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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 Anna Manahan, Stage, Film & Television Actress

Anna Maria Manahan, Irish stage, film and television actress, is born on October 18, 1924, in County Waterford in what is at the time the Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland).

Manahan receives two Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play nominations for her performances in the 1968 production of Lovers and the 1998 production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane, the latter for which she wins at the 52nd Tony Awards.

Manahan is also nominated for two Drama Desk Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, and an Outer Critics Circle Award in a career that spans more than 60 years. She interprets the works of, among others, Seán O’Casey, John B. Keane, John Millington Synge, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Martin McDonagh, Christy Brown, and Brian Friel.

Manahan’s career begins when, as a young woman, she is recruited by the legendary Irish impresarios and theatrical directors Micheál Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards. She later marries stage director Colm O’Kelly, who dies not long afterward of polio, which he contracts after swimming in the Nile during a theatre tour of Egypt. They have no children and she never remarries. She is known professionally by her maiden name. In 1946 she appears in a production by Irish playwright Teresa Deevy, The Wild Goose, where she plays the part of Eileen Connolly. This is performed by Equity Productions in the Theatre Royal, Waterford.

In 1957, Manahan plays Serafina in the first Irish production of Tennessee Williams‘s The Rose Tattoo and achieves unexpected notoriety when she and several other members of the cast are arrested for the possession of a condom on stage.

Manahan plays a minor role in the Irish cult soap opera The Riordans (1960s), and as Mrs. Mary Kenefick in the TV comedy Me Mammy (1970s). She also plays the lead in the Irish comedy series, Leave It To Mrs O’Brien (1980s) and Mrs. Cadogan in The Irish R.M. (1980s). Most recently she plays Ursula in Fair City, for which her niece, Michele Manahan (daughter of Michael Manahan), is a writer.

Manahan has an extensive theatre portfolio having played at theatres throughout Ireland including the Abbey Theatre, the United Kingdom, continental Europe, the United States and Australia. She wins the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her role as Mag in Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane on Broadway. She previously receives a Tony nomination in 1969 for Brian Friel’s Lovers.

The Irish playwright John B. Keane writes the play Big Maggie specifically for Manahan. In 2001 she stars in Keane’s The Matchmaker with veteran Irish actor Des Keogh. In 2005 she stars in Sisters, a new play by Declan Hassett that is also written for her and for which she is nominated for a Drama Desk Award in the category of Outstanding Solo Performance. The production tours Ireland and is staged at the International Festival of World Theatre in Colorado and also plays at the 59E59 Theater in New York City in 2006.

Manahan appears in films starring, among others, Laurence Olivier, Peter Cushing, Kenneth More, Christopher Walken, Maggie Smith, Albert Finney and Brenda Fricker, and with John Gielgud in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1977).

Manahan receives the Gold Medal of the Éire Society of Boston in 1984 and thus joins the company of past recipients such as John F. Kennedy, and film makers John Ford and John Huston. She receives an honorary doctorate in letters from the University of Limerick in 2003. She is granted the freedom of the city of Waterford in 2002 in recognition of her life’s achievement in the arts. She thus becomes the 28th Freeman of Waterford since Isaac Butt in 1877.

In 2004 Manahan starts to play the role of Ursula in Fair City. All About Anna (2005), a documentary on her life and work is made by Charlie Mc Carthy/Icebox Films for RTÉ Television. In 2008, she becomes the first ever patron of the Active Retirement Ireland organization.

Manahan dies of multiple organ failure on March 8, 2009 in Waterford. She had suffered from a longterm illness.

Her funeral is held on March 11, officiated by her “longtime friend” the psychoanalyst, poet, and priest Bernard Kennedy. “As the final curtain falls, the lights dim, the auditorium becomes silent, we remember her” he says. Describing her as a woman of faith (who “sought to bring the word of God alive”), he says she had brought everyone together to be present at “her last great exit from this great stage of life,” saying her life’s work had drawn people from all over the world. “Anna believed in the empty tomb of the Resurrection and she believed the empty tomb could be filled by hearing the word take the place of the emptiness,” he says. “She knew the bedsits which preceded the Tony nomination.”

Manahan is buried in Ballygunner Cemetery, Knockboy, County Waterford.


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Birth of Robin Jackson, Northern Irish Loyalist Paramilitary

Robin Jackson, also known as The Jackal, a Northern Irish loyalist paramilitary and part-time soldier, is born on September 27, 1948, in Tullynarry Cottages, Donaghmore, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.

Jackson is one of seven children of John Jackson, farmhand, and his wife Eileen. As a teenager he participates in Paisleyite demonstrations against the Northern Ireland civil rights movement. He is already a local “hard man” who cultivates an air of menace. After a brief period in Australia, he returns home and serves in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) from 1972 to 1975. He also joins the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and is alleged to have committed his first murders in 1973. He is arrested in 1973 after the doorstep killing of a Banbridge Catholic who works in the shoe factory that employs Jackson. The victim’s wife identifies Jackson as the murderer, but the charge is withdrawn after she admits to a degree of prompting by the police.

Jackson is a leading member of a UVF gang linked to about 100 murders carried out at random against Catholic civilians between 1973 and 1979, earning for the north Armagh and east Tyrone area the nickname “the murder triangle.” He also allegedly helps to plan the Dublin and Monaghan car bombings of May 17, 1974, killing thirty-three civilians, and orchestrates the attack on the Miami Showband on July 31, 1975. He becomes UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade commander in 1975. Never convicted of any of the numerous murders attributed to him, he is however jailed between 1979 and 1983 for arms possession.

Jackson marries Eileen Maxwell in the late 1960s. They have a son and two daughters. The marriage does not survive his imprisonment and after his release he moves to Donaghcloney, County Down, where he lives with a much younger girlfriend. He remains active in loyalist paramilitarism but takes a less prominent role. He survives several Irish Republican Army (IRA) attempts on his life, including the detonation of a car bomb outside his house. In 1984, the editor of the Belfast edition of the Sunday World  is shot and wounded after publishing articles denouncing “the Jackal,” the nickname by which the press calls Jackson during his lifetime.

After the Anglo–Irish Agreement of 1985, Jackson is briefly linked to Ulster Resistance (UR), a paramilitary group founded by associates of Ian Paisley. He allegedly assists the rearming and reorganisation of the Mid-Ulster UVF under Billy Wright after the killing of his brother-in-law and alleged accomplice, Roy Metcalf, by the IRA in 1988. Relations between Wright and Jackson cool after the killing of a Catholic in Donaghcloney by Wright’s men leads to Jackson being called in for questioning, and he supports the UVF leadership in its 1996–97 dispute with Wright. He is also the focus of recurring allegations about collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and elements of the security forces in mid-Ulster, including claims that he operated on behalf of British military intelligence who shielded him from prosecution.

Jackson dies of lung cancer at the age of 49 at his Donaghcloney home on May 30, 1998. He is buried on June 1 in a private ceremony in the St. Bartholomew Church of Ireland churchyard in his native Donaghmore, County Down. His grave, close to that of his parents, is unmarked apart from a steel poppy cross. His father had died in 1985 and his mother outlives him by five years.

Considerable uncertainty surrounds his involvement in many of the crimes attributed to him, but there is no doubt that he is a cold-blooded multiple murderer and one of the most sinister “hard men” of loyalist paramilitarism.

(From: “Jackson, Robin” by Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Patrick Francis Moran, Third Archbishop of Sydney

Patrick Francis Moran, a prelate of the Catholic Church, the first cardinal appointed from Australia and the third Archbishop of Sydney, is born at Leighlinbridge, County Carlow, on September 16, 1830. Before his promotion to Archbishop, his scholarly research into the lives and times of the Irish Catholic Martyrs leads to the publication of many primary sources for the first time. These publications have since been used in recent beatifications and at least one canonization.

Moran’s parents are Patrick and Alicia Cullen Moran. Of his three sisters, two become nuns, one of whom dies nursing cholera patients. His parents die by the time he is 11 years old. In 1842, at the age of twelve, he leaves Ireland in the company of his uncle, Paul Cullen, rector of the Pontifical Irish College in Rome. There he studies for the priesthood, first at the minor seminary and then at the major seminary.

Moran is considered so intellectually bright that he gains his doctorate by acclamation. By The age of 25 he speaks ten languages, ancient and modern. He focuses on finding and editing important documents and manuscripts related to Irish ecclesiastical history. Some editions of his works remain important source materials to this day.

Moran is appointed vice-rector at the Pontifical Irish College and also takes the chair of Hebrew at Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (CEP). He is also some-time vice-rector of the Scots College in Rome. In 1866, he is appointed secretary to his mother’s half-brother, Cardinal Paul Cullen of Dublin. He is also appointed professor of scripture at Holy Cross College, Dublin. He founds the Irish Ecclesiastical Record (on which he later models the Australasian Catholic Record).

In 1869, Moran accompanies Cardinal Cullen to the First Vatican Council, a council also attended by Melbourne‘s then-first archbishop, James Alipius Goold. According to Michael Daniel, it is generally agreed that the definition of the Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility is based on Cullen’s proposal, and Ayres suggests that there is strong evidence that Cullen’s proposal is largely drafted by Moran. While in Rome and Ireland he is very active politically in opposing English Benedictine plans for monastic foundations undergirding the Catholic Church in Australia.

Moran is appointed coadjutor bishop of Ossory on December 22, 1871, and is consecrated on March 5, 1872 in Dublin by his uncle, Cardinal Paul Cullen. On the death of Bishop Edward Walsh, he succeeds as Bishop of Ossory on August 11, 1872. He champions Home Rule and is consulted by William Ewart Gladstone prior to the introduction of his Home Rule Bills.

Moran is personally chosen and promoted by Pope Leo XIII to head the Archdiocese of Sydney – a clear policy departure from the previous English Benedictine incumbents, John Bede Polding and Roger Vaughan, who were experiencing tension leading the predominantly Irish Australian Catholics. In the archbishop’s farewell audience with Leo XIII, it is evident that the intrigues of parties, the interference of government agencies and the influence of high ecclesiastics had made the matter almost impossible to decide by Propaganda. In the presence of others, the Pope says clearly: “We took the selection into our own hands. You are our personal appointment.” Moran is appointed to Australia on January 25, 1884, and arrives on September 8, 1884. He is created cardinal-priest on July 27, 1885, with the title of St. Susanna. The new Irish Australian cardinal makes it his business to make his presence and leadership felt.

Moran begins transforming the Sydney Saint Patrick’s Day festivities by inaugurating the celebration of a Solemn Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral on Saint Patrick’s Day 1885. Over time the day’s events change from an Irish nationalist and political day into an occasion “for the demonstration of Irish Catholic power and respectable assimilation” as well as “for the affirmation of Irish Catholic solidarity.”

In 1886, it is estimated that Moran travels 2,500 miles over land and sea, visiting all the dioceses of New Zealand. In 1887, he travels 6,000 miles to consecrate fellow Irishman Matthew Gibney at Perth. He also travels to Ballarat, Bathurst, Bendigo, Hobart, Goulburn, Lismore, Melbourne and Rockhampton for the consecration of their cathedrals. Following the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, he supports the right of labourers to better their conditions.

During his episcopate, Moran consecrates 14 bishops (he is the principal consecrator of William Walsh, Michael Verdon, Patrick Vincent Dwyer, Armand Olier and also assists in consecrating Patrick Clune, among others). He ordains nearly 500 priests, dedicates more than 5,000 churches and professes more than 500 nuns. He makes five journeys to Rome on church business between 1885 and 1903, but does not participate in the papal conclave of 1903 because of the relatively short notice and the distance, making it impossible for him to reach Rome within 10 days of the death of Pope Leo.

Moran is a strong supporter of Federation, and in November 1896 attends the People’s Federal Convention in Bathurst. In March 1897, he stands as a candidate election of ten delegates from New South Wales to the Australasian Federal Convention. Although he states he will not attend the Convention in any official capacity, but in a solely individual one, his candidacy sparks a sectarian reaction. Twenty-nine per cent of voters give one of their ten votes to Moran, but he comes only thirteenth in number of total votes and is not elected.

From 1900 to 1901, Moran’s leadership survives a crisis when his personal secretary, Denis O’Haran, is named as co-respondent in the divorce case of the cricketer Arthur Coningham. Moran vigorously defends O’Haran and a jury finds in his favour.

Moran dies in Manly, Sydney, on August 16, 1911, aged 80. A quarter of a million people, the largest crowd ever to gather in Australia prior to that date, witness his funeral procession through the centre of Sydney. He is buried in St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney.


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The Royal Irish Constabulary is Disbanded

The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the police force in Ireland from 1822 until 1922, when all of the island was part of the United Kingdom, is disbanded on August 17, 1922, and replaced by the Garda Síochána.

A separate civic police force, the unarmed Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP), patrols the capital and parts of County Wicklow, while the cities of Derry and Belfast, originally with their own police forces, later have special divisions within the RIC. For most of its history, the ethnic and religious makeup of the RIC broadly matches that of the Irish population, although Anglo-Irish Protestants are overrepresented among its senior officers.

The first organised police forces in Ireland come about through Dublin Police Act 1786, which is a slightly modified version of the failed London and Westminster Police Bill 1785 drafted by John Reeves at the request of Home Secretary Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney, following the Gordon Riots of 1780. The force is viewed as oppressive by local elites and becomes a strain on the city budget. The arguably excessive budget is used as a pretext by Irish nationalist MP Henry Grattan and short-lived Lord Lieutenant of Ireland William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam, to essentially abolish the Dublin Police in 1795 and even temporarily move it under Dublin Corporation.

The Peace Preservation Act 1814, for which Sir Robert Peel is largely responsible, and the Irish Constabulary Act 1822 forms the provincial constabularies. The 1822 act establishes a force in each province with chief constables and inspectors general under the United Kingdom civil administration for Ireland controlled by the Dublin Castle administration.

The RIC’s existence is increasingly troubled by the rise of the Home Rule campaign in the early twentieth century period prior to World War I.

In January 1922, the British and Irish delegations agree to disband the RIC. Phased disbandments begin within a few weeks with RIC personnel both regular and auxiliary being withdrawn to six centres in southern Ireland. On April 2, 1922, the force formally ceases to exist, although the actual process is not completed until August 17. The RIC is replaced by the Civic Guard (renamed as the Garda Síochána the following year) in the Irish Free State and by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in Northern Ireland.

According to a parliamentary answer in October 1922, 1,330 ex-RIC men join the new RUC in Northern Ireland. This results in an RUC force that is 21% Roman Catholic at its inception in 1922. As the former RIC members retire over the subsequent years, this proportion steadily falls.

Just thirteen men transfer to the Garda Síochána. These include men who had earlier assisted Irish Republican Army (IRA) operations in various ways. Some retire, and the Irish Free State pays their pensions as provided for in the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty agreement. Others, still faced with threats of violent reprisals, emigrate with their families to Great Britain or other parts of the British Empire, most often to join police forces in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. A number of these men join the Palestine Police Force, which is recruiting in the UK at the time.


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Death of Monsignor James Horan

James Horan dies on August 1, 1986, while on a pilgrimage to Lourdes. He is a parish priest of Knock, County Mayo. He is most widely known for his successful campaign to bring an airport to Knock, his work on Knock Basilica, and is also credited for inviting Pope John Paul II to visit Knock Shrine in 1979.

Horan is born in Partry, County Mayo, on May 5, 1911. Educated at St. Jarlath’s College, Tuam, he trains for the priesthood in St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth. He is ordained in 1936, and his first post is in Glasgow, where he remains for three years. Having served as chaplain on an ocean liner and briefly in Ballyglunin, County Galway, he becomes curate in Tooreen, a small townland close to Ballyhaunis, County Mayo. While there, he organises the construction of a dance hall, which becomes a popular local amenity. He secures financing for the project by collecting £8,000 on a tour of American cities. After also serving in Cloonfad, County Roscommon, he is transferred to Knock in 1963, where he becomes parish priest in 1967. He is troubled by the struggles of daily life and mass emigration in the west of Ireland, and he works to improve the living standards of the local community.

While stationed at Knock, Horan oversees the building of a new church for Knock Shrine, which is dedicated in 1976. The shrine is the stated goal of Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1979. The pope travels to Knock as part of a state visit to Ireland, marking the centenary of the famous Knock apparitions. Horan works with Judy Coyne to organise the papal visit. He is responsible for the refurbishment of the church grounds, along with the construction of a huge church, with a capacity of 15,000. This newly constructed church is given the status of basilica by the pope. The day after the papal visit, Horan begins his campaign to build an international airport in Barnacuige, a small village near Charlestown, County Mayo.

Critics regard the idea of an airport on a “foggy, boggy site” in Mayo as unrealistic, but funding is approved by then Taoiseach Charles Haughey, who performs the official opening in May 1986, five years after work commenced. Although Horan had secured IR£10,000,000 in funding from Haughey, following the Fianna Fáil party’s defeat in the general election of 1982, his funding is cut, with the airport unfinished. He raises the IR£4,000,000 shortfall by holding a “Jumbo Draw.” This large lottery succeeds in raising the required revenue, but only after a painstaking tour of several countries, including Australia and the United States. This takes its toll on the ageing Horan and leads to his death shortly after the completion of the airport. The airport is originally known as Horan International Airport but is now officially referred to as Ireland West Airport Knock.

Horan dies on August 1, 1986, while on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, just a few months after the official opening of the airport. His remains are flown into Knock, the first funeral to fly into the airport he had campaigned for. He is buried in the grounds of the Knock Basilica. His life and work are chronicled in a musical written by Terry Reilly and local broadcaster Tommy Marren, entitled A Wing and a Prayer. It premières in The Royal Theatre in Castlebar, County Mayo, on November 25, 2010.


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Birth of Dermot Weld, Former Jockey & Successful Racehorse Trainer

Dermot K. Weld, former jockey, and one of Ireland’s most successful racehorse trainers, is born on July 29, 1948, in Kildare, County Kildare. He sets the record in 2000 for the most winners trained in Ireland with 2,578. He wins the Irish Flat Training Championship eight times in 1983, 1985, 1989, 1990, 1993, 1994, 1996, and 1998. As a trainer, he wins the Melbourne Cup in Australia twice, all five of the Irish Classics, the Epsom Derby and Epsom Oaks, the Hong Kong Mile, Derby Italiano, American Derby, and Breeders’ Cup Turf.

Weld is educated at Newbridge College and University College Dublin (UCD), becoming a qualified veterinarian in 1970, at the time, the youngest qualified vet in Ireland. In 2016, he is awarded UCD Alumnus of the Year in Veterinary Medicine.

Weld starts his career as an amateur jockey, obtaining a training licence in 1972. He then takes over the stable at Rosewell House, in The Curragh, from his father, Charlie Weld, who is also a successful racehorse trainer. He goes on to win the Irish Flat Training Championship eight times in 1983, 1985, 1989, 1990, 1993, 1994, 1996 and 1998.

Weld sets a new record for the most winners trained in Ireland with 2,578 in August 2000, holding the record until Willie Mullins overtakes it in May 2024. During his training career, he saddles over 4,000 winners (to 2016).

Weld is played by Brendan Gleeson in the feature film The Cup (2011).


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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 John Henry MacFarland, Irish Australian University Chancellor

Sir John Henry MacFarland, Irish Australian educationist and churchman, is born in Omagh, County Tyrone, on April 19, 1851.

MacFarland is the elder son of John MacFarland, draper, and his second wife Margaret Jane, daughter of Rev. William Henry, a famous Covenanting Church minister. Both parents are devout Presbyterians, well educated, with strong intellectual interests.

MacFarland attends the local national school until he is 13 when he moves to the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. He is senior scholar in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Queen’s College, Belfast, where he is taught by John Purser. There he earns a BA in 1871 and MA in 1872. He goes on to St. John’s College, Cambridge, for three more years of undergraduate study of mathematics and physics. There he is elected a foundation scholar and earns a second BA, as 25th wrangler, in 1876. He also earns an MA there in 1879.

MacFarland teaches at Repton School in Derbyshire from 1876 to 1880. A decade later, his younger brother Robert, also a Queen’s Belfast and Cambridge mathematics graduate, also teaches at Repton.

The emissaries of the provisional council of Ormond College in the University of Melbourne are impressed with MacFarland. He negotiates a salary of £600 plus the profit from “farming” the college. On March 18, 1881, he becomes the first master of Ormond College, passing the opening-day ordeal in the presence of 440 Presbyterian grandees, clergy and their ladies.

On Sir John Madden‘s death in 1918, MacFarland becomes chancellor of the university and is knighted in 1919. He presides over a period of considerable expansion, working closely with Sir John Monash, vice-chancellor from 1923, and Sir James Barrett.

MacFarland is immensely and properly proud of his careful financial management, but the erstwhile reformers are hardly tender enough in balancing economy with humanity. The professors become increasingly restive about the limited responsibility for academic matters and allocation of resources council allows them. When the issues come to a head in 1928, MacFarland’s prestige is too much for the professoriate who have great respect for his administrative capacity, humanity and reasonableness. Even in his eighties he does not retire as chancellor, probably wisely concluding that his likely successor, Barrett, will prove to be too divisive.

In 1892, MacFarland receives and honorary LLD degree from the Royal University of Ireland.

MacFarland’s reputation as a business manager leads to his directorship from about 1905 of the National Mutual Life Association, serving as chairman from 1928, and of the Trustees Executors and Agency Company. From 1913 he represents the Trustees Executors on the Felton Bequests Committee. He is also the popular chairman from its foundation in 1908 of the Alexandra Club Co. as the members of the leading female social club prefer men to control their finances.

In his younger days MacFarland is a vigorous cyclist and walker in the Australian Alps, Tasmania and New Zealand. By the age of 40 he is spending a month each summer trout-fishing in the South Island of New Zealand. He is also a regular golfer at Royal Melbourne and belongs to the Melbourne Club.

MacFarland dies in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, on July 22, 1935. His remains are cremated following a service at Scots’ Church. The university council minutes:

“Few men in any community, and almost no man in this community, can have won such universal esteem. No evil was ever spoken of him or could be thought of in connection with him; before him evil quailed. The greatest disciple of the greatest of the Greeks called his dead master ‘our friend whom we may truly call the wisest, and the justest, and the best of all men we have ever known’. And many of us can sincerely say that of John Henry MacFarland.”

(From: “Sir John Henry MacFarland (1851-1935)” by Geoffrey Serle, Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://www.adb.anu.edu.au, 1986)


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Birth of Abraham Brewster, Judge & Lord Chancellor of Ireland

Abraham Brewster PC (Ire), Irish judge and Lord Chancellor of Ireland, is born in Ballymutra House in Ballynultagh Townland, County Wicklow, on April 10, 1796.

Brewster is the son of William Bagenal Brewster, of Ballinulta, County Wicklow, by his wife Mary, daughter of Thomas Bates. He receives his earlier education at Kilkenny College, then proceeds to Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1812, taking his B.A. degree in 1817, and long after, in 1847, his M.A. degree.

Brewster is called to the Irish bar in 1819, and, having chosen Leinster for his circuit, soon acquires the reputation of a sound lawyer and a powerful speaker. Lord Plunket honours him with a silk gown on July 13, 1835. Notwithstanding the opposition of Daniel O’Connell, who dislikes him, he is appointed Law Adviser to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland on October 10, 1841, and is Solicitor-General for Ireland from February 2, 1846, until July 16. By the influence of his friend Sir James Graham, First Lord of the Admiralty, he is Attorney-General for Ireland and privy councilor from January 10, 1853, until the fall of the Aberdeen ministry on February 10, 1855.[1]

In 1854, Brewster is appointed to the Royal Commission for Consolidating the Statute Law, a royal commission to consolidate existing statutes and enactments of English law.

Brewster is very active in almost all branches of his profession after his resignation, and his reputation as an advocate may be gathered from the pages of the Irish Law and Equity Reports, and in the later series of the Irish Common Law Reports, the Irish Chancery Reports, and the Irish Jurist, in all of which his name very frequently appears. Among the most important cases in which he takes part are the Mountgarrett case in 1854, involving a peerage and an estate of £10,000 a year, the Carden abduction case in July of the same year, the Yelverton case in 1861, the Egmont will case in 1863, the Marquess of Donegall‘s ejectment action and lastly, the great will cause of Fitzgerald v. Fitzgerald, in which Brewster’s statement for the plaintiff is said to be one of his most successful efforts.

On Edward Smith-Stanley becoming prime minister, Brewster succeeds Francis Blackburne as Lord Justice of Appeal in Ireland in July 1866, and Lord Chancellor of Ireland the following March. As Lord Chancellor, he sits in his court for the last time on December 17, 1868, when Benjamin Disraeli‘s government resigns. He then retires from public life.

There are only three or four judgments delivered by him in print, either in the Court of Appeal or the Court of Chancery (Ireland). His judicial manner is quiet, but with what is called “a touch of serviceable fierceness” which keeps order in Court. He is highly regarded by his colleagues. Even the bitter-tongued Jonathan Christian, who despises most of his fellow judges, defers to Brewster.

Brewster dies at his residence, 26 Merrion Square South, Dublin, on July 26, 1874, and is buried in the family vault at Tullow, County Carlow, on July 30. By his marriage in 1819 with Mary Ann, daughter of Robert Gray of Upton House, County Carlow, who dies in Dublin on November 24, 1862, he has issue one son, Colonel William Bagenal Brewster, and one daughter, Elizabeth Mary, wife of Mr. Henry French, both of whom die in the lifetime of their father. His estates are inherited by Elizabeth’s son, Robert French-Brewster, who adopts his grandfather’s surname. A nephew, Edward Brewster, studies under Abraham Brewster and becomes a lawyer and politician in New South Wales. Edward’s brother, John Grey Brewster, also emigrates to Australia, where he becomes a prosperous grazier and company director, retiring to England in later years where he dies in 1897.

(Pictured: Right Honourable Abraham Brewster photographed by Thomas Cranfield, 1861)