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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 Samuel Haughton, Scientist, Mathematician & Doctor

samuel-haughton

Samuel Haughton, scientist, mathematician, and doctor, is born in Carlow, County Carlow on December 21, 1821. He is “famous” for calculating the drop required to kill a hanged man instantly.

Haughton is the son of James Haughton. His father, the son of a Quaker, but himself a Unitarian, is an active philanthropist, a strong supporter of Father Theobald Mathew, a vegetarian, and an anti-slavery worker and writer.

Haughton has a distinguished career at Trinity College, Dublin and in 1844 he is elected a fellow. Working on mathematical models under James MacCullagh, he is awarded in 1848 the Cunningham Medal by the Royal Irish Academy. In 1847 he has his ordination to the priesthood, but he is not someone who preaches. He is appointed as professor of geology at Trinity College in 1851 and holds the position for thirty years. He begins to study medicine in 1859. He earns his MD degree in 1862 from the University of Dublin.

Haughton becomes registrar of the Medical School. He focuses on improving the status of the school and representing the university on the General Medical Council from 1878 to 1896. In 1858 he is elected fellow of the Royal Society. He gains honorary degrees from Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh. At Trinity College Dublin he moves the first-ever motion at the Academic Council to admit women to the University on March 10, 1880. Through his work as Professor of Geology and his involvement with the Royal Zoological Society, he has witnessed the enthusiasm and contribution of women in the natural sciences. Although thwarted by opponents on the Council he continues to campaign for the admission of women to TCD until his death in 1897. It is 1902 before his motion is finally passed, five years after his death.

In 1866, Haughton develops the original equations for hanging as a humane method of execution, whereby the neck is broken at the time of the drop, so that the condemned person does not slowly strangle to death. “On hanging considered from a Mechanical and Physiological point of view” is published in the London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Vol. 32 No. 213 (July 1866), calling for a drop energy of 2,240 ft-lbs. From 1886 to 1888, he serves as a member of the Capital Sentences Committee, the report of which suggests an Official Table of Drops based on 1,260 ft-lbs. of energy.

Haughton writes papers on many subjects for journals in London and Dublin. His topics include the laws of equilibrium, the motion of solid and fluid bodies, sun-heat, radiation, climates and tides. His papers cover the granites of Leinster and Donegal and the cleavage and joint planes of the Old Red Sandstone of Waterford.

Haughton is president of the Royal Irish Academy from 1886 to 1891, and secretary of the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland for twenty years. In 1880 he gives the Croonian Lecture on animal mechanics to the Royal Society.

Haughton is also involved in the Dublin and Kingstown Railway company, in which he looks after the building of the first locomotives. It is the first railway company in the world to build its own locomotives.

Samuel Haughton dies on October 31, 1897, and is buried in the Church of the Holy Cross Cemetery in Killeshin, County Laois.


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Death of Activist James Haughton

james-haughton

James Haughton, Irish social reformer and temperance activist, dies in Dublin on February 20, 1873.

Haughton, son of Samuel Pearson Haughton (1748–1828), by Mary, daughter of James Pim of Rushin, Queen’s County (now County Laois), is born in Carlow, County Carlow, and educated at Ballitor, County Kildare, from 1807 to 1810, under James White, a quaker. After filling several situations to learn his business, in 1817 he settles in Dublin, where he becomes a corn and flour factor, in partnership with his brother William. He retires in 1850. Although educated as a Friend, he joins the Unitarians in 1834 and remains throughout his life a strong believer in their tenets.

Haughton supports the anti-slavery movement at an early period and takes an active part in it until 1838, going in that year to London as a delegate to a convention. Shortly after the Temperance campaigner Father Theobald Mathew takes the pledge, on April 10, 1838, Haughton becomes one of his most devoted disciples. For many years he gives most of his time and energies to promoting total abstinence and to advocating legislative restrictions on the sale of intoxicating drinks.

In December 1844 Haughton is the chief promoter of a fund which is raised to pay some of the debts of Father Mathew and release him from prison. About 1835 he commences a series of letters in the public press which make his name widely known. He writes on temperance, slavery, British India, peace, capital punishment, sanitary reform, and education. His first letters are signed “The Son of a Water Drinker,” but he soon commences using his own name and continues to write until 1872.

Haughton takes a leading part in a series of weekly meetings which are held in Dublin in 1840, when so numerous are the social questions discussed that a newspaper editor calls the speakers the “Anti-everythingarians.” In association with Daniel O’Connell, of whose character he has a very high opinion, he advocates various plans for the amelioration of the condition of Ireland and the Repeal of the Union but is always opposed to physical force.

Haughton becomes a vegetarian in 1846, both on moral and sanitary grounds. For two or three years before his death he is president of the Vegetarian Society of the United Kingdom. He is one of the first members of the Statistical Society of Dublin (1847), a founder of the Dublin Mechanics’ Institute (1849), in the same year is on the committee of the Dublin Peace Society, aids in abolishing Donnybrook Fair in 1855, and takes a chief part in 1861 in opening the National Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin on Sundays.

James Haughton dies at 35 Eccles Street, Dublin, on February 20, 1873, and is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery on February 24 in the presence of an immense crowd of people.

Haughton’s son, Samuel Haughton, publishes a memoir of his father’s life including extracts from his public correspondence in 1877.