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Tag Archives: County Tipperary


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Birth of Charles Cunningham Boycott, Land Agent

Charles Cunningham Boycott, land agent and the man who gave the English language the word “boycott,” is born on March 12, 1832, at Burgh St. Peter, Norfolk, England.

Boycott is the eldest surviving son of William Boycatt (1798–1877), rector of Wheatacrebury, Norfolk, and Elizabeth Georgiana Boycatt (née Beevor). The family name is changed to Boycott by his father in 1862. Educated at a boarding school in Blackheath, London, and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, he is commissioned ensign in the 39th (Dorsetshire) Regiment of Foot on February 15, 1850, and serves briefly in Ireland. He sells his commission on December 17, 1852, having attained the rank of captain, marries Annie Dunne of Queen’s County (County Laois) in 1852, and leases a farm in south County Tipperary.

In 1855, Boycott leaves for Achill Island, County Mayo, where he sub-leases 2,000 acres and acts as land agent for a friend, Murray McGregor Blacker, a local magistrate. He settles initially near Keem Strand but after some years builds a fine house near Dooagh overlooking Clew Bay. He clashes with local landowners and agents and is regularly involved in litigation. Twice summonsed unsuccessfully for assault (1856, 1859), he is involved (1859–60) in a bitter dispute with a land agent over salvage rights for shipwrecks, one of the few lucrative activities on the island. Achill’s remoteness and the difficulties of wresting a living from its harsh environment adds a roughness to the island’s social relations and probably aggravates Boycott’s tendency to high-handedness.

In 1873, Boycott inherits money and moves to mainland County Mayo, leasing Lough Mask House near Ballinrobe and its surrounding 300 acres. He also becomes agent for John Crichton, 3rd Earl Erne‘s neighbouring estate of 1,500 acres, home to thirty-eight tenant farmers paying rents of £500 a year, of which he receives 10 per cent as agent. He also serves as a magistrate and is unpopular because of his brusque and authoritarian manner, and for denying locals such traditional indulgences as collecting wood from the Lough Mask estate or taking short cuts across his farm. In April 1879, he purchases the 95-acre Kildarra estate between Claremorris and Ballinlough and an adjoining wood for £1,125, taking out a mortgage of £600 which stretches his finances.

Boycott is no brutal tyrant, but he is aloof, stubborn, and pugnacious, and believes that the Irish peasantry is prone to idleness and require firm handling. Such qualities and beliefs are unremarkable enough, but in the peculiar circumstances of the land war in County Mayo, they are enough to catapult this rather ordinary man to worldwide notoriety.

In autumn 1879, concerted land agitation begins in County Mayo, and on August 1, 1879, Boycott receives a notice threatening his life unless he reduces rents. He ignores it and evicts three tenants, which embitter relations on the estate. Lough Mask House is placed under Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) surveillance beginning in November 1879. In August 1880, his farm labourers, encouraged by the Irish National Land League, strike successfully for a wage increase from 7s. –11s. to 9s. –15s. Since the harvest is poor, Lord Erne allows a 10 per cent rent abatement. But in September 1880, when Boycott demands the rent, most tenants seek a 25 per cent abatement. Lord Erne refuses, and on September 22, Boycott attempts to serve processes against eleven defaulters. Servers and police are attacked by an angry crowd of local women and forced to take refuge in Boycott’s house. Almost immediately he is subjected to the ostracism against land grabbers advocated by Charles Stewart Parnell in his September 19 speech at Ennis, County Clare. This weapon proves as devastating against an English land agent as an Irish land-grabber. His servants leave him, labourers refuse to work his land, his walls and fences are destroyed, and local traders refuse to do business with him. He is jeered on the roads, is hissed and hustled by hostile crowds in Ballinrobe, and requires police protection.

The campaign against Boycott is largely orchestrated by Fr. John O’Malley, a local parish priest and president of the Neale branch of the Irish National Land League. It is probably O’Malley who coins the term “boycott” as an alternative to the word “ostracise,” which he believes would mean little to the local peasantry. Propagated by O’Malley’s friend, the American journalist, James Redpath, it is adopted by advocates and opponents alike.

On October 22, 1880, before his story breaks on the world, Boycott gives evidence of his treatment to the Bessborough Commission in Galway. He publicises his plight in an October 18, 1880, letter to The Times, and in a long interview with The Daily News on October 24, which is reprinted in Irish unionist newspapers and arouses considerable sympathy for him. Although he rarely uses his former military rank, he becomes universally known as “Captain Boycott,” since it suits both sides to portray him as someone of social standing. Letters of support appear in unionist papers and the Belfast News Letter sets up a “Boycott Relief Fund” and proposes a relief expedition, portraying Boycott as a peaceable English gentleman unjustly subjected to intimidation.

The prospect of hundreds of armed loyalists descending on County Mayo alarms the government, who announce on November 8 that they will provide protection for a small group of labourers to harvest Boycott’s crops. On November 12, fifty-seven loyalists from counties Cavan and Monaghan, “the Boycott Relief Expedition,” arrive at Lough Mask with an escort of almost a thousand troops. After harvesting Boycott’s crops, they leave on November 26. The entire operation costs £10,000 – about thirty times the value of the crops. Although the expedition passes off largely without incident, it focuses international media attention on the affair and establishes the word “boycott” in English and several other languages as a standard term for communal ostracism.

On November 27, Boycott and his wife go to the Hammam Hotel, Dublin, where he receives death threats. On December 1, he travels to London and then to the United States (March–May 1881) to see Murray McGregor Blacker, the friend from his time on Achill Island who has since settled in Virginia. In an interview with the New York Herald, he criticises the liberal government’s weakness toward the Land League and claims that the Irish land question is an intractable problem that can only be solved in the long term by emigration and industrialisation.

Boycott returns to Lough Mask on September 19, 1881, and at an auction in Westport is mobbed and burned in effigy. This, however, is the last outburst of hostility against him, and as the land agitation wanes so does his unpopularity. Although unsuccessful in efforts to win compensation from the government, he receives a public subscription of £2,000. He remains in County Mayo as Lord Erne’s agent until February 1886, when he obtains the post of land agent for Sir Hugh Adair in Flixton, Suffolk, but he keeps the small Kildarra estate, where he continues to holiday. On December 12, 1888, he gives evidence of his treatment to the parliamentary commission on “Parnellism and crime.”

After suffering from ill-health for some years, Boycott dies at Flixton on June 19, 1897, and is buried in the churchyard of Burgh St. Peter. A British-made film, Captain Boycott (1947), stars Cecil Parker in the title role.

(From: “Boycott, Charles Cunningham” by James Quinn, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Photo credit: Granger NYC/© Granger NYC/Rue des Archives)


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Death of James Boland, Member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood

James Boland, a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) who is linked to the Irish National Invincibles, dies in Dublin on March 11, 1895. He is the father of republican revolutionaries and politicians Harry, Gerald, Ned and Kathleen Boland.

Boland is born in Manchester, Lancashire, England, on October 6, 1856. His parents, Patrick Boland and Eliza Boland (née Kelly), are both Great Famine emigrants from Connacht in Ireland. His father is reputed to be a member of the IRB and his mother is a first cousin of Colonel Thomas J. Kelly.

Patrick and his brothers may have been involved in the IRB campaign to rescue Kelly and Timothy Deasy from a Manchester police van. Ten-year-old Boland is believed to have been a scout for the party that attacks the van and kills a police officer. As he grows older, he becomes more involved in the movement himself.

Boland moves to Dublin in around 1881 and becomes a foreman with a company paving the streets of Smithfield, Dublin. He is transferred from the Manchester Fenians to the Dublin section. He marries Kate Woods in 1882.

Boland is awarded the Royal Humane Society‘s medal in the same year for “jumping off the Metal Bridge” to save a life.

Boland’s involvement in the Invincibles and the Phoenix Park Murders remains unclear. He works with Joe Brady and is named by informers as a member of the IRB’s Dublin Directory in 1882, while another informer names him as a member of the Invincibles and claims that he gave orders to Brady. He is questioned at Dublin Castle, but when a warrant is issued for his arrest on January 25, 1883, he and Kate had fled to New York.

Boland finds work as an engineer with De Castro & Donner, a sugar-refining company in Brooklyn. He also becomes involved in Clan na Gael and gets to know John Devoy very well. He possibly secretly returns to Ireland in 1883 as he reputedly takes part in IRB meetings that are believed to lead to the formation of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). According to his grandson, Kevin Boland, he is in attendance as a member of the already established General Council at the historic meeting in Hayes’ Hotel in Thurles, County Tipperary.

Boland’s first child, Nellie, is born in the United States, while his second child, Gerald is conceived there, but is born in Manchester in May 1885.

The Boland family returns to Dublin in 1885 where Boland resumes work with the Dublin Corporation, this time directly employed and, by 1891, has been promoted from foreman to overseer. He is a leading figure in the Paviors’ Society. He is also under continuous surveillance by the police as his IRB role continues. He is named number 59 of 63 “dangerous Fenians” in the Dublin Metropolitan Police District in September 1886.

The Bolands’ third child, Harry, is born in 1887. Boland’s involvement in the nationalist movement increases and, after the split over Charles Stewart Parnell‘s leadership of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), he becomes one of the main Parnellite organisers in Dublin. At Parnell’s funeral procession in 1891, he and seven colleagues head a contingent of 2,000, each wielding a camán (hurley) draped in black. He also organises the funeral of his friend Pat Nally, a former member of the IRB’s Supreme Council with whom Boland had originally conspired in Manchester.

In 1892, Boland is brought before the courts charged with keeping drink for the purposes of sale without a license. In court, he is able to show that, in fact, the premises is the new premises of the Nally Branch of the GAA and that the bar is attached to the club. The case is dismissed.

Boland is elected President of the Dublin County Committee of the GAA in 1892 and to the Dublin seat of GAA Central Council for the next two years. The Bolands have two more children, Kathleen in 1889 and Ned in 1893.

In 1894, Boland is elected to the Supreme Council of the IRB.

Boland falls ill in October 1894 with a serious brain disorder. He has received head injuries at two previous incidents. According to accounts, he is hit in the head protecting Parnell from assailants before his last trip to Wicklow and suffers a concussion. The injury also causes an undetected skull fracture. He is also involved in a bombing of the offices of the Parnell’s newspaper United Ireland in 1891 following an attempted takeover by Healyites, during which he is struck in the head.

Boland fails to recover and dies in Dublin on March 11, 1895. Around 1,500 mourners on foot follow his open hearse at his funeral. The group includes three members of parliament, eight city councillors and prominent Nationalists, including Arthur Griffith, James Bermingham and Fred Allan. He is buried at Glasnevin Cemetery, Glasnevin, County Dublin. Following his death, two funds are raised to save his wife and young family from destitution. Enough money is raised to acquire a tobacconists business for Kate Boland.


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Death of Patrick O’Donoghue, Irish Nationalist & Journalist

Patrick O’Donoghue, also known as Patrick O’Donohoe or O’Donoghoe, an Irish Nationalist revolutionary, journalist and a member of the Young Ireland movement, dies in New York City on January 22, 1854.

Born to a peasant family in Clonegal, County Carlow, O’Donoghue is self educated. He manages to gain a place at Trinity College Dublin. He works as a law clerk in Dublin.

In the aftermath of the failed Young Ireland Rebellion at Ballingarry, County Tipperary, in July 1848, O’Donoghue is placed in October 1848 before a British “Special Commission” at Clonmel, County Tipperary, and sentenced to death for treason. As with other prominent Young Irelanders, this is later commuted to transportation for life to the penal colony at Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania).

In 1849, O’Donoghue, together with William Smith O’Brien, Terence MacManus, Thomas Francis Meagher and many others, are on board the prisoner transport ship The Swift for a six-month, 14,000-mile journey under difficult conditions on which some fellow prisoners do not survive.

On January 26, 1850, “Using materials he had begged and borrowed” as one account gives it, O’Donoghue starts publishing in Hobart a weekly newspaper named The Irish Exile, aimed mainly at fellow Irish prisoners and deportees and considered to be the first Irish Nationalist paper to be published in Australia.

The paper features Irish ballads and poetry, articles about Irish history, and a regular column by John Martin reporting on the situation of the Repeal Movement, a campaign to repeal the Acts of Union 1800 under which the Irish Parliament had been abolished. There is also local news of the Irish deportee community, then numbering in the thousands, and of Hobart daily life in general.

O’Donoghue uses The Irish Exile to publish excerpts of his journal aboard The Swift, which are reprinted in Australian, British and Irish newspapers. Brisbane‘s The Moreton Bay Courier, reprinted from Dublin’s The Nation, finds that the journal “will show how severely the tyrannical government of England visited the offences of the Ballingarry cabbage-tree heroes. The studies of Messrs. O’Brien, Meagher (afterwards O’), and O’Donoghoe, will amuse the reader”. While in Van Diemen’s Land, The Examiner, the daily newspaper of Launceston, Tasmania, reprints London‘s The Examiner‘s view that “a singularly large amount of mercy has been shown to those grown-up children who made the escapade from Dublin to raise the standard of Irish rebellion at Ballingarry. One of the worthies, Mr. Patrick O’Donoghue, has published an account of his deportation; and certainly a more pleasureable [sic] voyage could not have been under taken at the expanse of government. A roomy cabin, a capital library, a fair dinner, with a couple of glasses of wine, and cigars upon deck, from the dietary and the entertainment of the political exiles.”

Publication of the paper is not in itself illegal, but is highly displeasing to the Governor, Sir William Denison, who finds that the paper can be suppressed by arresting O’Donoghue and charging him with having “left his allocated district.” He is sentenced to one year’s work in a chain gang – a time spent at hard labour, living in a convict station and wearing a convict uniform, mainly in the company of non-political prisoners such as “rapists, muggers and thieves.”

In March 1851, O’Donoghue is released and taken back to Hobart. Undeterred, he immediately restarts his paper, prominently featuring an extensive personal account of his year with the chain gang. The governor reacts by sending him again to a chain gang, at a more distant location this time – the Cascades Penal Station. Three months later the governor orders him released from there and sent to Launceston.

On the way there, O’Donoghue succeeds in escaping from his guards with the help of fellow-prisoners, who manage to smuggle him on board the ship Yarra Yara, on its way to Melbourne. There, he successfully hides from the British authorities and, with further help from Irish sympathisers, manages to get to San Francisco, where some of his fellows such as MacManus and Meagher have also ended up.

O’Donoghue dies in New York City on January 22, 1854, shortly before the arrival of his wife on a ship from Ireland. The time spent in the chain gang may have contributed to undermining his health. The other escaped state prisoners do not attend his funeral, although Michael Doheny and Michael Cavanagh, fellow Young Irelanders who are living in New York City at the time, are in attendance.

The local Sinn Féin branch in Carlow is named after O’Donoghue.


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Death of Philip Shanahan, Sinn Féin Politician

Philip Shanahan, Irish Sinn Féin politician, dies in Hollyford, County Tipperary, November 21, 1931. He is elected to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in 1918 and serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) in Dáil Éireann from 1919 to 1922.

Shanahan is born in Hollyford on October 27, 1874. At some point he moves to Dublin, where he is a licensed vintner, maintaining an Irish pub in the notorious Monto red-light district.

Shanahan is involved in the Easter Rising in Dublin in April 1916. This leads to him having legal difficulties over the licence of his public house. He consults the lawyer and politician Tim Healy who comments:

“I had with me today a solicitor with his client, a Dublin publican named Phil Shanahan, whose licence is being opposed, and whose house was closed by the military because he was in Jacob’s during Easter week. I was astonished at the type of man – about 40 years of age, jolly and respectable. He said he ‘rose out’ to have a ‘crack at the English’ and seemed not at all concerned at the question of success or failure. He was a Tipperary hurler in the old days. For such a man to join the Rebellion and sacrifice the splendid trade he enjoyed makes one think there are disinterested Nationalists to be found. I thought a publican was the last man in the world to join a rising! Alfred Byrne, MP, was with him, and is bitter against the Party. I think I can save Shanahan’s property.”

Shanahan is elected for Dublin Harbour at the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, defeating Alfred Byrne. Like other Sinn Féin MPs, he does not take his seat at Westminster, but becomes a member of the revolutionary Dáil. He represents Dublin Harbour in the First Dáil from 1919 to 1921. He is arrested and detained in custody by the British government in April 1920 but is released in time to attend the next meeting of the Dáil on June 29, 1920.

During the Irish War of Independence, Billy Dunleavy recalls, “The IRA were the best men we ever had at that time. The Tans used to go around in the tenders with a wire over the top and if it was going by up there in Talbot Street they’d (IRA) say, ‘Get out of the way, quick!’ and they’d throw a hand grenade into the car. Now Phil Shanahan, he owned a pub over there on the corner, he was a great man and he used to hide them after they’d been out on a job. He had cellars and all the IRA men used to go there and hide their stuff.”

In 1921 a general election is held for the House of Commons of Southern Ireland. Republicans use this as an election for the Second Dáil. Shanahan is elected unopposed for the four member Dublin Mid constituency. He is defeated at the 1922 Irish general election to the Third Dáil, as a member of the Anti-Treaty faction of Sinn Féin, which opposes the creation of the Irish Free State in the place of the Republic declared in 1919.

Shanahan leaves Dublin in 1928 and returns to his home village of Hollyford, County Tipperary. He dies there on November 21, 1931, at the age of 57.


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Death of Jonathan Christian, Irish Judge

Jonathan Christian, SL, QC, PC (I), Irish judge, dies in Dublin on October 29, 1887. He serves as Solicitor-General for Ireland from 1856 to 1858. He is a judge of the Court of Common Pleas (Ireland) from 1858 to 1867 when he is appointed Lord Justice of Appeal in Chancery. On the creation of the new Irish Court of Appeal in 1878, he serves briefly on that Court, but retires after a few months.

Christian is considered one of the best Irish lawyers of his time, but as a judge, he regularly courts controversy. His bitter and sarcastic temper and open contempt for most of his colleagues leads to frequent clashes both in Court and in the Press. Though he is rebuked for misconduct several times by the House of Commons, no serious thought is given to removing him from office.

Christian is born in Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, the third son of George Christian, a solicitor, and his wife Margaret Cormack. He is educated at the Trinity College Dublin, enters Gray’s Inn in 1831 and is called to the Irish Bar in 1834. He marries Mary Thomas in 1859 and they have four sons and four daughters. He lives at Ravenswell, Bray, County Wicklow.

Christian’s early years at the Bar are not successful, and he admits to being near to despair at times about his prospects. His practice lays in the Court of Chancery, with procedures that are extremely complex and he finds at first almost unintelligible. Gradually he masters the intricacies of Chancery practice becoming a leader of the Bar, and took silk in 1841. It is said that his expertise in Chancery procedures leave even the Lord Chancellor himself quite unable to argue with him.

Christian is appointed Law Adviser to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, an influential post which involves assisting the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General in advising the Crown in 1850, but resigns after only a few months on the grounds that it interferes with his private practice. He is appointed Third Sergeant later the same year but resigns in 1855, allegedly because he is disappointed at not receiving further promotion. Promotion does in time come his way. He is appointed Solicitor-General the following year and a judge of the Court of Common Pleas in 1858. He is unusual in having no strong political loyalty; it is said that his political allegiance is known only to himself.

As a judge of the Court of Common Pleas, Christian gets on well with his colleagues, and any dissenting judgements he writes are short and courteous. It is after his appointment as a Lord Justice of Appeal in Chancery in 1867 that his behaviour begins to attract unfavourable comment, as he goes out of his way to court controversy on a wide variety of topics.

His criticisms of legal rulings and arguments are invariably delivered in the form of a personal attack. Such exchanges are frequently continued through the letters page of The Times. Conservative in politics, he objects to the appointment of Thomas O’Hagan as Lord Chancellor in December 1868, dismissing him as a liberal “political necessity.” He goes to great lengths to point out legal flaws in the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act 187, to the great annoyance of the Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone. His final public diatribe comes in 1877 when he launches an attack on the quality of law reporting, dismissing the contents of the Irish Reports as “a mass of utterly worthless rubbish.” He is vilified in the legal press and is the subject of cartoons in Dublin satirical journals. Pleading deafness, he retires in December 1878.

Christian dies on October 29, 1887, at his Dublin residence, 53 Merrion Square, and is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery, Deansgrange, County Dublin. In his will, approved in Dublin on December 3, 1887, he leaves an estate worth over £70,000. There is a fine portrait by Frank Reynolds in the dining hall of the Honourable Society of King’s Inns, Dublin.


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Birth of Pádraig de Brún, Catholic Priest & Linguist

Pádraig de Brún, also called Patrick Joseph Monsignor Browne, a Roman Catholic priest, linguist, Classicist, and Celticist, is born in Grangemockler, County Tipperary, on October 13, 1889. With regard to his contribution to modern literature in Irish, he, who Louis de Paor terms in 2014 “one of the most distinguished literary figures of his time,” is also a writer of Irish poetry in the Irish language and the literary translator of many of the greatest works of the Western canon into Modern Irish. He serves as President of University College, Galway (UCG), and is known in friendly and informal circles as Paddy Browne.

De Brún is the son of a primary school teacher, Maurice Browne. He is educated locally, at Rockwell College, Cashel, and at Holy Cross College, Drumcondra, Dublin (at both he is tutored in mathematics by Éamon de Valera). In 1909, he is awarded a BA from the Royal University of Ireland. He is awarded an MA degree by the National University of Ireland, and wins a traveling scholarship in mathematics and mathematical physics, enabling him to pursue further studies in Paris. He is ordained as a Catholic priest at the Irish College in Paris in 1913, the same year he earns his D.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Paris under Émile Picard.

After a period at the University of Göttingen, de Brún is appointed professor of mathematics at St. Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth, in 1914. In April 1945, he is elected by the Senate of the National University of Ireland to succeed John Hynes as President of University College, Galway, an office he holds until his retirement in 1959. His friend Thomas MacGreevy refers to de Brún as, “Rector Magnificus,” and praises his, “Olympian capacity to appreciate the most exalted works of art and literature, ancient and modern.”

The School of Mathematics, Mathematical Physics and Statistics is based in Áras de Brún, a building named in de Brún‘s honour. He subsequently becomes Chairman of the Arts Council of Ireland, a position he holds until his death in 1960. He also serves as chairman of the Council of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS).

De Brún is close friend of 1916 Easter Rising leader Seán Mac Diarmada and is deeply affected by the latter’s execution.

De Brún was a prolific writer of Irish poetry in the Irish language, including the well-known poem “Tháinig Long ó Valparaiso.” He further translates into Modern Irish many great works of the Western canon, including Homer‘s Iliad and Odyssey, Sophocles‘ Antigone and Oedipus Rex, and Plutarch‘s Parallel Lives, as well as French stage plays by Jean Racine and Dante Alighieri‘s Divine Comedy. With regards to his importance to modern literature in Irish, he is recently termed “one of the most distinguished literary figures of his time.”

The French Government awards de Brún the title of Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur in 1949, and in 1956, the order Al Merito della Repubblica Italiana is conferred on him by the President of Italy. He is created a Domestic Prelate (a Monsignor) by Pope Pius XII in 1950.

De Brún purchases land at Dunquin in the Dingle Peninsula Gaeltacht. In the 1920s, he also builds a house there known as Tigh na Cille, where his sister and her children often visit and stay at length. Through his literary mentorship of his niece, the future poet Máire Mhac an tSaoi, he has been credited with having an enormous influence upon the future development of modern literature in Irish.

After suffering a heart attack at his house at Seapoint, Dún Laoghaire, into which he had recently moved, de Brún dies on June 5, 1960, in St. Vincent’s nursing home, Leeson Street, Dublin.


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Birth of Des Hanafin, Fianna Fáil Politician

Desmond A. Hanafin, Fianna Fáil politician who serves for over 30 years as a member of Seanad Éireann, is born in Thurles, County Tipperary, on September 9, 1930. He opposes social liberalisation, particularly the legalisation of abortion, divorce and same-sex marriage, and is one of the founders of the anti-abortion advocacy group, Pro Life Campaign (PLC).

Hanafin is the son of John Hanafin (1890–1953), a draper and newsagent who serves for many years as a Fianna Fáil councillor for North Tipperary County Council and previously is a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and an elected Sinn Féin councillor.

Hanafin marries Mona Brady, daughter of J. P. Brady, on August 2, 1958, in Clonmel, County Tipperary. The wedding is followed by a reception at the Galtee Hotel, Cahir, which is attended by various notables including Rev. Father J. J. Hampson, president of Blackrock College. Their first child, Mary Hanafin, is born in June 1959, followed by John Hanafin in September 1960. Mary Hanafin is a former Fianna Fáil TD and government minister, and John Hanafin is a former Fianna Fáil senator.

Hanafin operates the Anner Hotel, located in Thurles during the 1960s. Initially successful, the business fails in 1967, which Mary Hanafin later blames on her father’s excess drinking. Subsequently, Hanafin is a director of the Transinternational Oil Company.

Hanafin’s first attempt for election to public office proves unsuccessful. In 1953, he seeks to be co-opted to fill the vacancy on North Tipperary County Council created by the death of his father. In the event councillors co-opt a Labour Party nominee, Michael Treacy, by eleven votes to seven.

Hanafin is elected a member of North Tipperary County Council in 1955, polling 934 first preference votes. Subsequently, in 1956, drawing support from the Clann na Poblachta representatives, he is elected Chairman of the County Council.

In 1957, Hanafin conducts a three-month tour of the United States, during which he is commissioned a Kentucky colonel by then Kentucky Governor Albert Benjamin “Happy” Chandler, Sr.. He is also awarded the freedom of Louisville, Kentucky, and is received by Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago.

Hanafin is re-elected to North Tipperary County Council in 1960, polling 797 first preference votes. In 1961, he votes against the Fianna Fáil nominee for Chair of the County Council, Thomas F. Meagher, and in favour of the Clann na Poblachta nominee, Michael F. Cronin, who is elected by 10 votes to 9. In 1964, he controversially votes in favour of Jeremiah Mockler, “a former school mate,” who is elected by 10 votes to 9 to the office of Rate Collector for Borrisokane, County Tipperary.

Hanafin holds the seat until 1985. He is first elected to Seanad Éireann in 1969 and retains his seat until the 1993 Seanad election at which he loses his seat by one vote. He regains his seat in the 1997 elections, and in 2002 announces his retirement from politics. He unsuccessfully contests the 1977 and 1981 Irish general elections for the Tipperary North constituency. He is a chief fundraiser of the Fianna Fáil party for many years.

In May 2015, Hanafin accuses “Yes” campaigners in the same-sex marriage referendum of spreading a “palpable climate of fear,” and calls for a “No” vote.

Hanafin opposes the legalisation of divorce, which is introduced in 1995, and attempts to overturn the referendum result in the Supreme Court, but is refused by the court.

An opponent of abortion, Hanafin is one of the promoters of the constitutional amendment that enshrines the legal ban on abortion in the Constitution of Ireland. He is co-founder, chairman and later honorary president of the Pro Life Campaign.

Hanafin dies in County Tipperary at the age of 86 on June 22, 2017. A Requiem Mass is held at the Cathedral of the Assumption, Thurles, on June 25, with burial afterward in St. Patrick’s Cemetery.


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Death of Johnny Hayes, Member of the Irish American Athletic Club

John Joseph Hayes, an American athlete and a member of the Irish American Athletic Club, dies on August 25, 1965, in Englewood, New Jersey. He is the winner of the men’s marathon race at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London. His Olympic victory contributes to the early growth of long-distance running and marathoning in the United States.

Born in New York City on April 10, 1886, to a family of Irish emigrants from Nenagh, County Tipperary, Hayes is probably best known for winning the controversial marathon race at the London Olympics. He is one of only three male American athletes to win the Olympic Marathon, the other two being Thomas Hicks in 1904 and  Frank Shorter in 1972.

In 1905, Hayes joins Bloomingdale Brothers as an assistant to the manager of the sporting goods department. At night, he trains on a cinder track on the roof of the Bloomingdale’s building in New York. He is promoted to manager of the department after returning from his Olympic victory.

Hayes starts his athletics career with a fifth-place finish at the 1906 Boston Marathon, running for the St. Bartholemew Athletic Club in a time of 2:55:38. He improves on that the following year by finishing third in Boston with a time of 2:30:38 and winning the inaugural Yonkers Marathon. In 1908, he finishes second, 21 seconds behind Thomas Morrissey in the Boston Marathon with a time of 2:26:04 and thus qualifies for the Olympic Games held in London that same year.

The British Olympic Association wants to start the race in front of Windsor Castle and finish in front of the royal reviewing stand at the White City Stadium. As a result, the distance is 26 miles and 385 yards (42.195 km). It takes until 1921 for the IAAF to codify that distance as the official length of the marathon. Prior to this, races are usually about 25 miles (40 km).

At the race itself, Dorando Pietri from Italy is the first to enter the stadium. But Pietri has depleted himself to open a more than 10 minute lead over the field and is suffering extreme fatigue and dehydration. When he enters the stadium, he takes the wrong path, and when umpires redirect him, he falls down for the first time. He gets up with their help in front of 75,000 spectators.

Pietri falls four more times, and each time, the umpires help him up. He manages to finish the race first, with a time of 2 hours, 54 minutes, 46 seconds. During all these stumbles and the direct aid from the officials, Hayes has now entered the stadium, finishing the race second, with a time of 2 hours, 55 minutes, 18 seconds.

Pietri is disqualified after the U.S. officials file a protest. Despite the official result, Pietri achieves much more fame than Hayes when Queen Alexandra awards him a special silver cup.

All of the Olympic officials are British, and the Pietri incident joins a list of other controversial calls in the 1908 Olympics, prompting the International Olympic Committee to start appointing judges from a wide variety of countries instead of only the host country.

After the dramatic Olympic battle between Pietri and Hayes, public interest is such that a match race is organized by professional promoters in November 1908 at Madison Square Garden. Pietri wins the race by 75 yards. A second match race is held on March 15, 1909, and again Pietri wins. Both Pietri and Hayes turn professional after the Olympics and achieve great fame.

Hayes is a trainer for the U.S. team for the 1912 Summer Olympics. He later teaches physical education and is a food broker. Hayes dies on August 25, 1965, in Englewood, New Jersey.

The Shore Athletic Club of New Jersey (Shore AC) holds the Johnny Hayes collection as lifetime trustees. Included in the collection are numerous trophies, as well as the 1908 Olympic gold medal for the marathon. This represents the first Olympic gold medal to be won at the modern marathon distance of 26 miles, 385 yards.

Hayes is a guest on the television show I’ve Got a Secret as one of five former Olympic champions, which airs on October 13, 1954.

In 2002, three statues honoring Olympic champions with links to Nenagh, Matt McGrath, Johnny Hayes and Bob Tisdall, are unveiled in front of the Nenagh Courthouse.


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Birth of Pierce McCan

Pierce McCan, Sinn Féin politician, is born at Prospect Lodge, Ballyanne Desmesne, County Wexford, on August 2, 1882. 

McCan is the son of Francis McCan, a land agent, and Jane Power. He is the nephew of Patrick Joseph Power, MP for East Waterford from 1885 to 1913. He attends Clongowes Wood College and Downside School. He resides at Ballyowen House, Dualla, Cashel, County Tipperary, and is an “extensive farmer” and is a member of the Tipperary Hunt.

McCan is a founder member of Sinn Féin in 1905. He joins the Gaelic League in 1909 and is a member of the Irish Volunteers from 1914 onward.

After more than 2,000 German and Austrian prisoners are imprisoned at Richmond Barracks, Templemore, County Tipperary, following the first battles of World War I in 1914, he plots to engineer a mass escape but is thwarted when the prisoners are removed to Leigh, Lancashire in 1915. He is interned in 1916 after the Easter Rising for several months in Richmond Barracks, Dublin, and Knutsford, England. In May 1918, he is arrested under the German Plot and detained in Gloucester Gaol.

McCan is president of the East Tipperary executive of Sinn Féin. While incarcerated, he is elected as a Sinn Féin MP for the East Tipperary constituency at the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland.

In January 1919, Sinn Féin MPs refuse to recognise the Parliament of the United Kingdom and instead assembles in the Mansion House, Dublin as a revolutionary parliament called Dáil Éireann. McCan never sits in Dáil Éireann, dying in prison on March 6, 1919, during the Spanish flu pandemic. On March 9, 1919, he is buried in Dualla, Cashel, County Tipperary.

No by-election is called to replace him in the UK constituency. After April 1, 1922, the Irish Free State (Agreement) Act 1922 prohibits any by-election, and the constituency is abolished when parliament is dissolved on October 26, 1922, for the general election on November 15.

The First Dáil also considers how to fill the vacancy. A select committee in April recommends that the local Sinn Féin organisation which nominated him should nominate his replacement. A June proposal to postpone action, either for six months or until a Westminster by-election is held, is referred to another committee, which recommends that “in view of the circumstances which occasioned the vacancy, it was due to the memory of the late Pierce McCann that his place should not be filled at present.”

On April 10, 1919, Cathal Brugha tells the First Dáil: “Before I formally move the motion, as I have mentioned the name of Pierce McCan, I would ask the Members of the Dáil to stand up as a mark of our respect to the first man of our body to die for Ireland, and of our sympathy with his relatives. We are sure that their sorrow is lightened by the fact that his death was for the cause for which he would have lived, and that his memory will ever be cherished in the hearts of the comrades who knew him, and will be honoured by succeeding generations of his countrymen with that of the other martyrs of our holy cause.” The McCan Barracks in Templemore, County Tipperary, is named after him.

In the 1933 Irish general election, McCan’s brother, Joseph, a member of the National Farmers’ and Ratepayers’ Association, stands unsuccessfully for the National Centre Party in the Tipperary constituency.


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Birth of Banjo Player Gerry O’Connor

Gerry O’Connor, traditional tenor banjo player, is born on July 21, 1960, in Nenagh, County Tipperary. As Earl Hitchener, music critic for The Wall Street Journal, says, O’Connor can be considered at the moment “the single best four-string banjoist in the history of Irish Music.” He also plays mandolin, fiddle, guitar and tenor guitar.

O’Connor releases four solo albums and his third one, titled No Place Like Home, is named by The Irish Times as Number 1 Traditional/Folk album of the year in 2004. After the sudden death of banjo player Barney McKenna on April 5, 2012, he joins The Dubliners to complete their planned tour, until the final shows at Vicar Street in Dublin, on December 28-30. McKenna himself says about Gerry O’Connor: “He’s my best pupil ever.” Together with Eamonn Campbell, Patsy Watchorn and Seán Cannon, O’Connor keeps touring in 2013 as The Dublin Legends.

In addition to his solo performances and recordings, O’Connor is a member of Four Men and a Dog. He also works on Michael Flatley‘s Lord of the Dance soundtrack and guests over the years with many famous Irish artists such as The Waterboys, Mary Black, Arcady, Moya Brennan, Luka Bloom, Sharon Shannon and performs for U.S. President Bill Clinton in Belfast during his historic visit to Ireland. More recently he guests on Christy Moore‘s album Folk Tale (2011).

O’Connor is one of four musicians brought together by blues rock singer/guitar player Joe Bonamassa to perform on a variety of instruments in an acoustic concert at the Vienna State Opera on July 3, 2012. None of the five had ever worked together nor even met until they arrive in Vienna, where three days later they put on a live performance. The event is released on March 12, 2013, on CD and DVD/Blu-Ray, titled An Acoustic Evening At The Vienna Opera House, and in 2014 is broadcast as a PBS special.

O’Connor mainly plays CGDA tuned tenor banjo, instead of the usual Irish tuning GDAE. He plays a David Boyle banjo on almost every tour since 1996, but usually records with an Epiphone Recording A banjo.