On July 5, 1790, the Irish mail coach service makes its first run from Dublin to Waterford, marking a significant milestone in Ireland’s postal history. This is part of the broader expansion of the General Post Office’s (GPO) mail coach network, which had been introduced in Ireland in 1789.
A twice-weekly mail coach service operates between Dublin and Drogheda to the north, Kilkenny to the south and Athlone to the west as early as 1737 and for a short period from 1740, a Dublin to Belfast mail coach exists. In winter, this route takes three days, with overnight stops at Drogheda and Newry. In summer, travel time is reduced to two days. In 1789, mail coaches begin a scheduled service from Dublin to Belfast. They meet the mail boats coming from Portpatrick in Scotland at Donaghadee, County Down.
The Irish mail coach system is modeled on the successful English service introduced in 1784 by John Palmer, which uses specially built coaches to carry the Royal Mail under contract to independent operators. These coaches are designed for speed and efficiency, stopping only for mail collection and delivery, and are protected by armed guards. The Dublin–Waterford route is one of the early inland services added to the network, complementing other major routes such as London–Norwich, Liverpool–Leeds, and London–Dover.
The July 5, 1790 run from Dublin to Waterford is notable because it is the first scheduled mail coach service on that route, replacing slower and less secure methods like mounted riders or carts. It demonstrates the GPO’s ability to extend its network to key inland towns, improving communication between Dublin and the southeast of Ireland. It also reflects the rapid expansion of the mail coach system in Ireland by 1790, with many towns already having daily mail delivery and collection.
While the primary purpose is to carry the Royal Mail, passengers can also travel at a premium fare. The coaches can carry four seated passengers inside and more standing outside, with the driver and guard occupying the front seats. The journey from Dublin to Waterford is relatively short for the time, but still requires careful scheduling to meet the strict post office timetable.
This first run lays the foundation for a regular mail service that becomes a vital part of Ireland’s transport and communication infrastructure until the advent of railways in the 1830s. By the mid-19th century, most of the mail coaches in Ireland are eventually out-competed by Charles Bianconi’s country-wide network of open carriages, before this system in turn succumbs to the railways. The Dublin–Waterford route, like others, is eventually replaced by the faster rail services, but its role in modernizing Ireland’s postal system is crucial.
Harrison’s brother, Henry, is a supporter of Charles Stewart Parnell and a Member of Parliament for Mid Tipperary. She herself becomes the first female city councillor for Dublin Corporation in 1912. She campaigns to have poor relief extended to the able-bodied unemployed and works to promote women’s rights. She is closely involved in Hugh Lane‘s efforts to establish a gallery of modern art in Dublin.
For some 30 years Harrison is part of social reform and women’s rights in Ireland. In 1912 she is the first woman to be elected to the Dublin City Council. Here she works closely with Alderman Alfie Byrne. She is also recognised for her prominent place in the suffrage victory procession and escorting Anna Haslam to vote in the Williams Street Courthouse, Dublin, in the 1918 United Kingdom general election.
Following Hugh Lane’s death on the RMS Lusitania in 1915, Harrison claims that they had been engaged to be married. Her 1914 portrait of Lane is one of her best-known works. She never marries.
Harrison dies on July 23, 1941, in Drumcondra, Dublin. She is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, the inscription on her gravestone reads “Artist and Friend of the Poor.”
Currie becomes an active member in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA). He later speaks about the effect of partition on Catholics in Northern Ireland: “Partition was used to try to cut us off from the rest of the Irish nation. Unionists did their best to stamp out our nationalism and, the educational system, to the extent it could organise it, was oriented to Britain and we were not even allowed to use names such as Séamus or Seán. When my brothers’ godparents went to register their birth, they were told no such names as Séamus or Seán existed in Northern Ireland and were asked for the English equivalent.”
Currie contests the 1979 United Kingdom general election and 1986 by-election in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone seat, but is unsuccessful on both attempts. He also is elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1982 for the same seat. That Assembly, which is an attempt by the Government of the United Kingdom to reintroduce devolved power-sharing, collapses in 1986 without executive ministerial functions ever being transferred to it from the UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland as no political agreement can be reached on power-sharing between the parties owing to nationalists abstentionism over the constituency boundaries used to elect members, and unionist opposition to the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985.
Following his decision to quit Northern Ireland politics, and relocate his family to County Kildare, Currie becomes actively involved in politics in the Republic of Ireland. Partly due to his long-standing doubts about the commitment of politicians in the Republic to the plight of northern nationalists, he join the Fine Gael party in 1989. He is elected as a Fine Gael TD for Dublin West at the 1989 Irish general election.
In 1990, Fine Gael selects Currie as their candidate for the 1990 Irish presidential election, running against Tánaiste and Fianna Fáil TD, Brian Lenihan Sr, and Senator Mary Robinson for the Labour Party. The 1990 election is the first contested election for the Irish Presidency in 17 years. Currie receives 267,902 first-preference votes (approximately 17%) and is eliminated on the first count. The distribution of his votes sees Mary Robinson elected as Ireland’s first female president on the second count, beating Lenihan by more than 86,000 votes.
In his 2004 autobiography All Hell will Break Loose, Currie writes about his experience of running in the presidential election, and the prejudice he faced as a nationalist from Ulster in southern politics: “What annoyed, indeed angered me most was the suggestion that because I came from the North, I was not a real Irishman … what I called the partitionist mentality … [during the election campaign] the [then Fianna Fáil] Minister for Justice [Ray Burke] said Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes ‘had to go to Tyrone to find a candidate for the presidency’ … it was hard to take, particularly from so-called republicans.”
Following his defeat in the presidential election, Currie holds his Dáil seat in Dublin West at the 1992 and 1997 Irish general elections. Following the formation of the so-called Rainbow Coalition between Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left, on December 20, 1994, newly appointed TaoiseachJohn Bruton appoints him as a Minister of State with responsibility for Children’s Rights at the Departments of Health, Education and Justice, becoming the first ever minister in an Irish Government with dedicated responsibility for children. He holds this post until the appointment of a new Irish Government on June 26, 1997, following the 1997 Irish general election.
At the 2002 Irish general election Currie contests the new constituency of Dublin Mid-West, and fails to be elected. He immediately announces his retirement from electoral politics. He continues to speak and campaign for civil rights across the island of Ireland and for causes he believes in, such as justice for the families of the Disappeared during the Troubles. He and his wife and family are personal friends of the family of one of the Disappeared, Columba McVeigh, from Donaghmore, County Tyrone. His daughter Emer Currie is elected in his former constituency of Dublin West at the 2024 Irish general election.
Following the deaths of Seamus Mallon and John Hume in January and August 2020 respectively, Currie becomes the last surviving founder of the SDLP.
Currie dies on November 9, 2021, at the age of 82 at his residence in Derrymullen, County Kildare. Following an initial funeral mass in Allentown, County Kildare, his remains are transferred to his original family home in Edendork, near Dungannon, County Tyrone, where a second funeral mass was celebrated at St. Malachy’s Church, Edendork. He is buried alongside his parents in the cemetery adjoining the church.
Murphy is born on June 19, 1914, at Lisheen, Gneeveguilla, County Kerry, part of an area in west Munster known as Sliabh Luachra. Her father Bill plays flute, fife and fiddle, and has a fife and drum band. Both she and her brother Denis Murphy, also a musician, are taught the fiddle by the noted traveling fiddler and fiddle teacher from the same area, Padraig O’Keeffe.
Clifford, her brother, O’Keeffe, and other musicians from the Sliabh Luachra area are regarded as a significant influence on Irish traditional music and have given rise to the term Sliabh Luachra style.
In the late 1930s Murphy emigrates to Scotland and then to London where she works as a hotel maid before marrying John Clifford in 1941. He is an accordion player, also from Kerry, and they had two sons, John and Billy. In the 1940s they play the Irish dance halls in London. In the 1950s they return to Ireland for a time, living in Newcastle West in County Limerick. They perform in the Star of Munster Ceili Band with which they make radio recordings.
Back in London, Clifford enjoys greater popularity with the onset of the 1960s folk boom. In 1968, Claddagh Records records her and brother Denis on an album of Kerry music, The Star Above the Garter.
Rediscovered by the British folk club scene of the 1970s, Topic Records in 1977 issues an earlier recording of Clifford with her brother and Padraig O’Keeffe, Kerry Fiddles (Music from Sliabh Luachra). This is followed by two LPs featuring a range of music from various periods played by her, her husband and her son Billy, a flute player.
The wider appreciation of the music of Sliabh Luachra – particularly its Kerry slides and polkas – come late in life for Clifford. The Cliffords live in a small council flat in Hackney in East London before being rehoused in Thetford, Norfolk in the late 1970s.
In the 1980s and 1990s Clifford’s reputation grows, being invited to perform at folk clubs and festivals. She performs on trips back to Ireland and is introduced to television audiences. She also visits the United States. Many young players who seek her out to learn tunes and styles from her Kerry repertoire find her generous and encouraging.
Clifford’s husband John dies in 1981. She dies on June 18, 1997, one day before her 84th birthday, and is buried in Norfolk.
As part of the 2008 Cork Midsummer Festival, 1,100 volunteers gather on the grounds of Blarney Castle in the early hours of Tuesday, June 17, 2008, and strip naked to have their picture taken at the famous location.
The occasion is the first shoot in Ireland by the American photographic artist Spencer Tunick, who has already made quite a name for himself shooting large groups of naked people in public spaces in New York City, Montreal, London and Amsterdam.
Like many of Tunick’s projects, the event in Cork comes about by invitation. “It was Mary McCarthy, the art curator at Dublin Docklands, who contacted me first,” says Tunick, via Zoom from his office in New York, of the organiser who is director of the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork. “Mary thought to make it a two-city project, in Cork and Dublin, and brought Cork Midsummer Festival on board. People think I can choose where I want to work, but it’s not as if I can get up and say, ‘hmm, I want to photograph 1,000 people in a volcanic crater in Hawaii.’ In reality, I need a team on the other side, helping me. And it was Mary who established that team in Ireland.”
McCarthy’s crew works with Tunick on selecting locations for his shoots. Blarney Castle appeals to Tunick. “When you think of a castle, you think of swords, you think of dreams, you think of battle and war,” he says. “But you might also think of the rose. I tried to combine a lot of different ideas or fantasies about the castle and connect them to the body. But there were also a lot of grounds around the castle, so I could have different set-ups and positions to shoot in.”
When Cork Midsummer Festival puts out a call for volunteers, it is inundated with applications. Those chosen are of all ages, and from all walks of life. “I think sometimes people associate my live works with young people. But there’s often a lot of people over 50, and into their 80s, at this great unifying event that touches on the idea of group photo gatherings from the 1920s. When you see a big haul of people lined up, undressed of course, it combines group portraiture with abstraction and the naked body.”
At Blarney Castle, beginning around 5:30 a.m., he shoots the crowd in a variety of poses on the castle lawns, facing toward and away from the camera, then lying on their backs as they each held a single rose aloft (pictured above), red for the women and white for the men. He then photographs a small number on their knees in the river that runs through the grounds, and a smaller number again kissing the Blarney Stone. Some participants see the photo shoot as an opportunity to challenge the general disapproval of nakedness that prevails in the Ireland of their youth. Others see it as a way to make peace with their body image.
Later that morning, Tunick photographs about 50 naked volunteers covered in foam at White Street Carpark in Cork city centre. “As a kid, I was always fascinated by the bubble scene in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the film,” says Tunick. “So, I wanted, in a whimsical and surreal way, to amplify my memories of that. But I also wanted to work with the history of the area, so I infused Murphy’s beer into four bubble machines and created a snow globe effect with the nudes. That was beautiful.”
Looking back on the photographs, one is struck by how most of the bodies are white. If it is true that Cork has become far more ethnically diverse city since that day in 2008, one must also wonder if Tunick’s call for volunteers appealed to a certain demographic. “I always ask the organisers to do community outreach in different areas, so we can get more colour and ethnicities into the work,” he says. “But sometimes it doesn’t really resonate, and sometimes the population is not there, you know. And often, where that population exists, it might not be connected to the body in contemporary art. But I’ve always tried, and now I insist that the organisers make an extra effort.”
Tunick’s shoots at Blarney Castle and White Street attract lavish coverage in the media, a reflection perhaps on how they coincide with a change in the public perception of nudity. The project would almost certainly have caused an uproar even twenty years previously. Participants describe a sense of joy and liberation. “This was definitely pre-Instagram, right? And now when we’re on Instagram, we think the whole world is accepting of nudity in public, but back then, there was not that same outlet for my images. But there was that documentation by the press, and through that, I think people realised that something had happened that went against the grain in a positive way.”
Four days later, Tunick photographs 2,500 naked volunteers on the South Wall in Dublin. Again, the event attracts headlines, but already, it seems, the culture has moved on, and there is not quite that same element of surprise and delight as there had been in Cork.
Tunick has done many projects since. Some of his favourites include those in Kingston upon Hull in 2016 and on the Dead Sea in 2011 and again in 2021. “I like working with props. In Cork, I used roses and beer foam. But now I like working with body paint. In Hull, we covered around 4,000 people in four shades of blue. The blues were those of the water I saw in a number of paintings in the Maritime Museum in the city. I asked Pantone to replicate the colours, and those were the blues we used. Not many people know that.”
“My projects in the Dead Sea were partly about showing how the salt in the water could elevate the body. That created a very interesting, otherworldly effect in the photographs. But they also aimed to raise awareness of how the Dead Sea is disappearing because of irrigation to serve the need for drinking water by adjoining countries such as Israel and Jordan. It’s a very difficult situation.”
Many photographers find their work curtailed by pandemic restrictions of the early 2020s. Tunick too is forced to postpone photographing groups of people on location, but he does find a way to go on creating. “An art collective called Studio 333 in Mexico asked me if I wanted to do group works on video chats, and offered to manage it technically. So we started making group works with people from all walks of life, all around the world. We had someone in Saudi Arabia posing with someone in Israel. We had people in Australia, people in Europe, people all over the world. I think the only place we weren’t able to work with was Antarctica, but who knows? Maybe that’s in the future.” The resulting images are published online, on Tunick and Studio 333’s websites and social media accounts, under the collective title ”Stay Apart Together.”
As for the future, Tunick would love to work in Ireland again, he says. “It’s always been my dream to do a work in Northern Ireland, maybe with 100 or 200 people on the Giant’s Causeway? I can’t have too many, because then you wouldn’t see the rocks. Northern Ireland, the Giant’s Causeway… that project’s been on my mind for a long time, so hopefully some museum or curator will invite me to do it.”
(From: “Cork in 50 Artworks, No 49: Spencer Tunick’s nude installation at Blarney Castle” by Marc O’Sullivan, Irish Examiner, http://www.irishexaminer.com, April 11, 2022 | Pictured: Blarney Castle with the crowd assembled by Spencer Tunick)
On June 15, 1988, an unmarked military van carrying six British Army soldiers is blown up by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) at Market Place in Lisburn, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. The explosion takes place at the end of a charity marathon run in which the soldiers had participated. All six soldiers are killed in the attack – four outright, one on his way to hospital and another later on in hospital.
Lisburn is the headquarters of the British Army in Northern Ireland. Four of the dead are from the Royal Corps of Signals while the other two are from the Green Howards and the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. A booby trap bomb is hidden under the Ford Transit van in which the soldiers are traveling, and is designed in such a way that the blast goes upward to cause maximum damage to the vehicle. Eleven civilian bystanders are injured, including a two-year-old child and 80-year-old man. The bombing is sometimes referred to as the Lisburn “Fun Run” bombing.
On Wednesday, June 15, 1988, at 8:50 p.m., an unmarked blue Ford Transit van carrying six off-duty British soldiers in civilian clothes drives off from a leisure centre carpark in Lisburn. The soldiers have just taken part in the “Lisburn Fun Run”, a 13-mile (21 km) charity half marathon held in the town. They leave the van unattended in the car park, which is the start and finish point for the run. It is there that an IRA active service unit (ASU), who has been following the van, hides a bomb underneath the vehicle. The half marathon and shorter “fun runs” are organised by Lisburn Borough Council, together with the YMCA, to raise funds for the disabled. There are 4,500 participants that day and at least 200 British Army personnel have been given leave to participate in the event.
Nine minutes later, the van stops at traffic lights at Market Place, in Lisburn’s town centre. As the van moves on, the seven-pound (3.2 kg) bomb detonates, turning the van into a massive fireball and instantly killing four of the soldiers as the vehicle disintegrates with the force of the blast. The Semtex device has been designed in a cone shape to channel the blast upward, thereby causing maximum damage to the vehicle and the soldiers inside. The area around Market Place is crowded with onlookers, including many teenagers and families with young children, although the biggest crowd is at the carpark. In all, about 10,000 onlookers have attended the charity run. There is pandemonium as frightened parents search for their children, while others rush to give aid to the dead and dying soldiers before fire engines and ambulances arrive.
Eleven civilian bystanders are injured in the attack, including a two-year-old child and an 80-year-old man. Another soldier dies on the way to hospital while a sixth soldier dies later that night after undergoing surgery for severe head injuries. The dead soldiers are stationed at Ebrington Barracks in Derry and are returning to base when the bomb goes off. Four of the men – Sergeant Michael Winkler (31), Signalman Mark Clavey (24), Lance Corporal Graham Lambie (22), and Corporal William Patterson (22) – are from the Royal Corps of Signals, while the other two – Corporal Ian Metcalf (36) and Lance Corporal Derek Green (20) – are from the Green Howards and Royal Army Ordnance Corps respectively.
Lisburn is a mainly Ulster Protestant town, 14 miles (23 km) southwest of Belfast. It serves as the garrison headquarters of the British Army in Northern Ireland. Six months before the van bombing, a booby trap bomb planted by the IRA kills Ulster Defence Association (UDA) leader John McMichael in the town.
The van bombing results in the greatest loss of life suffered by the British Army since eleven soldiers were killed in the Droppin Well Disco bombing on December 6, 1982.
On June 16, the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade claims responsibility for the bombing, promising to wage “unceasing war” against the British security forces in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams allegedly says that the IRA’s killing of the six soldiers is “vastly preferable” to killing members of the (locally recruited) Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) or Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The leisure centre is forced to remain shut for a time after the loyalistProtestant Action Force (a cover-name of the UVF) issues a warning that they regard Catholic staff working there as “legitimate targets,” inferring that they may have had a hand in the bombing. Lisburn mayor Councillor William Bleakes condemns the threats by the PAF.
That same day, Tom King, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, travels to Lisburn where he holds a meeting with Lieutenant General Sir John Waters, the British Army Commander in Northern Ireland, and senior RUC officers. They discuss the attack and proposals for heightened security. The soldiers had failed to follow proper security procedures, as they had left their vehicle unguarded for over two hours and had then driven off without having checked under it beforehand. After the Lisburn meeting, King flies to London where he reports directly to British Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher, who describes the attack as a “terrible atrocity.” However, she rejects demands from Conservative members of Parliament to bring back internment, regarding the proposal as “a very serious step.”
In his statement to the House of Commons, Tom King suggests that there would have been a much higher death toll had the bomb exploded in the carpark, where thousands of people had gathered after the run.
The Republic of Ireland‘s government also strongly condemns the killings and extends its sympathy to the families of the dead soldiers. The bombing is a topic of debate in the Seanad Éireann on June 16, 1988. Bishop Cahal Daly of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Down and Connor denounces the bombers and the killings in the “strongest possible terms.”
Questions are raised as to how the IRA knew the soldiers were attending the charity run in Lisburn, how they recognised their unmarked van, and how the unit was able to plant a bomb in the predominantly loyalist town without being spotted, despite the number of people in the carpark. The RUC believes that the bombers may have been wearing sports gear as they mingled with the crowd that evening. They appeal to onlookers who had attended the event to hand over any film they may have taken of the “fun run” in an attempt to identify the IRA bombers.
The following Saturday, between 1,000 and 2,000 people gather in Lisburn town centre to attend a remembrance service for the six soldiers. A book of condolences is also opened.
Antisell is born in Dublin on January 16, 1817, the youngest son of Thomas Christopher Antisell KC (home circuit) and Margaret (née) Daly. He attends the Dublin School of Medicine, the Apothecaries’ Hall of Ireland, and the Royal College of Surgeons of England in London, graduating from the latter with an MD in November 1839. He studies chemistry in Paris and Berlin in 1844. Upon his return to Dublin in 1845, he secures a lectureship in botany at the Peter St. School of Medicine, teaching there until 1848. After this, he opens a clinic at his residence of 25 Richmond Street, Portobello. He works as an assistant to Robert Kane, and between 1845 and 1847, produces textbooks on Irish geology and chemistry. He becomes a member of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) in 1844.
Antisell is a member of the Young Ireland movement of the 1840s, and joins the Irish Confederation in 1847. With a group of five friends in the republican movement, including Richard D’Alton Williams and Kevin O’Doherty, he sets up a short-lived revolutionary newspaper, The Irish Tribune, in June 1848 to take the place of the suppressed United Irishman, founded by John Mitchel. The paper is closed down on the grounds of sedition in July 1848 after just five issues. Following the closure of the paper, he emigrates to the United States, arriving in New York City on November 22, 1848. Some sources claim this departure is to evade arrest or charges relating to sedition. Although he is no longer politically active following his departure from Ireland, he is a close friend of John Mitchel and his family. He marries his first wife, Eliza Ann Nowlan, in 1841. She dies shortly after their arrival in the United States.
Antisell sets up and operates a clinic and medical laboratory in New York City from 1848 to 1854, while also lecturing in chemistry in a number of medical colleges in Massachusetts and Vermont. He takes up a post as expedition geologist and botanist on state surveys in southern Arizona, New Mexico, and California, working primarily with Lt. John Parke investigating the proposed routes for the Southern Pacific Railroad from 1854 to 1856. His work on the geology of the region adds to greater understanding of the science in America. In 1856, he is employed as chief examiner in the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C., with responsibility for chemical inventions. This work allows him to also lecture in chemistry at Georgetown University, eventually covering other subjects such as toxicology, military surgery, physiology, hygiene, and pathology, over the periods 1858 to 1869, and 1880 to 1882.
Breaking with Mitchel who, as defender of slavery, supports the southern secessionist cause, Antisell serves in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He is a brigade surgeon in the United States Volunteers from 1861, and later the medical director of the 12th army corps. He concludes his service as surgeon-in-charge of Harewood Hospital, Washington, D.C., in October 1865, being granted a brevet commission as colonel. From 1866 to 1871, he is chief chemist in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He marries his second wife, Marion Stuart Forsyth from Detroit, in 1854. They go on to have twelve children, six daughters and six sons.
Antisell is one of several scientists that are hired in 1871 as foreign government advisors to work in Hokkaido in northern Japan under Horace Capron. He is selected for his strong background in chemistry coupled with geology. However, he disagrees with Capron on whether or not Hokkaido’s severe winter climate will hinder development, and he also comes into conflict with the Japanese government over his salary. As a result, Hokkaido Colonisation Office hires another geologist, and Antisell’s report is excluded in the 1875 compilation of official reports. He serves his remaining time in Japan as a chemist for the Ministry of Finance, where he develops inks used for the printing of paper currency. For his services, he is awarded the Order of the Rising Sun by Emperor Meiji before his departure in 1876.
Upon returning to the United States, Antisell is conferred with a PhD in 1876 by Georgetown University, and once again takes up duties at the Patent Office, remaining there until his retirement. He publishes widely in numerous journals on topics such as agricultural chemistry, botany, oceanography, city sanitation, and animal disease, but he does not publish a significant treatise.
Antisell dies in Washington, D.C., on June 14, 1893, and is buried in the Congressional Cemetery.
O’Connor’s father, Andrew O’Connor (1846–1924), of Lanarkshire, Scotland, is a stonecutter who becones a professional sculptor. As a teenager, he apprentices to his father, helping him to design monuments for cemeteries.
O’Connor is involved in a minor controversy in 1909 when he is commissioned to design a statue for Commodore John Barry, of the American Revolutionary-era navy. His first design is heatedly attacked by Irish American groups. He submits a second version, but it too is ultimately rejected, and the sculptor John J. Boyle received the commission.
Maude is born on May 22, 1941, in Casla, County Galway, and reared in the Irish language. Her mother, Máire Nic an Iomaire, is a school teacher, and she receives her primary education from her on a small island off the coast of Rosmuc. Her father, John Maude, is from Cill Bhriocáin township near Rosmuc. She attends secondary school at Coláiste Chroí Mhuire, Spiddal, an all-Irish language school in County Galway. She later credits one of her Irish language teachers there, Sister Ailbhe, as an early influence in cultivating her writing confidence.
Maude begins writing modern literature in Irish in secondary school and develops a rhythm of poetry closely attuned to the rhythms of the Conamara Theas dialect of Connacht Irish, spoken in her native district. Though not conventionally religious, she admits in an interview that she has a deep interest in spirituality and that this has left its mark on her poetry. She is noted as a highly effective reciter of her own verse. Géibheann is the best-known of her poems, and is studied at Leaving Certificate Higher Level Irish in the Republic of Ireland. A posthumous collected edition, Caitlín Maude, Dánta, is published in 1984, Caitlín Maude: file in 1985 in Ireland and Italy, and Coiscéim in 1985.
Maude is widely known as an actress. She acts at the university, at An Taibhdhearc in Galway and the Damer Theatre in Dublin, and is particularly successful in a production of An Triail by Máiréad Ní Ghráda at the Damer Theatre in 1964. She plays the protagonist, Máire Ní Chathasaigh, an unmarried mother who experiences family rejection, a stay in a Magdalene laundry, and ultimately murders her infant child followed by suicide. In 2017, Former Irish Minister For JusticeMáire Geoghegan-Quinn cites this performance as “pathbreaking”: “Caitlín Maude played the role, when nobody talked about the issue and when, as we know, women were still devalued, still caricatured, still incarcerated and disenfranchised if they became mothers out of wedlock.” Maude herself is a playwright and co-authors An Lasair Choille with poet Michael Hartnett.
Maude is very active in the Celtic Revival. She founds An Bonnán Buí, an Irish-speaking social club in the 1970s in Dublin. As a member of the Dublin Metropolitan Gaelgeoir community, she is active in many direct action campaigns by the language revival organization Gluaiseacht Chearta Sibhialta na Gaeltachta, including the campaign that forces the Irish State to establish a Gaelscoil (Irish-medium primary school) Scoil Santain in the suburb of Tallaght, County Dublin. A second Irish language school, Scoil Chaitlin Maude, opens in Tallaght in 1985 shortly after her death. It begins as a two-room school with 35 children and has grown to a 16 room new building serving 345 children as of 2023.
Maude is also a distinguished sean-nós singer. She makes one album in this genre, Caitlín, released in 1975 on Gael Linn Records and now available as a CD. It contains both traditional songs and a selection of readings of her poetry.
Maude marries Cathal Ó Luain in 1969. They have one child Caomhán, their son.
Maude dies of complications from cancer on June 6, 1982, at the age of 41. She is buried in Bohernabreena graveyard, which overlooks the city from the Wicklow Mountains.
In 2001, a new writers’ centre in Galway is named after her: Ionad Scríbhneoirí Chaitlín Maude, Gaillimh.
Since Maude’s death, critics in several languages have continued to study her literary works. Irish writer and The Irish Times columnist Michael Harding cites her as one of a few examples of groundbreaking women to “spin the hurt and wound of their oppression, and weave new loves songs and laments.” Irish Studies professor Sarah McKibben notes that Maude’s innovation in the poem represents an instance of recent Irish writers transgressing “literary, nationalistic, sociolinguistic and gender norms to craft new ways of writing in Irish.”
According to Louis de Paor, “Although no collection of her work was published during her lifetime, Caitlín Maude had a considerable influence on Irish language poetry and poets, including Máirtín Ó Direáin, Micheál Ó hAirtnéide, Tomás Mac Síomóin, and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. That influence is a measure of the dramatic force of her personality, her exemplary ingenuity and commitment to the language, and her ability as a singer to embody the emotional disturbance at the heart of a song. Her collected poems are relatively slight, including incomplete drafts and fragments, but reveal a poetic voice confident of its own authority, drawing on the spoken language of the Connemara Gaeltacht but rarely on its conventions of oral composition or, indeed, on precedents in Irish poetry in either language. The best of her work is closer to the American poetry of the 1960s in its use of looser forms that follow the rhythms of the spoken word and the sense of the poem as direct utterance without artifice, a technique requiring a high degree of linguistic precision and formal control.”
Maude’s work has also been translated into English and Spanish. Spanish language critic Pura Coloma notes that Maude’s work played a role in preserving Connemaran culture, as she “utilizes her own style to replicate the deep rhythms and tonalities of the regional voice.”
F. J. McCormick (real name Peter Christopher Judge), an Irish actor who becomes known for his work at Dublin‘s Abbey Theatre, is born in Skerries, County Dublin, on June 1, 1890. He acquires the stage name “F.J. McCormick” to disguise his identity from his current and future employers, and to avoid parental disapproval. He joins the Abbey at age 19, and acts in some 500 productions there. He is especially remembered for his work in the plays of Seán O’Casey.
After living in Skerries in his early years, at age ten McCormick moves to Dublin and proceeds to live there for the majority of the duration of his life. He is educated locally in Skerries. His father, Michael Judge, is a maltser and later becomes a brewery manager. He is of medium height, with “expressive eyes” and thick brown hair. As a young man, he begins writing by contributing articles to the press. He works briefly as a post office clerk in London but returns to Dublin to work as a junior clerk in the Civil Service. He resigns from his public service career in 1918 and decides to embrace acting as a full-time career as a member of the Abbey Theatre at age 19.
McCormick’s mother dies when he is 2 years old. He and his family move to Dublin when he is 10 or 12 years old. He is raised in Skerries and attends the Holy Faith Convent for primary education. He describes his childhood in Skerries “as a very happy one.” He marries Eileen Crowe on December 2, 1925, in Rathdown. They meet at the Abbey where Crowe is also an actor. In describing their performances together, Seamus De Burca writes, “F. J. McCormick and Eileen Crowe lived a life together of perfect bliss.” The couple has two children, a son, David, and a daughter, Marie.
After moving briefly to London, McCormick returns to Dublin, where he works in the Civil Service. He also takes acting roles in the Workmen’s Club on York Street, and for the first time under the pseudonym by which he becomes known for roles with the Queen’s Theatre, Dublin. By May 1919, he has a leading role in an independent production of The Curate of St. Chad’s by Constance Powell Anderson at the Abbey Theatre. An attack on Irish acting by Edward Martyn is answered by McCormick in the pages of the journal Banba in June 1921.
McCormick acts in over 500 plays at the Abbey Theatre, becoming particularly associated with the plays of Sean O’Casey staged there. From 1923 to 1925, he is also stage manager at the Abbey. Of his performance as Seumus Sheilds in The Shadow of a Gunman, O’Casey says that the actor created a character greater than that which he had written. He plays Capt. Brennan in the filmed version of O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars but it is his return to film in Carol Reed‘s Odd Man Out (1947) that sees him singled out for praise in contemporaneous reviews. The Irish Times writes that “the acting of the Irish players was unremittingly professional, and, in the case of F. J. McCormick, as Shell, a weak-minded and elderly corner-boy, quite outstanding.” The Times of London finds “it is Mr. F. J. McCormick as a sly, bird-like creature, who stops just the right side of informing, who catches most surely at the imagination.”
In their review of the film Hungry Hill (1947), The New York Times writes, “As the butler who served John Brodrick, his sons, and their sons in turn, the late F. J. McCormick is truly magnificent, giving an even more subtle portrayal of Irish character than he did as the wily tramp in Odd Man Out.”
In the last five years of McCormick’s life he continues to work in the Abbey where he acts in over 70 plays before his death. He only stars in one play in the theatre in the final year of his life, the play They Got What They Wanted playing the role of Bartley Murnaghan. He secures more leading roles in the film industry. He dies in Dublin at the age of 56 from a brain tumour on April 24, 1947. He is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery, Deansgrange, County Dublin. He continues to work right up until his death.
It is said that people regarded McCormick as one of the greatest actors in his era. This comes from his work in 500 plays and 4 films over his career. A year after his death, Barry Fitzgerald says he only knew of two actors with the gift that McCormick had and they were Charles Laughton and Charlie Chaplin.
There are many popular plays and films that McCormick is part of which are still remembered to this day by many, some of them include the original The Plough and the Stars in 1926 where he originates the role of Commandant Jack Clitheroe. He also plays the role of Captain Brennan in the John Ford film version of the play in 1936. In his appreciation for McCormick, Gabriel Fallon remembers him as both a great actor and a great man.
It is said that McCormick was one of the most versatile actors of his generation, his early death was a huge loss to the Irish arts and more specifically the Abbey Theatre where he carried most of his work.
