In the mid-1750s, Fitzsimons’s family immigrates to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where his father dies soon thereafter. He has enough education that he begins work as a clerk in a mercantile house. He marries Catherine Meade on November 23, 1761, and forms a business partnership with her brother George. Their firm, which specializes in the West Indies trade, operates successfully for over 41 years.
The firm is soon hit by the new revenue measures created to help support the finances of the British Empire, including the much reviled Stamp Act of 1765. Concerned with these ideas, Fitzsimons becomes active in the Irish merchant community in Philadelphia. He is a founding member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in 1771 and later, in 1774, a steering committee organized to protest the Coercive Acts.
When Pennsylvania begins mobilizing and organizing a militia to fight the British, Fitzsimons is soon involved. He serves as captain of a company of home guards under the command of Colonel John Caldwalader. Initially his company serves as part of the soldiers who man posts along the New Jersey coast. His unit later serves as part of the reserve at the Battle of Trenton in 1776. Later in the war, he serves on the Pennsylvania Council of Safety and heads a board to oversee the newly formed Pennsylvania Navy.
Fitzsimons enters active politics as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1782 and 1783. He is a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 1786 until 1795. He is also a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention in 1787. Although not a leading member of that convention, he supports a strong national government, the end of slavery, the United States Congress‘s powers to impose a tariff on imports and exports, the granting the House of Representatives, and power in equal to the United States Senate in making treaties. He is one of only two Catholic signers of the Constitution of the United States, the other being Daniel Carroll of Maryland.
After the Constitution is established, Fitzsimons serves in the first three sessions of the House of Representatives as a Federalist, where he favors protective tariffs and a strong navy, co-drafting the Naval Act of 1794 authorizing the original six frigates of the United States Navy. He fails to win re-election in 1794. This is partially attributed to public opinion turning against the Federalist Party over the forceful suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion. Although he never holds elective office again, he serves in 1798 as head of the committee of merchants overseeing the subscription-loan to build a warship at private expense for use in the Quasi-War.
In 1796, Fitzsimons, along with James Innes of Virginia, is appointed by President John Adams to serve as one of two American members on the five-man debt commission charged under Article VI of the Jay Treaty with examining the claims of British subjects unable to collect debts incurred by Americans prior to the American Revolution. Fitzsimons, Innes and Samuel Sitgreaves, who replaces Innes upon the latter’s death, become annoyed with the arguments used by their British counterparts to inflate the claims total. Fitzsimons and Sitgreaves angrily and permanently secede from the board in July 1799. The claims are eventually disposed of by a lump-sum payment, agreed upon by United States Minister to BritainRufus King with British Foreign SecretaryRobert Banks Jenkinson and approved by PresidentThomas Jefferson and the Senate in 1802.
Kettle is one among six children of Thomas Kettle, a prosperous farmer, and his wife, Alice (née Kavanagh). His maternal grandmother, Mary O’Brien, had smuggled arms to United Irishmen in the district in 1798, while her future husband, Billy Kavanagh, had been a senior figure in the movement. He is educated at Ireland’s most prestigious Catholicboarding school, Clongowes Wood College. His education is cut short when he is called to help full-time on the farm. Though an autodidact and always a forceful writer, he is beset later by an exaggerated sense of his “defective education and want of talking powers.” Fascinated by politics, he enjoys the repeal excitement of 1841–44 and in his late teens speaks once or twice at Tenant Right League meetings in Swords. Through the 1850s and most of the 1860s he sets about expanding the family farm into a composite of fertile holdings in Swords, St. Margaret’s, Artane, and Malahide (c.150 acres). Getting on well with the Russell-Cruise family of Swords, his first landlords, he benefits from a favourable leasehold arrangement on their demesne in the early 1860s. The farm is mostly in tillage, though Kettle also raises some fat cattle and Clydesdale horses, which he eventually sells to Guinness’s.
Kettle first enters politics in 1867, when he disagrees with John Paul Byrne of Dublin Corporation in public and in print over the right of graziers to state aid during an outbreak of cattle distemper. In 1868, he joins an agricultural reform group initiated by Isaac Butt. He becomes friendly with Butt and later claims to have converted him to support tenant-right. His memoirs, which are somewhat egocentric, contain a number of such questionable claims. It is, however, the case that he habitually writes up, for his own use, cogent summaries of the direction of current political tendencies, which sometimes become useful confidential briefs for Butt and later Charles Stewart Parnell. He is among the published list of subscribers to the Home Rule League in July 1870.
In 1872, disappointed by the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act 1870, Kettle organises a Tenants’ Defence Association (TDA) in north County Dublin, soon sensing the need for a central body to coordinate the grievances of similar groups around the country. The Dublin TDA effectively acts as this central body, under his guidance as honorary secretary. At the 1874 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, the Dublin TDA decides to challenge the electoral control of certain corporation interests in County Dublin. Kettle secures the cautious approval of CardinalPaul Cullen for any candidate supporting the principle of denominational education. He is also one of a deputation to ask Parnell to fight the constituency, which the latter loses. He becomes closely acquainted with Parnell, who frequently attends Dublin TDA meetings after his election for Meath in April 1875.
Taking a sombre view of the threat of famine in the west of Ireland after evidence of crop failure appears in early summer 1879, Kettle calls a conference of TDA delegates at the European Hotel in Bolton Street, Dublin, in late May. After a heated debate in which a proposal for a rent strike is greatly modified, Parnell comes to seek Kettle’s advice on whether to become involved in the evolving land agitation in County Mayo. Kettle urges him to go to the Westport meeting set for June 8, 1879, and claims later to have stressed in passing that “if you keep in the open you can scarcely go too far or be too extreme on the land question.” If the incident is correctly recounted, this is a most important statement, which virtually defines Parnell’s oratorical strategy throughout the land war. In October 1879, Kettle agrees to merge the TDA with a new Irish National Land League, set up at a meeting in the Imperial Hotel, Dublin, chaired by Kettle. As honorary secretary of the Land League, Kettle frankly admits that he is able to attend meetings without “the necessity of working.” His attendance is, however, among the most regular of all League officers, with him taking part in 73 of 107 meetings scheduled between December 1879 and October 1881.
In March 1880, Kettle disputes Michael Davitt‘s reluctance to use League funds in the general election. He canvasses vigorously together with Parnell in Kildare, Carlow, and Wicklow and is later pressed by his party leader into standing for election in County Cork, though aware that the local tenant movement has already prepared their own candidates. His association with Parnell antagonises the catholic hierarchy in Munster, who issues a condemnation of his candidacy. The hurly-burly of this election creates the persistent impression that Kettle is anti-clerical in politics, and he is defeated by 151 votes.
On a train journey to Ballinasloe in early April 1880, Kettle confides to Parnell his idea that land purchase can be facilitated by the recovery of tax allegedly charged in excess on Ireland by the British government since the act of union. At League meetings in June and July 1880, he advances his “catastrophist” plan: to cease attempts to prevent the development of an irresistible crisis among the Irish smallholding population, by diverting the application of League funds from general relief solely to the aid of evicted tenants, who might be temporarily housed “encamped like gypsies and the land lying idle,” in the belief that the British government will thereby be compelled to introduce radical remedial legislation. Smallholders do not have enough faith in either League or parliamentary politicians to listen.
At a meeting of the League executive in London and in Paris, before and after Davitt’s arrest on February 3, 1881, Kettle presents his plan that the parliamentary party should, if faced with coercive legislation, withdraw from Westminster, “concentrate” in Ireland, and call a general rent strike. Republicans on the League executive continually find themselves embarrassed by Kettle’s radical calls to action motivated solely by the project of agrarian reform. Parnell is later supposed to have lamented party failure to execute the plan at this juncture.
Kettle is arrested in June 1881 for calling for a collective refusal of rent. After two weeks in Naas jail he is transferred to Kilmainham Gaol, where in October he is, with some misgivings, one of the signatories to the No Rent Manifesto. Discharged from Kilmainham in late December 1881 owing to poor health, he returns principally to work on the family farm for most of the 1880s, though he claims to have formulated a draft solution for the plight of the agricultural labourer and “pushed it through” in correspondence with Parnell. He reemerges in 1890 to defend Parnell after the divorce scandal breaks. Attempting to establish a new ”centre” party independent of extreme Catholic and Protestant interests, he stands for election as a Parnellite at the 1891 County Carlow by-election, where he is comprehensively beaten, having endured weeks of insinuating harangues by Tim Healy, and raucous mob insults to the din of tin kettles bashed by women and children at meetings around the county. He is intermittently involved in County Dublin politics in the 1890s and 1900s and maintains a brusque correspondence on matters of the day in the national press.
Kettle dies on September 22, 1916, at his residence, St. Margaret’s, County Dublin, anguished by the death on September 9 of his brilliant son, Tom Kettle, near the village of Ginchy during the Battle of the Somme. He is buried at St. Colmcille’s cemetery, Swords.
Kettle marries Margaret McCourt, daughter of Laurence McCourt of Newtown, St. Margaret’s, County Dublin, farmer and agricultural commodity factor. They have five sons and six daughters.
In March 1917, Ryan passes his final medical examinations. That June he sets up medical practice in Wexford. In 1921, he moves to Dublin where he opens a doctor’s practice at Harcourt Street, specialising in skin diseases at the Skin and Cancer Hospital on Holles Street. He leaves medicine in 1925, after he purchases Kindlestown, a large farm near Delgany, County Wicklow. He lives there and it remains a working farm until his death.
In July 1919, Ryan marries Máirín Cregan, originally from County Kerry and a close friend of Sinéad de Valera throughout her life. Cregan, like her husband, also fought in the Easter Rising and is subsequently an author of children’s stories in Irish. They have three children together.
While studying at university in 1913, Ryan joins the Gaelic League at Clonmel. The company commander recruits the young Catholicnationalist, who becomes a founder-member of the Irish Volunteers and is sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) the following year. In 1916, he goes first to Cork to deliver a message from Seán Mac Diarmada to Tomás Mac Curtain that the Easter Rising is due to happen on Easter Sunday, then to Cork again in a 12-hour journey in a car to deliver Eoin MacNeill‘s cancellation order, which attempts to stop the rising. When he arrives back on Tuesday, he serves as the medical officer in the General Post Office (GPO) and treats many wounds, including James Connolly‘s shattered ankle, a wound which gradually turns gangrenous. He is, along with Connolly, one of the last people to leave the GPO when the evacuation takes place. Following the surrender of the garrison, he is deported to HM Prison Stafford in England and subsequently Frongoch internment camp. He is released in August 1916.
Ryan rejoins the Volunteers immediately after his release from prison, and in June 1917, he is elected Commandant of the Wexford Battalion. His political career begins the following year when he is elected as a Sinn Féin candidate for the constituency of South Wexford in the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland. Like his fellow Sinn Féin MPs, he refuses to attend the Westminster Parliament. Instead he attends the proceedings of the First Dáil on January 21, 1919. As the Irish War of Independence goes on, he becomes Brigade Commandant of South Wexford and is also elected to Wexford County Council, serving as chairman on one occasion. In September 1919, he is arrested by the British and interned on Spike Island and later Bere Island. In February 1921, he is imprisoned at Kilworth Internment Camp, County Cork. He is later moved on Ballykinlar Barracks in County Down and released in August 1921.
In 1926, Ryan is among the Sinn Féin TDs who follow leader Éamon de Valera out of the party to found Fianna Fáil. They enter the Dáil in 1927 and spend five years on the opposition benches.
In 1947, after spending fifteen years as Minister for Agriculture, Ryan is appointed to the newly created positions of Minister for Health and Minister for Social Welfare. Following Fianna Fáil’s return to power at the 1951 Irish general election, he returns as Minister for Health and Social Welfare. Following the 1954 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil loses power and he moves to the backbenches once again.
Following the 1957 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil are back in office and de Valera’s cabinet has a new look to it. In a clear message that there will be a change to economic policy, Ryan, a close ally of Seán Lemass, is appointed Minister for Finance, replacing the conservative Seán MacEntee. The first sign of a new economic approach comes in 1958, when Ryan brings the First Programme for Economic Development to the cabinet table. This plan, the brainchild of T. K. Whitaker, recognises that Ireland will have to move away from self-sufficiency toward free trade. It also proposes that foreign firms should be given grants and tax breaks to set up in Ireland.
When Lemass succeeds de Valera as Taoiseach in 1959, Ryan is re-appointed as Minister for Finance. Lemass wants to reward him for his loyalty by also naming him Tánaiste. However, the new leader feels obliged to appoint MacEntee, one of the party elders to the position. Ryan continues to implement the First Programme throughout the early 1960s, achieving a record growth rate of 4 percent by 1963. That year an even more ambitious Second Programme is introduced. However, it overreaches and has to be abandoned. In spite of this, the annual growth rate averages five percent, the highest achieved since independence.
Ryan does not stand in the 1965 Irish general election, after which he is nominated by the Taoiseach to Seanad Éireann, where he joins his son, Eoin Ryan Snr. At the 1969 dissolution he retires to his farm at Kindlestown, County Wicklow, where he dies at age 77 on September 25, 1970. He is buried at Redford Cemetery, Greystones, County Wicklow. His grandson, Eoin Ryan Jnr, serves in the Oireachtas from 1989 to 2007 and later in the European Parliament from 2004 to 2009.
A serious interest in poetry and literature begins to manifest itself during his years at TCD. In 1900, he makes the acquaintance of W. B. Yeats and George Moore and begins to frequent Dublin literary circles. In 1904 and 1905 he publishes several short poems in the London publication The Venture and in John Eglinton‘s journal Dana. His name also appears in print as the renegade priest Fr. Oliver Gogarty in George Moore’s 1905 novel The Lake.
In 1905, Gogarty becomes one of the founding members of Arthur Griffith‘s Sinn Féin, a non-violent political movement with a plan for Irish autonomy modeled after the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy.
In July 1907, his first son, Oliver Duane Odysseus Gogarty, is born, and in autumn of that year he leaves for Vienna to finish the practical phase of his medical training. Returning to Dublin in 1908, he secures a post at Richmond Hospital, and shortly afterward purchases a house in Ely Place opposite George Moore. Three years later, he joins the staff of the Meath Hospital and remains there for the remainder of his medical career.
Gogarty maintains close friendships with many of the Dublin literati and continues to write poetry in the midst of his political and professional duties. He also tries his hand at playwriting, producing a slum drama in 1917 under the pseudonym “Alpha and Omega,” and two comedies in 1919 under the pseudonym “Gideon Ouseley,” all three of which are performed at the Abbey Theatre. He devotes less energy to his medical practice and more to his writing during the twenties and thirties.
With the onset of World War II, Gogarty attempts to enlist in the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) as a doctor. He is denied on grounds of age. He then departs in September 1939 for an extended lecture tour in the United States, leaving his wife to manage Renvyle House, which has since been rebuilt as a hotel. When his return to Ireland is delayed by the war, he applies for American citizenship and eventually decides to reside permanently in the United States. Though he regularly sends letters, funds, and care-packages to his family and returns home for occasional holiday visits, he never again lives in Ireland for any extended length of time.
Gogarty suffers from heart complaints during the last few years of his life, and in September 1957 he collapses in the street on his way to dinner. He dies on September 22, 1957. His body is flown home to Ireland and buried in Cartron Church, Moyard, near Renvyle, County Galway.
(Pictured: 1911 portrait of Oliver St. John Gogarty painted by Sir William Orpen, currently housed at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland)
Before entering politics, Cannon is a planning official for Galway City Council and Dublin City Council, as well as CEO and secretary of the Irish Pilgrimage Trust. In 2002, he is honoured as one of the Galway People of the Year.
Cannon is elected as Leader of the Progressive Democrats in April 2008. He is the first leader of the party to sit as a Senator while serving as leader. At his first press conference as party leader, he states that he believes “there was passion, commitment, talent and knowledge within the PDs’ ranks to stage a big comeback.”
However, after speculation increases that Noel Grealish, one of the two Progressive Democrat TDs, intends to leave the party, Cannon announces in September 2008 that a party conference will be held on November 8, 2008, at which he will recommend that the party disband. The delegates present at the conference vote 201–161 to agree with this recommendation.
On March 24, 2009, Cannon announces his decision to resign the leadership of the Progressive Democrats and joins Fine Gael the same day. At the 2011 Irish general election, he is one of two Fine Gael TDs elected in Galway East.
In 2019, in recognition of his work in education, Cannon is appointed as a UNICEF global champion for education. He is one of seven Generation Unlimited Champions who advocates worldwide for the development of UNICEF’s Gen U programme.
At the 2020 Irish general election, Cannon is elected to the second seat in Galway East. He continues to serve as a minister of state until the formation of a new government on June 27, 2020.
On March 19, 2024, Cannon announces that he will not contest the next general election, blaming a “toxicity in politics.”
Cannon is a musician and songwriter, and recently collaborated with Irish folk singer Seán Keane and others on songwriting projects. One of his co-compositions, “Nature’s Little Symphony,” is performed in Dublin by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra as part of the national Cruinniú celebrations on Easter Monday 2017. Both “Nature’s Little Symphony” and another of his compositions, “Gratitude,” are featured on the album Gratitude recorded by Keane and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra in 2018. On the August 10, 2018, Cannon plays piano with Keane and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra as part of a sold-out performance at the National Concert Hall. In 2019, he composes “An Túr,” a short piano instrumental to celebrate the birthday of W. B. Yeats.
In 2021 Cannon is commissioned to compose the soundtrack to a poem by Emily Cullen as part of the national commemoration of the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921.
In March 2024, Cannon begins presenting The Grey Lake Cafe, a radio show on Loughrea Community Radio featuring his own musical choices, and interviews with public figures who have a passion for music.
Cannon is also an avid cyclist and cycling safety advocate. He specialises in endurance cycling challenges and on June 19, 2021, he cycles Ireland end to end, a distance of 575 km, in 23 hours and 23 minutes, to raise money for charity.
On July 2, 2021, Cannon is involved in a road traffic collision and suffers serious injuries. On July 2, 2022 he marks the first anniversary of the incident by cycling 500 km around the border of County Galway. Marking the same date in 2023, he cycles 935 km (581 mi) in 56 hours, covering all 32 counties of the island of Ireland while fundraising for Hand In Hand, a charity that supports families challenged by childhood cancer.
Hanafin marries Mona Brady, daughter of J. P. Brady, on August 2, 1958, in Clonmel, County Tipperary. The wedding is followed by a reception at the Galtee Hotel, Cahir, which is attended by various notables including Rev. Father J. J. Hampson, president of Blackrock College. Their first child, Mary Hanafin, is born in June 1959, followed by John Hanafin in September 1960. Mary Hanafin is a former Fianna Fáil TD and government minister, and John Hanafin is a former Fianna Fáil senator.
Hanafin operates the Anner Hotel, located in Thurles during the 1960s. Initially successful, the business fails in 1967, which Mary Hanafin later blames on her father’s excess drinking. Subsequently, Hanafin is a director of the Transinternational Oil Company.
Hanafin’s first attempt for election to public office proves unsuccessful. In 1953, he seeks to be co-opted to fill the vacancy on North Tipperary County Council created by the death of his father. In the event councillors co-opt a Labour Party nominee, Michael Treacy, by eleven votes to seven.
Hanafin is elected a member of North Tipperary County Council in 1955, polling 934 first preference votes. Subsequently, in 1956, drawing support from the Clann na Poblachta representatives, he is elected Chairman of the County Council.
Hanafin is re-elected to North Tipperary County Council in 1960, polling 797 first preference votes. In 1961, he votes against the Fianna Fáil nominee for Chair of the County Council, Thomas F. Meagher, and in favour of the Clann na Poblachta nominee, Michael F. Cronin, who is elected by 10 votes to 9. In 1964, he controversially votes in favour of Jeremiah Mockler, “a former school mate,” who is elected by 10 votes to 9 to the office of Rate Collector for Borrisokane, County Tipperary.
Hanafin holds the seat until 1985. He is first elected to Seanad Éireann in 1969 and retains his seat until the 1993 Seanad election at which he loses his seat by one vote. He regains his seat in the 1997 elections, and in 2002 announces his retirement from politics. He unsuccessfully contests the 1977 and 1981 Irish general elections for the Tipperary North constituency. He is a chief fundraiser of the Fianna Fáil party for many years.
In May 2015, Hanafin accuses “Yes” campaigners in the same-sex marriage referendum of spreading a “palpable climate of fear,” and calls for a “No” vote.
Hanafin opposes the legalisation of divorce, which is introduced in 1995, and attempts to overturn the referendum result in the Supreme Court, but is refused by the court.
An opponent of abortion, Hanafin is one of the promoters of the constitutional amendment that enshrines the legal ban on abortion in the Constitution of Ireland. He is co-founder, chairman and later honorary president of the Pro Life Campaign.
Hanafin dies in County Tipperary at the age of 86 on June 22, 2017. A Requiem Mass is held at the Cathedral of the Assumption, Thurles, on June 25, with burial afterward in St. Patrick’s Cemetery.
O’Doherty receives a good education and studies medicine, but before he is qualified, joins the Young Ireland party and in June 1848, together with Thomas Antisell and Richard D’Alton Williams, establish The Irish Tribune. Only five editions are issued, the first being on June 10, 1848. On July 10, 1848, when the fifth edition is issued, O’Doherty is arrested and charged with treason felony. At the first and second trials the juries disagree, but at the third trial, he is found guilty and sentenced to transportation for ten years.
O’Doherty arrives in Tasmania in November 1849, is at once released on parole to reside at Oatlands, and his professional services are utilised at St. Mary’s Hospital, Hobart. The other Irish prisoners nickname him “St. Kevin.” In 1854 he receives a pardon with the condition that he must not reside in Great Britain or Ireland. He goes to Paris and carries on his medical studies, making one secret visit to Ireland to marry Mary Eva Kelly, to whom he is affianced before leaving Ireland. He receives an unconditional pardon in 1856, and completes his studies in Dublin, graduating FRCS in 1857. He practises in Dublin successfully, and in 1862 goes to Brisbane, Australia, and becomes well known as one of its leading physicians.
O’Doherty is elected a member of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland in 1867, in 1872 is responsible for a health act being passed, and is also one of the early opponents of the trafficking of Kanakas. In 1885, he resigns as he intends to settle in Europe.
In Ireland, O’Doherty is cordially welcomed, and is returned unopposed as Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) MP for North Meath to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in the November 1885 United Kingdom general election. However, finding the climate does not suit him, he does not seek re-election in 1886 and returns to Brisbane in that year. He attempts to take up his medical practice again but is not successful. He dies in poor circumstances in Brisbane on July 15, 1905.
O’Doherty’s wife and a daughter survive him. A fund is raised by public subscription to provide for his widow, a poet, who in her early days is well known as the author of Irish patriotic verse in The Nation under the soubriqet “Eva.” In Australia, she occasionally contributes to Queensland journals, and one of her poems is included in A Book of Queensland Verse. She dies at Brisbane on May 21, 1910.
He marries firstly Mary Halloran of Cloyne, County Cork, in 1845. She dies in 1901. In the year of his retirement, he remarries Florence Henrietta Gore, widow of Edward Croker. He has no children. James Joyce remarks in Ulysses that his second marriage at the age of 85 infuriates his nephew, who had been waiting patiently for years to inherit his money.
Despite his many years of service on the Bench, Chatterton does not seem to be highly regarded as a judge. On his retirement the Bar pays tribute to his good qualities but adds several qualifications: “there might have been on the Bench lawyers more profound, reasoners more acute…” In his first decade on the Bench, Chatterton has to endure the continual denigration of Jonathan Christian, the Lord Justice of Appeal in Chancery. Christian is notoriously bitter-tongued, and while he despises most of his colleagues, he seems to have a particular dislike of Chatterton. He regularly votes on appeal to overturn his judgments, and frequently adds personal insults. Nor does he confine his attacks to the courtroom: there is controversy in 1870 when remarks of Christian that Chatterton is “lazy, stupid, conceited and so incompetent that he ought to be pensioned off” find their way into The Irish Times. The hint about pensioning off Chatterton is not taken up, no doubt because he enjoys the confidence of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Thomas O’Hagan, 1st Baron O’Hagan, who is also on bad terms with Christian. In an appeal from Chatterton in 1873, the two appeal judges clash publicly, with O’Hagan reprimanding Christian for insulting a judge who is not there to defend himself.
Chatterton becomes involved in controversy in 1885, over the first attempt to rename Sackville Street to O’Connell Street. Dublin Corporation votes for the name change, but it arouses considerable objections from local residents, one of whom seeks an injunction. Chatterton grants the injunction on the ground that the corporation has exceeded its statutory powers. Rather unwisely, he also attacks the merits of the decision, accusing the Corporation of “sentimental notions.” The corporation is angered by both the decision and the criticisms: while it may have been a coincidence, the fact that Temple Street is briefly renamed Chatterton Street is interpreted by some as an insult to the judge, since the street is much frequented by prostitutes. The controversy is short-lived as the corporation is granted the necessary statutory powers in 1890, and the new name becomes official in 1924, by which time it has gained popular acceptance.
The Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903, also known as the Wyndham Land Act, is enacted on August 14, 1903, and allows for entire estates to be purchased by the occupying tenantry, subsidized by the state.
It differs from earlier legislation which initially advanced to tenants the sum necessary to purchase their holdings, repayable over a period of years on terms determined by an independent commission, while the Wyndham Act finishes off absentee landlords‘ control over tenants and makes it easier for tenants to purchase land, facilitating the transfer of about 9 million acres (36,000 km2) up to 1914. By then, 75% of occupiers are buying out their landlords under the 1903 Act and the later Irish Land Act 1909 of Augustine Birrell, which extends the 1903 act by allowing for the compulsory purchase of tenanted farmland by the Land Commission, but falls far short in its financial provisions. In all, under these pre-1921 Land Acts over 316,000 tenants purchase their holdings amounting to 11.5 million acres (47,000 km2) out of a total of 20 million acres (81,000 km2) in the country.
The Acts provide Irish tenant farmers with more rights than tenant farmers in the rest of the United Kingdom. Munster tenants avail of land purchase in exceptionally high numbers, encouraged by their Irish Land and Labour Association‘s leader D. D. Sheehan after he and O’Brien establish an Advisory Committee to mediate between landlords and tenants on purchase terms which produce a higher take-up of land purchase than in any other province.
Historian Robert K. Webb gives most of the credit for the Wyndham Act to Conservative leader Arthur Balfour. He says the Act is “a complete success. By the time the Irish Free State was created in 1922, the system of peasant proprietorship had become universal… A land problem more than a century old had been solved, though it had taken more than 30 years of educating Parliament and landlords to do it. The scheme was intended as well to ‘kill Home Rule by kindness.’”
seamus dubhghaill 