Drew’s parents are the Rev. Thomas Drew and Isabella (née Dalton) Drew. She is the third of the couple’s eight daughters and four sons, although most of her siblings die young. She spends her childhood in Belfast, where her father is the rector of Christ Church in Durham Street from 1833 to 1859. In 1866, she moves to 60 Upper Sackville Street, Dublin, to live with her brother, the architect Thomas Drew.
From here she appears to begin her journalist career, writing articles for the Irish Builder, going on to eventually become its assistant editor. She goes on to write for Belfast’s News Letter, and following advice from its proprietor James Alexander Henderson, she moves to London in 1871 becoming the paper’s London correspondent. She writes two columns, Metropolitan gossip and Ladies’ letter, which are among some of the earliest regular columns written specifically for women, providing society news for her readers in Belfast. Articles by her also appear in The Literary World, The British Architect and London Society.
Drew is one of the founding members of the Ladies’ Press Association, and campaigns for greater rights for women journalists. She becomes a prominent figure in the Institute of Journalists, representing the Institute at several international congresses. She is serving as the vice-president of the Institute at the time of her death. She also works on its Orphan Fund for many years, an initiative she originally suggests in 1891.
In 1894, Drew is one of the signatories of the Frances Power Cobbe memorial campaigning for greater recognition and rights for women journalists, alongside Millicent Fawcett and Jessie Boucherett. She writes a number of novels, including Harry Chalgraves’s Legacy (1876) and The Lutanistes of St. Jacobi’s (1881). In March 1885, she gives a lecture titled Dress, Economic and Technical at the Loan Exhibition of Women’s Industries in Bristol, which later appears as a pamphlet.
Drew dies at her home in Holland Street, Kensington, on August 26, 1910, and is buried at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Cemetery, Hanwell. Lady Drew, her sister-in-law, erects a Celtic cross memorial there in her honour. She bequeaths a jewel-studded gold bracelet to the Institute of Journalists, which had been presented to her by the Institute to mark her retirement in 1908. It is worn by women presidents or the wives of male presidents, and is known as the “Drew Bracelet.”
In 2004, Bacik’s book Kicking and Screaming: Dragging Ireland into the 21st Century, is published by The O’Brien Press.
In 2007, she contested the Seanad Éireann elections for the third time in the Dublin University constituency, and is elected to the third seat, behind sitting Independent senators Shane Ross and David Norris. She initially sits as an Independent senator.
In February 2009, Bacik is included in an ‘All Star Women’s Cabinet’ in the Irish Independent. In March 2009, she confirmed claims made on a TV programme that she had taken two voluntary pay cuts of 10% in addition to a pension levy. In June 2009, she is the Labour Party candidate for the Dublin Central by-election. She comes in third with 17% of the first preference votes. She joins the Labour Party group in the Seanad in September 2009, and becomes Labour Party Seanad spokesperson for both Justice and Arts, Sports and Tourism. In November 2009, a feature by Mary Kenny of the Irish Independent includes Bacik in a list of women who “well deserved their iconic status.”
In May 2010, Bacik seeks Labour’s nomination to contest the next election in the Dublin South-East constituency but is not selected. In December 2010, she is added to the ticket as the second candidate beside Labour Party leader, Eamon Gilmore, in the Dún Laoghaire constituency for the 2011 Irish general election. Gilmore tops the poll, with Bacik receiving 10.1% of first preference votes but she is not elected. She is re-elected to Seanad Éireann at the subsequent election, after which she becomes Deputy Leader of the Seanad. She holds her seat in the Seanad in 2016 and in 2020.
On April 27, 2021, after the resignation of Eoghan Murphy from his Dáil seat in Dublin Bay South, Bacik announces her intention to stand in the upcoming by-election. She campaigns with an emphasis on providing affordable housing, as well as improving healthcare and childcare, tackling climate change, and achieving “a true republic in which church and state are separated.” During the campaign, she describes herself as having “more bills passed into law than any other Senator, on issues such as workers’ conditions, women’s health rights, and LGBT equality”. She also campaigns on increasing the number of sports amenities for children in the area, calling for unused Defence Forces football fields at the Cathal Brugha Barracks to be freed up for local sports, with the suggestion rejected by Fine GaelMinister for DefenceSimon Coveney. Fine Gael complains to RTÉ after she features prominently on National Treasures, a prime-time TV show broadcast by RTÉ during the campaign. RTÉ has strict rules about fair coverage of candidates during campaigns. The national broadcaster blames an “inadvertent error” for the programme being shown three days before the election. A steering group within the broadcaster tells Fine Gael that “the broadcast should not have happened.” Consequentially, RTÉ has to show a special report on the by-election on Prime Time to “ensure fair coverage is given to all candidates.”
Bacik wins this election, receiving 8,131 (30.2%) first-preference votes. It is her fourth attempt as a Labour candidate, and she expresses her delight at the success at the count centre in the RDS. Following the election, she is described by The Irish Times as “a formidable activist and public intellectual” and that Fine Gael’s perceived antipathy towards their former TD, Kate O’Connell, may have contributed to the surge in support to Bacik from women voters. The newspaper claims that her election is “a long overdue morale boost” for Labour.
In March 2022, Bacik confirms she will run to succeed Alan Kelly as Labour Party leader. Kelly states that he believes that Bacik will succeed him. On March 24, 2022, she is confirmed as Labour Party leader unopposed at a party conference in Dublin. In a speech, she says she will focus on the rising cost of living and the serious and global problems facing the country. She pledges that Labour will fight the next election as a “standalone party” rather than joining any left-wing alliance.
Roberts is born in Waterford in 1712 or 1714, the son of Thomas Roberts, an architect and builder. Little is known of his early life, although he possibly trains in London for a time. At 17, he elopes with Mary Susannah Sautelle, a Huguenot heiress who also lives in Waterford.
In 1785, Roberts builds a house in Waterford for William Morris, now the Harbour Commissioners’ headquarters and the Chamber of Commerce. In 1786, he designs Newtown House, later Newtown School, a Quaker school. In 1787, he designs The Leper Hospital and Church of St. Stephen. He also builds the Assembly Rooms on Waterford’s Mall in 1788, which is now the Theatre Royal and City Hall.
Roberts has between 21 and 24 children with his wife Susannah, of whom eight live to adulthood, including the painters Thomas Roberts and Thomas Sautelle Roberts. They live for many years in the old bishop’s palace, opposite the cathedral, with a country residence at Roberts Mount. He is nicknamed “Honest John” because he pays his workers so reliably, sometimes giving half their pay directly to their wives so that it would not be wasted on alcohol.
Roberts dies on May 23, 1796, after falling asleep on the floor of the Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity, Waterford, and contracting pneumonia. The main square in Waterford is named John Roberts Square in his honour.
Gray meets her husband, Edmund Dwyer Gray, in September 1868 when she witnesses him saving five people from a wrecked schooner during a storm in Killiney Bay, near Dún Laoghaire. She later meets him, and the couple are married in 1869. They had four children, with three surviving to adulthood: Edmund, Mary and Sylvia. She places both of her daughters in convents after their education and the early death of their father, supposedly as she fears they will harm her chances of remarrying.
Gray is a noted hostess during her husband’s political career, in particular while he is Lord Mayor of Dublin. Following his death in 1888, she holds over 40% of the shares in her husband’s newspaper, the Freeman’s Journal. While she is not involved in the day-to-day running of the company, she does exert influence over the newspaper. When Charles Stewart Parnell‘s party splits, the paper sides with Parnell at Gray’s consent. She is one of a number of prominent Catholic women in Dublin who continue to support Parnell. In 1891, she appears with Parnell in public, leading to the Archbishop of Dublin describing her as “a rock of scandal.”
It is only when the Freeman’s Journal‘s circulation and revenue suffers after the establishment of an anti-Parnell newspaper, the National Press, that Gray’s loyalty to Parnell wavers. Influenced by her son, she decides that the Freeman’s Journal will abandon its relationship with Parnell. This decision is formalised at a special general meeting to the Freeman company on September 21, 1891, seeing the pro-Parnell board replaced with one that includes her son and Captain Maurice O’Conor. The Freeman’s Journal and the National Press merge in March 1892, after which Gray is bought out of the company with her son and O’Conor stepping down from the board, thus ending the Gray family’s 50-year relationship with the Freeman’s Journal.
Gray marries Captain O’Conor in November 1891. A Captain, and later a Major, with the Connaught Rangers, he is a relative of Charles Owen O’Conor and George Moore. She is twelve years his senior, and the couple has no children. They live on Inisfale Island on Lough Allen, County Leitrim. She lives the last thirty years of her life there, with failing eyesight and eventual blindness. She dies there April 15, 1927. O’Conor dies in a hotel in Dún Laoghaire on January 3, 1941, in poor circumstances.
Downing is the second son of Eugene Downing, a local merchant, and his wife, Helena, daughter of Timothy McCarthy of Kilfadamore, County Kerry. They have two other sons and two daughters. He is apprenticed in 1830 to his elder brother, Francis Henry, who practises as a solicitor at Killarney. Once admitted as a solicitor himself in 1836, he moves to Skibbereen, County Cork, where he practises until the mid-1860s, making from his practice a large fortune. By the mid-1870s he owns 4,067 acres in Cork and Kerry valued at £1,413.
Downing is prominent locally in public affairs, supporting the repeal campaign of Daniel O’Connell and the temperance campaign of Fr. Theobald Mathew. He is the first chairman of Skibbereen town commissioners, from 1862 to 1879. He later helps James Stephens and Michael Doheny escape to France in 1849. After Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa and other members of the Phoenix National and Literary Society are arrested on December 5, 1858, he acts as their solicitor. His chief clerk, Mortimer Moynahan, a member of the society, unwittingly takes on as an assistant a man who proves to be an informer.
Downing involves himself in the National Association of Ireland, the political pressure group formed by the CatholicArchbishop of Dublin, Paul Cullen, and succeeds in getting tenant-right added to its demands in March 1865. He is elected as one of the two MPs for County Cork on November 30, 1868, and is reelected without a contest on February 5, 1874. Nominally a liberal, he draws his main support from the Catholic bishops and most of the parish clergy and, more significantly, from the tenant farmer class. The farmers’ interests he vigorously pursues in parliament and outside.
After the passing of William Ewart Gladstone‘s first land act, Downing plays a prominent part in the formation of the Home Rule League under the leadership of Isaac Butt. He is always a moderate on the home-rule issue – he opposes the pledging of home-rule MPs always to act together and later the obstructive tactics of fellow home-rulers Joseph Gillis Biggar and Charles Stewart Parnell. He is one of the nine members of the standing committee of Butt’s Irish Parliamentary Party (1874–79) and proves a stalwart of Butt particularly in disputes with Parnell. It is he who draws to the attention of the House of Commons the condition of tenants on the Buckley estate in the foothills of the Galtee Mountains at Skeheenarinky in County Tipperary in March 1877. In Butt’s absence Downing introduces an Irish land tenure bill on February 6, 1878, which is, however, quickly defeated.
Downing dies January 10, 1879, at his residence, Prospect House, Skibbereen, a deputy lieutenant of County Cork. The cortège that follows his body to the Old Caheragh Graveyard, Skibbereen, for burial is said to be four miles long. In Emmet Larkin‘s judgement, “it was not altogether unlikely, if he had survived, that he would have eventually succeeded Butt as chairman of the Irish party.”
In 1837, Downing marries Jane, youngest daughter of Daniel McCarthy of Ave Hill, Dromore, County Cork, and with her has four sons and three daughters. His younger brother, Washington, is a parliamentary reporter and later the Rome correspondent for The Daily News of London, and husband of Mary McCarthy Downing.
(From: “Downing, Timothy McCarthy” by C.J. Woods, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Kickham’s father, John Kickham, is the proprietor of the principal drapery in the locality and is held in high esteem for his patriotic spirit. His mother, Anne O’Mahony, is related to the Fenian leader John O’Mahony. He grows up largely deaf and almost blind, the result of an explosion with a powder flask when he is thirteen. He is educated locally, where it is intended that he study for the medical profession. During his boyhood the campaign for a repeal of the Acts of Union 1800 between Great Britain and Ireland is at its height, and he soon becomes versed in its arguments and is inspired by its principles. He often hears the issues discussed in his father’s shop and at home amongst all his friends and acquaintances.
From a young age Kickham is imbued with these patriotic ideals. He becomes acquainted with the teaching of the Young Irelanders through their newspaper The Nation from its foundation in October 1842. His father read the paper aloud every week for the family. Like all the young people of the time, and a great many of the old ones, his sympathies are with the Young Irelanders on their secession from the Repeal Association.
When he is 22 years old, Kickham contributes The Harvest Moon sung to the air of “The Young May Moon,” to The Nation on August 17, 1850. Other verses are to follow, but the finest of his poems according to A. M. O’Sullivan, appear in other journals. Rory of the Hill, The Irish Peasant Girl, and Home Longings, better known as Slievenamon, are published in the Celt. The First Felon appears in the Irishman. Patrick Sheehan, the story of an old soldier, is published in the Kilkenny Journal, and becomes very popular as an anti-recruiting song.
Kickham begins to write for a number of papers, including The Nation, but also the Celt, the Irishman, the Shamrock, and becomes one of the leading writers of The Irish People, the Fenian newspaper, in which many of his poems appear. His writings are signed using his initials, his full name, or the pseudonyms, “Slievenamon” and “Momonia.”
Kickham is the leading member of the Confederation Club in Mullinahone, which he is instrumental in founding. When the revolutionary spirit begins to grip the people in 1848, he turns out with a freshly made pike to join William Smith O’Brien and John Blake Dillon when they arrive in Mullinahone in July 1848. On hearing of the progress of O’Brien through the country, he sets to work manufacturing pikes and is in the forge when news reaches him that the leaders are looking for him. It is here that he meets James Stephens for the first time. At O’Brien’s request, he rings the chapel bell to summon the people and before midnight a Brigade has answered the summons. He later writes a detailed account about this period which brings his connection with the attempted Rising of 1848 to a close.
After the failed 1848 uprising at Ballingarry, Kickham has to hide for some time, as a result of the part he had played in rousing the people of his native village to action. When the excitement has subsided, he returns to his father’s house and resumes his interests in the sports of fishing and fowling and spends much of his time in literary pursuits. Some of the authors in which he is well versed are Alfred Tennyson and Charles Dickens and he greatly admires George Eliot, and after William Shakespeare, is Robert Burns.
In the autumn of 1857, a messenger arrives from New York with a message for James Stephens from members of the Emmet Monument Association, calling on him to get up an organization in Ireland. On December 23, Stephens dispatches Joseph Denieffe to the United States with his reply and outlines his conditions and his requirements from the organisation in America. Denieffe returnd on March 17, 1858, with the acceptance of Stephens’ terms and £80. That evening the Irish Republican Brotherhood commences. Those present in Langan’s, lathe-maker and timber merchant, 16 Lombard Street, for that first meeting are Stephens, Kickham, Thomas Clarke Luby, Peter Langan, Denieffe and Garrett O’Shaughnessy. Later it includes members of the Phoenix National and Literary Society, which is formed in 1856 by Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa in Skibbereen, County Cork.
In mid-1863, Stephens informs his colleagues that he wishes to start a newspaper, with financial aid from O’Mahony and the Fenian Brotherhood in America. The offices are established at 12 Parliament Street, almost at the gates of Dublin Castle. The first issue of The Irish People appears on November 28, 1863. The staff of the paper along with Kickham are Luby and Denis Dowling Mulcahy as the editorial staff, O’Donovan Rossa and James O’Connor in charge of the business office, with John Haltigan being the printer. John O’Leary is brought from London to take charge in the role of Editor. Shortly after the establishment of the paper, Stephens departs on an America tour, and to attend to organizational matters. Before leaving, he entrusts to Luby a document containing secret resolutions on the Committee of Organization or Executive of the IRB. Though Luby intimates its existence to O’Leary, he does not inform Kickham as there seems no necessity. This document later forms the basis of the prosecution against the staff of The Irish People.
Kickham’s first contribution to The Irish People, entitled Leaves from a Journal, appears in the third issue and is based on a journal he kept on his way to America in 1863. This article leaves no doubt as to his literary capacity according to O’Leary. It falls to Kickham, as a good Catholic, to tackle the priests, though not exclusively with articles such as “Two Sets of Principles,” a rebuff to the doctrines laid down by Lord Carlisle, and “A Retrospect,” dealing with the tenant-right movement chiefly but also the events of the recent past and their bearing on the present. Kickham articulates the attitude held by the IRB in relation to priests, or more particularly in politics.
On July 15, 1865, American-made plans for a rising in Ireland are discovered when the emissary loses them at Kingstown railway station. They find their way to Dublin Castle and to Superintendent Daniel Ryan, head of G Division. Ryan has an informer within the offices of The Irish People named Pierce Nagle. He supplies Ryan with an “action this year” message on its way to the IRB unit in Tipperary. With this information, Ryan raids the offices of The Irish People on September 15, followed by the arrests of O’Leary, Luby, and O’Donovan Rossa. Kickham is caught after a month on the run. Stephens is also caught but with the support of Fenian prison warders John J. Breslin and Daniel Byrne is less than a fortnight in Richmond Bridewell when he vanishes and escapes to France. The last issue of The Irish People is dated September 16, 1865.
On November 11, 1865, Kickham is convicted of treason. Judge William Keogh, with many expressions of sympathy for the prisoner, and many compliments in reference to his intellectual attainments, sentences him to fourteen years’ penal servitude. The prisoners’ refusal to disown their opposition to British rule in any way, even when facing charges of life-imprisonment, earn them the nickname of “the bold Fenian men.” Kickham spends time from 1866 until his release in the Woking Convict Invalid Prison.
Kickham is given a free pardon from Queen Victoria on February 24, 1869, because of ill-health, and upon his release he is made Chairman of the Supreme Council of the IRB and the unchallenged leader of the reorganized movement. He is an effective orator and chairman of meetings despite his physical handicaps. He wears an ear trumpet and can only read when he holds books or papers within a few inches of his eyes. For many years he carries on conversations by means of the deaf and dumb alphabet.
Kickham is the author of three well-known stories, dealing sympathetically with Irish life and manners and the simple faith, the joys and sorrows, the quaint customs and the insuppressible humour of the peasantry. Knocknagow is deemed one of the finest tales of peasant life ever written. Sally Cavanagh is a touching story illustrating the evils of landlordism and emigration. For the Old Land deals with the fortunes of a small farmer’s family.
Kickham dies on August 22, 1882, at the house of James O’Connor, a former member of the IRB and afterward MP for West Wicklow, 2 Montpelier Place, Blackrock, Dublin, where he had been living for many years, and had been cared for by the poet Rose Kavanagh. He is buried in Mullinahone, County Tipperary.
Goddard Henry Orpen, lawyer and historian, is born in Dublin on May 8, 1852, the fourth son of the five sons and three daughters of John Herbert Orpen, barrister, of Dublin, and Ellen Susanna Gertrude Richards, youngest daughter of Rev. John Richards of Grange, County Wexford.
On August 18, 1880, in St. Peter’s Church, Aungier Street, Dublin, Orpen marries Adela Elizabeth Richards, the daughter and heiress of Edward Moore Richards, engineer and the landlord of Grange, County Wexford. Adela is his first cousin once removed, her great-grandfather and his grandfather being the Rev. John Richards. They live for two decades after their marriage at Bedford Park, Chiswick, London, with their daughter Lilian Iris (b. 1883) and son Edward Richards (b. 1884). Soon after their marriage, he begins taking lessons in the Irish language in line with his passionate interest in Irish historical and antiquarian research, which gradually supplants his languishing legal career. He translates and edits a French rhymed chronicle about the Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland, entitled The Song of Dermot and the Earl (1892), the title which he gives it and by which it has since generally been known in English. He also translates Émile de Laveleye‘s Le Socialisme Contemporain (The Socialism of Today, 1884), to which he adds a chapter on English socialism.
After Adela’s father transfers ownership of his estate to her in 1900, now renamed Monksgrange, the Orpens reluctantly leave London to live there, enabling Orpen to devote his time fully to research and writing. His major work is Ireland Under the Normans (Vols. 1–2, 1911; Vols. 3–4, 1920), which argue that the Norman invasion benefited the Irish, leading to advances in agriculture and trade.
Both before and after his death Orpen’s work is the subject of hostile criticism from those with more nationalist inclinations, starting with Eoin MacNeill in a series of lectures delivered in 1917. Despite his own eminence as a scholar of medieval Ireland, MacNeill resorts to unfair polemic in his attack on Orpen, caricaturing his account of pre-Norman Irish society and disregarding the more subtle nuances in his views of the English Irish relationship. In this he has been followed by generations of other scholars and readers, overlooking the depth of Orpen’s research, the perceptiveness of his interpretations, and the extent of his fieldwork on the archaeological evidence from the medieval period. Orpen takes the study of Anglo-Norman Ireland out of the realm of vague antiquarianism and professionalises it. His standards are not those of “the gentleman-amateur” as might be expected from his background, but of the twentieth century “scientific” historian, and he is therefore now widely regarded as the founder of the professional study of Anglo-Norman Ireland. Perhaps the most striking evidence of the continued validity and relevance of his work is that his four-volume Ireland Under the Normans has been twice republished in more recent years, in 1968 by Oxford University Press and in 2002 in a one-volume version by Four Courts Press.
Orpen is elected a member of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (RSAI), serving as president in 1930–32), and the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) (1911), and contributes historical articles to their journals as well as to periodicals such as The American Historical Review (1913–14) and The Cambridge Medieval History (1932, 1936). A lecture to the New Ross Literary Society is later published as New Ross in the Thirteenth Century (1911). He also contributes a major chapter on the medieval church to the second volume of Walter Alison Phillips‘s History of the Church of Ireland (1934). Though his literary work is recognised by an honorary doctorate from TCD in 1921, he feels increasingly isolated as Monksgrange is targeted during the Irish Civil War and raided on several occasions. On religion he lists himself as an agnostic in the 1911 census.
Orpen’s final work is The Orpen Family, a personal family history printed for private circulation in 1930. A portrait of Orpen (above) by Seán O’Sullivan hangs in Monksgrange.
Orpen dies on May 15, 1932, at Monksgrange, and is buried alongside his wife Adela in St. Anne’s Churchyard, Killanne, County Wexford. His very extensive papers, including correspondence, manuscripts and drawings, as well as records and papers of the Orpen family, are held at Monksgrange. Included there is a very large collection of his photographs, a skill in which he notably distinguishes himself. A small collection of his correspondence is also held in the National Library of Ireland (NLI).
(From: “Orpen, Goddard Henry” by Philip Bull, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009, revised March 2021 | Pictured: Portrait of Goddard Henry Orpen by Seán O’Sullivan)
Maturin is born on February 15, 1847, at All Saints’ vicarage, Grangegorman, Dublin, the third of the ten children of the Rev. William Basil Maturin and his wife, Jane Cooke (née Beatty). The Maturins, a prominent Anglo-Irish family of Huguenot ancestry, have produced many influential Church of Ireland clergymen over the generations, the most notable being Maturin’s grandfather, the writer Charles Robert Maturin. His own father, whose tractarian convictions are considered too “high church” for many in Dublin, is a somewhat controversial figure in the church. Religion plays a huge part in the Maturin children’s lives. Two of his brothers enter the church and two sisters become nuns. As a young man, he assists in training the choir and playing the organ at his father’s church. Educated at home and at a Dublin day school, he goes on to attend Trinity College Dublin (TCD), from where he graduates BA in 1870.
Though he initially intends to make a career in the army as an engineer, a severe attack of scarlet fever around 1868, and the death of his brother Arthur, changes his outlook on life, and he decides to become a clergyman. He is ordained a deacon in 1870 and later that year goes as a curate to Peterstow, Herefordshire, England, where his father’s friend Dr. John Jebb is rector. He subsequently joins the Society of St. John the Evangelist, entering the novitiate at Cowley, Oxford, in February 1873. As a Cowley father he is sent in 1876 to establish a mission in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he works as an assistant priest and, from 1881, as rector of Saint Clement’s Church. Though he proves to be an effective clergyman and popular preacher, his growing religious doubts and increasing interest in Catholicism results in his returning to Oxford in 1888. Then follows a six-month visit in 1889–90 to a society house in Cape Town, South Africa. He returns to Britain, where he preaches, and conducts retreats around the country and occasionally on the continent. In 1896 he produces the first in a series of religious publications, Some Principles and Practices of Spiritual Life.
Maturin’s continuing religious anxieties eventually lead to his conversion to Catholicism on March 5, 1897, at the JesuitBeaumont College outside London. He then studies theology at the Canadian College, Rome, and is ordained there in 1898. Following his return to England he lives initially at Archbishop’s House, Westminster, and undertakes missionary work. He then serves at St. Mary’s, Cadogan Street, in 1901. He becomes parish priest of Pimlico and, in 1905, having joined the newly established Society of Westminster Diocesan Missionaries, organises the opening of St. Margaret’s chapel on St. Leonard’s Street, where huge crowds come to hear his sermons. As a Catholic priest, he returns to Ireland on several occasions, and frequently preaches at the Carmelite church, Clarendon Street, Dublin. His attempt, at the age of sixty-three, to enter into monastic life at the Benedictinemonastery at Downside, in 1910, proves unsuccessful. He returns to London and begins working in St. James’s, Spanish Place, while maintaining his preaching commitments. He continues to write, publishing Self-Knowledge and Self-Discipline (1905), Laws of the Spiritual Life (1907) and his autobiographical The Price of Unity (1912), in which he traces his gradual move toward Catholicism. His sermons, like his approach when hearing confessions, are said to have much appeal for their integrity. Despite his influence as a preacher, he seems often feel that his life and vocation lack real purpose and at times he suffers from depression.
After a brief visit to the United States in 1913, Maturin accepts the post of Catholic chaplain at the University of Oxford in 1914. He travels to New York in 1915 and, after preaching there throughout the spring, boards the RMS Lusitania in May to return to England. The liner is torpedoed and sinks on May 7, 1915, off the southern coast of Ireland. He assists his fellow passengers in the last minutes, and it is presumed that he refuses a life jacket, as they are in short supply. His body washes ashore. A service is held for him at Westminster Cathedral.
Maturin’s friend Wilfrid Philip Ward edits a collection of his spiritual writings, Sermons and Sermon Notes, in 1916.
(From: “Maturin, Basil William” by Frances Clarke, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
In January and February 1689, Butler votes against the motion to put William of Orange and Mary on the throne and against the motion to declare that James II has abdicated it. Nevertheless, he subsequently joins the forces of William of Orange, by whom he is made colonel of the 2nd Troop of Horse Guards on April 20, 1689. He accompanies William in his Irish campaign, debarking with him in Carrickfergus on June 14, 1690, and commands this troop at the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690. In February 1691 he becomes Lord Lieutenant of Somerset.
Butler serves on the continent under William of Orange during the Nine Years’ War and, having been promoted to major general, he fights at the Battle of Steenkerque in August 1692 and the Battle of Landen in July 1693, where he is taken prisoner by the French and then exchanged for the Duke of Berwick, James II’s illegitimate son. He is promoted to lieutenant general in 1694.
Butler plays a dramatic role at the notorious meeting of the Privy Council on March 8, 1711, when Antoine de Guiscard, a French double agent who is being questioned about his treasonable activities, attempts to assassinate Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, against whom he has a personal grudge for drastically cutting his allowance, by stabbing him with a penknife. Harley is wounded, but not seriously, due largely to the fact that he is wearing a heavy gold brocade waistcoat in which the knife gets stuck. Several Councillors, including Butler, stab Guiscard in return. Guiscard implores Butler to finish the deed, but he replies that it is not for him to play the hangman. In any case, he has the sense to see that Guiscard must be kept alive at least long enough to be questioned, although as it turns out Guiscard’s wounds are fatal, and he dies a week later.
On April 23, 1712, Butler leaves Harwich for Rotterdam to lead the British troops taking part in the war. Once there he allows himself to be made the tool of the Tory ministry, whose policy is to carry on the war in the Netherlands while giving secret orders to him to take no active part in supporting their allies under Prince Eugene. In July 1712, he advises Prince Eugene that he can no longer support the siege of Le Quesnoy and that he is withdrawing the British troops from the action and instead intends to take possession of Dunkirk. The Dutch are so exasperated at the withdrawal of the British troops that they close the towns of Bouchain on Douai to British access, despite the fact that they have plenty of stores and medical facilities available. Butler takes possession of Ghent and Bruges as well as Dunkirk, in order to ensure his troops are adequately provided for. On April 15, 1713, he becomes Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk.
Ormonde’s position as Captain-General makes him a personage of much importance in the crisis brought about by the death of Queen Anne and, during the last years of Queen Anne, he almost certainly has Jacobite leanings and corresponds with the Jacobite Court including his cousin, Piers Butler, 3rd Viscount Galmoye, who keeps barrels of gunpowder at Kilkenny Castle. King George I, on his accession to the throne in August 1714, institutes extensive changes and excludes the Tories from royal favour. Butler is stripped of his posts as Captain-General, as colonel of the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards and as Commander in Chief of the Forces with the first two posts going to the Duke of Marlborough and the role of Commander-in-Chief going to John Dalrymple, 2nd Earl of Stair. On November 19, 1714, Butler is instead made a member of the reconstituted Privy Council of Ireland.
Accused of supporting the Jacobite rising of 1715, Butler is impeached for high treason by Lord Stanhope on June 21, 1715. He might avoid the impending storm of Parliamentary prosecution, if he remains in England and stands trial but instead, he chooses to flee to France in August 1715 and initially stays in Paris with Lord Bolingbroke. On August 20, 1715, he is attainted, his estate forfeited, and honours extinguished. The Earl Marshal is instructed to remove the names and armorial bearings of Butler and Bolingbroke from the list of peers and his banner as Knight of the Garter is taken down in St. George’s Chapel.
On June 20, 1716, the Parliament of Ireland passes an act extinguishing the regalities and liberties of the county palatine of Tipperary; for vesting Butler’s estate in the crown and for giving a reward of £10,000 for his apprehension, should he attempt to land in Ireland. But the same parliament passes an act on June 24, 1721, to enable his brother, Charles Butler, 1st Earl of Arran, to purchase his estate, which he does accordingly.
Butler subsequently moves to Spain where he holds discussions with Cardinal Giulio Alberoni. He later takes part in a Spanish and Jacobite plan to invade England and puts James Francis Edward Stuart on the British throne in 1719, but his fleet is disbanded by a storm in the Bay of Biscay. In 1732, he moves to Avignon, where he is seen in 1733 by the writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. He dies at Avignon in exile on November 16, 1745, but his body is returned to London and buried in Westminster Abbey on May 22, 1746.
On July 20, 1682, Butler, then called Lord Ossory, marries Lady Anne Hyde, daughter of Laurence Hyde, who is then Viscount Hyde of Kenilworth but becomes Earl of Rochester in November. The couple has a daughter, Mary, who dies young in 1688.
Following the death of his first wife in 1685, Butler plans to marry again in order to secure a male heir. He gains permission from the House of Lords for the arranging of a jointure for another marriage in May 1685, and in August of that year, he marries Lady Mary Somerset, daughter of the Duke of Beaufort and Mary Capel. The couple has a son, Thomas (1686–1689), and two daughters, Elizabeth (1689–1750) and Mary (1690–1713). His second wife is a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Anne. Their younger daughter, Mary, marries John Ashburnham, 1st Earl of Ashburnham.
(Pictured: Portrait of James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde, by Michael Dahl, National Portrait Gallery)
Joyce is the eldest of three sons of Michael Joyce, an Irish Catholic from a family of tenant farmers in Ballinrobe, County Mayo, and his wife, Gertrude (née Brooke), who although born in Shaw and Crompton, Lancashire, is from a well-off AnglicanAnglo-Irish family of physicians associated with County Roscommon. The Joyces return to Ireland in 1909. William, a precocious child, attends Coláiste Iognáid SJ, a Jesuit school in County Galway, from 1915 to 1921. At the age of fourteen, he abandons Catholicism for Anglicanism, apparently after being told that all non-Catholics, including his mother, would be damned. In adult life he is nominally anglican, though his adherence to Christianity is tenuous.
The Joyces are unionists and teach their children fervent imperialism. During the Irish War of Independence, Joyce openly associates with the Black and Tans and acts as a scout for them. An acquaintance claims that his views are so extreme even loyalists dislike him. On December 9, 1921, he flees to England to join the Worcestershire Regiment and is followed to England in 1923 by the rest of the family. When he enlists, he claims to be eighteen, but after he contracts rheumatic fever, his age is discovered, and he is discharged in March 1922. For a time, he studies mathematics and chemistry at Battersea Polytechnic Institute as a pre-medical student (1922–23), but he leaves of his own accord, with a reputation for laziness and violent political views. His studies in English and history at Birkbeck College are more successful. He is a brilliant linguist and mathematician and graduates BA with first-class honours in 1927. He publishes an academic article on philology and considers progressing to an MA. He later falsely claims that his research had been plagiarised by a Jewish academic. In 1932, he enrolls at King’s College, London, for a Ph.D. in educational psychology.
Joyce is disturbed by the difference between depressed post-war Britain and the imperial ideal that he had imbibed in Galway and is mocked for his outspoken patriotism and obvious Irishness. He identifies strongly with Thomas Carlyle, an earlier angry anti-liberal from the provinces. His life is marked by repeated episodes of hero worship, followed by disillusion and bitter denunciation. In 1923, he joins the British Fascists, an organisation that has a significant Irish loyalist membership, and in 1924 he allies himself with a militant splinter group, the National Fascists. Most British fascists see themselves as Tory auxiliaries, and they often provide a security presence at conservative meetings. On October 22, 1924, while stewarding a meeting addressed by a Jewish conservative candidate, he has his face slashed and is left with a prominent scar across his right cheek. He joins the Conservative Party in 1928 and is active in the Chelsea constituency until 1930, when he is forced out because of his eccentricities and sexual misbehaviour. On April 30, 1927, he marries Hazel Kathleen Barr. They have two daughters but separate in 1935, largely because of his infidelities, heavy drinking, and temper. The marriage is dissolved in 1937.
In November 1933, Joyce abandons his Ph.D. studies to work for Sir Oswald Mosley‘s British Union of Fascists (BUF). By early 1934 he has become its paid publicity director, traveling throughout Britain to organise meetings. He is a powerful, rabble-rousing speaker, driven by an instinctive awareness that vitriolic verbal abuse gives speaker and audience a sense of power and solidarity. MI5 sees him as a compelling, though deranged, personality. On February 8, 1937, he marries Margaret Cairns White, a BUF activist from Lancashire, with whom he had cohabited since 1936.
Joyce leads a BUF faction that favours a recruitment strategy based on uncompromising ideological assertion. This is challenged by populists who prioritise marches and displays and hold that indoctrination should follow membership. In February 1937, he is BUF candidate for the London County Council in Shoreditch. The party wins 14 percent of the vote. In March 1937, he, along with many full-time BUF staff, are sacked when the BUF cuts expenses. But his dismissal also reflects Mosley’s awareness that his obsessive rhetoric repels “respectable” recruits and that he is no longer a biddable, slavish admirer of “the Leader.” He later falsely claims near-exclusive credit for the BUF’s escalating antisemitism, a view that Mosley eventually finds it convenient to adopt in order to evade his own responsibility.
In April 1937, Joyce founds the National Socialist League, helped by a wealthy patron. He supports himself as a private tutor, refusing to take Jewish pupils. He is active in various antisemitic and pro-Nazi groups such as the Right Club and engages in “peace” campaigns based on the view that British interests lay with Germany against Russia. Political marginalisation intensifies his admiration for Nazi Germany and hero worship of Adolf Hitler. By the time of the Munich crisis in 1938, he has decided that if war comes, he will go to Germany, though he also considers moving to Ireland. He renews his British passport for one-year terms in August 1938 and August 1939.
On August 26, 1939, Joyce and his wife leave London for Berlin. He is allegedly tipped off about his impending arrest and internment by an MI5 officer, to whom he had supplied information on communists. His siblings, whom he recruited into his fascist organisations, are variously penalised for his activities. At a loose end in Berlin, he is persuaded by a British associate to become a radio announcer with the English-language service of the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (RRG). He makes his first broadcast on September 6, 1939, and receives a contract in October. He finds in radio an outlet for his forceful style and delight in saying the unsayable, and in the early years of the war takes an exultant pride in recounting Nazi victories. His performances are admired by Joseph Goebbels, whom Joyce, to his regret, never meets. On September 26, 1940, he acquires German citizenship.
The novel experience of hearing the enemy in one’s own living room attracts wide audiences in Britain. Joyce’s practice of naming newly captured prisoners of war in his broadcasts is also a compelling motive for listening. In fact, he tries to recruit British prisoners of war as collaborators. The name “Lord Haw-Haw,” invented by the Daily Express radio critic in September 1939, initially applies to several English-language broadcasters but in time becomes associated with Joyce. He is initially a figure of fun, imitated by comedians, but there are sinister undercurrents of terrifying omnipotence, intensified by his sneering, gloating delivery and his delighted deployment of the “big lie” technique. It is widely believed that British-based fifth columnists supply him with information, that he predicts air raids, and shows minute local knowledge. In time, fear and his growing notoriety feed popular hatred of him in Britain, though his anti-British taunts allegedly win appreciative Irish audiences. He exults that he is daily committing treason and rendering himself liable to the death penalty.
In 1940, Joyce publishes a commissioned self-justifying propaganda work, Twilight over England. His representation of himself echoes that of Hitler in Mein Kampf – the provincial patriot, whose martial sacrifices are betrayed by corrupt elites, learning through poverty the hollowness of bourgeois patriotism and the need to synthesise socialism with nationalism. He shares with his hero a paranoid belief in his own ability to create an alternative reality through language and obstinacy. He dreams of becoming the English Führer.
In Berlin, the Joyces’ marriage comes under increasing strain, marked by drunken rows, domestic violence, and infidelity on both sides, though they retain a fierce mutual fascination. They divorce on August 12, 1941, but remarry on February 11, 1942, while continuing their previous behaviour. As the Axis powers begin to fail, his broadcasts become more defensive, focusing on the Soviet threat. On October 14, 1944, he is awarded the German War Merit Cross, first class. On October 22, he is sworn into the Volkssturm (territorial army) and begins drilling. The Joyces are evacuated from Berlin in March 1945, initially to Apen near the Dutch border and then to Hamburg, where he makes a last, drunken, defiant broadcast on April 30, 1945, the day of Hitler’s death. After an unsuccessful attempt to escape to Sweden, the Joyces hide at Flensburg near the Danish border. On May 28, 1945, he is shot and captured while gathering firewood.
Joyce is brought back to Britain on June 16 after Parliament passed legislation simplifying treason trial procedures. At his September 17-20 trial, he proves his American citizenship, but the court holds that his illegally acquired British passport incurred duties of allegiance. His appeals are rejected by the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords. His fate is influenced by British public opinion, and possibly by a desire to avoid antagonising the Soviet Union. In his death cell he blames the defeat of national socialism on German limitations. He also fantasises that he could have saved Hitler from his incompetent subordinates.
Joyce is hanged by Albert Pierrepoint at Wandsworth Prison on January 3, 1946. Unlike most of his fellow Nazis, he proclaims to the end his allegiance to national socialism and hatred of Jews. He corresponds cheerfully with Margaret, joking evasively about the death camps and expressing a belief that his spirit will survive, watch over her, and continue his work. To neo-Nazis he becomes a martyr. Even among those to whom his activities had been repellent, a significant body of opinion holds he should not have been condemned on a questionable and innovative technicality. The historian A. J. P. Taylor maintains that Joyce was executed for making a false declaration to obtain a passport, a misdemeanour that normally incurs a £2 fine.
In 1976, Joyce is reinterred in Galway as it is feared that a grave in England might become a fascist shrine. Thomas Kilroy‘s play Double Cross (1986) juxtaposes Joyce and Brendan Bracken as Irishmen who reinvented themselves through fantasies of Britishness. The BBC Sound Archive has recordings of some of Joyce’s broadcasts and transcripts of others, collected during the war as evidence for a future treason trial.
(From: “Joyce, William Brooke (‘Lord Haw-Haw’)” by Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
seamus dubhghaill 