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George Bernard Shaw Refuses Nobel Prize Money

On November 18, 1926, George Bernard Shaw refuses to accept the Nobel Prize in Literature prize money of £7,000 awarded to him a year earlier. He says, “I can forgive Alfred Nobel for his invention of the explosive but only the devil can think of the Nobel Prize.”

Shaw is born in Dublin on July 26, 1856, the third child of George Carr Shaw, a civil servant who later turns to a failed grain business to become an alcoholic, and Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw, a professional singer and sister of the famous opera singer Lucinda Frances. He is initially poor but is gifted with music and soon understands and loves the work of famous musicians and learns more about painting in Dublin. At the age of 15, he works as an apprentice and cashier for a real estate firm.

In 1876, Shaw follows his mother and two sisters to London. There he writes music reviews for newspapers to earn money, self-studies and actively participates in social activities. In 1884, he joins the founding of Fabian Society, an organization of British intellectuals advocating transition from capitalism to socialism by way of peace. From 1879 to 1883, he writes his first novel, Immaturity, and five other works that are not printed. An Unsocial Socialist is the first novel to be printed in 1887. Considered the father of “conceptual drama,” he begins writing plays in 1885, but achieves initial fame with Widowers’ Houses (1892). By 1903, his drama takes over the American and German stage, and in 1904 dominates the domestic stage. He becomes even more famous when Edward VII, the King of England, attends the performance of John Bull’s Other Island (1904), after which his drama spreads to European countries.

In addition, Shaw is also considered the best playwright in Britain at the time. He wants to use art to awaken people first to require changing the bourgeoisie order with all its institutions and customs. He emphasizes the educational function of the theater, but seeing the function of education is not an imposition from the playwright but arousing the aesthetic needs of the audience. The harsh problems of contemporary society such as the island’s predominant power, exploitative patterns, and the poverty of the people lead to social evils clearly reflected in his drama. His drama style tends to be satirical, sarcastic, finding its way to truth through paradoxes.

Shaw’s youngest dream is to earn a sum of money, then marry a wealthy wife. However, before becoming so wealthy that he can spend $ 35,000 on charity and enough money to travel around the world, he goes through many years of hardship. In the first nine years of his career, he receives only $30 USD in royalties. He is so poor that he does not even have the toll to get his manuscript to publishers. His clothes are tattered, his shoes open. All of his spending comes from his mother’s allowance. When he gets his name and remembers the miserable days, he often frowns, “I should have supported my family, the results are the opposite. I have never done anything for my family, and my mother has to work, raising me even though I was an adult.” Shaw, however, decides not to give up writing.

Realizing that, Shaw looks at the real royalties by publishing novels and the journey to the desired destination seems far away. He then turns to writing plays. He calculates that if the script is made public, the author will have revenue through the number of tickets issued and the number of shows. At the same time, the name of the author is also quickly known to the public. On the other hand, he says, only theater can “awaken people before the change of modern social order with all its institutions and customs.” He also judges that in addition to entertainment functions, the drama also contains the function of education, through arousing the aesthetic needs of the audience. He does not hesitate to bring to the stage all the most pressing issues of contemporary society such as the money’s inertia, the poverty of the people, and the social evils.

Saint Joan (1923) is judged to be the culmination of Shaw’s writing career. It is performed throughout European stages and is very popular. Two years after the release of Saint Joan, he is awarded the Nobel Prize for “the ideological and highly humanistic compositions, especially the spectacular satirical plays, combined with looks. Strange beauty of poetry.” When notified of his winning of the Nobel Prize, he humorously says, “The Nobel Prize for literature is like a float thrown to a swimmer.” Although he thinks he is the “swimmer to the shore,” he never leaves the pen. Thirteen years after receiving the Nobel Prize, Pygmalion, a script he wrote in 1912, is made into a film and receives the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

In terms of scenario remuneration, Shaw receives an average of $100,000 a year, enough to spend on life, “reproduce” writing and traveling. It is only possible to marry a wealthy wife until the age of 40 years old. He always thinks that he “has no marriage status because he always worries others.” In terms of form, he is not very attractive because of his skinny body, but watching as the sisters do not allow him to carry out his intention to preserve his “absolute freedom.” Many beautiful female actors actively proclaim marriage proposal to Shaw, but he always uses humorous sentences to refuse.

Describing the George Bernard Shaw, Albert Einstein‘s physical genius after having met him has to say, “There are rare people who are so independent that they can see the weaknesses and absurdities of contemporaries. and at the same time do not let me get into it, but even so, when I encounter the hardships of life, these lonely people often lose their courage in helping humanity, with subtle humor and gentleness, can enthrall contemporaries and deserve to be torchbearers on the way of art’s unfavorable ways, today, with a passionate affection, I salute celebrate the biggest teacher on that path – the one who taught us and made us all feel happy.” It is a rare meeting of two great people in London in the fall of 1930.

(From: “November 18, 1926 – George Bernard Shaw refuses to receive a Nobel prize,” ScienceInfo.net, updated December 17, 2018)


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King Edward VII Begins Eight-Day Visit to Ireland

In 1904, King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra travel to Ireland for a semi-official eight-day visit, arriving in Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire) on April 26. They are accompanied by their daughter, Princess Victoria.

They travel by rail to Naas via the Great Southern and Western Railway Company. They are seated in a luxuriously upholstered carriage, the engine decorated with flags and streamers. The visit triggers a frenzy of preparation among the elite and merchants of Naas. Leading citizens from diverse backgrounds, including Protestants, Catholics, Loyalists, and Home Rulers, come together to welcome the royal visitors. The town is adorned with bunting, banners, and arches bearing royal and loyalist symbols, creating an extravagant showpiece of imperial loyalty.

During their visit to Naas, the King and Queen attend the Punchestown Races, adding a touch of glamour to the occasion.

They stay in the Dublin area for a few days, attending several events and ceremonies. After finishing in Dublin, the royals board their royal train for a three-day visit to Kilkenny.

For the arrival of the King and Queen in Kilkenny, significant efforts are undertaken to ensure the city is elegantly presented. In the weeks and months prior to the visit, local businessmen convene meetings in how best to organise the occasion.

The city is heavily festooned with bunting and streamers, and the route from the railway station to Kilkenny Castle is decorated with tiny fairy lights of every colour. During the visit, Princess Victoria plants three trees on the grounds of the Castle.

The visit is well-received in Kilkenny, although sometimes expressed in primitive fashion: an old man remarks, “Sure, the King’s a man after all,” his wife correcting him, “But he’s a great man, and the lovely lady’s an angel.” Although well-supported, black flags protesting the visit are hung from some buildings along the route. (It is more than 110 years before another royal visit is made to Kilkenny when Prince Charles and Princess Camilla visit the city on May 11, 2017.)

The King and Queen travel to Waterford on May 2, where they stay at Lismore Castle, home of the Duke of Devonshire. Thomas Horgan of Youghal, County Cork, makes the first known film in Ireland of this event.

The royal visit to Ireland comes to an end on May 4.

(Pictured: King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra in the grandstand of the Kilkenny Agricultural Show 1904)


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Birth of Martin Sheridan, Three-Time Olympic Gold Medalist

Martin John Sheridan, three-time Olympic Games gold medalist, is born in Bohola, County Mayo, on March 28, 1881. He is part of a group of Irish American athletes known as the “Irish Whales.”

At 6 ft. 3 in. (191 cm) and 194 lbs. (88 kg), Sheridan is the best all-around athlete of the Irish American Athletic Club, and like many of his teammates, serves from 1906 until his death in 1918 with the New York City Police Department. He is so well respected in the NYPD, that he serves as the Governor’s personal bodyguard when the governor is in New York City.

A five-time Olympic gold medalist, with a total of nine Olympic medals, Sheridan is called “one of the greatest figures that ever represented this country in international sport, as well as being one of the most popular who ever attained the championship honor.” He wins the discus throw event at the 1904, 1906, and 1908 Summer Olympics as well as the shot put at the 1906 Olympics and the Greek discus in 1908. At the 1906 Intercalated Games in Athens, Greece, he also wins silver medals in the standing high jump, standing long jump and the stone throw.

In 1907, Sheridan wins the National Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) discus championship and the Canadian championship, and in 1908 he wins the Metropolitan, National and Canadian championships as well as two gold medals in the discus throw and a bronze medal in the standing long jump at the 1908 Olympic Games.

Two of Sheridan’s gold medals from the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis, Missouri, and one of his medals from the 1906 Olympic Games in Athens, are currently located in the USA Track & Field‘s Hall of Fame History Gallery, in Washington Heights, Manhattan.

It is often claimed that Sheridan fueled a controversy in London in 1908, when flagbearer Ralph Rose refused to dip the flag to King Edward VII. Sheridan supposedly supports Rose by explaining, “This flag dips to no earthly king,” and it is claimed that his statement exemplified both Irish and American defiance of the British monarchy. However, careful research has shown that this was first reported in 1952. Sheridan himself makes no mention of it in his published reports on the Games and neither does his obituary.

Sheridan dies in St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, New York, on March 27, 1918, the day before his 37th birthday, a very early casualty of the 1918 flu pandemic. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York. The inscription on the granite Celtic Cross monument marking his grave says in part: “Devoted to the Institutions of his Country, and the Ideals and Aspirations of his Race. Athlete. Patriot.”

According to his obituary in The New York Times, Sheridan was “one of the greatest athletes the United States has ever known.”

(Pictured: Martin Sheridan from the historical picture collection of Knut Gulbrandsen)


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Birth of Captain Otway Cuffe

Captain Otway Cuffe, benefactor, Gaelic revivalist, twice mayor of Kilkenny and a founder of businesses and organisations to profit the local people, is born in London on January 11, 1853.

Cuffe is born the Honourable Otway Frederick Seymour Cuffe to John Cuffe, 3rd Earl of Desart, and Lady Elizabeth Lucy Campbell. He has an older sister and two older brothers. After the death of his eldest brother William Ulick, 4th Earl of Desart, his seecond eldest brother, Hamilton, becomes the 5th Earl of Desart. As the 5th Earl has no male heirs himself, Cuffe is nominally his heir. However, as he also dies without heirs, the line becomes extinct upon the death of the 5th Earl.

Cuffe marries Elizabeth St. Aubyn on July 22, 1891. She is the daughter of John St. Aubyn, 1st Baron St. Levan of St. Michael’s Mount, Cornwall, England, and Lady Elizabeth Clementina Townshend. When he becomes the heir to the Kilkenny-based title he moves to Ireland and lives nearby the main house, in Sheestown Lodge, Kilkenny, County Kilkenny. He has been in the British Army, serving as aide-de-camp to Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, in 1880–81. He is Groom of the Privy Chamber to Queen Victoria from 1893 until her death in 1901 and Gentleman Usher to both King Edward VII from 1901 until his death in 1910 and King George V until 1911. His rank in the army is Captain in the Rifle Brigade.

Dedicated to ensuring a strong Irish identity in the area, Cuffe works with his sister-in-law, Ellen Cuffe, Countess of Desart. He joins Conradh na Gaeilge soon after his arrival in Kilkenny. He is elected president of its Kilkenny branch in 1904 and remains so until his death. He is replaced by Lady Desart. Together they open the theatre in Kilkenny in 1902 and he is the first President of the Kilkenny Drama Club. He also performs on stage.

Cuffe is first elected Mayor of Kilkenny in 1907 and again in 1908. With Lady Desart, he builds the Kilkenny Woollen Mills, Desart Hall, the Talbot’s Inch model village and the Kilkenny Woodworkers factory. He lays the foundation stone for Kilkenny’s Carnegie library. He is also President of the Irish Industrial Association.

Cuffe is a friend of William Morris whom he had met on a trip to Iceland. He believes in the Arts and Crafts movement and tries to implement it in the projects which he drives. He is also a friend and supporter of Standish James O’Grady and helps him found the weekly radical conservative paper The All-Ireland Review and runs it between 1900 and 1906.

In 1911, Cuffe becomes ill and is forced to move to warmer climates until he recovers. He decides to go to the south of Europe but then a visit to Australia seems appropriate. However, on the journey there he contracts pneumonia and dies at Fremantle in Western Australia on January 3, 1912. He is buried at Perth, carried to his grave by Kilkenny hurlers. The Kilkenny Moderator calls his death “a thunderbolt to the people of Kilkenny.” He is remembered as a visionary who made a permanent impact on the physical landscape of Kilkenny.


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69th Infantry Regiment Refuses to March in Parade for the Prince of Wales

On October 11, 1860, all the militia units of New York City are ordered to turned out to march in in a parade in honor of the visiting Prince of Wales, the 19-year-old Albert Edward, heir to the English throne, who is visiting New York City at the time. Colonel Michael Corcoran, a native of Carrowkeel, near Ballysadare, County Sligo, refuses to march his 69th Infantry Regiment in the parade to protest against British rule in Ireland. He is removed from command and a court martial is pending over the matter when the American Civil War begins.

Five days earlier, Corcoran refuses tickets to a ball in the prince’s honor, telling those who invited him that he is “not desirous of joining in the festivity.”

As for the order to march, Corcoran says he refuses to ask the sons of Erin to honor the son of “a sovereign under whose reign Ireland was made a desert and her sons forced to exile.” He is also heard to refer to the prince as “the bald-faced son of our oppressor.”

Corcoran’s actions cause a firestorm of outrage around the country and especially in New York. U.S. citizens, most completely ignorant of the conditions under which many of these men had lived in British-controlled Ireland, see the actions of the men of the 69th Infantry Regiment as an insult to American hospitality in welcoming these immigrants to their adopted country, though in truth, the welcome is much less than lukewarm.

Corcoran has written his name forever in the pantheon of Irish heroes in America. New York’s Irish present the regiment with a green flag commemorating the event.

Corcoran is arrested and stripped of his command by New York and a court martial is planned. But before he can be tried on the charge, Fort Sumter is fired upon, and the country is more worried about saving the Union than honoring visiting princes. With the outbreak of war, the court martial is dropped and Corcoran is restored to his command because he had been instrumental in bringing other Irish immigrants to the Union cause.

Corcoran leads the 69th Infantry Regiment to Washington, D.C. and serves for a time in the Washington defenses building Fort Corcoran. On July 21, 1861, he leads the regiment into action at the First Battle of Bull Run with what is now called the “Prince of Wales Flag” flying proudly above his men.

After promotion to brigadier general, Corcoran leaves the 69th Infantry Regiment and forms the Corcoran Legion, consisting of at least five other New York regiments.

The Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, unveils Ireland’s national monument to the Fighting 69th in Ballymote, County Sligo, on August 22, 2006. The monument is sculpted by Philip Flanagan. The inscription around the top of the monument reads “Michael Corcoran 1827–1863” Around the base is inscribed “New York Ballymote Creeslough Bull Run.” Underneath the monument is a piece of steel from the World Trade Center, donated by the family of Michael Lynch, who died in the tower on September 11, 2001. Lynch’s family are from County Sligo.

(Pictured: Michael Corcoran, Irish American general in the Union Army during the American Civil War and a close confidant of President Abraham Lincoln)


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Birth of Sir Ernest Shackleton, Antarctic Explorer

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who leads three British expeditions to the Antarctic, is born on February 15, 1874, in Kilkea, County Kildare. He is one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

Shackleton is the second of ten children and the first of two sons. His father, Henry Shackleton, tries to enter the British Army, but his poor health prevents him from doing so. He becomes a farmer instead, settling in Kilkea. Shackleton’s mother, Henrietta Letitia Sophia Gavan, is descended from the Fitzmaurice family. His brother Frank achieves notoriety as a suspect, later exonerated, in the 1907 theft of the so-called Irish Crown Jewels, which have never been recovered.

The Shackleton family moves to Sydenham, London when he is ten. His first experience of the polar regions is as third officer on Captain Robert Falcon Scott‘s Discovery Expedition of 1901–04, from which he is sent home early on health grounds, after he and his companions Scott and Edward Adrian Wilson set a new southern record by marching to latitude 82°S. During the Nimrod Expedition of 1907–09, he and three companions establish a new record Farthest South latitude at 88°S, only 97 geographical miles from the South Pole, the largest advance to the pole in exploration history. Also, members of his team climb Mount Erebus, the most active Antarctic volcano. For these achievements, he is knighted by King Edward VII on his return home.

After the race to the South Pole ends in December 1911, with Roald Amundsen‘s conquest, Shackleton turns his attention to the crossing of Antarctica from sea to sea, via the pole. To this end, he makes preparations for what becomes the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–17. Disaster strikes this expedition when its ship, Endurance, becomes trapped in pack ice and is slowly crushed before the shore parties can be landed. The crew escapes by camping on the sea ice until it disintegrates, then by launching the lifeboats to reach Elephant Island and ultimately South Georgia island, a stormy ocean voyage of 720 nautical miles and Shackleton’s most famous exploit.

In 1921, Shackleton returns to the Antarctic with the Shackleton–Rowett Expedition on a 125-ton Norwegian sealer, named Foca I, which he renames Quest. When the party arrives in Rio de Janeiro, he suffers a suspected heart attack. He refuses a proper medical examination, so Quest continues south, and on January 4, 1922, arrives at South Georgia. In the early hours of the next morning, Shackleton summons the expedition’s physician, Alexander Macklin, to his cabin, complaining of back pains and other discomfort. According to Macklin’s own account, he tells Shackleton he has been overdoing things and should try to “lead a more regular life,” to which Shackleton answers, “You are always wanting me to give up things, what is it I ought to give up?” “Chiefly alcohol, Boss,” replies Macklin. A few moments later, at 2:50 AM on January 5, 1922, he suffers a fatal heart attack. At his wife’s request, he is buried there.

Away from his expeditions, Shackleton’s life is generally restless and unfulfilled. In his search for rapid pathways to wealth and security, he launches business ventures which fail to prosper, and he dies heavily in debt. Upon his death, he is lauded in the press but is thereafter largely forgotten, while the heroic reputation of his rival Scott is sustained for many decades. Later in the 20th century, Shackleton is “rediscovered”. He rapidly becomes a role model for leadership as one who, in extreme circumstances, kept his team together in a survival story described by cultural historian Stephanie Barczewski as “incredible.”

In his 1956 address to the British Science Association, Sir Raymond Priestley, one of his contemporaries, says “Scott for scientific method, Amundsen for speed and efficiency but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton,” paraphrasing what Apsley Cherry-Garrard had written in a preface to his 1922 memoir The Worst Journey in the World. In 2002, Shackleton is voted eleventh in a BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.


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Death of Michael Corcoran, General in the Union Army

Michael Corcoran, Irish American general in the Union Army during the American Civil War and a close confidant of President Abraham Lincoln, dies on December 22, 1863, of a fractured skull after being thrown from a runaway horse.

Corcoran is born in Carrowkeel, near Ballymote, County Sligo, on September 21, 1827. As its colonel, he leads the 69th Infantry Regiment (New York) to Washington, D.C. and is one of the first to serve in the defense of Washington by building Fort Corcoran. He then leads the 69th into action at the First Battle of Bull Run. After promotion to brigadier general, he leaves the 69th and forms the Corcoran Legion, consisting of at least five other New York regiments.

Corcoran is the only child of Thomas Corcoran, an officer in the British Army, and Mary McDonagh. Through his mother, he claims descent from Patrick Sarsfield, hero of the Williamite War in Ireland and leader of the Wild Geese. In 1846 he takes an appointment to the Revenue Police, enforcing the laws and searching for illicit stills and distilling activities in Creeslough, County Donegal. He also joins a guerrilla group called the Ribbonmen.

On August 30, 1849, Corcoran emigrates from Sligo to the United States and settles in New York City where he finds work as a clerk in the tavern owned by John Heaney, whose niece, Elizabeth, he marries in 1854.

Corcoran enlists as a Private in the 69th New York Militia. By 1859 he is appointed colonel of the regiment. The regiment is a state militia unit at the time composed of citizens, not soldiers, and is involved in the maintenance of public order. On October 11, 1860, he refuses to march the regiment on parade for the 19-year-old Prince of Wales, who is visiting New York City at the time, protesting the British imposition of the Irish Famine. He is removed from command and a court martial is pending over that matter when the Civil War begins.

Corcoran also becomes involved in Democratic politics at Tammany Hall. He becomes district leader, a member of the judicial nominations committee, an elected school inspector for his ward, and a member of the Fourteenth Ward General Committee. He is one of the founders of the Fenian Brotherhood in America.

With the outbreak of war, the court martial is dropped and Corcoran is restored to his command because he had been instrumental in bringing other Irish immigrants to the Union cause. He leads the 69th to Washington, D.C. and serves for a while in the Washington defenses building, Fort Corcoran. In July 1861 he leads the regiment into action at the First Battle of Bull Run and is taken prisoner.

While Corcoran is imprisoned, the United States makes threats to execute captured Confederate privateers. Corcoran and several other Union prisoners are selected by lot for execution if the United States carries out its threats against the privateers. This event is known as the Enchantress Affair, but no executions are ever carried out by either side. Corcoran is then offered a parole under the conditions that he does not take up arms against the Confederacy. Intending to resume his place in the Union army upon his release he refuses the offer of parole. He is appointed Brigadier General of volunteers in July and exchanged in August 1862. His role in the Enchantress Affair and his refusal for parole gains him some attention and upon his release he is invited to dinner with President Abraham Lincoln.

In April 1863 Corcoran is involved in an incident that ends with Corcoran shooting and killing Edgar A. Kimball, commander of the 9th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Corcoran attempts to pass through the 9th New York’s area without giving the required password after receiving the challenge from a sentry. When Kimball intervenes on the side of the sentry, Corcoran shoots him. Corcoran is not charged with a crime or reprimanded and continues to serve.

Corcoran returns to the army and sets about recruiting more Irish volunteers. He raises and takes command of what becomes known as the Corcoran Legion. Placed in command of the 1st Division, VII Corps he is engaged in the Battle of Deserted House and takes part in the Battle of Suffolk. In late 1863 he is placed in command of a division in the XXII Corps and returns to serve in the Washington defenses. While riding alone in Fairfax, Virginia he is thrown from a runaway horse and suffers a fractured skull. He dies at the age of 36 at the William Gunnell House on December 22, 1863.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveils Ireland’s national monument to the Fighting 69th in Ballymote on August 22, 2006. The monument is sculpted by Philip Flanagan. The inscription around the top of the monument reads “Michael Corcoran 1827–1863” Around the base is inscribed “New York Ballymote Creeslough Bull Run.” Underneath the monument is a piece of steel from the World Trade Center, donated by the family of Michael Lynch, who died in the tower on September 11, 2001. Lynch’s family are also from County Sligo.


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Death of James Hamilton, 3rd Duke of Abercorn

James Albert Edward Hamilton, 3rd Duke of Abercorn, dies on September 12, 1953 in London, England.

Hamilton is born in Hamilton Place, Piccadilly, London, on November 30, 1869. Styled Marquess of Hamilton between 1885 and 1913, he is a British peer and Unionist politician. He serves as the first Governor of Northern Ireland, a post he holds between 1922 and 1945. He is a great-grandfather of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Hamilton is the eldest son of James Hamilton, 2nd Duke of Abercorn, and godson of the Prince of Wales. His mother, Lady Mary Anna, is the fourth daughter of Richard Curzon-Howe, 1st Earl Howe. He is educated at Eton College and subsequently serves first in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers until 1892 when he joins the 1st Life Guards. He is later transferred as major to the North Irish Horse.

In early 1901 he accompanies his father on a special diplomatic mission to announce the accession of King Edward to the governments of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, Russia, Germany, and Saxony.

In the 1900 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, Hamilton stands successfully as Unionist candidate for Londonderry City, and three years later he becomes Treasurer of the Household, a post he holds until the fall of Arthur Balfour‘s Conservative administration in 1905. After serving for a time as an Opposition whip, Hamilton succeeds his father as third Duke of Abercorn in 1913. In 1922, he is appointed governor of the newly created Northern Ireland. He also serves as Lord Lieutenant of Tyrone from 1917 until his death, having previously been a Deputy Lieutenant for County Donegal. Hamilton proves a popular royal representative in Northern Ireland and is reappointed to the post in 1928 after completing his first term of office. In 1931, he declines the offer of the governor generalship of Canada, and three years later he is again reappointed governor for a third term. He remains in this capacity until his resignation in July 1945.

Hamilton is made the last non-royal Knight of the Most Illustrious Order of Saint Patrick in 1922. In 1928 he becomes a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter and is also the recipient of an honorary degree from the Queen’s University Belfast. He receives the Royal Victorian Chain in 1945, the same year he is sworn of the Privy Council.

Hamilton marries Lady Rosalind Cecilia Caroline Bingham, only daughter of Charles George Bingham, 4th Earl of Lucan and his wife Lady Cecilia Catherine Gordon-Lennox at St. Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge, on November 1, 1894. They have three daughters and two sons.

Hamilton dies at his London home on September 12, 1953, and is buried at Baronscourt in County Tyrone.

(Pictured: “James Albert Edward Hamilton, 3rd Duke of Abercorn” by Alexander Bassano, Collodion Negative, 1894, Photographs Collection, National Portrait Gallery, London)


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Birth of Sir Joseph Larmor, Physicist & Mathematician

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

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

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

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

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

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


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Formation of the Sinn Féin League

The nationalist groups, Cumann na nGaedheal and the Dungannon Clubs, combine to form the Sinn Féin League on April 21, 1907.

The ideas that lead to Sinn Féin are first propounded by the United Irishman newspaper and its editor, Arthur Griffith. An article by Griffith in that paper in March 1900 calls for the creation of an association to bring together the disparate Irish nationalist groups of the time and, as a result, Cumann na nGaedheal is formed at the end of 1900. Griffith first puts forward his proposal for the abstention of Irish members of parliament (MP) from the Parliament of the United Kingdom at the 1902 Cumann na nGaedheal convention. A second organisation, the National Council, is formed in 1903 by Maud Gonne and others, including Griffith, on the occasion of the visit of King Edward VII to Dublin. Its purpose is to lobby Dublin Corporation to refrain from presenting an address to the king. The motion to present an address is duly defeated, but the National Council remains in existence as a pressure group with the aim of increasing nationalist representation on local councils.

Griffith elaborates his policy in a series of articles in the United Irishman in 1904, which outline how the policy of withdrawing from the imperial parliament and passive resistance had been successfully followed in Hungary, leading to the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and the creation of a dual monarchy, and proposes that Irish MPs should follow the same course. These are published later that year in a booklet entitled The Resurrection of Hungary: A Parallel for Ireland. Also in 1904, Mary Ellen Butler, a friend of Griffith and cousin of Ulster Unionist Party leader Edward Carson, remarks in a conversation that his ideas are “the policy of Sinn Féin, in fact” and Griffith enthusiastically adopts the term. The phrase Sinn Féin (‘Ourselves’ or ‘We Ourselves’) had been in use since the 1880s as an expression of separatist thinking and was used as a slogan by the Gaelic League in the 1890s.

The first annual convention of the National Council on November 28, 1905, is notable for two things: the decision, by a majority vote (with Griffith dissenting), to open branches and organise on a national basis; and the presentation by Griffith of his ‘Hungarian’ policy, which is now called the Sinn Féin policy. This meeting is usually taken as the date of the foundation of the Sinn Féin party. In the meantime, a third organisation, the Dungannon Clubs, named after the Dungannon Convention of 1782, has been formed in Belfast by Bulmer Hobson, and it also considers itself to be part of ‘the Sinn Féin movement.’

By 1907, there is pressure on the three organisations to unite — especially from the United States, where John Devoy offers funding, but only to a unified party. The pressure increases when Charles Dolan, the Irish Parliamentary Party MP for North Leitrim, announces his intention to resign his seat and contest it on a Sinn Féin platform. On April 21, 1907, Cumann na nGaedheal and the Dungannon Clubs merge as the ‘Sinn Féin League.’ Negotiations continue until August when, at the National Council annual convention, the League and the National Council merge on terms favourable to Griffith. The resulting party is named Sinn Féin, and its foundation is backdated to the National Council convention of November 1905.

In the 1908 North Leitrim by-election, Sinn Féin secures 27% of the vote. Thereafter, both support and membership fall. Attendance is poor at the 1910 Ardfheis, and there is difficulty finding members willing to take seats on the executive. While some local councillors are elected running under the party banner in the 1911 local elections, by 1915 the party is, in the words of one of Griffith’s colleagues, “on the rocks,” and so insolvent financially that it cannot pay the rent on its headquarters in Harcourt Street in Dublin.

Following the Easter Rising in 1916, Sinn Féin grows in membership, with a reorganisation at its Ard Fheis in 1917. Its split in 1922 in response to the Anglo-Irish Treaty which leads to the Irish Civil War leads to the origins of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the two parties which have since dominated Irish politics. Another split in the remaining Sinn Féin organisation in the early years of the Troubles in 1970 leads to the Sinn Féin of today, which is a republican, left-wing nationalist and secular party.

(Pictured: Arthur Griffith, founder (1905) and third president (1911-17) of Sinn Féin)