seamus dubhghaill

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Tag Archives: Lord Mayor of Dublin


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Founding of the Dublin Women’s Suffrage Association

The Dublin Women’s Suffrage Association (DSWA), later the Irish Women’s Suffrage and Local Government Association (IWSLGA), a women’s suffrage organisation based in Dublin from 1876 to 1919, is founded on January 26, 1876. The organization also campaigns for a greater role for women in local government and public affairs.

The association grows from a committee established by Anna Haslam and her husband, Thomas Haslam, after a meeting on 21 February 21, 1872, chaired by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Sir George Bolster Owens, and addressed by Belfast suffragist Isabella Tod.

The DSWA is formally founded at a meeting on January 26, 1876, in the Exhibition Palace, Earlsfort Terrace (now the National Concert Hall). After the Poor Law Guardians (Ireland) (Women) Act 1896 allows women to be elected to the boards of guardians of poor law unions, it renames itself the Dublin Women’s Suffrage and Poor Law Guardians’ Association. After the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 allows women to serve on local councils, it becomes the Dublin Women’s Suffrage and Local Government Association. It establishes branches outside Dublin in the 1890s and becomes the IWSLGA in 1901.

In 1919, after the Representation of the People Act 1918 provides full franchise at local elections and partial franchise at parliamentary elections, the IWSLGA merges with the Irish Women’s Association of Citizenship to become the Irish Women Citizens’ and Local Government Association, later renamed the Irish Women’s Citizens Association, which in 1949 merges into the Irish Housewives Association.

The association confines itself to constitutional, nonsectarian and peaceful methods, and attracts support from both unionist and nationalist suffragists. Its tactics include making friends in parliament, hosting meetings with important speakers, and issuing pamphlets and periodicals. Its first secretaries are Anna Haslam and Miss McDowell. Haslam serves as secretary until 1913. In regards to membership, Haslam suggests an annual subscription of one shilling per annum as membership in the association. Other goals include appointing women to positions “such as rate collectors and sanitary inspectors, while always pursuing the association’s main objective of the parliamentary vote.” Prominent members of the association in the 20th century are Lady Margaret Dockrell, Mary Hayden, and Bridget Dudley Edwards (mother of Robert Dudley Edwards). Prominent supporters include Charles Cameron, Sir Andrew Reed, Willie Redmond MP, and William Field MP. Following the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, Lady Dockrell is one of the first women appointed Justice of the Peace.

(Pictured: Anna Haslam, co-founder of the DWSA along with her husband, Thomas)


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Death of Jim Tunney, Fianna Fáil Politician

James C. Tunney, a Fianna Fáil politician, dies in Dublin on January 16, 2002.

Tunney is born on December 25, 1924, in Finglas, Dublin, the fourth child among three sons and five daughters of James Tunney, a farmer and Labour Party Teachta Dála (TD) and senator, and M. Ellen Tunney (née Grimes), who both come from outside Westport, County Mayo. He is educated at St. Vincent’s C.B.S. in Glasnevin.

Tunney works in the Department of Agriculture from 1943 to 1955 and it is during this period that he studies part-time at University College Dublin (UCD), where he takes a BA in drama, English, and Irish before studying for a postgraduate qualification in Irish. From 1955 to 1962 he teaches drama at Vocational Education Committees (VEC) in Lucan, Balbriggan, and Garretstown, before being appointed headmaster of Blanchardstown VEC in 1962.

Tunney also plays at senior level for the Dublin county football team. He is on the winning side for Dublin in the 1948 All-Ireland Junior Football Championship.

A snappy dresser who earns the nickname “the yellow rose of Finglas,” Tunney is sometimes seen as pompous, a perception possibly attributable to his acting background, which once leads to an audition at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre.

In 1963 Tunney joins Fianna Fáil, and stands for the party at the  1965 Irish general election but is not elected. He is elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil TD for the Dublin North-West constituency at the 1969 Irish general election. He serves continuously in the Dáil until losing his seat at the 1992 Irish general election, having been a TD for Dublin Finglas from 1977 to 1981 when Dublin constituencies are reconfigured as 3-seaters, before being returned for Dublin North-West in 1981.

During this period Tunney serves as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education (after 1978, Minister of State at the Department of Education) in three governments. He serves as Leas-Ceann Comhairle of Dáil Éireann from 1981 to 1982, and from 1987 to 1993. He is also chair of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party for ten years. He is a member of Dublin City Council, and serves as Lord Mayor of Dublin from 1984 to 1985.

Following Tunney’s death, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern describes him as “a parliamentarian and a gentleman who was passionately committed to serving his country.” Ahern adds, “he was not only a man of substance but one of style. From the flower that was always in his buttonhole to the elegance of his language in both Irish and English he had a commanding and stylish presence.”

Fine Gael leader Michael Noonan says Tunney had gained “the widespread affection and respect of colleagues of all political parties.”

Leader of the Labour Party Ruairi Quinn describes Tunney as a “thoughtful and courteous colleague” who carried out his duties with “fairness but also with wit and style.”


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Death of Mary Carryl, Servant of the Ladies of Llangollen

Mary Carryl, an Irish-born loyal servant and friend of the celebrated Ladies of Llangollen, dies on November 22, 1809. She serves them up to her death. When the Ladies die, they share the same grave.

Carryl is brought up in a poor family in Ross, County Wexford. Little is known about her until she is employed by Lady Elizabeth “Betty” and Sir William Fownes, 2nd Baronet, at the Woodstock Estate near Inistioge, County Kilkenny. He inherits the baronetcy from his father Sir William Fownes, 1st Baronet, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, and over 21,000 acres from his grandfather. When Fownes marries Elizabeth Ponsonby, he receives £4,000 as a dowry and the couple builds the six-bayed, three-story Woodstock House in County Kilkenny in 1745-47. In 1769, the Fownes have a thirteen-year-old guest to stay for some time named Sarah Ponsonby, who is Elizabeth’s cousin and the orphaned daughter of Chambré Brabazon Ponsonby. She attends school at Kilkenny.

Sarah develops a friendship with Eleanor Butler, which is not approved of by the Fownes nor by Eleanor’s family guardians. When the friendship begins, Sarah is an unhappy thirteen-year-old orphan. She is captivated by the well-educated Eleanor Butler, a 30-year-old spinster no longer considered marriageable. Sarah is also receiving unwanted attention from Sir William, her guardian.

When Eleanor Butler runs away from home, she is hidden in Sarah’s room and Carryl smuggles in food for her stowaway. Eventually Butler and Ponsonby agree that they can leave Ireland together. They go to Llangollen in Wales where they set up home in a cottage called Plas Newydd. Meanwhile Carryl, who is known as Mary the Bruiser, has been fired after throwing a candlestick that wounds another servant. Her prospects are saved when Eleanor and Sarah send for her to come to Llangollen.

In time Eleanor and Sarah become notorious as “The Ladies of Llangollen,” and Carryl becomes both their servant and the head of the household. She is loyal to her employers. She is said to have “masculine qualities” and Lady Eleanor’s diary records how she gives as good as she gets as she bargains loudly with the fishermen, the butchers and the inebriated.

The lifestyle of the Ladies of Llangollen attracts attention. They receive notable visitors including the Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington; the poets William Wordsworth and Anna Seward; enlightenment leaders Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood; and writers including Sir Walter Scott.[3]

Carryl dies at Plas Newydd on November 22, 1809, and is buried in the churchyard of St. Collen’s Church, Llangollen. She leaves a shilling to her brother and sister, but leaves the field she owns to Sarah. When in time the Ladies of Llangollen die, they are buried beside their faithful servant.

The memorial monument to Mary Carryl, Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby in the churchyard of St. Collen’s Church is erected in 1810. The inscription on Carryl’s part of the monument reads: “In Memory of / Mrs Mary Carryl / Deceased 22 November 1809 / This monument is erected by Eleanor Butler, / and Sarah Ponsonby, of Plasnewydd in this Parish. / Released from Earth and all its transient woes, / She whose remains beneath this stone repose, / Stedfast in Faith resigned her parting breath, / Looked up with Christian joy, and smiled in Death! / Patient, Industrious, Faithful, Generous, Kind, / Her Conduct left the proudest far behind, / Her Virtues dignified her humble birth, / And raised her mind above this sordid earth, / Attachment (Sacred bond of grateful breasts) / Extinguished but with life, this Tomb attests, / Reared by Two Friends who will her loss bemoan, / ‘Till with Her Ashes…Here shall rest, Their own.”

(Pictured: A portrait of Mary Carryl from the Welsh Portrait Collection at the National Library of Wales)


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Reopening of New Abbey Theatre

The newly unveiled Abbey Theatre opens its doors for the first time on July 18, 1966.

Fifteen years earlier, in 1951, the original buildings of the theatre are destroyed by fire during the run of The Plough and the Stars. Ironically, the play closes to the strains of “Keep the Home Fires Burning.” The fire forces the theatre company to find a new home.

They relocate to the Queen’s Theater on Pearse Street for what is intended to be a temporary stay but instead lasts for a decade and a half. A week before the brand new premises on Abbey Street are opened, the company has its final performance at the Queen’s Theatre in what is a bittersweet evening. For the Abbey Theatre it signals the end of an era and the beginning a new one, but the future of the Queen’s Theatre is far less bright.

After the final performances from the Abbey, Never the Time and the Place by Lennox Robinson and The Irishwoman of the Year by John Power, uncertainty shrouds the fate of the theatre with the Irish Independent reporting that “It will be used for variety performances up to the end of September, but after that it is just a matter for speculation.” It is ultimately closed in 1969 and is demolished in 1975.

The jubilee year of the 1916 Easter Rising, the 1966 Abbey opening recalls memories of the events that had taken place fifty years earlier.

In an article published the day after opening night, the Irish Independent recalls that “Thomas MacDonagh, one of the executed leaders of the Rising was himself an Abbey playwright and when news of the seizure of the General Post Office reached the theatre at a rehearsal, members of the Abbey players and other hands made a hurried exit to join the fighting. And by then others of the company were already at the barricades.”

A world away from the battleground of the Rising, the opening of the new Abbey Theatre is attended by a who’s who of arts, culture and politics.

Alongside Abbey actors, playwrights and staff are members of parliament including President of Ireland Éamon de Valera, Minister for Finance Jack Lynch, James Dillon and Lord Mayor of Dublin Eugene Timmons. Eammon Andrews, Raidió Teilifís Éireann’s director-general Kevin McCourt, theatre personalities Hilton Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir and Lord Moyne, himself an Abbey playwright and who gave the Company its temporary home immediately after the fire in Rupert Guinness Memorial Home, are also there on the night.

The Abbey’s new home is opened by President Éamon de Valera, who once graced the Abbey Stage as an amateur actor.

The new building is designed by Irish architect Michael Scott, who also designed the nearby Busáras building. He is considered one of the great modern architects and his vision for the new Abbey is thought to be the last word in modern-day design.


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Death of Donal McCann, Stage, Film & Television Actor

Donal McCann, Irish stage, film, and television actor, dies from pancreatic cancer in Dublin on July 17, 1999. He is best known for his roles in the works of Brian Friel and for his lead role in John Huston‘s last film, The Dead (1987). In 2020, he is listed as number 45 on The Irish Times list of Ireland’s greatest film actors.

McCann is born on May 7, 1943, in Terenure, Dublin. His father is John J. McCann, a playwright and politician who serves twice as Lord Mayor of Dublin. Although he acts in a production of his father’s Give Me a Bed of Roses at Terenure College in 1962, he briefly studies architecture before taking a job as a trainee sub-editor at the Evening Press which allows him to pursue part-time acting classes at the Abbey School of Acting at the same time. He joins the Abbey Players in the late 1960s.

Among his most important early roles are Cú Chulainn in W. B. Yeats‘s On Baile Strand (1966), and as Estragon in a seminal production of Samuel Beckett‘s Waiting for Godot, partnering with Peter O’Toole as Vladimir (1969).

McCann’s career includes parts in many plays from the Irish literary canon, including Tarry Flynn, The Shaughran, and the Gate Theatre‘s highly acclaimed production of Seán O’Casey‘s classic Juno and the Paycock in the 1980s (McCann plays the “Paycock” (Captain Boyle) opposite Geraldine Plunkett as Juno and John Kavanagh as Joxer Daly) as well as a subsequent production of O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars.

McCann develops a particularly fruitful relationship with the playwright Brian Friel. He plays the role of Gar O’Donnell, the public figure, in a film adaptation of Philadelphia, Here I Come! in 1970 and, despite popular belief, he never plays either public or private Gar on stage. He gives a landmark performance as Frank Hardy, the title character, in Faith Healer in 1980 (a role he reprised in 1994), continuing his relationship with Friel through productions of Translations (1988) and Wonderful Tennessee (1993).

Friel says that McCann’s work “contains extraordinary characteristics that go beyond acting … it is deeply spiritual.” Perhaps McCann’s most renowned role is as Thomas Dunne in Sebastian Barry‘s The Steward of Christendom. He wins the London Critics’ Circle Theatre Award (Drama Theatre) as best actor for this role in 1995. He reprises this role in a 1996 production at the Gate Theatre, Dublin and, following a twelve-week run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1997, his “performance of unarguable greatness” (The New York Observer) had Newsweek hailing him as “a world-class star,” and The New York Times referring to this “astonishing Irish actor…widely regarded as the finest of them all.”

On the London stage, McCann plays in Prayer for My Daughter opposite Antony Sher (1978), and is Jean to Dame Helen Mirren‘s Julie in Miss Julie (1971). This is filmed for the BBC, and he much later plays Judge Brack with Fiona Shaw in the title role of Henrik Ibsen‘s Hedda Gabler, a production filmed for the BBC in 1993.

McCann begins his film career early, in 1966, in Walt Disney Pictures’s The Fighting Prince of Donegal (this later becomes a TV series). More significant roles include the title character’s father Shamie in Cal and one of the feuding brothers in Thaddeus O’Sullivan‘s December Bride (1990). He works a number of times with Neil Jordan (in Angel, The Miracle and High Spirits).

His best-known film role is as Gabriel Conroy in The Dead (1987), starring opposite Anjelica Huston and directed by her father, John Huston. Significant late roles include Bernardo Bertolucci‘s Stealing Beauty (1996) and in John Turturro‘s Illuminata (released in 1999, after McCann’s death).

McCann’s television work includes the featured role of Phineas Finn in the BBC’s serialised adaptation of Anthony Trollope‘s The Pallisers, Willie Burke in RTÉ‘s Prix Italia drama entry The Burke Enigma (1979) and Barney Mulhall in RTÉ’s Strumpet City (1980), as well as many one-off parts.

McCann plays in Bob Quinn‘s Irish language film Poitín (1979) and in Quinn’s somewhat experimental The Bishop’s Story (1995). After hearing that McCann is ill, Tom Collins asks Quinn to make a TV documentary about McCann for RTÉ called It Must Be Done Right (1999), after a remark by McCann on his craft. The film airs on RTÉ a week before McCann’s death.

In his private life, McCann is a quiet and unassuming man, but he battles both depression and alcoholism all his life. He has many friends in Irish theatre and artistic circles but also across all strata of life. His hobbies include sketching and he is passionate about horse racing.

Remembering McCann on the 25th anniversary of his death, Gerald Smyth writes, “In the melancholy of that life-worn voice could be heard the cadences of a lyric heart.”


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Birth of Donal Donnelly, Theatre & Film Actor

Donal Donnelly, Irish theatre and film actor, is born to Irish parents in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, on July 6, 1931. Perhaps best known for his work in the plays of Brian Friel, he has a long and varied career in film, on television and in the theatre. He lives in Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States at various times, and his travels lead him to describe himself as “an itinerant Irish actor.”

Donnelly’s father, James, is a doctor from County Tyrone, and his mother, Nora O’Connor, is a teacher from County Kerry.

Donnelly is raised in Dublin where he attends Synge Street CBS, where he acts in school plays with Milo O’Shea, Eamonn Andrews, Jack MacGowran, Bernard Frawley (Seattle Repertory Co.) and Jimmy Fitzsimons (brother of Maureen O’Hara), under the direction of elocution teacher, Ena Burke.

Donnelly gets his start in an amateur group calling itself the Globe Theatre Players. It is organised and run by Jim Fitzgerald and Monica Brophy. He then later tours with Anew McMaster‘s Irish repertory company before moving to England where he stars with Rita Tushingham in the film The Knack …and How to Get It.

Donnelly’s breakthrough role comes when he is cast as Gar Private in the world premiere of Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come! directed by Hilton Edwards for the Gate Theatre at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1964. The production subsequently transfers to Broadway where it plays for over 300 performances and establishes Donnelly and Patrick Bedford, who plays his alter-ego Gar Public, as formidable new talents to be reckoned with. They are jointly nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play in 1966.

Donnelly returns to Broadway a number of times, replacing Albert Finney in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg in 1968, playing Milo Tindle in Anthony Shaffer‘s Sleuth and appearing as Frederick Treves opposite David Bowie as The Elephant Man. He also renews his relationship with Brian Friel, appearing in the world premieres of Volunteers at the Abbey Theatre in 1975 and Faith Healer with James Mason at the Longacre Theatre in New York City in 1979, as well as the Broadway premieres of Dancing at Lughnasa in 1991 and Translations in 1995.

For many years, Donnelly tours a one-man performance of the writings of George Bernard Shaw, adapted and directed by Michael Voysey and entitled My Astonishing Self.

Donnelly’s film roles include Archbishop Gilday in The Godfather Part III and as Freddy Malins in John Huston‘s final work, The Dead, based on the short story by James Joyce, where he gains particular acclaim for his performance.

On television, Donnelly plays the lead role of Matthew Browne in the 1970s ITV sitcom Yes, Honestly, opposite Liza Goddard. But from the late 1950s onwards, he often appears in such British TV programs as The Avengers, Z-Cars and The Wednesday Play.

Donnelly is an acclaimed audiobook reader whose catalogue includes Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Voltaire‘s Philosophical Dictionary, and several audio versions of the works of James Joyce.

In 1968, Donnelly records an album of Irish songs, Take the Name of Donnelly, which is arranged, produced and conducted by Tony Meehan formerly of the Shadows.

Donnelly, who is a heavy smoker all his life, dies from cancer at the age of 78 in Chicago, Illinois, on January 4, 2010. He is survived by his wife, Patricia ‘Patsy’ Porter, a former dancer he met working on Finian’s Rainbow, and two sons, Jonathan and Damian. Their only daughter, Maryanne, predeceases him after being killed in a riding accident. A brother, Michael Donnelly, is a Fianna Fáil senator and councillor, and Lord Mayor of Dublin(1990–91).

(Pictured: Publicity still of Donal Donnelly as Frederick Treves in the Broadway’s play The Elephant Man)


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Death of Esther Vanhomrigh, Lover & Correspondent of Jonathan Swift

Esther Vanhomrigh, Irish woman of Dutch descent and a longtime lover and correspondent of Jonathan Swift, dies in Celbridge, County Kildare, on June 2, 1723. Swift’s letters to her are published after her death. Her fictional name “Vanessa” is created by Swift by taking Van from her surname, Vanhomrigh, and adding Esse, a pet form of her first name, Esther.

Vanhomrigh is born in Dublin on February 14, 1688, the eldest of four children of Bartholomew Van Homrigh, a merchant of Amsterdam and afterwards of Dublin, who is appointed commissary of the stores by King William III upon his expedition into Ireland. He serves as Lord Mayor of Dublin from 1697–98. Her mother, also named Esther, is the daughter of John Stone, an Irish commissioner of revenue. She grows up at Celbridge Abbey in County Kildare.

Vanhomrigh’s father dies in 1703, and his widow moves her family to London in 1707. She becomes acquainted with Swift in December of that year while the family is en route for London, at Dunstable, and it is here that their intense 17-year relationship begins. She is 22 years younger than Swift, and it is obvious from the beginning that he admires her for her rugged qualities, as he does not admire very delicate women. She is said “not to be a beauty,” although it is difficult to be sure about this since no contemporary portrait of her exists (the famous 1868 Millais portrait is a work of artistic imagination). Swift later serves as her tutor. After her mother dies in 1714, she follows Swift to Ireland, and returns to Celbridge Abbey, but she is desperately miserable there.

Their relationship is fraught. It is broken up after 17 years by Swift’s relationship with another woman, Esther Johnson, whom he calls “Stella,” in 1723. Swift has known Stella since about 1690, when she is a little girl in the household of his employer Sir William Temple; their relationship is intense and it is possible that they secretly married in 1716. Vanhomrigh is thought to have asked Swift not to see Stella again, and he apparently refuses, thus putting an end to their relationship.

Vanhomrigh never recovers from his rejection and dies on June 2, 1723, likely from tuberculosis contracted from nursing her sister Mary, who had died of the same disease in 1720, as had their mother before her. Some accuse Swift of inadvertently causing her death.

Vanhomrigh’s father had left her well provided for, but she is burdened by debts accumulated by her mother and her spendthrift brother Bartholomew. In her will, she names the barrister Robert Marshall and George Berkeley, the celebrated philosopher and future Bishop of Cloyne, executors and joint residuary legatees of her estate, although she knew neither man well. Due to the debts, a protracted lawsuit ensues and a large part of the estate is lost in legal costs. It is widely reported that she had made it a condition of the inheritance that her executors publish all her correspondence with Swift, but in fact, no such stipulation seems to have been made.

Swift, whose letters to her are published after her death, is not mentioned in her will, perhaps a final retaliation against a man whose neglect made her “live a life like a languishing death.”


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Birth of Caroline Agnes Gray, Owner of the “Freeman’s Journal”

Caroline “Carrie” Agnes Gray, English hostess and owner of the Freeman’s Journal, is born Caroline Agnes Chisholm in London, England, on May 13, 1848.

Gray is the sixth child of the eight children of the philanthropist Caroline Chisholm (née Jones) and Archibald Chisholm, an officer in the army of the East India Company.

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.


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Death of Timothy Harrington, Journalist, Barrister & Politician

Timothy Charles Harrington, Irish journalist, barrister, nationalist politician and Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, dies in Dublin on March 12, 1910, following a stroke.

Harrington is born on September 20, 1851, in Castletownbere, County Cork, son of Denis Harrington and his wife, Eileen (née O’Sullivan). He is educated at the Catholic University of Ireland and Trinity College Dublin (TCD).

As a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), Harrington represents Westmeath from February 1883 to November 1885. In 1885 he is elected for the new constituency of Dublin Harbour, which he represents until his death. He serves as Lord Mayor of Dublin three times from 1901 to 1904.

Harrington owns two newspapers, United Ireland and the Kerry Sentinel, and is a member of the so-called Bantry band of prominent nationalist politicians from the Bantry vicinity. They are also more pejoratively known as the Pope’s brass band. Tim Healy is another prominent member of this unofficial group.

In 1884, Harrington publishes a pamphlet, “Maamtrasna Massacres – Impeachment of the Trials,” in which he dismantles the Crown Prosecution’s case against the eight men accused of the murders of the Joyce family on August 17, 1882. He provides evidence that Crown Prosecutor George Bolton had deliberately suppressed evidence that would have acquitted Maolra Seoighe (English: Myles Joyce), who was hanged, and four men who were sentenced to twenty years of penal servitude.

Harrington is secretary and chief organiser of the Irish National League (INL), a supporter of Charles Stewart Parnell and is largely responsible for devising the agrarian Plan of Campaign in 1886. He becomes a Parnellite Nationalist when the party splits in 1891, continuing as secretary of the INL. In 1897 he proclaims himself an Independent Nationalist and sides with William O’Brien‘s United Irish League (UIL) from its early days. He is briefly considered as a possible alternative to John Redmond as leader of the re-united Irish Parliamentary Party in 1900 when he stands in the 1900 United Kingdom general election Ireland as a Nationalist again.

Thereafter Harrington becomes excluded from Redmond’s closed circle of confidants, retains sympathy with O’Brien, and represents the interests of the tenant farmers at the 1902 Land Conference negotiations which lead to the enactment of the unprecedented Wyndham Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903.

On September 7, 1901, as the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Harrington kicks off at the official ceremony to open Bohemian F.C.‘s new home, Dalymount Park.

Harrington retains the party nomination for the Dublin Harbour constituency in the January 1910 United Kingdom general election, largely because of local divisions about who should succeed him and because an O’Brienite offer to pay his election expenses deters rivals from going to the polls. He decides that the finely balanced result of the general election means that every nationalist vote would be required at Westminster. He therefore travels to London, but shortly after attending the parliamentary party meeting on February 23 he suffers a stroke. After some days’ recuperation he is brought home to Dublin, but his condition deteriorates and he dies on March 12, 1910, at his home, 70 Harcourt Street. He is buried near the Parnell circle at Glasnevin Cemetery.

Harrington is celebrated by a statue erected in 2001 at the east end of Castletownbere near the Millbrook bar.


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Death of Carl Hardebeck, Traditional Music Composer & Arranger

Carl Gilbert Hardebeck, or Carl G. Hardebec, British-born Irish composer and arranger of traditional music, dies in Dublin on February 10, 1945.

Hardebeck is born on December 10, 1869, in Clerkenwell, London, to a German father and Welsh mother. He loses his sight when he is a baby. He attends the Royal Normal School for the Blind in London (1880–92) where, under his teacher Frederick Corder, a professor from the Royal Academy of Music, he shows a marked aptitude for music.

In 1893, at the age of twenty-four, Hardebeck moves to Belfast, where he opens a music store, but the venture fails, and he becomes the organist of a small parish in the city, the Holy Family Church, Wellington Place. He enters an anthem, O God of My Salvation, for contralto and chorus, for the 1897 Dublin Feis Ceoil and wins. On this occasion he hears folk song arrangements of Charles Villiers Stanford and others for the first time. At the 1901 Feis Ceoil, he again wins a prize, this time for a large cantata, The Red Hand of Ulster. In 1914, his wife, Mary Reavy, dies.

In 1919, Hardebeck becomes the director of the music school in Cork and becomes the first professor of Irish music at University College Cork (UCC) in 1922. Ill-suited for administrative tasks, he relinquishes the post after one year and returns to Belfast, which after the Irish Civil War has become the capital of Northern Ireland. In 1932, he finally settles in Dublin, where he works for An Gúm, the Irish government publisher, as arranger of Irish traditional songs for piano and choirs, many of which become teaching material at schools in the nascent Republic of Ireland. He also teaches Irish and traditional music in the Dublin Municipal School of Music for two years. On many occasions he acts as adjudicator in singing and musical competitions across Ireland.

Despite Hardebeck’s mixed German/Welsh/English background, the events of the 1913 Dublin lock-out, the outbreak of World War I, and the 1916 Easter Rising radicalise him, turning him into an Irish nationalist. He is quoted as saying, “I believe in God, Beethoven and Patrick Pearse.” He studies the Irish language and collects folk songs from around the country, making some unique arrangements that bridge the gap between traditional and art song.

At home in Dublin, Hardebeck plays his excellent arrangements of Irish melodies on a Schiedmayer harmonium. The instrument has a “percussion” stop, which he uses to great effect. He also owns a Knauss piano but plays the harmonium by choice. He is quite an authority on plainchant. The noted Irish harpsichord maker Cathal Gannon is a close friend of his for many years. Hardebeck teaches him how to appreciate the structure of the classical symphony and concerto and passes on his enthusiasm and love of Irish melodies.

Following Hardebeck’s death at his home, 14 St. Vincent Street, Berkeley Road, Dublin, on February 10, 1945, a Radio Éireann-sponsored symphony concert, held in the Capitol Theatre in Dublin, begins with a sympathetic performance of his orchestral variations upon Seoithín Seó. A state funeral is held in Saint Joseph’s Church, Berkeley Road, Dublin. The church is packed; various government ministers, the Lord Mayor and representatives of President Douglas Hyde and of Éamon de Valera are there. Hardebeck’s own Kyrie and Agnus Dei are performed at the Requiem Mass. He is interred in Glasnevin Cemetery, where a Benedictus is chanted by the clergy present. A vote of sympathy is issued by the Irish National League of the Blind to Hardebeck’s widow and relatives, in which the hope is expressed “that the nation as a whole would not be unmindful of the important contribution which the late Dr. Hardebeck had made to Irish culture, music and art.”

Unfortunately, very little attention has been given to Hardebeck, who is one of the instigators in the revival of Irish music. Indeed, he is largely forgotten after his death. This is possibly due to his mixed origins and place of birth. His arrangement for orchestra of The Lark in the Clear Air is a fine piece of music, but he is content to sell it to the music publishers Boosey & Hawkes for just six guineas.

In June 2013, a plaque to Hardebeck’s memory is installed at Holy Family Church, Belfast.

(Pictured: “Carl Hardebeck (1869-1945),” oil on canvas, National Museums NI)