At the time Franklin is based in London attempting to negotiate on behalf of the American Colonies. Franklin details his views of Dublin and Ireland in a letter to Thomas Cushing, a lawyer and statesman from Boston, Massachusetts. Franklin has a keen interest in Irish affairs, writing in a letter two years prior to visiting the country that “all Ireland is strongly in favour of the American cause. They have reason to sympathise with us.”
As Franklin tours Ireland in 1771 and is astounded and moved by the level of poverty he sees there. Ireland is under the trade regulations and laws of England, which affect the Irish economy, and Franklin fears that America will suffer the same plight if Britain’s exploitation of the colonies continues. During his visit, Franklin also attends two sessions of Irish Parliament as an observer.
Franklin is struck by the contrast between the grandeur of Dublin city itself and the intense poverty of those beyond its core.
Franklin writes to a friend, “The people in that unhappy country, are in a most wretched situation. Ireland is itself a poor country, and Dublin a magnificent city; but the appearances of general extreme poverty among the lower people are amazing. They live in wretched hovels of mud and straw, are clothed in rags, and subsist chiefly on potatoes. Our New England farmers, of the poorest sort, in regard to the enjoyment of all the comforts of life, are princes when compared to them. Perhaps three-fourths of the Inhabitants are in this situation.”
In 1977, the United States Ambassador to IrelandWalter J.P. Curley presents a bust of Benjamin Franklin to the Bank of Ireland to commemorate the visit. Speaking at the unveiling of the bust, the Ambassador notes that Franklin’s friendship for Ireland was no fleeting whim. He had said “You have ever been friendly to the rights of mankind and we acknowledge with pleasure and gratitude that your nation has produced patriots who have nobly distinguished themselves in the cause of humanity and America.”
Harris is born James Thomas Harris on February 14, 1855, in Galway, County Galway, to Welsh parents. While living with his older brother he is, for a year or more, a pupil at The Royal School, Armagh. At the age of twelve he is sent to Wales to continue his education as a boarder at the Ruabon Grammar School in Denbighshire, a time he is to remember later in My Life and Loves. Harris is unhappy at the school and runs away within a year.
Harris runs away to the United States in late 1869, arriving in New York City virtually penniless. The 13-year-old takes a series of odd jobs to support himself, working first as a shoeshiner, a porter, a general laborer, and a construction worker on the erection of the Brooklyn Bridge. He later turns these early occupational experiences into art, incorporating tales from them into his book The Bomb.
From New York Harris moves to the American Midwest, settling in Chicago, where he takes a job as a hotel clerk and eventually a manager. Owing to Chicago’s central place in the meat packing industry, Harris makes the acquaintance of various cattlemen, who inspire him to leave the big city to take up work as a cowboy. He eventually grows tired of life in the cattle industry and enrolls at the University of Kansas, where he studies law and earns a degree, gaining admission to the Kansas state bar association.
Harris is not cut out to be a lawyer and soon decides to turn his attention to literature. He returns to England in 1882, later traveling to various cities in Germany, Austria, France, and Greece on his literary quest. He works briefly as an American newspaper correspondent before settling down in England to seriously pursue the vocation of journalism.
From 1908 to 1914 Harris concentrates on working as a novelist, authoring a series of popular books such as The Bomb, The Man Shakespeare, and The Yellow Ticket and Other Stories. With the advent of World War I in the summer of 1914, Harris decides to return to the United States.
From 1916 to 1922 he edits the U.S. edition of Pearson’s Magazine, a popular monthly which combines short story fiction with socialist-tinted features on contemporary news topics. One issue of the publication is banned from the mails by United States Postmaster GeneralAlbert S. Burleson during the period of American participation in the Great War. Despite this Harris manages to navigate the delicate situation which faces the left wing press and to keep the Pearson’s Magazine functioning and solvent during the war years.
Harris becomes an American citizen in April 1921. In 1922 he travels to Berlin to publish his best-known work, his autobiography My Life and Loves. It is notorious for its graphic descriptions of Harris’ purported sexual encounters and for its exaggeration of the scope of his adventures and his role in history. Years later, Time Magazine reflects in its March 21, 1960 issue “Had he not been a thundering liar, Frank Harris would have been a great autobiographer….he had the crippling disqualification that he told the truth, as Max Beerbohm remarked, only ‘when his invention flagged’.” A fifth volume, supposedly taken from his notes but of doubtful provenance, is published in 1954, long after his death.
Harris also writes short stories and novels, two books on Shakespeare, a series of biographical sketches in five volumes under the title Contemporary Portraits and biographies of his friends Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. His attempts at playwriting are less successful. Only Mr. and Mrs. Daventry (1900), which is based on an idea by Oscar Wilde, is produced on the stage.
Married three times, Harris dies of a heart attack in Nice at the age of 75 on August 26, 1931. He is subsequently buried at Cimetière Caucade in the same city. Just after his death a biography written by Hugh Kingsmill (pseudonym of Hugh Kingsmill Lunn) is published.
In November 1938, Lord Killanin is commissioned into the Queen’s Westminsters, a territorial regiment of the British Army, where he is responsible for recruiting fellow journalists, including future The Daily Telegraph editor Bill Deedes, and friends who are musicians and actors. He reaches the rank of major and takes part in the planning of D-Day and the Invasion of Normandy in 1944, acting as brigade major for the 30th Armoured Brigade, part of the 79th Armoured Division. He is appointed, due to the course of operations, a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). After being demobilised, he goes to Ireland. He resigns his TA commission in 1951.
In 1950, Lord Killanin becomes the head of the Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI) and becomes his country’s representative in the IOC in 1952. He becomes senior vice-president in 1968, and succeeds Avery Brundage, becoming President-elect at the 73rd IOC Session (August 21–24) held in Munich prior to the 1972 Summer Olympics. He takes office soon after the Games.
Lord Killanin serves as Honorary Consul-General of Monaco in Ireland from 1961 to 1984 and as Chairman of the Race Committee for Galway Racecourse from 1970 to 1985. A keen horse racing enthusiast, he also serves as a steward of the Irish Turf Club on two occasions and on the National Hunt Steeplechase Committee. In his business life Lord Killanin is a director of many companies including Irish Shell, Ulster Bank, Beamish & Crawford and Chubb Ireland. He is a founder member of An Taisce (The National Trust for Ireland) and is chairman of the National Monuments Advisory Council until his death.
Lord Killanin dies at his home in Dublin on April 25, 1999, at the age of 84 and, following a bilingual funeral Mass at St. Enda’s Church in Spiddal, County Galway, he is buried in the family vault in the New Cemetery, Galway.
Madden is born at Wormwood Gate, Dublin to Edward Madden, a silk manufacturer, and his wife Elizabeth (née Corey). His father has married twice and fathered twenty-one children. Luckily for young Richard his father is still affluent enough by the time he is reaching adolescence to afford him a top-quality education. This means private schools and a medical apprenticeship in Athboy, County Meath. He studies medicine in Paris, Italy, and St. George’s Hospital, London. While in Naples he becomes acquainted with Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington and her circle.
In 1828 Madden marries Harriet Elmslie, herself coincidentally the youngest of twenty-one children. Born in Marylebone in 1801 and baptised there into the Church of England, she is the last child of John Elmslie, a Scot who owns hundreds of slaves on his plantations in Jamaica, and his wife Jane Wallace. Both Harriet’s parents are of Quaker stock, but while living in Cuba she converts to Roman Catholicism. On marriage, Madden stops travelling and practises medicine for five years.
Eventually he realises that he needs to contribute to the abolitionist cause. The slave trade has been illegal in the empire since 1807, but slaves still exist. Abolishing slavery is a popular cause, and it is obvious that the trading of slaves is still in progress, and many are not actively involved but they are complicit with the activity.
Madden is employed in the British civil service from 1833, first as a justice of the peace in Jamaica, where he is one of six Special Magistrates sent to oversee the eventual liberation of Jamaica’s slave population, according to the terms of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. From 1835 he is Superintendent of the freed Africans in Havana. His son, Thomas More Madden, who later becomes a surgeon and writer, is born there. In 1839 he becomes the investigating officer into the slave trade on the west coast of Africa and, in 1847, the secretary for the West Australian colonies. He returns to Dublin and in 1850 is named secretary of the Office for Loan Funds in Dublin.
Richard Madden dies at his home in Booterstown, just south of Dublin, on February 5, 1886, and is interred in Donnybrook Cemetery.
Lynott goes to live with his grandmother, Sarah Lynott, in Crumlin, Dublin when he is four years old. He is introduced to music through his uncle Timothy’s record collection and becomes influenced by Tamla Motown and The Mamas and the Papas.
Growing up in Dublin in the 1960s, Lynott fronts several bands as a lead vocalist, most notably teaming up with bassist Brendan ‘Brush’ Shiels to form Skid Row in early 1968. It is during this period that Lynott learns to play the bass guitar.
Toward the end of 1969, Lynott, now confident enough to play bass himself in a band, teams with Brian Downey, Eric Bell, and Eric Wrixon to form Thin Lizzy. The band’s first top ten hit comes in 1973 with a rock version of the well-known Irish traditional song “Whiskey in the Jar.” With the release of the Jailbreak album in 1976, Lynott and Thin Lizzy become international superstars on the strength of the album’s biggest hit, “The Boys Are Back in Town.” The song reaches the Top 10 in the United Kingdom, No. 1 in Ireland, and is a hit in the United States and Canada.
Having finally achieved mainstream success, Thin Lizzy embarks on several consecutive world tours. However, the band suffers from personnel changes. By the early 1980s, Thin Lizzy is starting to struggle commercially and Lynott starts showing symptoms of drug abuse, including regular asthma attacks. After the resignation of longtime manager Chris O’Donnell, Lynott decides to disband Thin Lizzy in 1983.
In 1984, Lynott forms a new band, Grand Slam, with Doish Nagle, Laurence Archer, Robbie Brennan, and Mark Stanway. The band tours various clubs but suffers from being labeled a poor version of Thin Lizzy due to the inclusion of two lead guitarists. Grand Slam disbands at the end of the year due to a lack of money and Lynott’s increasing addiction to heroin.
Lynott’s last years are dogged by drug and alcohol dependency leading to his collapse on December 25, 1985, at his home in Kew. He is taken to Salisbury Infirmary where he is diagnosed as suffering from septicemia. His condition worsens by the start of the new year, and he is put on a respirator. He dies of pneumonia and heart failure due to septicemia in the hospital’s intensive care unit on January 4, 1986, at the age of 36.
In 1934, Dugan is appointed Governor of South Australia. He is appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (KCMG), retires from the Army and moves to Adelaide with his wife. They become an extremely popular and glamorous vice-regal couple. Sir Winston and Lady Dugan are both excellent public speakers and travel widely in order to bring problems to the attention of the ministers of the day. Upon the expiration of his term, there is bipartisan parliamentary support for him to serve a second term, but he has already accepted an appointment to be Governor of Victoria.
Sir Winston and Lady Dugan arrive in Melbourne on July 17, 1939. They continue their active role in community affairs, promoting unemployment reduction and making the ballroom of Government House available for the Australian Red Cross.
Dugan has an active role stabilising state politics during the tumultuous 1940s. Upon the disintegration of Albert Dunstan‘s Country Party in 1943, he installs Australian Labor Party leader John Cain as Premier. Four days later, Dunstan forms a coalition with the United Australia Party. Following the collapse of that ministry in 1945, Dugan dissolves parliament and calls a general election for November, which results in the balance of power being held by independents. Dugan commissions Cain to form the ministry of a minority government.
Dugan’s term as Governor is extended five times. He returns to England in February 1949. On July 7, 1949, he is raised to the peerage as Baron Dugan of Victoria, of Lurgan in County Armagh.
Winston Dugan dies at Marylebone, London, on August 17, 1951, at the age of 74. As there are no children from his marriage, the barony becomes extinct.
O’Brien is born in Limerick, County Limerick on December 3, 1897. Following the death of her mother when she is five years old, she becomes a boarder at Laurel Hill Convent. She graduates in English and French from the newly established University College Dublin, and she then moves to London, where she works as a teacher for a year.
In 1922–1923, O’Brien works as a governess in the Basque Country, in the north of Spain, where she begins to write fiction. Upon her return to England, she works at the Manchester Guardian. After the success of her play Distinguished Villa in 1926, she takes to full-time writing and is awarded both the 1931 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Hawthornden Prize for her debut novel Without My Cloak. O’Brien is best known for her 1934 novel The Ante-Room, her 1941 novel The Land of Spices, and the 1946 novel That Lady.
Many of O’Brien’s books deal with issues of female agency and sexuality in ways that are new and radical at the time. Her 1936 novel, Mary Lavelle, is banned in Ireland and Spain, while The Land of Spices is banned in Ireland upon publication. In addition to novels, she writes plays, film scripts, short stories, essays, copious journalism, two biographical studies, and two very personal travelogues. Throughout her life, she feels a particular affinity with Spain. While her experiences in the Basque Country inspire Mary Lavelle, she also writes a life of the Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila, and she uses the relationship between the Spanish king Philip II and Maria de Mendoza to write the anti-fascist novel That Lady.
O’Brien writes a political travelogue, Farewell Spain, to gather support for the leftist cause in the Spanish Civil War, and it has been argued that she is close to anarchism in the 1930s. A feminist, her novels promote gender equality and are mostly protagonised by young women yearning for independence. Several of her books include positive gay/lesbian characters. Her determination to encourage a greater understanding of sexual diversity makes her a pioneer in queer literary representation. She is very critical of conservatism in Ireland, and by spearheading a challenge to the Irish Censorship Act, she helps bring to an end the cultural restrictions of the 1930s and 40s in the country.
Kate O’Brien lives much of her life in England and died in Faversham, near Canterbury, on August 13, 1974.
Boyle enters the army, and in 1709 is raised to the rank of major-general and sworn one of Her Majesty’s Privy Council. He is appointed to the Order of the Thistle and appointed queen’s envoy to the states of Brabant and Flanders. Having discharged this trust with ability, he is created an English peer, as Baron Boyle of Marston, in Somerset. He inherits the estate in 1714.
Boyle becomes a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1706. In 1713, under the patronage of Boyle, clockmaker George Graham creates the first mechanical solar system model that can demonstrate proportional motion of the planets around the Sun. The device is named the orrery in the Earl’s honour.
Boyle receives several additional honours in the reign of George I but, having had the misfortune to fall under the suspicion of the government for playing a part in the JacobiteAtterbury Plot, he is committed to the Tower of London in 1722, where he remains six months, and is then admitted to bail. On a subsequent inquiry he is discharged.
Boyle writes a comedy, As you find it, printed in 1703 and later publishes together with the plays of the first earl. In 1728, he is listed as one of the subscribers to the Cyclopaedia of Ephraim Chambers.
John Field, pianist, composer, and teacher, is born in Dublin into a musical family on July 26, 1782. He is the eldest son of Irish parents who are members of the Church of Ireland. His father, Robert Field, earns his living by playing the violin in Dublin theatres.
Field first studies the piano under his grandfather, who is a professional organist, and later under Tommaso Giordani. He makes his debut at the age of nine, a performance that is well-received, on March 24, 1792 in Dublin. By late 1793, the Fields have settled in London, where the young pianist starts studying with Muzio Clementi.
Field continues giving public performances and soon becomes famous in London, attracting favourable comments from the press and the local musicians. Around 1795 his performance of a Jan Ladislav Dussek piano concerto is praised by Joseph Haydn. Field continues his studies with Clementi, also helping the Italian with the making and selling of instruments. He also takes up the violin, which he studies under Johann Peter Solomon. His first published compositions are issued by Clementi in 1795. The first historically important work, the Piano Concerto No. 1, H 27, is premiered by the composer in London on February 7, 1799, when he is 16 years old. Field’s first official opus is a set of three piano sonatas published by Clementi in 1801.
In summer 1802 Field and Clementi leave London and go to Paris on business. They soon travel to Vienna, where Field takes a brief course in counterpoint under Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, and in early winter arrive in Saint Petersburg. Field is inclined to stay, impressed by the artistic life of the city. Clementi leaves in June 1803, but not before securing Field a teaching post in Narva. After Clementi’s departure, Field has a busy concert season, eventually performing at the newly founded Saint Petersburg Philharmonia. In 1805 Field embarks on a concert tour of the Baltic states, staying in Saint Petersburg during the summer. The following year he gives his first concert in Moscow. He returns to Moscow in April 1807 and apparently does not revisit Saint Petersburg until 1811. In 1810 he marries Adelaide Percheron, a French pianist and former pupil.
In 1811 Field returns to Saint Petersburg where he spends the next decade of his life, more productive than ever before, publishing numerous new pieces and producing corrected editions of old ones. He is successful in establishing a fruitful collaboration with both H.J. Dalmas, the most prominent Russian publisher of the time, and Breitkopf & Härtel, one of the most important music publishing houses of Europe. By 1819 Field is sufficiently wealthy to be able to refuse the position of court pianist that is offered to him. His lifestyle and social behaviour are becoming more and more extravagant.
In 1818 Field revisits Moscow on business, prompted by his collaboration with the publisher Wenzel. He and his wife give a series of concerts in the city in 1821, the last of which marks their last appearance in public together. Adelaide leaves Field soon afterward and attempts a solo career, which is not particularly successful. Field stays in Moscow and continues performing and publishing his music. In 1822 he meets Johann Nepomuk Hummel and the two collaborate on a performance of Hummel’s Sonata for Piano 4-Hands, Op. 92.
Partly as a result of his extravagant lifestyle, Field’s health begins to deteriorate by the mid-1820s. From about 1823 his concert appearances started decreasing. By the late 1820s he is suffering from colorectal cancer. Field leaves for London to seek medical attention. He arrives in September 1831 and, after an operation, gives concerts there and in Manchester. He stays in England for some time, meeting distinguished figures such as Felix Mendelssohn and Ignaz Moscheles. After a series of concerts in various European cities, Field spends nine months in a Naples hospital. His Russian patrons rescue him. He briefly stays with Carl Czerny in Vienna, where he gives three recitals, and then returns to Moscow. He gives his last concert in March 1836 and dies in Moscow almost a year later, on January 23, 1837, from pneumonia. He is buried in the Vvedenskoye Cemetery.
Painter Michael Angelo Hayes is born in Waterford on July 25, 1820. Probably the best 19th century painter of animals in Ireland, Hayes is most accomplished as a watercolourist, although he occasionally uses oils.
Hayes is the son and pupil of Tipperary watercolour miniaturist Edward Hayes RHA. It is clear from his christening that he is expected to become an artist. Fortunately, the younger Hayes is a talented draughtsman, and by his late teens has acquired something of a reputation as a painter of horses and military subjects.
Hayes begins showing at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in 1837, then for three years 1840-1842. In 1842, he is appointed Military Painter-in-ordinary to the Lord Lieutenant. He passes the next few years in London, where he exhibits watercolours at the New Society of Painters in Water Colours, of which he is elected an Associate Member in 1848, the same year he makes his one and only contribution to the Royal Academy of Arts.
Returning to Dublin, Hayes resumes exhibiting at the RHA, at the same time becoming involved in its administration. He is elected an Associate member in 1853, a full Academician the following year, and Secretary in 1856. The affairs of the Academy are totally disorganized at the time, inducing Hayes and others to resolve the situation. His efforts to reform the institution and secure its finances meets with entrenched opposition from older members, which results in Hayes being removed from his post, although he is successfully reinstated in 1861.
Not long afterwards he is appointed secretary to the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Peter McSwiney, who happens to be his brother-in-law, and later becomes City Marshal in 1867. He continues as Secretary of the RHA until he resigns in 1870, and continues showing until 1874.
Hayes makes a special study of horses in motion, and in 1876 publishes his conclusions in an illustrated pamphlet, The Delineation of Animals in Rapid Motion. One of his Dublin paintings, Sackville Street, Dublin, depicts a view of Dublin’s premier street in the 1850s. The painting is a documentary of social life in Dublin. It achieves widespread popularity when reprinted as a lithograph.
Michael Angelo Hayes dies prematurely in 1877 in a tragic drowning accident at his home.
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