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The Tunnel Trench Assault at the Battle of Cambrai

At dawn on the morning of November 20, 1917, the 16th (Irish) Division of the British Army assaults an area of the German lines known as “Tunnel Trench,” named for an elaborate tunnel system that runs along it. The attack is meant as a diversion for the main attack, about eight miles to the southeast at Cambrai, France, where six infantry and two cavalry divisions of the British Expeditionary Force, with additional support from fourteen squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps, join the British Tank Corps in a surprise attack on the German lines.

By autumn 1917, three years into World War I, continuous shelling and lack of drainage has transformed the Ypres Salient, on the Western Front, into a waterlogged quagmire. In Ireland, meanwhile, a month earlier, Eamon de Valera becomes president of Sinn Féin and decides to push for an independent Irish republic. Despite the growing political turmoil at home, in France, on firm ground near the town of Cambrai, the British Army’s 16th (Irish) Division again proves to be formidable adversaries for the Germans.

According to the divisional historian, at Cambrai, the “swift and successful operation by 16th Division was a model of attack with a limited objective.” In addition to securing 3,000 yards of trench, 635 prisoners are captured from the German army’s 470th and 471st Regiments and 330 German bodies are counted in the trenches. More importantly, though, the mayhem caused by the diversionary assault contributes greatly to the initial success of the Cambrai offensive, though the offensive eventually sputters, dragging the war into 1918.

Cambrai becomes the field of operations when the British Commander-in-Chief, Field Marshal Douglas Haig, recognising that it is impossible to launch further military operations in the Ypres sector, seeks a new battlefield where he hopes success can be achieved before year’s end. Lieutenant Colonel John Fuller of the Tank Corps and General Julian Byng, commander of the Third Army, recommend that a massed assault by 400 tanks should be mounted across the firm, chalky ground to the southwest of Cambrai. Haig adopts this proposal, confident that the tanks can punch a hole through the mighty Hindenburg Line and allow his underused Cavalry Divisions to break through to the enemy rear.

In order to create maximum confusion among the Germans, Sir Aylmer Haldane, commander of VI Corps, is ordered to stage a diversionary attack. The area selected for the assault is about eight miles to the northwest of Cambrai, where the British line passes through the villages of Bullecourt and Fontaine-lès-Croisilles. The units select to make this subsidiary attack are 3rd Army and 16th (Irish) Division.

The defences of the Hindenburg Line opposite VI Corps positions consists of Tunnel Trench, a heavily defended front-line trench, with a second, or support trench, some 300 yards behind. The whole area is scattered with concrete machine gun forts, or Mebus, similar to those that had decimated the 16th (Irish) Division at the Battle of Langemarck three months earlier.

Tunnel Trench is so called because it has a tunnel 30 or 40 feet below ground along its entire length, with staircase access from the upper level every 25 yards. The entire tunnel has electric lighting, and side chambers provide storage space for bunks, food, and ammunition. Demolition charges are set that can be triggered from the German rear in order to prevent the defences from falling into British hands.

The 16th (Irish) Division, attacking on a three-brigade front, is assigned the task of capturing a 2,000-yard section of the trench network. On the right flank of the Irishmen, 3rd Division’s 9th Brigade is detailed to capture an additional 800 yards. One unusual feature of the attack is that there is to be no preliminary bombardment as surprise is the key to the success of the operation. Once the assault begins, however, 16th (Irish) Division’s artillery, reinforced with guns from the 34th Division, is to open a creeping barrage upon the German positions.

The morning of the advance, November 20, is overcast, with low visibility. At 6:20 a.m., the Divisional 18 pounder-field guns open fire, and the leading assault companies spring from their jump-off positions. At the same time, Stokes mortars begin to lay a smoke barrage upon the German trenches in imitation of a gas attack. This deception proves successful, as many German troops don cumbersome gas masks and retreat to the underground safety of the tunnel, thus leaving the exposed portion of the trench undefended.

On the left flank, the attack of the 49th Brigade is launched by 2nd Royal Irish Regiment and 7/8th Royal Irish Fusiliers. They quickly cross the 200 yards of no-man’s-land and reach the enemy frontline just as the barrage lifts. Resistance above ground is minimal, and storming parties began the task of flushing the Germans from the tunnel with Mills bombs and bayonets.

Once the tunnel is secure, sappers, acting on information obtained by 7th Leinster Regiment’s intelligence officer, cut the leads connecting the demolition charges. Supporting companies then press on to capture Tunnel Support Trench, while Divisional support units rapidly wire and made secure the new defensive front in anticipation of German counterattacks.

Only on the extreme left flank does 49th Brigade encounter any serious opposition. In this sector, Company “B” of the 7/8th Royal Irish Fusiliers suffers heavy losses inflicted by concentrated machine gun fire from Mebus Flora. Nearly one-hour elapses before resistance from this strong point can be overcome.

In the centre, 10th and 2nd Royal Dublin Fusiliers head the attack of the 48th Brigade. The advance here is so rapid that the Irish find many Germans still wearing gas masks and unable to fight. Two more Mebus, Juno and Minerva, are stormed and many more prisoners taken, particularly by 10th Royal Dublin Fusiliers which captures 170 Germans.

Leading the attack on the right flank is 6th Connaught Rangers and 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, both of which belong to the 47th “Irish Brigade.”

After capturing their assigned section of Tunnel Trench, two companies of Rangers press forward to assault the strong points known as Mars and Jove. The Division had learned from the disastrous frontal attack made at Langemarck, and so the Rangers work around to the rear before pressing home with the bayonet.

Unfortunately, 3rd Division fails in its attempt to capture the trench network immediately to the right of 16th (Irish) Division, and the flank of the Connaught Rangers is thus exposed to a savage counterattack. The Rangers ferociously engage the Germans and use captured “potato masher” grenades brought up from the tunnel to great effect. Eventually, overwhelming numbers begin to tell, and “A” Company is forced to yield Jove and fall back upon “B” Company, which is holding Mars.

These two isolated companies doggedly hold their ground for several hours. The situation only improves when the Divisional pioneer battalion, the 11th Hampshire Regiment, digs a communication trench across the fire-swept no-man’s-land, thereby allowing the support companies of the Rangers to come to the aid of their comrades. The front is finally stabilised three days later when 7th Leinster Regiment recaptures and consolidates Jove and successfully assaults the untaken section of Tunnel Trench.

On the first day of the Battle of Cambrai, General Byng’s eight attacking Divisions achieve complete surprise and pierce the Hindenburg Line, driving the Germans back four miles toward Cambrai itself. Having captured 8,000 prisoners and 100 guns for the loss of only 5,000 British casualties, it is small wonder that church bells are sounded in celebration in Britain for the first time during the war.

Unfortunately, Byng lacks sufficient reserves to exploit, or consolidate his success, and German counterattacks, launched by some 20 Divisions, recover most of the lost ground. Although the battle ultimately ends in failure for the British, the willingness to employ new weaponry and tactics at Cambrai and during the diversionary assault upon Tunnel Trench, points the way to the final victory in 1918.

Although the capture of Tunnel Trench contributes greatly to the early success at Cambrai, it proves costly as VI Corps suffers 805 casualties. Most of these occur close to Jove Mebus, where the Connaught Rangers had engaged the enemy in hand-to-hand combat.

Perhaps an idea of the ferocious nature of this form of trench warfare can be gleaned from Father William Doyle, chaplain of the 8th Royal Irish Fusiliers, who once remarks, “We should have had more prisoners, only a hot-blooded Irishman is a dangerous customer when he gets behind a bayonet and wants to let daylight through everybody.”

(From: “Tunnel Trench: 16th (Irish) Division Clears the Way at Cambrai,” by Kieron Punch, posted by The Wild Geese, http://www.thewildgeese.irish, January 18, 2013 | Pictured: Troops from the Royal Irish Regiment about to go into action at Cambrai)


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Death of W. T. Cosgrave, First President of the Free State Executive Council

William Thomas Cosgrave, Irish Fine Gael politician who serves as the first president of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State (1922-32), dies in The Liberties, Dublin, on November 16, 1965. He also serves as Leader of the Opposition in both the Free State and Ireland (1932-44), Leader of Fine Gael (1934-44), founder and leader of Fine Gael’s predecessor, Cumann na nGaedheal (1923-33), Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State (August 1922-December 1922), the President of Dáil Éireann (September 1922-December 1922), the Minister for Finance (1922-23) and Minister for Local Government (1919-22). He serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) (1921-44) and is a member of parliament (MP) for the North Kilkenny constituency (1918-22).

Cosgrave is born at 174 James’s Street, Dublin, on June 5, 1880, to Thomas Cosgrave, grocer, and Bridget Cosgrave (née Nixon). He is educated at the Christian Brothers School at Malahide Road, Marino, Dublin, before entering his father’s publican business. He first becomes politically active when he attends the first Sinn Féin convention in 1905.

At an early age, Cosgrave is attracted to the Irish nationalist party Sinn Féin. He becomes a member of the Dublin Corporation in 1909 and is subsequently reelected to represent Sinn Féin interests. He joins the Irish Volunteers in 1913, although he never joins the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) because he does not believe in secret societies. When the group splits in 1914 upon the outbreak of World War I, he sides with a radical Sinn Féin minority against the constitutional nationalists led by John Redmond, who supports the British war effort.

Cosgrave takes part in the 1916 Easter Rising and is afterward interned by the British for a short time. In 1917, he is elected to Parliament for the city of Kilkenny. In the sweeping election victory of Sinn Féin in the 1918 United Kingdom general election, he becomes a member of the First Dáil. He is made Minister for Local Government in the first republican ministry, and during the Irish War of Independence (1919–21) his task is to organize the refusal of local bodies to cooperate with the British in Dublin.

Cosgrave is a supporter of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty settlement with Great Britain, and he becomes Minister of Local Government in Ireland’s provisional government of 1922. He replaces Michael Collins as Chairman of the Provisional Government when the latter becomes commander-in-chief of the National Army in July 1922. He also replaces Arthur Griffith as president of the Dáil after Griffith’s sudden death on August 12, 1922. As the first president of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State, he, who had helped found the political party Cumann na nGaedheal in April 1923 and became its leader, represents Ireland at the Imperial Conference in October 1923. A month earlier he is welcomed as Ireland’s first spokesman at the assembly of the League of Nations.

Cosgrave’s greatest achievement is to establish stable democratic government in Ireland after the Irish Civil War (1922–23). In the Dáil there is no serious opposition, since the party headed by Éamon de Valera, which refuses to take the oath prescribed in the treaty, abstains from attendance. But neither Cosgrave nor his ministry enjoy much popularity. Order requires drastic measures, and taxation is heavy and sharply collected. He seems sure of a long tenure only because there is no alternative in sight.

In July 1927, shortly after a general election, the assassination of Kevin O’Higgins, the vice president, produces a crisis. The Executive Council introduces a Public Safety Act, which legislates severely against political associations of an unconstitutional character and introduces a bill declaring that no candidature for the Dáil should be accepted unless the candidate declares willingness to take a seat in the Dáil and to take the oath of allegiance. The result of this measure is that de Valera and his party decide to attend sessions in the Dáil, and, since this greatly alters the parliamentary situation, Cosgrave obtains leave to dissolve the assembly and hold a general election. The September 1927 Irish general election leaves his party numerically the largest in the Dáil but without an overall majority. He continues in office until de Valera’s victory at the 1932 Irish general election. Cumann na nGaedheal joins with two smaller opposition parties in September 1933 to form a new party headed by Cosgrave, Fine Gael (“Irish Race”), which becomes Ireland’s main opposition party. In 1944 he resigns from the leadership of Fine Gael.

Cosgrave dies on November 16, 1965, at the age of 85. The Fianna Fáil government under Seán Lemass awards him the honour of a state funeral, which is attended by the Cabinet, the leaders of all the main Irish political parties, and Éamon de Valera, then President of Ireland. He is buried in Goldenbridge Cemetery in Inchicore, Dublin. Richard Mulcahy says, “It is in terms of the Nation and its needs and its potential that I praise God who gave us in our dangerous days the gentle but steel-like spirit of rectitude, courage and humble self-sacrifice, that was William T. Cosgrave.”

While Cosgrave never officially holds the office of Taoiseach (prime minister), Ireland considers him to be its first Taoiseach due to having been the Free State’s first head of government.

Cosgrave’s son, Liam, serves as a TD (1943-81), as leader of Fine Gael (1965-77) and Taoiseach (1973-77). His grandson, also named Liam, also serves as a TD and as Senator. His granddaughter, Louise Cosgrave, serves on the Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council (1999-2009).

In October 2014, Cosgrave’s grave is vandalised, the top of a Celtic cross on the headstone being broken off. It is again vandalised in March 2016.


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Death of Thomas Addis Emmet, Lawyer & Politician

Thomas Addis Emmet, Irish and American lawyer and politician, dies at his home in New York on November 14, 1827, following a seizure while in court. He is a senior member of the revolutionary republican group Society of United Irishmen in the 1790s and Attorney General of New York 1812–1813.

Emmett is born in the Hammond’s Marsh area of Cork, County Cork, on April 24, 1764, the son of Dr. Robert Emmet from County Tipperary (later to become State Physician of Ireland) and Elizabeth Mason of County Kerry, both of whose portraits are today displayed at Cork’s Crawford Art Gallery. He is the elder brother of Robert Emmet, who is executed for leading the Irish Rebellion of 1803, becoming one of Ireland’s most famous republican martyrs. His sister, Mary Anne Holmes, holds similar political beliefs.

Emmet is educated at Trinity College, Dublin and is a member of the committee of the College Historical Society. He later studies medicine at the University of Edinburgh and is a pupil of Dugald Stewart in philosophy. After visiting the chief medical schools on the continent, he returns to Ireland in 1788. However, the sudden death of his elder brother, Christopher Temple Emmet (1761–1788), a student of great distinction, induces him to follow the advice of Sir James Mackintosh to forsake medicine for the law as a profession.

Emmet is a man of liberal political sympathies and becomes involved with a campaign to extend the democratic franchise for the Irish Parliament and to end discrimination against Catholics. He is called to the Irish bar in 1790 and quickly obtains a practice, principally as counsel for prisoners charged with political offenses. He also becomes the legal adviser of the Society of the United Irishmen.

When the Dublin Corporation issues a declaration of support of the Protestant Ascendancy in 1792, the response of the United Irishmen is their nonsectarian manifesto which is largely drawn up by Emmet. In 1795 he formally takes the oath of the United Irishmen, becoming secretary in the same year and a member of the executive in 1797. As by this time the United Irishmen had been declared illegal and driven underground, any efforts at peaceful reform of government and Catholic emancipation in Ireland are abandoned as futile, and their goal is now the creation of a non-sectarian Irish republic, independent from Britain and to be achieved by armed rebellion. Although Emmet supports this policy, he believes that the rebellion should not commence until French aid has arrived, differing from more radical members such as Lord Edward FitzGerald.

British intelligence infiltrates the United Irishmen and manages to arrest most of their leaders on the eve of the rebellion. Though not among those taken at the house of Oliver Bond on March 12, 1798, Emmet is arrested about the same time and is one of the leaders imprisoned initially at Kilmainham Gaol and later in Scotland at Fort George until 1802. Upon his release he goes to Brussels where he is visited by his brother Robert in October 1802 and is informed of the preparations for a fresh rising in Ireland in conjunction with French aid. However, at that stage France and Britain are briefly at peace, and the Emmets’ pleas for help are turned down by Napoleon.

Emmet receives news of the failure of his brother’s rising in July 1803 in Paris, where he is in communication with Napoleon. He then emigrates to the United States and joins the New York bar where he obtains a lucrative practice.

After the death of Matthias B. Hildreth, Emmet is appointed New York State Attorney General in August 1812 but is removed from office in February 1813 when the opposing Federalist Party obtains a majority in the Council of Appointment.

Emmet’s abilities and successes become so acclaimed, and his services so requested that he becomes one of the most respected attorneys in the nation, with United States Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story declaring him to be “the favourite counsellor of New York.” He argues the case for Aaron Ogden in the landmark United States Supreme Court case of Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824) relating to the Commerce and Supremacy clauses of the United States Constitution.

Emmet dies on November 14, 1827, while conducting a case in court regarding the estate of Robert Richard Randall, the founder of Sailors’ Snug Harbor, a home for needy seamen in Staten Island, New York. He is buried in St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery churchyard in the East Village, New York City, where a large white marble monument marks his grave.


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Death of Character Actor Liam Redmond

Liam Redmond, Irish character actor known for his stage, film and television roles, dies in Dublin on October 28, 1989, following a lengthy illness.

Redmond is born in Limerick, County Limerick, on July 27, 1913, one of four children born to cabinet-maker Thomas and Eileen Redmond. Educated at the Christian Brothers schools in Dublin, he later attends University College Dublin (UCD) and initially reads medicine before moving into drama.

While Director of the Dramatic Society, Redmond meets and marries the society’s secretary, Barbara MacDonagh, sister of Donagh MacDonagh and daughter of 1916 Easter Rising leader Thomas MacDonagh and Muriel Gifford. They have four children.

Redmond is invited to join the Abbey Theatre in 1935 as a producer by William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet. Yeats writes his play Death of Cú Chulainn for Redmond to star as Cú Chulainn, hero of one of Ireland’s foundational myths.

Redmond makes his acting debut at the Abbey Theatre in 1935 in Seán O’Casey‘s The Silver Tassie. His first stage appearance is in 1939 in New York City in The White Steed. After returning to Britain at the outbreak of World War II he is a regular on the London stage. He is one of the founders of the Writers’, Artists’, Actors’ and Musicians’ Association (WAAMA), a precursor of the Irish Actors’ Equity Association. His insistence that “part-time professionals” – usually civil servants who act on the side – should be paid a higher rate than professional actors for both rehearsal time and performance, effectively wiping out this class, raising the wages and fees of working actors.

Redmond stars in Broadway, among other plays starring in Paul Vincent Carroll‘s The White Steed in 1939, playing Canon McCooey in The Wayward Saint in 1955, winning the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for his performance, and starring in 1968 in Joe Orton‘s Loot and Brian Friel‘s The Loves of Cass Maguire.

Redmond works in television and film throughout the 1950s to the 1980s and is regularly seen in television series such as The Avengers, Daniel Boone, The Saint and Z-Cars. He is often called upon as a character actor in various military, religious and judicial roles in films such as I See a Dark Stranger (1946), Captain Boycott (1947), High Treason (1951), The Cruel Sea (1953), The Playboy of the Western World (1962), Kid Galahad (1962), The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1964), Tobruk (1967), The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966) and Barry Lyndon (1975). His performance as the kindly occult expert in the cult horror film Night of the Demon (1957) is a favourite of fans of the film.

Redmond retires to Dublin and dies at age 76, after a long period of ill health, on October 28, 1989. His wife Barbara predeceases him in 1987.


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Death of Rose Maynard Barton, Watercolour Artist

Rose Maynard Barton RWS, Anglo-Irish artist, dies on October 10, 1929, at her house at 79 Park Mansions, Knightsbridge, London. A watercolourist, she paints landscape, street scenes, gardens, child portraiture and illustrations of the townscape of Britain and Ireland.

Barton exhibits with a number of different painting societies, most notably the Water Colour Society of Ireland (WCSI), the Royal Academy of Arts (RA), the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), the Society of Women Artists (SWA) and the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS). She becomes a full member of the RWS in 1911.

Barton is born in Dublin on April 21, 1856. Her father is a lawyer from Rochestown, County Tipperary, and her mother’s family is from County Galway. Educated privately, she is a liberal in social affairs. Her interests include horse racing. She is cousins with sisters Eva Henrietta and Letitia Marion Hamilton. She begins exhibiting her broad-wash watercolour paintings with the Water Colour Society of Ireland (WCSI) in 1872. She and her sister Emily visit Brussels in 1875, where they receive drawing tuition in drawing and fine art painting under the French artist Henri Gervex. There, along with her close friend Mildred Anne Butler, she begins to study figure painting and figure drawing.

In 1879, Barton joins the local committee of the Irish Fine Art Society. Afterward she trains at Paul Jacob Naftel‘s art studio in London. She, like Butler, studies under Naftel. In 1882, she exhibits her painting Dead Game, at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA). In 1884, she exhibits at the Royal Academy of Arts (RA). Later, she shows at the Japanese Gallery, the Dudley Museum and Art Gallery and the Grosvenor Gallery in London. In 1893, she becomes an associate member of the Society of Painters in Water Colours, attaining full membership in 1911.

Barton’s watercolours and townscapes become well known in both Dublin and London. This is helped by her illustrations in books of both cities including Picturesque Dublin, Old and New by Francis Farmer and her own book Familiar London.

Barton’s paintings can be found in public collections of Irish painting in both Ireland and Britain, including the National Gallery of Ireland and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane in Dublin, and the Ulster Museum in Belfast.

(Pictured: “A rest in rotten row” – 1892 watercolour by Rose Maynard Barton. The painting shows a nurse and child resting on Rotten Row, Hyde Park, London.)


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Birth of Alexander Campbell, Ulster Scots Minister

Alexander Campbell, an Ulster Scots immigrant who becomes an ordained minister in the United States, is born on September 12, 1788, near Ballymena, in the parish of Broughshane, County Antrim.

Campbell is the eldest son of Thomas Campbell and Jane Campbell (née Corneigle), who marry in 1787 and later have four daughters and two younger sons. His father, the son of soldier Archibald Campbell and his wife Alice McNally, is born on February 1, 1763, at Sheepbridge, near Newry, County Down. The Presbyterian minister William Campbell may have been a relation.

Archibald Campbell is born Catholic but joins the Church of Ireland, while his son joins the seceding branch of the Presbyterian church and studies at the University of Glasgow, graduating with a Master of Arts degree in 1786, although he does not appear in the published records of the university. He becomes a teacher but is determined to become a minister, and studies in the Anti-Burgher Divinity Hall in Whitburn, West Lothian (or the Seceder Theological Seminary in Whithorn, Wigtownshire, according to another source) for two months each year for five years. He is ordained a minister in the seceding congregation of Ahorey, County Armagh, probably in 1798. Although at first a member of the Anti-Burgher party in his church, Thomas Campbell begins to believe that divisions between and within denominations are prejudicial to true Christianity. He writes a report in 1804 suggesting that Burgher and Anti-Burgher Presbyterians in Ireland should unite. When this is vetoed in 1805 by the General Associate Synod of Scotland, Thomas Campbell, then moderator of the Irish Seceding Synod, initiates an unsuccessful move to seek independence from Scottish control. His experiences with church authorities undoubtedly increase his belief in the need to rediscover the scriptural basis of religion, freed from man-made creeds.

In 1804, Thomas Campbell sets up an academy at Richhill, County Armagh. In 1798, he is one of the founders of the Evangelical Society of Ulster in which clergymen from differing sects cooperate but resigns when this enterprise is frowned on by seceding authorities.

In poor health in 1806, Thomas Campbell resigns from Ahorey, and goes to the United States in 1807, where he preaches in small congregations around Washington, Pennsylvania. He is soon accused of doctrinal unsoundness, of disciplinary laxity and of administering the sacraments to non-Presbyterians. His appeal to the Associate Synod of North America is unsuccessful, and in 1809 he ceases to be a minister of the seceder church. His liberal views on Christian unity and on the paramount importance of the Bible attract supporters, and in 1809 they found the Christian Association of Washington. He publishes a declaration and address in which he sets out the principles of this body. His followers claim it represents a “second reformation” or a “restoration.” It forms the basis of the doctrine of what becomes America’s most important indigenous religious development, and is regarded as significant in the history of the wider ecumenical movement. He publishes a great many other tracts and articles. Thomas Campbell dies in Bethany, West Virginia, on January 4, 1854.

Thomas had married Jane Corneigle in 1787 and their eldest son Alexander is born on September 12, 1788, in Broughshane, County Antrim, where his father is teaching. His parents intend him for the ministry, and he receives a good education, partly from his father, and religious training from both parents. He is greatly influenced by his strongminded and pious mother. In October 1808 his family sets sail for America to join his father. The ship is wrecked on the island of Islay, off Scotland. All on board are saved, partly thanks to Alexander’s strength and leadership. Rather than continuing the voyage by other means, Alexander spends eight months in the University of Glasgow to prepare himself for the ministry.

In the summer of 1809, the family finally arrives in Pennsylvania, among many emigrants from Ulster. On January 1, 1812, Campbell is ordained as a minister by his father’s Brush Run Church, and quickly takes over the leadership of the fledgling church. By 1812, most of their followers, thenceforth often called Campbellites, have undergone baptism by immersion; a union with the Baptist denomination results, but does not survive after 1830, by which date Campbell’s work on a translation of the Greek New Testament has convinced him that baptism is unscriptural. Controversy between the two groups continues for many years.

A very able preacher and debater, whose public discussions attract much attention, Campbell attacks the creeds and governance of established churches. In 1823, he founds the journal the Christian Baptist. Subsequently in 1830, after the break with the Baptists, he starts the Millennial Harbinger. Both periodicals are largely written by Campbell and his father, Thomas, and are widely influential. He is convinced that church unity will usher in a millennial age of peace and harmony. Primitive Christianity is thus to bring about a utopian future. His book Christianity Restored (1835) is widely read, in Britain as well as in the United States. In 1826, a translation of the Greek New Testament is printed by Campbell’s press in Bethany, West Virginia. Largely based on recent translations by others, it nonetheless contains variant readings by Campbell and furthers his aim of providing followers with authoritative texts on which to base their beliefs. In 1841, he founds Bethany College, West Virginia, and is its president until his death in Bethany on March 4, 1866, when he leaves it $10,000 and a large library.

In 1832, several fledgling churches join the Campbellites, and form a new body called the Christian Church, or Disciples of Christ, which today has over 3,000 congregations in the United States. The two guiding principles of the lifelong beliefs of the Campbells are in the end irreconcilable. An emphasis on the literal interpretation of scripture allows believers to form beliefs at variance from those of co-religionists, and neither Alexander Campbell’s great authority in the denomination nor Thomas Campbell’s emphasis on the need for church unity are enough to prevent the fissions inevitable in a church that so strongly opposes man-made creeds. There are now at least six major divisions of the Church of Christ, one of several alternative names.

On March 2, 1811, Campbell marries Margaret Brown, and thenceforth derives his income from the large farm that had belonged to her family. They have eight children, who all die in their father’s lifetime. Margaret Brown Campbell dies on October 22, 1827. On July 31, 1828, in fulfilment of his wife’s dying request, the widower marries the English-born Selina Huntington Bakewell, and has six children with her. Four of those children survive him. Selina Campbell writes a memoir of her husband, published in 1882, and lives until 1897.

(From: “Campbell, Alexander” by Linde Lunney, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, last revised May 2021)


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Founding of the Auxiliaries Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary

The Auxiliary Division, generally known as the Auxiliaries or Auxies, a paramilitary unit of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) during the Irish War of Independence (1919-21), is founded on July 27, 1920, by Major-General Henry Hugh Tudor. It is made up of former British Army officers, most of whom come from Great Britain and had fought in World War I.

In September 1919, the Commander-in-Chief, Ireland, Sir Frederick Shaw, suggests that the police force in Ireland be expanded via the recruitment of a special force of volunteer British ex-servicemen. During a Cabinet meeting on May 11, 1920, the Secretary of State for War, Winston Churchill, suggests the formation of a “Special Emergency Gendarmerie, which would become a branch of the Royal Irish Constabulary.” Churchill’s proposal is referred to a committee chaired by General Sir Nevil Macready, Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in Ireland. Macready’s committee rejects Churchill’s proposal, but it is revived two months later, in July, by the Police Adviser to the Dublin Castle administration in Ireland, Major-General Henry Hugh Tudor. In a memo dated July 6, 1920, Tudor justifies the scheme on the grounds that it will take too long to reinforce the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) with ordinary recruits. Tudor’s new “Auxiliary Force” is to be strictly temporary with its members enlisting for a year. Their pay is to be £7 per week (twice what a constable is paid), plus a sergeant’s allowances, and are to be known as “Temporary Cadets.” At that time, one of high unemployment, a London advertisement for ex-officers to manage coffee stalls at two pounds ten shillings a week receives five thousand applicants.

The Auxiliary Division is recruited in Great Britain from among ex-officers who had served in World War I, especially those who had served in the British Army (including the Royal Flying Corps). Most recruits are from Britain, although some are from Ireland, and others come from other parts of the British Empire. Many have been highly decorated in the war and three, James Leach, James Johnson, and George Onions, have been awarded the Victoria Cross (VC). Enlisted men who had been commissioned as officers during the war often find it difficult to adjust to their loss of status and pay in civilian life, and some historians have concluded that the Auxiliary Division recruited large numbers of these “temporary gentlemen.”

Piaras Béaslaí, a former senior member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) who supports the Anglo-Irish Treaty, while paying tribute to the bravery of the Auxiliaries, notes that the force is not composed exclusively of ex-officers but contains “criminal elements,” some of whom robbed people on the streets of Dublin and in their homes.

Recruiting began in July 1920, and by November 1921, the division is 1,900 strong. The Auxiliaries are nominally part of the RIC, but actually operate more or less independently in rural areas. Divided into companies, each about one hundred strong, heavily armed and highly mobile, they operate in ten counties, mostly in the south and west, where IRA activity is greatest. They wear either RIC uniforms or their old army uniforms with appropriate police badges, along with distinctive tam o’ shanter caps. They are commanded by Brigadier-General Frank Percy Crozier.

The elite ex-officer division proves to be much more effective than the Black and Tans especially in the key area of gathering intelligence. Auxiliary companies are intended as mobile striking and raiding forces, and they score some notable successes against the IRA. On November 20, the night before Bloody Sunday, they capture Dick McKee and Peadar Clancy, the commandant and vice-commandant of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade, and murder them in Dublin Castle. That same night, they catch Liam Pilkington, commandant of the Sligo IRA, in a separate raid. A month later, in December, they catch Ernie O’Malley completely by surprise in County Kilkenny. He is reading in his room when a Temporary Cadet opens the door and walks in. “He was as unexpected as death,” says O’Malley. In his memoirs, the commandant of the Clare IRA, Michael Brennan, describes how the Auxiliaries nearly capture him three nights in a row.

IRA commanders become concerned about the morale of their units as to many Volunteers the Auxiliaries seem to be “super fighters and all but invincible.” Those victories which are won over the Auxiliaries are among the most celebrated in the Irish War of Independence. On November 28, 1920, for example, a platoon of Auxiliaries is ambushed and wiped out in the Kilmichael Ambush by Tom Barry and the 3rd Cork Brigade. A little more than two months later, on February 2, 1921, another platoon of Auxiliaries is ambushed by Seán Mac Eoin and the North Longford Flying Column in the Clonfin Ambush. On March 19, 1921, the 3rd Cork Brigade of the IRA defeats a large-scale attempt by the British Army and Auxiliary Division to encircle and trap them at Crossbarry. On April 15, 1921, Captain Roy Mackinnon, commanding officer of H Company of the Auxiliary Division, is assassinated by the Kerry IRA.

Successes require reliable intelligence and raids often bring no result — or sometimes worse. In one case, they arrest a Castle official, Law Adviser W. E. Wylie, by mistake. In another, more notorious case, on April 19, 1921, they raid the Shannon Hotel in Castleconnell, County Limerick, on a tip that there are suspicious characters drinking therein. The “suspicious characters” turn out to be three off-duty members of the RIC. Both sides mistake the other for insurgents and open fire. Three people, an RIC man, an Auxiliary Cadet and a civilian, are killed in the shootout that follows.

The Auxiliary Division is disbanded along with the RIC in 1922. Although the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty requires the Irish Free State to assume responsibility for the pensions of RIC members, the Auxiliaries are explicitly excluded from this provision. Following their disbandment, many of its former personnel join the Palestine Police Force in the British-controlled territory.

The anti-insurgency activities of the Auxiliaries Division have become interchangeable with those conducted by the Black and Tans, leading to many atrocities committed by them being attributed to the Black and Tans. Nevertheless, both British units remain equally reviled in Ireland.

The Auxiliaries are featured in historical drama films like Michael Collins, The Last September, and The Wind That Shakes the Barley.

(Pictured: Cap badge design for F Company of the Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary)


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Death of Edith Anne Stoney, First Woman Medical Physicist

Edith Anne Stoney, considered to be the first woman medical physicist, dies in Bournemouth, England, on June 25, 1938.

Stoney is born into an old-established Anglo-Irish scientific family at 40 Wellington Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin, on January 6, 1869. The daughter of George Johnstone Stoney, FRS, an eminent physicist who coins the term “electron” in 1891 as the “fundamental unit quantity of electricity,” and his wife and cousin, Margaret Sophia Stoney. One of her two brothers, George Gerald, is an engineer and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). One of her two sisters, Florence Stoney, is a radiologist and receives an OBE. Her cousin is the Dublin-based physicist George Francis FitzGerald FRS (1851–1901), and her uncle Bindon Blood Stoney FRS is Engineer of Dublin Port, renowned for building a number of the main Dublin bridges and developing the Quayside.

Stoney demonstrates considerable mathematical talent and gains a scholarship at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she achieves a First in the Part I Tripos examination in 1893. However, she is not awarded a University of Cambridge degree as women are excluded from graduation until 1948. During her time at Newnham, she is in charge of the College telescope. She is later awarded a BA and an MA from Trinity College Dublin, after they accept women in 1904.

After briefly working on gas turbine calculations and searchlight design for Sir Charles Algernon Parsons, she takes a mathematics teaching post at the Cheltenham Ladies’ College.

Following the 1876 Medical Act, it is illegal for academic institutions to prevent access to medical education based on gender. The first medical school for women in Britain is established in 1874 by Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake in anticipation of this law. The London School of Medicine for Women quickly becomes part of the University of London, with clinical teaching at the Royal Free Hospital. Stoney’s sister Florence is a student at the school, graduates in medicine with honours in 1895 (MB BS) and obtains her MD in 1898. Meanwhile, Stoney gains an appointment as a physics lecturer at the school in 1899. Her first tasks are to set up a physics laboratory and design the physics course. The laboratory is planned for 20 students, and the course content is pure physics, as required by university regulations. It includes mechanics, magnetism, electricity, optics, sound, heat and energy. In her obituary in The Lancet, an ex-student of hers notes: “Her lectures on physics mostly developed into informal talks, during which Miss Stoney, usually in a blue pinafore, scratched on a blackboard with coloured chalks, turning anxiously at intervals to ask ‘Have you taken my point?’. She was perhaps too good a mathematician … to understand the difficulties of the average medical student, but experience had taught her how distressing these could be”.

In 1901, the Royal Free Hospital appoints Florence into a new part-time position of medical electrician. The following April, the two sisters open a new x-ray service in the electrical department. During their time at the Royal Free Hospital, the two sisters actively support the women’s suffrage movement, though oppose the direct violent action with which it is later associated.

During her time at the school, Stoney also plays a central role in the British Federation of University Women (BFUW). She is elected treasurer, in her absence, at the first executive meeting on October 9, 1909, a position she holds until the end of May 1915. She becomes increasingly engaged with the political lobbying of the Federation. At the executive meeting on October 19, 1912, she proposes the names of two members for a subcommittee to secure the passing into law of a bill to enable women to become barristers, solicitors or parliamentary agents. The legislation is eventually enacted after the war within the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919.

Stoney resigns her post at the school in March 1915 and it is recorded that “with due regret and most unwillingly a change is desirable in the physics lectureship.” She is offered £300 on tendering her resignation.

Both Stoney and Florence offer their services to the British Red Cross at the War Office in London, to provide a radiological service to support the troops in Europe, on the day Britain declares war. Their offer is refused, because they are women. Florence sets up her own unit with the Women’s Imperial Service League and spends the next 6 months in Europe. Stoney organises supplies from London where she also serves on the League’s committee. Florence returns to London at the time Stoney resigns from the London School of Medicine for Women. She contacts the Scottish Women’s Hospitals (SWH), an organisation formed in 1914 to give medical support in the field of battle and financed by the women’s suffrage movement. The organisation has gained agreement to set up a new 250-bed tented hospital at Domaine de Chanteloup, Sainte-Savine, near Troyes (France), funded by the Cambridge women’s colleges of Girton and Newnham and it becomes her role to plan and operate the x-ray facilities. She establishes stereoscopy to localise bullets and shrapnel and introduces the use of x-rays in the diagnosis of gas gangrene, interstitial gas being a mandate for immediate amputation to give any chance of survival.

The hospital is near the front line and, in her own words, by September 1915, “the town had been evacuated, the station had been mined, and we heard the heavy guns ever going at nighttime.” The unit is entirely female, except for two part-time male drivers, and her technical assistant, Mr. Mallett.

They are assigned to the Corps Expéditionnaire d’Orient and ordered to move to Serbia. After boarding the steamship Mossoul in Marseille, they reach Salonika (known as Thessaloniki in modern Greece) on November 3, where they take the night train north to Ghevgheli (now Gevgelija in modern North Macedonia), on the Serbian side of the Greek border. They set up a hospital in an unused silk factory where they treat 100 patients with injuries ranging from frostbite to severe lung and head wounds. Following defeats at the hands of Bulgarian forces, Stoney and her staff retreat to Salonika by December 6, 1916. Eleven days later, they have re-established the hospital on a drained low swamp by the sea, and by New Year’s Day 1917 she has the lights on and the x-rays working. Despite the lack of equipment and resources, she establishes an electrotherapy department and various equipments for the muscular rehabilitation of the soldiers in their care. She also assists with problems on two British hospital ships, on which the x-ray systems have been damaged during a storm and gives support to the SWH unit in Ostrovo (now Arnissa on Lake Vegoritida formerly lake Ostrovo in Northern Greece), which arrives during September 1916. She has a break for sick leave in December 1917 and returns the following summer. She applies for an appointment as an army camp radiologist in Salonika, but her demand is blocked by the War Office.

In October 1917, Stoney returns to France to lead the x-ray departments at the SWH hospitals of Royaumont and Villers-Cotterêts. In March 1918, she has to supervise a camp closure and retreat for the third time, when Villers-Cotterêts is overrun by the German troops. During the final months of the war the fighting intensifies and there is a steep increase in workload. In the month of June alone the x-ray workload peaks at over 1,300, partly because of an increased use of fluoroscopy.

Stoney’s war service is recognised by several countries, and she is awarded the Médaille des épidémies du ministère de la Guerre and the Croix de Guerre from France, the Order of St. Sava from Serbia, and the Victory Medal and British War Medal from Britain.

On returning to England, Stoney takes a post as lecturer in physics in the Household and Social Science department at King’s College for Women which she holds until retirement in 1925. After leaving King’s she moves to Bournemouth, where she lives with her sister Florence, who is suffering from spinal cancer, dying in 1932.

During her retirement, Stoney resumes her work with the BFUW for which she had acted as the first treasurer before the war. She becomes one of the earliest (and oldest) members of the Women’s Engineering Society and plays an active part in the organisation until shortly before her death. She travels widely and, in 1934, she speaks to the Australian Federation of University Women on the subject of women in engineering, highlighting the contribution made by women workers during the war. In 1936, she establishes the Johnstone and Florence Stoney Studentship in the BFUW, for “research in biological, geological, meteorological or radiological science undertaken preferably in Australia, New Zealand or South Africa.” The studentship is now administered by Newnham College, Cambridge, and supports clinical medical students going abroad for their elective period. The declaration of Trust is dated February 11, 1942 and the Johnstone And Florence Stoney Studentship Fund Charity is registered on March 25, 1976.

Stoney dies on June 25, 1938, at age 69, and obituaries are printed in both the scientific and medical press – Nature, The Lancet, The Woman Engineer and national newspapers in England, The Times and Australia.

Stoney is remembered for her considerable bravery and resourcefulness in the face of extreme danger, and her imagination in contributing to clinical care under the most difficult conditions of war. As a strong advocate of education for women, she enables young graduate women to spend time on research overseas and another to enable physicists to enter medical school thanks to the fund she created. Through her work and engagements, she is remembered as a pioneer of medical physics.

(Pictured: Edith Anne Stoney during her time in Cambridge in the early 1890s)


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Birth of Richard Colley Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley

Richard Colley Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, Anglo-Irish politician and colonial administrator, is born on June 20, 1760, at Dangan Castle, County Meath. He, as governor of Madras (now Chennai) and governor-general of Bengal (both 1797–1805), greatly enlarges the British Empire in India and, as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1821–28, 1833–34), attempts to reconcile Protestants and Roman Catholics in a bitterly divided country. Throughout his life he displays an ever-increasing jealousy of his younger brother Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, despite his own achievements.

Born Richard Colley Wesley, he is the eldest son of Garret Wesley, 1st Earl of Mornington (he changes the family surname to Wellesley in 1789). He is educated at the Royal School, Armagh, Harrow School, Eton College, and Christ Church, Oxford, although he leaves the latter in 1781, following his father’s death, before completing his degree. He enters the Irish House of Commons in 1780 and, after he inherits his father’s Irish titles in 1781, moves to the Irish House of Lords. A moderately liberal disciple of Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, he wins a seat in the British House of Commons in 1784 and serves there until 1797. From 1793 he is a member of the British Privy Council and a commissioner of the India Board of Control.

As Governor-General of India, Wellesley uses military force and diplomacy to strengthen and expand British authority. East India Company forces defeat and kill Tipu Sultan, Indian Muslim ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore (present-day Mysuru) and sympathizer for Revolutionary France, in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War (1799), and he then restores the Hindu dynasty there that had been deposed by Tipu’s father, Hyder Ali. He annexes much territory after his brother Arthur and General Gerard Lake defeat the Maratha Confederacy of states in the Deccan Plateau (peninsular India). In addition, he forces the Oudh State to surrender numerous important cities to the British, and he contracts with other states a series of “subsidiary alliances” by which all parties recognize British preponderance. He receives a barony in the British peerage in 1797 at the time of his appointment as governor-general, and in 1799 he is awarded a marquessate in the Irish peerage for his victory in the Mysore War.

When Wellesley is faced with an invasion by Zaman Shah Durrani, ruler (1793–1800) of Kabul (Afghanistan), he utilizes his envoy, Captain John Malcolm, to induce Fatḥ-Alī Shah Qajar of Qajar Iran to restrain Zaman Shah Durrani and to give British political and commercial interests preference over the French. On receiving a British government order to restore to France its former possessions in India, he refuses to comply. His policy is vindicated when the Treaty of Amiens (1802) is violated, and Great Britain resumes war against Napoleonic France.

Wellesley’s annexations and the vast military expenditure that he had authorized alarms the court of directors of the East India Company. In 1805, he is recalled, and soon afterward he is threatened with impeachment, although two years later he refuses an offer of the foreign secretaryship. In 1809, he goes to Spain to make diplomatic arrangements for the Peninsular War against France and later that year becomes foreign secretary under Prime Minister Spencer Perceval. In that office he antagonizes his colleagues, who consider him an indolent megalomaniac and welcome his resignation in February 1812. Unlike most of them, however, he had urged a stronger war effort in Spain and had advocated political rights for British Roman Catholics. After Perceval’s assassination on May 11, 1812, he attempts unsuccessfully to form a government at the request of the prince regent (the future King George IV).

As Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Wellesley disappoints the anti-Catholic George IV, and he is about to be removed when his brother, Arthur, is appointed prime minister in January 1828. He then resigns because his brother is opposed to Roman Catholic emancipation, although the duke is constrained to accept that policy as a political necessity in 1829. His second term as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1833–34) ends with the fall of Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey’s reform government. When the Whig Party returns to power in April 1835, he is not sent back to Ireland, and in his rage, he threatens to shoot the prime minister, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne. He wants to be created Duke of Hindustan so that his rank will equal that of his brother.

Wellesley dies at the age of 82 on September 26, 1842, at Knightsbridge, London. He is buried in Eton College Chapel, at his old school. He and Arthur, after a long estrangement, had been once more on friendly terms for some years. Arthur weeps at the funeral and says that he knows of no honour greater than being Lord Wellesley’s brother.

Wellesley’s library is sold at auction in London by R. H. Evans on January 17, 1843 (and three following days); a copy of the catalogue, annotated with prices and buyers’ names, is held at Cambridge University Library.

Wellesley has several children, including three sons, but none are legitimate. The marquessate thus becomes extinct upon his death. The earldom of Mornington goes to his next surviving brother, William Wellesley-Pole.

(From: “Richard Colley Wellesley, Marquess Wellesley, British statesman,” written and fact-checked by the Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com, April 2024 | Pictured: “Richard Colley Wellesley, Marquess of Wellesley (1760-1842),” oil on canvas portrait by Thomas Lawrence, 1812-13)


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Death of Andrew O’Connor, American Irish Sculptor

Andrew O’Connor, American Irish sculptor whose work is represented in museums in the United States, Ireland, Britain and France, dies in Dublin on June 9, 1941.

O’Connor is born on June 7, 1874, at Worcester, Massachusetts, the eldest of three sons and two daughters of Andrew O’Connor, a stonecutter from Lanarkshire, Scotland, who becomes a professional sculptor, and Marie Anne O’Connor (née McFadden), of County Antrim. Educated in Worcester public schools, at the age of 14 he becomes apprenticed to his father, helping him to design monuments for cemeteries. He is employed in the early 1890s on sculptural work for the World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago World’s Fair), being active in the studio of William Ordway Partridge, and assisting Daniel Chester French on his colossal Statue of the Republic, a landmark of the 1893 Columbian exposition.

Moving to London (1894–98), O’Connor works on bas-reliefs in the studio of the painter John Singer Sargent, who uses him as a model for his mural Frieze of Prophets for the Boston Public Library. His first independent work, Sea Dreams, a relief of a head, is exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1896. Returning to the United States (1898–1903), he becomes a studio assistant of French, through whom he receives his first public commission, for the Vanderbilt Memorial Doors for St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, Manhattan, New York, a project completed in 1902 to wide critical acclaim. He also executes the tympanum and lateral friezes.

Around 1900, O’Connor marries an artist’s model named Nora, by whom he has a daughter. In 1902, he hires as studio model Jessie Phoebe Brown from New Jersey and of County Down parentage. The following year he elopes with her to Paris, where they marry and have four sons, the youngest of whom, Patrick O’Connor, becomes an artist and gallery curator. Jessie continues for many years as his primary model, sitting for the heads of both female and male figures, O’Connor coarsening the features for the latter.

During his years in Paris (1903–14), O’Connor is influenced by the work of Auguste Rodin, whom he befriends. Among his pupils in Paris is the American sculptor and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt Whitney. He continues to fulfil numerous commissions for funerary and public monuments in the United States, an example of the former being the Recuillement in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, near Tarrytown, New York. From 1906 he exhibits annually at the Salon in Paris, where he is the first foreigner to win a second-class medal, for his bronze statue of Gen. Henry Lawton. Included in his only exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy (1907) is a bronze relief of the prophet Nehemiah adapted from a panel of the Vanderbilt doors. The relief is subsequently included in his one-man show at the Galerie Hébrard, Paris in 1909.

In 1909, O’Connor wins a competition open to sculptors of Irish descent to execute a monument to Commodore John Barry, the County Wexford-born “father of the American navy,” for Washington, D.C. His design includes a frieze depicting events in Irish history, flanked by a group of three nude Irish emigrants entitled Exile from Ireland, and another group representing the Genius of Ireland, which includes a female figure of the “Motherland.” Probably owing to opposition from the Barry family to the depiction of their ancestor as a rough-and-ready sailor, the commission is not completed. His marble statue of Gen. Lew Wallace (author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ), a plaster of which is exhibited at the Salon in Paris in 1909, is placed by the state of Indiana in the National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol, Washington, D.C. Another marble, Peace by Justice, is commissioned as a gift from the United States to the Peace Palace in The Hague in 1913.

O’Connor returns with his family to the United States on the outbreak of World War I, and sets up a studio in Paxton, Massachusetts. In 1918, his standing statue of the youthful Abraham Lincoln is placed outside the Illinois State Capitol at Springfield, Illinois. He later presents a marble head of Lincoln to the American ambassador’s residence, Phoenix Park, Dublin. His memorial in Chicago to President Theodore Roosevelt (1919) is commissioned as a tribute to Roosevelt’s associations with the Boy Scouts of America. The design of four standing scouts, modelled on O’Connor’s sons, is exhibited at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 1920. He becomes an associate of the National Academy of Design, New York in 1919. In the early 1920s he executes an equestrian statue of the Marquis de Lafayette for South Park, at Mount Vernon, Baltimore, Maryland.

Returning to Paris in the mid-1920s, O’Connor becomes the first foreigner to win a gold medal at the Salon des Artistes in 1928, for the marble sculpture Tristan and Iseult, now held in the Brooklyn Museum, New York. The French government makes him a Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion of Honour in 1929. In 1926 he had exhibited a plaster group, Monument aux morts de la Grande Guerre, at the Salon in Paris. The sculpture is requested in 1932 by the people of Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, as a memorial to Christ the King, O’Connor obligingly altering the interpretation of his iconography. Imposed on a “Tree of life” are three figures of Christ, representing in turn “Desolation,” “Consolation” and “Triumph.” Cast in bronze, throughout World War II the statue remains hidden in Paris to avoid its being melted down for the valuable metal. Transported to Dún Laoghaire in 1949, due to clerical opposition to its unconventional iconography, it is not at first erected, but for years lay on its side in a garden in Rochestown Avenue until its eventual unveiling in 1978 as Triple Cross in Haigh Terrace, where it stands in Moran Park. His other chief work in Ireland is a bronze statue of Daniel O’Connell in the Bank of Ireland, College Green, Dublin. Inspired by Rodin’s famous Monument to Balzac, the work is executed at his studio in a converted stable at Leixlip Castle, County Kildare in 1931–32.

During the 1930s, O’Connor lives and works in London and Ireland, where he has residences at Glencullen House, County Wicklow, and 77 Merrion Square, Dublin. He dies at the latter address on June 9, 1941, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. His own bronze relief, Le feu sacré, marks the grave. A portrait painting, executed by his son Patrick in 1940, is in Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, which also holds twenty-six sculptures presented by O’Connor late in his life, and posthumously by his family. The collection includes a marble self-portrait bust of 1940, a bronze of the Lafayette cast by the gallery in 1984 from a reduced plaster model presented by the artist, and a bronze group entitled The Victim, on view in Merrion Square Park, from an uncommissioned and uncompleted war memorial conceived by O’Connor under the general title Le Débarquement. The National Gallery of Ireland has the Desolation maquette for the Triple Cross. A centenary exhibition of his work is held at Trinity College Dublin in 1974. His widow dies in Dublin in 1974.

(From: “O’Connor, Andrew” by Lawrence William White and Carmel Doyle, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)