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Tag Archives: England


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The Buttevant Rail Disaster

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The Buttevant Rail Disaster, a train crash that occurs at Buttevant Railway Station, County Cork, takes place on August 1, 1980. More than 70 people are injured, and 18 die, resulting as one of Ireland’s worst rail disasters to ever occur and the country’s worst rail disaster during peacetime history.

At 12:45 the 10:00 am Dublin (Heuston) to Cork (Kent) express train enters Buttevant Railway Station carrying some 230 bank holiday passengers. The train is diverted off the main line across a 1:8 temporary set of points into a siding. The locomotive remains upright but carriages immediately behind the engine and generator van jack-knife and are thrown across four sets of rail lines. Two coaches and the dining car are totally demolished by the impact. It results in the deaths of 18 people and over 70 people being injured.

The accident happens because a set of manual facing points are set to direct the train into the siding. These points are installed about four months previously and have not yet been connected to the signal cabin. The permanent way maintenance staff are expecting a stationary locomotive at the Up platform to move into the siding, and set the points for the diversion to the siding, without obtaining permission from the signalman. Upon seeing that this has been done, the signalman at Buttevant manually sets the signals to the Danger aspect and informs the pointsman to reset the points. The train is traveling too fast to stop in time. The train is moving at approximately 60 mph when the derailment occurs.

The train consists of one locomotive, a generator van and eleven coaches. Six of the coaches consist of wooden bodies on steel underframes. Four of these are either destroyed or badly damaged in the impact, the two which survive being at the rear of the train. The remainder of the coaches are light alloy Cravens stock and most survive the crash.

This event, and the subsequent Cherryville junction accident, which kills a further seven people, account for 70% of all Irish rail deaths over a 28-year period. CIÉ and the Government come under severe public pressure to improve safety and to modernise the fleet. A major review of the national rail safety policy is held and results in the rapid elimination of the wooden-bodied coaches that had formed part of the train.

The passengers who are most severely injured or killed are seated in coaches with wooden frames. This structure is incapable of surviving a high speed crash and does not come near to the safety standards provided by modern (post-1950s) metal-body coaches. The expert bodies that review the accident discover that the old timber-frame carriage bodies mounted on a steel frame are totally inadequate as they are prone to complete collapse under the enormous compression forces of a high-speed collision.

The more modern steel-framed carriage bodies survive due to their greater structural rigidity. On this basis the decision to purchase a new fleet of modern intercity coaches based on the British Rail Mark 3 design is quickly made. The Mark 3’s longitudinally corrugated roof can survive compression forces of over 300 tonnes. These coaches, an already well proven design, are built by British Rail Engineering Limited (BREL) in Derby, England and, under licence, at CIÉ’s own workshops at Inchicore Railway Works in Dublin between 1983 and 1989.


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Birth of Emily Brontë, Novelist & Poet

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Emily Brontë, English novelist and poet who produces but one novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), is born on July 30, 1818, in Thornton, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. She is perhaps the greatest of the three Brontë sisters, but the record of her life is extremely meager, for she is silent and reserved and leaves no correspondence of interest, and her single novel darkens rather than solves the mystery of her spiritual existence.

Her father, Patrick Brontë (1777–1861), an Irishman, holds a number of curacies. Hartshead, Yorkshire, is the birthplace of his elder daughters, Maria and Elizabeth, who died young. Nearby Thornton is the birthplace of Emily and her siblings Charlotte, Patrick Branwell, and Anne. In 1820 Patrick Brontë becomes rector of Haworth, remaining there for the rest of his life.

After the death of their mother in 1821, the children are left very much to themselves in the bleak moorland rectory. The children are educated, during their early life, at home, except for a single year that Charlotte and Emily spend at the Cowan Bridge School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire. In 1835, when Charlotte secures a teaching position at Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head, Emily accompanies her as a pupil but suffers from homesickness and remains only three months. In 1838 Emily spends six exhausting months as a teacher at Law Hill School, near Halifax, and then resigns.

In an effort to keep the family together at home, Charlotte plans to keep a school for girls at Haworth. In February 1842 she and Emily go to Brussels to learn foreign languages and school management at the Héger Pensionnat. Although Emily pines for home and for the wild moorlands, it seems that in Brussels she is better appreciated than Charlotte. Her passionate nature is more easily understood than Charlotte’s decorous temperament. In October, however, when her aunt dies, Emily returns permanently to Haworth.

In 1845 Charlotte comes across some poems by Emily, and this leads to the discovery that all three sisters have written verse. A year later they publish jointly a volume of verse, Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, the initials of these pseudonyms being those of the sisters. It contains 21 of Emily’s poems, and a consensus of later criticism has accepted the fact that Emily’s verse alone reveals true poetic genius. The venture costs the sisters about £50 in all, and only two copies are sold.

By midsummer of 1847 Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Anne’s Agnes Grey have been accepted for joint publication by J. Cautley Newby of London, but publication of the three volumes is delayed until the appearance of their sister Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, which is immediately and hugely successful. Wuthering Heights, when published in December 1847, does not fare well. Critics are hostile, calling it too savage, too animal-like, and clumsy in construction. Only later does it come to be considered one of the finest novels in the English language.

Soon after the publication of her novel, Emily’s health begins to fail rapidly. She had been ill for some time, but now her breathing becomes difficult, and she suffers great pain. She dies of tuberculosis on December 19, 1848, in Haworth. She is buried at St. Michael and All Angels’ Church in Haworth.


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The Young Ireland Rebellion of 1848

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The Young Ireland Rebellion, a failed Irish nationalist uprising against the British led by the Young Ireland movement, takes place on July 29, 1848, in the village of Ballingarry, County Tipperary. The rebellion is part of the wider Revolutions of 1848 that affect most of Europe. It is sometimes called the Famine Rebellion (since it takes place during the Great Famine) or the Battle of Ballingarry.

In 1846, William Smith O’Brien, alongside John Mitchel, form the Irish Confederation with the Young Ireland movement which is dedicated to direct action against the British. Two short years later they are already calling for open rebellion, despite the fact that Ireland is now in the third year of the devastating famine which is leaving millions of the country’s people in brutal starvation.

Just a year after Black ‘47, the worst year of the Great Famine, the Young Ireland movement is hoping to uprise and overthrow the British but with the starving Irish just struggling to stay alive, dying or emigrating in their thousands, their revolutionary talk does little to act as a call to arms for the average Irish person.

Whereas the mistreatment of the Irish people by the British had rightly led to an increased radicalism in Irish nationalist movement, without the general Irish population able to think of anything other than staying alive, it seems doomed to failure, especially after the arrest of Mitchel before the rebellion is even started. He is convicted of sedition and transported to a penal colony in Australia before the revolt begins, a move that leads to an increased furor to revolt among the leaders that remain.

On July 29, 1848, O’Brien launches his rebellion. After being chased by a force of Young Irelanders and their supporters, a Royal Irish Constabulary unit takes refuge in a house and holds those inside as hostages.

It was evident to the rebels that the position of the police is almost impregnable. When a party of the Cashel police are seen arriving over Boulea Hill, the rebels attempt to stop them even though they are low on ammunition. The police continue to advance, firing up the road. It becomes clear that the police in the house are about to be reinforced and rescued. The rebels then fade away, effectively terminating both the era of Young Ireland and Repeal, but the consequences of their actions follow them for many years. This event is colloquially known as “The Battle of Widow McCormack’s cabbage plot.”

In O’Brien’s subsequent trial, the jury finds him guilty of high treason. He is sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Petitions for clemency are signed by 70,000 people in Ireland and 10,000 people in England. On June 5, 1849, the sentences of O’Brien and other members of the Irish Confederation are commuted to transportation for life to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania in present-day Australia). In 1854, after five years in Van Diemen’s Land, O’Brien is released on the condition he never return to the United Kingdom. He settled in Brussels.

(Pictured: The attack on the Widow McCormack’s house on Boulagh Common, Ballingarry, County Tipperary)


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Birth of Sir Hudson Lowe, Governor of Saint Helena

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Sir Hudson Lowe, Anglo-Irish soldier and colonial administrator who is best known for his time as Governor of Saint Helena, where he is the “gaoler” of Napoleon Bonaparte, is born in Galway, County Galway on July 28, 1769.

Lowe is the son of John Lowe, an army surgeon. His childhood is spent in various garrison towns, particularly in the West Indies, but he is educated chiefly at Salisbury Grammar. He obtains a post as ensign in the East Devon Militia when he is eleven. In 1787 he enters his father’s regiment, the 50th Regiment of Foot, which is then serving in Gibraltar under Governor-General Charles O’Hara. In 1791, he is promoted to lieutenant. The same year he is granted eighteen months’ leave and chooses to spend the time traveling through Italy rather than return to Britain. He chooses to avoid traveling to France as the French Revolution had recently broken out.

Lowe holds several important commands in the war with France from 1793. He is knighted in 1814. He arrives on the island of Saint Helena, Napoleon’s last place of exile, in April 1816. Many persons, notably Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, consider the choice ill advised, for Lowe is a conscientious but unimaginative man who takes his responsibility with excessive seriousness. Overwhelmed by the magnitude of the charge given him, he adheres rigorously to orders and treats Napoleon with extreme punctiliousness. After October 1816, the news that rescue operations are being planned by Bonapartists in the United States causes Lowe to impose even stricter regulations. The next month he deports Emmanuel, comte de Las Cases, Napoleon’s confidant and former imperial chamberlain, for writing letters about Lowe’s severity.

When, in late 1817, Napoleon first shows symptoms of his fatal illness, Lowe does nothing to mitigate the emperor’s living conditions. Yet he recommends that the British government increase its allowance to Napoleon’s household by one-half. After the emperor’s death on May 5, 1821, Lowe returns to England, where he receives the thanks of King George IV but is met with generally unfavourable opinion and is widely criticized for his unbending treatment of the former emperor. He later commands the British forces on Ceylon (1825–30) but is not appointed governor of that island when the office falls vacant in 1830.

Hudson Lowe dies at the age of 75 at Charlotte Cottage, near Sloane Street, Chelsea, London, of paralysis, on January 10, 1844.


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Birth of Elizabeth Hamilton, Poet & Novelist

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Elizabeth Hamilton, essayist, poet, satirist and novelist, is born in Belfast on July 25, 1756, though the date is often given as 1758.

Hamilton is born to Charles Hamilton (d.1759), a Scottish merchant, and his wife Katherine Mackay (d.1767). She lives most of her life in Scotland, moving there in 1762 to live with a Mrs. Marshall, her paternal aunt, near Stirling and spending much of her later life in Edinburgh.

Hamilton’s first literary efforts are directed in supporting her brother Charles in his orientalist and linguistic studies. After his death in 1792 she continues to publish orientalist scholarship, as well as historical, educationalist and theoretical works. She writes The Cottagers of Glenburnie (1808), a tale which has much popularity in the day, and perhaps has some effect in the improvement of certain aspects of humble domestic life in Scotland. She also writes the anti-Jacobin novel Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800), and the satirical Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah in 1796, a work in the tradition of Montesquieu and Oliver Goldsmith. Her most important pedagogical works are Letters on Education (1801), Letters on the Elementary Principles of Education (1801), Letters addressed to the Daughter of a Nobleman, on the Formation of Religious and Moral Principle (1806), and Hints addressed to the Patrons and Directors of Schools (1815).

Elizabeth Hamilton dies in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England on July 23, 1816, following a short illness.

(Pictured: Portrait of Elizabeth Hamilton, 1812, by Sir Henry Raeburn)


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Birth of Fenian John O’Leary

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John O’Leary, Irish republican and a leading Fenian, is born on July 23, 1830, in Tipperary, County Tipperary. He is imprisoned in England during the nineteenth century for his involvement in the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

O’Leary, born a Catholic, is educated at the local Protestant grammar school, The Abbey School, and later the Catholic Carlow College. He identifies with the views advocated by Thomas Davis and meets James Stephens in 1846.

He begins his studies in law at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1847, where, through the Grattan Club, he associates with Charles Gavan Duffy, James Fintan Lalor and Thomas Francis Meagher.

After the failure of the Young Ireland Rebellion of 1848, O’Leary attempts to rescue the Young Ireland leaders from Clonmel Gaol, and is himself imprisoned for a week from September 8, 1849. He takes part in a further attempted uprising in Cashel on September 16, 1849, but this proves abortive.

O’Leary abandons his study of law at Trinity College because he is unwilling to take the oath of allegiance required of a barrister. He enrolls at Queen’s College, Cork in 1850, to study medicine, later moving to Queen’s College, Galway, then on to further studies at Meath Hospital in Dublin, in Paris and in London. In 1855, he visits Paris, where he becomes acquainted with Kevin Izod O’Doherty, John Martin and the American painter, James Abbott McNeill Whistler. He subsequently becomes financial manager of the newly formed Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and is joint editor of the IRB paper The Irish People.

On September 16, 1865, O’Leary is arrested and later tried on charges of high treason, eventually reduced to “treason felony.” He is sentenced to twenty years of penal servitude, of which five years are spent in English prisons, prior to his release and exile in January 1871. During his exile, he lives mainly in Paris, also visiting the United States, remains active in the IRB and its associated organisations, and writes many letters to newspapers and journals.

On the expiration of his 20-year prison term and therefore of the conditions associated with his release in 1885, O’Leary returns to Ireland. He and his sister, the poet Ellen O’Leary, both become important figures within Dublin cultural and nationalist circles, which include William Butler Yeats, Maud Gonne, Rose Kavanagh, Rosa Mulholland, George Sigerson, and Katharine Tynan. He also functions as an elder statesman of the separatist movement, being active in the Young Ireland Society, and acts as president of the Irish Transvaal Committee, which supports the Boer side in the Second Boer War.

John O’Leary dies at his residence in Dublin on the evening of March 16, 1907. He is referred to famously by W.B. Yeats in his poem September 1913: “Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone/It’s with O’Leary in the grave.”

(Pictured: Painting of John O’Leary, a favorite subject of John Butler Yeats (1904). The National Gallery of Ireland owns three oil portraits of O’Leary.)


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Birth of Jimmy Kennedy, Songwriter & Lyricist

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James Kennedy, songwriter and lyricist, is born on July 20, 1902, near Omagh, County Tyrone in what is now Northern Ireland. He puts words to existing music such as “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” and “My Prayer” and co-writes with composers Michael Carr, Wilhelm Grosz and Nat Simon, among others. In a career spanning more than fifty years, he writes some 2,000 songs, of which over 200 become worldwide hits and about 50 are all-time popular music classics.

Kennedy’s father, Joseph Hamilton Kennedy, is a policeman in the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). While growing up in the village of Coagh, Kennedy writes several songs and poems. He is inspired by local surroundings — the view of the Ballinderry River, the local Springhill House and the plentiful chestnut trees on his family’s property, as evidenced in his poem Chestnut Trees. He later moves to Portstewart, a seaside resort in County Londonderry.

Kennedy graduates from Trinity College, Dublin, before teaching in England. He is accepted into the Colonial Service, as a civil servant, in 1927.

While awaiting a Colonial Service posting to the colony of Nigeria, Kennedy embarks on a career in songwriting. His first success comes in 1930 with “The Barmaid’s Song”, sung by Gracie Fields. Fellow lyricist Harry Castling introduces him to Bert Feldman, a music publisher based in London‘s “Tin Pan Alley“, for whom he starts to work. In the early 1930s he writes a number of successful songs, including “Oh, Donna Clara” (1930), “My Song Goes Round the World” (1931), and “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” (1933), in which he provides new lyrics to John Walter Bratton‘s tune from 1907.

In 1934, Feldman turns down Kennedy’s song “Isle of Capri“, but it becomes a major hit for a new publisher, Peter Maurice. He writes several more successful songs for Maurice, including “Red Sails in the Sunset” (1935), inspired by beautiful summer evenings in Portstewart, Northern Ireland, “Harbour Lights” (1937) and “South of the Border” (1939), inspired by a holiday picture postcard he receives from Tijuana, Mexico and written with composer Michael Carr. He and Carr also collaborate on several West End shows in the 1930s, including London Rhapsody (1937). “My Prayer,” with original music by Georges Boulanger, has English lyrics penned by Kennedy in 1939. It is originally written by Boulanger with the title “Avant de Mourir” in 1926.

During the early stages of World War II, while serving in the British Army‘s Royal Artillery, where he rises to the rank of Captain, Kennedy writes the wartime hit, “We’re Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line.” His hits also include “Cokey Cokey” (1945), and the English lyrics to “Lili Marlene.” After the end of the war, his songs include “Apple Blossom Wedding” (1947), “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” (1953), and “Love Is Like a Violin” (1960). In the 1960s he writes the song “The Banks of the Erne'”, for recording by his friend from the war years, Theo Hyde, also known as Ray Warren.

Kennedy is a patron of the Castlebar Song Contest from 1973 until his death in 1984 and his association with the event adds great prestige to the contest.

Kennedy wins two Ivor Novello Awards for his contribution to music and receives an honorary degree from the New University of Ulster. He is awarded the OBE in 1983 and, in 1997, is posthumously inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame.

Jimmy Kennedy dies in Cheltenham on April 6, 1984, at the age of 81. He is interred in Taunton, Somerset.


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Birth of Chartist Leader Feargus O’Connor

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Feargus Edward O’Connor, advocate of the Land Plan and prominent Chartist leader who succeeds in making Chartism the first specifically working-class national movement in Great Britain, is born near Castletown-Kinneigh, County Cork on July 18, 1796.

O’Connor is born into a prominent Irish Protestant family who claims to be the descendants of the 12th-century king Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair. He is educated mainly at Portarlington Grammar School and has some elementary schooling in England.

O’Connor practices law but exchanges law for politics when he enters the British Parliament in 1832 as a member for County Cork. Unseated in 1835, he turns to radical agitation in England, although he continues to press Irish grievances and to seek Irish support. As a result of his humour, invective, and energy, he becomes the best-known Chartist leader and the movement’s most popular speaker. His journal, the Northern Star (founded in 1837), gains a wide circulation.

O’Connor’s methods and views alienate other Chartist leaders, particularly William Lovett, but in 1841, after spending a year in prison for seditious libel, he acquires undisputed leadership of the Chartists. Failing to lead the movement to victory and vacillating in his attitude toward the middle class and toward the People’s Charter, a six-point bill drafted and published in May 1838, he begins to lose power, although he is elected to Parliament for Nottingham in 1847. The failure of the People’s Charter in 1848 marks the beginning of the end for O’Connor, whose egocentricity is already bordering on madness.

The circulation of the Northern Star falls steadily, and it loses money. O’Connor’s health is failing, and reports of his mental breakdown regularly appear in the newspapers. In the spring of 1852, he visits the United States, where his behaviour leaves no doubt that he is not a well man.

In 1852 in the House of Commons O’Connor strikes three fellow MPs, one of them Sir Benjamin Hall, a vocal critic of the Land Plan. Arrested by the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms, he is sent by his sister to Dr. Thomas Harrington Tuke‘s private Manor House Asylum in Chiswick, where he remains until 1854, when he is moved to his sister’s house. He dies on August 30, 1855, at 18 Albert Terrace, Notting Hill Gate and is buried on September 10 in Kensal Green Cemetery. No fewer than 40,000 people witness the funeral procession. Most Chartists preferred to remember O’Connor’s strengths rather than his shortcomings.


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Birth of James Owen Hannay, Clergyman & Novelist

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James Owen Hannay, Irish clergyman and prolific novelist who writes under the pen name of George A. Birmingham, is born on July 16, 1865, in Belfast. Today the house where he is born is a part of the administration building of Queen’s University Belfast.

Hannay receives his education in England. He enters Temple Grove School near the River Thames at the age of nine, and later studies at a public school called Haileybury School. He then returns to Ireland to enter the Divinity School of Trinity College Dublin. He is ordained in 1889 as a Church of Ireland (Anglican) minister and starts working as a curate for Delgany, County Wicklow, a seaside town south of Dublin.

To make up for a deficiency in their living Hannay writes a short story and sends it to a London publisher. It is accepted for publication, and he receives a check of ￡10. On his wife’s advice, he gives up writing fiction and commits himself to the study of Christian theology with her. This bears fruit with the publications of The Spirit and Origin of Christian Monasticism (1903) and The Wisdom of the Desert (1904).

Hannay then serves as rector of Holy Trinity Church in Westport, County Mayo. It is here that he makes his debut as a novelist. His early writings raise the ire of nationalist Catholics, and he withdraws from the Gaelic League in the wake of ongoing protests about the tour of his successful play General John Regan.

Hannay becomes rector of Kildare parish from 1918 to 1920, and after serving as chaplain to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, he joins the British ambassadorial team in Budapest in 1922. He returns to officiate at Mells, Somerset from 1924 to 1934, after which he is appointed vicar of Holy Trinity Church in the London suburb of Kensington where he serves from 1934 until his death in London on February 2, 1950.

Hannay enjoys sailing and is taught the rudiments by his father and grandfather in Belfast. When he is based in Westport, the financial success of his writing enables him to purchase a boat, a Dublin Bay Water Wag. In recognition of Hannay, the Water Wag Club of Dun Laoghaire returns to Westport and Clew Bay in 2016. In the frontispiece of his book The Inviolable Sanctuary Hannay includes a picture of the Water Wag.


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Birth of Boomtown Rats Guitarist Garry Roberts

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Garrick “Garry” Roberts, founding member and former lead guitarist of The Boomtown Rats, is born in Dublin on June 17, 1950.

Roberts’s father, Rex Roberts, played double bass with a dance band called The Melodists in the 1940s. The headmaster at The High School, Dublin, calls his father in one day to suggest that he consider move his son to a boarding school as he is spending a lot of time in detention.

After being bribed with the promise of a bicycle, Roberts is moved to a Quaker-run boarding school, Newtown School, Waterford. The move proves successful but not for the anticipated reasons. He quickly takes notice of the electric guitars of the school band and realizes that is to be his future.

In 1976, Roberts and Johnnie Fingers (Moylett) decide to put a band together and, between them, they recruit the other four members, Pete Briquette (bass), Gerry Cott (guitar), Simon Crowe (drums) and singer Bob Geldof to form The Boomtown Rats.

Following the breakup of The Boomtown Rats in 1986, Roberts works with Simply Red, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Flesh For Lulu in the role of audio engineer on tours in the UK and the United States. He avoids playing the guitar in public for ten years, after which he and Simon Crowe play together for four years in the rhythm and blues four-piece band The Velcro Flies.

After fifteen successful years as an Independent Financial Adviser, Roberts becomes disillusioned with the life insurance industry and becomes a central heating engineer to keep himself occupied between gigs. Roberts and Crowe, with Darren Beale on second lead guitar, and Peter Barton on bass guitar and lead vocals, are now playing together as Boomtown Rats Roberts and Crowe, and are performing material from the Boomtown Rats’ first three albums across Europe and the UK.

Garry Roberts currently lives in Bromyard, Herefordshire, England.