seamus dubhghaill

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

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Death of Thomas Eyre, Surveyor General of Ireland

Thomas Eyre, an Irish military engineer, dies in Dublin on February 22, 1772, while attending a session of the Irish House of Commons from an apoplectic fit.

Eyre is born around 1720, the second son of Colonel Samuel Eyre of Eyreville, County Galway, a descendant of Colonel John Eyre, who accompanies General Ludlow to Ireland in 1651 and acquires large estates in County Galway, including the Manor of Eyrecourt.

Eyre is that rare man whose military and engineering training occurs entirely in the Americas before he assumes the significant office of Surveyor General of Ireland in 1752. In 1738, he joins the regiment of James Oglethorpe, the founder of the Province of Georgia, and sails to the colony. As a cadet in Oglethorpe’s Regiment, he is sent to the colony’s interior as an agent to the Cherokee Indians. He rises from the rank of cadet to be sub-engineer for Georgia and the Province of South Carolina and in 1740 he is commissioned an ensign. He learns engineering from Major William Cook, the Regiment’s Engineer, and he marries Cook’s daughter Anne, who has accompanied her father to Georgia. The date of the wedding is not documented, but occurs by 1743, by which date both Eyre and Cook have returned to London. In the last two years of his tour of duty, Eyre serves also as the Sub-engineer for South Carolina and Georgia.

In 1744, Eyre is commissioned a lieutenant and joins Trelawney’s Regiment of Foot, headed by Edward Trelawney, Governor of Jamaica. He serves in Jamaica and at Roatán (Rattan) and is in charge of Roatán’s defences until 1748, when the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ends the War of the Austrian Succession and returns the island to Spain. He is promoted to captain in 1748. For the four years after his departure from Roatán and before his resignation from Trelawney’s Regiment, little is known about his activities until he retires from active duty in 1752.

On August 31, 1752, Eyre is appointed Surveyor General of Ireland, having purchased the office from Arthur Jones-Nevill. Joseph Jarratt works as his deputy in this role. He undertakes works at the Royal Barracks in Dublin, but the condition of the barracks is criticised by the Commissioners of the Ordnance for Ireland. As Surveyor General, he is also involved in harbour works at Dún Laoghaire, and is responsible for the rebuilding of the State Apartments at Dublin Castle. In 1763, the office of Surveyor General is abolished, and he is transferred to the new post of Chief Engineer of the Ordnance.

Eyre resigns his commission in 1766 and becomes member of the Irish House of Commons for Thomastown (1761-68) and Fore (1768-1772). He dies on February 22, 1772, from an apoplectic fit brought on by the sudden death of a much loved daughter, at Parliament House, Dublin, while attending a session of the House.


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Death of Richard Robert Madden, Abolitionist & United Irishmen Historian

Richard Robert Madden, Irish doctor, writer, abolitionist and historian of the United Irishmen, dies at his home in Booterstown, a coastal suburb of Dublin, on February 5, 1886. He takes an active role in trying to impose anti-slavery rules in Jamaica on behalf of the British government.

Madden is born at Wormwood Gate, Dublin, on August 22, 1798, to Edward Madden, a silk manufacturer, and his wife Elizabeth (née Corey). His father marries twice and fathers twenty-one children.

Madden attends private schools and is found a medical apprenticeship in Athboy, County Meath. He studies medicine in Paris, Italy, and St. George’s Hospital, London. While in Naples he becomes acquainted with Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, and her circle. From 1824 to 1827 he is in the Levant as a journalist and later publishes accounts of his travels.

In 1828, Madden marries Harriet Elmslie, daughter of John Elmslie of Jamaica, a slave-owner. He then practises medicine in Mayfair, London, for the next five years.

Madden becomes a recruit to the abolitionist cause. The transatlantic slave trade has been illegal in the British Empire since 1807, but slavery itself remains legal.

From 1833, Madden is employed in the British civil service, first as a justice of the peace in Jamaica, where he is one of six Special Magistrates sent to oversee the eventual liberation of Jamaica’s slave population, according to the terms of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. From 1835 he is Superintendent of the freed Africans in Havana, Cuba. In 1839 he leaves Cuba for New York, where he provides important evidence for the defense of the former slaves who had taken over the slave ship La Amistad.

In 1840 Madden becomes Her Majesty’s Special Commissioner of Inquiry into the British Settlements on the West Coast of Africa. His task is to investigate how the slave trade is continuing to operate on the west coast of Africa, despite the shipping of African slaves across the Atlantic Ocean now being illegal. He finds that London-based merchants (including Whig MP Matthew Forster) are actively helping the slave traders, and that crudely disguised forms of slavery exist in all the coast settlements. He particularly condemns the actions of George Maclean, the Governor of Gold Coast.

In 1847 Madden becomes the Colonial Secretary of Western Australia and arrives in the colony in 1848. After receiving news of their oldest son’s death back in Ireland, he and Harriet return to Dublin in 1849. In 1850 he is named secretary of the Office for Loan Funds in Dublin.

Madden also campaigns against slavery in Cuba, speaking to the General Anti-Slavery Convention in London on the topic of slavery in Cuba.

Madden dies at his home in Booterstown, just south of Dublin, on February 5, 1886, and is interred in Donnybrook Cemetery.

Besides several travel diaries (Travels in Turkey, Egypt etc. in 1824–27, 1829, and others (1833)), his works include the historically significant book The United Irishmen, their lives and times (1842-1860, 11 Vols.), which contains numerous details on the Irish Rebellion of 1798, including testimonies collected from veteran rebels and from family members of deceased United Irishmen.