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Birth of George Francis Mitchell, Historian, Archaeologist & Educator

George Francis (Frank) Mitchell, FRS, HonFRSE, MRIA, environmental historian, archaeologist, geologist, and educator, is born on October 15, 1912, in Dublin.

Mitchell is the younger son of David William Mitchell, owner of a Dublin ironmongery and furniture business, and Francis Elizabeth Mitchell (née Kirby). His elder brother David becomes president of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) and his sister Lillias is a noted weaver and teacher. He is educated at The High School, Dublin, and Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where he is a scholar in 1933 and receives a gold medal the following year. In 1934 he is appointed assistant to the professor of geology at TCD, and later is lecturer in geology (1940), reader in Irish archaeology (1959) and professor of Quaternary studies – a personal chair (1965). He is an efficient administrator and serves TCD successively as registrar, senior lecturer, and tutor, and after retirement is briefly a pro-chancellor of the university.

Mitchell’s major research focuses on the evolution of Ireland during the last two million years, particularly during the Quaternary since the retreat of the glacial ice over Ireland, and the effect man has had on this landscape. His interest in Quaternary studies begins in 1934, when he is appointed by the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) as an assistant to the Danish botanist and Quaternary geologist Knud Jessen, who uses the distribution of ancient pollen grains to reconstruct vegetational history. From 1940 he publishes a series of papers on topics such as the distribution of Irish giant deer and reindeer remains in Ireland, lacustrine deposits in County Meath, interglacial deposits in southeast Ireland, the palynology of Irish raised bogs, cave deposits, fossil pingos in County Wexford, bog flows, and the deposits of the older Pleistocene period in Ireland. His major study in this field is the documentation (1965) of the vegetational history of Littleton bog, County Tipperary, which has given its name to the present interglacial – the Littletonian warm stage.

Mitchell does not confine his studies to Ireland but also carries out work in Glasgow, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man. In 1957, he helps organise the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Dublin and is later chairman of the Geological Society of London sub-commission on British and Irish Quaternary stratigraphy, which produces a comprehensive report in 1973. He is a frequent broadcaster on radio and a prolific author of academic papers, and in later life writes several acclaimed books, including The Irish Landscape (1976), which goes through two further editions as Reading the Irish Landscape (1986, 1997), and a volume of semi-autobiography, The Way That I Followed (1990).

Although the recipient of many honours, Mitchell is modest about his achievements. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) (1939), its president (1976–79), and Cunningham medalist (1989); president of the Dublin Naturalists’ Field Club (1945–46); Fellow of Trinity College Dublin (1945); president of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (RSAI) (1957–60); president of the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland (RZSI) (1958–61); president of the International Union for Quaternary Research (1969–73); Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) (1973); founder member and later president (1991–93) of An Taisce; Boyle medalist of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) (1978); pro-chancellor of Dublin University (1985–87); personal chair in Quaternary studies, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) (1965–79); honorary member, Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) (1981); honorary life member, Royal Dublin Society (RDS) (1981); honorary member, The Prehistoric Society (1983); honorary member, Quaternary Research Association (1983); honorary member, International Association for Quaternary Research (1985); and honorary fellow, Royal Society of Edinburgh (1984). He receives honorary degrees from Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) (D.Sc., 1976), the National University of Ireland (NUI) (D.Sc., 1977), and Uppsala University (fil.D., 1977).

Mitchell dies on November 25, 1997, in Townley Hall, County Louth.

In 1940, Mitchell marries Lucy Margaret (‘Pic’) (1911–87), daughter of E. J. Gwynn, provost of TCD. They have two daughters. For many years they live at Townley Hall, near Drogheda, County Louth, which had been TCD’s agricultural facility. A 1985 portrait by David Hone is displayed at Trinity College Dublin.

(From: “Mitchell, George Francis (‘Frank’)” by Patrick N. Wyse Jackson, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Death of Suzanne R. Day, Feminist, Novelist & Playwright

Suzanne Rouviere Day, Irish feminist, novelist and playwright, dies in London on May 26, 1964. She founds the Munster Women’s Franchise League, is one of Cork‘s first women poor law guardians and serves a support role in both World Wars.

Day is born in Cork, County Cork, on April 24, 1876 to Robert and Rebecca Day. Her father runs a saddler and ironmonger business and is a well known antiquarian and photographer.

In 1910 Day forms the local Irish Women’s Franchise League branch in Cork as an activist group for women’s suffrage. The following year she leaves that group and founds the non-militant Munster Women’s Franchise League. Her new interest in politics leads to her winning the election of poor law guardians the same year. Her later writings reveal that she sees the Cork workhouses as an expensive self-perpetuating evil run by amateurs. This leads to her first novel, The Amazing Philanthropists (1916). From 1913 to 1917 she writes three plays for the Abbey Theatre in collaboration with Geraldine Cummins, Broken Faith (1913), The Way of the World (1914), and Fox and Geese (1917), which is the most successful of the three.

The Battle of Verdun lasts most of 1916 and during that time Day is amongst a group from the Society of Friends who cares for the wounded. She is in France for fifteen months and uses the experience to create her 1918 book Round about Bar-le-Duc. Where the Mistral Blows is published in 1933 and describes her time in Provence in France.

Day works as a member of the fire service in London during World War II. She lives in Cork, France and London. At the time of her death she is living at 47 Argyle Road, Kensington, London. She dies in the Cromer and District Hospital on May 26, 1964.

The work of Suzanne Rouviere Day and Geraldine Cummins has been described as a mixture of paganism and melodrama and has been suggested as a precursor to John B. Keane.

(Pictured: Suzanne R. Day in the cast of the 1901 production of The Mikado, Cork, County Cork)


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Birth of Jimmy O’Dea, Actor & Comedian

Jimmy O’Dea, Irish actor and comedian, is born at 11 Lower Bridge Street, Dublin, on April 26, 1899.

O’Dea, born James Augustine O’Dea, is one of eleven children of James O’Dea, an ironmonger, and Martha O’Gorman, who keeps a small toy shop. His father has a shop in Capel Street. He is educated at the Irish Christian Brothers O’Connell School in North Richmond Street, Dublin, where a classmate is future Taoiseach Seán Lemass, by the Holy Ghost Fathers at Blackrock College, and by the Jesuits at Belvedere College. From a young age he is interested in taking to the stage. He co-founds an amateur acting group, the Kilronan Players, in 1917, but his father will not hear of it. He is apprenticed to an optician in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he qualifies as an optician.

O’Dea returns to Dublin where, at age 21, he sets up his own business which he eventually gives to his sister, Rita. In his spare time he takes part in amateur productions of Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekhov. From 1920 he is in the Irish theatre in Hardwicke Street working with actor-producer John MacDonagh. In 1922 he makes a series of comedy films for Norman Whitten. After working in plays by George Bernard Shaw for a few years he rejoins MacDonagh in revues, the first of which, Dublin To-Night, is produced at the Queen’s Theatre, Dublin in 1924. In 1927 he takes to the stage full-time. In 1928, the company’s first production Here We Are wins international acclaim, and in December of the same year it produces its first Christmas Pantomime, Sinbad the Sailor.

O’Dea forms a partnership with Harry O’Donovan whom he first meets in a production of You Never Can Tell in 1924. Their first show is Look Who’s Here at Queen’s Theatre. For more than two decades beginning in 1929 the duo produces two shows a year in Dublin, first in the Olympia Theatre, then in the Gaiety Theatre. They create O’Dea’s most famous character, Mrs. Biddy Mulligan. The role draws on O’Dea’s previous manifestations as “Dames” in Variety performances and pantomimes. Biddy Mulligan is the representation (caricature, parody and stereotype) of a Dublin street-seller, with all the working-class repartee, wisdom and failings implicit. He makes a number of recordings of sketches starring Mrs. Mulligan. Biddy Mulligan is referenced in many Dublin music hall songs such as “Biddy Mulligan the Pride of the Coombe,” “Daffy the Belle of the Coombe” and “The Charladies’ Ball.”

O’Dea makes some film appearances, such as Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959) in which he plays King Brian of the little people and Johnny Nobody (1961). He also has a successful career in pantomime and tours Ireland and England many times, and is much associated with actress Maureen Potter, with whom he often partners.

O’Dea is also a prolific songwriter in his day. Many of his songs are still well known to this day, some of them having been sung and recorded by Dublin singer Frank Harte.

O’Dea marries Ursula Doyle, a theatrical impresario, in September 1959 with Seán Lemass standing in as best man and Maureen Potter as the bridesmaid. O’Dea had been best man at Lemass’s wedding in 1924.

Jimmy O’Dea dies at Dr. Steevens’ Hospital, Dublin, at age 65, on January 7, 1965. Seán Lemass, at the time Taoiseach, gives the valedictory oration at his funeral. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.