Mannock was born on May 24, 1887, to an English father, Edward Mannock, and an Irish mother, Julia Sullivan. His father serves in the British Army and in 1893, deeply in debt and exasperated with civilian life, he re-enlists, and the family moves to Meerut, India when he is five years old. In his early years, he is sickly and develops several ailments. Soon after arriving in Asia, he contracts malaria, narrowly avoiding death. Upon his return to England, he becomes a fervent supporter of Irish nationalism and the Irish Home Rule movement but becomes a member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP).
In 1914, Mannock is working as a telephone engineer in Turkey. After the Ottoman Empire‘s entry into the war on the side of the Central Powers he is interned. Poorly fed and cared for, his health rapidly declines in prison. Dysentery racks his intestines, and he is confined to a small cell. Turkish authorities repatriate him to Britain believing him to be unfit for war service. He recovers and joins the Royal Engineers (RE) and then the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC). He moves services again and in 1916 joins Royal Flying Corps (RFC). After completing his training, he is assigned to No. 40 Squadron RFC. He goes into combat on the Western Front, participating in three separate combat tours. After a slow start he begins to prove himself as an exceptional pilot, scoring his first victory on May 7, 1917.
By February 1918, Mannock has achieved sixteen victories and is appointed a Flight Commander in No. 74 Squadron. He amasses thirty-six more victories from April 12 — June 17, 1918. After returning from leave he is appointed commanding officer of No. 85 Squadron in July 1918, and scores nine more victories that month.
On July 26, Major Mannock offers to help a new arrival, Lt. Donald C. Inglis from New Zealand, obtain his first victory. After shooting down an enemy LVG two-seater behind the German front-line, Mannock is believed to have dived to the crash site to view the wreckage, seemingly breaking one of the unwritten rules of fellow pilots about the hazards of flying low into ground fire. In consequence, while crossing the trenches the fighters are met with a massive volley of ground fire. The engine of his aircraft is hit and immediately catches fire, and shortly thereafter the plane crashes behind German lines. His body is believed to have been found, though this is unproven, about 250 yards (250m) from the wreck of his plane, perhaps thrown, perhaps jumped. The body shows no gunshot wounds although he had vowed to shoot himself if shot down in flames.
The exact cause of Mannock’s death remains uncertain. A year later, after intensive lobbying by Ira Jones and many of his former comrades, he is awarded the Victoria Cross (VC).
Mannock’s name is listed on the Wellingborough War Memorial with the other fallen men from the town and the local Air Training Corps (ATC) unit bears his name – 378 (Mannock) Squadron. Additionally, Mannock Road, a residential street in Wellingborough, is named after him.
On June 24, 1988, a plaque is unveiled at 183 Mill Road, Wellingborough, by top scoring World War II British fighter pilot Air Vice-MarshalJohnnie Johnson. Mannock had lived at that address prior to the war after being befriended by the Eyles family.
Jack “Legs” Diamond, an Irish Americangangster in Philadelphia and New York City during the Prohibition era also known as John Nolan and Gentleman Jack, is born in Philadelphia on July 10, 1897, to Sara and John Moran, who emigrated from Ireland to Philadelphia in 1891. A bootlegger and close associate of gambler Arnold Rothstein, he survives a number of attempts on his life between 1916 and 1931, causing him to be known as the “clay pigeon of the underworld.” In 1930, his nemesis Dutch Schultz remarks to his own gang, “Ain’t there nobody that can shoot this guy so he don’t bounce back?”
In 1899, Diamond’s younger brother Eddie is born. He and Eddie both struggle through grade school, and their mother suffers from severe arthritis and other health problems. She passes away on December 24, 1913, following complications brought on by a bacterial infection and a high fever. John Moran then moves his family to Brooklyn, New York.
Diamond soon joins a Manhattan street gang called the Hudson Dusters. His first arrest for burglary occurs when he breaks into a jewelry store on February 4, 1914. He serves in the United States Army in World War I but is convicted and jailed for desertion in 1918 or 1919. He serves two years of a three- to five-year sentence at Leavenworth Military Prison. After being released in 1921, he becomes a hired thug and later personal bodyguard for crime boss Arnold Rothstein.
Diamond is known for leading a rather flamboyant lifestyle. He is an energetic individual, his nickname “Legs” derived either from his being a good dancer or from how fast he could escape his enemies. His wife Alice is never supportive of his life of crime but does not do much to dissuade him from it. He is a womanizer, with his best-known mistress being a showgirl and dancer, Marion “Kiki” Roberts.
In the late 1920s, Prohibition is in force, and the sale of beer and other alcoholic beverages is illegal in the United States. Diamond travels to Europe to acquire beer and narcotics but fails. However, he does obtain liquor, which is dumped overboard in partially full barrels that float to Long Island as ships enter New York Harbor. He pays children a nickel for every barrel they bring to his trucks.
Following the death of Jacob “Little Augie” Orgen, Diamond oversees illegal alcohol sales in downtown Manhattan via the Hotsy Totsy Club, an establishment partly owned by Diamond on Broadway. This work brings him into conflict with Dutch Schultz, who wants to move beyond his base in Harlem. He also runs into trouble with other gangs in the city. On July 14, 1929, he and fellow gang member Charles Entratta shoot three drunken brawlers in the Hotsy Totsy Club. Two of the brawlers, William Cassidy and Simon Walker, are killed, while the survivor, Peter Cassidy, is severely wounded. The club’s bartender, three waiters, and the hat check girl vanish, with one of them being found shot dead in New Jersey. He is not charged but is forced to close the club.
In 1930, Diamond and two henchmen kidnap truck driver Grover Parks in Cairo, New York, demanding to know where he had obtained his load of hard cider. When Parks denies carrying anything, Diamond and his men beat and tortured Parks, eventually letting him go. A few months later, he is charged with the kidnapping of James Duncan. He is sent to Catskill, New York, for his first trial, but is acquitted. However, he is convicted in a federal case on related charges and sentenced to four years in jail. He is tried in December 1931 in Troy, New York, also for kidnapping, and is once again acquitted.
On August 23, 1930, Diamond, under the false name John Nolan, boards the ocean liner SS Belgenland, bound for Europe. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) suspect that he might have left the U.S. aboard RMS Olympic or RMS Baltic, but he is not found on either ship when they reach Europe. The NYPD then sends a wireless telegraph message to the crew of SS Belgenland, who reply that a man similar to Diamond’s description is among the passengers. Diamond spends much of the voyage in the ship’s smoking-room playing poker, with one report claiming that he won thousands of dollars in this game. The SS Belgenland‘s officers, however, refute this, saying his winnings were small.
The NYPD telegraphs police in England, France and Belgium with the warning that Diamond is an undesirable character. When SS Belgenland reaches Plymouth on August 31, Scotland Yard officers tell Diamond he will not be allowed to land in England. He tells reporters that he wants to travel to the French spa town of Vichy for “the cure.” He disembarks in Antwerp on September 1, where Belgian police take him to their headquarters. Eventually, he agrees to voluntarily leave Belgium and is put on a train to Germany. When his train reaches Aachen, German police arrest him. On September 6, the German government decides to deport Diamond. He is driven to Hamburg and put on the cargo ship Hannover for passage to Philadelphia.
On September 23, Hannover arrives in Philadelphia, and Diamond is immediately arrested by the Philadelphia police. At a court hearing that day, the judge says he will release him if he leaves Philadelphia within the hour. Diamond agrees.
On October 24, 1924, Diamond is shot and wounded by shotgun pellets, reportedly after trying to hijack liquor trucks belonging to a rival crime syndicate.
On October 16, 1927, Diamond tries to stop the murder of “Little Augie” Orgen. His brother Eddie is Orgen’s bodyguard, but Diamond substitutes for Eddie that day. As Orgen and he are walking down a street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, three young men approach them and start shooting. Orgen is fatally wounded, and Diamond is shot twice below the heart. He is taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he eventually recovers. Police interview him in the hospital, but he refuses to identify any suspects or help the investigation in any way. Police initially suspect that he is an accomplice and charge him with homicide, but the charge is dropped. The assailants are supposedly hired by Lepke Buchalter and Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro, who are seeking to encroach on Orgen’s garment-district labor rackets.
On October 12, 1930, Diamond is shot and wounded at the Hotel Monticello on Manhattan’s West Side. Two men force their way into his room and shoot him five times. Still in his pajamas, he staggers into the hallway and collapses. When asked later by the police commissioner how he managed to walk out of the room, he says he drank two shots of whiskey first. He is rushed to the Polyclinic Hospital, where he eventually recovers. He is discharged from Polyclinic on December 30, 1930.
On April 21, 1931, Diamond is arrested in Catskill on assault charges for the Parks beating in 1930. Two days later, he is released from the county jail on $25,000 bond. Five days later, he is again shot and wounded at the Aratoga Inn, a roadhouse near Cairo. After eating in the dining room with three companions, he is shot three times and collapses by the front door. A local resident drives him to a hospital in Albany, where he eventually recovers. On May 1, while he is still in the hospital, the New York State Police seize over $5,000 worth of illegal beer and alcohol from his hiding places in Cairo and at the Aratoga Inn.
In August 1931, Diamond and Paul Quattrocchi go on trial for bootlegging. The same month, he is convicted and sentenced to four years in state prison. In September 1931, he appeals his conviction.
On December 18, 1931, Diamond’s enemies finally catch up with him. He is staying in a rooming house on Dove Street in Albany while on trial for kidnapping in Troy. On the night of his acquittal, December 17, he and his family and friends visit a restaurant in Albany. At 1:00 a.m., he and mistress, Marion “Kiki” Roberts, entertain themselves at the Rain-Bo Room of the Kenmore Hotel on North Pearl Street.
At 4:30 a.m., Diamond drunkenly goes back to the rooming house and passes out on his bed. Two gunmen enter his room about an hour later. One man holds Diamond down and the other shoots him three times in the back of the head.
There is much speculation as to who is responsible for the murder. Likely candidates include Schultz, the Oley Brothers, the Albany Police Department, and relatives of Red Cassidy, another Irish American gangster at the time. According to author William Kennedy in his book O Albany, Dan O’Connell, who runs the local Democraticpolitical machine, orders Diamond’s execution, which is carried out by the Albany police.
Given the power that the O’Connell machine holds in Albany and its determination to prevent organized crime, other than their own, from threatening their monopoly of vice in the city, some accept this account of the story. For those believing this theory, William Fitzpatrick’s promotion to chief of police is said to be a reward for executing Diamond. In 1945, Chief Fitzpatrick is shot and killed in his own office by John McElveney, an Albany police detective. McElveney is sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. He is released in 1957 when his sentence is commuted by GovernorW. Averell Harriman.
On December 23, 1931, Diamond is buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens. There is no church service or graveside ceremony. Family and spectators numbering 200 attend the interment. No criminal figures are spotted.
On July 1, 1933, Alice Kenny Diamond, Diamond’s 33-year-old widow, is found shot to death in her Brooklyn apartment. It is speculated that she is shot by Diamond’s enemies to keep her quiet.
Barry returns to Bandon in early 1919. He describes in his guerilla days in Ireland a Damascus-like conversion to Irish nationalism on hearing of the Easter Rising while with the Mesopotamian expeditionary force, but he is only accepted into the IRA with considerable caution. Initially tested in intelligence and training work, in mid-1920 he takes charge of the new brigade flying column, which is used both to train officers and to stage offensive actions.
Barry adapts his military experience successfully to the demands of guerrilla warfare, becoming the most famed of column leaders during the Irish War of Independence. In his memoirs, he pours scorn on the obsession of many with military titles and orthodox procedure, complaining of a “paper army.” He stresses the need for spontaneity, initiative, and knowledge of local conditions. “The reality,” he writes, “was a group of fellows, mostly in caps and not-too-expensive clothing, wondering how to tackle their job and where they would sleep that night or get their supper.” (The Reality of the Anglo–Irish War (1974)). He well realises that the war’s character does not permit any close control from the IRA’s GHQ in Dublin, hence increasing the importance of local leaders. His tactics put strong emphasis on speed of movement and on the need to attack the enemy at his weakest point. The column’s ambush successes are small in number but among the best-remembered of the war. He admits, however, that his own and his column’s lack of experience with mines frequently weakened their offensives.
The column’s first successful ambush is at Tooreen on October 22, 1920, followed on November 28 by the dramatic ambushing of a patrol of auxiliaries at Kilmichael while travelling from their Macroom base. A column of thirty-six men, divided into three sections, kill sixteen auxiliaries, with one captured and later shot, suffering two fatalities of their own. Controversy has raged since over whether a false surrender by the British force caused the brutality of some of the deaths. Together with the Bloody Sunday killings of a week earlier in Dublin, Kilmichael has a profound effect on the British military and political establishment, with the declaration in December of martial law for much of Munster and the implementation of wide-ranging internment, together with the authorisation of official reprisals.
After a short period in hospital with a heart condition, in early 1921 Barry leads unsuccessful attacks on Kilbrittain, Innishannon, Drimoleague, and Bandon barracks. The seizure of Burgatia House, outside Rosscarbery, in early February, and the successful resistance made there to British troops, wins much publicity but has little military significance. He is a leading figure in the brutal final stage of the war in the first six months of 1921, which sees widespread shooting of suspected spies and destruction of loyalist property. By March 1921, his flying column, with 104 men, is easily the largest in Ireland, and an explosives expert, Capt. McCarthy, has joined them.
The protracted engagement between Barry’s column and encircling British forces at Crossbarry on March 19, 1921, comes at a time when large-scale sweeps are making life increasingly difficult for the IRA. It consists of a daring and courageous breakout. Crossbarry is the largest action of the war, and Barry is to regard it as even more important than Kilmichael. Soon afterwards, Rosscarbery barracks is successfully attacked by a Barry-led party, representing one of the few successful such initiatives in 1921. Isolated triumphs, however, cannot hide the fact that pressure is increasing on the column, and he becomes increasingly critical of inactive regions. He is later to say that all County Kerry does during the war is to shoot one decent police inspector at Listowel Racecourse and a colleague of his. He is strongly critical also of the lack of assistance from GHQ and of the divisionalisation policy. He visits Dublin in May, travels around with Michael Collins, and is present when two American officers demonstrate the Thompson submachine gun. He is more aware than most of his 1st Southern Division colleagues of the scarcity of arms and ammunition at the war’s end.
During the truce, Barry becomes liaison officer for Munster, riling the British by insisting on his military rank, and criticising the IRA liaison men in Dublin for being overly deferential. He joins the overwhelming majority of the Cork IRA in opposing the Anglo–Irish Treaty but plays a characteristically maverick role throughout the treaty split. His independent attitude is heightened by his dislike of Liam Lynch, the republican IRA’s Chief of Staff, and his continuing respect for Michael Collins. He shows impatience at the long-drawn-out peace initiatives. In March 1922, therefore, he advocates armed confrontation with pro-treaty units over the occupation of barracks in Limerick, and on June 18 he submits a resolution, which only narrowly fails, at the army convention, giving British troops seventy-two hours to leave Dublin.
At the beginning of the Irish Civil War, Barry is arrested entering the Four Courts disguised as a woman. He escapes from an internment camp at Gormanston in early September 1922. For the rest of the war his actions mirror its confused nature. In late October 1922, he leads successful raids on the small towns of Ballineen and Enniskean, and later on Inchigeelagh and Ballyvourney. In December his column takes Carrick-on-Suir, demonstrating the weakness of the Free State army, but his talk of advancing on the Curragh and of large-scale actions does not materialise. There is no evidence that he is acting in accordance with any coordinated plan. By February 1923, he realises that the Republican IRA cause is hopeless and he is involved with Fr. Tom Duggan in efforts to get 1st Southern Division to declare a ceasefire. He journeys to Dublin to put pressure on the intransigent Lynch in this connection, telling Lynch, “I did more fighting in one week than you did in your whole life.”
Barry avoids capture in roundups after the war, remaining on the run until 1924. Unlike many republicans, he does not turn to constitutionalism, remaining strongly militaristic. He is always an unreconstructed republican, though by no means a naive one. In 1924 he becomes attached to Cleeves Milk Co., based in Limerick and Clonmel, and from 1927 to retirement in 1965 is general superintendent with the Cork harbour commissioners. He strongly advocates preserving the independence of the IRA army executive during the republican split of 1925–27. He is instrumental in continuing the drilling of IRA members and is a strong supporter of armed opposition to the Blueshirts.
During the 1930s Barry is arrested at various times for possession of arms and seditious utterances. He promotes an attack against a Freemasons’ meeting in Cork in 1936 and gives the orders for the killing on March 4 of that year of Vice-AdmiralHenry Boyle Somerville. He is opposed to the use by Frank Ryan of IRA volunteers to support the republican cause in the Spanish Civil War and to the proposals of Seán Russell for a bombing campaign in England. To maintain the link with traditional republicanism, he is elected IRA chief of staff in 1937. His plan, however, for the seizure of Armagh city, as part of a direct northern offensive, quickly collapses due to a leak of information, and he soon resigns his position. He forcefully attacks the bombing of English cities in 1938, regarding attacks on innocent civilians as immoral and counterproductive. He enlists in the National Army on July 12, 1940, only to be demobilised a month later. In 1946, he stands as an independent candidate in a by-election in the Cork Borough constituency, finishing at the bottom of the poll. He is more comfortable the following year touring the United States on an anti-partition platform.
In 1949 his Guerilla Days in Ireland is published. It proves a best-seller and has frequently been reprinted. It is well written in a forceful and direct style, one memoir needing no assistance from a ghost writer. Age does not mellow him: lawyers and bank managers are threatened by him over matters relating to his own column, and in 1974 he publishes a fierce pamphlet, angry at perceived slights in the Irish War of Independence memoir of Liam Deasy. He does strive to achieve a public reconciliation with Collins’s memory by unveiling the memorial to Collins at Sam’s Cross in 1966. On the outbreak of the Northern Ireland crisis in the late 1960s, he takes a militant line, castigating the argument that the Six Counties can be brought into the Republic by peaceful means, and asking when had peaceful means existed there. At the memorial meeting in Carrowkennedy, County Mayo, in 1971, he claims that there is a perfect right at the opportune time to take the Six Counties by force. He remains opposed to IRA bombing of civilian targets.
Barry dies in Cork on July 2, 1980. He is buried in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery, Cork. Early in the truce of 1921 he marries Leslie Price, one of the most active of Cumann na mBan members during and after the rising. They have no children.
While Barry always remains an influential figure in republican circles, he will be remembered best as the pioneer of guerrilla warfare, the hero of Kilmichael and Crossbarry. His military flair, individualism, and ruthlessness are well suited to the 1919–21 conflict. After that, his strained relations with colleagues and his lack of flexibility reduce his importance. While his life after the revolutionary era appears anti-climactic, he retains much of his charisma. In later years, he is ever willing to remind politicians and historians how far Ireland has retreated from republican ideals. He is often prickly and autocratic yet could be generous to old colleagues of either side of the treaty split. He is arguably the most intelligent but also the most intolerant of the revolutionary leaders.
(From: “Barry, Thomas Bernadine (‘Tom’)” by M. A. Hopkinson, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Stoney is born into an old-established Anglo-Irish scientific family at 40 Wellington Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin, on January 6, 1869. The daughter of George Johnstone Stoney, FRS, an eminent physicist who coins the term “electron” in 1891 as the “fundamental unit quantity of electricity,” and his wife and cousin, Margaret Sophia Stoney. One of her two brothers, George Gerald, is an engineer and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). One of her two sisters, Florence Stoney, is a radiologist and receives an OBE. Her cousin is the Dublin-based physicist George Francis FitzGerald FRS (1851–1901), and her uncle Bindon Blood Stoney FRS is Engineer of Dublin Port, renowned for building a number of the main Dublin bridges and developing the Quayside.
Stoney demonstrates considerable mathematical talent and gains a scholarship at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she achieves a First in the Part I Tripos examination in 1893. However, she is not awarded a University of Cambridge degree as women are excluded from graduation until 1948. During her time at Newnham, she is in charge of the College telescope. She is later awarded a BA and an MA from Trinity College Dublin, after they accept women in 1904.
Following the 1876 Medical Act, it is illegal for academic institutions to prevent access to medical education based on gender. The first medical school for women in Britain is established in 1874 by Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake in anticipation of this law. The London School of Medicine for Women quickly becomes part of the University of London, with clinical teaching at the Royal Free Hospital. Stoney’s sister Florence is a student at the school, graduates in medicine with honours in 1895 (MB BS) and obtains her MD in 1898. Meanwhile, Stoney gains an appointment as a physics lecturer at the school in 1899. Her first tasks are to set up a physics laboratory and design the physics course. The laboratory is planned for 20 students, and the course content is pure physics, as required by university regulations. It includes mechanics, magnetism, electricity, optics, sound, heat and energy. In her obituary in The Lancet, an ex-student of hers notes: “Her lectures on physics mostly developed into informal talks, during which Miss Stoney, usually in a blue pinafore, scratched on a blackboard with coloured chalks, turning anxiously at intervals to ask ‘Have you taken my point?’. She was perhaps too good a mathematician … to understand the difficulties of the average medical student, but experience had taught her how distressing these could be”.
In 1901, the Royal Free Hospital appoints Florence into a new part-time position of medical electrician. The following April, the two sisters open a new x-ray service in the electrical department. During their time at the Royal Free Hospital, the two sisters actively support the women’s suffrage movement, though oppose the direct violent action with which it is later associated.
During her time at the school, Stoney also plays a central role in the British Federation of University Women (BFUW). She is elected treasurer, in her absence, at the first executive meeting on October 9, 1909, a position she holds until the end of May 1915. She becomes increasingly engaged with the political lobbying of the Federation. At the executive meeting on October 19, 1912, she proposes the names of two members for a subcommittee to secure the passing into law of a bill to enable women to become barristers, solicitors or parliamentary agents. The legislation is eventually enacted after the war within the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919.
Stoney resigns her post at the school in March 1915 and it is recorded that “with due regret and most unwillingly a change is desirable in the physics lectureship.” She is offered £300 on tendering her resignation.
Both Stoney and Florence offer their services to the British Red Cross at the War Office in London, to provide a radiological service to support the troops in Europe, on the day Britain declares war. Their offer is refused, because they are women. Florence sets up her own unit with the Women’s Imperial Service League and spends the next 6 months in Europe. Stoney organises supplies from London where she also serves on the League’s committee. Florence returns to London at the time Stoney resigns from the London School of Medicine for Women. She contacts the Scottish Women’s Hospitals (SWH), an organisation formed in 1914 to give medical support in the field of battle and financed by the women’s suffrage movement. The organisation has gained agreement to set up a new 250-bed tented hospital at Domaine de Chanteloup, Sainte-Savine, near Troyes (France), funded by the Cambridge women’s colleges of Girton and Newnham and it becomes her role to plan and operate the x-ray facilities. She establishes stereoscopy to localise bullets and shrapnel and introduces the use of x-rays in the diagnosis of gas gangrene, interstitial gas being a mandate for immediate amputation to give any chance of survival.
The hospital is near the front line and, in her own words, by September 1915, “the town had been evacuated, the station had been mined, and we heard the heavy guns ever going at nighttime.” The unit is entirely female, except for two part-time male drivers, and her technical assistant, Mr. Mallett.
They are assigned to the Corps Expéditionnaire d’Orient and ordered to move to Serbia. After boarding the steamship Mossoul in Marseille, they reach Salonika (known as Thessaloniki in modern Greece) on November 3, where they take the night train north to Ghevgheli (now Gevgelija in modern North Macedonia), on the Serbian side of the Greek border. They set up a hospital in an unused silk factory where they treat 100 patients with injuries ranging from frostbite to severe lung and head wounds. Following defeats at the hands of Bulgarian forces, Stoney and her staff retreat to Salonika by December 6, 1916. Eleven days later, they have re-established the hospital on a drained low swamp by the sea, and by New Year’s Day 1917 she has the lights on and the x-rays working. Despite the lack of equipment and resources, she establishes an electrotherapy department and various equipments for the muscular rehabilitation of the soldiers in their care. She also assists with problems on two British hospital ships, on which the x-ray systems have been damaged during a storm and gives support to the SWH unit in Ostrovo (now Arnissa on Lake Vegoritida formerly lake Ostrovo in Northern Greece), which arrives during September 1916. She has a break for sick leave in December 1917 and returns the following summer. She applies for an appointment as an army camp radiologist in Salonika, but her demand is blocked by the War Office.
In October 1917, Stoney returns to France to lead the x-ray departments at the SWH hospitals of Royaumont and Villers-Cotterêts. In March 1918, she has to supervise a camp closure and retreat for the third time, when Villers-Cotterêts is overrun by the German troops. During the final months of the war the fighting intensifies and there is a steep increase in workload. In the month of June alone the x-ray workload peaks at over 1,300, partly because of an increased use of fluoroscopy.
On returning to England, Stoney takes a post as lecturer in physics in the Household and Social Science department at King’s College for Women which she holds until retirement in 1925. After leaving King’s she moves to Bournemouth, where she lives with her sister Florence, who is suffering from spinal cancer, dying in 1932.
During her retirement, Stoney resumes her work with the BFUW for which she had acted as the first treasurer before the war. She becomes one of the earliest (and oldest) members of the Women’s Engineering Society and plays an active part in the organisation until shortly before her death. She travels widely and, in 1934, she speaks to the Australian Federation of University Women on the subject of women in engineering, highlighting the contribution made by women workers during the war. In 1936, she establishes the Johnstone and Florence Stoney Studentship in the BFUW, for “research in biological, geological, meteorological or radiological science undertaken preferably in Australia, New Zealand or South Africa.” The studentship is now administered by Newnham College, Cambridge, and supports clinical medical students going abroad for their elective period. The declaration of Trust is dated February 11, 1942 and the Johnstone And Florence Stoney Studentship Fund Charity is registered on March 25, 1976.
Stoney dies on June 25, 1938, at age 69, and obituaries are printed in both the scientific and medical press – Nature, The Lancet, The Woman Engineer and national newspapers in England, The Times and Australia.
Stoney is remembered for her considerable bravery and resourcefulness in the face of extreme danger, and her imagination in contributing to clinical care under the most difficult conditions of war. As a strong advocate of education for women, she enables young graduate women to spend time on research overseas and another to enable physicists to enter medical school thanks to the fund she created. Through her work and engagements, she is remembered as a pioneer of medical physics.
(Pictured: Edith Anne Stoney during her time in Cambridge in the early 1890s)
Kitchener is the second son of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Horatio Kitchener and his first wife, Frances Anne (née Chevallier), daughter of clergyman John Chevallier. Col. Kitchener resigns his commission in 1849 and purchases Ballygoghlan House estate near Tarbert, County Kerry, in early 1850 under the provisions of the Encumbered Estates Act of 1849. Ballygoghlan House is in a state of disrepair, however, and the family lives in Gunsborough Villa until the end of 1850. In 1857, Col. Kitchener purchases Crotta House, near Kilflynn, County Kerry, and the Kitcheners divide their time between the two residences. While innovative and successful in his agricultural methods, Col. Kitchener is harsh towards his tenants and, after carrying out many evictions, becomes extremely unpopular in the area. He is a rigid disciplinarian and occasionally punishes his son severely.
Although Kitchener attends Ballylongford village school, his education is largely neglected. When examined by his cousin Francis Elliot Kitchener, fellow of Trinity College Dublin (TCD), he is found to have only the most rudimentary knowledge of grammar and arithmetic. Education by private tutors follows. In 1864, his father sells his Irish estates and moves to Switzerland for the sake of his wife’s health. After further private tuition, he passes into the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in 1868, and is commissioned into the Royal Engineers in December 1870.
Kitchener begins his career on survey missions and carries out such work in Palestine (1874–78) and Cyprus (1878–82). He then enters the Egyptian Army and takes part in the Sudan campaign of 1883–85, organised to relieve Genral Charles George Gordon. Subsequent appointments include governor of Suakin (1886–88), adjutant-general of the Egyptian Army (1888–92), and Sirdar (Commander-in-Chief) of the Egyptian Army (1892–96). After the Dongola Expedition in 1896, he is promoted to major-general. He commands the Khartoum Expedition of 1898, defeating Mahdist forces at Atbara and Omdurman, and is raised to the peerage.
At the outbreak of the Second Boer War in 1899, he is appointed chief of staff to Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts, and assumes total command, with the rank of lieutenant-general, in 1900. While acting as commander-in-chief in South Africa he reorganises the British forces and, using new tactics, manages finally to defeat the Boers. He is severely criticised in the world press for the conditions in the concentration camps where Boer families are confined, but is made a viscount, promoted to general, and awarded £50,000 by parliament at the end of the war.
Kitchener serves as commander-in-chief in India beginning in 1902, is promoted to Field Marshal in 1909, and is a member of the Committee of Imperial Defence (1910) and consul-general in Egypt (1911–14). At the outbreak of World War I he is made Secretary of State for War and begins to reorganise the British Army, an immense achievement, raising 1,700,000 men in service battalions by May 1915, creating an army of volunteers to reinforce the depleted regular army in Belgium and France. An archconservative, he totally opposes Home Rule for Ireland, and initially blocks plans by John Redmond for the formation of a southern Irish division from members of the National Volunteers. Convinced that an all-Irish brigade or division would be a security risk, he rejects Redmond’s suggestions in a meeting of August 1915 and originally proposes dispersing Irish recruits through the numerous regiments in the army. Impressed by Redmond’s persistence, and impelled by the recruiting crisis of late 1915, he finally reverses his decision and sanctions the establishment of the 16th (Irish) Division.
On June 5, 1916, Kitchener is making his way to Russia on HMS Hampshire to attend negotiations with Tsar Nicholas II when in bad weather the ship strikes a German mine 1.5 miles (2.4 km) west of Orkney, Scotland, and sinks. He is among 737 who perish. He is the highest-ranking British officer to die in action in the entire war.
Although he only spends his early years in Kerry, Kitchener occasionally returns to Ireland. While on leave in June 1910 he goes on a tour of County Kerry, visiting places connected to his childhood. There are numerous portraits and memorials to him in England, including a marble effigy by W. Reid Dick in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and a statue by John Tweed in Horse Guards Parade, London. There is a commemorative bible in the Church of Ireland church at Kilflynn, County Kerry, where he regularly attended Sunday service as a boy. There are some Kitchener letters in the John Redmond papers in the National Library of Ireland.
(From: “Kitchener, Horatio Herbert” by David Murphy, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
As Governor-General of India, Wellesley uses military force and diplomacy to strengthen and expand British authority. East India Company forces defeat and kill Tipu Sultan, Indian Muslim ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore (present-day Mysuru) and sympathizer for Revolutionary France, in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War (1799), and he then restores the Hindu dynasty there that had been deposed by Tipu’s father, Hyder Ali. He annexes much territory after his brother Arthur and General Gerard Lake defeat the Maratha Confederacy of states in the Deccan Plateau (peninsular India). In addition, he forces the Oudh State to surrender numerous important cities to the British, and he contracts with other states a series of “subsidiary alliances” by which all parties recognize British preponderance. He receives a barony in the British peerage in 1797 at the time of his appointment as governor-general, and in 1799 he is awarded a marquessate in the Irish peerage for his victory in the Mysore War.
When Wellesley is faced with an invasion by Zaman Shah Durrani, ruler (1793–1800) of Kabul (Afghanistan), he utilizes his envoy, Captain John Malcolm, to induce Fatḥ-Alī Shah Qajar of Qajar Iran to restrain Zaman Shah Durrani and to give British political and commercial interests preference over the French. On receiving a British government order to restore to France its former possessions in India, he refuses to comply. His policy is vindicated when the Treaty of Amiens (1802) is violated, and Great Britain resumes war against Napoleonic France.
Wellesley’s annexations and the vast military expenditure that he had authorized alarms the court of directors of the East India Company. In 1805, he is recalled, and soon afterward he is threatened with impeachment, although two years later he refuses an offer of the foreign secretaryship. In 1809, he goes to Spain to make diplomatic arrangements for the Peninsular War against France and later that year becomes foreign secretary under Prime MinisterSpencer Perceval. In that office he antagonizes his colleagues, who consider him an indolent megalomaniac and welcome his resignation in February 1812. Unlike most of them, however, he had urged a stronger war effort in Spain and had advocated political rights for British Roman Catholics. After Perceval’s assassination on May 11, 1812, he attempts unsuccessfully to form a government at the request of the prince regent (the future King George IV).
As Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Wellesley disappoints the anti-Catholic George IV, and he is about to be removed when his brother, Arthur, is appointed prime minister in January 1828. He then resigns because his brother is opposed to Roman Catholic emancipation, although the duke is constrained to accept that policy as a political necessity in 1829. His second term as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1833–34) ends with the fall of Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey’s reform government. When the Whig Party returns to power in April 1835, he is not sent back to Ireland, and in his rage, he threatens to shoot the prime minister, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne. He wants to be created Duke of Hindustan so that his rank will equal that of his brother.
Wellesley dies at the age of 82 on September 26, 1842, at Knightsbridge, London. He is buried in Eton College Chapel, at his old school. He and Arthur, after a long estrangement, had been once more on friendly terms for some years. Arthur weeps at the funeral and says that he knows of no honour greater than being Lord Wellesley’s brother.
Wellesley’s library is sold at auction in London by R. H. Evans on January 17, 1843 (and three following days); a copy of the catalogue, annotated with prices and buyers’ names, is held at Cambridge University Library.
Wellesley has several children, including three sons, but none are legitimate. The marquessate thus becomes extinct upon his death. The earldom of Mornington goes to his next surviving brother, William Wellesley-Pole.
(From: “Richard Colley Wellesley, Marquess Wellesley, British statesman,” written and fact-checked by the Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com, April 2024 | Pictured: “Richard Colley Wellesley, Marquess of Wellesley (1760-1842),” oil on canvas portrait by Thomas Lawrence, 1812-13)
Gwynn spends his early childhood in rural County Donegal, which is to shape his later view of Ireland. He attends 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 spends ten years from 1886 tutoring as a schoolmaster, for a time in France, which creates a lifelong interest in French culture, as expressed in his Praise of France (1927). By 1896 he has developed an interest in writing, becoming a writer and journalist in London focused on English themes, until he comes into contact with the emerging Irish literary revival, when he serves as secretary of the Irish Literary Society.
This is the beginning of a long and prolific career as a writer covering a wide range of literary genres, from poetry and biographical subjects to general historical works. The eighteenth century is Gwynn’s particular specialism. He writes numerous books on travel and on the topography of his own homeland, as well as on his other interests: wine, eighteenth-century painting and fishing.
Gwynn returns to Ireland in 1904 when he enters politics. In the 1906 Galway Borough by-election he wins a seat for Galway Borough, which he represents as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party until 1918. During this period, he is active in the Gaelic League and is one of the few Irish MPs to have close links to the Irish literary revival. Along with Joseph Maunsel Hone and George Roberts he founds the Dublin publishing house of Maunsel and Company. He is opposed to the demand for the Irish language to be a compulsory subject for matriculation. He supports the campaign which wins the establishment of a Catholic university when he serves on the Irish University Royal Commission in 1908. During the debate on the third Home Rule Bill, and at the request of his party leader John Redmond, he writes The case for Home Rule (1911) and is in charge of much of the party’s official publicity and its replies to criticism from Sinn Féin.
On the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Gwynn strongly supports Redmond’s encouragement of Irish nationalists and the Irish National Volunteers to support the Allied and British war effort by enlisting in Irish regiments of the Irish Divisions, especially as a means to ensure the implementation of the suspended Home Rule Act at the end of an expectedly short war. Now over fifty, he enlists in January 1915 with the 7th Leinster Regiment in the 16th (Irish) Division. In July he is commissioned as a captain in the 6th (Service) Battalion, Connaught Rangers and serves with them on the Western Front at Messines, the Somme and elsewhere.
Gwynn is one of five Irish Nationalist MPs who enlist and serve in the army, the others being John L. Esmonde, Willie Redmond, William Redmond and D. D. Sheehan, as well as former MP Tom Kettle. Together with Kettle and William Redmond, he undertakes a recruitment drive for the Irish divisions, co-operating with Kettle on a collection of ballads called Battle Songs for the Irish Brigade (1915). He is made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour in July 1915. In 1916, he is appointed to the Dardanelles Commission.
Recalled to Ireland in late 1917 to participate in the Irish Convention chaired by Sir Horace Plunkett, Gwynn sides with the Redmondite faction of the Irish Party in supporting a compromise with the southern unionists in an attempt to reach consensus on a Home Rule settlement which would avoid partition. On the death of Redmond in March 1918, he takes over as leader of the moderate nationalists in the Convention. He opposes the threat of compulsory military service during the Conscription Crisis of 1918, though as a member of the Irish Recruiting Council he continues to support voluntary recruitment, encountering intense opposition led by Sinn Féin.
Gwynn forms the Irish Centre Party in 1919 and stands unsuccessfully as an Independent Nationalist for Dublin University in the 1918 Irish general election. The party merges with Plunkett’s Irish Dominion League to press for a settlement by consent on the basis of dominion status, but Gwynn subsequently breaks with Plunkett due to his willingness to accept partition as a temporary compromise. The polarities which divide Ireland during the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War increasingly sideline his brand of moderate cultural nationalism. Although he supports the newly emergent nation, he equally condemns some of the excesses, such as the burning of houses belonging to Free State senators.
Gwynn’s personal life also becomes complicated at this stage and around 1920. He has a romantic association with married artist Grace Henry who is perhaps the best-known female artist in Ireland at the time. During this period, he and Grace travel in France and Italy and at various stages in his life she painted portraits of him including a very distinguished looking one of him in his late 60s or early 70s. Their relationship contributes significantly to the separation of Henry from her artist husband Paul Henry in 1930.
During the 1920s, Gwynn also devotes himself to writing, covering political events as Irish correspondent to The Observer and The Times. Later in his career, he writes some substantial works, and together with his son Denis Gwynn (The Life of John Redmond, 1932) does much to shape the retrospective image and self-justification of John Redmond. In the mid-1930s he authors three books with a connecting theme of fishing with the artist Roy Beddington serving as illustrator: The Happy Fisherman (1936), From River to River (1937), and Two in a Valley (1938).
Gwynn is awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the National University of Ireland in 1940, and a Litt.D. by the University of Dublin in 1945. The Irish Academy of Letters awards him the Gregory Medal in April 1950. In his literary writings he stands for a humanism and tolerance, which qualities, due to political upheavals, were relatively rare in the Ireland of his day.
Gwynn dies on June 11, 1950, at his home in Terenure, Dublin, and is buried at Tallaght Cemetery, south County Dublin.
Gwynn marries his cousin Mary Louisa (d. 1941), daughter of Rev. James Gwynn. She later converts to Catholicism. They have three sons and two daughters who are brought up in her religion, of whom Aubrey (1892–1983) becomes a Jesuit priest and professor of medieval history at University College Dublin (UCD). Their second son, Denis Rolleston (1893–1971), is professor of modern Irish history at University College Cork (UCC).
Gwynn’s brother Edward John (1868–1941) becomes provost of Trinity College and another brother Robert Malcolm becomes its senior dean. His sister Lucy Gwynn is the first woman registrar of Trinity. A third brother, Charles, has a successful career in the British Army and retires as a Major General. Younger brothers Lucius and Jack are noted cricketers.
O’Connor is born on June 7, 1874, at Worcester, Massachusetts, the eldest of three sons and two daughters of Andrew O’Connor, a stonecutter from Lanarkshire, Scotland, who becomes a professional sculptor, and Marie Anne O’Connor (née McFadden), of County Antrim. Educated in Worcester public schools, at the age of 14 he becomes apprenticed to his father, helping him to design monuments for cemeteries. He is employed in the early 1890s on sculptural work for the World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago World’s Fair), being active in the studio of William Ordway Partridge, and assisting Daniel Chester French on his colossal Statue of the Republic, a landmark of the 1893 Columbian exposition.
Moving to London (1894–98), O’Connor works on bas-reliefs in the studio of the painter John Singer Sargent, who uses him as a model for his mural Frieze of Prophets for the Boston Public Library. His first independent work, Sea Dreams, a relief of a head, is exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1896. Returning to the United States (1898–1903), he becomes a studio assistant of French, through whom he receives his first public commission, for the Vanderbilt Memorial Doors for St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, Manhattan, New York, a project completed in 1902 to wide critical acclaim. He also executes the tympanum and lateral friezes.
Around 1900, O’Connor marries an artist’s model named Nora, by whom he has a daughter. In 1902, he hires as studio model Jessie Phoebe Brown from New Jersey and of County Down parentage. The following year he elopes with her to Paris, where they marry and have four sons, the youngest of whom, Patrick O’Connor, becomes an artist and gallery curator. Jessie continues for many years as his primary model, sitting for the heads of both female and male figures, O’Connor coarsening the features for the latter.
During his years in Paris (1903–14), O’Connor is influenced by the work of Auguste Rodin, whom he befriends. Among his pupils in Paris is the American sculptor and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt Whitney. He continues to fulfil numerous commissions for funerary and public monuments in the United States, an example of the former being the Recuillement in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, near Tarrytown, New York. From 1906 he exhibits annually at the Salon in Paris, where he is the first foreigner to win a second-class medal, for his bronze statue of Gen. Henry Lawton. Included in his only exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy (1907) is a bronze relief of the prophet Nehemiah adapted from a panel of the Vanderbilt doors. The relief is subsequently included in his one-man show at the Galerie Hébrard, Paris in 1909.
In 1909, O’Connor wins a competition open to sculptors of Irish descent to execute a monument to Commodore John Barry, the County Wexford-born “father of the American navy,” for Washington, D.C. His design includes a frieze depicting events in Irish history, flanked by a group of three nude Irish emigrants entitled Exile from Ireland, and another group representing the Genius of Ireland, which includes a female figure of the “Motherland.” Probably owing to opposition from the Barry family to the depiction of their ancestor as a rough-and-ready sailor, the commission is not completed. His marble statue of Gen. Lew Wallace (author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ), a plaster of which is exhibited at the Salon in Paris in 1909, is placed by the state of Indiana in the National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol, Washington, D.C. Another marble, Peace by Justice, is commissioned as a gift from the United States to the Peace Palace in The Hague in 1913.
Returning to Paris in the mid-1920s, O’Connor becomes the first foreigner to win a gold medal at the Salon des Artistes in 1928, for the marble sculpture Tristan and Iseult, now held in the Brooklyn Museum, New York. The French government makes him a Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion of Honour in 1929. In 1926 he had exhibited a plaster group, Monument aux morts de la Grande Guerre, at the Salon in Paris. The sculpture is requested in 1932 by the people of Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, as a memorial to Christ the King, O’Connor obligingly altering the interpretation of his iconography. Imposed on a “Tree of life” are three figures of Christ, representing in turn “Desolation,” “Consolation” and “Triumph.” Cast in bronze, throughout World War II the statue remains hidden in Paris to avoid its being melted down for the valuable metal. Transported to Dún Laoghaire in 1949, due to clerical opposition to its unconventional iconography, it is not at first erected, but for years lay on its side in a garden in Rochestown Avenue until its eventual unveiling in 1978 as Triple Cross in Haigh Terrace, where it stands in Moran Park. His other chief work in Ireland is a bronze statue of Daniel O’Connell in the Bank of Ireland, College Green, Dublin. Inspired by Rodin’s famous Monument to Balzac, the work is executed at his studio in a converted stable at Leixlip Castle, County Kildare in 1931–32.
During the 1930s, O’Connor lives and works in London and Ireland, where he has residences at Glencullen House, County Wicklow, and 77 Merrion Square, Dublin. He dies at the latter address on June 9, 1941, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. His own bronze relief, Le feu sacré, marks the grave. A portrait painting, executed by his son Patrick in 1940, is in Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, which also holds twenty-six sculptures presented by O’Connor late in his life, and posthumously by his family. The collection includes a marble self-portrait bust of 1940, a bronze of the Lafayette cast by the gallery in 1984 from a reduced plaster model presented by the artist, and a bronze group entitled The Victim, on view in Merrion Square Park, from an uncommissioned and uncompleted war memorial conceived by O’Connor under the general title Le Débarquement. The National Gallery of Ireland has the Desolation maquette for the Triple Cross. A centenary exhibition of his work is held at Trinity College Dublin in 1974. His widow dies in Dublin in 1974.
(From: “O’Connor, Andrew” by Lawrence William White and Carmel Doyle, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
O’Faolain does not begin school until she is eight years old as her mother, Irish writer and teacher Eileen Gould, has little time for nuns. Following her schooling, she completes an arts degree at University College Dublin (UCD) and then further studies at the Sapienza University of Rome and the Sorbonne in Paris. A formidable student and strikingly beautiful, she makes a strong impression on those who meet her.
In search of love, literature and freedom from 1950s Ireland, the young O’Faolain remains abroad working variously as a translator, language teacher, editor and writer in London. She makes lifelong friends who speak highly of her generosity, loyalty and kindness. As well as maintaining a strong interest in politics throughout her life, she attains a black belt in karate and attends karate classes until her early 70s.
In her 2013 memoir, O’Faolain recounts a number of her adult loves before she meets and marries Lauro Martines in Florence in 1957. The couple lives in Florence for a year while Martines completes a travelling fellowship from Harvard University. They then move to Portland, Oregon, where their son Lucien is born in 1959. While in the United States, she teaches French at Reed College in Portland. The family returns to live in Florence from 1962-66 while her husband carries out research. When he is offered a professorship at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1966, they move back to the United States. However, not keen to live full-time in the United States, they purchase a house in Hampstead in 1970 and later in central London where she spends a good deal of time. From the 1990s onwards, she and Lauro spend more and more time in London, and they visit Ireland more during these years. Lucian, a painter and picture repairer, lives in London.
O’Faolain’s novels include No Country for Young Men, which is nominated for the Booker Prize in 1980, Women in the Wall (1975), The Obedient Wife (1982) and The Judas Cloth (1992) which is set in 19th-century Italy. Her first collection of short stories, We Might See Sights and Other Stories, is published in 1968, followed by Man in the Cellar (1974), Melancholy Baby (1978) and Daughters of Passion (1982). And with her husband, she edits Not in God’s Image: Women in History from the Greeks to the Victorians (1973).
O’Faolain’s writings are suffused with themes of clerical intrigue, women’s role in society, power, faith and sexuality. She says once that she is more detached from her characters than her father was. “He was fond of his characters whereas I was more impatient of mine… The fact that he often forgave their foolishness showed that he was fond of Ireland itself, where he lived for the most of his life. I instead left it and found I was happier elsewhere.”
As a writer, O’Faolain is not particularly well-known in Ireland. Following the publication of her memoir in 2013, she is asked by The Irish Times journalist Arminta Wallace if it bothers her that her name does not often figure in lists of famous Irish writers, perhaps because she did not live here. She replies, “Not only do I not live here but when my last book came out someone wrote an article naming me as a ‘forgotten writer’… which was not a cheerful read. It wasn’t in any way offensive, but it wasn’t very comforting…I suppose I didn’t write enough. You mustn’t let too many years go by between books – and I did that.”
O’Faolain dies at the age of 88 in London on October 27, 2020, following a long illness. Her papers, which include manuscripts of her writing and a significant correspondence between her and her father, are donated to UCD in 2018. At the time, archivists expect them to be available to researchers by 2022.
Pat Falvey, Irish high-altitude mountaineer, expedition leader, polar explorer, entrepreneur, author, corporate/personal trainer/coach, and motivational speaker, is born in Cork, County Cork, on June 2, 1957. He is the first person to complete the Seven Summits twice, with the summiting of Mount Everest reached from both the Tibetan (1996) and Nepalese sides (2004). He is expedition leader of the team that sees Clare O’Leary become the first Irish woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 2004. Other extreme expeditions that he makes include walking to the South Pole, crossing South Georgia island, and traversing the Greenland ice sheet. He starts his first business at 15 years of age and has since had businesses in property development, finance, construction, insurance, tourism, and film production. He has been a motivational speaker since the 1990s.
Raised on the north side of Cork city, Falvey starts mountain climbing in his late twenties, having worked as a builder and property developer from his late teens onward. Following the economic recession of the mid-1980s in Ireland, he loses most of his wealth and discovers mountaineering in his late 20s.
Falvey begins his climbing career with hill walking and climbing on the MacGillycuddy’s Reeks in County Kerry. He then devotes himself to training to become a high-altitude mountaineer. He trains initially with the Cork Mountaineering Club, at Tiglin in County Wicklow and becomes a member of Kerry Mountain Rescue, climbing very frequently in Ireland, Scotland, France and the Himalayas.
In June 1994, Falvey climbs Denali, also known as Mount McKinley, in Alaska, reaching the first summit in his Seven Summits attempt. This is followed by Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania (January 1995), Mount Everest via the Northeast Ridge (June 1995), Aconcagua in Argentina (December 1995), Mount Elbrus in Russia (March 1996), Vinson Massif in Antarctica (January 1997) and Mount Kosciusko in Australia (February 1997). He is the first Irish man (and the 32nd person in the world) to complete the Seven Summits.
Falvey is the expedition leader of the first Irish team to reach the summit of Cho Oyu in China and Nepal without oxygen, on May 20, 1998. He reaches the summit of Ama Dablam in Nepal on November 3, 1999. In 2003, he is the expedition leader of the first Irish team to reach the summit of Mount Everest via the South-Southeast Ridge, with team members Ger McDonnell and Mick Murphy reaching the summit. On May 18, 2004, he reaches the summit of Everest via the South-Southeast Ridge, and leads the expedition that sees the first Irish woman, Dr. Clare O’Leary, reach the top of Everest.
Falvey and O’Leary complete the Seven Summits on December 16, 2005, when he becomes the first person to complete the Seven Summits twice by climbing Mount Everest from both the Tibetan and Nepalese sides.
In 2006, Falvey leads a group of 32 across the South Georgia Traverse on South Georgia island in honour of Polar explorers Sir Ernest Shackleton and Kerryman Tom Crean, in the Beyond Endurance Antarctic expedition. He leads the first Irish traverse of Greenland in 2006. In January 2008, he leads a four-person Irish expedition to the South Pole. In April 2009, he and O’Leary do a “symbolic” walk to the North Pole, completing the final four-day trek to the Pole.
Falvey joins the Kerry county football team as a “sports performance coach” in 2021. Manager Peter Keane says, “You take us in this country with five million people and we have had some unbelievable adventurers like Shackleton and Crean; you look at someone like Pat who has climbed Everest twice from two different sides, managed to climb the Seven Summits twice, and I am looking to see if he can bring something different in here.”
Falvey’s publications include Reach for the Sky (The Collins Press, 1997), A Journey to Adventure: Stories I never thought I’d tell (The Collins Press, 2007), The Summit: How Triumph Turned to Tragedy on K2’s Deadliest Days (Beyond Endurance Publishing with The O’Brien Press, 2013), You Have the Power: Explore the Mindset You Need to Realise Your Dreams (Beyond Endurance Publishing, 2016) and Accidental Rebel (Beyond Endurance Publishing, 2018).
seamus dubhghaill 