seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Glasgow


by Leave a comment

The Execution of Fenian Michael Barrett

Michael Barrett, Irish activist and a member of the Fenians, is executed on May 26, 1868, for his part in the Clerkenwell Gaol explosion in December 1867. From all the evidence, it is likely he is not guilty. He is the last man to be publicly hanged in England.

Barrett is born in 1841 in Drumnagreshial in the Ederney area of County Fermanagh. As a young man and in search of work, he moves to Glasgow where, at the age of 27, he joins the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), often referred to as Fenians. In the 1860s, the IRB is a political movement that dominates Irish Republican politics and defies the Catholic Church, middle-class nationalists who advocate milder approaches and Irish Unionists. Tens of thousands of Irishmen in both Ireland and Great Britain are recruited into its ranks.

The Clerkenwell bombing is the most infamous action carried out by the Fenians in mainland Britain. It results in a long-lived backlash that foments much hostility against the Irish community in Britain.

The events that lead up to the bombing start with the arrest in November 1867 of Ricard O’Sullivan Burke, a senior Fenian arms agent who planned the “prison-van escape” in Manchester a few months earlier. O’Sullivan-Burke is subsequently imprisoned on remand in the Middlesex House of Detention, Clerkenwell. On December 13, an attempt to rescue him is made by blowing a hole in the prison wall. The explosion is seriously misjudged. It demolishes not only a large section of the wall, but also a number of tenement houses opposite in Corporation Lane (now Corporation Row), killing 12 people and wounding up to 120 more.

The bombing has a traumatic effect on British working-class opinion. The radical, Charles Bradlaugh, condemns the incident in his newspaper, the National Reformer, as an act “calculated to destroy all sympathy, and to evoke the opposition of all classes.”

The day before the explosion, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli bans all political demonstrations in London in an attempt to put a stop to the weekly meetings and marches that are being held in support of the Fenians. He fears that the ban might be challenged, but the explosion has the effect of turning public opinion in his favour.

Months earlier, Barrett had been arrested in Glasgow for illegally discharging a firearm and allegedly false evidence is used to implicate him in the Clerkenwell Prison explosion. In court, he produces witnesses who testify that he had been in Scotland on the date of the incident. The main case against him rests on the evidence of Patrick Mullany, a Dubliner known to have given false testimony before and whose price is a free passage to Australia, who tells the court that Barrett had informed him that he had carried out the explosion with an accomplice by the name of Murphy. After two hours of deliberation the jury pronounces Barrett guilty. On being asked if he has anything to say before sentence is passed, he delivers an emotional speech from the dock.

Many people, including a number of radical MPs, press for clemency. In Fermanagh, Barrett’s aged mother walks several miles in the snow to appeal to the local Irish Conservative Party MP, Captain Mervyn Edward Archdale, a staunch Orangeman, who rejects her.

Barrett is executed outside the walls of Newgate Prison on May 26, 1868, before a crowd of two thousand who boo, jeer and sing “Rule, Britannia!” and “Champagne Charlie” as his body drops. His execution is the last public hanging to take place in England. The hangman is William Calcraft.

Until their transfer to the City of London Cemetery, Barrett’s remains lay for 35 years in a lime grave inside the walls of Newgate Prison. When the prison is demolished in 1903 his remains are taken to their present resting place. Today the grave is a place of Fenian pilgrimage and is marked by a small plaque.

After the explosion, the Prime Minister Disraeli advocates the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act 1862 in Great Britain, as is already the case in Ireland. Greater security measures are quickly introduced. Thousands of special constables are enrolled to aid the police and at Scotland Yard a special secret service department is established to meet the Fenian threat. Although a number of people are arrested and brought to trial, Barrett is the only one to receive the death sentence.

Within days of the explosion, the Liberal Party leader, William Ewart Gladstone, then in opposition, announces his concern about Irish Nationalist grievances and says that it is the duty of the British people to remove them. Later, he says that it is the Fenian action at Clerkenwell that turned his mind towards Home Rule. When Gladstone discovers at Hawarden later that year that Queen Victoria had invited him to form a government he famously states, “my mission is to pacify Ireland.”


by Leave a comment

Birth of Evelyn Gleeson, Designer & Co-founder of Dun Emer Press

Evelyn Gleeson, English embroidery, carpet, and tapestry designer, is born on May 15, 1855, in Knutsford, Cheshire, England. Along with Elizabeth and Lily Yeats, she establishes the Dun Emer Press.

Gleeson is the daughter of Irish-born Edward Moloney Gleeson, a medical doctor, and Harriet (née Simpson), from Bolton, Lancashire. Her father has a practice in Knutsford but on a trip to Ireland he is struck by the poverty and unemployment and, with the advice of his brother-in-law, a textile manufacturer in Lancashire, he founds the Athlone Woollen Mills in 1859, investing all his money in the project. The family moves to Athlone in 1863 but Gleeson is educated in England, where she trains as a teacher. She later studies portraiture in London at the Atelier Ludovici from 1890–92. She goes on to study design with Alexander Millar, a follower of William Morris, who believes she has an exceptional aptitude for colour-blending. Many of her designs are bought by the exclusive Templeton Carpets of Glasgow.

Gleeson takes a keen interest in Irish affairs and, as a member of the Gaelic League and the Irish Literary Society, mixes with the Yeats family and the Irish artistic circle in London, and is inspired by the Gaelic revival in art and literature. She is also involved in the suffrage movement and is chairwoman of the Pioneer Club, a women’s club in London. In 1900, an opportunity arises to make a practical contribution to the Irish renaissance and the emancipation of Irish women. She is suffering from ill-health but her friend Augustine Henry, botanist and linguist, suggests she move away from the London smog to Ireland and open a craft centre with his financial assistance. She seizes the opportunity and discusses her plans with her friends the Yeats sisters, Elizabeth and Lily, who are talented craftswomen and have direct contact with William Morris and his followers. They have no money to contribute to the venture but are enthusiastic and can offer their skills and provide contacts. She seeks advice from W. B. and Jack Yeats, from Henry, who loans her £500, and from her cousin, T. P. Gill, secretary of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction.

During the summer of 1902 Gleeson finds a suitable house in Dundrum, County Dublin, ten minutes from the railway station. The house, originally called Runnymede, is renamed Dun Emer, after the wife of Cú-Chulainn, renowned for her craft skills. The printing press arrives in November 1902, and soon three craft industries are in operation. Lily Yeats runs the embroidery section, since she had trained with Morris’s daughter May. Elizabeth Yeats operates the press, having learned printing at the Women’s Printing Society in London. Gleeson manages the weaving and tapestry, and looks after the financial affairs of the industries. W. B. Yeats acts as literary adviser, an arrangement that often causes friction, and Gleeson’s sister, Constance McCormack, is also involved.

Local girls are employed and trained, and the industries seek to use the best of Irish materials to make beautiful, high-quality, lasting products of original design. Church patronage accounts for most of their orders and, in 1902–03, Loughrea cathedral commissions twenty-four embroidered banners portraying Irish saints. They also make vestments, traditional dresses, drapes, cushions and other items, all beautifully crafted and mostly employing Celtic design. The first book published is In the Seven Woods (1903), by W. B. Yeats, cased in full Irish linen.

Gleeson is in demand as an adjudicator in craft competitions around the country and at Feis na nGleann in 1904 she praises the workmanship of the entries but is critical of the lack of teaching in design. She gives lectures and tries to raise the status of craftwork from household occupation to competitive industry. There are tensions with the Yeats sisters, who complain that she is bad-tempered and arrogant. In truth she had taken on too much of a financial burden, even with the support of grants, and she is anxious to repay her debt to Augustine Henry, which he is prepared to forego. The sisters snub her, and omit her name in an interview about Dun Emer in the magazine House Beautiful. Millar, her design teacher in London, likens the omission to Hamlet without the prince. In 1904, it is decided to split the industries on a cooperative basis: Dun Emer Guild Ltd. under Gleeson and Dun Emer Industries Ltd. under the Yeats sisters.

Work continues, and the guild and industries exhibit separately at the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) and other craft competitions. In 1907, the National Museum of Ireland commissions a copy of a Flemish tapestry. It takes far longer than anticipated to complete, but the result is beautiful and is exhibited at the Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland in 1910. The guild wins a silver medal at the Milan International exhibition in 1906. The guild and industries both show work at the New York exhibition of 1908. The guild alone shows work in Boston. By now cooperation has turned to rivalry, and there is a final split as the Yeats sisters leave, taking the printing press with them to their house in Churchtown, Dublin. Gleeson writes off a debt of £185 owed to her, on condition that they do not use the name Dun Emer.

The business thrives at Dundrum, with her niece Katherine (Kitty) MacCormack and Augustine Henry’s niece, May Kerley, assisting with design. Later they move the workshops to Hardwicke Street, Dublin. In 1909, Gleeson becomes one of the first members of the Guild of Irish Art Workers and is made master in 1917. The Irish Women Workers’ Union commissions a banner from her about 1919, and, among numerous other notable successes, a Dun Emer carpet is presented to Pope Pius XI in 1932, the year of the Eucharistic Congress of Dublin.

Gleeson dies at the age of 89 at Dun Emer on February 20, 1944, with Kitty carrying on the Guild after her death. The final home of Dun Emer is a shop on Harcourt Street, Dublin, which finally closes in 1964.

(From: “Gleeson, Evelyn” by Ruth Devine, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


by Leave a comment

Birth of James Sheridan Knowles, Dramatist & Actor

James Sheridan Knowles, Irish dramatist and actor, is born in Cork, County Cork, on May 12, 1784. A relative of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, he enjoys success writing plays for the leading West End theatres. Later in his career he also produces several novels.

Knowles’s father is the lexicographer James Knowles, cousin of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The family moves to London in 1793, and at the age of fourteen he publishes a ballad entitled The Welsh Harper, which, set to music, is very popular. His talents secure him the friendship of William Hazlitt, who introduces him to Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He serves for some time in the Wiltshire and afterwards in the Tower Hamlets militia, leaving the service to become a pupil of Dr. Robert Willan. He obtains the degree of M.D., and is appointed vaccinator to the Jennerian Society.

Although Dr. Willan offers him a share in his practice, Knowles decides to give up medicine for the stage, making his first appearance as an actor probably at Bath, and plays Hamlet at the Crow Street Theatre, Dublin. At Wexford he marries, in October 1809, Maria Charteris, an actress from the Edinburgh Theatre. In 1810, he writes Leo, a successful play in which Edmund Kean appears. Another play, Brian Boroihme, written for the Belfast Theatre in the next year, attracts crowds. Nevertheless, his earnings are so small that he is obliged to become assistant to his father at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. In 1817 he moves from Belfast to Glasgow, where, besides keeping a flourishing school, he continues to write for the stage.

Knowles first important success is Caius Gracchus, produced at the Belfast Theatre in 1815. His Virginius, written for William Charles Macready, is first performed in 1820 at Covent Garden. In William Tell (1825), he writes for Macready one of his favourite parts. His best-known play, The Hunchback, is produced at Covent Garden in 1832, and he wins praise acting in the work as Master Walter. The Wife is brought out at the same theatre in 1833. The Daughter, better known as The Wrecker’s Daughter, in 1836, and The Love Chase in 1837. His 1839 play Love is praised by Mary Shelley for its “inspiring situations founded on sentiment and passion.” His second wife is the actress Emma Knowles.

In his later years Knowles forsakes the stage for the pulpit and, as a Baptist preacher, attracts large audiences at Exeter Hall and elsewhere. He publishes two polemical works: the Rock of Rome and the Idol Demolished by Its Own Priests in both of which he combats the special doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. He is for some years in the receipt of an annual pension of £200, bestowed by Sir Robert Peel in 1849. In old age he befriends the young Edmund Gosse, whom he introduces to Shakespeare. He makes a happy appearance in Gosse’s Father and Son.

Knowles dies at Torquay on November 30, 1862. He is buried under a huge tomb at the summit of the Glasgow Necropolis.

A full list of the works of Knowles and of the various notices of him can be found in The Life of James Sheridan Knowles (1872), privately printed by his son, Richard Brinsley Knowles (1820–1882), who is well known as a journalist. It is translated into German.


by 2 Comments

The 32 County Sovereignty Movement Launches Major Recruitment Campaign

The 32 County Sovereignty Movement, often abbreviated to 32CSM or 32csm, an Irish republican group that is founded by Bernadette Sands McKevitt, launches a major recruitment campaign in west Belfast on April 17, 1999.

The objectives of the 32CSM are:

  • The restoration of Irish national sovereignty.
  • To seek to achieve unity among the Irish people on the issue of restoring national sovereignty and to promote the revolutionary ideals of republicanism and to this end involve itself in resisting all forms of colonialism and imperialism.
  • To seek the immediate and unconditional release of all Irish republican prisoners throughout the world.

The 32CSM does not contest elections but acts as a pressure group, with branches, or cumainn, organised throughout the traditional counties of Ireland. It has been described as the “political wing” of the now defunct Real Irish Republican Army (Real IRA or RIRA), but this is denied by both organisations. The group originates in a split from Sinn Féin over the Mitchell Principles.

The organisation is founded on December 7, 1997, at a meeting of like-minded Irish republicans in the Dublin suburb of Finglas. Those present are opposed to the direction taken by Sinn Féin and other mainstream republican groups in the Northern Ireland peace process, which eventually leads to the Good Friday Agreement, also known as the Belfast Agreement, the following year. The same division in the republican movement leads to the paramilitary group now known as the Real IRA breaking away from the Provisional Irish Republican Army at around the same time.

Most of the 32CSM’s founders had been members of Sinn Féin, with some having been expelled from the party for challenging the leadership’s direction, while others felt they had not been properly able to air their concerns within Sinn Féin at the direction its leadership had taken. Bernadette Sands McKevitt, wife of Michael McKevitt and a sister of hunger striker Bobby Sands, is a prominent member of the group until a split in the organisation.

The name refers to the 32 counties of Ireland which were created during the Lordship of Ireland and Kingdom of Ireland. With the partition of Ireland in 1920–22, twenty-six of these counties form the Irish Free State which is abolished in 1937 and is now known as Ireland since 1949. The remaining six counties of Northern Ireland remain part of the United Kingdom. Founder Bernadette Sands McKevitt says in a 1998 interview with The Mirror that people did not fight for “peace” – “they fought for independence” – and that the organisation reaffirms to the republican position in the 1919 Irish Declaration of Independence.

Before the referendums on the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the 32CSM lodges a legal submission with the United Nations challenging British sovereignty in Ireland. The referendums are opposed by the 32CSM but are supported by 71% of voters in Northern Ireland and by 94% in the Republic of Ireland. It is reported in February 2000 that the group had established a “branch” in Kilburn, London.

In November 2005, the 32CSM launches a political initiative titled Irish Democracy, A Framework for Unity.

On May 24, 2014, Gary Donnelly, a member of the 32CSM, is elected to the Derry and Strabane super council. In July 2014, a delegation from the 32CSM travels to Canada to take part in a six-day speaking tour. On arrival the delegation is detained and refused entry into Canada.

The 32CSM has protested against what it calls “internment by remand” in both jurisdictions in Ireland. Other protests include ones against former Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Ian Paisley in Cobh, County Cork, against former British Prime Minister John Major being given the Keys to Cork city, against a visit to the Republic of Ireland by Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) head Sir Hugh Orde, and against the Israeli occupation of Palestine and Anglo-American occupation of Iraq.

In 2015, the 32CSM organises a demonstration in Dundee, Scotland, in solidarity with the men convicted of shooting Constable Stephen Carroll, the first police officer to be killed in Northern Ireland since the formation of the PSNI. The organisation says the “Craigavon Two” are innocent and are victims of a miscarriage of justice.

The 32CSM also operates outside of the island of Ireland to some extent. The Gaughan/Stagg Cumann covers England, Scotland and Wales, and has an active relationship of mutual promotion with a minority of British left-wing groups and anti-fascist organisations. The James Larkin Republican Flute Band in Liverpool and the West of Scotland Band Alliance, the largest section of which is the Glasgow-based Parkhead Republican Flute Band, are also supporters of the 32CSM. As of 2014, the 32CSM’s alleged paramilitary wing, the Real IRA, is reported to still be involved in attempts to perpetrate bombings in Britain as part of the dissident Irish republican campaign, which has been ongoing since 1998.

The 32CSM is currently considered a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) in the United States, because it is considered to be inseparable from the Real IRA, which is designated as an FTO. At a briefing in 2001, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of State states that “evidence provided by both the British and Irish governments and open-source materials demonstrate clearly that the individuals who created the Real IRA also established these two entities to serve as the public face of the Real IRA. These alias organizations engage in propaganda and fundraising on behalf of and in collaboration with the Real IRA.” The U.S. Department of State’s designation makes it illegal for Americans to provide material support to the Real IRA, requires U.S. financial institutions to block the group’s assets and denies alleged Real IRA members travel visas into the United States.


by Leave a comment

The Beginning of the Belfast Blitz

A Luftwaffe bomb kills thirteen people in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on the night of April 7, 1941. Ultimately, the city is devastated by air raids. Seven hundred people are killed and 400 seriously injured in what becomes known as the Belfast Blitz. The Blitz consists of four German air raids on strategic targets in Belfast, in April and May 1941 during World War II.

There had been a number of small bombings, probably by planes that missed their targets over the River Clyde in Glasgow or the cities of North West England. On March 24, 1941, John MacDermott, Minister for Public Security, writes to the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, John Andrews, expressing his concerns that Belfast is so poorly protected. “Up to now we have escaped attack. So had Clydeside until recently. Clydeside got its blitz during the period of the last moon. There [is] ground for thinking that the … enemy could not easily reach Belfast in force except during a period of moonlight. The period of the next moon from say the 7th to the 16th of April may well bring our turn.” MacDermott is proved right.

The first deliberate raid takes place on the night of April 7. It targets the docks. Neighbouring residential areas are also hit. Six Heinkel He 111 bombers, from Kampfgruppe 26, flying at 7,000 feet, drop incendiaries, high explosive and parachute mines. By British mainland blitz standards, casualties are light. Thirteen die, including a soldier killed when an anti-aircraft gun at the Balmoral show-grounds misfires. The most significant loss is a 4.5-acre factory floor for manufacturing the fuselages of Short Stirling bombers. The Royal Air Force (RAF) announces that Squadron Leader J.W.C. Simpson shot down one of the Heinkels over Downpatrick. The Luftwaffe crews return to their base in Northern France and report that Belfast’s defences are “inferior in quality, scanty and insufficient.” This raid overall causes relatively little damage, but a lot is revealed about Belfast’s inadequate defences.

On Easter Tuesday, April 15, 1941, spectators watching a football match at Windsor Park notice a lone Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 88 aircraft circling overhead. That evening over 150 bombers leave their bases in northern France and the Netherlands and head for Belfast. There are Heinkel He 111s, Junkers Ju 88s and Dornier Do 17s. At 10:40 p.m. the air-raid sirens sound. Accounts differ as to when flares are dropped to light up the city. The first attack is against the city’s waterworks, which had been attacked in the previous raid. High explosives are dropped. Initially it is thought that the Germans had mistaken this reservoir for the harbour and shipyards, where many ships, including HMS Ark Royal are being repaired. However, that attack is not an error. Three vessels nearing completion at Harland & Wolff are hit as is its power station. Wave after wave of bombers drop their incendiaries, high explosives and landmines. When incendiaries are dropped, the city burns as water pressure is too low for effective firefighting. There is no opposition. In the mistaken belief that they might damage RAF fighters, the anti-aircraft batteries cease firing. But the RAF does not respond. The bombs continued to fall until 5:00 a.m.

Outside of London, with some 900 dead, this is the greatest loss of life in a night raid during the Blitz. A stray bomber attacks Derry, killing fifteeen. Another attacks Bangor, County Down, killing five. By 4:00 a.m. the entire city seems to be in flames. At 4:15 a.m., John MacDermott, the Minister of Public Security, manages to contact Minister of Agriculture Basil Brooke seeking permission to seek help from the Irish government. Brooke notes in his diary, “I gave him authority as it is obviously a question of expediency.” Since 1:45 a.m. all telephones have been cut. Fortunately, the railway telegraphy link between Belfast and Dublin is still operational. The telegram is sent at 4:35 a.m. asking the Irish Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, for assistance.

By 6:00 a.m., within two hours of the request for assistance, 71 firemen with 13 fire tenders from Dundalk, Drogheda, Dublin, and Dún Laoghaire are on their way to cross the Irish border to assist their Belfast colleagues. In each station volunteers are requested, as it is beyond their normal duties. In every instance, all step forward. They remain in Belfast for three days, until they are sent back by the Northern Ireland government. By then 250 firemen from Clydeside have arrived.

Taoiseach Éamon de Valera formally protests to Berlin. Frank Aiken, the Irish Minister for the Co-ordination of Defensive Measures, is in Boston, Massachusetts, at the time. He gives an interview saying, “the people of Belfast are Irish people too.”

There is a second massive air raid on Belfast on Sunday, May 4-5, 1941, three weeks after the Easter Tuesday raid. Around 1:00 a.m., Luftwaffe bombers fly over the city, concentrating their attack on the Harbour Estate and Queen’s Island. Nearby residential areas in east Belfast are also hit when “203 metric tonnes of high explosive bombs, 80 land mines attached to parachutes, and 800 firebomb canisters containing 96,000 incendiary bombs” are dropped. Over 150 people die in what becomes known as the “Fire Blitz.” Casualties are lower than at Easter, partly because the sirens sound at 11:45 p.m. while the Luftwaffe attack more cautiously from a greater height. St. George’s Church in High Street is damaged by fire. Again, the Irish emergency services cross the border, this time without waiting for an invitation.

(Pictured: Rescue workers search through the rubble of Eglington Street in Belfast, Northern Ireland, after a German Luftwaffe air raid, May 7, 1941)


by Leave a comment

Bridie Gallagher’s “The Boys From The County Armagh” Tops the Irish Charts

Bridget “Bridie” Gallagher, Irish singer affectionately known as “The Girl from Donegal,” reaches No. 1 in the Irish Singles Chart with “The Boys From The County Armagh” on July 2, 1957. She is widely regarded as “Ireland’s first international pop star.”

Gallagher is born on September 7, 1924 in Creeslough, County Donegal. She starts her singing in the Creeslough Hall with a local Céilí band started by Bill Gallagher. The Creeslough Hall is owned by Jim McCaffrey and Bridie makes many more visits to the Creeslough Hall in her home town throughout her long and successful career. Her talent is soon spotted in the 1950s by Billy Livingstone who is a talent scout for Decca Records. She goes to Belfast, which becomes her base, where she marries Robert (Bob) Livingstone (no relation to Billy Livingstone) and has two boys, Jim and Peter. Peter dies in a motor accident in 1976 and Jim later goes on to tour with her.

Gallagher shoots to fame in 1956 with her recording of “A Mother’s Love’s A Blessing” and achieves international acclaim with her legendary rendition of “The Boys From County Armagh.” During her career, which spans over six decades, she appears in many leading venues across the globe. She also makes songs such as “The Homes of Donegal” famous.

Gallagher holds the record for the largest number of people in attendance in the Royal Albert Hall in London, with over 7,500 people, a record that is never equaled as it goes on to become an all-seater venue. She becomes world-famous and travels all over the world, United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and is known as “The Girl from Donegal.” She plays in many of the world’s best known theatres, including London’s Royal Albert Hall, Sydney Opera House and Carnegie Hall in New York City. She sings mainly ballads or as they later became known as Country and Irish. One of her best known songs is “The Boys From The County Armagh,” which sells over 250,000 copies, the biggest-selling Irish single at that time.

Bridie also records “Cottage by the Lee,” written by Irish songwriter, Dick Farrelly. Farrelly achieved worldwide fame with his classic song “The Isle of Innisfree“, which is originally a worldwide hit for Bing Crosby and is chosen by movie director John Ford as the main theme music for his film The Quiet Man.

Gallagher lives in Belfast for most of her life. She is honoured by the people of Creeslough on July 10, 2000 with an event to celebrate her career. Members of her family from Creeslough and Donegal attend the event along with her two sisters and their families who travel from Glasgow to be there along with an estimated crowd of 2,500 fans. A plaque paying tribute to her is unveiled. The following day she is honoured by Donegal County Council when they hold a Civic Reception for her. “Bridie blazed the trail for many artists who followed after her and I’m sure that many of them looked upon her as a role model as they started their careers in the music world,” council chairman Charlie Bennett says at the ceremony.

Gallagher dies at her home in Belfast on January 9, 2012 at the age of 87. Her burial takes place in her native Creeslough.


by Leave a comment

Birth of John Treacy, Olympian & Former Athlete

John Treacy, Irish Olympian and former athlete, now a sporting administrator, is born in Villierstown, County Waterford, on June 4, 1957.

Treacy attends St. Anne’s Post-Primary School in Cappoquin, County Waterford, running more than seven miles to school every morning. He graduates from Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1978 and 1979 he wins the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Glasgow, Scotland and Limerick respectively.

Treacy is known as a tenacious runner who does not have an especially sharp final kick in track races. In the 1978 European Athletics Championships in Prague, he places 11th in the fast 10,000-metre race and fourth in the slow and tactical 5,000-metre race, losing to Italy‘s Venanzio Ortis by just three tenths of a second. In the 5,000-metre final, he lingers behind Great Britain‘s Nick Rose on the final back straight just after Rose drops from the lead group.

In the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, Treacy collapses in his 10,000-metre heat with only 200 metres left, a victim of heat paralysis and dehydration. Because he was running in fourth place when he collapses and because only the top four runners qualify directly for the final from the three heats, his collapse allows Finnish four-time Olympic champion Lasse Virén, who had been trailing him, to qualify directly for the final. Having recovered from his heat-induced collapse, Treacy places seventh in the 5,000-metre final of those Olympics.

In the 1983 World Championships in Athletics in Helsinki, Finland, Treacy is eliminated in the 10,000-metre heats.

In the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California, Treacy places ninth in the 10,000-metre final before crowning his athletics career with a silver medal in the men’s marathon. Winner Carlos Lopes of Portugal is largely unchallenged for much of the race, with Treacy down the field until entering the top six around the 20-kilometre mark. He continues to work his way up the rankings until entering Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum just behind second-place English athlete Charlie Spedding. He overtakes Spedding with 150m to go, during which the Irish television commentary of Jimmy Magee lists the previous Irish Olympic medal winners up to that time, before culminating, “And for the 13th time, an Olympic medal goes to John Treacy from Villierstown in Waterford, the little man with the big heart.” His silver medal places Ireland 33rd on the medals table.

After the Los Angeles Olympics, Treacy runs competitively until 1995, retiring following a road race held in his honour in Waterford, attended by the other two medalists from the 1984 Olympic marathon, Carlos Lopes and Charlie Spedding. While he does not win any more major international championships medals, he does win the 1992 Los Angeles Marathon. At the 1986 European Athletics Championships in Stuttgart, he places sixth in the 10,000-metre race. In the 1987 World Championships in Athletics in Rome, he places twenty-sixth in the 10,000-metre race and thirteenth in the 5,000-metre final. He fails to finish the marathon at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul and places 51st in his final Olympic games, the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona in 1992. He wins the 1993 Dublin Marathon.

Treacy is currently chief executive of Sport Ireland, a statutory authority that oversees, and partly funds, the development of sport within Ireland . He is married to Fionnuala and they have four children: Caoimhe, Deirdre, Sean, and Conor.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Monsignor James Horan

James Horan is born in Partry, County Mayo, on May 5, 1911. He is a parish priest of Knock, County Mayo. He is most widely known for his successful campaign to bring an airport to Knock, his work on Knock basilica, and is also credited for inviting Pope John Paul II to visit Knock Shrine in 1979.

Educated at St. Jarlath’s College, Tuam, Horan trains for the priesthood in St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth. He is ordained in 1936, and his first post is in Glasgow, where he remains for three years. Having served as chaplain on an ocean liner and briefly in Ballyglunin, County Galway, he becomes curate in Tooreen, a small townland close to Ballyhaunis, County Mayo. While there, he organises the construction of a dance hall, which becomes a popular local amenity. He secures financing for the project by collecting £8,000 on a tour of American cities. After also serving in Cloonfad, County Roscommon, he is transferred to Knock in 1963, where he becomes parish priest in 1967. He is troubled by the struggles of daily life and mass emigration in the west of Ireland and he works to improve the living standards of the local community.

While stationed at Knock, Horan oversees the building of a new church for Knock Shrine, which is dedicated in 1976. The shrine is the stated goal of Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1979. The pope travels to Knock as part of a state visit to Ireland, marking the centenary of the famous Knock apparitions. Horan works with Judy Coyne to organise the papal visit. He is responsible for the refurbishment of the church grounds, along with the construction of a huge church, with a capacity of 15,000. This newly constructed church is given the status of basilica by the pope. The day after the papal visit, Horan begins his campaign to build an international airport in Barnacuige, a small village near Charlestown, County Mayo.

Critics regard the idea of an airport on a “foggy, boggy site” in Mayo as unrealistic, but funding is approved by then Taoiseach Charles Haughey, who performs the official opening in May 1986, five years after work commenced. Although Horan had secured IR£10,000,000 in funding from Haughey, following the Fianna Fáil party’s defeat in the general election of 1982, his funding is cut, with the airport unfinished. He raises the IR£4,000,000 shortfall by holding a “Jumbo Draw.” This large lottery succeeds in raising the required revenue, but only after a painstaking tour of several countries, including Australia and the United States. This takes its toll on the ageing Horan and leads to his death shortly after the completion of the airport. The airport is originally known as Horan International Airport, but is now officially referred to as Ireland West Airport Knock.

Horan dies on August 1, 1986 while on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, just a few months after the official opening of the airport. His remains are flown into Knock, the first funeral to fly into the airport he had campaigned for. He is buried in the grounds of the Knock Basilica. His life and work are chronicled in a musical written by Terry Reilly and local broadcaster Tommy Marren, entitled A Wing and a Prayer. It premières in The Royal Theatre in Castlebar, County Mayo, on November 25, 2010.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Pearse Hutchinson, Poet, Broadcaster & Translator

Pearse Hutchinson, Irish poet, broadcaster and translator, is born in Glasgow, Scotland, on February 16, 1927.

Hutchinson’s father, Harry Hutchinson, a Scottish printer whose own father had left Dublin to find work in Scotland, is Sinn Féin treasurer in Glasgow and is interned in Frongoch internment camp in 1919–21. His mother, Cathleen Sara, is born in Cowcaddens, Glasgow, of emigrant parents from County Donegal. She is a friend of Constance Markievicz. In response to a letter from Cathleen, Éamon de Valera finds work in Dublin for Harry as a clerk in the Labour Exchange, and later he holds a post in Stationery Office.

Hutchinson is five years old when the family moves to Dublin, and is the last to be enrolled in St. Enda’s School before it closes. He then goes to school at Synge Street CBS where he learns Irish and Latin. One of his close friends there is the poet and literary critic John Jordan. In 1948 he attends University College Dublin (UCD) where he spends a year and a half, learning Spanish and Italian.

Having published some poems in The Bell in 1945, Hutchinson’s poetic development is greatly influenced by a 1950 holiday in Spain and Portugal. A short stop en route at Vigo brings him into contact for the first time with the culture of Galicia. Later, in Andalusia, he is entranced by the landscape and by the works of the Spanish poets Federico García Lorca, Emilio Prados and Luis Cernuda.

In 1951 Hutchinson leaves Ireland again, determined to live in Spain. Unable to get work in Madrid, as he had hoped, he travels instead to Geneva, where he gets a job as a translator with the International Labour Organization, which brings him into contact with Catalan exiles, speaking a language then largely suppressed in Spain. An invitation by a Dutch friend leads to a visit to the Netherlands, in preparation for which he teaches himself the Dutch language.

Hutchinson returns to Ireland in 1953, and becomes interested in the Irish language poetry of writers such as Piaras Feiritéar and Aonghus Fionn Ó Dálaigh, and publishes a number of poems in Irish in the magazine Comhar in 1954. The same year he travels again to Spain, this time to Barcelona, where he learns the Catalan and Galician languages, and gets to know Catalan poets such as Salvador Espriu and Carles Riba. With the British poet P. J. Kavanagh, he organises a reading of Catalan poetry in the British Institute.

Hutchinson goes home to Ireland in 1957 but returns to Barcelona in 1961, and continues to support Catalan poets. An invitation by the publisher Joan Gili to translate some poems by Josep Carner leads to the publication of his first book, a collection of thirty of Carner’s poems in Catalan and English, in 1962. A project to publish his translation of Espriu’s La Pell de brau (The Bull-skin), falls through some years later. Some of the poems from this project are included in the collection Done into English.

In 1963, Hutchinson’s first collection of original poems in English, Tongue Without Hands, is published by Dolmen Press in Ireland. In 1967, having spent nearly ten years altogether in Spain, he returns to Ireland, making a living as a poet and journalist writing in both Irish and English. In 1968, a collection of poems in Irish, Faoistin Bhacach (A Lame Confession), is published. Expansions, a collection in English, follows in 1969. Friend Songs (1970) is a new collection of translations, this time of medieval poems originally written in Galician-Portuguese. In 1972 Watching the Morning Grow, a new collection of original poems in English, comse out, followed in 1975 by another, The Frost Is All Over.

In October 1971, Hutchinson takes up the Gregory Fellowship in Poetry at the University of Leeds, on the recommendation of Professor A. Norman Jeffares. There is some controversy around the appointment following accusations, later retracted, that Jeffares had been guilty of bias in the selection because of their joint Irish heritage. He holds tenure at the University for three years, and during that time contributes to the University’s influential poetry magazine Poetry & Audience.

From 1977 to 1978 Hutchinsonn compiles and presents Oró Domhnaigh, a weekly radio programme of Irish poetry, music and folklore for Ireland’s national network, RTÉ. He also contributes a weekly column on the Irish language to the station’s magazine RTÉ Guide for over ten years. A collaboration with Melita Cataldi of Old Irish lyrics into Italian is published in 1981. Another collection in English, Climbing the Light (1985), which also includes translations from Irish, Italian and Galician, is followed in 1989 by his last Irish collection, Le Cead na Gréine (By Leave of the Sun). The Soul that Kissed the Body (1990) is a selection of his Irish poems translated into English. His most recent English collection is Barnsley Main Seam (1995). His Collected Poems is published in 2002 to mark his 75th birthday. This is followed in 2003 by Done into English, a selection of many of the translated works he produced over the years.

A co-editor and founder of the literary journal Cyphers, Hutchinson receives the Butler Award for Irish writing in 1969. He is a member of Aosdána, the state-supported association of artists, from which he receives a cnuas (stipend) to allow him to continue writing. He describes this as “a miracle and a godsend” as he is fifty-four when invited to become a member and is at the end of his tether. A two-day symposium of events is held at Trinity College Dublin, to celebrate his 80th birthday in 2007, with readings from his works by writers including Macdara Woods, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Paul Durcan and Sujata Bhatt. His most recent collection, At Least for a While (2008), is shortlisted for the Poetry Now Award.

Hutchinson lives in Rathgar, Dublin, and dies of pneumonia in Dublin on January 14, 2012.

(Pictured: Pearse Hutchinson in 1976, photographed by Eve Holmes, © RTÉ Archives 2032/078)


by Leave a comment

Birth of Professional Golfer Harry “The Brad” Bradshaw

Harry “The Brad” Bradshaw, a leading Irish professional golfer of the 1940s and 1950s, is born in Delgany, County Wicklow on October 9, 1913.

Bradshaw is the son of the Delgany professional golfer Ned Bradshaw. He and his three brothers, Jimmy, Eddie and Hughie, all become professional golfers. He represents Ireland in the Triangular Professional Tournament at the Cawder Golf Club in Bishopbriggs, Glasgow, Scotland in October 1937 and the Llandudno International Golf Trophy match play tournament at the Maesdu Golf Club in Llandudno, Wales in September 1938. He wins the Irish PGA Championship ten times between 1941 and 1957, tied with Christy O’Connor Snr for most wins in that event. He is also the Irish Open champion in 1947 and 1949. He teams with Christy O’Connor to win the Canada Cup for Ireland in Mexico City, Mexico in 1958, finishing second in the individual section of the event despite suffering nosebleeds due to the altitude. He plays in the Ryder Cup in 1953, 1955 and 1957 and is twice Dunlop Masters champion, in 1953 and 1955.

Bradshaw loses the 1949 The Open Championship following a playoff against Bobby Locke at Royal St. George’s Golf Club, after an extraordinary incident in the second round when his drive at the 5th hole comes to rest against broken glass from a beer bottle on the fairway. Rather than taking a drop (to which he is probably entitled) he elects to play the ball as it lay, but is only able to move it slightly forward, dropping the shot. The setback results in his tying with Locke with an aggregate of 283, thereby equaling the championship record. However he loses the playoff to Locke. Arguably the incident with the bottle costs Bradshaw the tournament.

Bradshaw dies at the age of 77 on December 22, 1990.