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The Burning of Cork

The burning of Cork by British forces takes place on the night of December 11, 1920, during the Irish War of Independence. It follows an Irish Republican Army (IRA) ambush of a British Auxiliary patrol in the city, which wounds twelve Auxiliaries, one fatally.

IRA intelligence establishes that an Auxiliary patrol usually leaves Victoria Barracks (in the north of the city) each night at 8:00 p.m. and makes its way to the city centre via Dillon’s Cross. On December 11, IRA commander Seán O’Donoghue receives intelligence that two lorries of Auxiliaries will be leaving the barracks that night and travelling with them will be British Army Intelligence Corps Captain James Kelly.

A unit of six IRA volunteers commanded by O’Donoghue take up position between the barracks and Dillon’s Cross, a “couple of hundred yards” from the barracks. Their goal is to destroy the patrol and capture or kill Captain Kelly. Five of the volunteers hide behind a stone wall while one, Michael Kenny, stands across the road dressed as an off-duty British officer. When the lorries near he is to beckon the driver of the first lorry to slow down or stop.

At 8:00 p.m., two lorries, each carrying 13 Auxiliaries, emerge from the barracks. The first lorry slows when the driver spots Kenny and, as it does so, the IRA unit attacks with grenades and revolvers. The official British report says that 12 Auxiliaries are wounded and that one, Spencer Chapman, a former Officer in the 4th Battalion London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers), dies from his wounds shortly after. As the IRA unit makes its escape, some of the Auxiliaries fire on them while others drag the wounded to the nearest cover: O’Sullivan’s pub.

The Auxiliaries break into the pub with weapons drawn. They order everyone to put their hands over their heads to be searched. Backup and an ambulance are sent from the nearby barracks. One witness describes young men being rounded up and forced to lie on the ground. The Auxiliaries drag one of them to the middle of the crossroads, strip him naked and forced him to sing “God Save the King” until he collapses on the road.

Angered by an attack so near their headquarters and seeking retribution for the deaths of their colleagues at Kilmichael, the Auxiliaries gather to wreak their revenge. Charles Schulze, an Auxiliary and a former British Army Captain in the Dorsetshire Regiment during World War I, organizes a group of Auxiliaries to burn the centre of Cork.

At 9:30 p.m., lorries of Auxiliaries and British soldiers leave the barracks and alight at Dillon’s Cross, where they break into houses and herd the occupants onto the street. They then set the houses on fire and stand guard as they are razed to the ground. Those who try to intervene are fired upon and some are badly beaten. Seven buildings are set on fire at the crossroads. When one is found to be owned by Protestants, the Auxiliaries quickly douse the fire.

British forces begin driving around the city firing at random as people rush to get home before the 10:00 p.m. curfew. A group of armed and uniformed Auxiliaries surround a tram at Summerhill, smash its windows, and forced all the passengers out. Some of the passengers, including at least three women, are repeatedly kicked, hit with rifle butts, threatened, and verbally abused. The Auxiliaries then force the passengers to line up against a wall and search them, while continuing the physical and verbal abuse. Some have their money and belongings stolen. One of those attacked is a Catholic priest, who is singled out for sectarian abuse. Another tram is set on fire near Father Mathew‘s statue. Meanwhile, witnesses report seeing a group of 14–18 Black and Tans firing wildly for upwards of 20 minutes on nearby MacCurtain Street.

Soon after, witnesses report groups of armed men on and around St. Patrick’s Street, the city’s main shopping area. Most are uniformed or partially uniformed Auxiliaries and some are British soldiers, while others wear no uniforms. They are seen firing into the air, smashing shop windows and setting buildings on fire. Many report hearing bombs exploding. A group of Auxiliaries are seen throwing a bomb into the ground floor of the Munster Arcade, which houses both shops and flats. It explodes under the residential quarters while people are inside the building. They manage to escape unharmed but are detained by the Auxiliaries.

The Cork City Fire Brigade is informed of the fire at Dillon’s Cross shortly before 10:00 p.m. and are sent to deal with it at once. On finding that Grant’s department store on St. Patrick’s Street is ablaze, they decide to address it first. The fire brigade’s Superintendent, Alfred Hutson, calls Victoria Barracks and asks them to tackle the fire at Dillon’s Cross so that he can focus on the city centre. The barracks take no heed of his request. As he does not the resources to deal with all the fires at once, he has to prioritize the order in which the fires are addressed. He oversees the operation on St. Patrick’s Street and meets The Cork Examiner reporter Alan Ellis. He tells Ellis that “all the fires were being deliberately started by incendiary bombs, and in several cases, he had seen soldiers pouring cans of petrol into buildings and setting them alight.”

British forces hindered the firefighter’s attempts to tackle the blazes by intimidating them and cutting or driving over their hoses. Firemen are also shot at, and at least two are wounded by gunfire. Shortly after 3:00 a.m. on December 12, reporter Alan Ellis comes upon a unit of the fire brigade pinned down by gunfire near City Hall. The firemen say that they are being shot at by Black and Tans who have broken into the building. They also claim to see uniformed men carrying cans of petrol into the building from nearby Union Quay barracks.

At about 4:00 a.m. there is a large explosion and City Hall and the neighbouring Carnegie Library go up in flames, resulting in the loss of many of the city’s public records. According to Ellis, the Black and Tans had detonated high explosives inside City Hall. When more firefighters arrive, British forces shoot at them and refuse them access to water. The last act of arson takes place at about 6:00 a.m. when a group of policemen loot and burn the Murphy Brothers’ clothes shop on Washington Street.

After the ambush at Dillon’s Cross, IRA commander Seán O’Donoghue and volunteer James O’Mahony make their way to the farmhouse of the Delaney family at Dublin Hill on the northern outskirts of the city, not far from the ambush site. Brothers Cornelius and Jeremiah Delaney are members of F Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Cork Brigade IRA. O’Donoghue hides some grenades on the farm and the two men go their separate ways.

At about 2:00 a.m., at least eight armed men enter the house and go upstairs into the brothers’ bedroom. The brothers get up and stand at the bedside and are asked their names. When they answer, the gunmen open fire. Jeremiah is killed outright, and Cornelius dies of his wounds on December 18. Their elderly relative, William Dunlea, is wounded by gunfire. The brothers’ father says the gunmen wore long overcoats and spoke with English accents. It is thought that, while searching the ambush site, Auxiliaries had found a cap belonging to one of the volunteers and had used bloodhounds to follow the scent to the family’s home.

Over 40 business premises and 300 residential properties are destroyed, amounting to over five acres of the city. Over £3 million worth of damage (1920 value) is caused, although the value of property looted by British forces is not clear. Many people become homeless and 2,000 are left jobless. Fatalities include an Auxiliary killed by the IRA, two IRA volunteers killed by Auxiliaries, and a woman who dies from a heart attack when Auxiliaries burst into her house. Several people, including firefighters, are reportedly assaulted or otherwise wounded.

Irish nationalists call for an open and impartial inquiry. In the British House of Commons, Sir Hamar Greenwood, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, refuses the demand for such an inquiry. He denies that British forces had any involvement and suggests the IRA started the fires in the city centre.

Conservative Party leader Bonar Law says, “in the present condition of Ireland, we are much more likely to get an impartial inquiry in a military court than in any other.” Greenwood announces that a military inquiry would be carried out by General Peter Strickland. This results in the “Strickland Report,” but Cork Corporation instructs its employees and other corporate officials to take no part. The report blames members of the Auxiliaries’ K Company, based at Victoria Barracks. The Auxiliaries, it is claimed, burned the city centre in reprisal for the IRA attack at Dillon’s Cross. The British Government refuses to publish the report.

(Pictured: Workers clearing rubble on St. Patrick’s Street in Cork after the fires)


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Death of Patrick Mayhew, British Barrister, Politician & Northern Ireland Secretary

Patrick Barnabas Burke Mayhew, Baron Mayhew of Twysden, PC, QC, DL, British barrister, politician and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who serves during a critical period in the Northern Ireland peace process, dies at his home in Kent, England, on June 25, 2016. He is a key figure in the December 1993 Downing Street Declaration which leads to the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire on August 31, 1994

Mayhew is born on September 11, 1929. His father, George Mayhew, is a decorated army officer turned oil executive. His mother, Sheila Roche, descendant of members of the Anglo-Irish Protestant ascendancy, is a relative of James Roche, 3rd Baron Fermoy, an Irish National Federation MP for East Kerry. Through his father, Mayhew is descended from the Victorian social commentator Henry Mayhew. He is educated at Tonbridge School, an all boys public school in Tonbridge, Kent.

Mayhew then serves as an officer in the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards, studies law at Balliol College, Oxford, and is president of the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA) and of the Oxford Union. He is called to the Bar by the Middle Temple in 1955.

In 1963, Mayhew marries The Rev. Jean Gurney, and they have four sons.

Mayhew contests Dulwich at the 1970 United Kingdom general election, but the incumbent Labour Party member, Samuel Silkin, beats him by 895 votes. He is Member of Parliament (MP) for Tunbridge Wells from its creation at the February 1974 United Kingdom general election, standing down at the 1997 United Kingdom general election.

Mayhew is Under Secretary of Employment from 1979 to 1981, then Minister of State at the Home Office from 1981 to 1983. After this, he serves as Solicitor General for England and Wales from 1983 to 1987, and then Attorney General for England and Wales and simultaneously Attorney General for Northern Ireland from 1987 to 1992.

Mayhew is Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from 1992 to 1997, the longest anyone has served in this office.

Mayhew is one of only five Ministers (Tony Newton, Kenneth Clarke, Malcolm Rifkind and Lynda Chalker are the others) to serve throughout the whole 18 years of the premiership of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. This represents the longest uninterrupted Ministerial service in Britain since Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, in the early 19th century.

Mayhew is knighted in 1983. On June 1997, he is given a life peerage as Baron Mayhew of Twysden, of Kilndown in the County of Kent. He retires from the House of Lords on June 1, 2015.

Mayhew suffers from cancer and Parkinson’s disease in his later years. He dies at the age of 86 on June 25, 2016, in his home in Kent.

Mayhew’s son, The Honourable Henry Mayhew, appears in the fourth episode of the series The Secret History Of Our Streets, discussing life in the Portland Road, Notting Hill, London. Another son, Tristram, co-founds the outdoor adventure company Go Ape. His son Jerome is the Conservative Party MP for the constituency of Broadland in Norfolk since December 2019.


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Mary Lou McDonald Ratified as Leader of Sinn Féin

Mary Lou McDonald is ratified as the new president of Sinn Féin at a special party Ardfheis on February 10, 2018. Approximately 2,000 party delegates gather for the meeting in Dublin. After almost 35 years, Gerry Adams officially steps down as party leader, a role he has held since November 1983.

McDonald takes the helm with a sweeping speech that touches on everything from abortion to Brexit and promises a united Ireland “in our time.”

McDonald, 48, is the first woman to lead the party, and the first Sinn Féin leader with no direct connection to Ireland’s period of violence known as the Troubles. “We must only agree that the past is never again repeated,” she says. “On other things, we can agree to disagree. The poet Maya Angelou put it well: ‘History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived. But if faced with courage, need not be lived again.’”

McDonald takes over for Adams, a divisive politician who was the face of the Irish republican movement as it shifted from violence to peace. The end of Adams’ tenure marks a new era for the party, which wants to unite the United Kingdom’s Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland to the south.

Adams, who announced in November 2017 he was stepping down after almost 35 years, was the key figure in the peace process that saw the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the formation of a power sharing government between Northern Ireland’s pro-British and republican factions. But many believe Sinn Féin’s popularity among voters has been hindered by the presence of leaders linked to the Troubles, which killed over 3,600 people.

McDonald immediately puts her own stamp on the future, trying to infuse new energy into the movement that has lawmakers on both sides of the Irish border. But she also focuses on Sinn Féin’s founding principle: a united Ireland. “We are the generation of republicans who will see the rising of the moon,” she says. “Sinn Féin in government, both North and South. Irish unity in our time.”

McDonald also lays out her positions on the key issues of the day.

On the United Kingdom’s upcoming departure from the European Union, or Brexit, she says Sinn Féin will not accept any deal that reinstates border controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Brexit represents a threat to the prosperity of Ireland as a whole.

“Ireland will not be the collateral damage in the political games and antics of Tories in London,” she says, referring to the Conservative Party of British Prime Minister Theresa May.

McDonald also says the party will campaign for women’s right to an abortion in Ireland’s upcoming referendum on the issue and says she is committed to reaching an agreement that will restore Northern Ireland’s power sharing government on the basis of “respect and integrity for all.”

Northern Ireland’s last government collapsed more than a year earlier amid a corruption scandal.

(From: “Mary Lou McDonald takes over as Sinn Féin party leader” by Danica Kirka, AP News, apnews.com, February 10, 2018)


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Birth of William Smith O’Brien, Young Ireland Leader

William Smith O’Brien, Irish nationalist Member of Parliament (MP) and leader of the Young Ireland movement, is born in Dromoland, Newmarket-on-Fergus, County Clare, on October 17, 1803.

O’Brien is the second son of Sir Edward O’Brien, 4th Baronet, of Dromoland Castle. His mother is Charlotte Smith, whose father owns a property called Cahirmoyle in County Limerick. He takes the additional surname Smith, his mother’s maiden name, upon inheriting the property. He lives at Cahermoyle House, a mile from Ardagh, County Limerick. He is a descendant of the eleventh century Ard Rí (High King of Ireland), Brian Boru. He receives an upper-class English education at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge. Subsequently, he studies law at King’s Inns in Dublin and Lincoln’s Inn in London.

From April 1828 to 1831 O’Brien is Conservative MP for Ennis. He becomes MP for Limerick County in 1835, holding his seat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom until 1849.

Although a Protestant country-gentleman, O’Brien supports Catholic emancipation while remaining a supporter of British-Irish union. In 1843, in protest against the imprisonment of Daniel O’Connell, he joins O’Connell’s anti-union Repeal Association.

Three years later, O’Brien withdraws the Young Irelanders from the association. In January 1847, with Thomas Francis Meagher, he founds the Irish Confederation, although he continues to preach reconciliation until O’Connell’s death in May 1847. He is active in seeking relief from the hardships of the famine. In March 1848, he speaks out in favour of a National Guard and tries to incite a national rebellion. He is tried for sedition on May 15, 1848 but is not convicted.

On July 29, 1848, O’Brien and other Young Irelanders lead landlords and tenants in a rising in three counties, with an almost bloodless battle against police at Ballingarry, County Tipperary. In O’Brien’s subsequent trial, the jury finds him guilty of high treason. He is sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Petitions for clemency are signed by 70,000 people in Ireland and 10,000 people in England. In Dublin on June 5, 1849, the sentences of O’Brien and other members of the Irish Confederation are commuted to transportation for life to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania in present-day Australia).

O’Brien attempts to escape from Maria Island off Tasmania, but is betrayed by the captain of the schooner hired for the escape. He is sent to Port Arthur where he meets up with John Mitchel.

O’Brien is a founding member of the Ossianic Society, which is founded in Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day 1853, whose aim is to further the interests of the Irish language and to publish and translate literature relating to the Fianna. He writes to his son Edward from Van Diemen’s Land, urging him to learn the Irish language. He himself studies the language and uses an Irish-language Bible, and presents to the Royal Irish Academy Irish-language manuscripts he has collected.

In 1854, after five years in Tasmania, O’Brien is released on the condition he never returns to Ireland. He settles in Brussels. In May 1856, he is granted an unconditional pardon and returns to Ireland that July. He contributes to The Nation newspaper, but plays no further part in politics.

In 1864 he visits England and Wales, with the view of rallying his failing health, but no improvement takes place and he dies in Bangor, Gwynedd, Wales on June 18, 1864.

A statue of William Smith O’Brien stands in O’Connell Street, Dublin. Sculpted in Portland limestone, it is designed by Thomas Farrell and erected in D’Olier Street, Dublin, in 1870. It is moved to its present position in 1929.

(Pictured: Portrait of William Smith O’Brien by George Francis Mulvany, National Gallery of Ireland)


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Birth of Kevin Myers, Journalist & Writer

Kevin Myers, English-born Irish journalist and writer, is born in Leicester, England on March 30, 1947. He has contributed to the Irish Independent, the Irish edition of The Sunday Times, and The Irish Times‘s column An Irishman’s Diary. He is known for his controversial views on a number of topics, including single mothers, aid for Africa, and the Holocaust.

Myers grows up in England. His father, an Irish GP, dies when he is 15 and away at Ratcliffe College, a Catholic boarding school. His father’s early death creates financial difficulties, though he manages to stay at the school with the help of both the school and the Local Education Authority (LEA). He moves to Ireland to go to university, and graduates from University College Dublin (UCD) in 1969.

Myers subsequently works as a journalist for Irish broadcaster RTÉ, and reports from Northern Ireland during the height of the Troubles. He later works for three of Ireland’s major newspapers, The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, and the Irish edition of The Sunday Times. In 2000, a collection of his An Irishman’s Diary columns is published, with a second volume following in 2007. He is also a presenter of the Challenging Times television quiz show on RTÉ during the 1990s.

In 2001, Myers publishes Banks of Green Willow, a novel, which is met with negative reviews. In 2006, he publishes Watching the Door, about his time as a journalist in Northern Ireland during the 1970s. The book receives positive reviews in The Times, The Guardian, and the New Statesman, while The Independent publishes a more mixed review that wonders whether there is “an element of hyperbole” in Myers’ account.

Myers is a regular contributor to radio programmes on News Talk 106, particularly Lunchtime with Eamon Keane and The Right Hook. He regularly appears on The Last Word on Today FM. He is also a member of the Film Classification Appeals Board, formerly known as the Censorship Board.

Myers is a fervent critic of physical-force Irish republicanism. In 2008, he writes a column condemning the anniversary commemorations of the 1916 Easter Rising. He describes the Larne gun-running by Ulster Volunteers in 1914 as “high treason, done in collaboration with senior figures in the British army and the Conservative Party.” He has also written that it is a “myth” to say, when discussing Irish republicanism and Ulster loyalism, that “one side is as bad as the other.”

In 2005, Myers attracts considerable criticism for his column, An Irishman’s Diary, in which he refers to children of unmarried mothers as “bastards.” Former Minister of State Nuala Fennell describes the column as “particularly sad.” She says the word “bastard” is an example of pejorative language that is totally unacceptable. Myers issues an unconditional apology two days later. The Irish Times editor, Geraldine Kennedy, also apologises for having agreed to publish the article.

In July 2008, Myers writes an article arguing that providing aid to Africa only results in increasing its population, and its problems. This produces strong reactions, with the Immigrant Council of Ireland making an official complaint to the Garda Síochána alleging incitement to hatred. Hans Zomer of Dóchas, an association of NGOs, and another complainant, take a complaint to the Press Council on the grounds that it breaches four principles of the Council’s Code of Practice: accuracy, fairness and honesty, respect for rights, and incitement to hatred.

At the end of July 2017, Myers contributes an article entitled “Sorry, ladies – equal pay has to be earned” to the Irish edition of The Sunday Times about the BBC gender-pay-gap controversy. He further alleges that Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz are higher paid than other female presenters because they are Jewish. The editor of the Irish edition, Frank Fitzgibbon, issues a statement saying in part “This newspaper abhors anti-Semitism and did not intend to cause offence to Jewish people.” Martin Ivens, editor of The Sunday Times, says the article should not have been published. Ivens and Fitzgibbon apologise for publishing it. After complaints from readers and the Campaign Against Antisemitism, the article is removed from the website. The newspaper announces that Myers will not write for The Sunday Times again. Myers is defended by the chair of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, Maurice Cohen, who states, “Branding Kevin Myers as either an antisemite or a Holocaust denier is an absolute distortion of the facts.”

Myers is married to Rachel Nolan and lives in County Kildare. He is the brother-in-law of TV presenter, producer and UK Big Brother housemate Anna Nolan.


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Birth of Walter Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne

Walter Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne, soldier, politician, traveler, and anthropologist, is born on March 29, 1880, in Dublin.

Guinness is the third son of Edward Cecil Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh, and Adelaide Maria Guinness, a cousin. He is educated at Eton College, where he displays a keen interest in the sciences, especially biology, and considerable athletic prowess. Forsaking an intention to enter the University of Oxford, he joins the Suffolk Yeomanry regiment of the British Army as a second lieutenant on November 15, 1899, and serves in the Second Boer War (1899–1902), where he is wounded and mentioned in dispatches.

On return from South Africa Guinness enters politics, unsuccessfully contesting Stowmarket in the 1906 United Kingdom general election as a Conservative Party candidate. In the following year he becomes MP for Bury St. Edmunds, holding the seat until 1931. He is also elected as a member of the London County Council (1907–10). He interrupts his career yet again at the outbreak of World War I and, rejoining the Suffolk Yeomanry, serves in Gallipoli and Egypt. By the end of the war he is a lieutenant colonel, three times mentioned in dispatches, with the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in 1917 and a bar to it in 1918.

In the immediate postwar years Guinness devotes himself to his political career, and his work is soon rewarded with important appointments: Under-Secretary of State for War (1922) and Financial Secretary to the Treasury (1923). He serves for a second time at the Treasury (1924–5) under Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sworn of the Privy Council in 1924, he enters the cabinet in November 1925 as Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries. After the defeat of the Conservatives in the 1929 United Kingdom general election, he gradually withdraws from the political scene, retiring from his parliamentary seat in 1931. He is raised to the peerage in 1932 as Baron Moyne of Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk.

Always a keen traveler, during the following years Guinness makes several expeditions in search of biological specimens and archaeological material. He travels twice to New Guinea and also goes to Greenland and the Bay Islands near Honduras. These voyages are vividly described in his books Walkabout (1936) and Atlantic circle (1938). He still maintains a political profile, however, serving in several different capacities including financial commissioner to Kenya (1932) and chairman of the West India Royal Commission (1938–9). At the outbreak of World War II, he works as chairman of the Polish Relief Fund before being appointed as Joint Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture on the formation of the Churchill government (1940). In 1941 he becomes Secretary of State for the Colonies and Leader of the House of Lords. Appointed Deputy Resident Minister of State in Cairo (August 1942), he becomes Minister-Resident for the Middle East in January 1944. On November 6, 1944, he is assassinated in Cairo by members of the ‘Stern Gang’, the Jewish terrorist group based in Palestine.

Guinness marries (1903) Lady Evelyn Hilda Stuart Erskine, daughter of the 14th Earl of Buchan. They have two sons and one daughter.

(Pictured: Walter Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne of Bury St. Edmunds, bromide print, 1929, by Walter Stoneman, National Portrait Gallery)


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Death of M. E. Francis, Novelist & Playwright

Mary Elizabeth Blundell (née Sweetman), prolific Irish novelist and playwright who writes under the pen name M. E. Francis, dies on March 9, 1930. She is described as the best-known female novelist of the day.

Blundell is born in 1859 in Killiney Park, County Dublin to Margaret and Michael James Sweetman. The family moves to Brussels in 1873 and she spends her summers in Switzerland. Her family is quite artistic. Her sisters are poet Elinor Sweetman and writer Agnes Castle (aka Mrs. Egerton Castle). Her uncle is the novelist, William Sweetman. She marries her husband, Francis Blundell, on November 18, 1879, and moves to Little Crosby, Lancashire, North West England, where his family has been notable Catholics since the 16th century. They have three children: Francis Nicholas Blundell, Conservative politician, and writers Margaret Elizabeth Clementina Mary Blundell and Agnes Mary Frances Blundell.

Blundell’s husband dies after only five years of marriage. She had written her first story, True Joy, when she was just eight years old and has a publication in the Irish Monthly the day of her wedding. She takes up writing professionally after her husband’s death. In later life she writes in collaboration with her daughters. She later retires to Dorset.

The Ireland of her youth, the Lancashire of her married life, and the Dorset of her retirement provide backgrounds for many of her volumes of fiction.


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Birth of Hugh Holmes, MP & Judge of the Court of Appeal in Ireland

Hugh Holmes QC, an Irish Conservative Party, then after 1886 a Unionist Member of Parliament (MP) in the Parliament of the United Kingdom and subsequently a Judge of the High Court and Court of Appeal in Ireland, is born in Dungannon, County Tyrone, on February 17, 1840.

Holmes is the son of William Holmes of Dungannon and Anne Maxwell. He attends the Royal School Dungannon and Trinity College, Dublin. He is called to the English bar in 1864 and to the Bar of Ireland in 1865.

Holmes becomes a Queen’s Counsel (QC) in 1877. He is appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland on December 14, 1878, and serves until the Conservative government is defeated in 1880. He becomes Attorney-General for Ireland in 1885–1886 and 1886–1887. He is made a member of the Privy Council of Ireland on July 2, 1885. He is a MP for Dublin University from 1885 to 1887.

Holmes resigns from the House of Commons when he is appointed a Judge in 1887. He is a Justice of the Common Pleas division of the High Court of Justice in Ireland until 1888 when he becomes a Justice of the Queen’s Bench division. He is promoted to be a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1897. Ill health causes his retirement in 1914.

Holmes appears to be a stern judge, who does not suffer fools gladly and often imposes exceptionally severe sentences in criminal cases. Although the story is often thought to be apocryphal, Maurice Healy maintains that Holmes did once sentence a man of great age to 15 years in prison, and when the prisoner pleaded that he could not do 15 years, replied “Do as much of it as you can.” His judgments do however display some good humour and humanity, and the sentences he imposes often turned out to be less severe in practice than those he announces in Court.

The quality of his judgments is very high and Holmes, together with Christopher Palles and Gerald FitzGibbon, is credited with earning for the Irish Court of Appeal its reputation as perhaps the strongest tribunal in Irish legal history. His retirement, followed by that of Palles (FitzGibbon had died in 1909), causes a loss of expertise in the Court of Appeal from which its reputation never recovers. Among his more celebrated remarks is that the Irish “have too much of a sense of humour to dance around a maypole.” His judgment in The SS Gairloch remains the authoritative statement in Irish law on the circumstances in which an appellate court can overturn findings of fact made by the trial judge.

In 1869 Holmes marries Olivia Moule, daughter of J.W. Moule of Sneads Green House, Elmley Lovett, Worcestershire. She dies in 1901. Their children include Hugh junior, Sir Valentine Holmes KC (1888-1956), who like his father is a very successful barrister and a noted expert on the law of libel, Violet (dies in 1966), who married Sir Denis Henry, 1st Baronet, the first Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, Elizabeth, who marries the politician and academic Harold Lawson Murphy, author of a well-known History of Trinity College Dublin, and Alice (dies in 1942), who marries the politician and judge Edward Sullivan Murphy, Attorney General for Northern Ireland and Lord Justice of Appeal of Northern Ireland.

Holmes dies on April 19, 1916, five days before the beginning of the Easter Rising.


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Birth of British Labour Politician Kevin McNamara

Joseph Kevin McNamara KSG, British Labour Party politician who serves as a Member of Parliament (MP) for almost 40 years, is born on September 5, 1934.

McNamara is educated by the Irish Christian Brothers at St. Mary’s College, Crosby and he studies for an LLB at the University of Hull. He is head of department in History at St. Mary’s Grammar School (now called St. Mary’s College) in Kingston upon Hull from 1958–64 and a law lecturer at Hull College of Commerce from 1964–66.

After unsuccessfully contesting Bridlington in 1964, McNamara is elected to the House of Commons as Member of Parliament (MP) for Kingston upon Hull North, in a by-election in January 1966 following the death of sitting Labour MP Henry Solomons. Labour’s hold of a former marginal seat with a significantly increased majority is widely considered to have helped to convince Prime Minister Harold Wilson to call the 1966 election to seek a larger majority.

McNamara retains his seat at the 1966 general election, and at subsequent elections until the constituency is abolished for the February 1974 general election, when he transfers to the new Kingston upon Hull Central constituency. When that constituency is abolished for the 1983 election, he is re-elected for the re-created Kingston upon Hull North constituency.

McNamara campaigns in his last years in parliament on many issues, protesting against the Act of Succession which prohibits a Roman Catholic or the spouse of a Roman Catholic to be the British monarch. He steps down at the 2005 general election, with the local Constituency Labour Party choosing Diana Johnson to stand in his place.

During the 2005 general election campaign McNamara claims some of the policies regarding illegal travelers’ sites of the leader of the Conservative Party, Michael Howard, had a “whiff of the gas chambers” about them. Howard’s grandmother died at Auschwitz.

McNamara is known throughout his parliamentary career as a supporter of Irish nationalism and favours a United Ireland. After entering parliament, he soon becomes interested in reports of discrimination against the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland and supports the Campaign for Democracy in Ulster (CDU). He serves as a frontbench spokesman for the Labour Party, including Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland under Neil Kinnock, 1987–94, an appointment that is widely criticised by Unionists.

After Tony Blair becomes Labour leader, he replaces McNamara as Northern Ireland spokesman with Mo Mowlam. In 1997, he helps persuade the newly elected Labour government to donate £5,000 (thereby matching the contribution of the Irish government) for the erection of a memorial in Liverpool to the victims of the Great Irish Famine. He also supports Republicanism in the United Kingdom and joins the All-Party Parliamentary Republic Group.

McNamara is a Roman Catholic and a Knight of the Pontifical Order of Saint Gregory the Great. He is married to Nora McNamara, and is the father of four sons and a daughter.

In 2006, McNamara receives the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Hull in recognition of his long service in politics. He graduates with a Ph.D from the University of Liverpool in 2007 having completed a thesis on the MacBride Principles at the Institute of Irish Studies, where he gives the 2008 John Kennedy Lecture in Irish Studies, Perhaps It Will All Go Away – an Examination of the British Response to the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland.

In 2017, McNamara is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer while on holiday in Spain. He dies on August 6, 2017 at Formby, England, at the age of 82.


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Birth of Sir Joseph Larmor, Physicist & Mathematician

Sir Joseph Larmor FRS FRSE, Irish and British physicist and mathematician who makes breakthroughs in the understanding of electricity, dynamics, thermodynamics, and the electron theory of matter, is born in Magheragall, County Antrim, on July 11, 1857. His most influential work is Aether and Matter, a theoretical physics book published in 1900.

Larmor is the son of Hugh Larmor, a Belfast shopkeeper and his wife, Anna Wright. The family moves to Belfast around 1860, and he is educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, and then studies mathematics and experimental science at Queen’s College, Belfast, where one of his teachers is John Purser. He obtains his BA in 1874 and MA in 1875. He subsequently studies at St. John’s College, Cambridge where in 1880 he is Senior Wrangler and Smith’s Prizeman and obtains his MA in 1883. After teaching physics for a few years at Queen’s College, Galway, he accepts a lectureship in mathematics at Cambridge in 1885. In 1892 he is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, and he serves as one of the Secretaries of the society. He is made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1910.

In 1903 Larmor is appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, a post he retains until his retirement in 1932. He never marries. He is knighted by King Edward VII in 1909.

Motivated by his strong opposition to Home Rule for Ireland, in February 1911 Larmor runs for and is elected as Member of Parliament for Cambridge University (UK Parliament constituency) with the Conservative Party. He remains in parliament until the 1922 general election, at which point the Irish question has been settled. Upon his retirement from Cambridge in 1932 he moves back to County Down in Northern Ireland.

Larmor receives the honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD) from the University of Glasgow in June 1901. He is awarded the Poncelet Prize for 1918 by the French Academy of Sciences. He is a Plenary Speaker in 1920 at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) at Strasbourg and an Invited Speaker at the ICM in 1924 in Toronto and at the ICM in 1928 in Bologna.

Larmor dies in Holywood, County Down, Northern Ireland, on May 19, 1942.