seamus dubhghaill

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


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Birth of Sidney Czira, Journalist, Broadcaster, Writer & Revolutionary

Sidney Sarah Madge Czira (née Gifford), journalist, broadcaster, writer and revolutionary, known by her pen name John Brennan, is born in Rathmines, Dublin, on August 3, 1889. She is an active member of the revolutionary group Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland) and writes articles for its newspaper, Bean na h-Éireann, and for Arthur Griffith‘s newspaper Sinn Féin.

Gifford is the youngest of twelve children of Frederick and Isabella Gifford. Isabella Gifford (née Burton), is a niece of the artist Frederic William Burton, and is raised with her siblings in his household after the death of her father, Robert Nathaniel Burton, a rector, during the Great Famine.

Gifford’s parents—her father is Catholic and her mother Anglican—are married in St. George’s Church, a Church of Ireland church on the north side of Dublin, on April 27, 1872. She grows up in Rathmines and is raised as a Protestant, as are her siblings.

Like her sisters, the socialist Nellie Gifford, Grace Gifford, who marries Joseph Plunkett, and Muriel Gifford, who marries Thomas MacDonagh, she becomes interested and involved in the suffrage movement and the burgeoning Irish revolution.

Gifford is educated in Alexandra College in Earlsfort Terrace. After leaving school she studies music at the Leinster House School of Music. It is her music teacher, in her teens, who first gives her her first Irish national newspaper, The Leader. She begins reading this secretly and then starts reading Arthur Griffith’s newspaper, Sinn Féin.

Gifford is a member of Inghinidhe na hÉireann, a women’s political organisation active from the 1900s. It is founded by Maud Gonne and a group of working-class and middle-class women to promote Irish culture and help to alleviate the shocking poverty of Dublin and other cities at a time when Dublin’s slums are unfavourably compared with Calcutta‘s. Gifford, who is already writing under the name “John Brennan” for Sinn Féin, is asked to write for its newspaper Bean na h-Éireann. Her articles vary from those highlighting poor treatment of women in the workplace to fashion and gardening columns, some written under the pseudonym Sorcha Ní hAnlúan.

She also works, along with her sisters, in Maud Gonne’s and Constance Markievicz‘s dinner system in St. Audoen’s Church, providing good solid dinners for children in three Dublin schools – poor Dublin schoolchildren often arrive at school without breakfast, go without a meal for the day, and if their father has been given his dinner when they arrive home, might not eat or might only have a crust of bread that night.

In 1911, Gifford is elected (as John Brennan) to the executive of the political group Sinn Féin.

Gifford is a member of Cumann na mBan (The Irish Women’s Council) from its foundation in Dublin on April 2, 1914. Its members learn first aid, drilling and signalling and rifle shooting, and serve as an unofficial messenger and backup service for the Irish Volunteers. During the fight for Irish Independence the women carry messages, store and deliver guns and run safe houses where men on the run can eat, sleep and pick up supplies.

In 1914, Gifford moves to the United States to work as a journalist. Through her connection with Padraic Colum and Mary Colum, whom she had met through her brother-in-law Thomas MacDonagh, she meets influential Irish Americans such as Thomas Addis Emmet and Irish exiles like John Devoy, and marries a Hungarian lawyer, Arpad Czira, a former prisoner of war who is said to have escaped and fled to America. Their son, Finian, is born in 1922.

Czira writes both for traditional American newspapers and for Devoy’s newspaper, The Gaelic American. She and her sister Nellie found the American branch of Cumann na mBan, and she acts as its secretary. Both sisters tour and speak about the Easter Rising and those involved. She is an active campaigner for Irish independence and against the United States joining the war against Germany, seen as a war for profit and expansion of the British Empire, and so to the disadvantage of the work for Irish independence. She helps Nora Connolly O’Brien to contact German diplomats in the United States.

In 1922, Czira returns to Ireland with her son. As a member of the Women’s Prisoners’ Defence League, she is an activist against the ill-treatment of Republican prisoners during the Irish Civil War. She continues to work as a journalist, though she is stymied in her work, as are the women of her family and many of those who had taken the anti-Free State side. In the 1950s her memoirs are published in The Irish Times, and she moves into work as a broadcaster and produces a series of historical programmes.

Czira dies in Dublin on September 15, 1974, and is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery.


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Birth of Pierce McCan

Pierce McCan, Sinn Féin politician, is born at Prospect Lodge, Ballyanne Desmesne, County Wexford, on August 2, 1882. 

McCan is the son of Francis McCan, a land agent, and Jane Power. He is the nephew of Patrick Joseph Power, MP for East Waterford from 1885 to 1913. He attends Clongowes Wood College and Downside School. He resides at Ballyowen House, Dualla, Cashel, County Tipperary, and is an “extensive farmer” and is a member of the Tipperary Hunt.

McCan is a founder member of Sinn Féin in 1905. He joins the Gaelic League in 1909 and is a member of the Irish Volunteers from 1914 onward.

After more than 2,000 German and Austrian prisoners are imprisoned at Richmond Barracks, Templemore, County Tipperary, following the first battles of World War I in 1914, he plots to engineer a mass escape but is thwarted when the prisoners are removed to Leigh, Lancashire in 1915. He is interned in 1916 after the Easter Rising for several months in Richmond Barracks, Dublin, and Knutsford, England. In May 1918, he is arrested under the German Plot and detained in Gloucester Gaol.

McCan is president of the East Tipperary executive of Sinn Féin. While incarcerated, he is elected as a Sinn Féin MP for the East Tipperary constituency at the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland.

In January 1919, Sinn Féin MPs refuse to recognise the Parliament of the United Kingdom and instead assembles in the Mansion House, Dublin as a revolutionary parliament called Dáil Éireann. McCan never sits in Dáil Éireann, dying in prison on March 6, 1919, during the Spanish flu pandemic. On March 9, 1919, he is buried in Dualla, Cashel, County Tipperary.

No by-election is called to replace him in the UK constituency. After April 1, 1922, the Irish Free State (Agreement) Act 1922 prohibits any by-election, and the constituency is abolished when parliament is dissolved on October 26, 1922, for the general election on November 15.

The First Dáil also considers how to fill the vacancy. A select committee in April recommends that the local Sinn Féin organisation which nominated him should nominate his replacement. A June proposal to postpone action, either for six months or until a Westminster by-election is held, is referred to another committee, which recommends that “in view of the circumstances which occasioned the vacancy, it was due to the memory of the late Pierce McCann that his place should not be filled at present.”

On April 10, 1919, Cathal Brugha tells the First Dáil: “Before I formally move the motion, as I have mentioned the name of Pierce McCan, I would ask the Members of the Dáil to stand up as a mark of our respect to the first man of our body to die for Ireland, and of our sympathy with his relatives. We are sure that their sorrow is lightened by the fact that his death was for the cause for which he would have lived, and that his memory will ever be cherished in the hearts of the comrades who knew him, and will be honoured by succeeding generations of his countrymen with that of the other martyrs of our holy cause.” The McCan Barracks in Templemore, County Tipperary, is named after him.

In the 1933 Irish general election, McCan’s brother, Joseph, a member of the National Farmers’ and Ratepayers’ Association, stands unsuccessfully for the National Centre Party in the Tipperary constituency.


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Death of Sir Denis Pack, British Army General

Sir Denis Pack, British Army major general who serves in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, dies in London on July 24, 1823.

Pack is born on October 7, 1775 in Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, the younger son of Rev. Thomas Pack, Dean of Ossory, and Catherine Pack (née Sullivan), of St. Andrew’s parish, Dublin. In June 1790, he enters Trinity College Dublin (TCD), aged 15, but does not take his degree. His elder brother, Thomas Pack, previously attends TCD, but dies in December 1786.

Pack enters the army in November 1791, being commissioned as a cornet in the 14th Light Dragoons, and serves with this regiment in Flanders in 1794 as part of Francis Rawdon-Hastings‘s expedition. Transferring to the 8th Light Dragoons, he is promoted to lieutenant In March 1795 and takes part in the expedition to Quiberon Bay. He is promoted to captain in February 1796 and serves with the 5th Dragoon Guards in Ireland during the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Promoted to major In August 1798, he is attached to the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards, and after the surrender of the French expeditionary force at Ballinamuck, County Longford, on September 8, 1798 he commands the troops that escort General Jean Joseph Amable Humbert and the other French officers to Dublin.

Promoted to lieutenant colonel in December 1800, Pack commands the 71st (Highland) Regiment of Foot and takes part in the expedition to the Cape of Good Hope in 1806. He then takes part in General John Whitelocke‘s expedition to South America and is captured after an unsuccessful attack on Montevideo. His fellow-prisoner is William Carr Beresford, later 1st Viscount Beresford, and the two men remain friends for the rest of their lives. Refusing to give their parole to General Santiago de Liniers, they escape from La Plata in a boat, meeting a British cruiser at sea. Pack later takes part in the successful attack on Montevideo on February 9, 1807.

Pack is posted to Portugal in 1808 and is present at the Battle of Roliça on August 17 and the Battle of Vimeiro on August 21. In 1809, he takes part in the Walcheren Campaign and, promoted to colonel in July 1810, he is made aide-de-camp to George III. Returning to Portugal in 1810, he serves under Beresford, commanding a Portuguese brigade, and takes part in the Battle of Bussaco on September 27, 1810. Promoted to brigadier general in January 1812, he takes part in the Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo and is present at the Battle of Salamanca on July 22, 1812. In June 1813, he is promoted to major general and later is present at the battles of Vitoria (June 21, 1813), Nivelle (November 10, 1813), Nive (December 10-13, 1813), Orthez (February 27, 1814) and the final French defeat at Toulouse (April 10, 1814). In January 1815, he is made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in recognition of his services in the Peninsula.

During the Waterloo campaign of 1815, Pack commands one of the brigades in General Sir Thomas Picton‘s division. Present at the Battle of Quatre Bras (June 16, 1815), he plays a prominent part in the Battle of Waterloo, bringing his brigade forward at a crucial moment to stop the advance of the French 3rd Division under General Pierre-Louis Binet de Marcognet. During the course of his career he is wounded several times and is awarded numerous honours including the Peninsular Gold Cross (with seven clasps), the Military Order of the Tower and Sword (Portugal) and the Order of Saint Vladimir (Russia). In 1819, he is appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Plymouth, and is later made honorary colonel of the 84th (York and Lancaster) Regiment of Foot in 1822.

In July 1816, Pack marries Lady Elizabeth Louisa de la Poer Beresford, daughter of George Beresford, 1st Marquess of Waterford. They have two sons and two daughters. His descendants adopted “Pack-Beresford” as their family name. He dies on July 24, 1823, at Lord Beresford’s house in Upper Wimpole Street, London. A monument to him is later erected in St. Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny. A portrait by G. L. Saunders is in family possession; another by Charles Turner, showing Pack wearing his numerous orders and decorations, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London. A collection of his papers is held by the University of Southampton.


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Birth of E. M. O’R. Dickey, Wood Engraver & Painter

E. M. O’R. Dickey, wood engraver and oil painter who is active at the beginning of the twentieth century, is born Edward Montgomery O’Rorke Dickey in Belfast on July 1, 1894. He is a founder member of the Society of Wood Engravers.

Dickey is the son of Edward O’Rorke Dickey. He later marries Eunice Emmeline Howard and they have one son, Daniel. He is educated at Wellington College and Trinity College, Cambridge. He studies painting under Harold Gilman at the Westminster School of Art.

Dickey is art master at Oundle School in Oundle, Northamptonshire, England, and then becomes professor of fine art and director of King Edward VII School of Art, Armstrong College, Durham University from 1926 to 1931. He is then staff inspector of art from 1931 to 1957 for the Ministry of Education.

At the beginning of World War II Dickey is seconded from the Ministry of Information and, from 1939 to 1942, is secretary of the War Artists’ Advisory Committee. He is a full member of the committee from 1942 to 1945. During this period he establishes a close relationship with Eric Ravilious. He is appointed a CBE in 1952.

Dickey becomes the first curator of The Minories in Colchester, Essex, a post he holds for five years from 1957 to 1962.

Dickey is a founder member of the Society of Wood Engravers in 1920, and exhibits with them from 1920 to 1924. He is at his most active in the early 1920s and virtually all his engravings date from this period.

In 1922 Dickey contributes a wood engraving to Contemporary English Woodcuts, an anthology of wood engravings produced by Thomas Balston, a director at Gerald Duckworth and Company and an enthusiast for the new style of wood engravings. Campbell Dodgson, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, writes about him in his introduction to the book Mr. Hagreen and Mr. Dickey are among the engravers who rely very much upon the effective use of white lines and spaces. This is a limited edition of 550 copies, as is the only book that he illustrates with wood engravings, Workers by the Irish writer Richard Rowley, published by Balston at Duckworth in 1923.

Dickey devotes more time to working in oils. He is one of the most experimental painters in Ireland technically and stylistically. He paints extensively on the continent, and shows at the Royal Academy of Arts and the New English Art Club. He is elected to the London Group in 1920. He has several one-man exhibitions, at the Leicester Galleries in 1923, at the Manchester City Art Gallery in 1924, and the Beaux Arts Gallery in 1935.

Dickey dies on August 12, 1977. There are a number of examples of his oil paintings in public collections.

Dickey’s lasting legacy, rather than his wood engravings and oils, is his distinguished contribution to arts administration and art education.

(Pictured: “Kentish Town Railway Station” by Edward Montgomery O’Rorke Dickey, oil on canvas, 1919, Hollytrees Museum, United Kingdom)


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Birth of Luke O’Toole, Irish Gaelic Games Administrator

Luke O’Toole, Irish Gaelic games administrator, is born on June 21, 1873, in Ballycumber, Tinahely, County Wicklow.

O’Toole is the second son among five children of John O’Toole and Bridie O’Toole (née Doran). Of farming stock on both sides, he is educated at the local national school at Ballycumber and at a Dublin secondary school. When in the mid-1890s he moves to Dublin, he joins the Benburb Gaelic Football Club at Donnybrook, where his teammates include the future nationalist parliamentarian Thomas M. Kettle, who is killed in 1916 near Ginchy, France, during World War I. The proprietor of two newsagents’ shops near his home in Mount Pleasant Square, he soon becomes his club’s delegate to the Dublin county committee of the Gaelic Athletic Association about 1899. Founded in 1884 by Michael Cusack, the GAA by the late 1890s is insolvent and almost moribund, having been riven by rival nationalist factions. However, a group of younger officials which includes O’Toole is determined not to allow the Association to die, and at its annual congress in Thurles on September 22, 1901, stages what is in effect a palace coup. Alderman James Nowlan of Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, a labour activist and Gaelic League enthusiast, is elected president, and in a contest for the post of secretary, O’Toole defeats Cusack.

O’Toole holds the post of chief officer of the GAA until his death almost thirty years later. During this period, despite major political and military turmoil, including the world war, the Irish War of Independence, and the Irish Civil War, he is instrumental in turning the Association into the biggest Irish sports body, and some leading members, such as Michael Collins and Harry Boland, play major political roles between 1913 and 1923. Essentially a backroom administrator, O’Toole rarely appears in public apart from GAA events, one notable exception being on November 25, 1913, at the foundation meeting of the Irish Volunteers at the Rotunda Rink, Dublin, where he is one of the platform party. After the suppression of the 1916 Easter Rising, he goes into hiding temporarily in his native Wicklow. From then until the cessation of hostilities in mid-1921 he manages to evade the notice of the authorities though he is always a close associate of Sinn Féin leaders. He plays a big part in reviving the fortunes of the GAA after the Irish Civil War and is a principal organiser of the Tailteann Games in 1924 and 1928. His career, however, is cut short at the age of 56 by his sudden death at his desk on July 17, 1929.

For most of his life O’Toole resides in a house provided by the GAA beside Croke Park, the Association’s headquarters and principal stadium. He marries Bridget Doyle, a shopkeeper of Dublin. They have four sons and four daughters.

(From: “O’Toole, Luke” by Marcus de Búrca, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: Michael Collins, Luke O’Toole and Harry Boland in 1921, Image credit: GAA)


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Birth of Lydia Mary Foster, Writer & Teacher

Lydia Mary Foster, Irish writer and teacher, is born on June 18, 1867, in Newmills, County Tyrone, in what is now Northern Ireland. She writes three books drawing on the experiences of growing up in rural Ulster in the 19th century in the Kailyard school genre.

Foster is the fourth of the six children of Presbyterian minister of Newmills congregation, James Foster, and Lydia (née Harkness). She has three brothers and two sisters. She is educated at home and is later sent to board at Miss Black’s school in Holywood, County Down. She, with her sisters Jane and Bessie, move to Belfast to establish a girls’ school, the Ladies’ Collegiate School, in the Balmoral suburbs, first at Myrtlefield Park, at 434 Lisburn Road, and then in Maryfield Park. This is after Bessie graduates from Trinity College Dublin in 1896 having studied modern languages. Their school teaches boys and girls, both day pupils and boarders. Foster and Jane teach music, and possibly other subjects as well. Their brother Henry, who works in Belfast, lives with them. All four of the siblings attend the Malone Presbyterian Church and are members of the temperance movement. Throughout her life, Foster remains attached to Newmills, visiting regularly and laying the foundation stone for the new manse in 1910. Her brother, Nevin, is the only one of the six siblings to marry and is an Irish ornithological expert.

The school closes after the deaths of Bessie in December 1917 and Jane in October 1918. The death of Henry in December 1922 leaves Foster alone, and having lost her hearing almost completely, she is in difficult circumstances. To support herself, she begins to write literary sketches and dialect verse for a number of publications such as the Northern Whig, Ireland’s Own, and the annual miscellany Ulster Parade. A selection of these writings are published as a volume, Tyrone Among the Bushes, in 1933. She also writes plays, but these are not collected or produced. She is best known for her three books which are set in rural County Tyrone around the time of Foster’s parents and her childhood. The books, The Bush that Burned (1931), Manse Larks (1936), and Elders’ Daughters (1942) are published by Quota Press in Belfast and are seen as part of the Scottish Kailyard school genre of writing. The Bush that Burned details the story of a young man becoming a minister despite opposition, and is widely read in Ulster and beyond. Aodh de Blácam references the book as evidence that there is little difference between rural Ulster Protestants and their Catholic counterparts. Manse Larks recounts a rural childhood of six siblings growing up in the minister’s house. Foster’s fondness for animals is clear from the book, she is a supporter of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), and her companion in later years is a dog named Stewart. Elders’ Daughters explores the experiences, romantic dreams and misadventures of young women subject to paternal authority in rural County Tyrone.

As Foster’s health declines and after the Belfast Blitz of April 1941, she goes to live with a married niece in Hollowbridge House near Royal Hillsborough, County Down. It is to this niece that she dictates the last chapters of Elders’ Daughters. She dies at Hollowbridge House on December 13, 1943. She is buried at Newmills Presbyterian Church, with her parents and siblings.


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Birth of James Somers, Irish Recipient of the Victoria Cross

Sergeant James Somers VC, an Irish 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 Belturbet, County Cavan on June 12, 1894.

Somers is 21 years old, and a sergeant in the 1st Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, British Army during World War I when the following deed takes place for which he is awarded the Victoria Cross.

On July 1-2, 1915, in Gallipoli, Turkey, when, owing to hostile bombing, some of his troops had retired from a sap, Sergeant Somers remains alone there until a party brings up bombs. He then climbs over into the Turkish trench and bombs the Turks with great effect. Later on, he advances into the open under heavy fire and holds back the enemy by throwing bombs into their flank until a barricade has been established. During this period, he frequently runs to and from his trenches to obtain fresh supplies of bombs.

In a letter to his father, Somers writes:

“I beat the Turks out of our trench single-handed and had four awful hours at night. The Turks swarmed in from all roads, but I gave them a rough time of it, still holding the trench. It is certain sure we are beating the Turks all right. In the trench I came out of, it was shocking to see the dead. They lay, about three thousand Turks, in front of our trenches, and the smell was absolutely chronic. You know when the sun has been shining on those bodies for three or four days it makes a horrible smell; a person would not mind if it was possible to bury them. But no, you dare not put your nose outside the trench, and if you did, you would be a dead man.”

Somers had previously been severely wounded during the Retreat from Mons in August 1914.

Later in the war, Somers serves with the Royal Army Service Corps on the Western Front. He dies at the age of 24 on May 7, 1918, leaving behind his parents, wife and son. He is buried with full military honours in Modreeny Church of Ireland cemetery. His Union Jack-draped coffin is carried on a gun carriage, led by the Pipe Band of the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders. His headstone states simply: “He stood and defended. The Lord wrought a great wonder.”


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John Mitchel Escapes from Van Diemen’s Land

John Mitchel, Irish nationalist writer and political journalist, escapes from Van Diemen’s Land (modern-day Tasmania, Australia) on June 8, 1853, with the assistance of Patrick James (“Nicaragua”) Smyth, an agent of the New York Irish Directory.

Mitchel is born in Camnish, near Dungiven, County Derry on November 3, 1815, the son of a Presbyterian minister. At the age of four, he is sent to a classical school, run by an old minister named Moor, nicknamed “Gospel Moor” by the students. He reads books from a very early age. When a little over five years old, he is introduced to Latin grammar by his teacher and makes quick progress. In 1830, not yet 15 years old, he enters Trinity College, Dublin (TCD) and obtains a law degree in 1834.

In the spring of 1836, Mitchel meets Jane Verner, the only daughter of Captain James Verner. Though both families are opposed to the relationship, they become engaged in the autumn and are married on February 3, 1837, by the Rev. David Babington in Drumcree Church, the parish church of Drumcree.

Mitchel works in a law office in Banbridge, County Down, where he eventually comes into conflict with the local Orange Order. He meets Thomas Davis and Charles Gavan Duffy during visits to Dublin. He joins the Young Ireland movement and begins to write for The Nation. Deeply affected by the misery and death caused by the Great Famine, he becomes convinced that nothing will ever come of the constitutional efforts to gain Irish freedom. He then forms his own paper, United Irishman, to advocate passive resistance by Ireland’s starving masses.

In May 1848, the British tire of Mitchel’s open defiance. Ever the legal innovators in Ireland, they invent a crime especially for the Young Irelanders – felony-treason. They arrest him for violating this new law and close down his paper. A rigged jury convicts him, and he is deported first to Bermuda and then to Australia. However, on June 8, 1853, he escapes to the United States.

Mitchel works as a journalist in New York City and then moves to the South. When the American Civil War erupts, he is a strong supporter of the Southern cause, seeing parallels with the position of the Irish. His family fully backs his commitment to the Southern cause. He loses two sons in the war, one at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 and another at the Battle of Fort Sumter in 1864, and another son loses an arm. His outspoken support of the Confederacy causes him to be jailed for a time at Fort Monroe, where one of his fellow prisoners is Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

In 1874, the British allow Mitchel to return to Ireland and in 1875 he is elected in a by-election to be a member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom representing the Tipperary constituency. However, his election is invalidated on the grounds that he is a convicted felon. He contests the seat again in the resulting by-election and is again elected, this time with an increased vote.

Unfortunately, Mitchel, one of the staunchest enemies to English rule of Ireland in history, dies in Newry on March 20, 1875, and is buried there. Thirty-eight years later, his grandson, John Purroy Mitchel, is elected Mayor of New York City.


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Birth of Frank Duff, Lay Catholic & Author

Francis Michael Duff, Irish author, lay Catholic and founder of the Legion of Mary, known for bringing attention to the role of the Catholic laity during the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church, is born at 97 Phibsboro Road, Dublin, on June 7, 1889.

Duff is the eldest of seven children of John Duff, a civil servant with the local government board, and his wife, Susan Letitia (née Freehill), a civil servant with the post office. The wealthy family lives in the city at St. Patrick’s Road, Drumcondra. He attends Blackrock College.

In 1908, Duff enters the Civil Service and is assigned to the Irish Land Commission. In 1913, he joins the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul and is exposed to the real poverty of Dublin. Many who live in tenement squalor are forced to attend soup kitchens for sustenance, and abject poverty, alcoholism, street gangs, and organized prostitution are rife in parts of Dublin. He joins and soon rises through the ranks to become President of the Saint Patrick’s Conference at Saint Nicholas of Myra Parish. Having concern for people he sees as materially and spiritually deprived, he has the idea to picket Protestant soup kitchens as he considers they are giving aid in the form of food and free accommodation at hostels, in return for not attending Catholic services. He sets up rival Catholic soup kitchens and, with his friend, Sergeant Major Joe Gabbett, who has already been working at discouraging Catholics from patronizing Protestant soup kitchens. They succeed in closing down two of them over the years.

In 1916, Duff publishes his first pamphlet, Can we be Saints?, where he expresses the conviction that all are called to be saints without exception, and that through Christian faith, all have the means necessary.

In 1918, a friend gifts Duff a copy of the book True Devotion to Mary by the seventeenth-century French cleric Louis de Montfort, which influences his views on Mary. He is additionally influenced by the writings of John Henry Newman.

Duff briefly acts as private secretary to Michael Collins, then-Chairman of the Provisional Government and commander-in-chief of the National Army. In 1924, he is transferred to the Department of Finance.

On September 7, 1921, along with Fr. Michael Toher and fifteen predominantly young women, he is present at the first meeting of the association which he would forge as the Legion of Mary. He models the Legion on the Roman legions, naming the local unit the “praesidium,” and he immerses himself in the apostolic work which dominates the rest of his life.

In 1922, Duff establishes the Sancta Maria hostel in Dublin as a refuge for prostitutes, and is the driving force behind the closure of “Monto,” Dublin’s notorious red-light district. In 1927, he establishes the Morning Star hostel for homeless men in Dublin, and in 1930 the Regina Coeli hostel for homeless women, which provides special units for unmarried mothers and their children at a time when neither church nor state favour helping unmarried women to keep their children.

While Duff enjoys the support of W. T. Cosgrave, Ireland’s head of government, and in May 1931 is granted an audience with Pope Pius XI, his efforts are opposed internally in the Dublin diocese. In the 1930s and 1940s, he creates the Mercier Society, a study group designed to bring together Catholics and Protestants, as well as the Pillar of Fire, a group designed to promote dialogue between Irish Catholics with Ireland’s Jewish community.

Duff retires from the Civil Service in 1934 to devote all of his time to the Legion of Mary. For the rest of his life, with the help of many others, he guides the Legion’s worldwide extension.

In 1965, Pope Paul VI invites Duff to attend the Second Vatican Council as a lay observer. When he is introduced to the assembly by Archbishop John Heenan of Liverpool, he receives a standing ovation.

Duff makes the promotion of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus part of the Legion’s apostolate.

Duff dies in Dublin at the age of 91 on November 7, 1980. He Is interred in Glasnevin Cemetery. In July 1996, the cause of Duff’s beatification is introduced by Cardinal Desmond Connell.

Today, the Legion of Mary has an estimated four million active members and 10 million auxiliary members in close to 200 countries in almost every diocese in the Catholic Church.


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Birth of William Pirrie, 1st Viscount Pirrie

William James Pirrie, 1st Viscount Pirrie, KP, PC, PC (Ire), a leading British shipbuilder and businessman, is born on May 31, 1847, in Quebec City, Canada East, Province of Canada. He is chairman of Harland & Wolff, shipbuilders, between 1895 and 1924, and also serves as Lord Mayor of Belfast between 1896 and 1898.

Pirrie is taken back to Ireland when he is two years old and spends his childhood at Conlig House, also known as Little Clandeboye Conlig, County Down. Belonging to a prominent family, his nephews included J. M. Andrews, who later becomes Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Thomas Andrews, builder of RMS Titanic, and Sir James Andrews, 1st Baronet, the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland.

Pirrie is educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution before entering Harland & Wolff shipyard as a gentleman apprentice in 1862. Twelve years later he is made a partner in the firm, and on the death of Sir Edward Harland in 1895, he becomes its chairman, a position he holds until his death. As well as overseeing the world’s largest shipyard, he is elected Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1896, and is re-elected to the office as well as made an Irish Privy Counsellor the following year. He becomes Belfast’s first honorary freeman in 1898, and serves in the same year as High Sheriff of Antrim and subsequently of County Down. In February 1900, he is elected President of the UK Chamber of Shipping, where he had been vice-president the previous year. He helps finance the Liberals in Ulster in the 1906 United Kingdom general election, and that same year, at the height of Harland & Wolff’s success, he is raised to the peerage as Baron Pirrie, of the City of Belfast.

In 1907, Pirrie is appointed Comptroller of the Household to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and in 1908 is appointed Knight of St Patrick (KP). Pro-Chancellor of Queen’s University of Belfast (QUB) from 1908 to 1914, he is also in the years before World War I a member of the Committee on Irish Finance as well as Lord Lieutenant of Belfast.

In February 1912, after chairing a famous meeting of the Ulster Liberal Association at which Winston Churchill defends the government’s policy of Home Rule for Ireland, Pirrie is jeered on the streets of Belfast, and assaulted as he boards a steamer in Larne: pelted with rotten eggs, herrings, and bags of flour. In 1910, the Ulster Liberal Association, an overwhelmingly Protestant body, with a weekly newspaper, and branch network throughout Ulster, adopts (in opposition to the Ulster Liberal Unionist Association) an explicitly pro-home rule position.

In the months leading up to the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic, Pirrie is questioned about the number of life boats aboard the Olympic-class ocean liners. He responds that the great ships are unsinkable and the rafts are to save others. This haunts him for the rest of his life. In April 1912, Pirrie is to travel aboard RMS Titanic, but illness prevents him.

During the war Pirrie is a member of the War Office Supply Board, and in 1918 becomes Comptroller-General of Merchant Shipbuilding, organising British production of merchant ships.

In 1921, Pirrie is elected to the Senate of Northern Ireland, and that same year is created Viscount Pirrie of the City of Belfast, in the honours for the opening of the Parliament of Northern Ireland in July 1921, for his war work and charity work. In Belfast he is, on other grounds, already a controversial figure: a Protestant employer associated as a leading Liberal with a policy of Home Rule for Ireland.

In March 1924, Pirrie, his wife, and her sister sail on a Royal Mail Steam Packet Company liner from Southampton on a business trip to South America. They travel overland from Buenos Aires to Chile, where they embark aboard the Pacific Steam Navigation Company‘s Ebro. Pirrie comes down with pneumonia in Antofagasta, and his condition worsens when the ship reaches Iquique. At Panama City two nurses embark to care for him. By then he is very weak, but insists on being brought on deck to see the canal. He admires how Ebro is handled through the locks.

Pirrie dies at sea off Cuba on June 7, 1924. His body is embalmed. On June 13, Ebro reaches Pier 42 on the North River in New York City, where Pirrie’s friend Andrew Weir, 1st Baron Inverforth and his wife meet Viscountess Pirrie and her sister. UK ships in the port of New York lower their flags to half-mast, and Pirrie’s body is transferred to Pier 59, where it is embarked on White Star Line‘s RMS Olympic, one of the largest ships Pirrie ever built, to be repatriated to the UK. He is buried in Belfast City Cemetery. The barony and viscountcy die with him. Lady Pirrie dies on June 19, 1935. A memorial to Pirrie in the grounds of Belfast City Hall is unveiled in 2006.