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Birth of Abraham Brewster, Judge & Lord Chancellor of Ireland

Abraham Brewster PC (Ire), Irish judge and Lord Chancellor of Ireland, is born in Ballymutra House in Ballynultagh Townland, County Wicklow, on April 10, 1796.

Brewster is the son of William Bagenal Brewster, of Ballinulta, County Wicklow, by his wife Mary, daughter of Thomas Bates. He receives his earlier education at Kilkenny College, then proceeds to Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1812, taking his B.A. degree in 1817, and long after, in 1847, his M.A. degree.

Brewster is called to the Irish bar in 1819, and, having chosen Leinster for his circuit, soon acquires the reputation of a sound lawyer and a powerful speaker. Lord Plunket honours him with a silk gown on July 13, 1835. Notwithstanding the opposition of Daniel O’Connell, who dislikes him, he is appointed Law Adviser to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland on October 10, 1841, and is Solicitor-General for Ireland from February 2, 1846, until July 16. By the influence of his friend Sir James Graham, First Lord of the Admiralty, he is Attorney-General for Ireland and privy councilor from January 10, 1853, until the fall of the Aberdeen ministry on February 10, 1855.[1]

In 1854, Brewster is appointed to the Royal Commission for Consolidating the Statute Law, a royal commission to consolidate existing statutes and enactments of English law.

Brewster is very active in almost all branches of his profession after his resignation, and his reputation as an advocate may be gathered from the pages of the Irish Law and Equity Reports, and in the later series of the Irish Common Law Reports, the Irish Chancery Reports, and the Irish Jurist, in all of which his name very frequently appears. Among the most important cases in which he takes part are the Mountgarrett case in 1854, involving a peerage and an estate of £10,000 a year, the Carden abduction case in July of the same year, the Yelverton case in 1861, the Egmont will case in 1863, the Marquess of Donegall‘s ejectment action and lastly, the great will cause of Fitzgerald v. Fitzgerald, in which Brewster’s statement for the plaintiff is said to be one of his most successful efforts.

On Edward Smith-Stanley becoming prime minister, Brewster succeeds Francis Blackburne as Lord Justice of Appeal in Ireland in July 1866, and Lord Chancellor of Ireland the following March. As Lord Chancellor, he sits in his court for the last time on December 17, 1868, when Benjamin Disraeli‘s government resigns. He then retires from public life.

There are only three or four judgments delivered by him in print, either in the Court of Appeal or the Court of Chancery (Ireland). His judicial manner is quiet, but with what is called “a touch of serviceable fierceness” which keeps order in Court. He is highly regarded by his colleagues. Even the bitter-tongued Jonathan Christian, who despises most of his fellow judges, defers to Brewster.

Brewster dies at his residence, 26 Merrion Square South, Dublin, on July 26, 1874, and is buried in the family vault at Tullow, County Carlow, on July 30. By his marriage in 1819 with Mary Ann, daughter of Robert Gray of Upton House, County Carlow, who dies in Dublin on November 24, 1862, he has issue one son, Colonel William Bagenal Brewster, and one daughter, Elizabeth Mary, wife of Mr. Henry French, both of whom die in the lifetime of their father. His estates are inherited by Elizabeth’s son, Robert French-Brewster, who adopts his grandfather’s surname. A nephew, Edward Brewster, studies under Abraham Brewster and becomes a lawyer and politician in New South Wales. Edward’s brother, John Grey Brewster, also emigrates to Australia, where he becomes a prosperous grazier and company director, retiring to England in later years where he dies in 1897.

(Pictured: Right Honourable Abraham Brewster photographed by Thomas Cranfield, 1861)


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Birth of Abraham Colles, Professor & President of the RCSI

Abraham Colles, Professor of Anatomy, Surgery and Physiology at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) and the President of RCSI in 1802 and 1830, is born in Millmount, County Kilkenny, on July 23, 1773. A prestigious Colles Medal & Travelling Fellowship in Surgery is awarded competitively annually to an Irish surgical trainee embarking on higher specialist training abroad before returning to establish practice in Ireland.

Descended from a Worcestershire family, some of whom had sat in Parliament, Colles is born to William Colles and Mary Anne Bates of Woodbroak, County Wexford. The family lives near Millmount, a townland near Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, where his father owns and manages his inheritance which is the extensive Black Quarry that produces the famous Kilkenny black marble. His father dies when he is 6 years old, but his mother takes over the management of the quarry and manages to give her children a good education. While at Kilkenny College, a flood destroys a local physician’s house. He finds an anatomy book belonging to the doctor in a field and returns it to him. Sensing the young man’s interest in medicine, the physician lets him keep the book.

Colles goes on to enroll in Trinity College Dublin in 1790 and is indentured to Philip Woodroffe, studying at Dr. Steevens’ Hospital, The Foundlings’ Hospital and the House of Industry hospitals. He receives the Licentiate Diploma of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1795 and goes on to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, receiving his MD degree in 1797. Afterward, he lives in London for a short period, working with the famous surgeon Sir Astley Cooper in his dissections of the inguinal region.

Following his return to Dublin, in 1799, Colles is elected to the staff at Dr. Steevens’ Hospital where he serves for the next 42 years. In October 1803, he is appointed Surgeon to Cork-street Fever Hospital, and subsequently becomes Consulting Surgeon to the Rotunda Hospital, City of Dublin Hospital, and Victoria Lying-in Hospital. He is a well-regarded surgeon and is elected as president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) in 1802 at the age of 28 years, subsequently also serving as president in 1830. In 1804, he is appointed Professor of Anatomy, Physiology, and Surgery at RCSI.

In 1811, Colles writes an important treatise on surgical anatomy and some terms he introduces have survived in surgical nomenclature until today. He is remembered as a skillful surgeon and for his 1814 paper On the Fracture of the Carpal Extremity of the Radius. This injury continues to be known as Colles’ fracture. This paper, describing distal radial fractures, is far ahead of its time, being published decades before X-rays come into use. He also describes the membranous layer of subcutaneous tissue of the perineum, which comes to be known as Colles’ fascia. He also extensively studies the inguinal ligament, which is sometimes called Colles’ ligament. He is regarded as the first surgeon to successfully ligate the subclavian artery.

In 1837, Colles writes “Practical observations on the venereal disease, and on the use of mercury” in which he introduces the hypothesis of maternal immunity of a syphilitic infant when the mother has not shown signs of the disease. His principal textbook is the two-volume Lectures on the theory and practice of surgery. His writings are important, though not voluminous. Some of his papers are collected and edited by his son, William Colles, and published in the Dublin Journal of Medical Science. Selections from the works of Abraham Colles, chiefly relative to the venereal disease and the use of mercury, comprise Volume XOII. of the Library of the New Sydenham Society, published in 1881. They are edited and annotated by one of the most distinguished Fellows of the RCSI, Robert McDonnell. His Lectures on Surgery are edited by Simon M’Coy and published in 1850. In tribute to his distinguished career, he is awarded a baronetcy in 1839, which he refuses.

Upon Colles’s retirement as Professor of Surgery, the Members of RCSI pass a resolution which includes “We have also to assure you that it is the unanimous feeling of the College, that the exemplary and efficient manner in which you have filled this chair for thirty-two years, has been a principal cause of the success and consequent high character of the School of Surgery in this country.”

Colles dies on November 16, 1843, from gout. He is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin.

In 1807, Colles marries Sophia Cope. His son William follows in his footsteps, being elected to the Chair of Anatomy in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1863. Another of his sons, Henry, marries Elizabeth Mayne, a niece of Robert James Graves. His grandson is the eminent music critic and lexicographer H. C. Colles. His granddaughter Frances marries the judge Lord Ashbourne, and her sister Anna marries his colleague Sir Edmund Thomas Bewley.


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Death of Musicologist Francis Llewellyn Harrison

Francis Llewellyn Harrison, better known as “Frank Harrison” or “Frank Ll. Harrison” and one of the leading musicologists of his time and a pioneering ethnomusicologist, dies in Canterbury, England, on December 29, 1987.

Initially trained as an organist and composer, he turns to musicology in the early 1950s, first specialising in English and Irish music of the Middle Ages and increasingly turning to ethnomusicological subjects in the course of his career. His Music in Medieval Britain (1958) is still a standard work on the subject, and Time, Place and Music (1973) is a key textbook on ethnomusicology.

Harrison is born in Dublin on September 29, 1905, the second son of Alfred Francis Harrison and Florence May (née Nash). He becomes a chorister at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin in 1912 and is educated at the cathedral grammar school and Mountjoy School. A competent organist, he is deputy organist at St. Patrick’s from 1925 to 1928. In 1920, he also begins musical studies at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where he studies with John Francis Larchet (composition), George Hewson (organ) and Michele Esposito (piano). In 1926, he graduates Bachelor of Music at Trinity College Dublin and is awarded a doctorate (MusD) in 1929 for a musical setting of Psalm 19. He then works in Kilkenny for one year, serving as organist at St. Canice’s Cathedral and music teacher at Kilkenny College.

In 1930, Harrison emigrates to Canada to become organist at Westminster Presbyterian Church in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. In 1933, he studies briefly with Marcel Dupré in France but returns to Canada in 1934 to become organist at Knox Presbyterian Church in Ottawa. In 1935, he takes a position as organist and choirmaster at St. George’s Cathedral in Kingston, Ontario, as well as taking up the newly created post of “resident musician” at Queen’s University at Kingston. His duties include giving lectures, running a choir and an orchestra, and conducting concerts himself. His course in the history and appreciation of music is the first music course to be given for full credit at Queen’s. He resigns from St. George’s in 1941 to become assistant professor of music at Queen’s in 1942. During his years in Canada he still pursues the idea of remaining a performing musician and composer, winning three national composition competitions: for Winter’s Poem (1931), Baroque Suite (1943) and Night Hymns on Lake Nipigon (1945).

On a year’s leave of absence from Queen’s, Harrison studies composition with Paul Hindemith at Yale University, also taking courses in musicology with Leo Schrade. In 1946, he takes up a position at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, and then moves on to Washington University in St. Louis as head of the new Department of Music (1947–1950).

In 1951, Harrison takes the degrees of Master of Arts (M.A.) and Doctor of Music (DMus) at Jesus College, Oxford, and becomes lecturer (1952), senior lecturer (1956), and reader in the history of music (1962–1970) there. In 1965, he is elected Fellow the British Academy and Senior Research Fellow at Oxford. From 1970 to 1980, he is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, retiring to part-time teaching in 1976.

Harrison also holds Visiting Professorships in musicology at Yale University (1958–1959), Princeton University (spring 1961 and 1968–1969), and Dartmouth College (winter 1968 and spring 1972). He also briefly returns to Queen’s University at Kingston as Queen’s Quest Visiting Professor in the fall of 1980 and is Visiting Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh for the calendar year 1981.

Harrison’s honorary titles also include Doctor of Laws at Queen’s University, Kingston (1974), Corresponding Member of the American Musicological Society (1981), and Vice President and Chairman of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society (1985). At Queen’s also, the new Harrison-LeCaine Hall (1974) is partly named in his honour.

Harrison dies in Canterbury, England on December 29, 1987.

In 1989, Harry White appreciates Harrison as “an Irish musicologist of international standing and of seminal influence, whose scholarly achievement, astonishingly, encompassed virtually the complete scope of the discipline which he espoused.” David F. L. Chadd writes of him “He was above all things an explorer, tirelessly curious and boyishly delighted in the pursuit of knowledge, experience and ideas, and totally heedless of artificially imposed constraints and boundaries.”

Since 2004, the Society for Musicology in Ireland (SMI) awards a bi-annual Irish Research Council Harrison Medal in his honour to distinguished international musicologists.


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Death of George Beresford, 1st Marquess of Waterford

George de la Poer Beresford, 1st Marquess of Waterford, KP, PC (Ire), an Irish politician, known as George Beresford, 2nd Earl of Tyrone from 1763 to 1789, dies on December 3, 1800.

Beresford is the eldest surviving son of Marcus Beresford, 1st Earl of Tyrone, and his wife, Lady Catherine Power, suo jure Baroness de la Poer. Among his siblings are John Beresford, who marries Countess Anne Constantin de Ligondes, and William Beresford, 1st Baron Decies, who marries Elizabeth FitzGibbon, sister of John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare.

Beresford’s mother is the only daughter of James Power, 3rd Earl of Tyrone (who is also the 8th Baron Power) and the former Anne Rickard, eldest daughter and co-heiress of Andrew Rickard, of Dangan-Spidoge. His father is the only son of Sir Tristram Beresford, 3rd Baronet, and his wife Nichola Sophia Hamilton, youngest daughter of Hugh Hamilton, 1st Viscount of Glenawly.

Beresford is educated at Kilkenny College and Trinity College Dublin.

From 1757 to 1760, Beresford is a Member of the Irish House of Commons for County Waterford from 1757 to 1760, and for Coleraine from 1761 until 1763, when he inherits his father’s earldom, enters the Irish House of Lords and is admitted to the Privy Council of Ireland.

Beresford is Governor of Waterford from 1766 and Custos Rotulorum of County Waterford from 1769 to 1800, during which time he is made a Knight of St. Patrick, created Baron Tyrone in the Peerage of Great Britain in 1786, and elevated as a marquess in 1789.

On April 19, 1769, Beresford marries Elizabeth Monck, the daughter of Henry Monck, of Charleville, and the former Lady Isabella Bentinck, second daughter of Henry Bentinck, 1st Duke of Portland. Elizabeth is also the cousin of Charles Monck, 1st Viscount Monck. Together, they are the parents of eight children:

Beresford also has two illegitimate sons, William Carr Beresford, 1st Viscount Beresford, and Sir John Beresford, 1st Baronet.

Beresford dies on December 3, 1800, and his titles pass to his eldest surviving legitimate son, Henry.

(Pictured: George Beresford, First Marquess of Waterford, oil on canvas by Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828))


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Birth of E. R. Dodds, Irish Classical Scholar

Eric Robertson Dodds, Irish classical scholar, is born in Banbridge, County Down, on July 26, 1893. He is Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford from 1936 to 1960.

Dodds is the son of schoolteachers. His father Robert is from a Presbyterian family and dies of alcoholism when Dodds is seven years old. His mother Anne is of Anglo-Irish ancestry. When he is ten, he moves with his mother to Dublin, and he is educated at St. Andrew’s College, where his mother teaches, and at Campbell College in Belfast. He is expelled from the latter for “gross, studied, and sustained insolence.”

In 1912, Dodds wins a scholarship at University College, Oxford, to read classics, or Literae Humaniores, a two-part, four-year degree program consisting of five terms of study of Latin and Greek texts followed by seven terms of study of ancient history and ancient philosophy. His friends at Oxford include Aldous Huxley and T. S. Eliot. In 1916, he is asked to leave Oxford due to his support for the Easter Rising, but he returns the following year to take his final examinations in Literae Humaniores, and is awarded a first-class degree to match the first-class awarded him in 1914 in Honour Moderations, the preliminary stage of his degree. His first tutor at Oxford is Arthur Blackburne Poynton.

After graduation, Dodds returns to Dublin and meets W. B. Yeats and George William Russell. He teaches briefly at Kilkenny College and in 1919 is appointed as a lecturer in classics at the University of Reading, where in 1923 he marries a lecturer in English, Annie Edwards Powell. They have no children.

In 1924, Dodds is appointed Professor of Greek at the University of Birmingham, and comes to know W. H. Auden, whose father George, Professor of Public Medicine and an amateur classicist, is a colleague. He is also responsible for Louis MacNeice‘s appointment as a lecturer at Birmingham in 1930. He assists MacNeice with his translation of Aeschylus, Agamemnon (1936), and later becomes the poet’s literary executor. He publishes one volume of his own poems, Thirty-Two Poems, with a Note on Unprofessional Poetry (1929).

In 1936, Dodds becomes Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford, succeeding Gilbert Murray. Murray decisively recommends him to British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and it is not a popular appointment. He is chosen over two prominent Oxford dons, Maurice Bowra of Wadham College and John Dewar Denniston of Hertford College. His lack of service in World War I and his support for Irish republicanism and socialism in addition to his scholarship on the non-standard field of Neoplatonism, also does not make him initially popular with colleagues. He is treated particularly harshly by Denys Page at whose college, Christ Church, the Regius Chair of Greek is based.

Dodds has a lifelong interest in mysticism and psychic research, being a member of the council of the Society for Psychical Research from 1927 and its president from 1961 to 1963.

On his retirement in 1960, Dodds is made an Honorary Fellow of University College, Oxford, until his death on April 8, 1979. He dies in the village of Old Marston, northeast of Oxford.

Among Dodds’s works are The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), which charts the influence of irrational forces in Greek culture up to the time of Plato, and Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, a study of religious life in the period between Marcus Aurelius and Constantine I. He is also editor of three major classical texts for the Clarendon Press, Proclus: Elements of Theology, Euripides‘ The Bacchae and Plato’s Gorgias, all published with extensive commentaries, and a translation in the case of the first. His autobiography, Missing Persons, is published in 1977. He edits Louis MacNeice’s unfinished autobiography The Strings are False (1965) and MacNeice’s Collected Poems (1966).


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Birth of George Berkeley, Anglican Bishop of Cloyne

George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne of the Anglican Church of Ireland known as Bishop Berkeley, is born at his family home, Dysart Castle, near Thomastown, County Kilkenny, on March 12, 1685. He is an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose primary achievement is the advancement of a theory he calls “immaterialism” (later referred to as “subjective idealism” by others). This theory denies the existence of material substance and instead contends that familiar objects like tables and chairs are ideas perceived by the mind and, as a result, cannot exist without being perceived. He is also known for his critique of abstraction, an important premise in his argument for immaterialism.

Berkeley is the eldest son of William Berkeley, a cadet of the noble family of Berkeley whose ancestry can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxon period and who had served as feudal lords and landowners in Gloucester, England. Little is known of his mother. He is educated at Kilkenny College and attends Trinity College Dublin, where he is elected a Scholar in 1702, being awarded BA in 1704 and MA and a Fellowship in 1707. He remains at Trinity College after completion of his degree as a tutor and Greek lecturer.

Berkeley’s earliest publication is on mathematics, but the first that brings him notice is his An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, first published in 1709. In the essay, he examines visual distance, magnitude, position and problems of sight and touch. While this work raises much controversy at the time, its conclusions are now accepted as an established part of the theory of optics.

The next publication to appear is A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge in 1710, which has great success and gives him a lasting reputation, though few accept his theory that nothing exists outside the mind. This is followed in 1713 by Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, in which he propounds his system of philosophy, the leading principle of which is that the world, as represented by our senses, depends for its existence on being perceived.

For this theory, the Principles gives the exposition and the Dialogues the defence. One of his main objectives is to combat the prevailing materialism of his time. The theory is largely received with ridicule, while even those such as Samuel Clarke and William Whiston, who do acknowledge his “extraordinary genius,” are nevertheless convinced that his first principles are false.

Shortly afterwards, Berkeley visits England and is received into the circle of Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope and Richard Steele. In the period between 1714 and 1720, he intersperses his academic endeavours with periods of extensive travel in Europe, including one of the most extensive Grand Tours of the length and breadth of Italy ever undertaken. In 1721, he takes holy orders in the Church of Ireland, earning his doctorate in divinity, and once again chooses to remain at Trinity College Dublin, lecturing this time in Divinity and in Hebrew. In 1721-22 he is made Dean of Dromore and, in 1724, Dean of Derry.

In 1723, following her violent quarrel with Jonathan Swift, who had been her intimate friend for many years, Esther Vanhomrigh names Berkeley her co-heir along with the barrister Robert Marshall. Her choice of legatees causes a good deal of surprise since she does not know either of them well, although Berkeley as a very young man had known her father. Swift says generously that he does not grudge Berkeley his inheritance, much of which vanishes in a lawsuit in any event. A story that Berkeley and Marshall disregarded a condition of the inheritance that they must publish the correspondence between Swift and Vanhomrigh is probably untrue.

In 1725, Berkeley begins the project of founding a college in Bermuda for training ministers and missionaries in the colony, in pursuit of which he gives up his deanery with its income of £1100.

In 1728, Berkeley marries Anne Forster, daughter of John Forster, Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas, and his first wife Rebecca Monck. He then goes to America on a salary of £100 per annum. He lands near Newport, Rhode Island, where he buys a plantation at Middletown – the famous “Whitehall.” He purchases several enslaved Africans to work on the plantation. He also brings John Smibert to New England, the Scottish artist he “discovered” in Italy, who is generally regarded as the founding father of American portrait painting. Meanwhile, he draws up plans for the ideal city he plans to build on Bermuda. He lives at the plantation while he waits for funds for his college to arrive. The funds, however, are not forthcoming and he leaves America and returns to London in 1732.

Berkeley and his wife have four children who survive infancy: Henry, George, William and Julia, and at least two other children who die in infancy. William’s death in 1751 is a great cause of grief to his father.

Berkeley is nominated to be the Bishop of Cloyne in the Church of Ireland on January 18, 1734. He is consecrated as such on May 19, 1734. He is the Bishop of Cloyne until his death on January 14, 1753, although he dies at Oxford.

While living in London’s Saville Street, Berkeley takes part in efforts to create a home for the city’s abandoned children. The Foundling Hospital is founded by royal charter in 1739, and Berkeley is listed as one of its original governors.

Berkeley’s last two publications are Siris: A Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries Concerning the Virtues of Tarwater, And divers other Subjects connected together and arising one from another (1744) and Further Thoughts on Tar-water (1752). Pine tar is an effective antiseptic and disinfectant when applied to cuts on the skin, but he argues for the use of pine tar as a broad panacea for diseases. His 1744 work on tar-water sells more copies than any of his other books during Berkeley’s lifetime.

Berkeley remains at Cloyne until 1752, when he retires. With his wife and daughter Julia, he goes to Oxford to live with his son George and supervise his education. He dies soon afterwards and is buried in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. His affectionate disposition and genial manners make him much loved and held in warm regard by many of his contemporaries. Anne outlives her husband by many years, dying in 1786.

(Pictured: “Bishop George Berkeley,” oil on canvas portrait by John Smibert, c. 1727)


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Birth of Jonathan Swift, Essayist, Pamphleteer, Poet & Cleric

Jonathan Swift, satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet and cleric who becomes Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, is born in Dublin on November 30, 1667.

Swift’s father, an attorney, also named Jonathan Swift, dies just two months before he is born. Without steady income, his mother struggles to provide for her newborn. Moreover, he is a sickly child. It is later discovered that he suffers from Ménière’s disease, a condition of the inner ear that leaves the afflicted nauseous and hard of hearing. In an effort to give her son the best upbringing possible, Swift’s mother gives him over to Godwin Swift, her late husband’s brother and a member of the respected professional attorney and judges group Gray’s Inn. Godwin Swift enrolls his nephew with one of his cousins in Kilkenny College, which is perhaps the best school in Ireland at the time. He arrives there at the age of six, where he is expected to have already learned the basic declensions in Latin. He has not and thus begins his schooling in a lower form. He graduates in 1682, when he is 15. His transition from a life of poverty to a rigorous private school setting proves challenging. He does, however, make a fast friend in William Congreve, the future poet and playwright.

In 1682, Swift commences his undergraduate studies at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1686, he receives a Bachelor of Arts degree and goes on to pursue a master’s degree. Not long into his research, huge unrest breaks out in Ireland. The king of Ireland, England and Scotland is soon to be overthrown. What becomes known as the Glorious Revolution of 1688 spurs him to move to England and start anew. For 10 years, Swift works in Surrey‘s Moor Park and acts as an assistant to Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet.

During his Moor Park years, Swift meets the daughter of Temple’s housekeeper, an 8-year-old named Esther Johnson, known as “Stella.” They become lovers for the rest of their lives until Johnson’s death in 1728. It is rumored that they marry in 1716, and that Swift keeps of lock of Johnson’s hair in his possession at all times.

During his decade of work for Temple, Swift returns to Ireland twice. On a trip in 1695, he takes all necessary requirements to become an ordained priest in the Anglican tradition. Under Temple’s influence, he also begins to write, first short essays and then a manuscript for a later book. Temple dies in 1699. Swift completes the task of editing and publishing Temple’s memoirs. He then leans on his priestly qualifications and finds work ministering to a pea-sized congregation just 20 miles outside of Dublin. For the next ten years, he gardens, preaches and works on the house provided to him by the church. He also returns to writing. His first political pamphlet is titled A Discourse on the Contests and Dissentions in Athens and Rome.

In 1704, Swift anonymously releases A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books. Tub, although widely popular with the masses, is harshly disapproved of by the Church of England. Ostensibly, it criticizes religion, but Swift means it as a parody of pride. Nonetheless, his writings earn him a reputation in London and when the Tories come into power in 1710, they ask him to become editor of The Examiner, their official paper. After a time, he becomes fully immersed in the political landscape and begins writing some of the most cutting and well-known political pamphlets of the day, including The Conduct of the Allies, an attack on the Whigs. Privy to the inner circle of Tory government, he lays out his private thoughts and feelings in a stream of letters to his beloved Stella. They are later published as The Journal to Stella.

When he sees that the Tories will soon fall from power, Swift returns to Ireland. In 1713, he takes the post of Dean at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. While leading his congregation at St. Patrick’s, he begins to write what would become his best-known work. In 1726, at last finished with the manuscript, he travels to London and benefits from the help of several friends, who anonymously publish it as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, more simply known as Gulliver’s Travels. The book is an immediate success and has not been out of print since its first run.

Not long after the celebration of this work, Esther Johnson, falls ill. She dies in January 1728. Her death moves Swift to write The Death of Mrs. Johnson.

In 1742, Swift suffers a stroke and loses the ability to speak. He dies on October 19, 1745. He is laid to rest next to Esther Johnson inside Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral.


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Death of Abraham Colles, Professor & President of the RCSI

Abraham Colles, Professor of Anatomy, Surgery and Physiology at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) and the President of RCSI in 1802 and 1830, dies on November 16, 1843. A prestigious Colles Medal & Travelling Fellowship in Surgery is awarded competitively annually to an Irish surgical trainee embarking on higher specialist training abroad before returning to establish practice in Ireland.

Descended from a Worcestershire family, some of whom had sat in Parliament, Colles is born to William Colles and Mary Anne Bates of Woodbroak, County Wexford, on July 23, 1773. The family lives near Millmount, a townland near Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, where his father owns and manages his inheritance which is the extensive Black Quarry that produces the famous Kilkenny black marble. His father dies when he is 6 years old, but his mother takes over the management of the quarry and manages to give her children a good education. While at Kilkenny College, a flood destroys a local physician’s house. He finds an anatomy book belonging to the doctor in a field and returns it to him. Sensing the young man’s interest in medicine, the physician lets him keep the book.

Colles goes on to enroll in Trinity College Dublin in 1790 and is indentured to Philip Woodroffe, studying at Dr. Steevens’ Hospital, The Foundlings’ Hospital and the House of Industry hospitals. He receives the Licentiate Diploma of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1795 and goes on to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, receiving his MD degree in 1797. Afterward, he lives in London for a short period, working with the famous surgeon Sir Astley Cooper in his dissections of the inguinal region.

Following his return to Dublin, in 1799, Colles is elected to the staff at Dr. Steevens’ Hospital where he serves for the next 42 years. In October 1803, he is appointed Surgeon to Cork-street Fever Hospital, and subsequently becomes Consulting Surgeon to the Rotunda Hospital, City of Dublin Hospital, and Victoria Lying-in Hospital. He is a well-regarded surgeon and is elected as president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) in 1802 at the age of 28 years, subsequently also serving as president in 1830. In 1804, he is appointed Professor of Anatomy, Physiology, and Surgery at RCSI.

In 1811, Colles writes an important treatise on surgical anatomy and some terms he introduces have survived in surgical nomenclature until today. He is remembered as a skillful surgeon and for his 1814 paper On the Fracture of the Carpal Extremity of the Radius. This injury continues to be known as Colles’ fracture. This paper, describing distal radial fractures, is far ahead of its time, being published decades before X-rays come into use. He also describes the membranous layer of subcutaneous tissue of the perineum, which comes to be known as Colles’ fascia. He also extensively studies the inguinal ligament, which is sometimes called Colles’ ligament. He is regarded as the first surgeon to successfully ligate the subclavian artery.

In 1837, Colles writes “Practical observations on the venereal disease, and on the use of mercury” in which he introduces the hypothesis of maternal immunity of a syphilitic infant when the mother has not shown signs of the disease. His principal textbook is the two-volume Lectures on the theory and practice of surgery. His writings are important, though not voluminous. Some of his papers are collected and edited by his son, William Colles, and published in the Dublin Journal of Medical Science. Selections from the works of Abraham Colles, chiefly relative to the venereal disease and the use of mercury, comprise Volume XOII. of the Library of the New Sydenham Society, published in 1881. They are edited and annotated by one of the most distinguished Fellows of the RCSI, Robert McDonnell. His Lectures on Surgery are edited by Simon McCoy and published in 1850. In tribute to his distinguished career, he is awarded a baronetcy in 1839, which he refuses.

Upon Colles’s retirement as Professor of Surgery, the Members of RCSI pass a resolution which includes “We have also to assure you that it is the unanimous feeling of the College, that the exemplary and efficient manner in which you have filled this chair for thirty-two years, has been a principal cause of the success and consequent high character of the School of Surgery in this country.”

Colles dies on November 16, 1843, from gout. He is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin.

In 1807, Colles marries Sophia Cope. His son William follows in his footsteps, being elected to the Chair of Anatomy in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1863. Another of his sons, Henry, marries Elizabeth Mayne, a niece of Robert James Graves. His grandson is the eminent music critic and lexicographer H. C. Colles. His granddaughter Frances marries the judge Lord Ashbourne, and her sister Anna marries his colleague Sir Edmund Thomas Bewley.


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Birth of Maeve Kyle, Olympic Athlete & Hockey Player

Maeve Esther Enid Kyle, OBE, Irish Olympic athlete and hockey player, is born Maeve Esther Enid Shankey in County Kilkenny on October 6, 1928.

Kyle briefly attends Kilkenny College where her father C.G. Shankey is headmaster, before attending Alexandra College and finally, Trinity College, Dublin. She is the granddaughter of William Thrift.

Kyle competes in the 100m and 200m in the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, and subsequently in the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy, and the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, where she reaches the semi-finals of both the 400m and 800m. She takes the bronze medal in the 400m at the 1966 European Athletics Indoor Championships in Dortmund, Germany. She wins four gold medals in W45 Category at the 1977 World Masters Athletics Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden, in the 100m, 400m, high jump and long jump. She holds World Masters records at W40 for the 100m (12:00 secs) and 400m (55.30 secs) and W45 100m (12.50 secs) and W50 long jump at 5.04m.

In field hockey, Kyle gains 58 Irish caps as well as representing three of the four Irish provinces (Leinster, Munster and Ulster) at different stages of her career. She is named in the World All Star team in 1953 and 1959. She is also a competitor in tennis, swimming, sailing and cricket and works as a coach. She is chair of Coaching NI. In 2006, she is awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of the University (DUniv) from the University of Ulster.

Kyle is awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2006 Coaching Awards in London in recognition of her work with athletes at the Ballymena and Antrim Athletics Club. Earlier in 2006 she is one of 10 players who are initially installed into Irish hockey’s Hall of Fame. She is appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours.


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Death of John Hewitt Jellett, Mathematician & Priest

John Hewitt Jellett, Irish mathematician whose career is spent at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where he rises to the rank of Provost, dies in Dublin on February 19, 1888. He is also a priest in the Church of Ireland.

Jellett is born at Cashel, County Tipperary, on December 25, 1817, the son of Rev. Morgan Jellett and his wife Harriette Townsend, daughter of Hewitt Baldwin Poole of County Cork, by his wife Dorothea Morris. He is the eldest brother of Hewitt Poole Jellett, Serjeant-at-law (Ireland) and Chairman of the Quarter Sessions for County Laois, and of the Venerable Henry Jellett, Archdeacon of Cloyne. He is educated at Kilkenny College and at TCD, where he becomes a fellow in 1840.

Jellett marries his cousin on his mother’s side, Dorothea Charlotte Morris Morgan, daughter of James Morgan, on July 7, 1855. The marriage produces seven children. His son, William Morgan Jellett, is a member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is the father of the celebrated artist Mainie Jellett, and of Dorothea Jellett, director of the orchestra of the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. Another son Henry Holmes Jellett is a civil engineer in British India. His daughter Harriette Mary Jellett is the wife of the noted Irish physicist George Francis FitzGerald. Another daughter Eva Jellett is the first woman to graduate with a degree in medicine from Trinity and goes on to practice as a doctor in India.

Jellett graduates B.A. in mathematics in 1837, M.A. 1843, B.D. 1866, and D.D. 1881. He is ordained a priest in 1846. In 1848 he is elected to the chair of natural philosophy at TCD, and in 1868 he receives the appointment of commissioner of Irish national education.

In 1851 Jellett is awarded the Cunningham Medal of the Royal Irish Academy for his work on the “Calculus of Variations.” The society later elects him their president, a position he holds from 1869 to 1874.

In 1870, on the death of Dr. Thomas Luby, Jellett is co-opted a Senior Fellow, and thus a member of the Board of TCD. William Ewart Gladstone‘s government in February 1881 appoints him provost of Trinity. In the same year he is awarded a Royal Medal by the Royal Society.

After the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland by the Irish Church Act 1869, Jellett takes an active part in the deliberations of the general synod and in every work calculated to advance its interests. He is an able mathematician and writes A Treatise of the Calculus of Variations (1850), and A Treatise on the Theory of Friction (1872), as well as several papers on pure and applied mathematics, articles in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy. He also writes some theological essays, sermons, and religious treatises, of which the principals are An Examination of some of the Moral Difficulties of the Old Testament (1867), and The Efficacy of Prayer (1878).

Jellett dies of blood poisoning at the provost’s house, TCD, on February 19, 1888, and is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery on February 23. The funeral procession is the largest that ever left Trinity.

(Pictured: “John Hewitt Jellett,” oil on canvas by Sarah Purser)