seamus dubhghaill

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Birth of Margaret Pearse, Politician & Mother of Patrick Pearse

Margaret Pearse (née Brady), Irish politician and mother of Patrick and Willie Pearse, who are both executed after the 1916 Easter Rising, is born in Dublin on February 12, 1857.

Margaret Brady is born to Patrick Brady, a coal merchant whose family are from County Meath, and Brigid Brady (née Savage) of Oldtown, Dublin. She is baptised in St. Lawrence O’Toole’s parish. At the time, her parents are living at 1 Clarence Street. She has three known siblings and is educated by the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul. She is employed as a stationery shop assistant where she meets her future husband, James Pearse.

In 1877, she marries James Pearse at St. Agatha’s Church, off the North Strand. James is born in Bloomsbury, Middlesex, on December 8, 1839, and later lives in Birmingham. He comes to Ireland to work as a sculptor in the late 1850s with his first wife, Emily Susanna Fox, who dies in 1876. They have four children together. The first three children are Margaret Mary (born on August 4, 1878), Patrick (born on November 10, 1879) and William (born on November 15, 1881). All three children are born while the family lives in 27 Great Brunswick Street. Their youngest child, Mary Brigid, is born on September 29, 1888, by which time the family has moved to Newbridge Avenue, Sandymount. Pearse’s aunt, Margaret Brady, an Irish speaker, is a frequent visitor to the family home and encourages the children’s interest in the Irish language and culture. Her husband dies in 1900. Pearse does not permit her children to play with other children, however, she supports her children in all their aspirations. She has a very strong relationship and consequent effect on her eldest son, Patrick, who founds St. Enda’s School in 1908 and is the headmaster up until the time of his execution. She takes over the responsibility of Housekeeper at the school.

Pearse supports her sons’ political beliefs. After their execution, she wishes to maintain their legacy and becomes involved in political life. She joins Sinn Féin after the Rising and gives support and endorsement to candidates during the 1918 Westminster election. During the 1920 Poor Law Elections for the Rathmines area of Dublin, she stands as a Sinn Féin candidate and is elected on the first count. She is elected to Dáil Éireann as a Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin County constituency at the 1921 Irish elections.

Pearse strongly opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty, as do all the female TDs. She states during the Treaty debate that:

“I rise to support the motion of our President for the rejection of the Treaty. My reasons for doing so are various, but my first reason for doing so I would like to explain here today is my son’s account. It has been said here on several occasions that Patrick Pearse would have accepted this Treaty. I deny it. As his mother I deny it, and on his account, I will not accept it.”

Later she continues in a similar vein:

“Always we had to be on the alert. But even the Black and Tans alone would not frighten me as much as if I accepted this Treaty; because I feel in my heart – and I would not say it only I feel it – that the ghosts of my sons would haunt me.”

Following the ratification of the Treaty Pearse leaves the Dáil with the other anti-Treaty deputies. She is defeated at the 1922 Irish general election. She supports those who oppose the Treaty during the Irish Civil War and continues to be a member of Sinn Féin until 1926. In 1926 she leaves the party conference with Éamon de Valera and becomes a founder member of Fianna Fáil. She never stands for election again.

At the launch of The Irish Press newspaper, Pearse is asked to press the button to start the printers rolling. At many public occasions she states that were her sons alive they too would have joined Fianna Fáil. Accordingly, Patrick Pearse is recognised as the spiritual figurehead of the party to this day.

After Patrick’s death, the responsibility for running the school falls to Pearse and her two daughters. As Patrick Pearse had died without a will, the school is left in a precarious financial position. In May 1924, when she is aged 70, she undertakes a trip to the United States to raise funds for the school, alongside showing support for Éamon de Valera and the Irish Republic. At an event in Brooklyn on May 19, 1924, when referencing the execution of her two sons, she declares herself the “proudest mother in Ireland.” She also states that Michael Collins had attempted to “bribe” her with an offer to subsidise the school, which she refused. During a meeting in Seattle on August 11, 1924, she again discusses her sons and how she believes “the best way to honour their memory was to carry on their work for Ireland.” She raises over $10,000 in donations for the school during the trip. Notwithstanding her fundraising activities, St. Enda’s continues to decline and eventually closes in 1935. Great Brunswick Street, where she and the Pearse family originally lived, is renamed Pearse Street in 1920 by a resolution passed at the Dublin City Council meeting.

Pearse dies on April 22, 1932. She is honoured with a large state funeral and a motion is passed at the meeting of Dublin City Council expressing sympathy with the Pearse family. On April 26, 1932, sizeable crowds pay their respects as her funeral procession makes its way through the streets of Dublin. At the General Post Office (GPO), where Patrick and William fought during the Easter Rising, the funeral cortege pauses for a minute of silence before proceeding to Glasnevin Cemetery. Éamon de Valera gives an oration as she is laid to rest, which praises her inspiring courage, charity and cheerfulness during the years after her son’s death.

After Pearse’s death, her daughter, Mary Margaret, continues to reside at St. Enda’s. She also joins Fianna Fáil, and serves as a TD from 1933 to 1937 and later serves in Seanad Éireann as a Senator from 1938 until her death in 1968. Upon her death, as per her mother’s request, she passes St. Enda’s on to the people of Ireland.


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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.


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Birth of Máire Ní Chinnéide, Language Activist & Playwright

Máire Ní Chinnéide (English: Mary or Molly O’Kennedy) Irish language activist, playwright, first president of the Camogie Association and first female president of Oireachtas na Gaeilge, is born in Rathmines, an affluent inner suburb on the Southside of Dublin, on January 17, 1879.

Ní Chinnéide attends Muckross Park College and the Royal University of Ireland (later the National University of Ireland) where she is a classmate of Agnes O’Farrelly, Helena Concannon, and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington. She learns the Irish language on holiday in Ballyvourney, County Cork, and earns the first scholarship in Irish language from the Royal University of Ireland, worth £100 a year, which is spent on visits to the Irish college in Ballingeary.

She studies in the school of Old Irish established by Professor Osborn Bergin and is strongly influenced by the Irish Australian professor O’Daly. She later teaches Latin through Irish at Ballingeary and becomes proficient in French, German, Italian and Spanish.

She spends the last £100 of her scholarship on a dowry for her marriage to Sean MacGearailt, later first Accountant General of Revenue in the Irish civil service, with whom she lives originally in Glasnevin and then in Dalkey.

She is a founder member of the radical Craobh an Chéitinnigh, the Keating branch of Conradh na Gaeilge, composed mainly of Dublin-based Kerry people and regarded, by themselves at least, as the intellectual focus of the League.

In August 1904, some six years after the establishment of the earliest women’s hurling teams, the rules of camogie (then called camoguidheacht), first appears in Banba, a journal produced by Craobh an Chéitinnigh. Camogie had come to public attention when it was showcased at the annual Oireachtas (Conradh na Gaeilge Festival) earlier that year, and it differed from men’s hurling in its use of a lighter ball and a smaller playing-field. Ní Chinnéide and Cáit Ní Dhonnchadha, like Ní Chinnéide, an Irish-language enthusiast and cultural nationalist, are credited with having created the game, with the assistance of Ní Dhonnchadha’s scholarly brother Tadhg Ó Donnchadha, who drew up its rules. She is on the first camogie team to play an exhibition match in Navan, County Meath, in July 1904, becomes an early propagandist for the game and, in 1905, is elected president of the infant Camogie Association.

Ní Chinnéide later serves as Vice-President of Craobh an Chéitinnigh, to Cathal Brugha. She is active in Cumann na mBan during the Irish War of Independence and takes the pro-treaty side during the Irish Civil War and attempts to set up a woman’s organisation “in support of the Free State” alongside Jennie Wyse Power.

She first visits the Blasket Islands in 1932 with her daughter Niamh, who dies tragically young. In the summer of 1934, she puts the idea into Peig Sayers‘s head to write a memoir. According to a later interview with Ní Chinnéide “she knew and admired her gift for easy conversation, her gracious charm as a hostess, her talent for illustrating a point she was making by a story out of her own experience that was as rich in philosophy and thought as it was limited geographically.” Peig answers that she has “nothing to write.” She had learned only to read and write in English at school and most of it has been forgotten.

Ní Chinnéide suggests Peig should dictate her memoir to her son Micheal, known to everyone on the island as An File (“The Poet”), but Peig “only shook her head doubtfully.” At Christmas, a packet arrives from the Blaskets with a manuscript, she transcribes it word for word and the following summer brings it back to the Blaskets to read it to Peig. She then edits the manuscript for the Talbot Press. Peig becomes well known as a prescribed text on the Leaving Certificate curriculum in Irish.

Ní Chinnéide has an acting part in the first modern play performed in Irish on the stage, Casadh an tSugáin by Douglas Hyde in 1901. She is later author of children’s plays staged by An Comhar Drámuidhachta at the Oireachtas and the Peacock Theatre, of which Gleann na Sidheóg and An Dúthchas (1908) are published. She is a broadcaster in Irish on 2RN, a wholly owned subsidiary of Raidió Teilifís Éireann, after its foundation in 1926 and author of a translation of Grimms’ Fairy Tales (1923). She is president of the Gaelic Players Dramatic group during the 1930s and a founder of the Gaelic Writers Association in 1939.

She soon becomes interested in writing children’s plays, including Gleann na Sidheóg (Fairy Glen, 1905) and Sidheoga na mBláth (Flower Fairies, 1909. Although there is little information available on the staging of her first play, by the time her second children’s play, Sidheóga na mBláth, is published in An Claidheamh Soluis in December 1907, “Éire Óg” (“Young Ireland”) branches of Conradh na Gaeilge have been established in conjunction with adults’ branches. Patrick Pearse in particular voices the expectation that this play will be staged by many “Éire Óg” branches “before the New Year is very old,” thus indicating the immediate take up of such plays. Indeed, a week after the play’s publication, it is staged in the Dominican College in Donnybrook, Dublin, where Ní Chinnéide had spent several years as an Irish teacher.

Ní Chinnéide dies on April 25, 1967, and is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery.

In 2007 the camogie trophy (Máire Ní Chinnéide Cup) for the annual inter-county All-Ireland Junior Camogie Championship is named in her honour.

(Pictured: Máire Ní Chinéide at her graduation, photograph from Banba, 1903)


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Death of Katy French, Socialite, Model & TV Personality

Katy Ellen French, Irish socialite, model, writer, television personality and charity worker, dies on December 6, 2007, in Navan, County Meath, after collapsing at a friend’s house on December 2. According to the BBC, “in the space of less than two years, she had become one of Ireland’s best-known models and socialites.” Her cause of death is given as hypoxic ischemic brain injury caused by cocaine and ephedrine.

French is born on October 31, 1983, in Basel, Switzerland, to John and Janet French, from Australia and Britain respectively. At the age of two, she moves with her family to Ireland, briefly living in the Sandyford area before settling in Enniskerry, County Wicklow, and later to Stillorgan, County Dublin. She attends Alexandra College in Milltown, Dublin, from the age of seven. While still in school she works part-time as a hostess at the Dublin branch of the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain.

French studies psychology and marketing before working for the Assets Modelling Agency and later writing articles for several Dublin magazines and newspapers. She represents Sony Ericsson and Suzuki among many other brands, becoming more famous in 2007 as a result of her fiancé, restaurateur Marcus Sweeney, ending their relationship in a very public fashion after she is photographed for a lingerie shoot for the Sunday Independent in his restaurant in January of that year. As a result of this publicity, her image appears more regularly in daily Irish tabloid newspapers, and she makes numerous television appearances on shows such as RTÉ‘s The Podge and Rodge Show in April 2007 and Tubridy Tonight a week before her death.

French is known for deliberately courting controversy to promote her career. On Tubridy Tonight she speaks of her appearance on Celebrities Go Wild as well as her relationship break up with Sweeney. Mention is also made of her birthday party which she is to celebrate the following week, having missed her birthday due to Celebrities Go Wild. Host Ryan Tubridy is invited to the event. Footage is shown of the charity single “Down in the Bog” which is to be released as a Christmas single. She works for several Irish charities including Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin and GOAL in Calcutta, India. She writes a column for Social & Personal magazine.

In an interview with Hot Press‘s Jason O’Toole, French says that she would consider having an abortion if she became pregnant during the peak of her career, a controversial statement in Ireland where abortion is at that time effectively illegal, and that she loves fur despite being a “massive animal lover.” She also airs her religious beliefs, being a member of the Church of England as well as a practising Catholic and speaks highly of Islam and her Muslim friends saying, “When you read the Koran, you realise that Islam is a beautiful religion.” In the same interview she is asked if she has ever used cocaine and denies ever having done so. In November 2007, she tells an Irish tabloid that she has used cocaine but has stopped. A week before she dies, she celebrates her 24th birthday with celebrity and media friends.

French dies on the evening of December 6, 2007, in Our Lady’s Hospital, Navan, County Meath, having collapsed at a house in Kilmessan, County Meath, in the early hours of Sunday, December 2. There is widespread speculation in the media that her death is the result of a drug overdose. A postmortem finds she has suffered brain damage, and that traces of cocaine are found in her body. A senior Garda states, “We strongly suspect that drugs contributed to her death. This was a previously healthy person being brought to hospital in a collapsed state.” In 2010 two people are charged with supplying cocaine to French and in failing to get medical assistance in a timely fashion. She is buried in her hometown of Enniskerry, County Wicklow, on December 10. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern‘s aide de camp, Captain Michael Tracey, attends her funeral.

On November 13, 2012, two friends of French, Kieron Ducie and Ann Corcoran, plead guilty to possession of cocaine with intent to supply on the weekend of French’s death. Trim Circuit Court is told that a second charge against the pair is not being pursued, that they had intentionally or recklessly engaged in behaviour relating to the supply of cocaine to French and failed to get medical assistance in a timely fashion. In July 2013 the pair are sentenced to a 2-1⁄2 year suspended sentence and three-year good behaviour bond, and a two-year suspended sentence and two-year good behaviour bond respectively. At the verdict, French’s cause of death is given as hypoxic ischemic brain injury caused by cocaine and ephedrine.


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Death of Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany FRSL, Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist, dies in hospital in Dublin on October 25, 1957, following an attack of appendicitis. Over 90 volumes of fiction, essays, poems and plays appear in his lifetime, and a modest amount of material is published posthumously.

Plunkett, known to his family as “Eddie,” is born in London, England, on July 24, 1878, the first son of John William Plunkett, 17th Baron of Dunsany (1853–1899), and his wife, Ernle Elizabeth Louisa Maria Grosvenor Ernle-Erle-Drax, (née Burton) (1855–1916). From a historically wealthy and famous family, he is related to many well-known Irish figures. He is a kinsman of the Catholic Saint Oliver Plunkett, the martyred Archbishop of Armagh. He is also related to the prominent Anglo-Irish unionist and later nationalist Home Rule politician Sir Horace Plunkett and George Noble Plunkett, Papal Count and Republican politician, father of Joseph Plunkett, executed for his part in the 1916 Easter Rising.

Plunkett’s only grown sibling, a younger brother, from whom he is estranged from about 1916, for reasons not fully clear but connected to his mother’s will, is the noted British naval officer Sir Reginald Drax. Another younger brother dies in infancy.

Plunkett grows up at the family properties, notably, Dunstall Priory in Shoreham, Kent, and Dunsany Castle in County Meath, but also in family homes such as in London. His schooling is at Cheam School, Eton College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, which he enters in 1896.

The title passes to Plunkett at his father’s death in 1899 at a fairly young age. The young Lord Dunsany returns to Dunsany Castle in 1901 after war duty. In that year he is also confirmed as an elector for the Representative Peers for Ireland in the House of Lords.

In 1903, Plunkett meets Lady Beatrice Child Villiers (1880–1970), youngest daughter of Victor Child Villiers, 7th Earl of Jersey, who is then living at Osterley Park. They marry in 1904. Their one child, Randal, is born in 1906. Lady Beatrice is supportive of her husband’s interests and helps him by typing his manuscripts, selecting work for his collections, including the 1954 retrospective short story collection, and overseeing his literary heritage after his death.

The Plunketts are socially active in Dublin and London and travel between homes in Meath, London and Kent, other than during the First and Second World Wars and the Irish War of Independence. He circulates with many literary figures of the time. To many of these in Ireland he is first introduced by his uncle, the co-operative pioneer Sir Horace Plunkett, who also helps to manage his estate and investments for a time. He is friendly, for example, with George William Russell, Oliver St. John Gogarty, and for a time, W. B. Yeats. He also socialises at times with George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells and is a friend of Rudyard Kipling.

In 1910 Plunkett commissions a two-story extension to Dunsany Castle, with a billiard room, bedrooms and other facilities. The billiard room includes the crests of all the Lords Dunsany up to the 18th.

Plunkett serves as a second lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards in the Second Boer War. Volunteering in World War I and appointed Captain in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, he is stationed for a time at Ebrington Barracks in Derry, Northern Ireland. Hearing while on leave of disturbances in Dublin during the Easter Rising of 1916, he drives in to offer help and is wounded by a bullet lodged in his skull. After recovery at Jervis Street Hospital and what is then the King George V Hospital (now St. Bricin’s Military Hospital), he returns to duty. His military belt is lost in the episode and later used at the burial of Michael Collins. Having been refused forward positioning in 1916 and listed as valuable as a trainer, he serves in the later war stages in the trenches and in the final period writing propaganda material for the War Office with MI7b. There is a book at Dunsany Castle with wartime photographs, on which lost members of his command are marked.

During the Irish War of Independence, Plunkett is charged with violating the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act 1920, tried by court-martial on February 4, 1921, convicted, and sentenced to pay a fine of 25 pounds or serve three months in prison without labour. The Crown Forces had searched Dunsany Castle and had found two double-barreled shotguns, two rook rifles, four Very pistols, an automatic pistol and a large quantity of pistol ammunition, along with shotgun and rifle ammunition.

During World War II, Plunkett signs up for the Irish Army Reserve and the British Home Guard, the two countries’ local defence forces, and is especially active in Shoreham, Kent, the English village bombed most during the Battle of Britain.

Plunkett’s fame arises chiefly from his prolific writings. He is involved in the Irish Literary Revival. Supporting the Revival, he is a major donor to the Abbey Theatre, and he moves in Irish literary circles. He is well acquainted with W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, Percy French, George “AE” Russell, Oliver St. John Gogarty, Padraic Colum and others. He befriends and supports Francis Ledwidge, to whom he gives the use of his library, and Mary Lavin.

Plunkett makes his first literary tour to the United States in 1919 and further such visits up to the 1950s, in the early years mostly to the eastern seaboard and later, notably, to California. His own work and contribution to the Irish literary heritage are recognised with an honorary degree from Trinity College Dublin.

In 1940, Plunkett is appointed Byron Professor of English in the University of Athens in Greece. Having reached Athens by a circuitous route, he is so successful that he is offered a post as Professor of English in Istanbul. However, he has to be evacuated due to the German invasion of Greece in April 1941, returning home by an even more complex route, his travels forming a basis for a long poem published in book form (A Journey, in 5 cantos: The Battle of Britain, The Battle of Greece, The Battle of the Mediterranean, Battles Long Ago, The Battle of the Atlantic, special edition January 1944). Olivia Manning‘s character Lord Pinkrose in her novel sequence the Fortunes of War is a mocking portrait of Dunsany in that period.

In 1947, Plunkett transfers his Meath estate in trust to his son and heir and settles in Kent at his Shoreham house, Dunstall Priory, not far from the home of Rudyard Kipling. He visits Ireland only occasionally thereafter and engages actively in life in Shoreham and London. He also begins a new series of visits to the United States, notably California, as recounted in Hazel Littlefield-Smith’s biographical Dunsany, King of Dreams.

In 1957, Plunkett becomes ill while dining with the Earl and Countess of Fingall at Dunsany, in what proves to be an attack of appendicitis. He dies in hospital in Dublin, at the age of 79, on October 25, 1957. He is buried in the churchyard of the ancient church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Shoreham, Kent. His funeral is attended by many family members, representatives of his old regiment and various bodies in which he had taken an interest, and figures from Shoreham. A memorial service is held at Kilmessan in County Meath, with a reading of “Crossing the Bar,” which coincides with the passing of a flock of geese.

Beatrice survives Plunkett, living mainly at Shoreham and overseeing his literary legacy until her death in 1970. Their son Randal succeeds to the barony and is in turn succeeded by his grandson, the artist Edward Plunkett. Plunkett’s literary rights pass from Beatrice to Edward.


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Hugh Brady Appointed Church of Ireland Bishop of Meath

Hugh Brady, a native of Trim, County Meath, is appointed Church of Ireland Bishop of Meath on October 21, 1563. He serves in this position until his death on February 14, 1584.

Brady is born in 1527, but his parentage is uncertain, as are most of the details of his early life. He is said to be a graduate of the University of Oxford and later a professor of divinity there, but there is no evidence of this in the college registers.

Brady’s first patron is Edmund Grindal, Bishop of London, under whose auspices he secures a prestigious appointment to the rectorship of St. Mary Aldermary, London, in early 1561. Over the next two years he becomes acquainted with a relative and chief advisor of Queen Elizabeth I, William Cecil. He is eager to return to Ireland and is appointed Bishop of Meath on October 21, 1563, while still in England. He is ideally qualified for this role, being a native of the diocese and a skilled preacher fluent in English and Irish. Arriving in Dublin on December 3, 1563, he is consecrated on December 19, being made a member of the Privy Council of Ireland soon thereafter.

On reaching his diocese, Brady is dismayed at its dilapidated state. His diocesan income scarcely exceeds £60 a year, many of the churches are in ruins, his clergy are uneducated and largely pro-Catholic, and the right to appoint clergy to many parish churches is in the hands of Catholic landowners. Further, the rival Catholic Bishop of Meath, William Walsh, is dedicated, capable, and popular. Although Walsh is belatedly arrested in 1565, his willingness to lead by example and suffer persecution for his beliefs stiffens Catholic resistance in Meath.

Brady is always diligent in attendance at Council meetings. He is vigorous in beating off raids on his diocese by Shane O’Neill, the effective ruler of Ulster. He enjoys the friendship of Sir Henry Sidney, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, who praises his sound judgment, hospitality and blameless private life. His good qualities lead Sidney and Adam Loftus, Archbishop of Armagh, to propose Brady as Archbishop of Dublin, after they have lobbied successfully for the recall of Archbishop Hugh Curwen. However, soon after, Brady and Loftus quarrel, and Loftus blocks Brady’s nomination in order to obtain the See of Dublin for himself.

Nonetheless, Brady retains Sidney’s confidence and finds a new ally in 1567 when Robert Weston becomes Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Weston sympathises with his educational and evangelical bent while gaining the respect of the querulous Loftus, thereby defusing the animosity between Ireland’s leading Protestant clergy.

In 1569, Brady’s diocese is amalgamated with the diocese of Clonmacnoise. He now heads a sprawling diocese that includes Gaelic areas where the crown has very little authority. In practice, he appears to have largely ignored Clonmacnoise. In Meath, a government inquiry in 1575 shows that he has made little headway in spreading the Protestant faith or in restoring the fabric and finances of the church. He has found clergy for nearly every church in the diocese, but most are of a poor standard. He contributes to the diocese’s worsening finances by alienating church land to family and associates. The free school he establishes is also forced to close due to a lack of suitable premises.

Following Sidney’s dismissal as Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1578, Protestant hard-liners begin to dominate the Irish government, causing Brady to lose influence. He complains in 1581 that his letters to London are being opened and read by his colleagues and sometimes being suppressed. His influence declines in Meath also as discontent with the government increases. In 1577, his men capture a number of friars at Navan but are attacked by locals and forced to free their captives. Thereafter, local officials and landowners routinely defy his authority. His conciliatory policies totally discredited, he stays away from Dublin and resides mainly at his episcopal palace at Ardbraccan.

From 1582 Brady suffers from ill health, forcing him to curtail his preaching. He dies on February 14, 1584, and is buried near the parish church at Dunboyne.

Brady marries twice, but little is known of his first wife. In 1568, following the death of his first wife, he marries Weston’s daughter Alice. They had at least four children, including Luke, their eldest son, and Nicholas, grandfather of his namesake the poet. After Brady’s death, his widow marries Sir Geoffrey Fenton and has further issue, including Catherine, Countess of Cork. The poet Nicholas Brady is the bishop’s great-grandson. Maziere Brady, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, is a nineteenth-century descendant of the bishop.


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Birth of George Francis Mitchell, Historian, Archaeologist & Educator

George Francis (Frank) Mitchell, FRS, HonFRSE, MRIA, environmental historian, archaeologist, geologist, and educator, is born on October 15, 1912, in Dublin.

Mitchell is the younger son of David William Mitchell, owner of a Dublin ironmongery and furniture business, and Francis Elizabeth Mitchell (née Kirby). His elder brother David becomes president of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) and his sister Lillias is a noted weaver and teacher. He is educated at The High School, Dublin, and Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where he is a scholar in 1933 and receives a gold medal the following year. In 1934 he is appointed assistant to the professor of geology at TCD, and later is lecturer in geology (1940), reader in Irish archaeology (1959) and professor of Quaternary studies – a personal chair (1965). He is an efficient administrator and serves TCD successively as registrar, senior lecturer, and tutor, and after retirement is briefly a pro-chancellor of the university.

Mitchell’s major research focuses on the evolution of Ireland during the last two million years, particularly during the Quaternary since the retreat of the glacial ice over Ireland, and the effect man has had on this landscape. His interest in Quaternary studies begins in 1934, when he is appointed by the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) as an assistant to the Danish botanist and Quaternary geologist Knud Jessen, who uses the distribution of ancient pollen grains to reconstruct vegetational history. From 1940 he publishes a series of papers on topics such as the distribution of Irish giant deer and reindeer remains in Ireland, lacustrine deposits in County Meath, interglacial deposits in southeast Ireland, the palynology of Irish raised bogs, cave deposits, fossil pingos in County Wexford, bog flows, and the deposits of the older Pleistocene period in Ireland. His major study in this field is the documentation (1965) of the vegetational history of Littleton bog, County Tipperary, which has given its name to the present interglacial – the Littletonian warm stage.

Mitchell does not confine his studies to Ireland but also carries out work in Glasgow, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man. In 1957, he helps organise the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Dublin and is later chairman of the Geological Society of London sub-commission on British and Irish Quaternary stratigraphy, which produces a comprehensive report in 1973. He is a frequent broadcaster on radio and a prolific author of academic papers, and in later life writes several acclaimed books, including The Irish Landscape (1976), which goes through two further editions as Reading the Irish Landscape (1986, 1997), and a volume of semi-autobiography, The Way That I Followed (1990).

Although the recipient of many honours, Mitchell is modest about his achievements. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) (1939), its president (1976–79), and Cunningham medalist (1989); president of the Dublin Naturalists’ Field Club (1945–46); Fellow of Trinity College Dublin (1945); president of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (RSAI) (1957–60); president of the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland (RZSI) (1958–61); president of the International Union for Quaternary Research (1969–73); Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) (1973); founder member and later president (1991–93) of An Taisce; Boyle medalist of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) (1978); pro-chancellor of Dublin University (1985–87); personal chair in Quaternary studies, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) (1965–79); honorary member, Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) (1981); honorary life member, Royal Dublin Society (RDS) (1981); honorary member, The Prehistoric Society (1983); honorary member, Quaternary Research Association (1983); honorary member, International Association for Quaternary Research (1985); and honorary fellow, Royal Society of Edinburgh (1984). He receives honorary degrees from Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) (D.Sc., 1976), the National University of Ireland (NUI) (D.Sc., 1977), and Uppsala University (fil.D., 1977).

Mitchell dies on November 25, 1997, in Townley Hall, County Louth.

In 1940, Mitchell marries Lucy Margaret (‘Pic’) (1911–87), daughter of E. J. Gwynn, provost of TCD. They have two daughters. For many years they live at Townley Hall, near Drogheda, County Louth, which had been TCD’s agricultural facility. A 1985 portrait by David Hone is displayed at Trinity College Dublin.

(From: “Mitchell, George Francis (‘Frank’)” by Patrick N. Wyse Jackson, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Maurice Dease, First WWI Victoria Cross Recipient

Maurice James Dease VC, British Army officer during World War I, is born on September 28, 1889, in Gaulstown, Coole, County Westmeath. He is one of the first British officer battle casualties of the war and the first posthumous recipient of the Victoria Cross in the war.

Dease is born to Edmund Fitzlaurence and Katherine Murray Dease. He is educated at Stonyhurst College and the Army Department of Wimbledon College before attending the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He is 24 years old, and a lieutenant in the 4th Battalion, the Royal Fusiliers, and is awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions on August 23, 1914, at Mons, Belgium.

Nimy Bridge is being defended by a single company of the 4th Royal Fusiliers and a machine gun section with Dease in command. The gunfire is intense and the casualties very heavy, but the lieutenant continues to fire in spite of his wounds, until he is hit for the fifth time and is carried away.

Dease wins the first Victoria Cross to be awarded in the Great War and he receives it on the first day of the first significant British encounter in that war.

When Lieutenant Dease has been mortally wounded, Private Sidney Godley offers to defend the Railway Bridge while the rest of the section retreats and is also awarded the Victoria Cross. He is taken prisoner of war.

Dease is buried at St. Symphorien Military Cemetery, two kilometres east of Mons, Belgium. He is remembered with a plaque under the Nimy Railway Bridge, Mons and in Westminster Cathedral. His name is on the wayside cross in Woodchester, Stroud, Gloucestershire, on a cross at Exton, Rutland and on a plaque installed in St. Martin’s Church, Culmullen, County Meath. His Victoria Cross is displayed at the Royal Fusiliers Museum in the Tower of London. Victoria Cross holders are honoured with commemorative paving stones. and Dease’s stone is the first to be unveiled on August 23, 2014, at Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

Dease is portrayed in the BBC Three series Our World War (2014) by Dominic Thorburn.


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Birth of Liam Ó Briain, Irish Language Expert & Political Activist

Liam Ó Briain, Irish language expert and political activist, is born at 10 Church Street, North Wall, Dublin, on September 16, 1888.

Christened as William O’Brien, the seventh child of Arthur O’Brien, clerk, and Mary O’Brien (née Christie), who is from County Meath, Ó Briain takes an interest in the Irish language from an early age and begins learning Irish by himself from a grammar book, as it is not encouraged by his teachers at the Christian Brothers’ O’Connell School nor spoken by his parents. While still at the O’Connell School, he starts using the Irish version of his name. He also attends meetings of the Gaelic League, then attends University College Dublin (UCD) on a scholarship, where he studies French, English and Irish, receiving a BA (1909) and an MA (1910).

UCD decides to start awarding one annual scholarship for overseas travel in 1911, and Ó Briain wins the first one, using it to visit Germany and study under Kuno Meyer and Rudolf Thurneysen. After three years, he returns home, where he rejoins the Gaelic League and begins teaching French at UCD. He also joins the Irish Volunteers then, the following year, Seán T. O’Kelly convinces him to join the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).

During the 1916 Easter Rising, Ó Briain sees action with the Irish Citizen Army. He comes into conflict with his commander, Michael Mallin, as he wants to pursue a strategy without the Dublin brigade being “cooped up in the city.” However, Mallin overrules him and insists they should focus on taking Dublin Castle. He spends two months in Wandsworth Prison in London and six months in Frongoch internment camp in Wales before being released to discover that he has been fired from his job. However, he quickly obtains a professorship in Romance languages at University College Galway (UCG).

Around this time, Ó Briain joins Sinn Féin, and he stands unsuccessfully for the party in Mid Armagh at the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, taking 5,689 votes. His campaign leads, indirectly, to his arrest and three months in jail in Belfast. In 1920, following his release, he is appointed a judge in the then-illegal republican court system in Galway, and visits both France and Italy to try to source weapons for the Irish Republican Army (IRA). In November 1920, he is arrested in the UCG dining room by Black and Tans, and is imprisoned for thirteen months, first in Galway and then in the Curragh camp in County Kildare, thereby missing the conclusion of the Irish War of Independence. By the time he is released, the Anglo-Irish Treaty has been signed. He supports the treaty and takes no further part in militant activity.

In the newly independent Ireland, Ó Briain remains a professor at Galway. He also stands in the 1925 Seanad election, although he is not successful. He is the founding secretary of the Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe theatre, also acting in many of its productions, and spends much time translating works from English and the Romance languages into Irish. He stands to become president of UCG in 1945, but is not elected, and in the 1940s and 1950s is best known for his many appearances on television and radio.

From his retirement in 1959, Ó Briain lives in Dublin. In 1974, the National University of Ireland (NUI) confers an honorary doctorate on him. He dies on August 12, 1974, at St. Gabriel’s Hospital, Cabinteely, County Dublin. His funeral to Glasnevin Cemetery is almost a state occasion, with a huge attendance of public figures, and a military firing party at the graveside, where the oration is given by Micheál Mac Líammóir and a lesson is read by Siobhán McKenna. For days after his death, the newspapers carry tributes to his many-sided career and personality. On the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, Proinsias Mac Aonghusa and Art Ó Beoláin write commemorative articles in Feasta.

On September 1, 1921, Ó Briain marries Helen Lawlor, of Dublin, who dies two years before him. The couple’s only child is Eibhlín Ní Bhriain, who is a journalist for The Irish Times and other periodicals.


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Birth of Siobhan Fahey, Founding Member of Bananarama

Siobhan Maire Fahey, Irish singer and founding member of the British girl group Bananarama, who have ten top-10 hits including the U.S. number one hit single “Venus,” is born on September 10, 1958, in County Meath. She is the first Irish-born woman to have written two number one singles on the Irish charts. She later forms the musical act Shakespears Sister, who have a UK number one hit with the 1992 single “Stay.” She joins the other original members of Bananarama for a 2017 UK tour, and, in 2018, a North America and Europe tour.

Fahey is the daughter of Helen and Joseph Fahey, both from County Tipperary. She has two younger sisters, Maire (who plays Eileen in the video of the 1982 song “Come On Eileen,” a hit for Dexys Midnight Runners) and Niamh, a producer and editor. She lives in Ireland for several years before her father joins the British Army and the family moves to England, then to Germany for several years, and back to England when she is nine years old. When she is 14, she and her family move to Harpenden, Hertfordshire, and, two years later, she leaves home for London and becomes involved in the punk scene of the late 1970s.

Fahey takes a course in fashion journalism at the London College of Fashion, where she meets Sara Dallin in 1980. Along with Keren Woodward, they found Bananarama and record their first demo “Aie a Mwana” in 1981. Bananarama then works with the male vocal trio Fun Boy Three, releasing two top-five singles with them in early 1982 before having their own top-five hit with “Shy Boy” later that year. Fahey, with Dallin and Woodward, co-write many of the group’s hits, including “Cruel Summer,” “Robert De Niro’s Waiting…,” “I Heard a Rumour,” and “Love in the First Degree.”

In 1988, frustrated with the direction she feels Bananarama is heading, Fahey leaves the group and forms Shakespears Sister. Initially, she effectively is Shakespears Sister, though American singer/songwriter Marcella Detroit later becomes an official member, making the outfit a duo. Their 1992 single “Stay” spends eight weeks at number one on the UK Singles Chart and wins the 1993 Brit Award for Best British Video. At the 1993 Ivor Novello Awards, she, Detroit, and Dave Stewart receive the award for Outstanding Contemporary Song Collection. She often appears in the band’s music videos and on-stage as a vampish glam figure. After two successful albums, tensions begin to rise between Fahey and Detroit and they split up in 1993. That year, Fahey admits herself into a psychiatric unit with severe depression.

In 1996, Fahey continues as Shakespears Sister by herself and releases the single “I Can Drive.” Intended as the first single from Shakespears Sister’s third album and her first record since her split with Marcella Detroit, the single performs disappointingly (UK number 30), which prompts London Records not to release the album. Following this, she leaves the label and, after a lengthy battle, finally obtains the rights to release the album (entitled #3) independently through her own website in 2004.

Fahey briefly re-joins Bananarama in 1998 to record a cover version of ABBA‘s “Waterloo” for the Channel 4 Eurovision special A Song for Eurotrash. She reteams with Bananarama again in 2002 for a “last ever” reunion at the band’s 20th-anniversary concert at G-A-Y in London. The trio performs “Venus” and “Waterloo.”

Fahey continues to make music into the new millennium. In 2005, she independently releases The MGA Sessions, an album recorded with frequent collaborator Sophie Muller in the mid-1990s. Her most recent single under her own name, “Bad Blood,” is released on October 17, 2005.

Fahey’s track “Bitter Pill” is partially covered by the pop band The Pussycat Dolls on their 2005 debut album PCD. The verses, which were slightly altered, and the overall sound of the song are from “Bitter Pill,” but added in is the chorus of Donna Summer‘s “Hot Stuff.” The song is renamed “Hot Stuff (I Want You Back)” and a remix is included as a B-side to their hit single “Beep.”

In 2008, Fahey appears in the Chris Ward-written and directed short film What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor, based on the life of artist/model Nina Hamnett, self-styled “Queen of Bohemia,” with Fahey playing the role of Hamnett opposite actor Clive Arrindel, Donny Tourette, frontman with punk band Towers of London, and Honey Bane, former vocalist of the punk band Fatal Microbes.

In 2009, Fahey decides to resurrect the Shakespears Sister name and releases a new album. Entitled Songs from the Red Room, it is released on her own record label, SF Records, and includes various singles she had released under her own name in recent years. She performs her first live show in almost 15 years as Shakespears Sister in Hoxton, London, on November 20, 2009. In 2014 she joins the line-up of Dexys Midnight Runners for some shows, including at Glastonbury Festival.

In 2017, it is announced that Fahey has joined her former Bananarama bandmates for an upcoming UK tour. This is the first live tour she has done as a member of Bananarama.

In 2019, Fahey reunites with Marcella Detroit for Shakespears Sister dates, commencing with an appearance on BBC One‘s The Graham Norton Show on May 10, 2019.

Fahey marries Dave Stewart of Eurythmics in 1987; the couple divorces in 1996. They have two sons, Samuel (born November 26, 1987) and Django James (born 1991). The two brothers form a musical band called Nightmare and the Cat. As an infant, Samuel Stewart appears in early Shakespears Sister videos for “Heroine” and “You’re History.” Django Stewart is also an actor. Samuel is currently the guitarist for the American indie rock band Lo Moon.

Prior to her marriage to Stewart, Fahey is romantically involved with Jim Reilly, the drummer for the Northern Irish punk rock band Stiff Little Fingers and Scottish singer Bobby Bluebell of The Bluebells, with whom she co-writes the UK No. 1 “Young at Heart.”