Santry is born in Cork, County Cork, on May 14, 1879, to Denis Santry, Sr., a carpenter and joiner. He studies at the Cork Municipal School of Art from 1894 to 1896 after serving an apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker. In 1895, he also studies at the Crawford School of Art. In 1897, he is articled to architect James Finbarre McMullen. From 1897 to 1898, he studies at the Royal College of Art in London under a Lane scholarship. While he is at the college, he wins the Queen’s prize for freehand drawing. After graduating, he returns to McMullen’s office and works there for the next two years.
Santry comes to South Africa at the end of 1901 due to ill health. He settles in Cape Town and is employed at Tully & Waters, an architectural firm, from 1901 to 1902. He then spends a year working for architect William Patrick Henry Black. In 1903, his cartoons begin to appear in local newspapers and magazines, including the South African Review. He uses the pseudonym “Adam” in his cartoons. He continues to work as an architect until 1910 when he begins working as a cartoonist, as well as a metalworker, sculptor and filmmaker. He then moves to Johannesburg and is employed at the Sunday Times and The Rand Daily Mail as a cartoonist. During World War I, his cartoons are reproduced in several other countries. He becomes a pioneer of animated cartoons in South Africa. He is a member of the Royal Society of Arts and a council member of the South African Society of Artists.
Santry comes to Singapore in 1918 and joins the architectural firm Swan & Maclaren as a partner. While in Singapore, he serves as the architect of several prominent buildings and monuments, including the Sultan Mosque, The Cenotaph, the Maritime Building, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank Building and the Telok Ayer Chinese Methodist Church. He serves as the first president of the St. Patrick’s Society Singapore, the first president of the Singapore Amateur Boxing Association, the chairman of the Singapore Art Club, a member of the board of control of the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall, a member of the Censorship Appeal Board and the vice-president of the Straits Settlements Association. He is also a frequent contributor to the Straits Produce, a satirical magazine. He helps to found the Singapore Society of Architects and the Institute of Architects of Malaya and is the founder and the chairman of the Singapore Musical Society. He retires to England in March 1934.
Santry returns to South Africa in 1940. Following the end of World War II, he resumes his practice as a result of lost income caused by the Japanese occupation of Malaya. In 1950, he becomes a member of the Institute of South African Architects. He designs several private houses in Hillcrest, KwaZulu-Natal.
Santry marries Madeline Hegarty in 1904. From 1910 to 1918, he lives in Kleine Schuur on Rhodes Avenue in Johannesburg. The house is designed by prominent architect Herbert Baker. He dies in Durban, South Africa, on April 14, 1960.
Walker is born in Dublin, son of Cooper Walker, merchant, and educated by Thomas Ball. He suffers from asthma, which prevents him from attending college. Instead he travels to Italy, where he possibly receives some private tuition in Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and Spanish. He takes a special interest in Italian literature and Irish antiquities, and on his return to Ireland (where he is employed in the Irish treasury as third clerk in the upper department) resides in an Italianate villa, St. Valerie, on the road from Bray to Enniskerry.
In 1785, Walker is elected one of the original members of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and on March 17, 1786, is requested to sit on its committee of antiquities. In this capacity he submits several essays to the Academy’s Transactions. However, his best-known work is Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (1786). His interest in poetry, and in eighteenth-century vernacular survivals of the ancient bardic tradition, suggests important new contemporary and literary dimensions for what had previously been antiquarian and scholarly pursuits. He also breaks new ground by considering modern as well as historical Irish culture, and introduces it to an Anglo-Irish audience by providing English translations of Gaelic songs and poems.
The authorities Walker cites covers the entire range of Irish and Anglo-Irish scholarship on Irish antiquities. He includes excerpts from his correspondence with Charles O’Conor, Charles Vallancey, and Sylvester O’Halloran and carries out an extensive correspondence with Thomas Percy after he becomes Bishop of Dromore in 1782. He focuses on both poetry and music, which according to the popular eighteenth-century view has been the two traditional pursuits of the Irish bards. He presents a historical outline of their progress from the earliest times to the eighteenth century and ends with nine appendices, which are almost as lengthy as the main text. In these, his appreciation of what he considers to be the contemporary survivals of the ancient Irish bardic tradition is apparent in his including an account of Cormac Common, a blind eighteenth-century poet from Mayo, as well as a lengthy biographical notice of Turlough O’Carolan, together with translations of several of his songs. The book brings together many of the literary, scholarly, popular, Celtic, antiquarian, political, and musical dimensions of eighteenth-century Irish culture and prefigures the synthesis of literary modes, cultural theories, and musical styles that would occur in the literary productions of the United Irishmen.
Despite his linguistic skills, Walker has little knowledge of the Irish language, yet he (a member of the Anglo-Irish elite) is consistent in his praise of Gaelic culture, portraying it as sophisticated and literate and, although he highly romanticises his work, he does help to challenge negative appraisals of the Irish character. By the standards of the time it is a work of great erudition. However, today the book is judged to be of limited academic merit as Walker is severely hampered by a shortage of primary documents and by his limited grasp of the Irish language. This is illustrated by his ambiguous use of James Macpherson‘s volumes of Ossianic poems, published in the 1760s, which he quotes as authentic in the text while hinting in the footnotes that they are unreliable.
Charlotte Brooke translates three poems, and in return Walker encourages her to produce her Reliques of Irish Poetry (1789). Her work reflects Walker’s influence and she thanks him in the preface for affording her “every assistance which zeal, judgment and extensive knowledge, could give” as well as for prevailing on people to subscribe to her work and for being a subscriber himself. He is part of a literary circle that includes Edward Ledwich, Charles O’Conor, Edward Berwick, John Philpot Curran, and Henry Grattan. He also writes Historical essay on the dress of the ancient and modern Irish (1788), dedicated to his friend James Caulfeild, 1st Earl of Charlemont, for which he interviews the older generation, consults manuscripts, and even visits tombs to examine the clothing of corpses, and admits he has received copious aid from Elizabeth Rawdon, Countess of Moira. The English Review receives it warmly but Richard Gough, the reviewer for TheGentleman’s Magazine, states he is “much disappointed in the perusal of this high priced history.” Other works by Walker include “an historical essay on the Irish stage,” RIA Trans., ii (1788), Historical Memoir on Italian Tragedy (1799) and contributions to Vallancey’s Collectanea de rebus Hibernicis (Dublin, 1770–1804). In the 1790s he subscribes to Anthologia Hibernica: a monthly collection of science, belles lettres and history and in December 1794 submits an “Historical essay on the Irish stage” which surveys Irish drama from bardic times through to contemporary folk plays.
Walker dies on April 12, 1810, in Enniskerry, County Wicklow, leaving a fine gallery of pictures, a library containing Irish manuscripts, and a collection of antiquities. He is buried on April 14 in St. Mary’s Churchyard, Dublin. His memoirs of Alessandro Tassoni are published posthumously in London in 1815 (with a lengthy preface by his brother Samuel), as is the second edition of Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (2 vols., Dublin, 1818).
(From: “Walker, Joseph Cooper” by Rosemary Ritchie, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Barrington is born in 1756 or 1757 in Knapton, Abbeyleix, Queen’s County (now County Laois), the third son of John Barrington, an impoverished Protestantgentleman landowner in Queens’s County and his wife Sibella French of Peterswell, County Galway. He is raised and schooled by his grandparents in Dublin and enters Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1773, aged 16, but leaves TCD without a degree.
Barrington joins the Irish Volunteers and supports the Irish Patriot Party in the early 1780s. His father raises and commands two Corps: the Cullenagh Rangers and the Ballyroan Light Infantry.
Barrington’s elder brother commands both the Kilkenny Horse and the Durrow Light Dragoons. Through his correspondence with General Hunt Walsh, Barrington’s father secures him a commission in Walsh’s regiment. Upon learning that the regiment is to be sent to America to fight in the American Revolution, and fearful of dying on some foreign battlefield, he writes to Walsh asking him to present the commission to another candidate instead, claiming that he himself is too tender to be of any real use. His fears prove well founded when his replacement, the only child of one of Walsh’s friends, is killed in his first engagement.
Barrington is called to the Irish bar in 1788 and in 1789 he marries Catherine, daughter of Dublin mercer, Edward Grogan. They ultimately have seven children. The following year he enters by the purchase of the seat the pre-1801 Parliament of Ireland as MP for Tuam. He accepts a sinecure post in 1793 at the Dublin customhouse worth £1,000 p.a. generally supporting Henry Grattan and he takes silk the same year. He is a member of the Kildare Street Club in Dublin. Appointed an Admiralty court judge in 1798, he re-enters parliament the same year as member for Clogher and votes against the Act of Union in 1799–1800, rejecting John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare‘s offer of the solicitor-generalship in 1799. In 1802, he unsuccessfully contests a seat for Dublin City in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Barrington’s comments on the Act of Union has a continuing resonance with the Young Ireland, Fenian and Irish Parliamentary Party movements, which hope to re-establish “Grattan’s Parliament” in some way. In particular, his Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation (1833) provides the basis for this romantic idealisation of Grattan’s Parliament adopted by the Irish Parliamentary Party from the 1880s.
Appointed an Admiralty court judge in 1798 at a salary of £500, Barrington finds there is little work to be done and his lack of a degree restricts other opportunities to support extravagant tastes. His award of a knighthood in 1807 brings no increased income. His court orders the sale of two derelict vessels and he gives instructions that the proceeds are to go to his own bank account. In 1810 or 1811 he takes his wife and family to England and from that time on his work in Ireland is carried out by surrogates. Still retaining his judgeship and salary, he moves to France in 1814 to escape his creditors and never returns to Ireland.
In 1828, commissioners learn of Barrington’s financial irregularities. He crosses the channel to London and protests that he is innocent but does not answer the charges based on the documentary evidence produced by the commissioners. In 1830, a parliamentary commission recommends that he be removed from office, finding misappropriations of court funds in 1805, 1806 and 1810. Pursuant to a provision of the Act of Settlement 1701, which seeks to protect the independence of the judiciary, both Houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom vote for an Address to King William IV praying for his removal, and the King duly dismisses Barrington from office. By then, Barrington’s first 1827 volume of memoirs has sold successfully, and they are republished and expanded. He is the first judge removed from office under the Act of Settlement, and to this day, is the only judge in the United Kingdom to be so removed.
According to one of Barrington’s sometimes spurious personal memoirs, on March 20, 1780, he travels to Donnybrook, Dublin, to duel with Richard Daly. Daly has fought 16 duels in three years – three with swords and thirteen with pistols. Remarkably, he, and his opponents, have always escaped serious injury. Barrington has no pistols so he and his second, Richard Crosbie, spend the previous night constructing a pair “from old locks, stocks and barrels.” At Donnybrook, Daly’s second, Jack Patterson, a nephew of the Chief Justice, approaches Crosbie, explains that it is all a mistake and asks that the two shake hands. Barrington is in favour, but Crosbie has none of it. Taking out a duelling handbook, he points to rule No.7 – “No apology can be received after the parties meet, without a fire.”
Taking up their positions, Barrington loses no time in pressing the trigger and Daly staggers back, puts his hand to his chest, and cries, “I’m hit, Sir.” The ball does not penetrate but does drive part of a brooch slightly into his breastbone. Barrington only then thinks to inquire why the duel is even taking place. This time the rule book notes: “If a party challenged accepts the challenge without asking the reason for it, the challenger is never bound to divulge it afterwards.”
Barrington is most notable today for his memoirs which include scathing but humorous thumbnail portraits of contemporary Irish lawyers, judges and politicians during the last years of the Protestant Ascendancy. Personal sketches also includes vignettes on Irish people from every background. His works are reprinted with frequent additions and renamings.
Since his death, Barrington’s work has been quoted by a wide selection of editors, primarily following two themes: the political drama surrounding the Act of Union and the colourful nature of life in 1700s Ireland.
Fisher is the sixteenth of seventeen children to Jane and Abraham Fisher. The Fishers are a Quaker family with a business in Youghal. They are noted for their charitable works, especially during the Great Famine.
Fisher and Haslam marry on March 20, 1854, in Cork Registry Office. Their marriage is mainly celibate as a result of them not wanting to have children. In later writings Thomas argues in favour of chastity for men. The couple shares a belief in equality for men and women and he supports her campaigns.
Both of the Haslams are expelled from the Society of Friends due to their interests in social reform but both maintain links with the community. Thomas is said to have been disowned for harbouring ideas contrary to Quaker teachings. In 1868, he publishes a pamphlet called “The Marriage Problem,” in which he raises and supports the idea of family limitation and outlines a number of contraceptive methods including the safe period. He dies on January 30, 1917, in his ninety-second year.
Haslam is best remembered today for her work for votes for women. She is a pioneer in every 19th century Irish feminist campaign and fights for votes for women from the year 1866. In 1872, she organises the “General Meeting of the members and friends of the Irish Society for Women’s Suffrage” in Blackrock, Dublin, which is chaired by George Owens and attended by MPs Maurice Brooks (a Home Ruler) and William Johnston (a northern Orangeman) and by the future Liberal Unionist Party MP Thomas Spring Rice, 2nd Baron Monteagle of Brandon. The Haslams are founding members of the Dublin Women’s Suffrage Association (DWSA) in 1876. This marks the start of a remarkable campaign in Dublin for votes for women. Haslam, along with the writing of her husband, continues the campaign and in 1896 women in Ireland win the right to be elected as Poor Law Guardians, members of the official bodies which administer the Poor Law. Ireland’s early women’s rights activists have a close relationship with their English correlatives and share the same discrimination in education, employment, sexual freedom and political participation. The DWSA organises the introduction of a private member’s bill to remove disqualification “by sex or marriage” for election or serving as a poor law guardian. The bill passes in 1896 and the association immediately writes to the newspapers and publishes leaflets explaining the process on how to register to vote and stand for election and encouraged qualified women to go forward as candidate.
By 1900, there are nearly 100 women guardians. Haslam then leads a campaign to encourage qualified women to stand for election in 1898. Women win eligibility to vote in local government elections, and to stand for elections as rural and urban district councillors. In 1913, she steps down as secretary of the Association and is elected life-president.
One of Haslam’s longest campaigns, working alongside the Belfast suffragist Isabella Tod, is for repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864. The acts allow for state regulation of prostitutes in areas in which the army is stationed. The act permits compulsory internment of women for up to three months, which is later extended to one year. Medical treatment is also enforced on the women. The act seeks only to reduce the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among the military. She opposes the act as she feels it legitimises prostitution, commoditises women and undermines family life. It is finally repealed following eighteen years of campaigning.
Haslam is involved in the 1866 petition and gathers 1,499 signatures to extend suffrage to women as well as men. In 1867, male suffrage is extended but it is not until 1911 that the Suffrage movement achieves the significant victory of securing the right of women to stand for election as local councillors.
In 1918, a woman of almost ninety, Haslam goes to the polls “surrounded by flowers and flags,” with women who unite in her honour to celebrate the victory of the vote. This display of unity by activist women from all shades of political opinion acknowledge her role in the fight for the right to vote. The same year in which she dies, in 1922, the Irish Free State extends the vote to all men and women over the age of 21.
Haslam dies on November 28, 1922, at her home in Carlton Terrace, Dublin, of “cardiac dropsy” at the age of 93. She is buried next to her husband in the Quaker burying ground at the Friends Burial Ground in Temple Hill, Blackrock, Dublin.
A memorial seat to Anna and Thomas Haslam is erected in 1923 in St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, with the inscription “in honour of their long years of public service chiefly devoted to the enfranchisement of women.”
Veronica Dunne, Irish operaticsoprano and voice teacher also known as Ronnie Dunne, who is described as “an Irish national treasure,” dies on April 5, 2021. After a successful operatic career at the Dublin Opera and the Royal Opera House in London, she focuses on voice teaching in Dublin, where she trains future international singers. The triennial Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition is established in 1995. She receives the National Concert Hall Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.
Dunne is born in Dublin on August 20, 1927. She is the youngest of three children of a well-to-do family. Her father works as a master builder whose construction firm builds the church in Foxrock, Dublin, in the early 1930s. She begins singing when she is 11 years old. She studies initially in Dublin with Hubert Rooney. She then sells her pony for £125 in order to fund her dream of studying music in Italy. She goes to Rome in 1946 to study with Soldini Calcagni and Francesco Calcatelli. Her family meets with Sarsfield Hogan, the secretary of the Department of Finance at the time, to discuss the issue of her monthly allowance, which would breach foreign exchange controls. Sarsfield permits her to receive the money on the condition that she return to Ireland in the future and teach her young compatriots to sing.
Dunne gives a number of world premieres of works by contemporary Irish composers including Never to Have Lived is Best (1965) by Seóirse Bodley, as well as Irish Songs (1971) and The Táin (1970) by James Wilson.
Dunne is appointed a voice teacher at the then Dublin College of Music (today Technical University Conservatory of Music and Drama) in 1962. She is awarded an honorific doctorate in 1987. She retires in 1992, but continues to teach at the Leinster School of Music and the Royal Irish Academy of Music. Her students include Patricia Bardon, Orla Boylan, Mary Brennan, Tara Erraught, Lynda Lee, Colette McGahon, Anthony Kearns, Suzanne Murphy, and Finbar Wright, who have all sung in the major international opera houses. In 2014, at the age of 87, she continues to teach 39 hours per week.
The triennial Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition, established by the Friends of the Vocal Arts in Ireland in 1995, awards bursaries in her name. Recipients included Orla Boylan, Sarah-Jane Brandon, Tara Erraught, Pumeza Matshikiza and Simon O’Neill. She receives the National Concert Hall Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.
Dunne marries Peter McCarthy in 1953. The couple has two children.
Dunne dies at the age of 93, on April 5, 2021. Irish PresidentMichael D. Higgins pays tribute to Dunne, saying that she “captivated millions with her singing” and adding, “The legacy she leaves lies in the talents of those scores of others whose talents and performances she unlocked with her enthusiasm, energy and commitment as a teacher and friend.”
Duhan is one of nine children, one of whom dies before Johnny is born. His parents, John and Christina (née Murphy), raise their family on Wolfe Tone Street, Limerick. He attends the Christian Brothersnational school on Sexton Street but hates it.
Duhan is writing songs from an early age. He leaves school and starts his career as the 15-year-old frontman of the Irish beat group Granny’s Intentions. After success in Limerick and Dublin, where he shares a flat with Phil Lynott and Gary Moore, the band moves to London and is signed to the Deram Records record label. His girlfriend, Maureen, leaves her job as a teacher to travel to London with him. The band releases several singles and one album, Honest Injun, with Duhan composing eight of the band’s eleven songs. Granny’s Intentions melds a bluesy rock sound with a down-home earthiness. Moore joins the band at the age of 17, and Pete Cummins (later of The Fleadh Cowboys) is also a member. The band has their sights set on a further move to Los Angeles, California, but the deal falls through. The band disbands before Duhan is twenty-one. While in London he is offered a job as lead singer with St. James Gate, but that deal falls through as well.
From there, the couple set about a different kind of life, with Duhan growing his own vegetables and embarking on a path as a solo singer-songwriter in earnest. He has a cry in his voice that is plaintive and highly distinctive. An advance from Arista Records allows him and Maureen to put a deposit on their first home in Sandyvale Lawn on Headford Road in Galway. Later they move to Barna, where he enjoys a quiet but very orderly, some might say even regimental life: rising daily before dawn, attending daily Mass, reading vociferously and enjoying his daily swims on his beloved Silver Strand. He climbs Diamond Mountain most Sundays and Carrauntoohil annually.
Just Another Town, To the Light, Flame, and The Voyage are some of Duhan’s work. These align with the first four sections of his poetic autobiography, To The Light. His songs have been performed by Christy Moore, The Dubliners, Mary Black, and other Irish and international singers. Christy Moore states that his song “The Voyage” has been performed at over a million weddings worldwide.
His daughters, Ailbhe and Niamh, describe Duhan as a kind, gentle and selfless soul. He is a true family man. Headstrong in his beliefs, he never follows trends. He spends his life seeking meaning, delving deeply into philosophical and theological works. Mornings are devoted to reading and studying his favourite writers, making meticulous notes on whether he agrees or disagrees with their thoughts, and more importantly why. He teaches all his children to play music, and Niamh is now a music teacher.
Duhan drowns on November 12, 2024, while swimming off Silver Strand in Galway. His funeral Mass takes place at St. Killian’s New Inn Church in County Galway. He is laid to rest at Killaan Cemetery, Woodlawn.
Stanford is born in Dublin into a well-off and highly musical family on September 30, 1852, the only son of John James Stanford, a prominent Dublin lawyer, Examiner to the Court of Chancery in Ireland and Clerk of the Crown for County Meath, and his second wife, Mary (née Henn). He is educated at the University of Cambridge before studying music in Leipzig and Berlin. He is instrumental in raising the status of the Cambridge University Musical Society, attracting international stars to perform with it.
While still an undergraduate, Stanford is appointed organist of Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1882, at the age of 29, he is one of the founding professors at the Royal College of Music, where he teaches composition for the rest of his life. From 1887 he is also Professor of Music at Cambridge. As a teacher, he is skeptical about modernism and bases his instruction chiefly on classical principles as exemplified in the music of Johannes Brahms. Among his pupils are rising composers whose fame go on to surpass his own, such as Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams. As a conductor, he holds posts with the Bach Choir and the Leeds Triennial Music Festival.
Stanford composes a substantial number of concert works, including seven symphonies, but his best-remembered pieces are his choral works for church performance, chiefly composed in the Anglican tradition. He is a dedicated composer of opera, but none of his nine completed operas has endured in the general repertory. Some critics regard him, together with Hubert Parry and Alexander Mackenzie, as responsible for a renaissance in music from the British Isles. However, after his conspicuous success as a composer in the last two decades of the 19th century, his music is eclipsed in the 20th century by that of Edward Elgar as well as former pupils.
In September 1922, Stanford completes the sixth Irish Rhapsody, his final work. Two weeks later he celebrates his 70th birthday and thereafter his health declines. On March 17, 1924, he suffers a stroke and dies on March 29 at his home in London, survived by his wife and children. He is cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on April 2 and his ashes are buried in Westminster Abbey the following day.
Stanford’s last opera, The Travelling Companion, composed during World War I, is premiered by amateur performers at the David Lewis Theatre, Liverpool in 1925 with a reduced orchestra. The work is given complete at Bristol in 1928 and at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London, in 1935.
Katherine Wilmot, Irish traveler and diarist, dies in Paris, France, on March 28, 1824. She makes a Grand Tour from 1801 to 1803 and documents her experiences through letters, including encounters with notable figures like Napoleon Bonaparte. She later travels to Russia to join her sister Martha Wilmot and lives there from 1805 to 1807. She later moves to France and dies in Paris in 1824. Her writings, letters, and diaries provide insight into the Napoleonic era, on Russian society and on travel in the 19th century. Her works also include her sister’s transcript of the memoirs of Princess Yekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova.
Wilmot is born around 1773 in Drogheda, County Louth, to Edward and Martha Wilmot (née Moore). She is the eldest daughter of six daughters and three sons. Her father is the port surveyor in Drogheda, having previously served as captain in the 40th Regiment of Foot. He is transferred to a similar post in County Cork in 1775, where Wilmot is raised. The family settles in Glanmire, near the seat of the Earl Mount Cashell in Moore Park. The earl’s family uses the surname Moore.
Wilmot is friendly with Lady Mountcashell, formerly Margaret King, an early and eager pupil of Mary Wollstonecraft. She is invited to accompany the party of Stephen Moore, 2nd Earl Mount Cashell, and his wife on a grand tour of the continent. Her letters from the time survive, in France from November 1801 to October 1802, and in Italy until July 1803. The Mount Cashells entertain lavishly, especially during the first nine months in Paris, and through them she meets Napoleon Bonaparte, and becomes friends with the Austrian painter Angelica Kauffman. She also meets the French diplomat and politician Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, and the Irish republicanRobert Emmet fleetingly. She recounts her meeting in Rome with the English aristocrat Frederick Augustus Hervey, and her audience with Pope Pius VII. She returns to London from Italy in October 1803, via Germany and Denmark, after England and France resume hostilities.
Wilmot then goes to Russia to bring home her sister Martha, and ends up spending two years there. Martha is in the country as a favourite of Princess Dashkova, one of the key figures of the Russian Enlightenment and a close friend of Catherine the Great. Martha is living at the Princess’s estate in Troitskoe on the Oka River, about 100 km from Moscow. Wilmot arrives on August 4, 1805, having set out from Cork on June 5. Her writings from this time record the Russian aristocracy‘s opulence and attitudes to the servile classes (the serfs). The sisters come to know the customs of the Russian elite, as well as the festivals and religious rites of the country people. She leaves Moscow on July 4, 1807, a combination of passport problems, wars and storms at sea, resulting in delays and in her reaching Yarmouth on September 7, 1807, and returning to Ireland in October 1807.
Wilmot moves to France to live in a warmer, drier climate than Ireland. Her health declines when she moves to Paris, and she dies there on March 28, 1824. Her nephew by Martha, Wilmot Henry Bradford, lives to be “Father of the Army.”
Wilmot had taken Martha’s transcript of the memoirs of the Princess Dashkova when she left Russia. These are published by Martha in 1840, as she had burned the original manuscript before her departure from Russia in 1808.
Wilmot’s letters are published a century later, and have been described as a unique portrayal of the Napoleonic period. They describe the social scene, as well as the experience of traveling by coach and ship at that time. The family makes transcriptions of the letters. The collection belonging to Martha is donated to the library of the Royal Irish Academy by Elisabeth van Dedem Lecky, the historian and writer. Among these Russian letters are a number written by Eleanor Cavanagh, who describes the lives of servants. Wilmot’s diaries are published in 1920 by Thomas Sadleir, and later by H. Montgomery Hyde and Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry.
TheGrand Tours of Katherine Wilmot, France 1801-1803, and Russia 1805-07(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1992)
An Irish Peer on the Continent, 1801-03 (1920)
The Russian Journals of Martha and Catherine Wilmot (1934)
More letters from Martha Wilmot; Vienna 1819-29 (1935)
Shannon is the eldest child of solicitor George William Shannon and Emily Shannon (née Goodman). She has two sisters and two brothers. She attends Alexandra College, and later lectures for women at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). On July 27, 1875, she marries Maurice Dockrell, eldest son of Thomas Dockrell, a well known Dublin merchant, and Anne Morgan Dockrell (née Brooks). The couple has seven children, one daughter and six sons. She goes on to become a director and member of the board of her husband’s family company: Messrs Thomas Dockrell & Sons & Co. Ltd.[1]
Dockrell is an active member of the committee of the Dublin Women’s Suffrage and Local Government Association, later known as the Irish Women’s Suffrage and Local Government Association (IWSLGA), founded in 1876 to promote women’s suffrage by democratic methods. She attends international women’s suffrage conferences in Stockholm in 1911 and Budapest in 1913. She is also a committee member of the London Women’s Suffrage Society, speaking on the role of women in local government at the International Congress of Women in London in 1899. The Irish Citizen lists her as a suitable woman candidate to run for the senate seat proposed by the Home rule bill in 1912.
Dockell is a member of the National Union of Women Workers, sitting as a member of its public services committee. Like many of her contemporaries, she believes that women are best placed to address issues around health, societal moral well-being, and housing. From 1898, the Local Government (Ireland) Act, allows women to be candidates for local government elections. Dockrell first runs as a candidate in the Urban District Council (UDC) of the Monkstown ward of Blackrock, Dublin in the 1898 local elections, where she is returned as the third of nine elected, becoming one of only four women councillors elected in Ireland.
Dockrell describes herself as a unionist and a Protestant, sitting as a council on the Blackrock UDC until her death. She is the only woman councillor on that UDC until 1925 and the election of Ellen O’Neill. She is also the first woman chair of a UDC when she is elected to the position in 1906.
Despite the political and societal turmoil of the early 20th century in Ireland and the establishment of the Irish Free State, Dockrell continues in her commitment to local politics. This includes being the first woman to be elected to a Dublin county council in 1920. Despite remaining a committed unionist, she works with the Free State government. Following her husband’s knighthood, she is also known as Lady Dockrell.
Esther Johnson, an Englishwoman known as “Stella” and known to be a close friend of Jonathan Swift, is born in Richmond, Surrey, England, on March 13, 1681. Whether or not she and Swift are secretly married, and if so, why the marriage is never made public, is a subject of debate.
Johnson spends her early years at Moor Park, Farnham, home of Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet. Here, when she is about eight, she meets Swift, who is Temple’s secretary. He takes a friendly interest in her from the beginning and apparently supervises her education.
Johnson’s parentage has been the subject of much speculation. The weight of evidence is that her mother acts as companion to Temple’s widowed sister, Martha, Lady Giffard, and that Johnson, her mother and her sister Anne are regarded as part of the family. Her father is said to have been a merchant who died young. Gossip that she is Temple’s illegitimate daughter seems to rest on nothing more solid than the friendly interest he shows in her. There are similar rumours about his supposed relationship with Swift.
When Swift sees Johnson again in 1696, he considers that she has grown into the “most beautiful, graceful and agreeable young woman in London.” Temple, at his death in 1699, leaves her some property in Ireland, and it is at Swift’s suggestion that she move to Ireland in 1702 to protect her interests, but her long residence there is probably due to a desire to be close to Swift. She generally lives in Swift’s house, though always with female companions like Rebecca Dingley, a cousin of Temple whom she has known since childhood. She becomes extremely popular in Dublin and an intellectual circle grows up around her, although it was said that she finds the company of other women tedious and only enjoys the conversation of men.
In 1704, their mutual friend, the Reverend William Tisdall, tells Swift that he wishes to marry Johnson, much to Swift’s private disgust, although his letter to Tisdall, which outlines his objections to the marriage, is courteous enough, making the practical point that Tisdall is not in a position to support a wife financially. Little is known about this episode, other than Swift’s letter to Tisdall. It is unclear if Tisdall actually proposes to her. If he does, he seems to have been met with a firm rejection, and he marries Eleanor Morgan two years later. He and Swift, after a long estrangement, become friends once more after Johnson’s death.
Johnson’s friendship with Swift becomes fraught after 1707 when he meets Esther Vanhomrigh, daughter of the Dutch-born Lord Mayor of Dublin, Bartholomew Van Homrigh. Swift becomes deeply attached to her and invents for her the name “Vanessa.” She in turn becomes infatuated with him and after his return to Ireland follows him there. The uneasy relationship between the three of them continues until 1723 when Vanessa, who is by now seriously ill from tuberculosis, apparently asks Swift not to see Johnson again. This leads to a violent quarrel between them, and Vanessa, before her death in June 1723, destroys the will she had made in Swift’s favour, leaving her property to two men, George Berkeley and Robert Marshall, who though eminent in their respective callings are almost strangers to her.
Whether Swift and Johnson are married has always been a subject of intense debate. The marriage ceremony is allegedly performed in 1716 by St. George Ashe, Bishop of Clogher, with no witnesses present, and it is said that the parties agree to keep it secret and live apart. Johnson always describes herself as a “spinster” and Swift always refers to himself as unmarried. Rebecca Dingley, who lives with Johnson throughout her years in Ireland, says that Johnson and Swift were never alone together. Those who know the couple best are divided on whether a marriage ever took place. Some, like Mrs. Dingley and Swift’s housekeeper Mrs. Brent laugh at the idea as “absurd.” On the other hand, Thomas Sheridan, one of Swift’s oldest friends, believes that the story of the marriage is true. He reportedly gives Johnson herself as his source. Historians have been unable to reach a definite conclusion on the truth of the matter. Bishop Ashe dies before the story first becomes public, and there are no other witnesses to the supposed marriage.
A collection of Johnson’s witticisms is published by Swift under the titles of “Bon Mots de Stella” as an appendix to some editions of Gulliver’s Travels. A Journal to Stella, a collection of 65 letters from Swift to Johnson, is published posthumously.
In 1722, Martha, Lady Giffard, dies and leaves money to Johnson and Swift’s sister, Mrs. Fenton, who had been her companion in 1711.
Johnson’s health begins to fail in her mid-forties. In 1726, she is thought to be dying and Swift rushes back from London to be with her but finds her better. The following year it becomes clear that she is gravely ill. After sinking slowly for months, she dies on January 28, 1728, and is buried in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. Swift is inconsolable at her death and writes The Death of Mrs. Johnson in tribute to her. When Swift dies in October 1745, he is buried beside her at his own request. A ward in St. Patrick’s University Hospital is named “Stella” in her memory.
In the 1994 film Words Upon the Window Pane, based on the play by William Butler Yeats, Johnson is played by Bríd Brennan. The plot turns on a séance in Dublin in the 1920s, where the ghosts of Swift, Johnson and Vanessa appear to resume their ancient quarrel.
seamus dubhghaill 