seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Belvedere College (Dublin)


by Leave a comment

Death of Leo Whelan, Portrait & Genre Painter

(Michael) Leo Whelan, portrait and genre painter, dies from leukemia on November 6, 1956, at the Mater private nursing home in Dublin.

Whelan is born on January 17, 1892, at 20 St. George’s Villas, Fairview, Dublin, one of two sons and three daughters of Maurice Whelan, a draper, of County Kerry ancestry, and Mary Whelan (née Cruise), from County Roscommon. The family subsequently moves to 65 Eccles Street, where his parents operated a small hotel. Educated at Belvedere College, Dublin, he then attends the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA) (1908–14), where he is a student of William Orpen, who has a huge influence on his artistic style. His fellow students at the school include Patrick Tuohy and Séan Keating.

Whelan is awarded many prizes in the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) Taylor art competitions, including one in 1912 for a portrait of his sister Lena, entitled On the Moors, rendered in a strongly academic technique. In 1916, he wins the Taylor scholarship for the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) schools for his finest early work, The Doctor’s Visit, an adroitly executed composition of contrasting shadows and light. Typical of many of his genre interiors, the painting depicts a room in the family home, with relatives as models: Whelan’s mother sits by the bed watching over his ill cousin, while his sister, dressed in a Mater hospital nurse’s uniform, is in the background opening the door for the doctor. The subtly evoked atmosphere of restrained emotion foreshadowed a hallmark of his mature style.

Whelan exhibits annually at the RHA for forty-five years (1911–56), averaging six works per year. He is elected an RHA associate in 1920, becoming a full member in 1924. He participates in the Exposition d’art irlandais at the Galerie Barbazanges in Paris in 1922. A visiting teacher at the RHA schools in 1924, he also teaches in the DMSA for a time. He has studios at 64 Dawson Street (1914–27) and 7 Lower Baggot Street (1931–56). Beginning in the 1910s, he receives regular commissions for portraits, constituting his primary source of income. Having become the family’s main breadwinner following his parents’ deaths in the 1920s, he concentrates most of his production on this lucrative activity, portraying numerous leading figures in the spheres of politics, academia, religion, society, medicine, and law.

Coming from a family of militant nationalist sympathies, in 1922 he begins a large group portrait, GHQ Staff of the Pre-Treaty IRA, including Michael Collins, Richard Mulcahy, Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellows and nine others, composed from individual studies of the men rendered during clandestine sittings in his home and studio. The painting, which he leaves unfinished, is in McKee Barracks, Dublin. He receives special praise for his portraits of John Henry Bernard, Provost of Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and of Louis Claude Purser, TCD vice-provost. The latter is awarded a medal at the 1926 Tailteann Games. He exhibits seventeen paintings at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, London, of which he is a member, and shows two works at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. His 1929 portrait of John McCormack, one of his major patrons, is presented by the tenor’s family some fifty years later to the National Concert Hall, Dublin.

Situated securely in the academic tradition, in most of his portraits Whelan favours a sombre, restricted palette, with the sitter placed, in grave demeanour, against a monotone background with few accessories. In a 1943 interview he asserts that twentieth-century portraiture suffers from the drabness of modern costume, for which the artist must compensate by careful rendition of the subject’s hands. He tends to depart from his prevailing portrait style when painting women, whom he characteristically depicts in meticulously observed interiors, a notable example being his portrait of Society hostess Gladys Maccabe (c.1946; NGI).

Whelan’s commercial concentration on portraiture notwithstanding, he expresses his true talent in genre compositions, especially kitchen interiors, in which he emulates the technique of the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. Two of the most accomplished of these depict his sister Frances in the basement kitchen of the family home: The Kitchen Window (1927; Crawford Art Gallery, Cork) demonstrates a particularly skillful use of light, while Interior of a Kitchen (1935) is notable for the dexterous handling of objects of varied shapes and textures. His genre works include both urban and rural scenes, with a distinctive interest in portraying occupations and other activities. Gypsy (1923), an Orpenesque composition of a shawled woman in a west-of-Ireland landscape with a caravan in the background, receives wide contemporary critical acclaim. Jer (c.1925), depicting a man seated by the fire in a cottage interior, is reproduced in J. Crampton Walker’s Irish Art and Landscape (1927). The Fiddler (c.1932), a naturalistic, sensitively characterised study, is first shown at an Ulster Academy exhibition at Stranmillis, Belfast. A Kerry Cobbler is reproduced in Twelve Irish Artists (1940), introduced by Thomas Bodkin, as among the works denoting the development of a distinctively Irish school of painting.

In 1929, Whelan designs the first Irish Free State commemorative stamp, a portrait of Daniel O’Connell for the centenary of Catholic emancipation. Commissioned by the Thomas Haverty trust to paint an incident from the life of Saint Patrick for the 1932 Eucharistic Congress, he executes The Baptism by St. Patrick of Ethna the Fair and Fedelmia the Ruddy, Daughters of the Ard Rí Laoghaire, a work highly conservative in style. He rapidly completes an oil study of the papal legate, Lorenzo Lauri, also for the Eucharistic Congress. He is represented in the art competitions at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. His depiction of Saint Brigid, shown at the Academy of Christian Art exhibition (1940), becomes a familiar image owing to the wide circulation of reproductions.

Whelan’s political portraits are influential in creating a strong, assured image of the newly formed Irish state, and thus retain an historical significance. His posthumous portrait, The Late General Michael Collins, exhibited at the RHA in 1943 and now held in Leinster House, is an iconic, heroic image of the fallen leader. His portraits of Arthur Griffith and Kevin O’Higgins – commissioned posthumously, as is the Collins, by Fine Gael – also hang in Leinster House, while that of John A. Costello, exhibited at the RHA in 1949, is now held in the King’s Inns, Dublin. He paints two presidents, Douglas Hyde and Seán T. O’Kelly, both works currently in Áras an Uachtaráin. A portrait of Éamon de Valera, painted in 1955 when the sitter is Leader of the Opposition, is in Leinster House. In 1954, he designs a second commemorative stamp, picturing a reproduction of a portrait bust of John Henry Newman, to mark the centenary of the Catholic University of Ireland.

Whelan is elected an honorary academician of both the Ulster Academy of Arts (1931), and the Royal Ulster Academy (1950). He becomes a member of the United Arts Club in 1934. As a representative of the RHA, he sits on the board of governors of the National Gallery of Ireland for many years, and is on the advisory committee of the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art. Unmarried, he resides until his death at the Eccles Street address, with two sisters who continue to manage the family hotel. He dies on November 6, 1956, from leukemia at the Mater private nursing home in Dublin. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.

(From: “Whelan, (Michael) Leo,” by Carmel Doyle, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


by Leave a comment

Death of Malachi Martin, Irish American Catholic Priest

Malachi Brendan Martin, also known under the pseudonym of Michael Serafian, Irish-born American Traditionalist Catholic priest, biblical archaeologist, exorcist, palaeographer, professor, and writer on the Catholic Church, dies in New York City on July 27, 1999.

Martin is born on July 23, 1921, in Ballylongford, County Kerry, to a middle-class family in which the children are raised speaking Irish at the dinner table. His parents, Conor and Katherine Fitzmaurice Martin, have five sons and five daughters. Four of the five sons become priests, including his younger brother, Francis Xavier Martin.

Martin attends Belvedere College in Dublin, then studies philosophy for three years at University College Dublin (UCD). On September 6, 1939, he becomes a novice with the Society of Jesus. He teaches for three years, spending four years at Milltown Park, Dublin, and is ordained in August 1954.

Upon completion of his degree course in Dublin, Martin is sent to the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, where he takes a doctorate in archaeology, Oriental history, and Semitic languages. He starts postgraduate studies at both the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at the University of Oxford. He specializes in intertestamentary studies, Jesus in Jewish and Islamic sources, Ancient Hebrew and Arabic manuscripts. He undertakes additional study in rational psychology, experimental psychology, physics, and anthropology.

Martin participates in the research on the Dead Sea Scrolls and publishes 24 articles on Semitic palaeography. He does archaeological research and works extensively on the Byblos syllabary in Byblos, in Tyre, and in the Sinai Peninsula. He assists in his first exorcism while working in Egypt for archaeological research. In 1958, he publishes a work in two volumes, The Scribal Character of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Martin’s years in Rome coincide with the beginning of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), which is to transform the Catholic Church in a way that the initially liberal Martin begins to find distressing. He becomes friends with Monsignor George Gilmary Higgins and Father John Courtney Murray.

In Rome, Martin becomes a professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, where he teaches Aramaic, Hebrew, palaeography, and Sacred Scripture. He also teaches theology, part-time, at Loyola University Chicago‘s John Felice Rome Center. He works as a translator for the Eastern Orthodox Churches and Ancient Oriental Churches Division of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity under Bea. He becomes acquainted with Jewish leaders, such as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, in 1961 and 1962. He accompanies Pope Paul VI on a trip to Jordan in January 1964. He resigned his position at the Pontifical Institute in June 1964.

In 1964, Martin requests a release from his vows and from the Jesuit Order. He receives a provisional release in May 1965 and a dispensation from his vows of poverty and obedience on June 30, 1965. Even if dispensed from his religious vow of chastity, he remains under the obligation of chastity if still an ordained secular priest. He maintains that he remains a priest, saying that he had received a dispensation from Paul VI to that effect.

Martin moves to New York City in 1966, working as a dishwasher, a waiter, and taxi driver, while continuing to write. He co-founds an antiques firm and is active in communications and media for the rest of his life.

In 1967, Martin receives his first Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1970, he publishes the book The Encounter: Religion in Crisis, winning the Choice Book Award of the American Library Association. He then publishes Three Popes and the Cardinal: The Church of Pius, John and Paul in its Encounter with Human History (1972) and Jesus Now (1973). In 1970, he becomes a naturalized U.S. citizen.

In 1969, Martin receives a second Guggenheim Fellowship, allowing him to write his first of four bestsellers, Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Living Americans (1976). In the book, he calls himself an exorcist, claiming he assisted in several exorcisms. According to McManus Darraugh, William Peter Blatty “wrote a tirade against Malachi, saying his 1976 book was a fantasy, and he was just trying to cash in.” Darraugh also says that Martin became “an iconic person in the paranormal world.”

Martin serves as religious editor for the National Review from 1972 to 1978. He is interviewed twice by William F. Buckley, Jr. for Firing Line on PBS. He is an editor for the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Martin is a periodic guest on Art Bell‘s radio program, Coast to Coast AM, between 1996 and 1998. The show continues to play tapes of his interviews on Halloween.

Martin’s The Keys of This Blood: The Struggle for World Dominion between Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Capitalist West is published in 1990. It is followed in 1996 by Windswept House: A Vatican Novel.

The Vatican restores Martin’s faculty to celebrate Mass in 1989, at his request. He is strongly supported by some Traditionalist Catholic sources and severely criticized by other sources, such as the National Catholic Reporter. He serves as a guest commentator for CNN during the live coverage of the visit of Pope John Paul II to the United States in October 1995.

On July 27, 1999, Martin dies in Manhattan of an intracerebral haemorrhage, four days after his 78th birthday. It is caused by a fall in his Manhattan apartment. The documentary Hostage to the Devil claims that Martin says he was pushed from a stool by a demonic force.

Martin’s funeral takes place in St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in West Orange, New Jersey, before burial at Gate of Heaven Cemetery, in Hawthorne, New York.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Dermot Ryan, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin

Dermot Joseph Ryan, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin from 1972 until 1984, is born on June 26, 1924, in Clondalkin, Dublin.

Ryan is born to Andrew Ryan, a medical doctor, and Therese (née McKenna). In 1932, he goes to Belvedere College, Dublin. In 1942 he enters Holy Cross College, Drumcondra, and graduates with a first in Hebrew and Aramaic at University College Dublin in 1945. He spends a year at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth before attending the Pontifical Irish College in Rome gaining his BD in 1948 at the Pontifical Lateran University, Rome. He returns to Clonliffe to complete his formation, and where he is ordained a priest on May 28, 1950. He returns to Rome to study at the Pontifical Gregorian University, gaining a Licentiate in Sacred Theology in 1952. In 1954 he is awarded an MA in Semitic Languages from the National University of Ireland (NUI), followed by a licentiate in sacred scripture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute.

Ryan is Professor of Oriental Languages at University College Dublin before his appointment by Pope Paul VI as Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland on December 29, 1971. Maintaining his connection and interest in oriental studies, he serves as chairman of the trustees of the Chester Beatty Library from 1978 to 1984.

Ryan is ordained a bishop by Pope Paul VI in Rome, assisted by Cardinals Bernardus Johannes Alfrink and William Conway (Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland), on February 13, 1972. At the time of his appointment, he is seen as a liberal and a reformer in the Church.

During his term, Ryan consolidates much of the expansion of the archdiocese which had taken place during the term of his predecessor. He also oversees the fuller implementation of the reforms of Vatican II. He is particularly interested in liturgical reform.

Seen as a Liberal, following the episcopacy of John Charles McQuaid, in November 1972, Ryan becomes the first Roman Catholic archbishop to attend a Church of Ireland service in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, and holds an interdenominational service in St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral. He also supports “Ballymascanlon talks,” an inter-church initiative to try to bring communities together and bring peace to Northern Ireland.

Ryan also takes a traditional stand on social issues, including poverty, family life and opposition to abortion. He strongly promotes the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland in 1983, granting the equal right to life to mother and unborn.

As Archbishop, Ryan gives the people of Dublin a public park on a site earmarked by his predecessors for a proposed cathedral. It is named “Archbishop Ryan Park” in his honour. The land, at Merrion Square, is a gift from the archbishop to the city of Dublin.

Ryan dies at the age of 60 in Rome on February 21, 1985, following a heart attack. He is buried in St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Tim Pat Coogan, Journalist, Writer & Broadcaster

Timothy Patrick “Tim Pat” Coogan, Irish journalist, writer and broadcaster, is born in Monkstown, County Dublin, on April 22, 1935. He serves as editor of The Irish Press newspaper from 1968 to 1987. He is best known for such books as The IRA (1970) and On the Blanket: The H Block Story (1980), and biographies of Michael Collins and Éamon de Valera.

Coogan’s particular focus is on Ireland’s nationalist/independence movement in the 20th century, a period of unprecedented political upheaval. He blames the Troubles in Northern Ireland on “Paisleyism.”

Coogan is the first of three children born to Beatrice (née Toal) and Eamonn Coogan, a native of Kilkenny who is an Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer during the Irish War of Independence and later serves as the first Deputy Commissioner of the newly established Garda Síochána, then a Fine Gael TD for the Kilkenny constituency. His mother, the daughter of a policeman, is a Dublin socialite who is crowned Dublin’s Civic Queen of Beauty in 1927. She writes for the Evening Herald and takes part in various productions in the Abbey Theatre and Radio Éireann. He spends many summer holidays in the town of Castlecomer, County Kilkenny, his father’s hometown.

A former student of the Irish Christian Brothers in Dún Laoghaire and Belvedere College in Dublin, Coogan spends most of his secondary studies at Blackrock College in Dublin.

In 2000, Irish writer and editor Ruth Dudley Edwards is awarded £25,000 damages and a public apology by the High Court in London against Coogan for factual errors in references to her in his book Wherever Green is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora (2000). In the book, he writes that Dudley Edwards had “groveled to and hypocritically ingratiated herself with the English establishment to further her writing career.” He also alleges that Dudley Edwards “had abused the position of chairwoman of the British Association for Irish Studies (BAIS) by trying to impose her political views on it” and that her commission to write True Brits had been awarded because of political favouritism.

When Taoiseach Enda Kenny causes confusion following a speech at Béal na Bláth by incorrectly claiming Michael Collins had brought Lenin to Ireland, Coogan comments, “Those were the days when bishops were bishops and Lenin was a communist. How would that have gone down with the churchyard collections?”

In November 2012, for reasons that are uncertain, the United States embassy in Dublin refuses to grant Coogan a visa to visit the United States. As a result, a planned book tour for his book The Famine Plot, England’s role in Ireland’s Greatest Tragedy (2012) is cancelled. After representations to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by United States Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Congressman Peter T. King (R-NY), he receives his visa.

Coogan has been criticised by the Irish historians Liam Kennedy and Diarmaid Ferriter, as well as Cormac Ó Gráda, for a supposed lack of thoroughness in his research and bias:

“Well, I waited in this book to hear some great revelation, and it just isn’t there. It’s anticlimactic. I could not see the great plot, and indeed there is no serious historian who … I can’t think of a single historian who has researched the Famine in depth – and Tim Pat has not researched it in depth” (The Famine Plot).

“Coogan is not remotely interested in looking at what others have written on 20th-century Irish history…. he does not appear interested in context and shows scant regard for evidence. He does not attempt to offer any sustained analysis in relation to the challenges of state building, the meaning of sovereignty, economic and cultural transformations, or comparative perspectives on the evolution of Irish society. There is no indication whatsoever that Coogan has engaged with the abundant archival material relating to the subject matter he pronounces on. There is no rhyme or reason when it comes to the citation of the many quotations he uses; the vast majority are not referenced. For the 300-page text, 21 endnotes are cited and six of them relate to Coogan’s previous books, a reminder that much of this tome consists of recycled material…. Tim Pat Coogan… he is a decent, compassionate man who has made a significant contribution to Irish life. But he has not read up on Irish history; indeed, such is the paucity of his research efforts that this book amounts to a travesty of 20th-century Irish history” (1916: The Mornings After).


by Leave a comment

Birth of Kevin Barry, IRA Volunteer & Medical Student

Kevin Gerard Barry, Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer and medical student, is born on January 20, 1902, at 8 Fleet Street, Dublin. He becomes the first Irish republican to be executed by the British Government since the leaders of the Easter Rising.

Barry is the fourth of seven children born to Thomas Barry, dairyman, and Mary Barry (née Dowling), both originally from northeast County Carlow. His father dies of heart disease on February 8, 1908, at the age of 56. His mother then moves the family to the family’s farm at Tombeagh, Hacketstown, County Carlow, while retaining the family’s townhouse on Fleet Street. As a child he goes to the National School in Rathvilly. In 1915, he is sent to live in Dublin and attends the O’Connell Schools for three months, before enrolling in the Preparatory Grade at St. Mary’s College, Rathmines, in September 1915. He remains at that school until May 31, 1916, when it is closed by its clerical sponsors. With the closure of St. Mary’s College, he transfers to Belvedere College, a Jesuit school in Dublin. He joins the Irish Volunteers, the forerunner of the IRA, while still at Belvedere College, and enters University College Dublin (UCD) in 1919 to study medicine.

As a member of 1st Battalion, Dublin Brigade of the Irish Volunteers, he takes part in a successful raid for arms on the military post in King’s Inns, Dublin, on June 1, 1920. Within only six minutes the raiders secure rifles, light machine guns, and large quantities of ammunition, and depart the site with no casualties. He also takes part in an abortive attempt to burn Aughavanagh House, Aughrim, County Wicklow in July 1920, and an attack on a British ration party in Church Street, Dublin, on September 20, with the aim of seizing arms. The final operation fails. Gunfire breaks out, three soldiers of around Barry’s own age are killed or fatally wounded, and he becomes the first Volunteer to be captured in an armed attack since 1916.

During interrogation, Barry is threatened with a bayonet and is mistreated. A general court-martial on October 20, which he refuses to recognise, condemns him to death for murdering the three soldiers, although one of the bullets taken from Private Marshall Whitehead’s body is a .45 calibre, while all witnesses state that Barry was armed with a .38 Mauser Parabellum. Despite widespread appeals on grounds of both clemency and expediency, the cabinet in London and officials in Dublin decide separately against a reprieve, probably because of its likely effect on the morale of soldiers and police.

On October 28, the Irish Bulletin, the official propaganda newspaper produced by Dáil Éireann‘s Department of Publicity, publishes Barry’s statement alleging torture. The headline reads English Military Government Torture a Prisoner of War and are about to Hang him. The Irish Bulletin declares Barry to be a prisoner of war, suggesting a conflict of principles is at the heart of the conflict. The British do not recognise a war and treat all killings by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) as murder. The public learns on this day that the date of execution has been fixed for November 1.

He was hanged in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, on November 1, after hearing two Masses in his cell. The timing of the execution, only seven days after the death by hunger strike of Terence MacSwiney, the republican Lord Mayor of Cork, brings public opinion to a fever-pitch. He is buried in unconsecrated ground on the jail property. His comrade and fellow student Frank Flood is buried alongside him four months later. A plain cross marks their graves and those of Patrick Moran, Thomas Whelan, Thomas Traynor, Patrick Doyle, Thomas Bryan, Bernard Ryan, Edmond Foley and Patrick Maher who are hanged in the same prison before the Anglo-Irish Treaty of July 1921 which ends hostilities between Irish republicans and the British. The graves go unidentified until 1934. They become known as the Forgotten Ten by republicans campaigning for the bodies to be reburied with honour and proper rites. On October 14, 2001, the remains of the ten men are given a state funeral and moved from Mountjoy Prison to be re-interred at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.

Barry is the first person to be tried and executed for a capital offence under the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act 1920, passed twelve weeks earlier. Together with his youth, this makes him a republican martyr celebrated in many ballads and verses. The best-known, set to a tune popular with British servicemen, is recorded by the American singer Paul Robeson, among others. A memorial stained-glass window by Richard King of the Harry Clarke Studio is later installed in the former UCD council chamber (afterward called the Kevin Barry Room), Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin.


by Leave a comment

Death of Frank Fay, Actor & Co-founder of the Abbey Theatre

Frank J. (Francis John) Fay, actor, theatrical producer and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, dies on January 2, 1931.

Fay is born on August 30, 1870, at 10 Lower Dorset Street, Dublin, the eldest son of four children of William Patrick Fay, a government clerk, and his wife, Martha Fay (née Dowling). He is educated at Belvedere College, Dublin, where he learns shorthand and typing, before leaving to become a secretary for an accountancy firm in Dublin. From an early age he has a passion for the theatre and immerses himself in books on the subject, becoming a drama expert. His brother, William George Fay, shares his enthusiasm and they take part in many amateur productions, setting up the Ormonde Dramatic Company in 1891.

Fay is an ardent nationalist, and Arthur Griffith appoints him drama critic for his newspaper, the United Irishman (1899–1902), where he develops his ideas on how the theatre should be run. Initially in favour of plays in the Irish language, he soon abandons this as unworkable. In May 1901 he attacks W. B. Yeats for his faulty notions about theatre and even his work as a dramatist, ending with the fiercely nationalistic assertion that “there is a herd of Saxon and other swine fattening on us. They must be swept into the sea with the pestilent breed of West Britons with which we are troubled, or they will sweep us there.” Yeats’s and Lady Gregory‘s next play is Cathleen ni Houlihan.

In 1902, Fay writes a famous article advocating a national theatre company that will “be the nursery of an Irish dramatic literature which, while making a world-wide appeal, would see life through Irish eyes.” He is a member of his brother’s National Dramatic Society, which merges with the Irish Literary Theatre in 1902 to form the Irish National Theatre Society, the originating body of the Abbey Theatre. The following year Yeats declares that the national theatre owes its existence to the two Fay brothers. Fay soon abandons Griffith and begins to champion the cause of Yeats.

An excellent tragic actor, Fay can make audiences forget his less than five feet six-inch stature through the power of his voice. When the Abbey Theatre opens on December 27, 1904, he stars in Yeats’s On Baile’s Strand as Cú Chulainn, a role he makes his own. He spends much time training the other actors. As an elocution teacher he has no equal. One play has Yeats leaving with his “head on fire” because of the quality of the voices on stage. Yeats dedicates his play The King’s Threshold (1904) with the words: “In memory of Frank Fay and his beautiful speaking in the character of Seanchan.”

Fay has a close but turbulent relationship with his brother William, whom he defers to in all theatrical matters except acting. Their heated arguments sometimes lead to blows. His temper is always volatile, and he is prone to histrionics and fits of depression. After 1905, the Abbey Theatre becomes a limited company owing to the patronage of Annie Horniman, and the Fays lose most of their control, which results in much tension and bitterness. In 1907, Fay plays Shawn Keogh in the first production of The Playboy of the Western World by John Millington Synge.

Disagreements with Yeats over the approach to choosing and staging of plays comes to a head late in late 1907 and the Fays resign on January 13, 1908. On March 13 they are suspended from the Irish National Theatre Society. They tour the United States with Charles Frohman before separating. Fay then tours England in minor Shakespearean roles and melodrama. Between 1912 and 1914, Thomas MacDonagh and Joseph Mary Plunkett attempt to persuade him to become actor-manager of an Irish theatre. In 1918 he returns to the Abbey Theatre in two short-lived revivals of Yeats’s The Hour Glass and The King’s Threshold. He retires to Dublin permanently in 1921, teaching elocution and directing plays in local colleges.

Fay marries, in 1912, Freda, known as “Bird.” They live at Upper Mount Street, Dublin, and have one son, Gerard, who becomes a popular writer and memoirist. Fay dies on January 2, 1931, having never really recovered from the death of his wife, and is buried at Glasnevin Cemetery. He is credited with creating the Abbey Theatre style of acting, which becomes internationally known, and influences many other schools of acting. He wanted actors to behave as naturally as possible and to speak the lines as people would in real life, rather than with an exaggerated stage delivery. His training is a major influence on subsequent generations, as actors learned to “speak words with quiet force, like feathers borne on puffs of wind.”

(From: “Fay, Frank J. (Francis John)” by Patrick M. Geoghegan, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009) | Pictured: Portrait of Frank Fay by John Butler Yeats, commissioned by Annie Horniman for the opening of the Abbey Theatre, December 27, 1904)


by Leave a comment

Birth of Tomás de Bhaldraithe, Irish Language Scholar

Tomás Mac Donnchadha de Bhaldraithe, Irish scholar notable for his work on the Irish language, particularly in the field of lexicography, is born on December 14, 1916, in Ballincurra, County Limerick. He is best known for his English-Irish Dictionary, published in 1959.

De Bhaldraithe is born Thomas MacDonagh Waldron, one of five children of Pádraig de Bhaldraithe, civil servant from Nenagh, County Tipperary, and Eilís Nic Conmara from near Kilkee, County Clare. He is named after Thomas MacDonagh, one of the signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, who had been executed after the Easter Rising earlier that year. He moves to Donnybrook, Dublin, with his family at the age of five. He is enrolled in Muckross Park school in 1923. He receives his secondary education at Belvedere College in Dublin (1926-34). He adopts the use of the Irish language version of his name in both Irish and English.

De Bhaldraithe’s stance on standard forms and spellings is supported by Éamon de Valera despite opposition from traditionalists in the Department of Education, and the work is widely seen as an important benchmark in Irish scholarship.

In 1942, de Bhaldraithe is appointed a professor at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS) in the department of Celtic Studies. In 1960 he is appointed professor of modern Irish language and literature at University College Dublin (UCD), where he develops an impressive archive of material on Irish dialects. Much of the material in this archive is later used as the basis of Niall Ó Dónaill‘s Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla, published in 1978, for which he is consulting editor. Also, during the 1970s, de Bhaldraithe translates the Irish language diary of Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin, Cín Lae Amhlaoibh, into English. It is then published by Mercier Press as The Diary of an Irish Countryman.

The language laboratory which de Bhaldraithe sets up in UCD is the first of its kind in any university in Ireland. His interest in seanchas (folklore) leads to his publication of Seanchas Thomáis Laighléis in 1977, while his earlier work includes the ground-breaking study of the Cois Fharraige dialect (a variety of Connacht Irish), Gaeilge Chois Fharraige: Deilbhíocht. In later years he works extensively on the definitive Irish dictionary, Foclóir Stairiúil na Nua-Ghaeilge, which remains unfinished at the time of his death, but which is still in progress today.

De Bhaldraithe dies in Dublin on April 24, 1996, after launching a collection of a friend’s writings entitled The words we use. He marries Vivienne Ní Thoirdhealbhaigh in 1943 and they have nine children.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Karl Mullen, Rugby Union Player & Gynecologist

Dr. Karl Daniel Mullen, rugby union player and consultant gynecologist who captains the Irish rugby team and captains the British Lions on their 1950 tour to Australia and New Zealand, is born on November 26, 1926, in Courtown Harbour, County Wexford.

Mullen is one of three sons and seven daughters of Daniel Mullen, an officer of the customs and excise, and his wife Annie (née Hargrove). After his parents move to Home Farm Road, Drumcondra, Dublin, he is educated at the Dominican St. Thomas’s Academy, Eccles Street, the Jesuit Belvedere College, Great Denmark Street, and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI). He plays rugby and cricket at school, association football with Home Farm F.C., and golf in the summer months. Initially a centre, he becomes a prop on the Belvedere junior cup team and, after injury to a teammate, hooker on the senior cup team, which loses the Leinster Schools Rugby Senior Cup final to Castleknock College in 1944.

On January 25, 1947, Mullen makes his formal Irish debut in a 12–8 loss to France. He plays as hooker, winning 25 caps for Ireland from 1947 to 1952. A year later, on January 31, 1948, he plays his first game for Barbarian F.C. in a 9–6 victory over Australia in Cardiff, Wales. After helping Ireland to victory over France on January 1, 1948, at the age of 21, he captains Ireland for the first time, on February 14, 1948, leading them to an 11–10 victory over England at Twickenham Stadium.

Mullen captains the Irish team to their first Grand Slam in the 1948 Five Nations Championship and is one of eight players from that team who live to see the country’s next Grand Slam in 2009.

Ireland retains the triple crown in 1949 by beating Wales 5–0 in Swansea, ending a run of defeats on Welsh soil lasting fourteen years. The following season Ireland suffers from injuries and loses to both England and Wales, the latter securing the triple crown.

Mullen is selected to captain the 1950 Lions Tour to Australia and New Zealand. After appearing in the first two tests against New Zealand, a 9–9 draw and an 8–0 loss, he sustains an ankle injury in the latter game and concedes his place to Dai Davies of Wales. Returning for the second test against Australia, a resounding 24–3 victory, he also plays in a semi-official “British Isles RFU” team against Ceylon during their return journey in September.

Under Mullen’s captaincy Ireland regains the international championship in 1951. His last cap comes in a 14–3 loss to Wales at Lansdowne Road on March 8, 1952. In twenty-five successive appearances (fifteen as captain), he secured three international championships and two triple crowns for Ireland in four seasons, their most successful haul of the twentieth century.

Mullen’s distinguished rugby career has to be fitted around his medical studies. In 1945, he enters the RCSI, graduating L and LM (RCSI and RCPI) in 1949. Awarded the diploma in obstetrics (1952) and membership of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (1956), he trains at Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital, Jervis Street Hospital and the Rotunda hospitals. After serving as senior obstetrics registrar at the Derby City General Hospital (1953–56), he returns to Dublin to become a consultant obstetrician, based at Mount Carmel Community Hospital, Churchtown, Dublin, and develops a considerable private practice. By his retirement in 2002, he is estimated to have delivered over 40,000 babies. A proponent of sex education in schools, he appears on RTÉ‘s 7 Days in December 1970, outlining various methods of birth control and calling for a more honest and realistic approach to artificial contraception.

Mullen marries Doreen Kilbride, an accomplished soprano, on April 30, 1952, in Donnybrook, Dublin, interrupting their honeymoon to play for Old Belvedere R.F.C. in the Leinster Senior Cup final. They have eight children, three boys and five girls. In 1975, they move from Altamount, Dundrum, Dublin, to Tulfarris House, Blessington, County Wicklow, adjacent to Poulaphouca Reservoir, where they farm and bred Irish draught horses. In 1985, he sells the property and much of his art collection and moves to Kilcullen, County Kildare.

Mullen is one of eight surviving members of the 1948 team to witness Ireland’s second grand slam on March 21, 2009. Only weeks later, having suffered from a long illness, he dies on April 27, 2009, at his home, Gilltown Lodge, in Kilcullen.

(Pictured: Karl Mullen, captain of the British Lions rugby union team, 1950)


by Leave a comment

Birth of Arthur Cox, Solicitor & Senator

Arthur Conor Joseph Cox, solicitor and senator, is born on July 25, 1891, in Dublin.

Cox is the younger of two sons of Dr. Michael Cox, physician originally of Roscommon and Sligo, and Elizabeth Cox (née Nolan). Like his father, he supports the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) and maintains an interest in a wide range of subjects outside his chosen career throughout his life. He attends Belvedere College (1900-09), where he often obtains first place in his class and wins the Union prize for essay writing three years in a row (1905–07). He is the first auditor of the Belvedere Debating Society and is succeeded in the post by George O’Brien, who remains his lifelong friend. In 1909, he wins both a Royal University of Ireland (RUI) scholarship and an entrance exhibition to University College Dublin (UCD), a college of the new National University of Ireland (NUI).

Working for an arts degree at UCD, then housed at 86 St. Stephen’s Green, Cox overcomes an innate shyness to cultivate a reputation as a skillful and humorous orator in the Literary and Historical Society (L&H), where he befriends both Kevin O’Higgins and John A. Costello. He has immense respect for both men, and they remain firm friends. The respect is reciprocal, and during their subsequent careers O’Higgins and Costello often have occasion to seek Cox’s wise counsel. In 1912, Cox defeats Costello for the auditorship of the L&H by 112 votes to 63, and in the same year attains a first-class honours BA. His role as auditor means that he is involved with UCD for a further year. He attends lectures at the Incorporated Law Society while at the same time he pursues both the LL. B course, a one-year postgraduate law degree, and an MA at UCD. By the end of 1913 he has achieved first place in the LL. B and first-class honours in his MA. In addition, he has become auditor of the Solicitors’ Apprentices’ Debating Society.

After university Cox is apprenticed to a solicitor, Francis Joseph Scallan, who runs a firm in partnership with his brother, John Louis Scallan. On qualifying in 1915, he remains with the firm as an assistant solicitor until 1920, when he forms a partnership with another solicitor, John McAreavey. The firm is called Arthur Cox & Co. and has its offices at 5 St. Stephen’s Green. Initially the new firm’s clients are predominantly made up of those for whom he worked at his previous firm, and friends from his university days. Through George O’Brien he meets Sir Horace Plunkett, president of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS), a connection of enormous benefit, which sees the firm both become solicitor to the IAOS and gain a large number of clients through its membership.

Despite his relative youth, Cox is held in high esteem by those attempting to construct the apparatus of the newly independent Irish Free State in 1922. This is clear when he provides Hugh Kennedy, law officer to the provisional government and future Chief Justice of Ireland, with a lengthy opinion on the status of the Anglo–Irish Treaty, in the context of drafting a constitution for the new state. He is conscious of the need to counter claims that the treaty does not go far enough in acknowledging Irish nationhood; and he advises that the first article of the new constitution should explicitly state that the sovereignty of the new state derives from the Irish people. This is ultimately done in the preamble of the Constitution of the Irish Free State (1922).

In 1923, Cox is appointed solicitor to Siemens-Schuckert, the German engineering firm, and helps to negotiate the terms of an agreement with the Irish government for the construction of a hydro-electric station at Ardnacrusha, County Clare. In 1926, the Electricity (Supply) Act is passed, on which he advises. Although he experiences much success in these years, he is very much affected by the death of his friend Kevin O’Higgins, who is shot and dies from his injuries on July 10, 1927. He visits O’Higgins on his deathbed. Arthur Cox & Co. expands rapidly in its early years, and in 1926 Cox and McAreavey purchase new premises at 42–3 St. Stephen’s Green. Four years later he buys his partner out of the firm.

Given his friendships with various members of the original Free State administration, and the amount of work he receives from it, government work for Cox dries up when Fianna Fáil comes to power in 1932. However, the protectionist corporate policies and implementing legislation of the new administration bring new opportunities. The legislation places severe restrictions on foreign companies owning and operating enterprises in Ireland. He develops a reputation for assisting corporate clients to circumnavigate the restrictive laws. Along with his friend James Beddy, chief executive of the Industrial Credit Corporation, he realises that foreign investment is essential to the growth of the Irish economy. He introduces many clients to Beddy, and between them they find ways to assist the firms in investing in various enterprises without breaching the law. During this period, he cements his reputation as the foremost corporate lawyer in Ireland. This is evident when James Marmion Gilmor Carroll appoints him, as one of only two non-family members, to the board of the tobacco manufacturers P. J. Carroll & Co. He plays a key role in transforming the archaic practices of the firm by persuading Carroll to recruit Kevin McCourt as executive director. He and McCourt later convince Carroll to employ his nephew, Don Carroll, who plays a key role in the modernisation and diversification of the firm. In 1960 He and Carroll negotiate the sale of 40 per cent of the company to Rothmans International.

Despite his reputation as a corporate lawyer, Cox also represents non-corporate clients, some of whom include well-known personalities. In 1946, he agrees to assist Hungarian film-maker Gabriel Pascal in attempting to persuade the Irish government to establish an Irish film studio, with a view to filming the plays of George Bernard Shaw. He puts much time and energy into trying to convince the government to provide finance for the venture, but to no avail.

In 1942, Cox is elected to the council of the Incorporated Law Society and becomes president of the society for the 1951-52 term, presiding over the celebrations to commemorate the centenary of the society’s charter of incorporation. In 1951, he also becomes chairman of the company law reform committee, which produces its report, known as “the Cox report,” in 1958. Renowned for his eccentricities, he is almost as well known for his shabby mode of dress as he is for his incisive mind and immense capacity for work. His reputation is also based on a strict adherence to discretion and confidentiality. This is clear in 1948 when his old friend John A. Costello, having been offered the office of Taoiseach in the first inter-party government, turns to him for advice on whether he should accept the post. In 1954, Costello nominates him to the 8th Seanad.

In October 1953, the London firm of Nicholl Manisty & Co. retains him to represent British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill in a libel action brought by Brigadier Eric Dorman O’Gowan, arising from comments in Churchill’s The Second World War: The Hinge of Fate. Churchill also relies on the advice of his friend Sir Hartley Shawcross, leader of the English bar, who makes several visits to Dublin to meet Cox and counsel (including John A. Costello). Cox and Shawcross believe it necessary to reach some form of settlement to avoid Churchill having to appear in court. The action is therefore withdrawn in return for an undertaking that certain corrections will be made.

On August 5, 1940, Cox marries Brigid O’Higgins (née Cole), widow of his friend Kevin O’Higgins. Prior to this he lives with his mother at 26 Merrion Square. He had purchased Carraig Breac in Howth in 1936 and moves there on his marriage. His commitment to his work means that he often works seven days a week and he therefore keeps a flat on Mespil Road, Dublin, from 1940. In 1959, he sells Carraig Breac and moves to 8 Shrewsbury Road, Dublin.

On February 14, 1961, Brigid Cox dies. Soon after, Cox decides to retire from his profession and study for the priesthood. He is intent on becoming a Jesuit and discusses his intentions with the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, who agrees to ordain him after two years of private tuition at the Jesuit theologate at Milltown Park, Dublin. On being accepted by the Jesuits, he makes arrangements to settle his worldly affairs by selling his home on Shrewsbury Road and leaving his practice to the existing partners. He enters Milltown Park on October 15, 1961, and is ordained on December 15, 1963. His impact on Irish life over the previous forty years is evident by the presence at his ordination of John A. Costello, W. T. Cosgrave, Seán T. O’Kelly, and James Dillon, among others.

Following ordination Cox is appointed to serve at the Jesuit mission in Monze, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia). He arrives at Monze in August 1964 and is appointed extraordinary chaplain to the local convent and hospital. On June 8, 1965, he suffers head injuries in a car accident while traveling to Namwada in Zambia. Taken to Choma hospital, he initially appears to be relatively unscathed but collapses and dies on June 11, 1965. He is found to have suffered from a cerebral haemorrhage and a fractured skull. He is buried in the grounds of the Jesuit retreat house in Chikuni, Zambia.

Many of the Cox family papers are housed at the UCD archives.

(From: “Cox, Arthur Conor Joseph” by Shaun Boylan, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


by Leave a comment

Birth of Desmond Connell, Future Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church

Desmond Connell, cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church and former Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland, is born in Phibsborough, Dublin, on March 24, 1926.

Connell is educated at St. Peter’s National School, Phibsborough and the Jesuit Fathers’ second level school, Belvedere College, and studies for the priesthood at Holy Cross College. He later studies Arts at University College Dublin (UCD) and graduates with a BA in 1946 and is awarded an MA the following year. Between 1947 and 1951, he studies theology at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth for a Bachelor of Divinity.

Connell is ordained priest by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid on May 19, 1951. He takes up a teaching post at the Department of Metaphysics at the University College Dublin. He is appointed Professor of General Metaphysics in 1972 and in 1983 becomes the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Sociology. The College’s Department of Metaphysics is abolished after his departure.

Connell is appointed Archbishop of Dublin by the Holy See in early 1988. He is consecrated at St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Dublin on March 6, 1988. He is created Cardinal-Priest by Pope John Paul II at the Consistory in Rome on February 21, 2001, with the Titulus S. Silvestri in Capite. Archbishops of Armagh, who hold the higher title of Primate of All Ireland, are more frequently appointed Cardinal than Archbishops of Dublin. The last Archbishop of Dublin to have been a cardinal is Cardinal Edward MacCabe, who was appointed in 1882. A large Irish contingent from Church and State, along with family and friends of the Cardinal, attend the installation which for the first time takes place at the front of the entrance to St. Peter’s Basilica.

On April 26, 2004, Connell retires as archbishop, handing the diocese to the coadjutor bishop, Diarmuid Martin. All bishops submit their resignation to the Pope on their 75th birthday. Connell’s is accepted shortly after his 78th birthday.

Connell is one of the cardinal electors who participates in the 2005 papal conclave that selects Pope Benedict XVI. Connell is considered quite close to Pope Benedict, both theologically and personally, both having served together on a number of congregations. He attends the 50th International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin in June 2012 and concelebrates at the Statio Orbis Mass in Croke Park.

It is Connell’s failure, when Archbishop of Dublin in 1988–2004, to address adequately the abuse scandals in Dublin that lead the Vatican to assign Archbishop Martin as his replacement in the country’s largest diocese. The Murphy Report finds that Connell had handled the affair “badly” as he was “slow to recognise the seriousness of the situation.” It does praise him for making the archdiocesan records available to the authorities in 2002 and for his 1995 actions in giving the authorities the names of 17 priests who had been accused of abuse, although it says the list is incomplete as complaints were made against at least 28 priests in the archdiocese.

From 1988 Connell also continues to insure his archdiocese against liability from complainants, while claiming to the Murphy Commission that the archdiocese is “on a learning curve” in regard to child abuse. He arranges for compensation payments to be made from a “Stewardship Trust” that is kept secret from the archdiocese’s parishioners until 2003. In 1996 he refuses to help a victim of Paul McGennis and does not pass on what he knows about McGennis to her, or to the police. He apologises for this in 2002.

Desmond Connell dies in Dublin at the age of 90 on February 21, 2017, exactly sixteen years after his creation as Cardinal.