The party is small throughout its existence. According to the ISRP historian David Lynch, the party never has more than 80 members. Upon its founding one journalist comments that the party has more syllables than members. Nevertheless, the ISRP is regarded by many Irish historians as a party of seminal importance in the early history of Irish socialism and republicanism. It is often described as the first socialist and republican party in Ireland, and the first organisation to espouse the ideology of socialist republicanism on the island. During its lifespan it only has one really active branch, the Dublin branch. There are several attempts to create branches in Cork, Belfast, Limerick, Naas, and even in northern England but they never come to much. The party establishes links with feminist and revolutionary Maud Gonne who approves of the party.
The party produces the first regular socialist paper in Ireland, the Workers’ Republic, runs candidates in local elections, represents Ireland at the Second International, and agitates over issues such as the Boer War and the commemorations of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Politically the ISRP is before its time, putting the call for an independent “Republic” at the centre of its propaganda before Sinn Féin or other political organizations.
A public meeting held by the party is described in Irish socialist playwrightSean O’Casey‘s autobiography Drums under the Window.
Connolly, who is the full-time paid organiser for the party, subsequently leaves Ireland for the United States in 1903 following internal conflict. In fact, it seems that a combination of the petty infighting and his own poverty that causes Connolly to abandon Ireland (he returns in 1910). Connolly clashes with the party’s other leading light, E. W. Stewart, over trade union and electoral strategy. A small number of members around Stewart establish an anti-Connolly micro organisation called the Irish Socialist Labour Party. In 1904, this merges with the remains of the ISRP to form the Socialist Party of Ireland.
Creighton Hale, Irish American theatre, film, and television actor, is born Patrick Fitzgerald on May 24, 1882, in County Cork. His career extends more than a half-century, from the early 1900s to the end of the 1950s.
Some believe that in 1923 Hale stars in an early pornographic “stag” filmOn the Beach (a.k.a. Getting His Goat and The Goat Man). In the film, three nude women agree to have sex with him, but only through a hole in a fence. Photographs of the scene clearly show that the man in the film is not Hale but is another actor who also wears glasses.
Hale’s two sons, Creighton Hale, Jr. and Robert Lowe Hale, from his first marriage to Victoire Lowe, are adopted by Lowe’s second husband, actor John Miljan. After his divorce, Hale marries Kathleen Bering in Los Angeles in 1931.
Edgeworth is born at Black Bourton, Oxfordshire, England on January 1, 1768. She is the second child of Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Anna Maria Edgeworth (née Elers). She spends her early years with her mother’s family in England, until her mother’s death when Maria is five. When her father marries his second wife Honora Sneyd in 1773, she goes with him to his estate, Edgeworthstown, in County Longford. There, she assists her father in managing his estate. In this way she acquires the knowledge of rural economy and of the Irish peasantry that is to become the backbone of her novels.
Domestic life at Edgeworthstown is busy and happy. Encouraged by her father, Edgeworth begins her writing in the common sitting room, where the 21 other children in the family provide material and audience for her stories. She publishes them in 1796 as The Parent’s Assistant. Even the intrusive moralizing, attributed to her father’s editing, does not wholly suppress their vitality, and the children who appear in them, especially the impetuous Rosamond, are the first real children in English literature since William Shakespeare.
Her first novel, Castle Rackrent (1800), written without her father’s interference, reveals her gift for social observation, character sketch, and authentic dialogue and is free from lengthy lecturing. It establishes the genre of the “regional novel,” and its influence is enormous. Sir Walter Scott acknowledges his debt to Edgeworth in writing Waverley. Her next work, Belinda (1801), a society novel unfortunately marred by her father’s insistence on a happy ending, is particularly admired by Jane Austen.
Edgeworth never marries. She has a wide acquaintance in literary and scientific circles. Between 1809 and 1812 she publishes her Tales of Fashionable Life in six volumes. They include one of her best novels, The Absentee, which focuses attention on a great contemporary abuse in Irish society: absentee English landowning.
Before her father’s death in 1817 she publishes three more novels, two of them, Patronage (1814) and Ormond (1817), of considerable power. After 1817 she writes less. She completes her father’s Memoirs (1820) and devotes herself to the estate. She enjoys a European reputation and exchanges cordial visits with Scott. Her last years are saddened by the Irish famine of 1846, during which she works for the relief of stricken peasants.
After a visit to see her relations in Trim, Maria, now in her eighties, begins to feel heart pains and dies suddenly of a heart attack in Edgeworthstown on May 22, 1849. She is laid to rest in a vault at Edgeworthstown Church.
The feminist movement of the 1960s leads to the reprinting of her Moral Tales for Young People, 5 vol. (1801) and Letters for Literary Ladies (1795) in the 1970s. Her novels continue to be regularly reprinted in the 21st century.
Dixon is the youngest of the seven sons of George Dixon, a soap manufacturer, and Rebecca (née Yeates) Dixon. He is educated at Rathmines School and Trinity College, Dublin. In 1894, after studying in Bonn, Germany, he is appointed assistant and later full Professor of Botany at Trinity. In 1906 he becomes Director of the Botanic Gardens and in 1910 of the Herbarium also. He has a close working relationship with physicist John Joly and together they develop the cohesion theory of the ascent of sap.
Dixon’s early research includes work on the cytology of chromosomes and first mitosis in certain plants. Familiarity with work on transpiration and on the tensile strength of columns of sulfuric acid and water leads Dixon and Joly to experiment on transpiration. “On the Ascent of Sap” (1894) presents the hypothesis that the sap or water in the vessels of a woody plant ascends by virtue of its power of resisting tensile stress and its capacity to remain cohesive under the stress of great differences of pressure. Dixon and Joly further demonstrate that water is transported through passive vessels and not living cells.
Dixon writes Transpiration and the Ascent of Sap in Plants (1914), which brings various theories and experimental works together in a coherent argument. He also writes a textbook, Practical Plant Biology (1922).
In 1907 Dixon marries Dorothea Mary, daughter of Sir John H. Franks, with whom he raises three sons. He is the father of biochemistHal Dixon and grandfather of Adrian Dixon and Joly Dixon.
Margaret Anna Cusack, founder of the first Poor Clares convent in the west of Ireland and a talented writer who publishes on the issues of social injustice, is born to an aristocratic family of English origin in Coolock, County Dublin on May 6, 1829. Her writings and actions focus on advocacy of women’s rights including equal pay, equal opportunity for education, and legal reform to give women control of their own property.
Cusack is raised in the Anglican church tradition until her conversion to Catholicism in 1858. She enters the Irish Poor Clare Sisters and is among the first group of Sisters sent to found the convent at Kenmare, County Kerry.
During the next 21 years, Cusack, now known as Sister Francis Clare, dedicates herself to writing. Her writings include a wide range of concerns including lives of the saints, local histories, biographies, books and pamphlets on social issues and letters to the press. As the “Nun of Kenmare” she writes on behalf of the liberation of women and children who are victims of oppression. Income from her books and from her famine relief fund is distributed throughout Ireland. While doing all she can to feed the hungry, at the same time she campaigns vigorously against the abuse of absentee landlords, lack of education for the poor and against a whole system of laws which degrade and oppress a section of society.
To broaden the scope of her work Cusack moves to Knock, County Mayo in 1881 with the idea of expanding the ministry of the Poor Clares. She starts an industrial school for young women and evening classes for daytime land-workers. Several women are attracted by this work and in 1884 she decides to found her own community, The Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace.
Later, Cusack travels to the United States to continue her work with immigrant Irish women but is immediately rebuked by ArchbishopMichael Corrigan of New York. Just at that time, New Jersey stretches out a hand of welcome and encouragement as Bishop Winand Wigger of the Archdiocese of Newark invites her to establish homes for young Irish working women there. Within a few years, however, she claims that because of Archbishop Corrigan’s criticism of her among bishops throughout the United States, the work of her new community cannot continue as long as she remains with them.
Physically exhausted, sick and disillusioned with a patriarchal Church, Cusack withdraws from the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace and leaves behind the sisters she so dearly loved. She eventually returns to her friends in the Church of England. In later years, she keeps in contact with the Sisters and expresses a loving concern for them. She dies on June 5, 1899, and is buried in the cemetery reserved for the Church of England at Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England.
Cusack passes into obscurity for a long time until, as a result of the Second Vatican Council, religious orders are encouraged to review their roots and the intent of their founders. Since then, there have been a number a studies on Cusack, such as Philomena McCarthy’s The Nun of Kenmare: The True Facts. With the rediscovery of the life and times of Cusack, she has been hailed as a feminist and a social reformer ahead of her time.
Wilson attends Marlborough public school between September 1877 and Easter 1880, before leaving for a crammer to prepare for the Army.
Wilson serves as Commandant of the Staff College, Camberley, and then as Director of Military Operations at the War Office, in which post he plays a vital role in drawing up plans to deploy an Expeditionary Force to France in the event of war. During these years he acquires a reputation as a political intriguer for his role in agitating for the introduction of conscription and in the Curragh incident of 1914, when he encourages senior officers to resign rather than move against the Ulster Volunteers.
As Sub Chief of Staff to the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), Wilson is John French‘s most important adviser during the 1914 campaign, but his poor relations with Douglas Haig and William Robertson see him sidelined from top decision-making in the middle years of the war. He plays an important role in Anglo-French military relations in 1915 and, after his only experience of field command as a corps commander in 1916, again as an ally of the controversial French General Robert Nivelle in early 1917. Later in 1917 he is informal military advisor to British Prime MinisterDavid Lloyd George, and then British Permanent Military Representative at the Supreme War Council at Versailles.
In 1918 Wilson serves as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, the professional head of the British Army. He continues to hold this position after the war, a time when the Army is being sharply reduced in size whilst attempting to contain industrial unrest in the UK and nationalist unrest in Mesopotamia, Iraq and Egypt. He also plays an important role in the Irish War of Independence.
The son of a Dublin-based Dutch merchant, Hone moves to England as a young man and, after marrying Molly Earle, daughter of the John Campbell, 4th Duke of Argyll, in 1742, eventually settles in London, by which time he has acquired a reputation as a portrait-painter. While his paintings are popular, his reputation is particularly enhanced by his skill at producing miniatures and enamels. He interrupts his time in London by spending two years (1750–52) studying in Italy.
As a portrait painter, several of Hone’s works are now held at the National Portrait Gallery in London. His sitters include magistrate Sir John Fielding and Methodist preacher John Wesley, and General Richard Wilford and Sir Levett Hanson in a double portrait. He often uses his son John Camillus Hone (1745-1836) in some of his works, including his unique portrait of “The Spartan Boy,” painted in 1774.
Hone courts controversy in 1775 when his satirical picture The Conjurer (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) is seen to attack the fashion for Italian Renaissance art and to ridicule Sir Joshua Reynolds, leading the Royal Academy to reject the painting. It also originally includes a nude caricature of fellow Academician Angelica Kauffman in the top left corner, which is painted out by Hone after Kauffman complains to the academy. The combination of a little girl and an old man has also been seen as symbolic of Kauffman and Reynolds’s closeness, age difference, and rumoured affair. To show that his reputation is undamaged, Hone organises a one-man retrospective in London, the first such solo exhibition of an artist’s work.
The Hone family is related to the old Dutch landed family the van Vianens, who hold the hereditary title of Vrijheer. His great-grand-nephew shares the same name and is also a notable Irish painter, known as Nathaniel Hone the Younger (1831–1917). He is also a relation to painter Evie Hone.
Nathaniel Hone the Elder dies on August 14, 1784.
(Pictured: Self-portrait by Nathaniel Hone, circa 1760)
Interested in powered flight, Wilson collaborates with Percy Sinclair Pilcher and the Hon. Adrian Verney-Cave to attempt to make an aero-engine from 1898. The engine is a flat-twin air-cooled and weighs only 40 lbs., but shortly before a demonstration flight planned for September 30, 1899, it suffers a crankshaft failure. Unwilling to let down his backers, Pilcher opts to demonstrate a glider, which crashes, and he is fatally injured. The shock of Pilcher’s death ends Wilson’s plans for aeroengines.
Following Pilcher’s death, Wilson switches to building the Wilson–Pilcher motor car, which is launched in 1900. This car is quite remarkable in that it is available with either flat-four or flat-six engines, which are very well balanced, and with a low centre of gravity making good stability. Each water-cooled cylinder is separate and identical for either engine. Cylinders are slightly offset with separate crankpins, and the crankshaft has intermediate bearings between each pair of cylinders.
The gearbox of the car is also novel, having dual epicyclic gears and being bolted directly to the engine. This allows four speeds, with direct drive in top gear. All the gears are helical, and enclosed in an oil bath, making for very silent transmission. Reverse gear is built into the rear axle, as is the foot operated brake drum, all of which are housed in a substantial aluminum casing.
After marrying in 1904 Wilson joins Armstrong Whitworth who takes over production of the Wilson-Pilcher car. From 1908 to 1914 he works with J & E Hall of Dartford designing the Hallford lorry which sees extensive service with the army during World War I.
The sole known surviving Wilson-Pilcher car is a four-cylinder version that is retained by the Amstrong Whitworth factory and after restoration in the 1940s is presented to W.G. Wilson in the 1950s. It stays in the Wilson family until 2012 when it is sold at auction to a private collector.
With the outbreak of World War I, Wilson rejoins the navy and the Royal Naval Armoured Car Division, which protects the Royal Naval Air Service in France. When the Admiralty begins investigating armoured fighting vehicles under the Landship Committee in 1915, 20 Squadron is assigned to it and Wilson is placed in charge of the experiments. He works with the agricultural engineer William Tritton resulting in the first British tank called “Little Willie.” At Wilson’s suggestion the tracks are extended right round the vehicle. This second design becomes the prototype for the Mark I tank.
Designing several of the early British tanks, Wilson incorporates epicyclic gearing which is used in the Mark V tank to allow it to be steered by a single driver rather than the four previously needed. In 1937, he provides a new steering design which gives a larger turning radius at higher speeds.
In 1778, English Catholics are relieved of the restrictions on land inheritance and purchase. A savage reaction to these concessions produces the Gordon Riots of 1780, and the whole history of Catholic Emancipation is one of struggle against great resistance. In 1791 the Roman Catholic Relief Act repeals most of the disabilities in Great Britain, provided Catholics take an oath of loyalty. In 1793 the army, the navy, the universities, and the judiciary are opened to Catholics, although seats in Parliament and some offices are still denied. These reforms are sponsored by William Pitt the Younger, who hopes thereby to split the alliance of Irish Catholics and Protestants. But Pitt’s attempt to secure a general repeal of the Penal Laws is thwarted by George III. Pope Pius VII consents to a royal veto on episcopal nominations if the Penal Laws are repealed, but the move fails. In Ireland the repeal of Poynings’ Law in 1782 is followed by an act (1792) of the Irish Parliament relaxing the marriage and education laws and an act (1793) allowing Catholics to vote and hold most offices.
The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 permits members of the Catholic Church to sit in the parliament at Westminster and to hold all but a handful of public offices. O’Connell had won a seat in a by-election for Clare in 1828 against an Anglican. Under the then extant penal law, O’Connell as a Catholic, is forbidden to take his seat in Parliament. Peel, the Home Secretary, until then is called “Orange Peel” because he always supports the Orange (anti-Catholic) position. Peel now concludes, “Though emancipation was a great danger, civil strife was a greater danger.” Fearing a revolution in Ireland, Peel draws up the Catholic Relief Bill and guides it through the House of Commons. To overcome the vehement opposition of both the House of Lords and King George IV, the Duke of Wellington works tirelessly to ensure passage in the House of Lords and threatens to resign as Prime Minister if the King does not give Royal Assent.
With the Universities Tests Act 1871, which opens the universities to Roman Catholics, Catholic Emancipation in the United Kingdom is virtually complete.
Although Mulholland later claims that at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 2, 1863, he personally took command of the 140th Pennsylvania Infantry and led it into action, this fact is mentioned in neither his own official report of the battle, nor that of the lieutenant colonel commanding the 140th. When the 116th is returned to full strength in early 1864, he is promoted to colonel. He is wounded a second time at the Battle of the Wilderness on May 5, 1864. At the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, he is wounded a third time but remains in the hospital only ten days. Resuming his command, he is dangerously wounded again at the Battle of Totopotomoy Creek. He recovers rapidly and commands his brigade in all the actions around the Siege of Petersburg, particularly distinguishing himself by storming a fort on the Boydton Plank Road. He is mustered out of the volunteer service on June 3, 1865.
On May 4, 1866, PresidentAndrew Johnson nominates Mulholland for the brevet grade of brigadier general of volunteers to rank from March 13, 1865, for his conduct at the Battle of the Wilderness and the U.S. Senate confirms the appointment on May 18, 1866. On January 13, 1869, President Johnson nominates Mulholland for appointment to the brevet grade of major general of volunteers, to rank from March 13, 1865, for his actions on the Boydton Plank Road and the Senate confirms the appointment on February 16, 1869. The brevet is issued February 20, 1869. It is the last brevet of major general issued for service during the Civil War.
Returning to civilian life after the war, Mulholland is appointed Chief of Police in Philadelphia in 1868 and signalizes his administration by the good order in which he keeps both the force and the city. President Grover Cleveland appoints him United States Pension Agent, in which office he is continued by Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. He is considered an authority on the science of penology and also devotes much of his leisure time to art studies, and as a lecturer and writer on the Civil War and its records. He compiles a history of the 116th Regiment, and another of those to whom Congress voted the Medal of Honor. In the Catholic affairs of Philadelphia, he is always active and a leader among the best-known laymen.
St. Clair Augustin Mulholland dies on February 17, 1910, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is buried at Old Cathedral Cemetery, Philadelphia.
seamus dubhghaill 