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Birth of George Noble Plunkett, Scholar & Revolutionary

George Noble Plunkett, scholar and revolutionary, is born on December 3, 1851, at 1 Aungier Street, Dublin, the youngest and only survivor from infancy of the three children of Patrick Joseph Plunkett (1817–1918), builder and politician, and his wife, Elizabeth (née Noble). The Plunketts are Catholic, claiming collateral descent from Archbishop of Armagh Oliver Plunkett, and nationalist: the two drummers from the republican army at Vinegar Hill in 1798 visit George’s cradle.

Plunkett is educated expensively: at a primary school in Nice, making him fluent in French and Italian, then at Clongowes Wood College, and, from 1872, at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where his generous allowance allows him to study renaissance and medieval art. He enrolls at King’s Inns in 1870 and the Middle Temple in 1874, but is not called to the bar until 1886. While there he befriends Oscar Wilde and Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa. In 1877, he endows a university gold medal for Irish speakers and publishes a book of poems, God’s Chosen Festival, and the following year he issues a pamphlet, The Early Life of Henry Grattan. He also writes articles for magazines, editing a short-lived one, Hibernia, for eighteen months from 1882. In 1883, he donates funds and property to the nursing order of the Little Company of Mary (Blue Sisters), and on April 4, 1884, Pope Leo XIII makes him a count.

On June 26, 1884, Plunkett marries Mary Josephine Cranny (1858–1944). The couple has seven children: Philomena (Mimi) (b. 1886), Joseph (b. 1887), Mary Josephine (Moya) (b. 1889), Geraldine (b. 1891), George Oliver (b. 1894), Fiona (b. 1896), and Eoin (Jack) (b. 1897).

Plunkett surprises many in 1890 by declaring for Charles Stewart Parnell against the Catholic hierarchy. In the 1892 United Kingdom general election in Ireland he is a Parnellite candidate for Mid Tyrone but withdraws from a potential three-cornered fight lest he let in the unionist. He is sole nationalist candidate for Dublin St. Stephen’s Green in the 1895 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, and at an 1898 by-election there he cuts the unionist majority to 138 votes. The reunited Irish Party wins the seat in 1900.

In 1894, Plunkett part-edits Charles O’Kelly‘s memoir The Jacobite War in Ireland. By 1900, when he publishes the standard biography Sandro Botticelli, he is supplementing his income by renewed artistic studies, which until 1923 finances his lease of Kilternan Abbey, County Dublin. His Pinelli (1908) is followed by Architecture of Dublin, and, in 1911, by his revised edition of Margaret McNair Stokes‘s Early Christian Art in Ireland. In 1907, he becomes director of the National Museum of Ireland, where he increases annual visits from 100 to 3,000.

Joseph Plunkett swears his father into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in April 1916, sending him secretly to seek German aid and a papal blessing for the projected Easter rising. After its defeat, Plunkett is sacked by the National Museum of Ireland and deported with the countess to Oxford, and the following January he is expelled by the Royal Dublin Society (RDS). This earns him nomination as the surviving rebels’ candidate in the North Roscommon by-election. He returns to Ireland illegally on January 31, 1917, and wins the seat easily three days later. Pledging abstention from attendance at Westminster in accordance with Sinn Féin policy, he initiates a Republican Liberty League, which coalesces with similar groups such as Sinn Féin. In October this front becomes the new Sinn Féin, committed to Plunkett’s republic rather than to the “king, lords and commons“ of Arthur Griffith. Plunkett and Griffith become the new party’s vice-presidents, under Éamon de Valera.

On May 18, 1918, Plunkett is interned again. Released after Sinn Féin’s general election landslide (in which he is returned unopposed), he presides, Sinn Féin’s oldest MP, at the planning meeting for Dáil Éireann on January 17, 1919, and at its opening session on January 21. On the 22nd he is made foreign affairs minister by Cathal Brugha, an appointment reaffirmed by de Valera on April 10. He criticises his president for advocating a continuing Irish external relationship with Britain, and fails to organise an Irish foreign service. In February 1921, de Valera makes Robert Brennan his departmental secretary and a ministry takes shape, while Plunkett publishes a book of poems, Ariel. After uncontested “southern Irish“ elections to the Second Dáil, de Valera moves his implacable foreign minister from the cabinet to a tailor-made portfolio of fine arts. Plunkett’s Dante sexcentenary commemoration is overshadowed by news of the Anglo–Irish Treaty. Opposing this, Plunkett cites his oath to the republic and its martyrs including his son. He leaves his ministry on January 9, 1922.

Plunkett chairs the anti-treaty Cumann na Poblachta, which loses the June general election, though he is returned again unopposed. In the Irish Civil War the treatyites intern him and the republicans appoint him to their council of state. In the August 1923 Irish general election, his first electoral contest since 1917, the interned count tops the poll in County Roscommon. He is released in December.

When de Valera forms Fianna Fáil in 1926, Plunkett stays with Sinn Féin, and loses his deposit in the June 1927 Irish general election. A year later he publishes his last poetry collection, Eros. He runs for a new Cumann Poblachta na hÉireann in a County Galway by-election in 1936, but loses his deposit again. On December 8, 1938, with the other six surviving abstentionist Second Dáil TDs, he transfers republican sovereignty to the IRA Army Council.

Plunkett is a big man with a black beard which whitens steadily after his fiftieth birthday. He is always formally pleasant and courteous. His oratory is described by M. J. MacManus as “level, cultured tones . . . [more] used to addressing the members of a learned society than to the rough and tumble of the hustings” (The Irish Press, March 15, 1948). Theoretically and practically, he is more scholar than politician. His portrait is on display at the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (RSAI).

Plunkett dies from cancer on March 12, 1948, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, survived by his children Geraldine (wife of Thomas Dillon), Fiona, and Jack. His grandson Joseph (1928–66), son of George Oliver Plunkett, inherits the title.

(From: “Plunkett, Count George Noble” by D. R. O’Connor Lysaght, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Death of Chicago Mobster Charles Dean O’Banion

Charles Dean O’Banion, better known as Dion O’Banion, is murdered by Frankie Yale, John Scalise, and Albert Anselmi in Chicago, Illinois, on November 10, 1924. He graduates from the violent newspaper wars of early 20th century Chicago to become the chief bootlegging rival of mobsters Al Capone and Johnny Torrio.

O’Banion is born to Irish Catholic parents in Maroa, Illinois on July 8, 1892. After the death of his mother in 1901, he moves with his family to a North Side neighborhood populated largely by other Irish Americans. The neighborhood, then known as Kilgubbin after an Irish place name and now called Goose Island, is notorious for its high crime rate, and by all accounts he fits easily into that environment. In his teens, he forms a street gang with Earl “Hymie” Weiss, Vincent “The Schemer” Drucci and George “Bugs” Moran with whom he continues to associate throughout his life.

Chicago of the period is, according to Mayor William Hale “Big Bill” Thompson, a “wide open city.” Wide open for rackets such as prostitution and gambling, and wide open for violent competition among gangsters. Bombings and murder are met with token official resistance but are often settled by uneasy truces among the rivals.

The violence extends to the press. O’Banion and his friends are “sluggers” for, first, the Chicago Tribune and later for the Tribune’s rival, the Chicago Examiner. Sluggers intimidate sellers and readers of the wrong newspaper. Although played for laughs in stage and film in productions such as The Front Page, the Chicago newspaper wars are quite violent and include lethal gunfights in saloons and on the streets.

In 1909, O’Banion is arrested and convicted of robbery and assault.

The newspapers wars are a good warm-up for O’Banion’s work as a bootlegger when Prohibition comes into effect in 1920. Chicago, with its large population of immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe, is a town that loves its beer, wine and liquor. Almost from the start, O’Banion’s North Side Gang is at odds with the South Side outfit led at the time by Torrio.

About 1921, O’Banion and Torrio, who actively wants peace with his rival, work out a deal that seems to satisfy both the South Side gangsters and O’Banion’s group. O’Banion not only keeps the North Side and the Gold Coast, a wealthy neighborhood on Lake Michigan, but he even gets a slice of Cicero, a suburb controlled by Torrio and Capone on the South Side of Chicago, and they all share profits from a lakefront casino called The Ship.

Eventually the peace breaks down. O’Banion is enraged by efforts of a third gang, the Genna crime family’s West Side Gang, to expand its bootlegging and rackets operations into his territory. The Gennas are allied with Torrio’s South Side gang. O’Banion seals his fate when he refuses to forgive a gambling debt that one of the Gennas had racked up at The Ship.

On the morning of November 10, 1924, O’Banion is in his North Side flower shop, Schofield’s, a front for his mob activities. A Torrio associate from New York City, Frankie Yale, enters the shop with Genna gunmen John Scalise and Albert Anselmi. When O’Banion and Yale shake hands, Yale grasps O’Banion’s hand in a tight grip. At the same time, Scalise and Anselmi step aside and fire two bullets into O’Banion’s chest and two into his throat. One of the killers fires a final shot into the back of his head as he lies face down on the floor.

Since O’Banion is a major crime figure, the Catholic Church denies him burial in consecrated ground. However, a priest O’Banion has known since childhood recites the Lord’s Prayer and three Hail Marys in his memory. Despite this restriction, his funeral is the biggest anyone can remember. Among those attending are Al Capone and members of the South Side Gang. But there soon will be other funerals. The Beer Wars, as they become known, are just beginning.

Torrio escapes an assassination attempt in 1925 and turns over his operation to Capone, the greatest gangster of all. O’Banion’s friend and conspirator Hymie Weiss, who is fingered as one of those who tried to kill Torrio, is gunned down in 1926. In 1929, in an effort to permanently put down the North Side Gang, led then by Bugs Moran, seven of the North Side mobsters are killed in the infamous Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, but Moran survives through the end of Prohibition in 1933.


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Death of Nancy Wynne-Jones, Welsh & Irish Artist

Nancy Wynne-Jones HRHA, a Welsh and Irish artist, dies in County Wicklow on November 9, 2006.

Mary Esperance (“Nancy”) Wynne-Jones is born on December 10, 1922, in Penmaenucha, Wales, to landowner Charles Llewellyn Wynne-Jones and Sybil Mary Gella Scott. The family spends half the year in Wales and half the year in Thornhill, Stalbridge, Dorset. She has two brothers, Andrew and Ronald (“Polly”), both of whom die in Africa during World War II.

Wynne-Jones is educated at home. Her skill in art leads to her getting lessons in Sherborne from a children’s book illustrator. Her music is encouraged by the family doctor and she begins to compose and study the violin, receiving lessons in Bournemouth with the first violinist of the symphony orchestra. After the start of World War II, she continues in Aberystwyth. She goes on to study the violin and composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London (1940–43). While in London she also serves as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse until 1943 and later as a draughtswoman at the Ordnance Survey.

After the war, Wynne-Jones purchases and manages a bookshop on the King’s Road in Chelsea, but it is not a financial success. She returns to painting, studying at the Heatherley School of Fine Art, London, from 1951 to 1952 and the Chelsea School of Art from 1952 to 1955. She travels extensively through Portugal and Italy painting landscapes. An interest in completing landscapes in an abstract manner leads her to study with Peter Lanyon in St. Ives, Cornwall.

Wynne-Jones begins study in Cornwall in 1957 and remains there for fifteen years. Her first public exhibition is in a group show in 1957 at the Pasmore Edwards Gallery, Newlyn. Other group shows are Jefferson Place Gallery, Washington, D.C. (1959) and in Falmouth, Cornwall (1960). Her solo exhibitions are at the New Vision Centre, London (1962 and 1965), Florence (1963) and Dolgellau (1964). From the 1960s through the 1990s she exhibits in Britain, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Holland, South Africa, and the United States.

In 1962, Wynne-Jones purchases Trevaylor House near Penzance and provides accommodation for other artists including renowned Irish painter Tony O’Malley, sculptor Conor Fallon and English poet and writer W. S. ‘Sydney’ Graham. In the 1970s she exhibits in Ireland at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin (1970) and at the Emmet Gallery, Dublin (1975 and 1977). During the 1980s she exhibits at the Lincoln and Hendricks galleries in Dublin before joining the Taylor Gallery, run by John and Patrick Taylor. She is elected an honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in 1994 and becomes a member of Aosdána in 1996. Originally an abstract artist, her contact with the Irish countryside slowly transforms her work to that of a landscape artist, albeit with an influence of abstraction attached to it. She becomes well-known in Irish art circles as an eminent Irish landscape artist.

Wynne-Jones is involved with artist Derek Middleton before moving to Cornwall. There she becomes romantically involved with Graham who is in an open marriage, however, it is the death of her mentor Peter Lanyon which devastates her. She meets the sculptor Conor Fallon through their mutual friend, Tony O’Malley. Fallon had arrived in Cornwall ostensibly to meet Lanyon. They marry in 1966. Their honeymoon in Provence is immortalised in expressionist paintings done by her. The couple adopts a boy and a girl, siblings, John and Bridget. In 1972, she moves with her family to Kinsale, County Cork. It is in the area around here that a number of her paintings are created. Later she paints the mountain visible from her Wicklow home after the family moves in the late 1980s. She moves to Ballard House, near Rathdrum, County Wicklow in 1987.

Wynne-Jones dies on November 9, 2006, and is buried in Ballinatone (Church of Ireland), Rathdrum.


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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 Johnny Adair, Northern Irish Loyalist

Johnny Adair, leader of “C Company” of the Ulster Loyalist paramilitary organisation Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), a cover name of the Ulster Defence Association, is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on October 27, 1963. He is known as Mad Dog. He is expelled from the organisation in 2002 following a violent power struggle. Since 2003, he, his family and a number of supporters have been forced to leave Northern Ireland by other loyalists.

Adair is born into a working class loyalist background and raised in Belfast. He grows up in the Lower Oldpark area, a site of many sectarian clashes during “The Troubles.” By all accounts, he has little parental supervision, and does not attend school regularly. He takes to the streets, forming a skinhead street gang with a group of young loyalist friends, who “got involved initially in petty, then increasingly violent crime.” Eventually, he starts a rock band called Offensive Weapon, which during performances espouses support for the British National Front.

While still in his teens, Adair joins the Ulster Young Militants (UYM), and later the Ulster Defence Association, a loyalist paramilitary organisation which also calls itself the Ulster Freedom Fighters.

By the early 1990s, Adair has established himself as head of the UDA/UFF’s “C Company” based on the Shankill Road. When he is charged with terrorist offences in 1995, he admits that he had been a UDA commander for three years up to 1994. During this time, he and his colleagues are involved in multiple and random murders of Catholic civilians. At his trial in 1995, the prosecuting lawyer says he is dedicated to his cause against those whom he “regarded as militant republicans – among whom he had lumped almost the entire Roman Catholic population.” Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) detectives believe his unit killed up to 40 people during this period.

Adair once remarks to a Catholic journalist from the Republic of Ireland upon the discovery of her being Catholic, that normally Catholics travel in the boot of his car. According to a press report in 2003, he is handed details of republican suspects by British Army intelligence, and is even invited for dinner in the early 1990s. In his autobiography, he claims he was frequently passed information by sympathetic British Army members, while his own whereabouts were passed to republican paramilitaries by the RUC Special Branch, who, he claims, hated him.

The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombing of a fish shop on the Shankill Road in October 1993 is an attempt to assassinate Adair and the rest of the UDA’s Belfast leadership in reprisal for attacks on Catholics. The IRA claims that the office above the shop is regularly used by the UDA for meetings and one is due to take place shortly after the bomb is set to explode. The bomb goes off early, killing one IRA man, Thomas Begley, and nine Protestant civilians. The UFF retaliates with a random attack on the Rising Sun bar in Greysteel, County Londonderry, which kills eight civilians, two of whom are Protestants. Adair survives 13 assassination attempts, most of which are carried out by the IRA and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).

During this time, undercover officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary record months of discussions with Adair, in which he boasts of his activities, producing enough evidence to charge him with directing terrorism. He is convicted and sentenced to 16 years in HM Prison Maze. In prison, according to some reports, he sells drugs such as cannabis, ecstasy tablets and amphetamines to other loyalist prisoners, earning him an income of £5000 a week.

In January 1998, Adair is one of five loyalist prisoners visited in the prison by British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam. She persuades them to drop their objection to their political representatives continuing the talks that leads to the Good Friday Agreement in April. In 1999, he is released early as part of a general amnesty for political prisoners after the Agreement.

Following his release, much of Adair’s activities are bound up with violent internecine feuds within the UDA and between the UDA and other loyalist paramilitary groupings. The motivation for such violence is sometimes difficult to piece together. It involves a combination of political differences over the loyalist ceasefires, rivalry between loyalists over control of territory and competition over the proceeds of organised crime.

In 1999, shortly after his release from prison, Adair is shot at and grazed in the head by a bullet at a UB40 concert in Belfast. He blames the shooting on republicans, but it is thought that rival loyalists are to blame.

In August 2000, Adair is again mildly injured by a pipe bomb he is transporting in a car. He again attempts to blame the incident on an attack by republicans, but this claim is widely discounted. A feud breaks out at the time between the UDA and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) leaving several loyalists dead. As a result of Adair’s involvement in the violence, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Mandelson, revokes his early release and returns him to prison.

In May 2002, Adair is released from prison again. Once free, he is a key part of an effort to forge stronger ties between the UDA/UFF and the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), a small breakaway faction of the UVF loyalist paramilitary organization in Northern Ireland. The most open declaration of this is a joint mural depicting Adair’s UDA “C company” and the LVF. Other elements in the UDA/UFF strongly resist these movements, which they see as an attempt by Adair to win external support in a bid to take over the leadership of the UDA. Some UDA members dislike his overt association with the drugs trade, with which the LVF are even more heavily involved. A loyalist feud begins, and ends with several men dead and scores evicted from their homes.

On September 25, 2002, Adair is expelled from the UDA/UFF along with close associate John White, and the organisation almost splits as Adair tries to woo influential leaders such as Andre Shoukri, who are initially sympathetic to him. There are attempts on Adair’s and White’s lives.

Adair returns to prison in January 2003, when his early release licence is revoked by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Paul Murphy, on grounds of engaging in unlawful activity. On February 1, 2003, UDA divisional leader John Gregg is shot dead along with another UDA member, Rab Carson, on returning from a Rangers F.C. match in Glasgow. The killing is widely blamed on Adair’s C Company as Gregg is one of those who organised his expulsion from the UDA. Five days later, on February 6, about twenty Adair supporters, including White, flee their homes for Scotland, widely seen as a response to severe intimidation.

Adair is released from prison again on January 10, 2005. He immediately leaves Northern Ireland and joins his family in Bolton, Lancashire, where it is claimed he stays with supporters of Combat 18 and the Racial Volunteer Force.

The police in Bolton question Adair’s wife, Gina, about her involvement in the drugs trade, and his son, nicknamed both “Mad Pup” and “Daft Dog,” is charged with selling crack cocaine and heroin. Adair is arrested and fined for assault and threatening behaviour in September 2005. He had married Gina Crossan, his partner for many years and the mother of his four children, at HM Prison Maze on February 21, 1997. She is three years Adair’s junior and grew up in the same Lower Oldpark neighbourhood. 

After being released, Adair is almost immediately arrested again for violently assaulting Gina, who suffers from ovarian cancer. Since this episode he reportedly moves to Scotland, living in Troon in Ayrshire.

In May 2006, Adair reportedly receives £100,000 from John Blake publishers for a ghost-written autobiography.

In November 2006, the UK’s Five television channel transmits an observational documentary on Adair made by Dare Films.

Adair appears in a documentary made by Donal MacIntyre and screened in 2007. The focus of the film centers around Adair and another supposedly reformed character, a Neo-Nazi from Germany called Nick Greger, and their trip to Uganda to build an orphanage. Adair is seen to fire rifles, stating it is the first time he has done so without wearing gloves. He also admits to being “worried sick” and “pure sick with worry” after Greger disappears in Uganda for days on end. It turns out that he had gone off and married a Ugandan lady. Adair confesses via telephone that he “thought something might have happened to Nick.”

On July 20, 2015, three Irish republicans, Antoin Duffy, Martin Hughes and Paul Sands, are found guilty of planning to murder Adair and Sam McCrory. Charges against one of the accused in the trial are dropped on July 1.

On September 10, 2016, Adair’s son, Jonathan Jr., is found dead in Troon, aged 32. He dies from an accidental overdose while celebrating the day after his release from prison for motoring offences. He had been in and out of prison since the family fled Northern Ireland. He served a five-year sentence for dealing heroin and crack cocaine. The year before, he had been cleared of a gun raid at a party and in 2012 is the target of a failed bomb plot. He was also facing trial later that year on drugs charges.

In December 2023, while recording a podcast with far-right activist Tommy Robinson, Adair surprisingly expresses a grudging respect for the IRA hunger strikers, describing the manner of their deaths as “dedication at the highest level” for a political cause and admitting that he would not have volunteered to do the same if asked.


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RMS Queen Mary Collides with HMS Curacoa

Twenty miles off the coast of County Donegal on October 2, 1942, the luxury Cunard liner RMS Queen Mary, converted into a troop carrier for World War II, smashes into her escort ship, the British Royal Navy cruiser HMS Curaçoa (D41). The HMS Curacoa, which had connected with the RMS Queen Mary to escort her for the final two hundred miles to the port of Greenock, Scotland, sinks with the loss of 338 men. As are his orders, Captain Cyril Illingworth of the RMS Queen Mary, which is carrying an estimated 15,000 U.S. troops, does not stop to mount a rescue operation.

On a near perfect afternoon, the RMS Queen Mary is off the Irish coast. The vessel is setting a zigzag course to help evade U-boats and long-range German bombers. The RMS Queen Mary has caught up with her 4,290 tonne escort vessel, the HMS Curacoa, and is set to overtake her.

Aboard the HMS Curacoa, seaman Ernest Watson is admiring the RMS Queen Mary’s majestic lines when he notices the bow is swinging toward the cruiser. To his horror, she continues to swing and is soon on a collision course. The gap narrows inexorably as the stunned Watson finally finds his vocal cords and screams, “She’s going to ram us.” Later Watson describes how many of his mates are so shocked they cannot move.

Within seconds, there is a screech of twisted metal followed by the hiss of steam and the screams of those injured or trapped below. The RMS Queen Mary, twenty times larger than the cruiser, has been traveling at top revs giving her a speed of 28.5 knots. The impact swings the HMS Curacoa broadside on and the troopship slices through her 10 cm armour plating. It is all over in seconds, and the troopship continues on her zigzag course leaving the HMS Curacoa cut in two with the forward and aft sections separated by 100 metres of ocean.

At the moment of impact, as the HMS Curacoa reels in the water, Watson and many other seaman on deck are thrown into the freezing water. Even as they surface they watch in horror as the stern quickly sinks, taking with it the men trapped behind the water-tight doors. The forward section follows soon after, leaving the men in the murky water surrounded by debris, oil and drowned or mutilated bodies. It is every man for himself as survivors cling to floating wreckage. They are about 20 nautical miles off the Irish coast which, had boats or rafts been launched, would put them within easy reach of safety.

The survivors believe the RMS Queen Mary will turn back to pick them up, however, it is with obvious despair that they watch her disappear over the horizon. To sail on is probably the toughest decision Captain Illingworth ever has to make. The World War I veteran has many years of experience by the time he has risen to become Cunard-White Star Line’s senior commander and master of the RMS Queen Mary. He is obeying orders that under no circumstances is he to stop until the RMS Queen Mary has safely delivered the troops to Britain. His only option is to signal nearby British destroyers to rescue survivors.

Two destroyers react to Captain Illingworth’s message and steam toward the wreckage where two hours after the collision, they find many bodies of sailors who have died of hypothermia. Only the hardiest live long enough to land in Londonderry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, the next day. Of the HMS Curacoa’s 430 personnel, only 99 seamen and two officers survive. Because of war-time security the official inquiry is delayed until the war in Europe is over. Then, in June 1945, only a few weeks after VE Day, the Admiralty Commissioners sued Cunard-White Star Line claiming the RMS Queen Mary had been responsible.

It appears to be a clear-cut case. The HMS Curacoa’s captain, John Boutwood, gives evidence to a Royal Navy inquiry and is acquitted without a reprimand. Later he gains the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). Boutwood says the HMS Curacoa steamed at some 3 knots slower than the larger vessel which had been in the process of overtaking at the time of the collision. He says he had been amazed when the troopship continued turning to starboard and closed the gap between the vessels. When the collision occurred he, and all others on the bridge, had clung to whatever was nearest.

At first, Boutwood vainly hopes the damaged ship will stay afloat. He also says it was impossible to give orders because of the noise of escaping steam from the boiler room. The RMS Queen Mary’s first officer gives evidence that he had taken over the helm less than two minutes before she rams the cruiser. She is about 500m away and on the starboard bow. He is unconcerned at the narrow gap because he expects HMS Curacoa to take evasive action. He believes the cruiser, a more manoeuvrable vessel, would change course.

The first officer had also been reassured by Captain Illingworth, that the cruiser was “experienced in escorting and would keep out of the way.” At a later hearing some months after the opening, Illingworth says he had felt a bump at the time of the collision and had asked the quartermaster if they had been hit by a bomb. The answer was: “No sir, we have hit the cruiser.”

The judge holds the cruiser responsible saying the normal rules of an overtaking vessel keeping clear of the other does not apply in this case. He says the cruiser could have avoided the collision up to seconds before it occurred. The Admiralty, faced with huge compensation to the families of the dead sailors, appeals. In appeal the ruling is that the cruiser was responsible for two-thirds of the damage and the RMS Queen Mary for one-third. Still not satisfied, the case goes to the House of Lords where the verdict of the Appeal Court is upheld in February 1949. No survivor comes out unscathed but above all others, Illingworth has to live with the memory of leaving British sailors to fight for their lives in the ocean.

However, when asked at the first hearing if he felt Illingworth had made the right decision, the captain of the HMS Curacoa says, “I would say, yes.” The RMS Queen Mary continues as a troopship until August 11, 1945. The vessel is now a floating attraction at Long Beach, California.

(From: “SS Queen Mary & the loss of HMS Curacoa 1942” by A. N. Other and NHSA Webmaster, Naval Historical Society of Australia, https://navyhistory.au)


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Death of R. M. “Bertie” Smyllie, Editor of “The Irish Times”

Robert Maire Smyllie, known as Bertie Smyllie, editor of The Irish Times for twenty years, dies on September 11, 1954.

Smyllie is born on March 20, 1893, at Hill Street, Shettleston, Glasgow, Scotland. He is the eldest of four sons and one daughter of Robert Smyllie, a Presbyterian printer originally from Scotland who is working in Sligo, County Sligo, at the time, and Elisabeth Follis, originally from Cork, County Cork. His father marries in Sligo on July 20, 1892, and later becomes proprietor and editor of the unionist Sligo Times. Smyllie attends Sligo Grammar School in 1906 and enrolls at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1911.

After two years at TCD, Smyllie’s desire for adventure leads him to leave university in 1913. Working as a vacation tutor to an American boy in Germany at the start of World War I, he is detained in Ruhleben internment camp, near Berlin, during the war. As an internee, he is involved in drama productions with other internees. Following his release at the end of the war, he witnesses the German revolution of 1918–1919. During this period, he encounters revolutionary sailors from Kiel who temporarily make him a representative of the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council, and he observes key events including the looting of the Kaiser’s Palace and violent clashes between rival factions in Berlin. It is also during this period that he secures a personal interview with David Lloyd George at the Paris Convention of 1919. This helps Smyllie gain a permanent position with The Irish Times in 1920, where he quickly earns the confidence of editor John Healy. Together, they take part in secret but unsuccessful attempts to resolve the Irish War of Independence.

Smyllie contributes to the Irishman’s Diary column of the paper from 1927. In 1927, he publishes an exclusive report outlining a draft government including both Labour Party and Fianna Fáil TDs, signaling the volatile politics of the early state years.

Smyllie’s knowledge of languages (particularly the German he had learned during his internment) led to numerous foreign assignments. His reports on the rise of National Socialism in 1930s Germany are notably prescient and instill in him a lasting antipathy towards the movement.

When Healy dies in 1934, Smyllie becomes editor of The Irish Times and also takes on the role of Irish correspondent for The Times (London), a position that brings significant additional income. Under Healy’s leadership, The Irish Times shifted from representing the Anglo-Irish ascendancy to becoming an organ of liberal, southern unionism, and eventually becomes a critical legitimising force in the Irish Free State. Smyllie enthusiastically supports this change. He establishes a non-partisan profile and a modern Irish character for the erstwhile ascendancy paper. For example, he drops “Kingstown Harbour” for “Dún Laoghaire.” He also introduces the paper’s first-ever Irish-language columnist. He is assisted by Alec Newman and Lionel Fleming, recruits Patrick Campbell and enlists Flann O’Brien to write his thrice-weekly column “Cruiskeen Lawn” as Myles na gCopaleen. As editor, he introduces a more Bohemian and informal style, establishing a semi-permanent salon in Fleet Street’s Palace Bar. This becomes a hub for journalists and literary figures and a source of material for his weekly column, Nichevo.

One of Smyllie’s early political challenges as editor concerns the Spanish Civil War. At a time when Irish Catholic opinion is strongly pro-Franco, he ensures The Irish Times coverage is balanced and fair, though advertiser pressure eventually forces the withdrawal of the paper’s young reporter, Lionel Fleming, from the conflict. His awareness of the looming European crisis earns him the Order of the White Lion of Czechoslovakia in 1939. However, during World War II, he clashes with Ireland’s censorship authorities, especially under Minister Frank Aiken. He challenges their views both publicly and privately, though his relationship with the editor of the Irish Independent, Frank Geary, is cold, reducing the effectiveness of their joint opposition to censorship.

During the 1943 Irish general election, Smyllie uses the paper to promote the idea of a national government that could represent Ireland with authority in the postwar world. He praises Fine Gael’s proposal for such a government and criticises Éamon de Valera for dismissing it as unrealistic. This leads to a public exchange between de Valera and Smyllie, with the latter defending The Irish Times’s role as a constructive voice for Ireland’s future rather than a partisan interest.

Following the war, Smyllie’s editorial stance shifts toward defending Ireland’s neutrality and diplomatic position. When Winston Churchill accuses de Valera of fraternising with Axis powers, Smyllie counters by revealing Ireland’s covert collaboration with the Allies, such as military and intelligence cooperation, despite official neutrality. In the same period, he continues to oppose censorship, particularly the frequent banning of Irish writers by the Censorship of Publications Board. This opposition features prominently in a controversy on The Irish Times letters page in 1950, later published as the liberal ethic. The paper also adopts a critical stance toward the Catholic Church, notably during the 1951 resignation of Minister for Health Noël Browne amid opposition from bishops and doctors to a national Mother and Child Scheme. His editorials suggest the Catholic Church is effectively the government of Ireland, though he maintains a cordial relationship with Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, who invites him annually for dinner.

Smyllie is also wary of American foreign policy, showing hostility particularly during the Korean War. American diplomats in Dublin allege that Smyllie is “pro-communist“. Despite growing readership among an educated Catholic middle class, The Irish Times’s circulation in 1950 remains under 50,000, far below the Irish Independent and the Fianna Fáil-aligned The Irish Press.

In later years, Smyllie’s health declines, prompting a quieter lifestyle. He moves from his large house in Pembroke Park, Dublin, to Delgany, County Wicklow. As he does not drive, he becomes less present in the newspaper office in D’Olier Street, contributing to a decline in the paper’s dynamism. His health deteriorates further, resulting in frequent absences from his editorial duties, though he retains his position despite management attempts to limit his authority, especially over finances. He dies of heart failure on September 11, 1954.

In 1925, Smyllie marries Kathlyn Reid, eldest daughter of a County Meath landowner. They have no children.

Smyllie is an eccentric: he hits his tee shots with a nine iron, speaks in a curious mix of Latin phrases and everyday Dublin slang, and weighs 22 stone (308 lbs.; 140 kg) yet still cycles to work wearing a green sombrero.


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Birth of Mario Rosenstock, Actor, Comedian, Impressionist & Musician

Mario Rosenstock, Irish actor, comedian, impressionist and musician, is born in London, England, on August 31, 1970.

Rosenstock first comes to the attention of the Irish public playing the role of Dr. David Hanlon in the soap opera Glenroe in the 1990s.

However, he is now best known for the popular Gift Grub segments which have featured on The Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show on Today FM since May 1999 which Rosenstock creates alongside Paul McLoone, a radio presenter with Today FM and frontman of the Northern Irish pop-punk/new-wave band, The Undertones.

Gift Grub is a series of comic sketches, impersonations and parodies that featured Rosenstock assuming the personae of Bertie Ahern, Ronan Keating, Colin Farrell and Roy Keane among many others. He also provides the manic voice of Right Price Tiles radio spokesperson “Daft Dave.”

Rosenstock performs an impersonation of José Mourinho in a parody of a song from the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. This spreads like wildfire on Internet message boards and eventually it is played on a Sky Sports broadcast. Mourinho hears the song and enjoys the impersonation so much he asks Rosenstock to perform a private show for him and the Chelsea F.C. squad. Rosenstock later releases, with Mourinho’s blessing, a single version of “José and his Amazing Technicolor Overcoat.” He also releases another song (“I Sign a Little Player or Two“) on the internet with a parody of Mourinho in an interview then breaking into song.

In 2005, Rosenstock stars as Keano in the comedy musical play I, Keano, which concerns Keane storming out of the Republic of Ireland national football squad during preparations for the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

In 2005, Rosenstock achieves the Christmas number one single in the Irish Singles Chart, with a parody of Will Young‘s song Leave Right Now (which itself is a Christmas number-one in 2003). The parody concerned Roy Keane’s controversial departure from Manchester United and his falling-out with Alex Ferguson. 

Between December 2007 and May 2009, Rosenstock works on a puppet comedy series entitled Special 1 TV (originally known as I’m on Setanta Sports), which is presented as a parody weekly football talk show hosted by “José Mourinho.” He voices all the puppet characters on the sketch, with the exception of “Rafael Benitez,” who is performed by Keith Burke, including the main character Mourinho, his studio co-hosts “Sven-Göran Eriksson” and “Wayne Rooney,” and regular phone-in callers like “Alex Ferguson,” “Arsène Wenger,” “Roy Keane” and “Mick McCarthy,” as well as the non-football-related characters, Nelson Mandela, Willie Nelson, Barack Obama and Tom Cruise.

Rosenstock receives the Outstanding Achievement Award at the 11th annual PPI (Phonographic Performance Ireland) Radio Awards in 2011.

In November 2012 his new show called The Mario Rosenstock Show starts on RTÉ2. A second series of the show begins to air in September 2013.

Rosenstock is married, with two children. His uncle, Gabriel Rosenstock, is one of Ireland’s most notable Irish language poets and member of Innti with Michael Davitt, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Liam Ó Muirthile. Rosenstock’s grandfather George is a doctor and writer from Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. He never speaks German again after the war out of shame. His grandmother is a nurse from Athenry, County Galway.


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Death of Liam Ó Briain, Irish Language Expert & Political Activist

Liam Ó Briain, Irish language expert and political activist, dies on August 12, 1974, in Cabinteely, County Dublin.

Christened as William O’Brien, Ó Briain is born at 10 Church Street, North Wall, Dublin, on September 16, 1888, the seventh child of Arthur O’Brien, clerk, and Mary O’Brien (née Christie), who is from County Meath. He takes an interest in the Irish language from an early age and begins learning Irish by himself from a grammar book, as it is not encouraged by his teachers at the Christian Brothers’ O’Connell School nor spoken by his parents. While still at the O’Connell School, he starts using the Irish version of his name. He also attends meetings of the Gaelic League, then attends University College Dublin (UCD) on a scholarship, where he studies French, English and Irish, receiving a BA (1909) and an MA (1910).

UCD decides to start awarding one annual scholarship for overseas travel in 1911, and Ó Briain wins the first one, using it to visit Germany and study under Kuno Meyer and Rudolf Thurneysen. After three years, he returns home, where he rejoins the Gaelic League and begins teaching French at UCD. He also joins the Irish Volunteers then, the following year, Seán T. O’Kelly convinces him to join the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).

During the 1916 Easter Rising, Ó Briain sees action with the Irish Citizen Army. He comes into conflict with his commander, Michael Mallin, as he wants to pursue a strategy without the Dublin brigade being “cooped up in the city.” However, Mallin overrules him and insists they should focus on taking Dublin Castle. He spends two months in Wandsworth Prison in London and six months in Frongoch internment camp in Wales before being released to discover that he has been fired from his job. However, he quickly obtains a professorship in Romance languages at University College Galway (UCG).

Around this time, Ó Briain joins Sinn Féin, and he stands unsuccessfully for the party in Mid Armagh at the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, taking 5,689 votes. His campaign leads, indirectly, to his arrest and three months in jail in Belfast. In 1920, following his release, he is appointed a judge in the then-illegal republican court system in Galway, and visits both France and Italy to try to source weapons for the Irish Republican Army (IRA). In November 1920, he is arrested in the UCG dining room by Black and Tans, and is imprisoned for thirteen months, first in Galway and then in the Curragh camp in County Kildare, thereby missing the conclusion of the Irish War of Independence. By the time he is released, the Anglo-Irish Treaty has been signed. He supports the treaty and takes no further part in militant activity.

In the newly independent Ireland, Ó Briain remains a professor at Galway. He also stands in the 1925 Seanad election, although he is not successful. He is the founding secretary of the Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe theatre, also acting in many of its productions, and spends much time translating works from English and the Romance languages into Irish. He stands to become president of UCG in 1945, but is not elected, and in the 1940s and 1950s is best known for his many appearances on television and radio.

From his retirement in 1959, Ó Briain lives in Dublin. In 1974, the National University of Ireland (NUI) confers an honorary doctorate on him. He dies on August 12, 1974, at St. Gabriel’s Hospital, Cabinteely, County Dublin. His funeral to Glasnevin Cemetery is almost a state occasion, with a huge attendance of public figures, and a military firing party at the graveside, where the oration is given by Micheál Mac Líammóir and a lesson is read by Siobhán McKenna. For days after his death, the newspapers carry tributes to his many-sided career and personality. On the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, Proinsias Mac Aonghusa and Art Ó Beoláin write commemorative articles in Feasta.

On September 1, 1921, Ó Briain marries Helen Lawlor, of Dublin, who dies two years before him. The couple’s only child is Eibhlín Ní Bhriain, who is a journalist for The Irish Times and other periodicals.


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Birth of Sidney Czira, Journalist, Broadcaster, Writer & Revolutionary

Sidney Sarah Madge Czira (née Gifford), journalist, broadcaster, writer and revolutionary, known by her pen name John Brennan, is born in Rathmines, Dublin, on August 3, 1889. She is an active member of the revolutionary group Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland) and writes articles for its newspaper, Bean na h-Éireann, and for Arthur Griffith‘s newspaper Sinn Féin.

Gifford is the youngest of twelve children of Frederick and Isabella Gifford. Isabella Gifford (née Burton), is a niece of the artist Frederic William Burton, and is raised with her siblings in his household after the death of her father, Robert Nathaniel Burton, a rector, during the Great Famine.

Gifford’s parents—her father is Catholic and her mother Anglican—are married in St. George’s Church, a Church of Ireland church on the north side of Dublin, on April 27, 1872. She grows up in Rathmines and is raised as a Protestant, as are her siblings.

Like her sisters, the socialist Nellie Gifford, Grace Gifford, who marries Joseph Plunkett, and Muriel Gifford, who marries Thomas MacDonagh, she becomes interested and involved in the suffrage movement and the burgeoning Irish revolution.

Gifford is educated in Alexandra College in Earlsfort Terrace. After leaving school she studies music at the Leinster House School of Music. It is her music teacher, in her teens, who first gives her her first Irish national newspaper, The Leader. She begins reading this secretly and then starts reading Arthur Griffith’s newspaper, Sinn Féin.

Gifford is a member of Inghinidhe na hÉireann, a women’s political organisation active from the 1900s. It is founded by Maud Gonne and a group of working-class and middle-class women to promote Irish culture and help to alleviate the shocking poverty of Dublin and other cities at a time when Dublin’s slums are unfavourably compared with Calcutta‘s. Gifford, who is already writing under the name “John Brennan” for Sinn Féin, is asked to write for its newspaper Bean na h-Éireann. Her articles vary from those highlighting poor treatment of women in the workplace to fashion and gardening columns, some written under the pseudonym Sorcha Ní hAnlúan.

She also works, along with her sisters, in Maud Gonne’s and Constance Markievicz‘s dinner system in St. Audoen’s Church, providing good solid dinners for children in three Dublin schools – poor Dublin schoolchildren often arrive at school without breakfast, go without a meal for the day, and if their father has been given his dinner when they arrive home, might not eat or might only have a crust of bread that night.

In 1911, Gifford is elected (as John Brennan) to the executive of the political group Sinn Féin.

Gifford is a member of Cumann na mBan (The Irish Women’s Council) from its foundation in Dublin on April 2, 1914. Its members learn first aid, drilling and signalling and rifle shooting, and serve as an unofficial messenger and backup service for the Irish Volunteers. During the fight for Irish Independence the women carry messages, store and deliver guns and run safe houses where men on the run can eat, sleep and pick up supplies.

In 1914, Gifford moves to the United States to work as a journalist. Through her connection with Padraic Colum and Mary Colum, whom she had met through her brother-in-law Thomas MacDonagh, she meets influential Irish Americans such as Thomas Addis Emmet and Irish exiles like John Devoy, and marries a Hungarian lawyer, Arpad Czira, a former prisoner of war who is said to have escaped and fled to America. Their son, Finian, is born in 1922.

Czira writes both for traditional American newspapers and for Devoy’s newspaper, The Gaelic American. She and her sister Nellie found the American branch of Cumann na mBan, and she acts as its secretary. Both sisters tour and speak about the Easter Rising and those involved. She is an active campaigner for Irish independence and against the United States joining the war against Germany, seen as a war for profit and expansion of the British Empire, and so to the disadvantage of the work for Irish independence. She helps Nora Connolly O’Brien to contact German diplomats in the United States.

In 1922, Czira returns to Ireland with her son. As a member of the Women’s Prisoners’ Defence League, she is an activist against the ill-treatment of Republican prisoners during the Irish Civil War. She continues to work as a journalist, though she is stymied in her work, as are the women of her family and many of those who had taken the anti-Free State side. In the 1950s her memoirs are published in The Irish Times, and she moves into work as a broadcaster and produces a series of historical programmes.

Czira dies in Dublin on September 15, 1974, and is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery.