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Birth of Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, Dancer & Actress

lola-montezMarie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, Countess of Landsfeld, Irish dancer and actress better known by the stage name Lola Montez, is born in Grange, County Sligo, on February 17, 1821. She becomes famous as a “Spanish dancer,” courtesan, and mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who makes her Countess of Landsfeld. She uses her influence to institute liberal reforms. At the start of the German revolutions of 1848-1849, she is forced to flee. She proceeds to the United States via Switzerland, France, and London, returning to her work as an entertainer and lecturer.

Gilbert’s family makes their residence at King House in Boyle, County Roscommon, until early 1823, when they journey to Liverpool, thence departing for India on March 14. Gilbert spends much of her childhood in India but is educated in Scotland and England. At age 19 she elopes with Lieutenant Thomas James. The couple separates five years later and, in 1843, Gilbert launches a career as a dancer. Her London debut in June 1843 as “Lola Montez, the Spanish dancer” is disrupted when she is recognized as Mrs. James. The fiasco would probably have ended the career of anyone less beautiful and determined, but Gilbert receives additional dancing engagements throughout Europe. During her travels she reputedly forms liaisons with Franz Liszt and Alexandre Dumas, among many others.

Late in 1846, Gilbert dances in Munich and Ludwig I of Bavaria is so struck by her beauty that he offers her a castle. She accepts, becomes Baroness Rosenthal and Countess of Lansfeld, and remains as his mistress. Under Gilbert’s influence, Louis inaugurates liberal and anti-Jesuit governmental policies, but his infatuation with her helps to bring about the collapse of his regime in the revolution of 1848. In March of that year Ludwig abdicates in favour of his son. Gilbert flees to London, where in 1849 she marries Lieutenant George Heald, although she has never been divorced from James. Heald later leaves her.

From 1851 to 1853 Gilbert performs in the United States. Her third marriage, to Patrick P. Hull of San Francisco in 1853, ends in divorce soon after she moves to Grass Valley, California. There, among other amusements, she coaches young Lotta Crabtree in singing and dancing. She settles in New York City after an unsuccessful tour of Australia in 1855–1856 and gathers a following as a lecturer on such topics as fashion, gallantry, and beautiful women. An apparently genuine religious conversion leads her to take up various personal philanthropies.

Gilbert publishes Anecdotes of Love; Being a True Account of the Most Remarkable Events Connected with the History of Love; in All Ages and among All Nations (1858), The Arts of Beauty, or, Secrets of a Lady’s Toilet with Hints to Gentlemen on the Art of Fascination (1858), and Lectures of Lola Montez, Including Her Autobiography (1858). The international notoriety of her heyday persists long after her death and inspires numerous literary and balletic allusions.

Gilbert spends her last days in rescue work among women. By November 1859 she is showing the tertiary effects of syphilis and her body begins to waste away. She dies at the age of 39 on January 17, 1861. She is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

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Death of Robert John Kane, Chemist & Educator

robert-john-kaneSir Robert John Kane, chemist and educator, dies at the age of 80 in Dublin on February 16, 1890. In a distinguished career, he founds the Dublin Journal of Medical  & Chemical Science, is Vice-Chancellor of Royal University of Ireland and is director of the Museum of Irish Industry.

Kane is born at 48 Henry Street, Dublin on September 24, 1809 to John and Eleanor Kean (née Troy). His father is involved in the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and flees for a time to France where he studies chemistry. Back in Dublin, Kean (now Kane) founds the Kane Company and manufactures sulfuric acid.

Kane studies chemistry at his father’s factory and attends lectures at the Royal Dublin Society as a teenager. He publishes his first paper in 1828, Observations on the existence of chlorine in the native peroxide of manganese, in the London Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature and Art. The following year, his description of the natural arsenide of manganese results in the compound being named Kaneite in his honour. He studies medicine at Trinity College, Dublin, graduating in 1834 while working in the Meath Hospital. He is appointed Professor of Chemistry at the Apothecaries’ Hall, Dublin in 1831, which earns him the moniker of the “boy professor.” In the following year he participates in the founding of the Dublin Journal of Medical & Chemical Science.

On the strength of his book Elements of Practical Pharmacy, Kane is elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 1832. He studies acids, shows that hydrogen is electropositive, and proposes the existence of the ethyl radical. In 1836 he travels to Giessen in Germany to study organic chemistry with Justus von Liebig. In 1843 he is awarded the Royal Irish Academy’s Cunningham Medal for his work on the nature and constitution of compounds of ammonia.

Kane publishes a three-volume Elements of Chemistry in 1841–1844, and a detailed report on the Industrial Resources of Ireland. This includes the first assessment of the water power potential of the River Shannon, which is not realised until the 1920s at Ardnacrusha.

Kane becomes a political adviser on scientific and industrial matters. He serves on several commissions to enquire into the Great Irish Famine, along with Professors Lindley and Taylor, all more or less ineffective. His political and administrative work means that his contribution to chemistry ceases after about 1844.

Kane’s work on Irish industry leads to his being appointed director of the Museum of Irish Industry in Dublin in 1845. The Museum is a successor to the Museum of Economic Geology, and is housed at 51 St. Stephen’s Green.

Also in 1845 Kane becomes the first President of Queen’s College, Cork (now University College Cork). He does not spend a lot of time in Cork as he has work in Dublin, and his wife lives there. The science building on the campus is named in his honour. He is knighted in 1846.

In 1873 Kane takes up the post of National Commissioner for Education. He is elected president of the Royal Irish Academy in 1877, holding the role until 1882. In 1880 he is appointed the first chancellor of the newly created Royal University of Ireland. After a motion to admit women to the University, put forward by Prof. Samuel Haughton at Academic Council in Trinity College Dublin, March 10, 1880, Kane is appointed to a committee of ten men to look into the matter. He is opposed to the admission of women, and nothing is reported from the committee in the Council minutes for the next ten years.


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Birth of Stephen Lucius Gwynn, Writer & Politician

stephen-lucius-gwynnStephen Lucius Gwynn, journalist, biographer, author, poet, Protestant Nationalist politician, and Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, is born on February 13, 1864 in St. Columba’s College, Rathfarnham, Dublin, where his father John Gwynn, a biblical scholar and Church of Ireland clergyman, is a warden.

Gwynn spends his early childhood in rural County Donegal, which shapes his later view of Ireland. He is educated at St. Columba’s College and goes on to Brasenose College, Oxford, where, as scholar, in 1884 he is awarded first-class honours in classical moderations and in 1886 literae humaniores. During term holidays he returns to Dublin, where he meets several of the political and literary figures of the day.

After graduating Gwynn moves to France where he works as a schoolmaster for ten years. In December 1889 he marries his cousin Mary Louisa Gwynn. They have four sons and two daughters. Having dabbled in journalism since his student days, he moves to London in 1896 to pursue a career as a writer. He soon becomes a prominent figure in literary and journalistic circles.

In 1904 the Gwynns return to Ireland to live in Raheny, County Dublin. In November 1906 he wins a seat for Galway Borough, which he represents as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party until 1918. During this time he also becomes active with the Gaelic League and the Irish Literary Revival.

At the outbreak of World War I, Gwynn gives his support to John Redmond that Irishmen should enlist in the British forces. At the age of fifty-one he enlists as a private in the 7th Leinster Regiment and is later commissioned lieutenant in the 6th Battalion Connaught Rangers, attached to the 16th (Irish) Division. He is promoted to captain in 1915 and serves with his battalion at the battles of Ginchy and Guillemont during the Somme offensive and also at Messines in 1917, leaving the front line shortly afterwards.

Gwynn is appointed to the Dardanelles Commission in 1916, an investigation into the unsuccessful 1915 Gallipoli Campaign.

After the war Gwynn continues with his writing and political life. He receives honorary doctorates from the National University of Ireland in 1940 and the University of Dublin in 1945. He dies on June 11, 1950 at his home in Terenure, Dublin and is buried at Tallaght cemetery.


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Birth of Edmund Ignatius Hogan, Jesuit Scholar

edmund-ignatius-hoganJesuit scholar Edmund Ignatius Hogan S.J. is born in Cork, County Cork on January 25, 1831.

Hogan joins the Society of Jesus and studies for the priesthood in Belgium and France. He returns to Ireland where he teaches German for a year at Clongowes Wood College and then languages and music in the Sacred Heart College, Limerick.

After extensive research in Rome Hogan publishes a history of the Jesuits in Ireland and a life of Saint Patrick. He lectures on Irish language and history at University College Dublin and is Todd Professor (Celtic) at the Royal Irish Academy.

Hogan’s works include Distinguished Irishmen of the 16th Century (1894), the Irish Phrase Book (1899) and Onomasticon Goedelicum: An Index to Irish Names of Places and Tribes (1910), a standard reference based on the research of John O’Donovan, The Irish Wolfhound, A Description of Ireland in 1598 and Chronological list of the Irish members of the Society of Jesus, 1550-1814. He also contributes to the editing and compilation of other works in his field.

Edmund Ignatius Hogan dies on November 26, 1917.


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Birth of Thomas Clarke Luby, Irish Revolutionary

thomas-clarke-lubyThomas Clarke Luby, Irish revolutionary, author, journalist and one of the founding members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, is born in Dublin on January 16, 1822.

Luby is the son of a Church of Ireland clergyman from Templemore, County Tipperary, his mother being a Catholic. He is educated at Trinity College Dublin where he studies law and puts in the necessary number of terms in London and Dublin where he acquires a reputation as a scholar and takes his degree. He goes on to teach at the college for a time.

Luby supports the Repeal Association and contributes to The Nation newspaper. After the breach with Daniel O’Connell he joins the Young Irelanders in the Irish Confederation. He is deeply influenced by James Fintan Lalor at this time. Following the suppression of the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848, he with Lalor and Philip Gray attempt to revive the fighting in 1849 as members of the secret Irish Democratic Association. This, however, ends in failure.

In 1851 Luby travels to France, where he hopes to join the French Foreign Legion to learn infantry tactics but finds the recruiting temporarily suspended. From France he goes to Australia for a year before returning to Ireland. From the end of 1855 he edits the Tribune newspaper founded by John E. Pigot who had been a member of The Nation group. During this time he remains in touch with the small group of ’49 men including Philip Gray and attempts to start a new revolutionary movement. Luby’s views on social issues grow more conservative after 1848 which he makes clear to James Stephens whom he meets in 1856.

In the autumn of 1857 Owen Considine arrives with a message signed by four Irish exiles in the United States, two of whom are John O’Mahony and Michael Doheny. The message conveys the confidence they have in Stephens and asks him to establish an organisation in Ireland to win national independence. Considine also carries a private letter from O’Mahony to Stephens which is a warning, and which is overlooked by Luby and Stephens at the time. Both believe that there is a strong organisation behind the letter, only later to find it is rather a number of loosely linked groups. On December 23 Stephens dispatches Joseph Denieffe to America with his reply which is disguised as a business letter dated and addressed from Paris. In his reply Stephen’s outlines his conditions and his requirements from the organisation in America.

On March 17, 1858, Denieffe arrives in Dublin with the acceptance of Stephens’s terms by the New York Committee and the eighty pounds. On that very evening the Irish Republican Brotherhood is established in Peter Langan’s timber-yard in Lombard Street.

In mid-1863 Stephens informs his colleagues he wishes to start a newspaper, with financial aid from O’Mahony and the Fenian Brotherhood in America. The offices are established at 12 Parliament Street, almost at the gates of Dublin Castle. The first issue of the Irish People appears on November 28, 1863. The staff of the paper along with Luby are Charles J. Kickham and Denis Dowling Mulcahy as the editorial staff. Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa and James O’Connor have charge of the business office, with John Haltigan being the printer. John O’Leary is brought from London to take charge in the role of Editor.

On July 15, 1865 American-made plans for a rising in Ireland are discovered. Superintendent Daniel Ryan, head of the G Division of the Dublin Metropolitan Police at Dublin Castle, has an informer within the offices of the Irish People who supplies him with an “action this year” message on its way to the IRB unit in Tipperary. With this information, Ryan raids the offices of the Irish People on Thursday, September 15, followed by the arrests of Luby, O’Leary and O’Donovan Rossa. Kickham is caught after a month on the run. Stephens is also caught with the support of Fenian prison warders. The last number of the paper is dated September 16, 1865.

After his arrest and the suppression of the Irish People, Luby is sentenced to twenty years of penal servitude. He is released in January 1871, but is compelled to remain away from Ireland until the expiration of his sentence.

Upon his release Luby goes first to the Continent and later settles in New York City. He lectures all over the country for years, and writes for a number of Irish newspapers on political topics. At the memorial meeting on the death of John Mitchel, he delivers the principal address in Madison Square Garden.

Thomas Clarke Luby dies at 109½ Oak Street, Jersey City, New Jersey of paralysis, on November 29, 1901 and is buried in a grave shared with his wife in Bayview Cemetery in Jersey City. His epitaph reads: “Thomas Clarke Luby 1822–1901 He devoted his life to love of Ireland and quest of truth.”


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Death of General Jean Joseph Amable Humbert

jean-joseph-amable-humbertGeneral Jean Joseph Amable Humbert, French soldier and French Revolution participant who leads a failed invasion of Ireland to assist Irish rebels in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, dies on January 3, 1823 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Born in the townland of La Coâre Saint-Nabord, outside Remiremont Vosges, Humbert is a sergeant in the National Guard of Lyon. He rapidly advances through the ranks to become brigadier general on April 9, 1794 and fights in the Western campaigns before being allocated to the Army of the Rhine.

In 1794, after serving in the Army of the Coasts of Brest, Humbert serves under Louis Lazare Hoche in the Army of the Rhin-et-Moselle. Charged to prepare for an expedition against Ireland, he takes command of the Légion des Francs under Hoche, sailing in the ill-fated Expédition d’Irlande against Bantry Bay in 1796, and is engaged in actions at sea against the Royal Navy. Contrary weather and enemy action force this expedition to withdraw. The trip home ends in a naval battle, the Action of 13 January 1797, during which Humbert, on the French ship Droits de l’Homme (1794), narrowly escapes death. As the ship is destroyed and sinks, hundreds of men perish, but Humbert is among the last to escape.

On his return to France, Humbert serves in the Army of the Sambre-et-Meuse, before being appointed to command the troops in another attempt to support a rising in Ireland in 1798. His command chiefly consists of infantry of the 70th demi-brigade with a few artillerymen and some cavalry of the 3rd Hussars, however by the time he arrives off the Irish coast the United Irish rising has already suffered defeat. The expedition is able to land in Ireland at Killala on Thursday August 23, 1798, meeting with initial success in the Battle of Castlebar where he routs the Irish Militia. Humbert subsequently declares a Republic of Connacht, with hopes of taking Dublin. However, Humbert’s small force is defeated at the Battle of Ballinamuck by the Irish Royal Army and he is taken as a prisoner of war by the authorities. The British send the French officers home in two frigates and then massacre their Irish supporters. Humbert makes no attempt to save the Irish who bravely supported him.

Humbert is shortly repatriated in a prisoner exchange and appointed in succession to the Armies of Mayence, Danube and Helvetia, with which he serves at the Second Battle of Zurich. He then embarks for Santo Domingo and participates in several Caribbean campaigns for Napoleon Bonaparte before being accused of plundering by General Brunet. It is also rumored that he engages in an affair with Pauline Bonaparte, the wife of his commanding officer Charles Leclerc. He is returned to France by order of General Leclerc in October 1802, for “prevarications, and liaison relationships with organisers of the inhabitants and with leaders of brigands.” A committed Republican, his displeasure at Napoleon’s Imperial pretensions lead to him being dismissed in 1803 and he retires to Morbihan in Brittany.

In 1810, after brief service in the Army of the North, Humbert emigrates to New Orleans, where he makes his acquaintance with French pirate Jean Lafitte. In 1813, Humbert joins the revolutionary Juan Bautista Mariano Picornell y Gomila in an unsuccessful attempt to foment rebellion in Spanish Mexico, but the effort fails. In 1814, Humbert again leaves New Orleans and joins the rebelling forces of Buenos Aires, briefly commanding a corps, before returning home. Humbert last fights the British at the Battle of New Orleans, as a volunteer private soldier in U.S. ranks, in the War of 1812, wearing his Napoleonic uniform. General Andrew Jackson thanks him for his assistance there after the American victory in January 1815. Thereafter Humbert lives peacefully as a schoolteacher until his death on January 3, 1823.

A monument to General Humbert depicting Mother Ireland stands on Humbert Street, Ballina, County Mayo. In 1989, sculptor Carmel Gallagher unveils a bust of General Humbert in Killala, Ireland, to mark the upcoming bicentennial of the Irish Rebellion of 1798.


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The Flight of the Wild Geese

flight-of-the-wild-geesePatrick Sarsfield sails to France on December 22, 1691, leading 19,000 of his countrymen to enter the French service in the first phase of the military denuding of Ireland known as the Flight of the Wild Geese, as agreed in the Treaty of Limerick on October 3, 1691, following the end of the Williamite War in Ireland.

More broadly, the term “Wild Geese” is used in Irish history to refer to Irish soldiers who leave to serve in continental European armies in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, or even, poetically, Irish soldiers in British armies as late as World War I.

Irish recruitment for continental armies dries up after it is made illegal in 1745. In 1732 Sir Charles Wogan indicates in a letter to Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, that 120,000 Irishmen have been killed and wounded in foreign service “within these forty years.” Swift later replies, “I cannot but highly esteem those gentlemen of Ireland who, with all the disadvantages of being exiles and strangers, have been able to distinguish themselves by their valour and conduct in so many parts of Europe, I think, above all other nations.”

It was some time before the British armed forces begin to tap into Irish Catholic manpower. In the late eighteenth century, the Penal Laws are gradually relaxed and in the 1790s the laws prohibiting Catholics bearing arms are abolished.

Thereafter, the British begin recruiting Irish regiments for the Crown Forces – including such famous units as the Connaught Rangers. Several more Irish units are created in the 19th century. By 1914 specifically Irish infantry regiments in the British Army comprise the Prince of Wales’s Leinster Regiment, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, the Irish Guards, the Royal Irish Regiment, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, the Royal Irish Rifles, the Royal Irish Fusiliers, the Connaught Rangers and the Royal Munster Fusiliers. With the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922 five of the above regiments are disbanded, with most of the remainder undergoing a series of amalgamations between 1968 and 2006. The United Kingdom still retains three Irish regiments: the Irish Guards, the Royal Irish Regiment, and the London Irish Rifles.

Sarsfield is honored to this day in the crest of County Limerick. The Flight of the Wild Geese is remembered in the poetic words…“War-battered dogs are we, Fighters in every clime, Fillers of trench and of grave, Mockers, bemocked by time. War-dogs, hungry and grey, Gnawing a naked bone, Fighters in every clime, Every cause but our own.”

(Pictured: ‘Irish Troops Leaving Limerick’, 1692, (Cassell Petter & Galpin, London, Paris & New York, c1880), Artist Unknown)