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Death of Jonah Barrington, Lawyer, Judge & Politician

Sir Jonah Barrington, KC, Irish lawyer, judge and politician, dies at Versailles, France, on April 8, 1834. He is most notable for his amusing and popular memoirs of life in late 18th-century Ireland, for his opposition to the Act of Union 1800, and for his removal from the judiciary by both Houses of Parliament in 1830, still a unique event.

Barrington is born in 1756 or 1757 in Knapton, Abbeyleix, Queen’s County (now County Laois), the third son of John Barrington, an impoverished Protestant gentleman landowner in Queens’s County and his wife Sibella French of Peterswell, County Galway. He is raised and schooled by his grandparents in Dublin and enters Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1773, aged 16, but leaves TCD without a degree.

Barrington joins the Irish Volunteers and supports the Irish Patriot Party in the early 1780s. His father raises and commands two Corps: the Cullenagh Rangers and the Ballyroan Light Infantry.

Barrington’s elder brother commands both the Kilkenny Horse and the Durrow Light Dragoons. Through his correspondence with General Hunt Walsh, Barrington’s father secures him a commission in Walsh’s regiment. Upon learning that the regiment is to be sent to America to fight in the American Revolution, and fearful of dying on some foreign battlefield, he writes to Walsh asking him to present the commission to another candidate instead, claiming that he himself is too tender to be of any real use. His fears prove well founded when his replacement, the only child of one of Walsh’s friends, is killed in his first engagement.

Barrington is called to the Irish bar in 1788 and in 1789 he marries Catherine, daughter of Dublin mercer, Edward Grogan. They ultimately have seven children. The following year he enters by the purchase of the seat the pre-1801 Parliament of Ireland as MP for Tuam. He accepts a sinecure post in 1793 at the Dublin customhouse worth £1,000 p.a. generally supporting Henry Grattan and he takes silk the same year. He is a member of the Kildare Street Club in Dublin. Appointed an Admiralty court judge in 1798, he re-enters parliament the same year as member for Clogher and votes against the Act of Union in 1799–1800, rejecting John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare‘s offer of the solicitor-generalship in 1799. In 1802, he unsuccessfully contests a seat for Dublin City in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

Barrington’s comments on the Act of Union has a continuing resonance with the Young Ireland, Fenian and Irish Parliamentary Party movements, which hope to re-establish “Grattan’s Parliament” in some way. In particular, his Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation (1833) provides the basis for this romantic idealisation of Grattan’s Parliament adopted by the Irish Parliamentary Party from the 1880s.

Appointed an Admiralty court judge in 1798 at a salary of £500, Barrington finds there is little work to be done and his lack of a degree restricts other opportunities to support extravagant tastes. His award of a knighthood in 1807 brings no increased income. His court orders the sale of two derelict vessels and he gives instructions that the proceeds are to go to his own bank account. In 1810 or 1811 he takes his wife and family to England and from that time on his work in Ireland is carried out by surrogates. Still retaining his judgeship and salary, he moves to France in 1814 to escape his creditors and never returns to Ireland.

In 1828, commissioners learn of Barrington’s financial irregularities. He crosses the channel to London and protests that he is innocent but does not answer the charges based on the documentary evidence produced by the commissioners. In 1830, a parliamentary commission recommends that he be removed from office, finding misappropriations of court funds in 1805, 1806 and 1810. Pursuant to a provision of the Act of Settlement 1701, which seeks to protect the independence of the judiciary, both Houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom vote for an Address to King William IV praying for his removal, and the King duly dismisses Barrington from office. By then, Barrington’s first 1827 volume of memoirs has sold successfully, and they are republished and expanded. He is the first judge removed from office under the Act of Settlement, and to this day, is the only judge in the United Kingdom to be so removed.

According to one of Barrington’s sometimes spurious personal memoirs, on March 20, 1780, he travels to Donnybrook, Dublin, to duel with Richard Daly. Daly has fought 16 duels in three years – three with swords and thirteen with pistols. Remarkably, he, and his opponents, have always escaped serious injury. Barrington has no pistols so he and his second, Richard Crosbie, spend the previous night constructing a pair “from old locks, stocks and barrels.” At Donnybrook, Daly’s second, Jack Patterson, a nephew of the Chief Justice, approaches Crosbie, explains that it is all a mistake and asks that the two shake hands. Barrington is in favour, but Crosbie has none of it. Taking out a duelling handbook, he points to rule No.7 – “No apology can be received after the parties meet, without a fire.”

Taking up their positions, Barrington loses no time in pressing the trigger and Daly staggers back, puts his hand to his chest, and cries, “I’m hit, Sir.” The ball does not penetrate but does drive part of a brooch slightly into his breastbone. Barrington only then thinks to inquire why the duel is even taking place. This time the rule book notes: “If a party challenged accepts the challenge without asking the reason for it, the challenger is never bound to divulge it afterwards.”

Barrington is most notable today for his memoirs which include scathing but humorous thumbnail portraits of contemporary Irish lawyers, judges and politicians during the last years of the Protestant Ascendancy. Personal sketches also includes vignettes on Irish people from every background. His works are reprinted with frequent additions and renamings.

Since his death, Barrington’s work has been quoted by a wide selection of editors, primarily following two themes: the political drama surrounding the Act of Union and the colourful nature of life in 1700s Ireland.


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Death of Katherine Wilmot, Irish Traveler & Diarist

Katherine Wilmot, Irish traveler and diarist, dies in Paris, France, on March 28, 1824. She makes a Grand Tour from 1801 to 1803 and documents her experiences through letters, including encounters with notable figures like Napoleon Bonaparte. She later travels to Russia to join her sister Martha Wilmot and lives there from 1805 to 1807. She later moves to France and dies in Paris in 1824. Her writings, letters, and diaries provide insight into the Napoleonic era, on Russian society and on travel in the 19th century. Her works also include her sister’s transcript of the memoirs of Princess Yekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova.

Wilmot is born around 1773 in Drogheda, County Louth, to Edward and Martha Wilmot (née Moore). She is the eldest daughter of six daughters and three sons. Her father is the port surveyor in Drogheda, having previously served as captain in the 40th Regiment of Foot. He is transferred to a similar post in County Cork in 1775, where Wilmot is raised. The family settles in Glanmire, near the seat of the Earl Mount Cashell in Moore Park. The earl’s family uses the surname Moore.

Wilmot is friendly with Lady Mountcashell, formerly Margaret King, an early and eager pupil of Mary Wollstonecraft. She is invited to accompany the party of Stephen Moore, 2nd Earl Mount Cashell, and his wife on a grand tour of the continent. Her letters from the time survive, in France from November 1801 to October 1802, and in Italy until July 1803. The Mount Cashells entertain lavishly, especially during the first nine months in Paris, and through them she meets Napoleon Bonaparte, and becomes friends with the Austrian painter Angelica Kauffman. She also meets the French diplomat and politician Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, and the Irish republican Robert Emmet fleetingly. She recounts her meeting in Rome with the English aristocrat Frederick Augustus Hervey, and her audience with Pope Pius VII. She returns to London from Italy in October 1803, via Germany and Denmark, after England and France resume hostilities.

Wilmot then goes to Russia to bring home her sister Martha, and ends up spending two years there. Martha is in the country as a favourite of Princess Dashkova, one of the key figures of the Russian Enlightenment and a close friend of Catherine the Great. Martha is living at the Princess’s estate in Troitskoe on the Oka River, about 100 km from Moscow. Wilmot arrives on August 4, 1805, having set out from Cork on June 5. Her writings from this time record the Russian aristocracy‘s opulence and attitudes to the servile classes (the serfs). The sisters come to know the customs of the Russian elite, as well as the festivals and religious rites of the country people. She leaves Moscow on July 4, 1807, a combination of passport problems, wars and storms at sea, resulting in delays and in her reaching Yarmouth on September 7, 1807, and returning to Ireland in October 1807.

Wilmot moves to France to live in a warmer, drier climate than Ireland. Her health declines when she moves to Paris, and she dies there on March 28, 1824. Her nephew by Martha, Wilmot Henry Bradford, lives to be “Father of the Army.”

Wilmot had taken Martha’s transcript of the memoirs of the Princess Dashkova when she left Russia. These are published by Martha in 1840, as she had burned the original manuscript before her departure from Russia in 1808.

Wilmot’s letters are published a century later, and have been described as a unique portrayal of the Napoleonic period. They describe the social scene, as well as the experience of traveling by coach and ship at that time. The family makes transcriptions of the letters. The collection belonging to Martha is donated to the library of the Royal Irish Academy by Elisabeth van Dedem Lecky, the historian and writer. Among these Russian letters are a number written by Eleanor Cavanagh, who describes the lives of servants. Wilmot’s diaries are published in 1920 by Thomas Sadleir, and later by H. Montgomery Hyde and Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry.

  • The Grand Tours of Katherine Wilmot, France 1801-1803, and Russia 1805-07(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1992)
  • An Irish Peer on the Continent, 1801-03 (1920)
  • The Russian Journals of Martha and Catherine Wilmot (1934)
  • More letters from Martha Wilmot; Vienna 1819-29 (1935)


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Birth of Michael Holohan, Irish Composer

Irish composer Michael Holohan is born on March 27, 1956, in Drumcondra, Dublin.

Holohan receives his primary and secondary education at the O’Connell School on North Richmond Street, Dublin. He then attends University College Dublin (UCD), earning his BA in 1978, and Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). He studies composition with Jane O’Leary, Eric Sweeney and Seóirse Bodley. He also attends master classes by Olivier Messiaen, Iannis Xenakis, Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio and Helmut Lachenmann in France.

Holohan is chairman of the Association of Irish Composers from 1987 to 1989 and is later appointed chairman of the Droichead Arts Centre in Drogheda, County Louth, where he has lived since 1983.

Holohan is elected to Aosdána in 1999 and later serves as a member and chair of its Toscaireacht, its ten-member steering body.

Holohan has composed for solo instrument, ensemble, orchestra, stage, choir and voice, and has collaborated with poets including Seamus Heaney, Tomas Tranströmer, Ivan Lalić and Paul Durcan.

Holohan’s music has been performed and broadcast in Ireland and internationally. Career highlights in Drogheda include performances of Cromwell (1994), The Mass of Fire (1995) and No Sanctuary (1997).

Holohan’s work has been reviewed in Irish music journalism. Writing in The Journal of Music following a National Concert Hall composers’ showcase, Benedict Schlepper-Connolly describes The Dream of Aengus as demonstrating Holohan’s “orchestrational control,” and characterises Portrait of the Artist as “captivating,” while noting the influence of Irish traditional music within his choral writing.

Regional press coverage has also documented performances and recordings of his work, including reports on the release of the piano album Fields of Blue and Whiteand concerts of his music in Drogheda.


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Birth of Patrick Pollen, Stained Glass Artist

Patrick Pollen, a British stained glass artist who spends most of his life working in Ireland, is born Patrick La Primaudaye Pollen in London on January 12, 1928.

Pollen is the second son and second of six children of Arthur and Daphne Pollen (née Baring). His father is a sculptor of religious works, and grandson of John Hungerford Pollen. His mother is a painter of religious matter and the daughter of Cecil Baring, 3rd Baron Revelstoke, who purchases Lambay Island and employs Edwin Lutyens to restore the castle there. Pollen attends St. Philip’s preparatory school in South Kensington, then Avisford, near Arundel, and finally Ampleforth College, going on to serve national service. He attends the Slade School of Fine Art for two years to study painting, going on to work at Académie Julian, an art school in Paris, France.

In 1952, Pollen’s father takes him to see Evie Hone‘s “Crucifixion and Last Supper” window in Eton College Chapel. Upon seeing it he announces, “That’s what I want to do.” He moves to Dublin to study with the stained glass cooperative Evie Hone is a member of, An Túr Gloine, which is run by Catherine O’Brien and she and Hone become his mentors. When Hone dies in 1955, she leaves him her brushes.

Pollen’s early work from the 1950s is mostly in Britain, including a window in a private chapel in the London Oratory, three windows for a chapel at Whitchurch, and a crypt window for Rosslyn Chapel. He works for two years from 1957 on thirty-two windows for the new Cathedral of Christ The King, Johannesburg. He makes the windows in Dublin, then ships them to be assembled in South Africa. He creates the mosaic of St. Joseph the Worker and windows for Galway Cathedral. In 1963, he creates a memorial window to Catherine O’Brien in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. He takes on Helen Moloney as an assistant from 1960 to 1962.

Following the Second Vatican Council, newly designed churches feature less stained glass, and Pollen finds he is receiving less commissions. As a consequence he and his family move to the United States in 1981. They settle in Winston-Salem, North Carolina but there is very little work there and in 1997 they return in Ireland, living in his wife’s native County Wexford.

Pollen marries sculptor Nell Murphy in 1963, with the couple buying a house in Dublin in which Pollen had his studio. Murphy works in plaster, clay and stone, her works often featured in churches with those of her husband. They hav four sons, Peter, Ciaran, Laurence and Christopher, and a daughter, Brid.

Pollen dies on November 30, 2010, in Enniscorthy, County Wexford. His remains are cremated and the location of his ashes is unknown.


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Birth of Henry John Stephen Smith, Mathematician & Amateur Astronomer

Henry John Stephen Smith, mathematician and amateur astronomer, is born in Dublin on November 2, 1826. He is remembered for his work in elementary divisors, quadratic forms, and Smith–Minkowski–Siegel mass formula in number theory. In matrix theory he is visible today in having his name on the Smith normal form of a matrix. He is also first to discover the Cantor set.

Smith is the fourth child of John Smith (1792–1828), a barrister, who dies when Henry is two. His mother, Mary Murphy (d.1857) from Bantry Bay, very soon afterward moves the family to England. He has thirteen siblings, including Eleanor Smith, who becomes a prominent educational activist. He lives in several places in England as a boy. His mother does not send him to school but educates him herself until age 11, at which point she hires private tutors. In 1841, at the age of 15, he is admitted to Rugby School in Warwickshire, where Thomas Arnold is the school’s headmaster. This comes about because his tutor, Henry Highton, takes up a housemaster position there.

At the age of 19 Smith wins an entrance scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. He graduates in 1849 with high honours in both mathematics and classics. He is fluent in French having spent holidays in France, and he takes classes in mathematics at the College of Sorbonne in Paris during the 1846–47 academic year. He is unmarried and lives with his mother until her death in 1857. He then brings his sister, Eleanor, to live with him as housekeeper at St. Giles.

Smith remains at Balliol College as a mathematics tutor following his graduation in 1849 and is soon promoted to Fellow status.

In 1861, Smith is promoted to the Savilian Chair of Geometry at the University of Oxford. In 1873, he is made the beneficiary of a fellowship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and gives up teaching at Balliol College.

In 1874, Smith becomes Keeper of the University Museum and moves, along with his sister, to the Keeper’s House on South Parks Road in Oxford.

On account of his ability as a man of affairs, Smith is in demand for academic administrative and committee work: he is Keeper of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, a Mathematical Examiner for the University of London, a member of a Royal Commission to review scientific education practice, a member of the commission to reform University of Oxford governance, chairman of the committee of scientists overseeing the Meteorological Office and twice president of the London Mathematical Society.

Smith dies in Oxford on February 9, 1883. He is buried in St. Sepulchre’s Cemetery in Oxford.


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Birth of Nora Twomey, Animator, Director & Screenwriter

Nora Twomey, Irish animator, director, screenwriter, producer and voice actress, is born on October 31, 1971, in Cork, County Cork. She is best known as the co-founder of Cartoon Saloon, alongside Tomm Moore and Paul Young, an animation studio and production company, based in Kilkenny, County Kilkenny.

Twomey is educated at St. Mary’s Secondary School in Midleton, County Cork but leaves before completing the Leaving Certificate at the age of fifteen. She does manual labor at a local factory but continues to draw and briefly studies fine art before she is admitted to Ballyfermot Senior College in Dublin to their School of Animation program on the basis of her portfolio. In the factory she operates a conveyor belt for up to twelve hours on end during the night shift. She credits this period of her life to much of her success, as she wears headphones to drown out the loud noise of machinery, the silence combined with the monotony of the task she performs allows her to ponder concepts and generate ideas, many of which are put to film later in her life.

After graduating from Ballyfermot Senior College in 1995, Twomey begins to work for Brown Bags Film, an animation studio in Dublin. In 1999, she helps found Cartoon Saloon, along with Tomm Moore, Paul Young and Ross Murray. In 2002, she directs the award-winning short animated film From Darkness. The short film has no dialogue and is based on an Inuit folk tale where a man helps a woman with only a skeleton for a body to regenerate. She also works on the successful animated TV series Skunk Fu!.

Twomey goes on to write and direct the animated short Cúilín Dualach (Backwards Boy), released in 2004. Based on a story by Jackie Mac Donacha, a boy with his head on backwards finds only love and acceptance in his mother and has to work to gain that from the rest of his community but most of all his father.

Twomey co-directs, with Tomm Moore, The Secret of Kells, an animated feature film as well as doing additional voice acting for the film. The film is set in 9th century Ireland, at the time when the Book of Kells is written. In it, a 12-year-old orphan boy living at a monastery has the task of finishing a book with the art of illumination. The film premieres at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2009. The Secret of Kells is nominated in the category of Best Animated Feature Film at the 82nd Academy Awards.

Twomey continues to work on feature films with Cartoon Saloon with 2014’s Song of the Sea directed by Tomm Moore. She works as the film’s head of story and voice director.

Twomey next directs the animated film The Breadwinner, released in 2017. Based on the best-selling young adult novel by Deborah Ellis, an 11-year-old girl named Parvana must dress as a boy and become the titular breadwinner for her family when her father is wrongfully arrested by the Taliban. It premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2017 with a wide release in November 2017. It is the first feature-length film she has sole director credit on. She works on the project with actress Angelina Jolie, who helps fund the project and works as an executive producer. The project is a huge success for Twomey, as she is recognized as a solo female filmmaker, and given accolades as well as being lauded by many as a source of female empowerment, all while battling cancer during production. During the development of The Breadwinner, she is named in Variety‘s “2017 10 Animators to Watch.”

Twomey is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Twomey becomes the seventh graduate of Ballyfermot Senior College to be nominated for an Academy Award with her work on The Breadwinner when it is nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 90th Academy Awards. She is also nominated for an award at the Golden Globe Awards.

The Breadwinner earns ten nominations at the 45th Annie Awards, including Outstanding Achievement for Directing in an Animated Feature Production for Twomey. It wins the award for best animated feature for an independent film. This marks the first time a sole female director directs the film that wins the award. It also wins the Cinema for Peace award for Justice in 2018.

Twomey’s work also has a heavy presence at the Emile Awards, an annual event held by the European Animation Awards Association that honors European creators of animation. During the awards of 2018, which are hosted in Lile, France, her film The Breadwinner wins awards in five categories: Best Direction, Best Storyboarding, Best Character Animation, Best Background, and Best Character Design.

Twomey has won several awards according to the Screen Directors Guild of Ireland (SDGI). These awards include the best New Irish Short Animation at the Galway Film Fleadh (2002), Best Short at the Boston Irish Film Festival (2003), Best Animation at the Kerry Film Festival (2003), and the Silver Award at the Kalamazoo Animation Festival International (2003) for her film From Darkness. Her film Cúilín Dualach (Backwards Boy) also wins the Best Animated Short from the Irish Film & Television Academy (2005), Best Short Film at Cartoons on the Bay (2005), Best Animation for Children at Animadrid (2005) and the Best Animation at the Celtic Film Festival (2005). Among other awards, the 2018 Cinema for Peace Award for Justice for her movie The Breadwinner can be included.

Cartoon Saloon, the studio Twomey co-founds with contemporaries Paul Young and Tom Moore in Kilkenny, has been nominated for five Academy Awards, a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award and several Emmy Awards.


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Birth of Helena Concannon, Historian, Writer & Politician

Helena Concannon (née Walsh), Irish historian, writer, language scholar and Fianna Fáil politician, is born in Maghera, County Londonderry, on October 28, 1878.

Concannon is educated by the Loreto nuns in Coleraine, County Londonderry. In 1897, she studies modern languages at the Royal University of Ireland on a three-year scholarship. She studies abroad during these years as in 1899, she travels to Germany and studies German in Berlin University accompanied by her friend, Mary Macken. She then travels to France to study French at Sorbonne University. In 1900, she graduates Bachelor of Arts with first class honours and goes on to study Master of Arts in 1902 at the Royal University of Ireland. She is fortunate to being one of the first generation of educated women.

In 1906, Concannon marries Tomás Bán Ó Conceanainn, who she met in 1900 when he arrived home from the United States. They settle down in County Galway where they share the same love for the Irish language and write many Irish texts. They have no children. In Galway, she is a professor at University College Galway where she teaches history, which mainly involves the history of Irish women. In 1909, she is offered a lectureship at University College Dublin, in Italian, but the offer is then withdrawn before she can accept it, so she decides to pursue a writing career.

Concannon produces over twenty books, including works on religion, the history of Ireland and Irish women’s history. Her works are highly impacted by her political and nationalist views. Her analyses of Irish history is based on Catholicism and patriotism. She is also an advocate of Irish language restoration. Her first writings are love poems to her husband. These poems are ”simple, sensuous and passionate.”

Concannon also produces a number of imaginative historical text for children. She uses her married name for her publications and her first book, entitled A Garden of girls, or the famous schoolgirls of former days, is published in 1914. It is about “school life and education of real little girls” Her next well known piece is the Life of St. Columban in 1915, which is a study about the Irish ancient monastic life and a biography of a sixth-century saint.

Two of Concannon’s books, Daughters of Banba (1922) and St. Patrick (1932), receive the Tailteann Medal for Literature, and The Poor Clares in Ireland (1929) wins the National University Prize, a D.Litt. higher doctorate degree for historical research.

Concannon’s most common publication, Women of ‘Ninety Eight, is dedicated to all the dead women and all the living ones who have given their loved ones. This book emerges on the ideologies of Catholicism and patriotism “praising the devotion of Irish nationalist women while emphasising the centrality of women’s spiritual and domestic role in the home to the well-being of the nation.” As this work is written during the time of the Irish War of Independence, she stresses the importance of women help during the rebellion as “they acted as messengers and intelligence officers,” and in some cases, they fought as any men.

Concannon was elected to the 8th Dáil for Fianna Fáil at the 1933 Irish general election for the National University of Ireland constituency, serving from February 8, 1933 until June 14, 1937.

Concerning the Land Purchase (Guarantee Fund) Bill 1935, which according to George Cecil Bennett will negatively impact the rural middle class of which he is a representative, Bennett accuses Concannon and her fellow Dublin men of not caring about the people of the country. Concannon goes on to vote that the Dáil should disagree with the Seanad Éireann-proposed bill with 71 others.

Though Concannon is a TD as a university representative, she votes with her party to remove university representation from the Dáil, leading one TD to say, “I am very much surprised to see such a distinguished scholar and such a great contributor to Irish literature as Deputy Mrs. Concannon voting for the disfranchisement of the University that she has so well and so ably represented.”

Concannon speaks on behalf of Irish women in the Dáil in 1936. She speaks on how Irish women play a fundamental role in Ireland’s agricultural economy and therefore more money should be put toward educating these women.

Concannon is one of the minority voices against the role appointed to women in Éamon de Valera‘s constitution. She does not contest the Dáil election of 1937.

After the adoption of the Constitution of Ireland in 1937, the National University of Ireland constituency is reconstituted in the new Seanad Éireann. The first election takes place in 1938, and Concannon is elected. She is a popular figure and is re-elected each election in the Seanad until she dies in office on February 27, 1952.


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Birth of Sarah Atkinson, Writer & Philanthropist

Sarah (née Gaynor) Atkinson, Irish writer, biographer, essayist and philanthropist, is born in Athlone, County Westmeath, on October 23, 1823.

She is the eldest daughter of John and Anne Gaynor, of Athlone. At the age of fifteen she moves with her family to Dublin where her education is completed. Two of her sisters, Anna and Marcella, become nuns with Religious Sisters of Charity. At twenty-five, she marries the much older George Atkinson, a medical doctor and, with Sir John Gray, joint proprietor of the Freeman’s Journal. They are both interested in art and she accompanies her husband on many trips abroad, taking in the cultural centres of Europe. At home they make the acquaintance of prominent politicians, journalists and musicians. Regular guests at their house are Dr. John Shaw, editor of the Evening Mail, Rosa Mulholland and Katharine Tynan.

The loss of her only child in his fourth year deeply affected Atkinson and she throws herself into charitable and other good works. She moves with her husband to Drumcondra in Dublin, where she makes the acquaintance of Ellen Woodlock. Woodlock, a sister of Francis Sylvester Mahony, is born in Cork, County Cork, in 1811 and is married in 1830 and widowed quite young, just before the birth of her only son. Woodlock is the sister-in-law of Rev. Dr. Bartholomew Woodlock, who is President of All Hallows College. She intends to join a religious community in France but after spending a few years in that country (with her son in a nearby school) returns to Cork and then moves to Dublin. At this time the post-famine city is inundated with poverty-stricken families and abandoned children. Fever and disease are rife, and the Poor Law of the day is insufficient to meet the needs of the starving population. Many evictions are taking place in deplorable circumstances, which force the poor, however reluctantly, to seek refuge in the workhouses. The most vulnerable sections of the community are single women (including widows) and children. Woodlock is totally against placing children in workhouses and founds St. Joseph’s Industrial Institute in 1855 to rescue girls from that situation. With her, Atkinson interests herself in the female paupers of the South Dublin Union. With much difficulty in the 1860s, she gains permission for ladies like herself to enter and inspect the condition of young girls in the North and South Dublin Unions, after which she opens a better home to which many were transferred. She campaigns for years to improve the state of the workhouses and provide better conditions for the poverty-stricken. One of her sisters runs the Our Lady’s Hospice in Dublin, to which she donates funds. She helps Woodlock establish the Children’s Health Ireland at 9 Buckingham Street in 1872, which later moves to Temple Street, which she visits every day. Every week she visits hospitals and prisons, in the 1880s accompanying Katharine Tynan to visit the last of the Land Leaguers incarcerated in Kilmainham Gaol.

From the 1850s Atkinson contributes a large number of historical and biographical articles and essays to several publications, including Duffy’s Hibernian Magazine, The Month, The Nation and the Freeman’s Journal. She later writes for the Irish Monthly after it is established, and for the Irish Quarterly Review. Her Life of Mary Aikenhead is published in 1875 and is very well received. She follows this with biographies of the Irish sculptors John Henry Foley and John Hogan and also a life of Catherine of Siena. A collection of her essays, with a preface and biography by Rosa Mulholland, is published posthumously in 1895.

Atkinson dies in County Dublin on July 8, 1893, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, where the cemetery committee places a Celtic cross as a monument to her and her husband after his death on December 8, 1893.


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Birth of Dairine Vanston, Landscape Artist

Dairine (Doreen) Vanston, Irish landscape artist who works in a Cubist style, is born in Dublin on October 19, 1903.

Vanston is the daughter of solicitor John S. B. Vanston, and sculptor Lilla Vanston (née Coffey). She attends Alexandra College, going on to study at Goldsmiths College, London under Roger Bissière. She then goes to Paris to the Académie Ranson, being sent there following the advice of Paul Henry. While in Paris she meets Guillermo Padilla, a Costa Rican law student at the University of Paris. They marry in 1926 and she takes the name Vanston de Padilla. The couple lives for a time in Italy, before moving to San José, Costa Rica. The marriage breaks down in the early 1930s, at which point she returns to Paris with her son and studies with André Lhote. She is living in France at the outbreak of World War II with Jankel Adler, but is able to escape to London in 1940, and later to Dublin.

Vanston’s time in Paris leaves a lasting impression on her work, including use of primary colours and a strong Cubist influence. She belongs to what critic Brian Fallon calls the “Franco-Irish generation of painters who looked to Paris,” along with Mainie Jellett, Evie Hone, and Norah McGuinness. Her time spent living in Costa Rica in the late 1920s and early 1930s imbues her work with tropical and highly toned colours. In Dublin in 1935, she exhibits 17 paintings, largely Costa Rican landscapes, at Daniel Egan’s gallery on St. Stephen’s Green. This is the closest thing to a solo show she would mount, with this show also featuring Grace Henry, Cecil Ffrench Salkeld, and Edward Gribbon.

Meeting the English artist Basil Rakoczi, who is also living in Dublin during World War II, leads Vanston to become associated with The White Stag group. In November 1941, she exhibits for the first time at a group show with 24 other artists, including Patrick Scott. One work that is shown at this exhibition is the painting Keel dance hall, which demonstrates that she spends time in the west of Ireland. The most important event staged by the group is the Exhibition of subjective art, which takes place at 6 Lower Baggot St. in January 1944. The Dublin Magazine notes her work at this show as the most effective of the experimental vanguard. This work, Dying animal, is a Cubist work with semi-representation forms rendered in bold colours. In 1945, her work is featured in a White Stag exhibition in London of young Irish painters at the Arcade gallery, Old Bond Street.

In 1947, Vanston spends almost a year in Costa Rica where she paints primarily in watercolours. Apart from this period, she lives and works in Dublin, living at 3 Mount Street Crescent near St. Stephen’s Church. At the inaugural Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1943, she exhibits five works. At the first Exhibition of Independent Artists in 1960, of which she is a founder, she exhibits three landscapes and a work entitled War. She largely exhibits with the Independent Artists, the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, and the Oireachtas na Gaeilge, and does not exhibit with the Royal Hibernian Academy. Later in life, she exhibits with the Figurative Image exhibitions in Dublin, and is amongst the first painters chosen for Aosdána. A number of her works are featured in the 1987 exhibition, Irish women artists, from the eighteenth century to the present arranged by the National Gallery of Ireland and The Douglas Hyde Gallery.

Vanston dies on July 12, 1988, in a nursing home in Enniskerry, County Wicklow. Her work is greatly admired, but has received little by way of critical attention, which may have been to do with her slow rate of output. A number of her works have proved difficult to trace. She was a private person, even refusing to cooperate with the Taylor Galleries in the 1980s when they wanted to mount a retrospective of her work. The National Self-Portrait Collection in Limerick holds a work by Vanston.

(Pictured: Dairine Vanston with Guillermo Padilla in Paris)


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Death of David Bailie Warden, United Irishman & Diplomat

David Bailie Warden, United Irishman, diplomat, and bibliographer, dies in Paris on October 9, 1845, where he had lived for the previous thirty-eight years.

Warden is born in the townland of Ballycastle, near Newtownards in County Down, the eldest among three sons of Robert Warden, tenant farmer, and Elizabeth Warden (née Bailie). Educated locally, he studies for the Presbyterian ministry, despite being told by a clergyman that he is a “blockhead.” Entering the University of Glasgow, he wins a silver medal for his work on barometers, receives a certificate in midwifery, and graduates MA in April 1797. Returning to Ireland, he accepts a provisional license to preach from the Presbytery of Bangor, County Down, and becomes a popular preacher in the region. A patriot in politics, he joins the United Irishmen. Because of this a warrant was issued for his arrest in 1798 and he surrenders himself to the government. Banished from Ireland, he decides to emigrate to the United States and writes a pamphlet explaining his decision, A farewell address to the junto of the presbytery of Bangor, in which he accuses the church leaders of “meanness, injustice and cruelty.”

On his arrival in New York City in 1799, Warden decides to abandon his career as a clergyman and become a teacher. Interested in mathematics, science and literature, he becomes principal of the Columbia Academy in Kinderhook, New York, and is appointed in 1801 the head tutor at Kingston Academy in Ulster County, New York. Employed by General John Armstrong, Jr. to teach his children, he makes useful connections in American society. He becomes a citizen in 1804 and is asked to accompany Armstrong to France when he is appointed ambassador. Arriving in Paris in 1806, he gives strong support to Armstrong and defends him from criticism in the American press. He is appointed acting consul in 1808, and serves as head of the legation on two occasions when Armstrong is absent. Surprisingly, despite their ties of friendship, Armstrong does not recommend Warden to succeed him permanently, and advises President Thomas Jefferson that although “honest and amiable” he is “not well qualified for business.” Stung by these comments, Warden reacts angrily and his friendship with Armstrong ends acrimoniously. As a result he is swiftly recalled from Paris.

Once back in America, Warden lobbies vigorously to be appointed French consul. Supported by Jefferson, now out of office, he returns to Paris in August 1811 having convinced the government of his credentials. Befriending the new ambassador, Joel Barlow, he soon allows pride to get the better of him. Arrogantly styling himself “consul general” after Barlow dies in December 1812, he provokes much anger and is dismissed from office on June 10, 1814. He never holds a diplomatic appointment again.

Deciding to remain in France, he resumes his scholarly activities and publishes his first book, On the Origin, Nature, Progress and Influence of Consular Establishments in 1813. A friend of many of the leading French writers and intellectuals, he also offers assistance to visiting scholars from America, providing a bridge between the European and American intellectual communities. His reputation increases with the publication of Chorographical and Statistical Description of the District of Columbia (1816) and A Statistical, Political and Historical Account of the United States of North America (3 vols., 1819). The publishers of a series, L’art de vérifier les dates, commissions him to research the volumes on North and South America in 1821. These run to ten volumes and are written over thirteen years.

Beset by financial difficulties, Warden is twice forced to sell part of his vast library to raise money. He dies on October 9, 1845, in Paris, after a long illness. He never marries.

(From: “Warden, David Bailie” by Patrick M. Geoghegan, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)