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Tag Archives: Benefactor


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Birth of Captain Otway Cuffe

Captain Otway Cuffe, benefactor, Gaelic revivalist, twice mayor of Kilkenny and a founder of businesses and organisations to profit the local people, is born in London on January 11, 1853.

Cuffe is born the Honourable Otway Frederick Seymour Cuffe to John Cuffe, 3rd Earl of Desart, and Lady Elizabeth Lucy Campbell. He has an older sister and two older brothers. After the death of his eldest brother William Ulick, 4th Earl of Desart, his seecond eldest brother, Hamilton, becomes the 5th Earl of Desart. As the 5th Earl has no male heirs himself, Cuffe is nominally his heir. However, as he also dies without heirs, the line becomes extinct upon the death of the 5th Earl.

Cuffe marries Elizabeth St. Aubyn on July 22, 1891. She is the daughter of John St. Aubyn, 1st Baron St. Levan of St. Michael’s Mount, Cornwall, England, and Lady Elizabeth Clementina Townshend. When he becomes the heir to the Kilkenny-based title he moves to Ireland and lives nearby the main house, in Sheestown Lodge, Kilkenny, County Kilkenny. He has been in the British Army, serving as aide-de-camp to Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, in 1880–81. He is Groom of the Privy Chamber to Queen Victoria from 1893 until her death in 1901 and Gentleman Usher to both King Edward VII from 1901 until his death in 1910 and King George V until 1911. His rank in the army is Captain in the Rifle Brigade.

Dedicated to ensuring a strong Irish identity in the area, Cuffe works with his sister-in-law, Ellen Cuffe, Countess of Desart. He joins Conradh na Gaeilge soon after his arrival in Kilkenny. He is elected president of its Kilkenny branch in 1904 and remains so until his death. He is replaced by Lady Desart. Together they open the theatre in Kilkenny in 1902 and he is the first President of the Kilkenny Drama Club. He also performs on stage.

Cuffe is first elected Mayor of Kilkenny in 1907 and again in 1908. With Lady Desart, he builds the Kilkenny Woollen Mills, Desart Hall, the Talbot’s Inch model village and the Kilkenny Woodworkers factory. He lays the foundation stone for Kilkenny’s Carnegie library. He is also President of the Irish Industrial Association.

Cuffe is a friend of William Morris whom he had met on a trip to Iceland. He believes in the Arts and Crafts movement and tries to implement it in the projects which he drives. He is also a friend and supporter of Standish James O’Grady and helps him found the weekly radical conservative paper The All-Ireland Review and runs it between 1900 and 1906.

In 1911, Cuffe becomes ill and is forced to move to warmer climates until he recovers. He decides to go to the south of Europe but then a visit to Australia seems appropriate. However, on the journey there he contracts pneumonia and dies at Fremantle in Western Australia on January 3, 1912. He is buried at Perth, carried to his grave by Kilkenny hurlers. The Kilkenny Moderator calls his death “a thunderbolt to the people of Kilkenny.” He is remembered as a visionary who made a permanent impact on the physical landscape of Kilkenny.


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Death of Mary McShain, Landowner & Benefactor

Mary McShain, Irish American landowner and benefactor, dies at Killarney House in Killarney, County Kerry on December 2, 1998.

McShain is born Mary Horstmann in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on March 27, 1907. Her parents are Ignatius J. Horstmann and his wife Pauline. She is the fifth of six children. She attends St. Leonard’s Academy in Philadelphia and Rosemont College in Rosemont, Pennsylvania. In 1927 she marries John McShain, building contractor who works on the reconstruction of the White House and the building of the Jefferson Memorial, the Pentagon, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. They are both interested in horse breeding and racing, establishing a stable of racehorses in 1952. They expand this stable to Ireland in 1955, hiring first Vincent O’Brien and then John Oxx as trainers. Their greatest success is the horse Ballymoss.

The McShains move to Ireland in 1960, buying Killarney House in County Kerry and a large portion of the Kenmare estate, which had been owned by the Earls of Kenmare since the 16th century. They gift Innisfallen Island and the ruins of an abbey to the Irish state in 1973, bestowing guardianship of Ross Island and its castle to the state. For a nominal fee, they turn over the entire estate to the state in 1979, stipulating a life tenancy of the house and some land, with the rest of the land being incorporated into Killarney National Park.

McShain is a Dame of Malta and a Lady of the Grand Cross of the Holy Sepulchre. She receives the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice cross in 1976. She is awarded two honorary doctorates in 1977, one from La Salle University in Philadelphia and one from her alma mater, Rosemont College.

McShain dies at Killarney House on December 2, 1998. She is buried beside her husband in Holy Cross Cemetery, Philadelphia. Her daughter, Pauline McShain, is a sister of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus and dies on March 8, 2019 due to complications of pneumonia.

(Pictured: John and Mary McShain with Lakes of Killarney in the background sometime in the late 1950s)