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Tag Archives: County Wexford


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Death of James Ryan, Doctor, Revolutionary & Fianna Fáil Politician

James Ryan, medical doctor, revolutionary and politician who serves in every Fianna Fáil government from 1932 to 1965, dies on his farm at Kindlestown, County Wicklow, on September 25, 1970.

Ryan is born on the family farm at Tomcoole, near Taghmon, County Wexford, on December 6, 1892. The second-youngest of twelve children, he is educated at St. Peter’s College, Wexford, and Ring College, Waterford. In 1911, he wins a county council scholarship to University College Dublin (UCD) where he studies medicine.

In March 1917, Ryan passes his final medical examinations. That June he sets up medical practice in Wexford. In 1921, he moves to Dublin where he opens a doctor’s practice at Harcourt Street, specialising in skin diseases at the Skin and Cancer Hospital on Holles Street. He leaves medicine in 1925, after he purchases Kindlestown, a large farm near Delgany, County Wicklow. He lives there and it remains a working farm until his death.

In July 1919, Ryan marries Máirín Cregan, originally from County Kerry and a close friend of Sinéad de Valera throughout her life. Cregan, like her husband, also fought in the Easter Rising and is subsequently an author of children’s stories in Irish. They have three children together.

One of Ryan’s sisters, Mary Kate, marries Seán T. O’Kelly, one of Ryan’s future cabinet colleagues and a future President of Ireland. Following her death O’Kelly marries her sister, Phyllis Ryan. Another of Ryan’s sisters, Josephine (‘Min’) Ryan, marries Richard Mulcahy, a future leader of Fine Gael. Another sister, Agnes, marries Denis McCullough, a Cumann na nGaedheal TD from 1924 to 1927. He is also the great-grandfather of Ireland and Leinster Rugby player James Ryan.

While studying at university in 1913, Ryan joins the Gaelic League at Clonmel. The company commander recruits the young Catholic nationalist, who becomes a founder-member of the Irish Volunteers and is sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) the following year. In 1916, he goes first to Cork to deliver a message from Seán Mac Diarmada to Tomás Mac Curtain that the Easter Rising is due to happen on Easter Sunday, then to Cork again in a 12-hour journey in a car to deliver Eoin MacNeill‘s cancellation order, which attempts to stop the rising. When he arrives back on Tuesday, he serves as the medical officer in the General Post Office (GPO) and treats many wounds, including James Connolly‘s shattered ankle, a wound which gradually turns gangrenous. He is, along with Connolly, one of the last people to leave the GPO when the evacuation takes place. Following the surrender of the garrison, he is deported to HM Prison Stafford in England and subsequently Frongoch internment camp. He is released in August 1916.

Ryan rejoins the Volunteers immediately after his release from prison, and in June 1917, he is elected Commandant of the Wexford Battalion. His political career begins the following year when he is elected as a Sinn Féin candidate for the constituency of South Wexford in the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland. Like his fellow Sinn Féin MPs, he refuses to attend the Westminster Parliament. Instead he attends the proceedings of the First Dáil on January 21, 1919. As the Irish War of Independence goes on, he becomes Brigade Commandant of South Wexford and is also elected to Wexford County Council, serving as chairman on one occasion. In September 1919, he is arrested by the British and interned on Spike Island and later Bere Island. In February 1921, he is imprisoned at Kilworth Internment Camp, County Cork. He is later moved on Ballykinlar Barracks in County Down and released in August 1921.

In the 1922 Irish general election, Ryan and one of the other two anti-Treaty Wexford TDs lose their seats to pro-Treaty candidates. During the Irish Civil War, he is arrested and held in Mountjoy Prison before being transferred to Curragh Camp, where he embarks on a 36-day hunger strike. While interned he wins back his Dáil seat as an abstentionist at the 1923 Irish general election. He is released from prison in December 1923.

In 1926, Ryan is among the Sinn Féin TDs who follow leader Éamon de Valera out of the party to found Fianna Fáil. They enter the Dáil in 1927 and spend five years on the opposition benches.

Following the 1932 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil comes to office and Ryan is appointed Minister for Agriculture, a position he continuously holds for fifteen years. He faces severe criticism over the Anglo-Irish trade war with Britain as serious harm is done to the cattle trade, Ireland’s main export earner. The trade war ends in 1938 with the signing of the Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement between both governments, after a series of talks in London between the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, de Valera, Ryan and Seán Lemass.

In 1947, after spending fifteen years as Minister for Agriculture, Ryan is appointed to the newly created positions of Minister for Health and Minister for Social Welfare. Following Fianna Fáil’s return to power at the 1951 Irish general election, he returns as Minister for Health and Social Welfare. Following the 1954 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil loses power and he moves to the backbenches once again.

Following the 1957 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil are back in office and de Valera’s cabinet has a new look to it. In a clear message that there will be a change to economic policy, Ryan, a close ally of Seán Lemass, is appointed Minister for Finance, replacing the conservative Seán MacEntee. The first sign of a new economic approach comes in 1958, when Ryan brings the First Programme for Economic Development to the cabinet table. This plan, the brainchild of T. K. Whitaker, recognises that Ireland will have to move away from self-sufficiency toward free trade. It also proposes that foreign firms should be given grants and tax breaks to set up in Ireland.

When Lemass succeeds de Valera as Taoiseach in 1959, Ryan is re-appointed as Minister for Finance. Lemass wants to reward him for his loyalty by also naming him Tánaiste. However, the new leader feels obliged to appoint MacEntee, one of the party elders to the position. Ryan continues to implement the First Programme throughout the early 1960s, achieving a record growth rate of 4 percent by 1963. That year an even more ambitious Second Programme is introduced. However, it overreaches and has to be abandoned. In spite of this, the annual growth rate averages five percent, the highest achieved since independence.

Ryan does not stand in the 1965 Irish general election, after which he is nominated by the Taoiseach to Seanad Éireann, where he joins his son, Eoin Ryan Snr. At the 1969 dissolution he retires to his farm at Kindlestown, County Wicklow, where he dies at age 77 on September 25, 1970. He is buried at Redford Cemetery, Greystones, County Wicklow. His grandson, Eoin Ryan Jnr, serves in the Oireachtas from 1989 to 2007 and later in the European Parliament from 2004 to 2009.


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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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Death of Richard Corish, Politician & Trade Unionist

Richard Corish, Irish politician and trade unionist, dies in Wexford, County Wexford, on July 19, 1945. His involvement in the Labour Party for over 25 years and his contribution to the development of Wexford makes him one of the key figures in Wexford’s long history.

Born at 35 William Street in Wexford on September 17, 1886, Corish is the eldest child of carpenter Peter Corish and Mary Murphy. He is educated by the Christian Brothers in the town on George’s Street and leaves school at fourteen years old, which is not unusual at this time.

On September 29, 1913, at 27 years of age, he marries Catherine Bergin, daughter of labourer Daniel Bergin. They have six children, including Brendan.

Corish works as a fitter in the Wexford Engineering foundry the Star Iron Works. It is in this job that he witnesses the poor working conditions that industrial workers have to face all over the country. Many people of Ireland feel that this needs to change and so, in 1909, James Larkin forms the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU). Many important figures join the union including P. T. Daly, James Connolly and eventually Corish himself, who becomes a voice for the Wexford workers.

The Wexford lockout from 1911 to 1912 that ensues because of this union is the event that first brings public attention to Corish in his hometown. Wexford employers counter the ITGWU by locking out their employees. On a conciliation committee, Corish represents the workers of the town and becomes a leader of this local union. During the lockout, he is arrested, spending a night in jail, for expressing his anger to a recently employed non-union foundry worker.

When visiting Wexford to support the workers, ITGWU leader James Larkin and trusted members James Connolly and P. T. Daly are put up in the Corish household on William Street.

In February 1912, the dispute is resolved with the introduction of the Irish Foundry Workers’ Union of which Corish is secretary until 1915. His career as a tradesman however is over as he is blacklisted by all employers. This new union is absorbed by the ITGWU two years later. He remains a respected figure in the town, especially by the foundry workers, and continues as secretary in the ITGWU until 1921.

Corish first takes his seat in the Wexford Borough Council in January 1913, where he is given the title of “Alderman.”

In May 1916, Corish is arrested after being suspected of having involvement in the Easter Rising and is imprisoned in Stafford, England until June. He is often targeted because of his republican activism, receiving a life-threatening letter in 1920 regarding the killing of Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) officers.

Corish is first elected to Wexford County Council in 1920 and later that year is appointed mayor of the town.

Corish is an Irish Labour Party representative. However, as the Labour Party in the southern 26 counties, later the Irish Free State, choose not to contest the 1921 Irish elections, Corish runs as a Sinn Féin candidate and is elected to Dáil Éireann for the Wexford constituency.

Corish supports the Anglo-Irish Treaty and votes in favour of it. He also runs as a member of the Labour Party at the 1922 Irish general election. His involvement in the trade union movement and his clear speech-giving skills displayed during a visit from Michael Collins to Wexford that same year are what give him a fighting chance in the election. He is elected and serves in Dáil Éireann until his death in 1945.

He is a public supporter of the Garda Síochána, expressing his disagreement with the reductions in Garda pay and allowances in 1924 and 1929.

Corish is a member of the governing body of University College Dublin (UCD) as well as the Irish National Foresters, and is its High Chief Ranger in 1942.

Corish is a recipient of the Honorary Freedom of the Borough of Wexford in early 1945 and dies later that year, on July 19, 1945, after serving as mayor and council member for 25 years. During exploratory surgery for stomach pain, the doctors of Wexford County Hospital realise that his condition is much worse than imagined and he dies at the age of 58 shortly thereafter. After appearing in the Dáil only a few days prior, his death is unexpected.

His death causes a by-election to the Dáil which is won by his son, Brendan Corish, who is later a leader of the Labour Party and Tánaiste. He serves as mayor up until his retirement in 1982. Another son, Des Corish, later also becomes mayor of the town. Corish’s granddaughter, Helen Corish, is mayor in 1990.

Corish Park is built in his honour in the early 1950s.


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Birth of Goddard Henry Orpen, Lawyer & Historian

Goddard Henry Orpen, lawyer and historian, is born in Dublin on May 8, 1852, the fourth son of the five sons and three daughters of John Herbert Orpen, barrister, of Dublin, and Ellen Susanna Gertrude Richards, youngest daughter of Rev. John Richards of Grange, County Wexford.

For most of his childhood Orpen’s family lives at 58 St. Stephen’s Green. He is educated at Abbey CBS, a Christian Brothers secondary school in Tipperary, County Tipperary, and in 1869 enters Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where he displays early academic aptitude, obtaining exhibitions and scholarships and being elected a foundation scholar. He graduates BA with first-class honours in 1873 and four years later is called to the English bar at the Inner Temple, London.

On August 18, 1880, in St. Peter’s Church, Aungier Street, Dublin, Orpen marries Adela Elizabeth Richards, the daughter and heiress of Edward Moore Richards, engineer and the landlord of Grange, County Wexford. Adela is his first cousin once removed, her great-grandfather and his grandfather being the Rev. John Richards. They live for two decades after their marriage at Bedford Park, Chiswick, London, with their daughter Lilian Iris (b. 1883) and son Edward Richards (b. 1884). Soon after their marriage, he begins taking lessons in the Irish language in line with his passionate interest in Irish historical and antiquarian research, which gradually supplants his languishing legal career. He translates and edits a French rhymed chronicle about the Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland, entitled The Song of Dermot and the Earl (1892), the title which he gives it and by which it has since generally been known in English. He also translates Émile de Laveleye‘s Le Socialisme Contemporain (The Socialism of Today, 1884), to which he adds a chapter on English socialism.

After Adela’s father transfers ownership of his estate to her in 1900, now renamed Monksgrange, the Orpens reluctantly leave London to live there, enabling Orpen to devote his time fully to research and writing. His major work is Ireland Under the Normans (Vols. 1–2, 1911; Vols. 3–4, 1920), which argue that the Norman invasion benefited the Irish, leading to advances in agriculture and trade.

Both before and after his death Orpen’s work is the subject of hostile criticism from those with more nationalist inclinations, starting with Eoin MacNeill in a series of lectures delivered in 1917. Despite his own eminence as a scholar of medieval Ireland, MacNeill resorts to unfair polemic in his attack on Orpen, caricaturing his account of pre-Norman Irish society and disregarding the more subtle nuances in his views of the English Irish relationship. In this he has been followed by generations of other scholars and readers, overlooking the depth of Orpen’s research, the perceptiveness of his interpretations, and the extent of his fieldwork on the archaeological evidence from the medieval period. Orpen takes the study of Anglo-Norman Ireland out of the realm of vague antiquarianism and professionalises it. His standards are not those of “the gentleman-amateur” as might be expected from his background, but of the twentieth century “scientific” historian, and he is therefore now widely regarded as the founder of the professional study of Anglo-Norman Ireland. Perhaps the most striking evidence of the continued validity and relevance of his work is that his four-volume Ireland Under the Normans has been twice republished in more recent years, in 1968 by Oxford University Press and in 2002 in a one-volume version by Four Courts Press.

Orpen is elected a member of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (RSAI), serving as president in 1930–32), and the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) (1911), and contributes historical articles to their journals as well as to periodicals such as The American Historical Review (1913–14) and The Cambridge Medieval History (1932, 1936). A lecture to the New Ross Literary Society is later published as New Ross in the Thirteenth Century (1911). He also contributes a major chapter on the medieval church to the second volume of Walter Alison Phillips‘s History of the Church of Ireland (1934). Though his literary work is recognised by an honorary doctorate from TCD in 1921, he feels increasingly isolated as Monksgrange is targeted during the Irish Civil War and raided on several occasions. On religion he lists himself as an agnostic in the 1911 census.

Orpen’s final work is The Orpen Family, a personal family history printed for private circulation in 1930. A portrait of Orpen (above) by Seán O’Sullivan hangs in Monksgrange.

Orpen dies on May 15, 1932, at Monksgrange, and is buried alongside his wife Adela in St. Anne’s Churchyard, Killanne, County Wexford. His very extensive papers, including correspondence, manuscripts and drawings, as well as records and papers of the Orpen family, are held at Monksgrange. Included there is a very large collection of his photographs, a skill in which he notably distinguishes himself. A small collection of his correspondence is also held in the National Library of Ireland (NLI).

(From: “Orpen, Goddard Henry” by Philip Bull, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009, revised March 2021 | Pictured: Portrait of Goddard Henry Orpen by Seán O’Sullivan)


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Death of W. R. E. Murphy, Soldier & Policeman

William Richard English-Murphy, DSO MC, Irish soldier and policeman known as W. R. E. Murphy, dies on March 5, 1975, in Ardee, County Louth. He serves as an officer with the British Army in World War I and later in the National Army. In the Irish Civil War, he is second in overall command of the National Army from January to May 1923. He is first Irish Commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) and the last Commissioner of the force before its merger with the Garda Síochána in 1925. Thereafter he is the Deputy Commissioner of the Gardaí until his retirement in 1955.

Murphy is born in Danecastle, Bannow, County Wexford, on January 26, 1890. His parents die when he is four years old. His grandparents also die during his childhood. He and his sister Mae (Mary Sarah) are separately raised by relatives in Belfast and Waterford. He is completing his master’s degree at Queens University Belfast (QUB) when he follows the call of John Redmond to join the war effort and ensure Irish independence. Ulster regiments reject him because he is Catholic. Seeking a regiment that treats Irish volunteers with respect, he joins the British Army in Belfast in 1915 as an officer cadet in the South Staffordshire Regiment.

Murphy serves in the Battle of Loos in 1915 and is wounded but returns to action for the start of the Battle of the Somme in July 1916. He becomes commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, the South Staffordshire Regiment in August 1918, reaching the rank of temporary lieutenant colonel. In 1918, his regiment is posted to the Italian Front, at the Piave River, where they are when the armistice is declared on November 4, 1918. He is granted the rank of substantive lieutenant colonel on the retired list on May 16, 1922.

After he returns to Ireland, Murphy resumes his career as a teacher. At some point, he joins the Irish Republican Army (IRA), an organisation fighting to end British rule in Ireland.

In December 1921, the Anglo-Irish Treaty is signed between British and Irish leaders, resulting in the setting up of the Irish Free State. Conflict over the Treaty among Irish nationalists ultimately leads to the outbreak of the Irish Civil War in June 1922. Murphy enlists as a general in the new National Army of the Irish Free State. After the start of the Irish Civil War, he is put in command of troops charged with taking posts held by the anti-Treaty IRA in Limerick.

At the Battle of Kilmallock in July–August 1922, Murphy is second in command to Eoin O’Duffy. His troops successfully dislodge the anti-Treaty IRA from positions around Kilmallock in County Limerick, but he is criticised for his tendency to “dig in” and resort to trench warfare rather than rapid offensive action.

Afterward, Murphy is put in overall command of Free State forces in County Kerry until January 1923. He lobbies Richard Mulcahy, commander in chief, for 250 extra troops, to bring his command up to 1,500 and help to put down the guerrilla resistance there. In the early stages of the guerrilla war, he organises large-scale “sweeps” to break up the republican concentrations in west Cork and east Kerry. These meet with little success, however. He exercises overall command in the county, but day-to-day operations are largely run by Brigadier Paddy Daly, of the Dublin Guard.

In October, in response to continuing guerrilla attacks on his troops, Murphy orders a nightly curfew to be put into place in Tralee.

In December, Murphy writes to Mulcahy that the “Irregular [Anti-Treaty] organisation here is well-nigh broken up,” and suggests the end of the war in the county is in sight. His optimistic prediction, however, proves premature.

On December 20, Murphy sentences four captured republican fighters to death under the fictitious “Public Safety Act” for possession of arms and ammunition. However, the sentences are to be called off if local guerrilla activity ceases. Humphrey Murphy, the local IRA Brigade commander, threatens to shoot eight named government supporters in reprisal if the men are executed. Eventually, their sentence is commuted to penal servitude.

In January 1923, Murphy is promoted from his command in Kerry to “responsibility for operations and organisation at the national level” in the army. Paddy Daly takes over as commanding officer in Kerry. Murphy later voices the opinion that Daly had been a bad choice, given his implication in the Ballyseedy massacre and other events of March 1923, in which up to 30 anti-Treaty prisoners were killed in the county.

Murphy leaves the National Army after the end of the Irish Civil War in May 1923 and becomes the first Irish commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. He later becomes deputy commissioner of the Garda Síochána, when DMP is merged with the new national police force in 1925. He holds this post until his retirement in 1955.

Murphy is at the forefront of efforts to close down Dublin’s red-light district, the Monto, in the early 1920s. Between 1923 and 1925, religious missions led by Frank Duff of the Legion of Mary, a Roman Catholic organisation, and Fr. R.S. Devane work to close down the brothels. They receive the cooperation of Murphy in his role as Dublin Police Commissioner, and the campaign ends with 120 arrests and the closure of the brothels following a police raid on March 12, 1925.

Murphy also holds the post for a time of president of the Irish Athletic Boxing Association.

Murphy lives with his daughter, Joan McMahon, in Ardee, County Louth, after his wife, Mary Agnes Fortune, dies on July 31, 1958. He dies on March 5, 1975, and is buried in St. Peter’s Churchyard, Bray, County Wicklow.

(Pictured: Major-General W. R. E. Murphy, as depicted on a Wills’ Irish Sportsmen cigarette card, from their boxing series)


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Death of Myles Byrne, United Irishman & French Army Officer

Myles Byrne, United Irishman, French army officer, and author, dies at his house in the rue Montaigne (now rue Jean Mermoz, 8th arrondissement, near Champs-Élysées), Paris on January 24, 1862.

Byrne is born on March 20, 1780, at Ballylusk, Monaseed, County Wexford, the eldest son of Patrick Byrne, a middling Catholic farmer, and Mary (née Graham). He joins the United Irishmen in the spring of 1797 and, although only seventeen, becomes one of the organisation’s most active agents in north Wexford.

When rebellion engulfs his home district on May 27, 1798, Byrne assumes command of the local Monaseed corps and rallies them at Fr. John Murphy‘s camp on Carrigrew Hill on June 3. They fight at the rebel victory at Tubberneering on June 4 and the unsuccessful attempt to capture Arklow five days later. After the dispersal of the main rebel camp at Vinegar Hill on June 21, he accompanies Murphy to Kilkenny but begins the retreat to Wexford four days later. Heavily attacked at Scollagh Gap, he is one of a minority of survivors who spurn the proffered amnesty and join the rebel forces in the Wicklow Mountains. He is absent when the main force defeats a cavalry column at Ballyellis on June 30 but protects the wounded who are left in Glenmalure when the rebels launch a foray into the midlands the following week. He takes charge of the Wexfordmen who regain the mountains and fight a series of minor actions in the autumn and winter of 1798 under the militant Wicklow leader Joseph Holt. On November 10, he seizes an opportunity to escape into Dublin, where he works as a timber-yard clerk with his half-brother Edward Kennedy.

Byrne is introduced to Robert Emmet in late 1802 and immediately becomes a prominent figure in his insurrection plot. He is intended to command the many Wexford residents of the city during the planned rising of 1803. On July 23, 1803, he assembles a body of rebels at the city quays, which disperse once news is received that the rising has miscarried. At Emmet’s request, he escapes to Bordeaux in August 1803 and makes his way to Paris to inform Thomas Addis Emmet and William James MacNeven of the failed insurrection. In his Paris diary, the older Emmet recalls passing on “the news brought by the messenger” to Napoleon Bonaparte‘s military advisors.

Byrne enlists in the newly formed Irish Legion in December 1803 as a sub-lieutenant and is promoted to lieutenant in 1804 but only sees garrison duty. The regiment eventually moves to the Low Countries, and is renamed the 3rd Foreign Regiment in 1808, the year he is promoted to captain. He campaigns in Spain until 1812, participating in counterinsurgency against Spanish guerillas. He fights in Napoleon’s last battles and is appointed Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur on June 18, 1813. With Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, the former Irish Legion, with its undistinguished and somewhat unfortunate history, is disbanded.

Though a supporter of Napoleon during the Hundred Days, Byrne is not involved in his return, yet he is included in an exclusion order from France which he successfully appeals. In November 1816, he swears the oath of loyalty to the now Royal Order of the Legion of Honour and becomes a naturalised French subject by royal decree on August 20, 1817. He becomes a half-pay captain but is recalled for active service in 1828 and serves as a staff officer in the French expeditionary force in Morea in support of Greek independence (1828–1830). His conduct on this campaign leads to his promotion as chef de bataillon (lieutenant-colonel) of the 56th Infantry Regiment in 1830.

After five years of service in garrisons around France, including counterinsurgency duty in Brittany, Byrne retires from the army in 1835. On December 24, 1835, he marries a Scottish woman, Frances “Fanny” Horner, at the British Embassy Chapel in Paris. They live in modest circumstances in various parts of Paris and remain childless. Though it is unclear when he is awarded the Chevalier de St Louis, having initially applied for it unsuccessfully in 1821, this distinction is mentioned in his tomb inscription, under his Legion of Honour. John Mitchel, who visits him regularly in Paris in the late 1850s, recalls Byrne sporting the rosette of the Médaille de Sainte Hélène, awarded in 1857 to surviving veterans of Napoleon’s campaigns.

An early list of Irish Legion officers describes Byrne as an upright and disciplined man, with little formal instruction but aspiring to improve himself. He becomes fully fluent in French but also learns Spanish and his language skills are a useful asset in various campaigns. Because of his suspected Bonapartist leanings, he is under police surveillance for some time after the Bourbon Restoration. He does, however, cultivate a wide social circle in Paris over the years. Various references throughout his writings testify to an inquisitive and cultured mind. He intended publishing a lengthy criticism of Gustave de Beaumont‘s Irlande, sociale, politique et religieuse (1840), claiming that it misrepresented the 1798 rebellion, but he withdraws it after meeting the author, not wishing to prejudice the reception of such an important French work on “the sufferings of Ireland.”

A lifelong nationalist, Byrne acts as Paris correspondent of The Nation in the 1840s and is a well-known figure in the Irish community there. He works in the 1850s on his notably unapologetic and candid Memoirs, an early and significant contribution to the Irish literature of exile. This autobiography is acclaimed by nationalists when published posthumously by his wife in 1863, with a French translation swiftly following in 1864. His detailed testimony of key battles of the 1798 rebellion in the southeast and Emmet’s conspiracy are written with the immediacy of an eyewitness and make them an invaluable contribution to that period of Irish history.

Byrne dies on January 24, 1862, in Paris, and is buried in Montmartre Cemetery. On November 25, 1865, John Martin writes of him: “In truth he was a beautiful example of those natures that never grow old. A finer, nobler, gentler, kindlier, gayer, sunnier nature never was than his, and to the last he had the brightness and quickness and cheeriness of youth”.

Byrne’s engaging and dispassionate Memoirs have ensured his special status among Irish nationalists. Because of his longevity he is the only United Irishman to have been photographed. His wife had sketched him in profile in middle age, and the photograph taken almost three decades later shows the same, strong features though those of a frail, but dignified man of 79 years.

(From: “Byrne, Miles” by Ruan O’Donnell and Sylvie Kleinman, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009, last revised August 2024 | Pictured: Photograph of Miles Byrne taken in Paris in 1859)


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Birth of Stephen Hayes, Member & Leader of the IRA

Stephen Hayes, a member and leader of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) from April 1939 to June 1941, is born in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, on December 26, 1902.

During the Irish War of Independence (1919-21), Hayes is commandant of the Wexford Brigade of Fianna Éireann. He takes the Anti-Treaty side during the Irish Civil War (1922-23), during which he is interned.

Hayes is active in Gaelic Athletic Association circles in Wexford. In 1925, he helps Wexford win the Leinster Senior Football Championship. He also serves as secretary to the county board for ten years, from the 1920s to 1930s.

Hayes joins the IRA and is on the IRA Army Council in January 1939 when it declares war on the British government. When IRA Chief of Staff Seán Russell departs on IRA business to the United States, and subsequently to Nazi Germany, Hayes becomes IRA Chief of Staff. His time in office is marred by controversy and it is widely believed that he serves as an informer to the Garda Síochána.

Hayes sends a plan for the invasion of Northern Ireland by German troops to Germany in April 1940. This plan later becomes known as Plan Kathleen. He is also known to have met with German agent Hermann Görtz on May 21, 1940, in Dublin shortly after the latter’s parachuting into Ireland on May 5, 1940, as part of Operation Mainau. He is known to have asked Görtz for money and arms to wage a campaign in Northern Ireland, although shortly after this meeting the original Plan Kathleen is discovered. The discovery of the plan leads to the acceleration of joint British and Irish military planning for a German invasion known as Plan W.

Another meeting on August 15, 1940, on Rathgar Road, Dublin, organised by Hayes and attended by senior IRA men Paddy McGrath, Tom Harte and Tom Hunt, is also raided by the Garda Síochána.

McGrath and Harte are both arrested and tried by Military Tribunal, established under the Emergency Powers Act 1939. They challenge the legislation in the High Court, seeking a writ of habeas corpus, and ultimately appeal to the Supreme Court of Ireland. They are represented in the courts by Seán MacBride. The appeal is unsuccessful, and they are executed by firing squad at Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison on September 6, 1940.

On June 30, 1941, Northern-based IRA men kidnap Hayes, accusing him of being a spy. By his own account, he is tortured and “court-martialed” for “treason” by his comrades, and would have been executed, but he buys himself time composing an enormously long confession. He manages to escape on September 8, 1941, and hands himself in to the Garda for protection.

The Officer Commanding (O/C) of the IRA Northern Command, Seán McCaughey, is convicted on September 18, 1941, of the kidnapping. After a long hunger and thirst strike in Portlaoise Prison, he dies on May 11, 1946.

Hayes is later sentenced to five years’ imprisonment by the Special Criminal Court on account of his IRA activities.

Within IRA circles, Hayes is still considered a traitor and an informer. One of the main allegations against him is that he informed the Garda Síochána about IRA arms dumps in Wexford. However, this is later blamed on a Wexford man named Michael Deveraux, an officer of the Wexford Battalion of the IRA who is subsequently abducted and executed by an IRA squad in County Tipperary on Hayes’ orders. George Plant, a Protestant IRA veteran, is later executed in Portlaoise Prison for Devereux’s murder.

After his release, Hayes resumes his clerical position at Wexford County Council. He dies in Enniscorthy on December 28, 1974.


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Birth of Karl Mullen, Rugby Union Player & Gynecologist

Dr. Karl Daniel Mullen, rugby union player and consultant gynecologist who captains the Irish rugby team and captains the British Lions on their 1950 tour to Australia and New Zealand, is born on November 26, 1926, in Courtown Harbour, County Wexford.

Mullen is one of three sons and seven daughters of Daniel Mullen, an officer of the customs and excise, and his wife Annie (née Hargrove). After his parents move to Home Farm Road, Drumcondra, Dublin, he is educated at the Dominican St. Thomas’s Academy, Eccles Street, the Jesuit Belvedere College, Great Denmark Street, and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI). He plays rugby and cricket at school, association football with Home Farm F.C., and golf in the summer months. Initially a centre, he becomes a prop on the Belvedere junior cup team and, after injury to a teammate, hooker on the senior cup team, which loses the Leinster Schools Rugby Senior Cup final to Castleknock College in 1944.

On January 25, 1947, Mullen makes his formal Irish debut in a 12–8 loss to France. He plays as hooker, winning 25 caps for Ireland from 1947 to 1952. A year later, on January 31, 1948, he plays his first game for Barbarian F.C. in a 9–6 victory over Australia in Cardiff, Wales. After helping Ireland to victory over France on January 1, 1948, at the age of 21, he captains Ireland for the first time, on February 14, 1948, leading them to an 11–10 victory over England at Twickenham Stadium.

Mullen captains the Irish team to their first Grand Slam in the 1948 Five Nations Championship and is one of eight players from that team who live to see the country’s next Grand Slam in 2009.

Ireland retains the triple crown in 1949 by beating Wales 5–0 in Swansea, ending a run of defeats on Welsh soil lasting fourteen years. The following season Ireland suffers from injuries and loses to both England and Wales, the latter securing the triple crown.

Mullen is selected to captain the 1950 Lions Tour to Australia and New Zealand. After appearing in the first two tests against New Zealand, a 9–9 draw and an 8–0 loss, he sustains an ankle injury in the latter game and concedes his place to Dai Davies of Wales. Returning for the second test against Australia, a resounding 24–3 victory, he also plays in a semi-official “British Isles RFU” team against Ceylon during their return journey in September.

Under Mullen’s captaincy Ireland regains the international championship in 1951. His last cap comes in a 14–3 loss to Wales at Lansdowne Road on March 8, 1952. In twenty-five successive appearances (fifteen as captain), he secured three international championships and two triple crowns for Ireland in four seasons, their most successful haul of the twentieth century.

Mullen’s distinguished rugby career has to be fitted around his medical studies. In 1945, he enters the RCSI, graduating L and LM (RCSI and RCPI) in 1949. Awarded the diploma in obstetrics (1952) and membership of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (1956), he trains at Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital, Jervis Street Hospital and the Rotunda hospitals. After serving as senior obstetrics registrar at the Derby City General Hospital (1953–56), he returns to Dublin to become a consultant obstetrician, based at Mount Carmel Community Hospital, Churchtown, Dublin, and develops a considerable private practice. By his retirement in 2002, he is estimated to have delivered over 40,000 babies. A proponent of sex education in schools, he appears on RTÉ‘s 7 Days in December 1970, outlining various methods of birth control and calling for a more honest and realistic approach to artificial contraception.

Mullen marries Doreen Kilbride, an accomplished soprano, on April 30, 1952, in Donnybrook, Dublin, interrupting their honeymoon to play for Old Belvedere R.F.C. in the Leinster Senior Cup final. They have eight children, three boys and five girls. In 1975, they move from Altamount, Dundrum, Dublin, to Tulfarris House, Blessington, County Wicklow, adjacent to Poulaphouca Reservoir, where they farm and bred Irish draught horses. In 1985, he sells the property and much of his art collection and moves to Kilcullen, County Kildare.

Mullen is one of eight surviving members of the 1948 team to witness Ireland’s second grand slam on March 21, 2009. Only weeks later, having suffered from a long illness, he dies on April 27, 2009, at his home, Gilltown Lodge, in Kilcullen.

(Pictured: Karl Mullen, captain of the British Lions rugby union team, 1950)


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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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Death of Maurice FitzMaurice FitzGerald, 3rd Lord of Offaly

Maurice FitzMaurice FitzGerald, Irish magnate, soldier, and Justiciar of Ireland from 1272 to 1273, dies in Ross, County Wexford, on September 2, 1277. His family comes to epitomise the ideal of cultural synthesis in Ireland, becoming “more Irish than the Irish themselves,” fusing Gaelic and Norman customs in Irish identity.

FitzGerald is born in 1238 in Wexford, the second son of Maurice FitzGerald, 2nd Lord of Offaly, and Juliana de Grenville. He has three brothers, Gerald FitzMaurice II, Thomas FitzMaurice and David FitzMaurice. He is known by the nickname of Maurice Mael (from an old word meaning “devotee” in Irish). He is granted his father’s lands in Connacht in exchange for quitclaiming the barony of Offaly sometime before May 20, 1257, when his father, Maurice FitzGerald II, dies at Youghal Monastery.

Before his father’s death, FitzGerald is custos of Offaly, but after the 2nd Lord of Offaly dies, the countess of Lincoln, Margaret de Quincy, sues him for custody of Offaly.

Terrible feuds rage in his time between the Geraldines and the De Burghs. FitzGerald and his nephew John, son of his brother Thomas, capture the justiciar, Richard de la Rochelle, Theobald Butler IV, and John de Cogan I (whose son is married to Maurice FitzGerald III’s sister, Juliana). The capture of the three magnates leads to a private war in Ireland, with the Geraldines on one side and Walter de Burgh and Geoffrey de Geneville on the other. However, the Second Barons’ War in England forces them to come to a temporary peace while they battle Montfortians in the English Midlands in 1266.

In May 1265, FitzGerald is among the chief magnates in Ireland summoned to inform King Henry III of England and his son Prince Edward about conditions in the country, and again in June 1265. These are the result of the private war between the Geraldines and Walter de Burgh, lord of Connacht (who is later made the 1st Earl of Ulster). He is appointed Justiciar of Ireland on June 23, 1272, following the accidental death of his predecessor, James de Audley, on June 11 of that year. His father had served in the same capacity from 1232 to 1245. He holds the post until September 1273, when he is succeeded by Sir Geoffrey de Geneville, Seigneur de Vaucouleurs.

FitzGerald holds four knight’s fees in both Lea and Geashill from Roger Mortimer, 1st Baron Mortimer of Wigmore, who had inherited them from his wife, Maud de Braose.

In 1276, FitzGerald leads a force of men from Connacht against the Irish of County Wicklow. His contingent joins the main army of English settlers jointly commanded by his son-in-law, Thomas de Clare, Lord of Inchiquin and Youghal, who had been made Lord of Thomond earlier that same year, and Sir Geoffrey de Geneville, Maurice’s successor as Justiciar of Ireland. The English under Thomas de Clare and Geoffrey de Geneville attack the Irish at Glenmalure, but are defeated and suffer heavy losses.

Shortly before October 28, 1259, FitzGerald married his first wife, Maud de Prendergast, daughter of Sir Gerald de Prendergast of Beauvoir and Matilda de Burgh, daughter of Richard Mór de Burgh. Together they have two daughters:

FitzGerald is Maud’s third husband. She dies on an unknown date. In 1273, he marries his second wife, Emmeline Longespee (1252–1291), daughter of Stephen Longespée and Emmeline de Ridelsford. He and Emeline have no issue.

FitzGerald dies September 2, 1277, at Ross, County Wexford. Emmeline Longespée then fights until her death to claim her dower against her daughter, Juliana, her stepdaughter, Amabilia, and John FitzGerald, who is created 1st Earl of Kildare on May 14, 1316. John is the son of his brother, Thomas by Rohesia de St. Michael. John sues or physically takes lands from the bailiffs of Emmeline, Juliana, and Amabilia.

There is some confusion as to whether Gerald Fitzmaurice FitzGerald is the first or second son of Maurice FitzGerald, 2nd Lord of Offaly. Most, like M. Hickson, of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (RSAI) say he is the eldest. Lord Walter FitzGerald says he is the second. In any event, he predeceases his father in 1243. His son, Maurice FitzGerald, drowns in the Irish Channel in July 1268. His son is Gerald FitzMaurice III, born in 1263. Gerald’s marriage is sold to Geoffrey de Geneville, who matches Gerald with his own daughter, Joan, but he dies childless on August 29, 1287.

Maurice FitzMaurice FitzGerald 3rd Earl of Offaly, is succeeded by his nephew John, son of his younger brother Thomas FitzMaurice FitzGerald.