seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Member of Parliament


by Leave a comment

Death of Arthur Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Ardilaun

Arthur Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Ardilaun, Irish businessman, politician, and philanthropist, best known for giving St. Stephen’s Green back to the people of Dublin, dies on January 20, 1915.

Guinness is born on November 1, 1840 at St. Anne’s, Raheny, near Dublin, the eldest son of Sir Benjamin Guinness, 1st Baronet, and elder brother of Edward Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh. He is the great-grandson of Arthur Guinness. He is educated at Eton College and Trinity College Dublin and, in 1868, succeeds his father as second Baronet.

In the 1868 United Kingdom general election Guinness is elected Conservative Member of Parliament for Dublin City, a seat he holds for only a year. His election is voided because of his election agent’s unlawful efforts, which the court finds were unknown to him. He is re-elected the following year in the 1874 United Kingdom general election.

A supporter of Benjamin Disraeli‘s one-nation conservatism, Guinness’s politics are typical of “constructive unionism,” the belief that the union between Ireland and Britain should be more beneficial to the people of Ireland after centuries of difficulties. In 1872 he is a sponsor of the “Irish Exhibition” at Earlsfort Terrace in Dublin, which is arranged to promote Irish trade. Correcting a mistake about the exhibition in the Freeman’s Journal leads to a death threat from a religious extremist, which he does not report to the police. In the 1890s he supports the Irish Unionist Alliance.

After withdrawing from the Guinness company in 1876, when he sells his half-share to his brother Edward for £600,000, Guinness is in 1880 raised to the peerage as Baron Ardilaun, of Ashford in County Galway. His home there is at Ashford Castle on Lough Corrib, and his title derives from the Gaelic Ard Oileáin, a ‘high island’ on the lake.

Between 1852 and 1859, Guinness’s father acquires several large Connacht estates that are up for sale. With these purchases, he becomes landlord to 670 tenants. With his father’s death in 1868, Guinness continues in his father’s footsteps, purchasing vast swaths of Galway. When his acquisitions are combined with those of his father, total acreage for the Ashford estate is 33,298 acres, with Guinness owning most of County Galway between Maam (Maum) Bridge and Lough Mask.

Like many in the Guinness family, Guinness is a generous philanthropist, devoting himself to a number of public causes, including the restoration of Marsh’s Library in Dublin and the extension of the city’s Coombe Lying-in Hospital. In buying and keeping intact the estate around Muckross House in 1899, he assists the movement to preserve the lake and mountain landscape around Killarney, now a major tourist destination.

In his best-known achievement, Guinness purchases, landscapes, and donates to the capital, the central public park of St. Stephen’s Green, where his statue commissioned by the city can be seen opposite the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. To do so he sponsors a private bill that is passed as the Saint Stephen’s Green (Dublin) Act 1877, and after the landscaping it is formally opened to the public on July 27, 1880. It has been maintained since then by the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland, now the Office of Public Works.

Guinness dies on January 20, 1915 at his home at St. Anne’s, Raheny, and is buried at All Saints Church, Raheny, whose construction he had sponsored. Those present at the funeral include representatives of the Royal Dublin Society, of which he is president for many years, the Royal Horticultural Society of Ireland, the Irish Unionist Alliance, and the Primrose League. His barony becomes extinct at his death, but the baronetcy devolves upon his nephew Algernon.


by Leave a comment

The Dunmurry Train Bombing

The Dunmurry train bombing, a premature detonation of a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) incendiary bomb aboard a Ballymena to Belfast passenger train, takes place on January 17, 1980.

The blast engulfs a carriage of the train in flames, killing three and injuring five others. One of the dead and the most seriously injured survivor are volunteers of the IRA. After the blast, the organisation issues a statement acknowledging responsibility, apologising to those who were harmed and state that it was ‘grave and distressing’ but an ‘accident’ caused by the ‘war situation.’

The train is a Northern Ireland Railways afternoon service carrying passengers between Ballymena railway station and Belfast Central railway station. The train is largely empty as it leaves Dunmurry railway station and enters the outskirts of Belfast, crossing under the M1 motorway on its way to Finaghy railway station shortly before 4:55 PM. A large fireball erupts in the rear carriage, bringing the train to a standstill and forcing panicked passengers to evacuate urgently as the smoke and flames spread along the train. The survivors then move down the track in single file to safety while emergency services fight the blaze. After several hours and combined efforts from fire, police and military services the blaze is contained. One fireman is treated for minor injuries. The two damaged carriages are transported to Queen’s Quay in Belfast for forensic examination and are subsequently rebuilt, one remaining in service until 2006 and the other until 2012.

Of the four persons occupying the carriage, three are killed with burns so severe that it is not possible to identify them by conventional means. Rail chief Roy Beattie describes the human remains as “three heaps of ashes.” The fourth, later identified as Patrick Joseph Flynn, is an IRA member and one of the men transporting the bombs. He suffers very serious burns to his face, torso and legs, and is reported to be close to death upon arrival at the hospital. Of the dead, two are eventually named as 17-year-old Protestant student Mark Cochrane from Finaghy and the other a 35-year-old Belfast-based accountant and recent immigrant from Lagos, Nigeria, Max Olorunda, who had been visiting a client in Ballymena. The identity of the third is harder to ascertain, but it is eventually confirmed by the IRA by their statement that he is 26-year-old IRA member Kevin Delaney. In addition to the fireman, four people are injured, including Flynn, two teenagers treated for minor injuries and an older man who suffers much more serious burns.

Further bomb alerts are issued across the region and two similar devices are discovered on trains, at York Road railway station in Belfast and at Greenisland railway station. Both are removed safely, and control detonated. The devices are simple incendiary bombs similar to that which exploded south of Befast, consisting of a 5-lb. block of explosives attached to a petrol can with a simple time device intended to delay the explosion until the train is empty that evening. Later testimony indicates that Delaney armed the first of two bombs and placed it beside him as he picked up the second one. As he arms this device, the first bomb suddenly detonates for reasons that remain unknown. Delaney is killed instantly and his accomplice, Patrick Joseph Flynn, is forced to leap from the train in flames. Flynn is guarded by police in hospital and arrested once his wounds heal sufficiently.

The IRA releases a lengthy statement about the event, terming it a ‘bombing tragedy,’ blaming the Royal Ulster Constabulary for their ‘sickening and hypocritical … collective activity of collaboration with the British forces.’ In Britain, Conservative MP Winston Churchill calls for the death penalty to be reinstated for terrorists as a result of the incident.

Patrick Flynn is tried at Belfast Crown Court for double manslaughter and possession of explosives after he recovers from his injuries. He is severely disfigured and badly scarred from the extensive burns the incendiary device had inflicted upon him. The judge is asked and agrees to take this into account for sentencing after reviewing the evidence and finding Flynn guilty due to his proximity to the explosion, his known IRA affiliation and the discovery of telephone numbers for the Samaritans and Belfast Central railway station in his jacket, to be used to telephone bomb warnings. Justice Kelly sentences Flynn to ten years in prison for each manslaughter as well as seven years for the explosives offences, to be served concurrently.

(Pictured: Dunmurry Railway Station)


by 1 Comment

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey Assassination Attempt

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, Northern Ireland civil rights campaigner and former Westminster Member of Parliament (MP), is shot by members of the Ulster Freedom Fighters, a cover name of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), who burst into her home at Coalisland, County Tyrone on January 16, 1981. She survives the assassination attempt.

The three men shoot McAliskey nine times in the chest, arm and thigh as she goes to wake up one of her three children. Her husband, Michael, is also shot twice at point blank range. British soldiers are watching the McAliskey home at the time but fail to prevent the assassination attempt. It is claimed that Devlin’s assassination was ordered by British authorities, and that collusion was a factor. An army patrol of the 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment enter the house and wait for half an hour. McAliskey claims they are waiting for the couple to die.

Another group of soldiers then arrive and transport them by helicopter to a nearby Dungannon hospital for emergency treatment and then to the Musgrave Park Hospital, Military Wing, in Belfast, under intensive care. Their condition is initially said to be serious, but not life-threatening.

The attackers, Ray Smallwoods, Tom Graham, both from Lisburn, and Andrew Watson from Seymour Hill, Dunmurry, are captured by members of the Parachute Regiment, who are on patrol nearby when they hear the shots and are taken in for questioning by the police and subsequently jailed. All three are members of the South Belfast UDA. Smallwoods is the driver of the getaway car. Police say it is a professional attack. The gunmen cut the telephone wires to the house before breaking down the front door with a sledgehammer.

McAliskey had played a leading role in the campaign for Republican prisoners in the HM Prison Maze, who are demanding “prisoner of war” or political status. They want to be held separately from loyalist supporters in the Maze. Four other members of the campaign for the H-block inmates have been murdered.

Seven Maze prisoners went on hunger strike before Christmas in support of their demands for political status. The strike is called off on December 12 after Taoiseach Charles Haughey convinces the inmates their families want them to start eating again.


by Leave a comment

Birth of David Bleakley, Northern Ireland Politician

David Wylie Bleakley, politician and peace campaigner in Northern Ireland, is born in the Strandtown district of Belfast, Northern Ireland on January 11, 1925.

Bleakley works as an electrician in the Harland & Wolff dockyards while becoming increasingly active in his trade union. He studies economics at Ruskin College in Oxford, where he strikes up a friendship with C. S. Lewis, about whom he later writes a centenary memoir. He later attends Queen’s University Belfast. A committed Christian, he is a lifelong Anglican – a member of the Church of Ireland. Throughout his life, he is a lay preacher.

Bleakley joins the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) and contests the Northern Ireland Parliament seat of Belfast Victoria in 1949 and 1953 before finally winning it in 1958. At Stormont, he is made the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, but he loses his seat in 1965. He is head of the department of economics and political studies at Methodist College Belfast from 1969 to 1979.

Bleakley runs for the Westminster seat of Belfast East in 1970 (gaining 41% of the vote), February 1974 and October 1974 for the Northern Ireland Labour Party each time, but never enough to win the Westminister seat from the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). In 1971, Brian Faulkner appoints him as his Minister for Community Relations at Stormont, but as Bleakley is not an MP, he can only hold the post for six months. He resigns five days before his term expires in order to highlight his disagreement with government policy, specifically the failure to widen the government to include non-Unionist parties, and the decision to introduce internment. He writes a respectful biography of Faulkner and his own memoir of the period.

After the Parliament is abolished, Bleakley stands for, and is elected to, the Northern Ireland Assembly and its successor, the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention. He stands again for Belfast East in the February and October UK general elections, but wins only 14% of the vote each time.

By the late 1970s, the NILP is in disarray, and does not stand a candidate for the 1979 European Assembly election. Bleakley instead stands as an “Independent Community Candidate,” but takes only 1.6% of the votes cast.

During the 1980s, Bleakley sits as a non-partisan member of various quangos. From 1980 to 1992 he is general secretary of the Irish Council of Churches. In 1992, he joins the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland and is an advisor to the group during the all-party talks. For the 1996 Northern Ireland Forum election, he is a prominent member of the Democratic Partnership list and stands in Belfast East, but is not elected. In 1998, he joins the Labour Party of Northern Ireland and stands in Belfast East in the Assembly elections, receiving 369 first preference votes.

Bleakley dies in Belfast at the age of 92 on June 26, 2017.


by Leave a comment

Founding of the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language

The Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language (Irish: Cumann Buan-Choimeádta na Gaeilge), a cultural organisation which is part of the Gaelic revival of the period, is formed in Dublin on December 29, 1876.

Present at the initial meeting are Charles Dawson, High Sheriff of Limerick City, Timothy Daniel Sullivan, editor of The Nation, and Bryan O’Looney. Writing in 1937, Douglas Hyde also remembers himself, George Sigerson, Thomas O’Neill Russell, J. J. McSweeney of the Royal Irish Academy, and future MP James O’Connor as being present. Its patron is John MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam, its first president is Lord Francis Conyngham, and its first vice-presidents include Isaac Butt and Charles Owen O’Conor.

Unlike similar organisations of the time, which are antiquarian in nature, the SPIL aims at protecting the status of the Irish language, which is threatened with extinction at the time. Its mission statement says that it is “possible and desirable to preserve the Irish Language in those parts of the Country where it is spoken, with a view to its further extension and cultivation.” Hyde writes that the formation of the society can truly be said to be the first attempt made to recruit the common people to the cause of the Irish language. The society succeeds in having Irish included on the curriculum of primary and secondary schools and third-level colleges in 1878.

The membership of the SPIL includes Protestant Ascendancy figures such as John Vesey, 4th Viscount de Vesci, and Colonel W. E. A. Macdonnell. Horace Plunkett represents the Society at the 1901 Pan-Celtic Congress in Dublin. It takes a conciliatory approach to the British government and civil service in pursuing its aims, in contrast to the later Gaelic League, which is anti-British in character.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Marmaduke Coghill, Member of Parliament

Marmaduke Coghill, member of Parliament for University of Dublin, judge of the prerogative court and Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland, is born in Dublin on December 28, 1673.

Coghill is the son of John Coghill of Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, judge of the prerogative court and one of the masters in chancery. His mother is the daughter of Tobias Cramer, of Ballyfoyle, County Kilkenny. Two elder sisters and a younger brother, James, survive infancy. He spends his childhood in Dublin.

Coghill occupies a prominent place in the life of Dublin, and is remarkable for his early display of ability. At the age of fourteen he enters the University of Dublin, graduating at the age of eighteen as a Bachelor of Laws. At the age of nineteen he is returned to Parliament and at the age of 26 he becomes judge of the prerogative court.

In Parliament, from 1692 to 1713 Coghill is a representative of the borough of Armagh, and from 1713 until his death in 1739, a representative of the University of Dublin. He is politically close to William Conolly, speaker of the Irish House of Commons, who dies in 1729. Upon Conolly’s death he succeeds him as a commissioner of the revenue. Over the following years he plays a prominent role in parliament, particularly on financial matters. He also builds up a close relationship with John Perceval, the British Prime Minister‘s chief advisor on Irish affairs.

Coghill becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1735 and is regarded as an honest and able supporter of Irish interests. Outside parliament he is very active on boards, commissions and trusts, takes a hand in the building of Dr. Steevens’ Hospital and is pro-vice-chancellor of Trinity College Dublin. He lives in Belvedere House, now in the grounds of St. Patrick’s College, Dublin. He suffers from gout for a large part of his life.

From his father, Coghill, who never married, had inherited a lease from the Corporation of lands in Clonturk, where he erects a house which is afterwards known as Drumcondra House. He moves into Drumcondra House and lives there with his unmarried sister Mary until his death in 1738. He is buried in the family vault in St. Andrew’s Church, Dublin.

Upon Coghill’s death Mary is left, for her lifetime, his lands in the barony of Coolock, rents from his properties in Clonturk, all his household goods, and his coach, chariot and horses. In 1743, she erects the parish church of Clonturk, now Drumcondra Church, and places in it a statue of her brother by the Dutch sculptor Peter Scheemakers.


by Leave a comment

Death of Marie-Louise O’Murphy, Mistress of Louis XV

Marie-Louise O’Murphy, one of the lesser mistresses of King Louis XV of France and possibly the model for the famous painting by François Boucher, dies in Paris on December 11, 1814.

O’Murphy is born in Rouen, France on October 21, 1737 as the youngest of twelve children of Daniel Morfi and Marguerite Iquy, a family of Irish origin. Her parents have well-known criminal histories. Her father was involved in a case of espionage and blackmail while her mother was accused of prostitution and theft. She and her sisters are also known for being involved in prostitution.

Contemporary and modern historiography believe O’Murphy is the very young model who posed for the Jeune Fille allongée (Reclining Girl), of François Boucher, a painting famous for its undisguised eroticism, dating from 1752. Two versions of this painting have survived, both conserved in Germany, one in the Alte Pinakothek at Munich and the other in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum at Cologne.

The term petite maîtresse (little mistress) is given to Louis XV’s mistresses that are not formally presented at court, and unlike the official mistress (maîtresse-en-titre) do not have an apartment in Palace of Versailles. Generally recruited by the King’s valets in Paris surroundings, if their affair lasts more than a single night, they are placed in a group of houses in the district of Parc-aux-Cerfs in Versailles, or close to other royal residences. O’Murphy resides there for two years, from 1753 to 1755.

After a miscarriage in mid-1753 which almost kills her, O’Murphy gives birth to Louis XV’s illegitimate daughter, Agathe-Louise de Saint-Antoine de Saint-André, born in Paris on June 20, 1754. The King, who does not want to recognize the offspring born from petites maîtresses and brief affairs, orders that the newborn must be immediately placed in care of a wet nurse. Subsequently, Agathe-Louise is sent to the Couvent de la Présentation, where she is raised.

After serving as a mistress to the King for almost two years, O’Murphy makes a mistake that is common for many courtesans, that of trying to replace the official mistress. She unwisely tries to unseat the longtime royal favorite, Madame de Pompadour. This ill-judged move quickly results in her downfall at court. In November 1755 she is expelled at night from her home at Parc-aux-Cerfs, repudiated by the King, and sent far away from Versailles.

O’Murphy hastily marries Jacques Pelet de Beaufranchet, Seigneur d’Ayat on November 25, 1755. Soon after she becomes pregnant. Her first child, a daughter named Louise Charlotte Antoinette Françoise Pelet de Beaufranchet, is born on October 30, 1756 (she dies at the age of two). Thirteen months later, on November 5, 1757, her husband is killed in action at the Battle of Rossbach. Seventeen days after his death she gives birth a second child, a son, Louis Charles Antoine de Beaufranchet, the later Comte de Beaufranchet and General under the Republic.

On February 19, 1759, O’Murphy marries François Nicolas Le Normant, Comte de Flaghac and Receiver General of Finance in Riom, a divorcee with three children. From this marriage, she gives birth to a daughter, Marguerite Victoire Le Normant de Flaghac on January 5, 1768, who, according to one theory, could be another illegitimate daughter of Louis XV. François Le Normant dies on April 24, 1783.

During the Reign of Terror O’Murphy is imprisoned as a “suspect,” under the name of O’Murphy, at Sainte-Pélagie Prison and later at the English Benedictine convent in Paris. After her release she marries Louis Philippe Dumont, a moderate MP for Calvados in the National Convention and twenty-eight years her junior, on June 19, 1795. This union quickly fails, and after almost three years, they divorce on March 16, 1798. She never marries again.

Marie-Louise O’Murphy dies in Paris on December 11, 1814 aged 77, at the home of her daughter Marguerite Le Normant.


by Leave a comment

First Issue of “The Irish People” Printed in Dublin

The Irish People, a nationalist weekly newspaper supportive of the Fenian movement, is first printed in Dublin on November 28, 1863. It is suppressed by the British Government in 1865.

Other republican newspapers namely, the United Irishman, The Irish Tribune, The Irish Felon, and then the Repeal Association-supporting paper, The Nation, are suppressed in 1848 after their writers, Young Irelanders and members of the Irish Confederation, are accused of promoting sedition. James Stephens is a Young Irelander and part of the Young Ireland rebellion of 1848 that follows the closures of these newspapers. He flees to France after the rebellion’s failure. In 1856, he returns to Ireland and makes connections with former rebels. Two years later, he founds the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).

In 1863, Stephens tells friends he is to start a newspaper. With funds through John O’Mahony, founder of the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States, he sets up an office at 12 Parliament Street. John O’Leary becomes the editor, with Thomas Luby, Charles Kickham, and Denis Mulcahy as editorial staff and Luby as a proprietor. Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa is the business manager and James O’Connor his assistant and bookkeeper. The newspaper is printed by John Haltigan. Most of the articles are written by O’Leary and Kickham. The first issue comes out on Saturday, November 28, 1863. Its sympathies are clear. A front-page advertisement offers to ship old copies of the United Irishman and The Irish Felon to any address in the UK and editorial content is critical of the political status quo. Superintendent Daniel Ryan of G Division of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, which is largely concerned with Fenianism, notes the new publication’s birth and comments on its low circulation.

Plans for a rising in Ireland, hatched in the United States, are found at Kingstown station in July 1865 in an envelope containing a £500 New York bankers’ draft payable to Stephens’ brother-in-law. This is handed over to Dublin Castle and the link proves to be decisive for what follows. Later, a letter to the Tipperary IRB calling for a nationalist uprising is found by Pierce Nagle, a police informer working for The Irish People. Nagle had visited British officials while in New York in 1864 and offers his services after being upset by Stephens’ manner. After Nagle provides the information, the offices of The Irish People are raided on September 15. The last issue comes out the following day.

The paper is suppressed by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, John Wodehouse. Luby, O’Leary, O’Donovan Rossa and O’Connor are arrested and held at Richmond Bridewell prison. Stephens and Kickham join them a month later. Stephens escapes from prison on November 24. A Special Commission is opened on November 27 and forty-one people are charged are ultimately charged. Luby, O’Leary, O’Connor, O’Donovan Rossa and Kickham are charged with the most serious crime of treason felony, first used against the republicans of 1848. Evidence used for the prosecution includes the letter found by Nagel and his testimony about Fenian connections, articles from The Irish People as far back as the first issue, in which Irish Catholic judges including one of the presiding judges, the current Attorney-General for Ireland and Privy Councillor William Keogh, had been strongly criticised, and a devastating secret document from 1864 written by Stephens and entrusted to Luby granting Luby, O’Leary and Kickham executive powers over the IRB. Kickham is unaware of the document. The conflicts of interest, also with the other judge, John David FitzGerald, who is involved in the defendants’ arrest, are highlighted by the defending counsel, former Tory MP Isaac Butt. Also noted is the striking, if not unusual, jury packing, an act where in a mostly Catholic land, some of the juries involved are entirely Protestant.

Luby, O’Leary and O’Connor receive sentences of twenty years. O’Donovan Rossa is sentenced to life imprisonment because of his previous convictions. The frail Kickham, lifelong near blind and deaf, gets twelve years. Judge Keogh praises his intellect and expresses sympathy with his plight, despite having refused his request for a writ of corpus to bring Luby and Charles Underwood O’Connell to his trial concerning his ignorance of the “executive document,” as Luby had already begun his sentence in Pentonville Prison.

(Pictured: The masthead of the first issue of The Irish People | This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license)


by Leave a comment

Birth of Morgan O’Connell, Soldier & Politician

Morgan O’Connell, soldier, politician and son of the Irish Nationalist leader Daniel O’Connell, the Liberator of Ireland, is born in Dublin on October 31, 1804. He serves in the Irish South American legion and the Imperial Austrian Army. He is MP for Meath from 1832 until 1840 and afterwards assistant registrar of deeds for Ireland from 1840 until 1868.

O’Connell, one of seven children (and the second of four sons) of Daniel and Mary O’Connell, is born at 30 Merrion Square, Dublin. His brothers Maurice, John and Daniel are also MPs.

In 1819, self-styled General John Devereux comes to Dublin to enlist military aid for Simón Bolívar‘s army to liberate Venezuela from Spanish rule. He succeeds in forming an Irish Legion, to be part of Bolivar’s British Legions. O’Connell, encouraged by his father, is one of the officers who purchases a commission in it even though he is only 15 years old. The enterprise is mismanaged; there is no commissariat organisation on board the ships, and a part of the force die on the voyage. The remainder are disembarked on the Spanish Main at Margarita Island, where many deaths take place from starvation eight days after the Irish mutineers leave for Jamaica.

Bolivar, who had noted his pleasure at the departure of “these vile mercenaries,” is too astute a diplomat to offend the son of his Irish counterpart. O’Connell is accorded the appropriate privileges of his rank, and toasts are drunk to the health of his father, the “most enlightened man in all Europe.” A portion of the expedition, under Francis O’ Connor, effects an alliance with Bolivar, and to the energy of these allies the republican successes are chiefly due.

Bolivar makes sure that the untrained Irish lad stays out of danger. “I have numberless hardships to go through,” said Bolivar, “which I would not bring him into, for the character of his father is well known to me.” But ceremonial duties soon bore the restless young Irishman. After a year at Bolivar’s headquarters Morgan leaves for Ireland.

If South America did not satisfy O’Connell’s taste for adventure, he has more than his fill on the return journey. He survives a bout of tropical fever and is shipwrecked twice in succession, ending up stranded in Cuba. A schooner captain, who turns out to be a long-lost Irish cousin, rescues him. After the captain is killed in a fight with his boatswain, he hitches a ride to Jamaica on a Danish ship commanded by a skipper from Cork. From Jamaica, another Irish officer offers Morgan passage home.

Arriving in January 1822, O’Connell is greeted by his proud father as a prodigal son returned. His South American adventure, declares Daniel O’Connell, has made a man of Morgan. Otherwise, said O’Connell, “it would have been difficult to tame him down to the sobriety of business.” After his return to Ireland, he again seeks foreign service in the Austrian army.

On December 19, 1832, O’Connell enters parliament in the Liberal interest, as one of the members for Meath, and continues to represent that constituency until January 1840, when he is appointed first assistant-registrar of deeds for Ireland, at a salary of £1,200 a year, a position he holds until 1868. In politics he is never in perfect accord with his father, and his retirement from parliament is probably caused by his inability to accept the Repeal movement.

During his parliamentary career O’Connell fights a duel with Lord William Arden, 2nd Baron Alvanley, a captain in the British Army, at Chalk Farm, on May 4, 1835. A challenge had been sent by Alvanley to O’Connell’s father, who, in accordance with a vow he had made after shooting John D’Esterre, declines the meeting. The younger O’Connell thereupon takes up the challenge on his father’s account. Two shots each are exchanged, but no one is hurt. Afterwards, in December 1835, he receives a challenge from Benjamin Disraeli, in consequence of an attack made on Disraeli by O’Connell’s father. He declines to meet Disraeli.

On July 23, 1840, O’Connell marries Kate Mary, youngest daughter of Michael Balfe of South Park, County Roscommon.

Morgan O’Connell dies at 12 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, on January 20, 1885. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin on January 23.

(Pictured: Morgan O’Connell, oil on canvas, artist unknown, c. 1819/20)


by Leave a comment

Death of Edward Moore, 5th Earl of Drogheda

Edward Moore, 5th Earl of Drogheda and former Member of Parliament (MP) for Dunleer, drowns with his son Edward, chaplain to the House of Commons, on October 28, 1758 enroute from England to Dublin.

Moore is born in 1701, the second son of Charles Moore, Lord Moore, son of Henry Hamilton-Moore, 3rd Earl of Drogheda, and Jane Loftus, daughter of Lord Loftus. He serves in the Irish House of Commons as the Member of Parliament for Dunleer between 1725 and 1727 when he succeeds to his elder brother’s titles and takes his seat in the Irish House of Lords. In 1748 he is invested as a member of the Privy Council of Ireland and made a Governor of Meath.

Moore marries, firstly, Lady Sarah Ponsonby, daughter of Brabazon Ponsonby, 1st Earl of Bessborough, and Sarah Margetson, in 1727, with whom he has six sons and two daughters. Following her death on January 19, 1736, he married, secondly, Bridget Southwell, daughter of William Southwell and Lucy Bowen, on October 13, 1737.

Moore and his son Edward are lost in a storm at sea while travelling between Holyhead and Dublin on October 28, 1758. He is succeeded by his eldest son, Charles, who is created Marquess of Drogheda in 1791.

(Pictured: Stamp of Edward Moore, 5th Earl of Drogheda)