in habits, and in the discipline of life no higher than Maories or other Polynesians.”

The court proceedings are carried out in a language the accused do not understand (English), with a solicitor from Trinity College Dublin (TCD), who does not speak Irish. The three are executed in Galway by William Marwood for the crime in 1882. The role of John Spencer, 5th Earl Spencer, who is then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, is the most controversial aspect of the trial, leading most modern scholars to characterise it as a miscarriage of justice. Research carried out in The National Archives by Seán Ó Cuirreáin, has found that Spencer “compensated” three alleged eyewitnesses to the sum of £1,250, equivalent to €157,000 (by 2016 rates).

As of 2016, nobody has issued an apology or pardon for the executions, though the case has been periodically taken up by various political figures. The then MP for Westmeath, Timothy Harrington, takes up the case, claiming that the Crown Prosecutor for the case George Bolton, had deliberately withheld evidence from the trial. In 2011, two sitting members of the House of Lords, the Liberal Democrat life peers David Alton and Eric Lubbock, request a review of the case. Crispin Blunt, Tory Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Prisons and Youth Justice, states that Seoighe was “probably an innocent man,” but he does not seek an official pardon.

Seoighe’s final words are: “Feicfidh mé Iosa Críost ar ball beag – crochadh eisean san éagóir chomh maith. … Ara, tá mé ag imeacht … Go bhfóire Dia ar mo bhean agus a cúigear dílleachtaí.” (I will be seeing Jesus Christ soon – he too was also unjustly hanged … I am leaving … the blessings of God on my wife and her five orphans.)

On April 4, 2018, Michael D. Higgins, the President of Ireland, issues a pardon on the advice of the government of Ireland saying “Maolra Seoighe was wrongly convicted of murder and was hanged for a crime that he did not commit”. It is the first presidential pardon relating to an event predating the foundation of the state in 1922 and the second time a pardon has been issued after an execution. Seoighe’s case is not an isolated one, and there are strong similarities with the case of Patrick Walsh who was hanged in the Galway jail on September 22, 1882, just three months before Seoighe for the murders of Martin and John Lydon. The same key players and political factors are active in both cases and his conviction is just as questionable as that of Seoighe.

In September 2009, the story is featured on RTÉ‘s CSI programme under an episode entitled CSI Maamtrasna Massacre. A dramatised Irish language film regarding the affair, entitled Murdair Mhám Trasna, produced by Ciarán Ó Cofaigh is released in 2017.


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Birth of Padraig Marrinan, Figure- & Portrait-Painter

Padraig H. Marrinan, figure and portrait painter, is born Patrick Hamilton Marrinan in Belfast on December 10, 1906, the son of James Marrinan, a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), originally from County Louth, and Emily Marrinan (née O’Neill).

Marrinan becomes ill with infantile paralysis at the age of five, and as a result is tutored privately. He has no formal training in art but is largely influenced by his reading matter, particularly the American comic strips of Bud Fisher. The variety of facial expressions that Fisher can achieve, with only a pencil, intrigues and inspires him. Likewise, the images evoked by Celtic mythology and religious art also contributes to his visual language, and many hours are spent in the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery studying the paintings in their collection.

Marrinan exhibits with the Ulster Academy of Arts from an address at 524 Donegall Road, Belfast, entering “The Wee Gate, Earl Street, Belfast” (1931) and “The Painter’s Father” and the “Apache” (1934), which is judged “picture of the year.” He last exhibits with a landscape, “Connemara,” along with four other works in 1949.

Marrinan paints and sketches portraits of many notable Irish figures, among which is the charcoal drawing of northern Fenian Robert Johnston (1934; National Gallery of Ireland) and a sketch of the Donegal storyteller Niall Duffy (University College Dublin). His literary portraits include one of Brian Friel. He holds a one-man show in 1951 at 55a Donegall Place, Belfast, where he exhibits a bust of John McLaverty. He takes an interest in sculpture although painting and drawing remain his preferred form of expression. Important commissions are for a memorial portrait (completed 1952) of Éamonn Ceannt for Ceannt Barracks officers’ mess, Curragh Camp, County Kildare, and for a portrait of Vice-brigadier Peadar Clancy for Clancy Barracks, Dublin. He paints two memorial portraits of President John F. Kennedy, one of which is in the Irish Club, London.

Examples of his religious art are in Dublin and Northern Ireland, with a Stations of the Cross in the Church of the Good Shepherd, Churchtown, Dublin, and another Stations in St. Colman’s Church, Lambeg, County Antrim. He paints “Our Lady of Belfast” for the Holy Cross church, Ardoyne, Belfast, a church regularly targeted in the northern troubles. His “Madonna and Child of Loreto” (1969) is in the Loreto Grammar School, Omagh, County Tyrone.

Marrinan is an honorary member of the Royal Ulster Academy and exhibits with them every year from 1950 onward, showing a portrait of Mrs. Padraig Marrinan in 1967 (no other details of his marriage are known). He is preparing for an exhibition to be held at the Irish Club, London, in 1974, but dies on October 25, 1973, at Tyrone County Hospital in Omagh. He is then living at James Street, Omagh.

(From: “Marrinan, Padraig H.” by Ruth Devine, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: “The River Lee, Cork City, Ireland” by Padraig Marrinan, oil on canvas)


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Birth of Timothy Lyons, Irish Republican Army Volunteer

Timothy Lyons, also known as Aero or Aeroplane, an Irish Republican Army (IRA) soldier who fights with the Anti-Treaty side during the Irish Civil War, is born in Garrynagore, County Kerry, on December 4, 1895.

Lyons is born in to Margaret (née Sullivan) and Timothy Lyons senior, who is listed on his birth certificate as a cottier. He is the oldest of six siblings. Prior to the Irish Civil War, he works as a labourer. He fights with the IRA’s Kilflynn Company during the Irish War of Independence. He is described as being slight, “adventurous” as a column leader and a marksman who shoots at small birds. He shoots a British officer in an ambush led by captain George O’Shea at Shannow Bridge where the Kilflynn road joins the R557, forcing a retreat. He gains the nickname “Aeroplane” or “Aero” because of the way he suddenly appears and his last-minute escapes. Because of regular searches by Black and Tans, his father fears the family home will be burnt out and asks him to leave.

After the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Lyons fights against Free State forces . At the time of his death he is commandant. He is involved in fighting in Listowel and Limerick, is captured near Athea, jailed in Limerick and released in late 1922 with an undertaking not to rejoin the fight. Notwithstanding this, the column continues to operate, generally around Causeway and Ballyduff.

On April 15, 1923, Lyons’ column attacks a Free State raiding party in Meenoghane, County Kerry. The raiding party receives reinforcements. He and his men are eventually surrounded at nearby Clashmealcon on April 16 by Michael Hogan’s 1st Western Division. They descend the rugged, Atlantic cliffs to the caves and hide in Dumfort’s Cave. He shoots out searchlights with his Lee-Enfield rifle and two Free State soldiers are shot dead from the cave. The situation is under Army Emergency Powers. With no escape for the men hiding, troops try to blast them out by dropping mines and smoke them out with petrol-soaked turf.

On April 16, James McGrath, the brother of Thomas McGrath, one of Lyons’s men, is arrested and taken to the cliffs in order to enter the cave and persuade the men to surrender. On the night of April 17-18, Thomas McGrath and Patrick O’Shea, his first cousin, fall trying to scale the cliffs to escape and drown. After offering to surrender himself on the morning of the April 18, Lyons falls several metres onto rocks from a rope that is provided by National Army troops. He is then shot multiple times by troops from the cliff top and is not recovered.

Three of Lyons’ men who surrender, Edmond Greaney, James McEnery and British deserter-turned-republican Reginald Stephen Hathaway, are executed in Ballymullen Barracks by gunshot on April 25, for breaking their undertaking not to take up arms against the Free State, attacking troops at Clashmealcon, burning the Civic Guard station at Ballyheigue, stripping the same Civic Guards and robbing the post office at Ballyduff.

Lyons’ decomposing body, minus a leg, is washed up on May 5, identifiable by a boot. He is buried alongside George O’Shea and Timothy Tuomey (both killed at Ballyseedy) in the Republican plot at Kilflynn Church (now St. Columba’s Heritage Centre).

(Pictured: Kilflynn IRA Flying Column, 1922. Back (L to R): Denis O’Connell (Lixnaw), Stephen Fuller (Kilflynn), William Hartnett (Mountcoal), Tim Twomey (Kilflynn). Front (L to R): Terry Brosnan (Lixnaw), John McElligott (Leam, Kilflynn), Danny O’Shea (Kilflynn), Timothy (Aero) Lyons (Garrynagore), Tim Sheehy (Lyre), Pete Sullivan (Ballyduff), Paddy Mahony (Ballyegan, Battalion O.C.).)


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Birth of George Noble Plunkett, Scholar & Revolutionary

George Noble Plunkett, scholar and revolutionary, is born on December 3, 1851, at 1 Aungier Street, Dublin, the youngest and only survivor from infancy of the three children of Patrick Joseph Plunkett (1817–1918), builder and politician, and his wife, Elizabeth (née Noble). The Plunketts are Catholic, claiming collateral descent from Archbishop of Armagh Oliver Plunkett, and nationalist: the two drummers from the republican army at Vinegar Hill in 1798 visit George’s cradle.

Plunkett is educated expensively: at a primary school in Nice, making him fluent in French and Italian, then at Clongowes Wood College, and, from 1872, at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where his generous allowance allows him to study renaissance and medieval art. He enrolls at King’s Inns in 1870 and the Middle Temple in 1874, but is not called to the bar until 1886. While there he befriends Oscar Wilde and Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa. In 1877, he endows a university gold medal for Irish speakers and publishes a book of poems, God’s Chosen Festival, and the following year he issues a pamphlet, The Early Life of Henry Grattan. He also writes articles for magazines, editing a short-lived one, Hibernia, for eighteen months from 1882. In 1883, he donates funds and property to the nursing order of the Little Company of Mary (Blue Sisters), and on April 4, 1884, Pope Leo XIII makes him a count.

On June 26, 1884, Plunkett marries Mary Josephine Cranny (1858–1944). The couple has seven children: Philomena (Mimi) (b. 1886), Joseph (b. 1887), Mary Josephine (Moya) (b. 1889), Geraldine (b. 1891), George Oliver (b. 1894), Fiona (b. 1896), and Eoin (Jack) (b. 1897).

Plunkett surprises many in 1890 by declaring for Charles Stewart Parnell against the Catholic hierarchy. In the 1892 United Kingdom general election in Ireland he is a Parnellite candidate for Mid Tyrone but withdraws from a potential three-cornered fight lest he let in the unionist. He is sole nationalist candidate for Dublin St. Stephen’s Green in the 1895 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, and at an 1898 by-election there he cuts the unionist majority to 138 votes. The reunited Irish Party wins the seat in 1900.

In 1894, Plunkett part-edits Charles O’Kelly‘s memoir The Jacobite War in Ireland. By 1900, when he publishes the standard biography Sandro Botticelli, he is supplementing his income by renewed artistic studies, which until 1923 finances his lease of Kilternan Abbey, County Dublin. His Pinelli (1908) is followed by Architecture of Dublin, and, in 1911, by his revised edition of Margaret McNair Stokes‘s Early Christian Art in Ireland. In 1907, he becomes director of the National Museum of Ireland, where he increases annual visits from 100 to 3,000.

Joseph Plunkett swears his father into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in April 1916, sending him secretly to seek German aid and a papal blessing for the projected Easter rising. After its defeat, Plunkett is sacked by the National Museum of Ireland and deported with the countess to Oxford, and the following January he is expelled by the Royal Dublin Society (RDS). This earns him nomination as the surviving rebels’ candidate in the North Roscommon by-election. He returns to Ireland illegally on January 31, 1917, and wins the seat easily three days later. Pledging abstention from attendance at Westminster in accordance with Sinn Féin policy, he initiates a Republican Liberty League, which coalesces with similar groups such as Sinn Féin. In October this front becomes the new Sinn Féin, committed to Plunkett’s republic rather than to the “king, lords and commons“ of Arthur Griffith. Plunkett and Griffith become the new party’s vice-presidents, under Éamon de Valera.

On May 18, 1918, Plunkett is interned again. Released after Sinn Féin’s general election landslide (in which he is returned unopposed), he presides, Sinn Féin’s oldest MP, at the planning meeting for Dáil Éireann on January 17, 1919, and at its opening session on January 21. On the 22nd he is made foreign affairs minister by Cathal Brugha, an appointment reaffirmed by de Valera on April 10. He criticises his president for advocating a continuing Irish external relationship with Britain, and fails to organise an Irish foreign service. In February 1921, de Valera makes Robert Brennan his departmental secretary and a ministry takes shape, while Plunkett publishes a book of poems, Ariel. After uncontested “southern Irish“ elections to the Second Dáil, de Valera moves his implacable foreign minister from the cabinet to a tailor-made portfolio of fine arts. Plunkett’s Dante sexcentenary commemoration is overshadowed by news of the Anglo–Irish Treaty. Opposing this, Plunkett cites his oath to the republic and its martyrs including his son. He leaves his ministry on January 9, 1922.

Plunkett chairs the anti-treaty Cumann na Poblachta, which loses the June general election, though he is returned again unopposed. In the Irish Civil War the treatyites intern him and the republicans appoint him to their council of state. In the August 1923 Irish general election, his first electoral contest since 1917, the interned count tops the poll in County Roscommon. He is released in December.

When de Valera forms Fianna Fáil in 1926, Plunkett stays with Sinn Féin, and loses his deposit in the June 1927 Irish general election. A year later he publishes his last poetry collection, Eros. He runs for a new Cumann Poblachta na hÉireann in a County Galway by-election in 1936, but loses his deposit again. On December 8, 1938, with the other six surviving abstentionist Second Dáil TDs, he transfers republican sovereignty to the IRA Army Council.

Plunkett is a big man with a black beard which whitens steadily after his fiftieth birthday. He is always formally pleasant and courteous. His oratory is described by M. J. MacManus as “level, cultured tones . . . [more] used to addressing the members of a learned society than to the rough and tumble of the hustings” (The Irish Press, March 15, 1948). Theoretically and practically, he is more scholar than politician. His portrait is on display at the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (RSAI).

Plunkett dies from cancer on March 12, 1948, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, survived by his children Geraldine (wife of Thomas Dillon), Fiona, and Jack. His grandson Joseph (1928–66), son of George Oliver Plunkett, inherits the title.

(From: “Plunkett, Count George Noble” by D. R. O’Connor Lysaght, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Physician Sir Dominic Corrigan, 1st Baronet

Sir Dominic John Corrigan, 1st Baronet, Irish physician known for his original observations in heart disease, is born in Thomas Street, Dublin, on December 2, 1802. The abnormal “collapsing” pulse of aortic valve insufficiency is named Corrigan’s pulse after him.

Corrigan is the son of a dealer in agricultural tools. He is educated in St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, which then has a department for secular students apart from the ecclesiastical seminary. He is attracted to the study of medicine by the physician in attendance, and spends several years as an apprentice to the local doctor, Edward Talbot O’Kelly. He studies medicine in Dublin later transferring to Edinburgh Medical School where he receives his degree as MD in August 1825.

Corrigan returns to Dublin in 1825 and sets up a private practice at 11 Ormond Street. As his practice grows, he moves to 12 Bachelors Walk in 1832, and in 1837 to 4 Merrion Square West. Apart from his private practice, he holds many public appointments. He is a physician to St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, the Sick Poor Institute, the Charitable Infirmary Jervis Street (1830–43) and the House of Industry Hospitals (1840–66). His work with many of Dublin’s poorest inhabitants leads to him specialising in diseases of the heart and lungs, and he lectures and published extensively on the subject. He is known as a very hard-working physician, especially during the Great Famine of Ireland. At the 1870 Dublin City by-election he is elected a Liberal Member of Parliament for Dublin City. In parliament he actively campaigns for reforms to education in Ireland and the early release of Fenian prisoners. He does not stand for re-election in 1874. His support for temperance and Sunday closing (of pubs) antagonises his constituents and alcohol companies

In 1847, Corrigan is appointed physician-in-ordinary to the Queen in Ireland. Two years later he is given an honorary MD from Trinity College Dublin (TCD). In 1846, his application to become a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) is blocked. In 1855, he gets around this opposition by sitting the college’s entrance exam with the newly qualified doctors. He becomes a fellow in 1856, and in 1859 is elected president, the first Catholic to hold the position. He is re-elected president an unprecedented four times. There is a statue of Corrigan in the Graves’ Hall of the college by John Henry Foley.

Corrigan is President of the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland, the Dublin Pathological Society, and the Dublin Pharmaceutical Society. From the 1840s he is a member of the senate of the Queen’s University and in 1871 becomes its vice-chancellor. In 1866, he is created a baronet, of Cappagh and Inniscorrig in County Dublin and of Merrion Square in the City of Dublin, partly as a reward for his services as Commissioner of Education for many years. He is a member of the board of Glasnevin Cemetery and a member of the Daniel O’Connell Memorial Committee. Armand Trousseau, the French clinician, proposes that aortic heart disease should be called Corrigan’s disease.

The Corrigan Ward, a cardiology ward in Beaumont Hospital, Dublin is named in his honour. Part of his family crest is also part of the Beaumont Hospital crest.

Corrigan marries Joanna Woodlock, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and sister of the Bishop Dr. Bartholomew Woodlock, in 1827. They have six children, three girls and three boys. Hus eldest son, Captain John Joseph Corrigan, Dragoon Guards, dies on January 6, 1866, aged 35 years and is interred at the Melbourne General Cemetery, Melbourne, Australia.

Corrigan dies at Merrion Square, Dublin, on February 1, 1880, having suffered a stroke the previous December. He is buried in the crypt of St. Andrews Church on Westland Row, Dublin. His grandson succeeds him to the baronetcy.


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Birth of John McAlery, Association Football Pioneer

John McCredy McAlery, an Irish association football pioneer, is born in Rathfriland, County Down, on November 29, 1848. His accomplishments include organizing the first ever properly organized football match in the history of Irish football in 1878, founding the first Irish football club in 1879, helping found the Irish Football Association in 1880, and wearing the captain‘s armband in Ireland‘s first ever international match in 1882. He is known as the “father of Irish association football.”

McAlery moves to Belfast to learn the drapery business and soon becomes very successful, opening the Irish Tweed House gentleman’s outfitters on Royal Avenue. A talented cricketer in his youth, his first involvement in the Belfast sport scene is helping in the formation of the Cliftonville Cricket Club in 1870, later serving as club treasurer. In 1878, during his honeymoon in Scotland, he witnesses his first ever association football match, and enjoys it so much he decides to introduce the sport back home.

The first match of organized association football on Irish soil is played on October 24, 1878, between Caledonian and Queen’s Park. McAlery invites the Scottish sides to play in the exhibition match at the Ulster Cricket Ground in an attempt to showcase the game to the Belfast crowd. Queen’s Park achieves a 3–2 victory, and more importantly, the demonstration is well received by the locals.

On September 20, 1879, less than a year later, McAlery places an advertisement in both the News Letter and the Northern Whig soliciting for individuals interested in becoming members of the Cliftonville Association Football Club.

The newly formed Cliftonville F.C. side plays their first match just nine days later, losing 2–1 to a team of rugby players called Quidnunces. They achieve their first victory on November 1 with a 2–0 defeat of Knock F.C., a team of former lacrosse players.

On November 18, 1880, McAlery organizes a meeting at the Queen’s Hotel in Belfast between the seven Irish football clubs that have been established at the time: Alexander, Avoniel, Cliftonville, Lisburn Distillery, Knock, Moyola Park and Oldpark. These teams become the founding members of the Irish Football Association (IFA), with Lord Spencer Chichester serving as its president and McAlery as secretary. In an appendix to the minutes of the meeting, McAlery writes: “If the spirit which pervaded from those present be acted upon the result will be a strong Association for promoting the game which we have espoused.”

The meeting also provides for Ireland’s first official football competition, the Irish FA Cup. In the first Cup final of the inaugural competition, played on April 9, 1881, Cliftonville is defeated by Moyola Park. They suffer the same fate the following year, losing to Queen’s Island in the final of the 1881–82 edition. McAlery, who captains Cliftonville while playing at fullback, wins his first trophy on his third try, as his club defeats Ulster to win the 1882–83 Irish Cup.

McAlery does not play much after this, deciding to focus on his administrative role in Irish football. He referees international matches until 1887, and remains the Irish FA secretary until 1888.

McAlery captains Ireland’s first ever international match on February 18, 1882, playing at right back. On a “bittery cold” Belfast night with occasional rain and hail, Ireland loses to the far more experienced England team by a score of 13–0. A week later, he makes his second and final international appearance, captaining his team again as they lose 7–1 to Wales in Wrexham.

McAlery retires to Whitehead, County Antrim, where he dies on December 3, 1925.

In 2013, a blue plaque erected by the Ulster History Circle is unveiled at Solitude, Cliftonville’s home ground, to commemorate McAlery’s efforts.


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Birth of Reginald Greville-Nugent, Politician

The Honourable Reginald James Macartney Greville-Nugent, an Irish politician, is born on November 27, 1848.

Greville-Nugent is the youngest of five sons born to the former Lady Rosa Nugent and Fulke Greville-Nugent, 1st Baron Greville. His brothers are Hon. Algernon Greville-Nugent (who marries Lady Beatrice Violet Graham, a daughter of James Graham, 4th Duke of Montrose), Hon. George Greville-Nugent MP (who marries Cecil Aitcheson Hankey, a daughter of Lt. Gen. Henry Aitchison Hankey), Hon. Robert Southwell Greville-Nugent (who dies unmarried), and Hon. Patrick Greville-Nugent, of Clonyn Castle, the High Sheriff of Westmeath (who marries Ermengarde Ogilvy). His sister is Hon. Mildred Charlotte Greville-Nugent, who marries Alexis Huchet, Marquis de la Bedoyére.

Greville-Nugent’s mother is the only daughter and heir of George Nugent, 1st Marquess of Westmeath and, his first wife, Lady Emily Cecil (second daughter of James Cecil, 1st Marquess of Salisbury). His paternal grandparents are Algernon Greville, of North Lodge in Hertford and the former Caroline Graham (daughter of Sir Bellingham Graham, 6th Baronet).

Greville-Nugent holds the Irish parliamentary seat of Longford, vacated by his father on his elevation to the peerage, from December 31, 1869, defeating John Martin. He has to relinquish the seat in May 1870 due to Judge Fitzgerald overturning the election result on the grounds of voting irregularities.

On October 21, 1871, Greville-Nugent is married to Louisa Maud Yarde-Buller, sister of John Yarde-Buller, 1st Baron Churston, and daughter of Sir Francis Buller-Yarde-Buller, 2nd Baronet.

Greville-Nugent is killed on February 28, 1878, after a fall in a steeplechase at Sandown Park Racecourse.

Greville-Nugent’s illegitimate son, Reginald Charles Fulke Greville, born August 19, 1866, is better known after changing his surname to Maugham (following a close friendship with the writer W. Somerset Maugham‘s great-aunt Julia) as the author of numerous books about Africa, and his most well-known work, Jersey under the Jack Boot.