seamus dubhghaill

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Tag Archives: Great Famine (Ireland)


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Death of Richard Davis Webb, Publisher & Abolitionist

Richard Davis Webb, Irish publisher and abolitionist, dies on July 14, 1872.

Webb is born in 1805 in the Cornmarket, Dublin, the eldest of seven sons of James Webb and Deborah Webb (née Sparrow), who own a linen business. He is educated in Quaker schools at Mountmellick, County Laois, and at Ballitore, County Kildare, where he becomes friendly with Mary Leadbeater, sister of the influential schoolmaster Abraham Shackleton. Schoolfellows include James Haughton and Jonathan Pim.

In 1837, Webb is one of three founding members, with James Haughton and Richard Allen, of the Hibernian Antislavery Association. This is not the first antislavery association, but it is acknowledged to be the most active and considered the most ardent abolitionists in Europe. Allen serves as the secretary of this association.

Webb marries Hannah Waring, and they have four children: Alfred, Richard, Deborah and Anne. He and his two sons, Alfred and Richard, are regular correspondents with the American abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.

Webb is one of the few Irish delegates at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London which attracts hundreds from the United States. The Irish delegation includes Webb, Richard Allen and Daniel O’Connell. In 1846, he attends another world convention in London. This time the subject is temperance, and his fellow delegate Richard Allen is one of the speakers. He meets the American delegates Wendell Phillips and his wife Ann, with Ann reporting how they are particularly impressed by Webb.

When the famous Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass visits Ireland it is Webb who is responsible for setting up his speaking engagements and also organising the printing of Douglass’s book, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Douglass is one of the many visitors who stay in Webb’s Dublin home.

Webb was notable in Douglass’s regard for the arguments that he and Webb have. Douglass feels that white abolitionists would prefer to be hypocritical than be racist and would try not to disagree with him face to face. Webb shows no such false regard, and they argue as equals in a way that Douglass hopes would be a precursor of the relationships that might exist across the races when slavery ends in the United States. Webb, however, quickly comes to distrust and dislike Douglass and his associates.

In 1852 Webb prints and publishs the elaborate Transactions of the Central Relief Committee, compiled by Jonathan Pim. This deals with the relief operations in Ireland in which Quakers had been involved throughout the Great Famine of the 1840s, and also includes statistics and recommendations for reforms. He helps Quaker efforts to provide food for the poor in Ireland, and in April and May 1847 he travels on fact-finding missions in Connacht for the Yearly Meeting. His contributions to Quaker historiography include his edition of Mary Leadbetter’s The Leadbetter Papers, which he prints, and which is published in London (1862). Also, in 1862 he publishes Betsy Shackleton’s Ballitore Seventy Years Ago. He frequently publishes comments on Irish conditions and politics in The Manchester Guardian and elsewhere.

Webb’s commitment to the causes in which he believes so strongly end only with his death on July 14, 1872. He is buried in Temple Hill graveyard, Blackrock, County Dublin.


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Birth of Bernard “Barney” Hughes, Master Baker & Entrepreneur

Bernard “Barney” Hughes, master baker, entrepreneur, and liberal reformer, is born on July 8, 1808, second among eight children of Peter Hughes, probably a tradesman or labourer, and Catherine Hughes (née Quinn), of Blackwatertown, near Armagh in what is now Northern Ireland.

Hughes is brought up as a devout Roman Catholic and speaks both Irish and English fluently. He starts working at age 12 as a baker’s boy in Armagh and around 1822 tries unsuccessfully to set up his own bakery. To enhance his career prospects, he moves to Belfast in the mid-1820s and becomes a journeyman baker. He soon proves to be a highly skilled and reliable worker and in 1833 is appointed operations manager at the Public Bakery, Church Street.

Hughes is a great admirer of Daniel O’Connell and is part of the delegation that meets him when he visits Belfast in 1840. However, his employer does not share his views on liberal reform, and strained relations lead to Hughes setting up his own bakery in December 1840. At this point he must have already gained a reputation as a highly respected citizen in Belfast, as he is able to borrow £1,400 for the new factory that is built at 71 Donegall Street. This proves a wise investment, as within two years his factory produces more bread than any other bakery in the town. Demand for his loaves and his famous “Belfast bap” is fueled by the thousands of poor Catholics who migrate to the city in search of employment in the two decades before the famine.

Hughes is probably the first entrepreneur in Ireland to appreciate how machinery can create economies of scale in food production. He keeps enlarging his factory by adding ovens (using his own patent design) and dough‐mixing machines, and in 1847 opens another bakery on Donegall Place, which becomes known as the “railway bakery” on account of the rails that are used to transport raw materials by cart between various parts of the site. By using new technology, he is able to produce large quantities of consistently high‐quality bread at prices that are up to 20% cheaper than his local competitors. By 1851 he employs up to a third of those in the Belfast baking trade. He removes much of the human drudgery in the baking process, and higher productivity means that his employees can sleep at home rather than on the bakery floor. The population growth of Belfast continues to increase steeply after the famine years, and in 1858 he opens a third bakery on Divis Street, in the Falls area of the town. Distribution problems during the 1840s had convinced Hughes that he needs tighter control over all elements of the food production chain. By the 1870s his empire includes flour mills, ships to import grain, a brewery, shops, and a fleet of horse‐drawn vans.

Hughes is an enlightened employer and throughout his life he gives generously to the poor in Belfast. During the famine years of the 1840s he keeps the price of bread as low as possible, and on special days such as Christmas gives away thousands of loaves. In July 1842 he confronts a mob of up to 2,000 hungry and agitated weavers who are intent on causing damage to his bakery. He convinces them that he is a friend of the people. This is borne out by the fact that he is the largest single donor to both the Belfast Relief Committee and the Belfast Relief Fund for Ireland during the great famine. Though he is not politically ambitious, he does feel that he can use his status as one of the largest employers in Belfast and the wealthiest Catholic layman to promote the liberal cause. He is particularly appalled by the way in which the members of the conservative‐dominated council are able to indemnify themselves against the £84,000 debt which they had accrued while in office during the 1840s and 1850s.

Hughes is the first Catholic to be elected to the Belfast town council (1855–58, 1871–72) and the first Catholic alderman (1872–78). There are numerous attempts to smear his reputation, and articles in the Belfast News Letter lampoon his thick Armagh accent. As councillor he imprudently remarks on one public occasion that Belfast is “governed by Protestants, but the bone and sinew of the town is Roman Catholic.” This is seized upon by his conservative adversaries as evidence of an anti‐Protestant stance. In reality, he is always even‐handed and against any form of violent action. In his Smithfield ward there are large groups of poor Catholics and Protestants in close proximity to each other and this leads to regular disturbances. As a JP (1867–78) he urges fellow members of the Belfast Home Rule Association to avoid the tactics of the Fenians. In 1878 he is one of a group of magistrates who upholds the right of the Protestant shipyard workers to hold processions in Belfast.

Hughes’s fair mindedness sometimes brings him into collision with his more zealous Catholic friends. In 1876 he is heavily criticised for supporting the campaign to have a statue of the Rev. Henry Cooke, the Presbyterian preacher with strong anti‐Catholic views, erected in a prominent position in Belfast. He contributes funds to the Catholic Institute in Belfast, donates the site for St. Peter’s Church in 1858, and pays for the Lady Chapel. Despite his generosity, Patrick Dorrian, the coadjutor bishop of Down and Connor, vetoes a plan by the Vatican to award him a papal honour.

Hughes dies on September 23, 1878, and is buried privately at Friar’s Bush Graveyard. His son Edward, later appointed the first chairman of The Irish News at its launch in 1891, takes over the business and builds a large “model bakery” on a two‐acre site on the Springfield Road which is one of the largest and most technically sophisticated factories of its kind in Europe.

(From: “Hughes, Bernard (‘Barney’)” by Daniel Beaumont, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Mary Field Parsons, Countess of Rosse

Mary Parsons (née Field), Countess of Rosse, Anglo-Irish amateur astronomer, architect, furniture designer, and pioneering photographer, is born on April 14, 1813, at Heaton Hall, Heaton, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Often known simply as Mary Rosse, she is one of the early practitioners of making photographs from waxed-paper negatives.

Field is the daughter of John Wilmer Field, a wealthy estate owner. She has a sister, Delia, and they are educated at home by Susan Lawson, a governess who encourages her creativity and broad interests, including astronomy. The sisters are joint heirs to their father’s fortune.

Through her family Field meets William Parsons, then Lord Oxmantown and the future 3rd Earl of Rosse, an Anglo-Irish astronomer and naturalist, and they are married on April 14, 1836, her 23rd birthday. In February 1841, Lord Oxmantown succeeds his father in the family peerage to become the 3rd Earl of Rosse. She, Baroness Oxmantown since her marriage, thus now becomes the Countess of Rosse.

In the early 1840s the couple becomes interested in astronomy, and the Countess of Rosse helps her husband build a number of giant telescopes, including the so-called Leviathan of Parsonstown, that is considered a technical marvel in its time. The author, Henrietta Heald, contends that she is not only a financial support to the building of the telescope, but is also involved in a practical and intellectual capacity. The Leviathan of Parsontown is completed in 1845 and holds the record as the world’s largest telescope for over 70 years. It is mentioned in Jules Verne’s science fiction novel, From the Earth to the Moon.

The Countess of Rosse is an accomplished blacksmith, which is very unusual for higher class women of the time, and she may have constructed some of the iron work that supports the telescope. Other metal cast items around the castle grounds are designed by her, including bronze gates.

During the Great Famine of 1845–47 in Ireland, the Countess of Rosse is responsible for keeping over five hundred men employed in work in and around Birr Castle, where she and her husband live.

The Countess of Rosse creates a huge dining room at Birr Castle in which to entertain scientific guests, which becomes increasingly used when Lord Rosse becomes President of the Royal Society of London in 1848. Guests include mathematician William Rowan Hamilton, who writes her a sonnet about his experience of gazing through the Leviathan.

In 1842, Lord Rosse begins experimenting in daguerreotype photography, possibly learning some of the art from his acquaintance William Henry Fox Talbot. In 1854, he writes to Fox Talbot saying that the Countess too has just commenced photography and sends some examples of her work. Fox Talbot replies that some of her photographs of the telescope “are all that can be desired.”

The Countess of Rosse becomes a member of the Dublin Photographic Society, and in 1859 she receives a silver medal for “best paper negative” from the Photographic Society of Ireland. Many examples of her photography are in the Birr Castle Archives. Much of the topography of Birr Castle that she portrayed has changed very little, and it is possible to compare many of her photographs with the actual places. She records the Leviathan in her photographs including one image showing her three sons, Clere, Randal and Charles along with her sister-in-law, Jane Knox, standing upright at the mouth of the telescope.

The Countess of Rosse gives birth to eleven children, but only four survive to adulthood:

Mary, Dowager Countess of Rosse, dies in 1885.


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Birth of Thomas Spring Rice, 1st Baron Monteagle of Brandon

Thomas Spring Rice, 1st Baron Monteagle of Brandon, PC, FRS, FGS, British Whig politician who serves as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1835 to 1839, is born on February 8, 1790, into a notable Anglo-Irish family which owns large estates in Munster.

Spring Rice is one of the three children of Stephen Edward Rice, of Mount Trenchard House, and Catherine Spring, daughter and heiress of Thomas Spring of Ballycrispin and Castlemaine, County Kerry, a descendant of the Suffolk Spring family. He is a great grandson of Sir Stephen Rice, Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer and a leading Jacobite Sir Maurice FitzGerald, 14th Knight of Kerry. His grandfather, Edward, converted the family from Roman Catholicism to the Anglican Church of Ireland, to save his estate from passing in gavelkind.

Spring Rice is educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and later studies law at Lincoln’s Inn, but is not called to the Bar. His family is politically well-connected, both in Ireland and Great Britain, and he is encouraged to stand for Parliament by his father-in-law, Lord Limerick.

Spring Rice first stands for election in Limerick City in 1818 but is defeated by the Tory incumbent, John Vereker, by 300 votes. He wins the seat in 1820 and enters the House of Commons. He positions himself as a moderate unionist reformer who opposes the radical nationalist politics of Daniel O’Connell and becomes known for his expertise on Irish and economic affairs. In 1824 he leads the committee which establishes the Ordnance Survey in Ireland.

Spring Rice’s fluent debating style in the Commons brings him to the attention of leading Whigs and he comes under the patronage of the Marquess of Lansdowne. As a result, he is made Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department under George Canning and Lord Goderich in 1827, with responsibility for Irish affairs. This requires him to accept deferral of Catholic emancipation, a policy which he strongly supports. He then serves as joint Secretary to the Treasury from 1830 to 1834 under Lord Grey. Following the Reform Act 1832, he is elected to represent Cambridge from 1832 to 1839. In June 1834, Grey appoints him Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, with a seat in the cabinet, a post he retains when Lord Melbourne becomes Prime Minister in July. A strong and vocal unionist throughout his life, he leads the Parliamentary opposition to Daniel O’Connell’s 1834 attempt to repeal the Acts of Union 1800. In a six-hour speech in the House of Commons on April 23, 1834, he suggests that Ireland should be renamed “West Britain.” In the Commons, he also champions causes such as the worldwide abolition of slavery and the introduction of state-supported education.

The Whig government falls in November 1834, after which Spring Rice attempts to be elected Speaker of the House of Commons in early 1835. When the Whigs return to power under Melbourne in April 1835, he is made Chancellor of the Exchequer. As Chancellor, he has to deal with crop failures, a depression and rebellion in North America, all of which create large deficits and put considerable strain on the government. His Church Rate Bill of 1837 is quickly abandoned and his attempt to revise the charter of the Bank of Ireland ends in humiliation. Unhappy as Chancellor, he again tries to be elected as Speaker but fails. He is a dogmatic figure, described by Lord Melbourne as “too much given to details and possessed of no broad views.” Upon his departure from office in 1839, he has become a scapegoat for the government’s many problems. That same year he is raised to the peerage as Baron Monteagle of Brandon, in the County of Kerry, a title intended earlier for his ancestor Sir Stephen Rice. He is also Comptroller General of the Exchequer from 1835 to 1865, despite Lord Howick‘s initial opposition to the maintenance of the office. He differs from the government regarding the exchequer control over the treasury, and the abolition of the old exchequer is already determined upon when he dies.

From 1839 Spring Rice largely retires from public life, although he occasionally speaks in the House of Lords on matters generally relating to government finance and Ireland. He vehemently opposes John Russell, 1st Earl Russell‘s policy regarding the Irish famine, giving a speech in the Lords in which he says the government had “degraded our people, and you, English, now shrink from your responsibilities.”

In addition to his political career, Spring Rice is a commissioner of the state paper office, a trustee of the National Gallery and a member of the senate of the University of London and of the Queen’s University of Ireland. Between 1845 and 1847, he is President of the Royal Statistical Society. In addition, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Geological Society of London. In May 1832 he becomes a member of James Mill‘s Political Economy Club.

Spring Rice is well regarded in Limerick, where he is seen as a compassionate landlord and a good politician. An advocate of traditional Whiggism, he strongly believes in ensuring society is protected from conflict between the upper and lower classes. Although a pious Anglican, his support for Catholic emancipation wins him the favour of many Irishmen, most of whom are Roman Catholic. He leads the campaign for better county government in Ireland at a time when many Irish nationalists are indifferent to the cause. During the Great Famine of the 1840s, he responds to the plight of his tenants with benevolence. The ameliorative measures he implements on his estates almost bankrupts the family and only the dowry from his second marriage saves his financial situation. A monument in honour of him still stands in the People’s Park in Limerick.

Even so, Spring Rice’s reputation in Ireland is not entirely favourable. In a book regarding assisted emigration from Ireland, a process in which a landlord pays for their tenants’ passage to the United States or Australia, Moran suggests that Spring Rice was engaged in the practice. In 1838, he is recorded as having “helped” a boat load of his tenants depart for North America, thereby allowing himself the use of their land. However, he is also recorded as being in support of state-assisted emigration across the British Isles, suggesting that his motivation is not necessarily selfish.

Spring Rice dies at the age of 76 on February 7, 1866. Mount Monteagle in Antarctica and Monteagle County in New South Wales are named in his honour.

(Pictured: Thomas Spring Rice, 1st Baron Monteagle of Brandon (1790-1866), contemporary portrait by George Richmond (1809-1896))


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Death of James Fintan Lalor, Revolutionary & Journalist

James Fintan Lalor, Irish revolutionary, journalist, and one of the most powerful writers of his day, dies at the age of 43 on December 27, 1849. A leading member of the Irish Confederation (Young Ireland), he plays an active part in both the Rebellion in July 1848 and the attempted Rising in September of that same year. His writings exert a seminal influence on later Irish leaders such as Michael Davitt, James Connolly, Pádraig Pearse, and Arthur Griffith.

Lalor is born on March 10, 1807, in Tinnakill House, Raheen, County Laois, the first son of twelve children of Patrick “Patt” Lalor and Anne Dillon, the daughter of Patrick Dillon of Sheane near Maryborough. His father is an extensive farmer and is the first Catholic MP for Laois (1832–1835). The household is a very political one where active discussion on national issues is encouraged.

Because of an accident when he is young, Lalor is semi-crippled all his life. He is not a very healthy young man and consequently is educated at home. In February 1825 he goes to St. Patrick’s, Carlow College. He studies chemistry under a Mr. Holt and the classics under Father Andrew Fitzgerald. While in college he becomes a member of the Apollo Society, where literature and music are studied, his favourite author at the time being Lord Bolingbroke. He suffers greatly through ill health during his time in college, and in February 1826, being ill and very weak he has to return home.

Lalor’s father is passionately opposed to the payment of tithes and urges Catholics not to pay. He supports this stand, but it is the land question and the power of the landlords to evict tenants that exercises him in particular. His father is also a great supporter of Daniel O’Connell and the Repeal movement. However, Lalor does not support the Repeal movement as he considers it to be flawed. As a result, a rift occurs between him and his father on this question. Such is the rift that he leaves home and spends time in Belfast and Dublin. He finally returns home due to ill health and heals his differences with his father.

It is while writing from home that Lalor achieves national prominence. He contributes articles to The Nation and The Felon. He advocates rent strikes and active resistance to any wrongdoings. His central theme is the rights of the tenant farmer to his own land. In his opinion, land reform is the biggest issue of the time. He writes articles such as “What must be done,” “The Faith of a felon,” “Resistance,” and “Clearing Decks.” It is he who says it is time for revolution and active resistance. This is especially evident during the famine years when tenants are being evicted for nonpayment of rent. As a result, he is arrested and imprisoned. Upon his release he continues to write. He is now a nationally acclaimed writer, revolutionary, and reformer.

Ill health once again curtails his efforts. An attack of bronchitis eventually brings about his early death on December 27, 1849, at his lodgings in Great Britain Street (now Parnell Street) at the age of 43. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.

The James Fintan Lawlor Commemorative Committee, chaired by David Lawlor is formed in August 2005 to erect a memorial to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of James Fintan Lalor. Laois County Council provides the site; Irish Life and Permanent sponsors the project; the Department of the Environment provides half the cost. The bronze statue of Lalor holding a pamphlet aloft is sculpted by Mayo-based artist Rory Breslin. The inscription on the limestone plinth reads: “Ireland her own, and all therein, from the sod to the sky. The soil of Ireland for the people of Ireland.”

Michael Davitt considered Lalor “the only real Irish revolutionary mind in the ’48 period.” His ideas were the ideological underpinning of the Irish National League during the Land War.


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Death of Michael Corcoran, General in the Union Army

Michael Corcoran, Irish American general in the Union Army during the American Civil War and a close confidant of President Abraham Lincoln, dies on December 22, 1863, of a fractured skull after being thrown from a runaway horse.

Corcoran is born in Carrowkeel, near Ballymote, County Sligo, on September 21, 1827. As its colonel, he leads the 69th Infantry Regiment (New York) to Washington, D.C. and is one of the first to serve in the defense of Washington by building Fort Corcoran. He then leads the 69th into action at the First Battle of Bull Run. After promotion to brigadier general, he leaves the 69th and forms the Corcoran Legion, consisting of at least five other New York regiments.

Corcoran is the only child of Thomas Corcoran, an officer in the British Army, and Mary McDonagh. Through his mother, he claims descent from Patrick Sarsfield, hero of the Williamite War in Ireland and leader of the Wild Geese. In 1846 he takes an appointment to the Revenue Police, enforcing the laws and searching for illicit stills and distilling activities in Creeslough, County Donegal. He also joins a guerrilla group called the Ribbonmen.

On August 30, 1849, Corcoran emigrates from Sligo to the United States and settles in New York City where he finds work as a clerk in the tavern owned by John Heaney, whose niece, Elizabeth, he marries in 1854.

Corcoran enlists as a Private in the 69th New York Militia. By 1859 he is appointed colonel of the regiment. The regiment is a state militia unit at the time composed of citizens, not soldiers, and is involved in the maintenance of public order. On October 11, 1860, he refuses to march the regiment on parade for the 19-year-old Prince of Wales, who is visiting New York City at the time, protesting the British imposition of the Irish Famine. He is removed from command and a court martial is pending over that matter when the Civil War begins.

Corcoran also becomes involved in Democratic politics at Tammany Hall. He becomes district leader, a member of the judicial nominations committee, an elected school inspector for his ward, and a member of the Fourteenth Ward General Committee. He is one of the founders of the Fenian Brotherhood in America.

With the outbreak of war, the court martial is dropped and Corcoran is restored to his command because he had been instrumental in bringing other Irish immigrants to the Union cause. He leads the 69th to Washington, D.C. and serves for a while in the Washington defenses building, Fort Corcoran. In July 1861 he leads the regiment into action at the First Battle of Bull Run and is taken prisoner.

While Corcoran is imprisoned, the United States makes threats to execute captured Confederate privateers. Corcoran and several other Union prisoners are selected by lot for execution if the United States carries out its threats against the privateers. This event is known as the Enchantress Affair, but no executions are ever carried out by either side. Corcoran is then offered a parole under the conditions that he does not take up arms against the Confederacy. Intending to resume his place in the Union army upon his release he refuses the offer of parole. He is appointed Brigadier General of volunteers in July and exchanged in August 1862. His role in the Enchantress Affair and his refusal for parole gains him some attention and upon his release he is invited to dinner with President Abraham Lincoln.

In April 1863 Corcoran is involved in an incident that ends with Corcoran shooting and killing Edgar A. Kimball, commander of the 9th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment. Corcoran attempts to pass through the 9th New York’s area without giving the required password after receiving the challenge from a sentry. When Kimball intervenes on the side of the sentry, Corcoran shoots him. Corcoran is not charged with a crime or reprimanded and continues to serve.

Corcoran returns to the army and sets about recruiting more Irish volunteers. He raises and takes command of what becomes known as the Corcoran Legion. Placed in command of the 1st Division, VII Corps he is engaged in the Battle of Deserted House and takes part in the Battle of Suffolk. In late 1863 he is placed in command of a division in the XXII Corps and returns to serve in the Washington defenses. While riding alone in Fairfax, Virginia he is thrown from a runaway horse and suffers a fractured skull. He dies at the age of 36 at the William Gunnell House on December 22, 1863.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveils Ireland’s national monument to the Fighting 69th in Ballymote on August 22, 2006. The monument is sculpted by Philip Flanagan. The inscription around the top of the monument reads “Michael Corcoran 1827–1863” Around the base is inscribed “New York Ballymote Creeslough Bull Run.” Underneath the monument is a piece of steel from the World Trade Center, donated by the family of Michael Lynch, who died in the tower on September 11, 2001. Lynch’s family are also from County Sligo.


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The Wreck of the “Stephen Whitney”

The passenger-carrying sailing ship Stephen Whitney is wrecked on West Calf Island off the southern coast of Ireland on November 10, 1847 with the loss of 92 of the 110 passengers and crew aboard.

The Stephen Whitney is a packet ship in Robert Kermit‘s Red Star Line. The ship is named after a Kermit investor, New York City merchant Stephen Whitney.

The 1,034-ton ship leaves New York City on October 18 for Liverpool, England, carrying passengers and a cargo which includes corn, raw cotton, cheese, resin, and twenty boxes of clocks. On November 10 in thick fog, the captain, C.W. Popham, mistakes the Crookhaven lighthouse for the one at the Old Head of Kinsale and the lighthouse on Cape Clear Island is obscured by fog compounding the error in navigation. At around 10:00 p.m., the ship strikes the western tip of West Calf Island, completely breaking up within about ten minutes. Conditions in the area are distressing as it is the height of the Great Famine.

The loss of the ship triggers the decision to replace the Cape Clear Island lighthouse with one on Fastnet Rock. This decision is also because the lighthouse on Cape Clear is often shrouded in fog or low level clouds, which make it hard or at times impossible to see.

(Pictured: West Calf Island, the most westerly of the three Calf Islands that lie at the heart of Roaring Water Bay, West Cork)


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Birth of William Smith O’Brien, Young Ireland Leader

William Smith O’Brien, Irish nationalist Member of Parliament (MP) and leader of the Young Ireland movement, is born in Dromoland, Newmarket-on-Fergus, County Clare, on October 17, 1803.

O’Brien is the second son of Sir Edward O’Brien, 4th Baronet, of Dromoland Castle. His mother is Charlotte Smith, whose father owns a property called Cahirmoyle in County Limerick. He takes the additional surname Smith, his mother’s maiden name, upon inheriting the property. He lives at Cahermoyle House, a mile from Ardagh, County Limerick. He is a descendant of the eleventh century Ard Rí (High King of Ireland), Brian Boru. He receives an upper-class English education at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge. Subsequently, he studies law at King’s Inns in Dublin and Lincoln’s Inn in London.

From April 1828 to 1831 O’Brien is Conservative MP for Ennis. He becomes MP for Limerick County in 1835, holding his seat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom until 1849.

Although a Protestant country-gentleman, O’Brien supports Catholic emancipation while remaining a supporter of British-Irish union. In 1843, in protest against the imprisonment of Daniel O’Connell, he joins O’Connell’s anti-union Repeal Association.

Three years later, O’Brien withdraws the Young Irelanders from the association. In January 1847, with Thomas Francis Meagher, he founds the Irish Confederation, although he continues to preach reconciliation until O’Connell’s death in May 1847. He is active in seeking relief from the hardships of the famine. In March 1848, he speaks out in favour of a National Guard and tries to incite a national rebellion. He is tried for sedition on May 15, 1848 but is not convicted.

On July 29, 1848, O’Brien and other Young Irelanders lead landlords and tenants in a rising in three counties, with an almost bloodless battle against police at Ballingarry, County Tipperary. In O’Brien’s subsequent trial, the jury finds him guilty of high treason. He is sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Petitions for clemency are signed by 70,000 people in Ireland and 10,000 people in England. In Dublin on June 5, 1849, the sentences of O’Brien and other members of the Irish Confederation are commuted to transportation for life to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania in present-day Australia).

O’Brien attempts to escape from Maria Island off Tasmania, but is betrayed by the captain of the schooner hired for the escape. He is sent to Port Arthur where he meets up with John Mitchel.

O’Brien is a founding member of the Ossianic Society, which is founded in Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day 1853, whose aim is to further the interests of the Irish language and to publish and translate literature relating to the Fianna. He writes to his son Edward from Van Diemen’s Land, urging him to learn the Irish language. He himself studies the language and uses an Irish-language Bible, and presents to the Royal Irish Academy Irish-language manuscripts he has collected.

In 1854, after five years in Tasmania, O’Brien is released on the condition he never returns to Ireland. He settles in Brussels. In May 1856, he is granted an unconditional pardon and returns to Ireland that July. He contributes to The Nation newspaper, but plays no further part in politics.

In 1864 he visits England and Wales, with the view of rallying his failing health, but no improvement takes place and he dies in Bangor, Gwynedd, Wales on June 18, 1864.

A statue of William Smith O’Brien stands in O’Connell Street, Dublin. Sculpted in Portland limestone, it is designed by Thomas Farrell and erected in D’Olier Street, Dublin, in 1870. It is moved to its present position in 1929.

(Pictured: Portrait of William Smith O’Brien by George Francis Mulvany, National Gallery of Ireland)


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Birth of John Martin, Irish Nationalist Activist

John Martin, Irish nationalist activist, is born on September 8, 1812, into a landed Presbyterian family, the son of Samuel and Jane (née Harshaw) Martin, in Newry, County Down, in what is now Northern Ireland. He shifts from early militant support for Young Ireland and the Repeal Association, to non-violent alternatives such as support for tenant farmers’ rights and eventually as the first Home Rule MP, for Meath (1871–75).

Martin first meets John Mitchel while attending Dr. Henderson’s private school in Newry. He receives an Arts degree at Trinity College Dublin in 1832 and proceeds to study medicine but has to abandon this in 1835 when his uncle dies, and he has to return to manage the family landholding.

In 1847 Martin is moved by the Great Famine to join Mitchel in the Repeal Association but subsequently leaves it with Mitchel. He contributes to Mitchel’s journal, United Irishman, and then following Mitchel’s arrest on May 27, 1848, he continues with his own anti-British journal, The Irish Felon, and establishes “The Felon Club.” This leads to a warrant for his arrest, and he turns himself in on July 8, 1848. He is sentenced on August 18, 1848, to ten years transportation to Van Diemen’s Land.

Martin arrives on the Elphinstone with Kevin Izod O’Doherty in Hobart, Tasmania, in November 1849. He accepts a “ticket of leave” which allows him to live in relative freedom at Bothwell, provided he promises not to escape.

While in Tasmania, Martin continues to meet in secret with his fellow exiles Kevin Izod O’Doherty, Thomas Francis Meagher, William Smith O’Brien, and John Mitchel. He and Mitchel live together before the arrival of Mitchel’s wife, Jenny. He chooses not to join Mitchel when Mitchel revokes his ticket of leave and escapes. Instead, he remains in Tasmania until he is granted a “conditional pardon” in 1854. This allows him to leave for Paris, and he returns to Ireland on being granted a full pardon in 1856.

On return to Ireland Martin becomes a national organiser for the Tenant Right League. He begins to write for The Nation in 1860. He forms the National League with others in January 1864 – it is mainly an educational organisation but Fenians disrupt its meetings. He remains in contact with Mitchel in Paris through 1866. He opposes the Fenians’ support of armed violence, yet, together with Alexander Martin Sullivan in December 1867, he heads the symbolic funeral march honouring the Manchester Martyrs as it follows the MacManus route to Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. He is briefly arrested for these activities, but the charges are dropped.

Martin is in the United States in December 1869 when he is nominated by Isaac Butt and his nationalists as the Irish nationalist Home Rule candidate to oppose Reginald Greville-Nugent, who is supported by the Catholic clergy, in the Longford by-election. Greville-Nugent initially wins the vote, but the result is nullified by Judge Fitzgerald on the grounds that voters had been illegally influenced in the non-secret voting process. In the May 1870 re-run, Butt’s second candidate, Edward Robert King-Harman, like Martin a Protestant landlord, is also defeated, but this time legally.

Contradictions and factionalism are symptomatic of the struggle for influence and leadership at the time between the waning Church of Ireland and the rising Irish Catholic Church. Hence a secular Protestant land-owning, non-violent elite reformist nationalist who desires Home Rule like Martin, can find himself both sympathetic to and at odds with a militant organisation like the Fenians with their Jacobin– and American-influenced ideas of revolutionary republicanism and different social roots. Until Charles Stewart Parnell, the Isaac Butt-originated Home Rule forces could not obtain the support of the Catholic Church under the anti-Fenian Cardinal Paul Cullen or manage to achieve more than short-term tactical alliances with Fenians, leading to a split and uncoordinated opposition to British rule. Protestants such as Martin and John Mitchel, with their early political roots in Young Ireland, are, whatever their political ideals, not part of the majority Catholic mainstream, which consists largely of tenants rather than landlords.

In the January 1871 by-election, Martin is elected by a margin of 2–1 to the seat of Meath in the British parliament as the first Home Rule MP, representing first Isaac Butt’s Home Government Association and from November 1873 the Home Rule League. This is unusual for a Protestant in a Catholic constituency, and is a measure of the popular esteem Martin is held in. He retains his seat in the 1874 United Kingdom general election as one of 60 Home Rule members. He is commonly known as “Honest John Martin.” In parliament he speaks strongly for Home Rule for Ireland and opposes Coercion Bills.

Martin dies in Newry, County Down, on March 29, 1875, homeless and in relative poverty, having forgiven tenant fees during preceding years of inflation and low farm prices. His parliamentary seat of County Meath is taken up by Charles Stewart Parnell.

Martin marries Henrietta Mitchel, the youngest sister of John Mitchel, on November 25, 1868, after twenty years of courtship. She shares her husband’s politics, and after his death campaigns for home rule believing this to be a continuation of the Young Ireland mandate. After the split in the party, she sides with Charles Stewart Parnell. She dies at her home in Dublin on July 11, 1913, and is buried in Newry.


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First Voluntary Smallpox Inoculations in Ireland

Five Dublin children receive the first voluntary smallpox inoculations in Ireland on August 26, 1725.

Smallpox is an acute and infectious disease caused by a virus. It is characterized by high fever and large sores on the body that leaves scars. The disease is estimated to have killed up to one-third of its victims. Those who are not killed are left with pock-marked skin or even blind. The name “smallpox” is coined in the 15th century to distinguish it from the “great pox,” better known as syphilis. However, smallpox’s history on earth is believed to date back thousands of years.

In 1980 the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declares smallpox eradicated. After ten years and $300 million, used on a global vaccination program, the disease is gone. The last recorded death from this disease is in Somalia in 1977.

In Ireland, the spread of smallpox from the 1600s onward inspires dread. Ireland’s poverty and ignorance of infectious disease, at the time, sees typhoid and dysentery ravage communities. Between 1661 and 1746 smallpox is believed to be the cause of 20% of all deaths in Dublin and a third of all children deaths in the area. This highly infectious disease does not discriminate as the rich, as well as the poor, are badly affected.

By the 18th century, hope emerges and an inoculation technique is found. Since the 10th century, the Chinese had been inoculating people, by using a small dose of the disease. This technique does not arrive in Europe for almost 800 years. This technique is first tried on prisoners in Cork Jail in 1721, presumably against their will. Four years later five children in Dublin voluntarily receive the inoculation on August 26, 1725.

Over the years this technique shows its effectiveness. The rich begin to infest and inoculate their families. Throughout the 18th century, as the disease has periodic epidemics, the richer families are less affected. By the middle of the 18th century, the inoculation is in widespread use. The South Infirmary, in Cork, even initiates a program to inoculate the poor.

Sadly, of course, the unscrupulous see an opportunity to make money as people queue up to receive the treatment. In Donegal in 1781, all but one child of a group of 52 die when an unqualified practitioner supposedly inoculates the group.

While inroads are being made against smallpox, with the emergence of the Great Famine in Ireland (1845–49), the disease returns with a vengeance. This devastates even those who had found a way to make ends meet. Smallpox means that even if you survive the disease you will be unable to work for some time and many are pauperized by the lack of income and die eventually.

As Ireland emerges from the poverty and devastation of the Great Hunger, during the 1870s over 7,000 die in Ireland from the disease. It is only from the 1880s that smallpox becomes more earnestly eradicated in Ireland. By the 1910s the death rate is down to just 65 people. From 1901 to 1910 almost 1 million Irish are inoculated.

The last outbreak of smallpox in Ireland is in 1903. In Dublin, there are found to be 256 cases. Sadly elsewhere around the world even up to the 1960s smallpox is rampant, taking up to two million lives per year and leaving millions more disfigured and blind.

Thankfully by the 1980s, the WHO’s world vaccine program has done its work and now the world is free of this disease which plagued the earth for thousands of years.

(From: “On this day: In 1725 Dublin children received the first smallpox vaccination” by IrishCentral staff, http://www.irishcentral.com, August 26, 2020)