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Death of Sir Richard Church, Anglo-Irish British Army Officer

Sir Richard Church CB GCH, Anglo-Irish military officer in the British Army and commander of the Greek forces during the last stages of the Greek War of Independence after 1827, dies in Athens, Kingdom of Greece, on March 20, 1873. After Greek independence, he becomes a general in the Hellenic Army and a member of the Greek Senate.

Church is born on February 23, 1784, the second son of Matthew Church, a Quaker merchant in the North Mall area of Cork, County Cork, and Anne Dearman, originally from Braithwaith, Yorkshire, England. At the age of sixteen, he runs away from home and enlists in the British Army. For this violation of its principles, he is disowned by the Religious Society of Friends, but his father buys him a commission, dated July 3, 1800, in the 13th Somerset Light Infantry. He serves in the demonstration against Ferrol, Spain, and in the expedition to Egypt under Sir Ralph Abercromby in 1801, where he takes part in the Battle of Abukir and the taking of Alexandria. After the expulsion of the French from Egypt he returns home but goes back to the Mediterranean in 1805 among the troops sent to defend the island of Sicily. He accompanies the expedition which lands in Calabria and fights a successful battle against the French at the Battle of Maida on July 4, 1806. He is present on this occasion as captain of a recently raised company of Royal Corsican Rangers. His zeal attracts the notice of his superiors, and he has begun to show his capacity for managing and drilling foreign levies. His Corsicans form part of the garrison of Capri from October 1806 until the island is taken by an expedition directed against it by Joachim Murat, in September 1808, at the very beginning of his reign as king of Naples. Church, who has distinguished himself in the defence, returns to Malta after the capitulation.

In the summer of 1809 Church sails with the expedition sent to occupy the French-occupied Ionian Islands. Here he increases the reputation he has already gained by forming a Greek regiment in British pay. On September 9, 1809, he takes the position of Major in the 1st Regiment Greek Light Infantry. On November 19, 1812, he becomes Lieutenant-Colonel of the unit, by then renamed The Duke of York’s Greek Light Infantry Regiment. Having gained the experience of managing foreign troops, he commands the regiments made up of Greeks he recruits himself in 1813, when he forms a second regiment composed of 454 Greeks (2nd Regiment Greek Light Infantry) to occupy Paxoi islands. These regiments include many of the men who are afterward among the leaders of the Greeks in the Greek War of Independence including Theodoros Kolokotronis, with whom he keeps a friendship and correspondence. He commands this regiment at the taking of the island of Santa Maura (Lefkada), on which occasion his left arm is shattered by a bullet.

During his slow recovery Church travels in northern Greece, in Macedonia, and to Constantinople. In the years of the fall of Napoleon (1813 and 1814) he is present as British military representative with the Austrian troops until the campaign which terminates in the expulsion of Murat from Naples. He draws up a report on the Ionian Islands for the Congress of Vienna, in which he argues in support, not only of the retention of the islands under the British flag, but of the permanent occupation by Britain of Parga and other formerly Venetian coastal towns on the mainland, then in the possession of Ali Pasha of Ioannina. The peace and the disbanding of his Greek regiment leaves him without employment, though his reputation is high at the war office, and his services are recognized by the grant of a Companion of the Order of the Bath.

In 1817, Church enters the service of King Ferdinand I of Naples as lieutenant-general, with a commission to suppress the brigandage then rampant in Apulia. Ample powers are given him, and he attains a full measure of success. In 1820 he is appointed governor of Palermo and commander-in-chief of the troops in Sicily. The revolution which breaks out in that year leads to the termination of his services in Naples. He escapes from violence in Sicily with some difficulty. At Naples he is imprisoned and put on trial by the government but is acquitted and released in January 1821. King George IV confers on him a Knight Commander of the Royal Guelphic Order in 1822. He is further promoted to Knight Grand Cross by William IV in 1837.

The rising of the Greeks against the Turks has his full sympathy from the beginning. But for some years he has to act only as the friend of the insurgents in England. In 1827 he takes the honourable but unfortunate step of accepting the commandership-in-chief of the Greek army. At the point of anarchy and indiscipline to which they have now fallen, the Greeks can no longer form an efficient army and can look for salvation only to foreign intervention. Church, who lands in March, is sworn archistrategos on April 15, 1827, but cannot secure loyal co-operation or obedience. The rout of his army in an attempt to relieve the Acropolis of Athens, then besieged by the Ottomans, proves that it is incapable of conducting regular operations. With the acropolis capitulated, he turns to partisan warfare in western Greece.

After the Battle of Navarino, and during the Kapodistrias period, Church is placed commander-in-chief of the Greek regular forces in Central Greece, together with Demetrios Ypsilantis. However, he surrenders his commission as a protest against the unfriendly government of Capodistrias on August 25, 1829. He lives the remainder of his life in Greece.

Church’s activity has beneficial results and leads to a rectification in 1832, in a sense favourable to Greece, of the frontier drawn by the Great Powers in the London Protocol (1830). Under King Otto, he occupies senior military positions. On October 3, 1833, he is promoted to lieutenant general in the Hellenic Army, and in January 1835 becomes commander of the forces in Continental Greece. On June 10, 1835, he is appointed head of the Secretariat of State for Military Affairs (Army Minister), becoming Inspector-General of the Army on October 28, 1836. He serves as a senator from 1844 to 1845. He is promoted to full general in February 1854, the grade being established for the first time for this purpose in the Hellenic Army.

Church dies following an illness on March 20, 1873. The funeral service takes place in the Anglican Church in Filellinon Street in the presence of King George I and a large number of official guests. Panagiotis Chalkiopoulos, the Minister of Justice, gives the funeral speech in Greek, while John Gennadius gives a speech in English. He is buried at the First Cemetery of Athens at public expense on March 27. The funeral monument has an inscription in English on the front and Greek on the back.

(Pictured: Portrait of Sir Richard Church, oil on cardboard by an unidentified artist, 1873)


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Death of Richard Robert Madden, Abolitionist & United Irishmen Historian

Richard Robert Madden, Irish doctor, writer, abolitionist and historian of the United Irishmen, dies at his home in Booterstown, a coastal suburb of Dublin, on February 5, 1886. He takes an active role in trying to impose anti-slavery rules in Jamaica on behalf of the British government.

Madden is born at Wormwood Gate, Dublin, on August 22, 1798, to Edward Madden, a silk manufacturer, and his wife Elizabeth (née Corey). His father marries twice and fathers twenty-one children.

Madden attends private schools and is found a medical apprenticeship in Athboy, County Meath. He studies medicine in Paris, Italy, and St. George’s Hospital, London. While in Naples he becomes acquainted with Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, and her circle. From 1824 to 1827 he is in the Levant as a journalist and later publishes accounts of his travels.

In 1828, Madden marries Harriet Elmslie, daughter of John Elmslie of Jamaica, a slave-owner. He then practises medicine in Mayfair, London, for the next five years.

Madden becomes a recruit to the abolitionist cause. The transatlantic slave trade has been illegal in the British Empire since 1807, but slavery itself remains legal.

From 1833, Madden is employed in the British civil service, first as a justice of the peace in Jamaica, where he is one of six Special Magistrates sent to oversee the eventual liberation of Jamaica’s slave population, according to the terms of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. From 1835 he is Superintendent of the freed Africans in Havana, Cuba. In 1839 he leaves Cuba for New York, where he provides important evidence for the defense of the former slaves who had taken over the slave ship La Amistad.

In 1840 Madden becomes Her Majesty’s Special Commissioner of Inquiry into the British Settlements on the West Coast of Africa. His task is to investigate how the slave trade is continuing to operate on the west coast of Africa, despite the shipping of African slaves across the Atlantic Ocean now being illegal. He finds that London-based merchants (including Whig MP Matthew Forster) are actively helping the slave traders, and that crudely disguised forms of slavery exist in all the coast settlements. He particularly condemns the actions of George Maclean, the Governor of Gold Coast.

In 1847 Madden becomes the Colonial Secretary of Western Australia and arrives in the colony in 1848. After receiving news of their oldest son’s death back in Ireland, he and Harriet return to Dublin in 1849. In 1850 he is named secretary of the Office for Loan Funds in Dublin.

Madden also campaigns against slavery in Cuba, speaking to the General Anti-Slavery Convention in London on the topic of slavery in Cuba.

Madden dies at his home in Booterstown, just south of Dublin, on February 5, 1886, and is interred in Donnybrook Cemetery.

Besides several travel diaries (Travels in Turkey, Egypt etc. in 1824–27, 1829, and others (1833)), his works include the historically significant book The United Irishmen, their lives and times (1842-1860, 11 Vols.), which contains numerous details on the Irish Rebellion of 1798, including testimonies collected from veteran rebels and from family members of deceased United Irishmen.


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Birth of Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 1st Marquess of Hastings

Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 1st Marquess of Hastings, Anglo-Irish politician and military officer, is born on December 9, 1754, at Moira, County Down. As Governor-General of India, he conquers the Maratha states and greatly strengthens British rule in India.

Rawdon-Hastings is the son of John Rawdon, 1st Earl of Moira, and Elizabeth Hastings, 13th Baroness Hastings, who is a daughter of Theophilus Hastings, 9th Earl of Huntingdon. He is baptised at St. Audoen’s Church, Dublin, on January 2, 1755. He grows up in Moira and in Dublin. He attends Harrow School and matriculates at University College, Oxford, but drops out. While there, he becomes friends with Banastre Tarleton.

He joins the British Army on August 7, 1771, as an ensign in the 15th Regiment of Foot. With his uncle Francis Hastings, 10th Earl of Huntingdon, he goes on the Grand Tour. On October 20, 1773, he is promoted to lieutenant in the 5th Regiment of Foot. He returns to England to join his regiment, and sails for America on May 7, 1774.

He serves in the American Revolutionary War (1775–81), first seeing action at the Battles of Lexington and Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill. He is rewarded with an English peerage in 1783. He succeeds his father as Earl of Moira in 1793. When the Whigs come to power in 1806, he is appointed Master-General of the Ordnance, a post he resigns on the fall of his party in 1807. Taking an active part in the business of the House of Lords, he belongs to the circle of the Prince of Wales (later George IV), through whose influence he is appointed Governor-General of India, on November 11, 1812. He lands at Calcutta (Kolkata) and assumes office in October 1813. Facing an empty treasury, he raises a loan in Lucknow from the nawab-vizier there and defeats the Gurkhas of Nepal in 1816. They abandon disputed districts, cede some territory to the British, and agree to receive a British resident (administrator). For this success, in 1817 he is raised to the rank of Marquess of Hastings together with the subsidiary titles Viscount Loudoun and Earl of Rawdon.

He then has to deal with a combination of Maratha powers in western India whose Pindaris, bands of horsemen attached to the Maratha chiefs, are ravaging British territory in the Northern Sarkars, in east-central India. In 1817, he offers the Marathas the choice of cooperation with the British against the Pindaris or war. The Peshwa, the Prime Minister of the Maratha Confederacy, the raja of Nagpur, and the army under Holkar II, ruler of Indore, chose war and are defeated. The Pindari bands are broken up, and, in a settlement, the Peshwa’s territories are annexed, and the Rajput princes accept British supremacy. By 1818 these developments establish British sovereignty over the whole of India east of the Sutlej River and Sindh. Rawdon-Hastings also suppresses pirate activities off the west coast of India and in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. In 1819, Sir Stamford Raffles, under his authority, obtains the cession by purchase of the strategic island of Singapore.

In internal affairs, Rawdon-Hastings begins the repair of the Mughal canal system and brings the pure water of the Yamuna River (Jumna) into Delhi, encourages education in Bengal, begins a process of Indianization by raising the status and powers of subordinate Indian judges, and takes the first measures for the revenue settlement of the extensive “conquered and ceded” provinces of the northwest.

Rawdon-Hastings’s competent administration, however, ends under a cloud because of his indulgence to a banking house. Though he is cleared of any corrupt motive, the home authorities censure him. He resigns and returns to England in 1823, receiving the comparatively minor post of Governor of Malta in 1824. He dies at sea off Naples on November 28, 1826, aboard HMS Revenge, while attempting to return home with his wife. She returns his body to Malta, and following his earlier directions, cuts off his right hand and preserves it, to be buried with her when she dies. His body is then laid to rest in a large marble sarcophagus in Hastings Gardens, Valletta. His hand is eventually interred, clasped with hers, in the family vault at Loudoun Kirk.

In 1828, two years after Rawdon-Hastings’s death, members of the India House, to make some amends for their vote of censure, give £20,000 to trustees for the benefit of Hastings’s son.

(Pictured: “Portrait of Francis Rawdon, 2nd Earl of Moira, later 1st Marquess of Hastings (1754 – 1826)” possibly by Martin Archer Shee, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Ireland)


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Death of Michele Esposito, Composer, Conductor & Pianist

Michele Esposito, Italian composer, conductor and pianist who spends most of his professional life in Dublin, dies on November 19, 1929.

Esposito is born at Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples, Italy, on September 29, 1855. In 1865, he wins a scholarship to the Naples Conservatory as a piano pupil of Beniamino Cesi, himself a favourite pupil of Sigismond Thalberg, and studies composition there for eight years under Paolo Serrao, teacher of Francesco Cilea and others. He is a near-contemporary of Giuseppe Martucci, and a few years the senior of Alessandro Longo, both taught by these teachers. In 1878, he goes to Paris for several years where he establishes a growing reputation.

In 1879, Esposito marries Natalia Klebnikoff, the only daughter of Pierre Klebnikoff, professor of chemistry and physics at Saint Petersburg University. They have four children, including the noted scholar, Mario Esposito.

On December 24, 1881, Esposito is visited by an old friend, Caracciolo, who is principal professor of singing at the Royal Irish Academy of Music (RIAM) in Dublin. Upon his recommendation, Esposito is offered the position of chief pianoforte professor of piano at the RIAM at Easter 1882.

Esposito remains in Dublin for more than forty years, devoting himself to the encouragement of classical music in Dublin. He inaugurates the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) chamber music recitals, with great success, and gives piano recitals for the Society every year. He establishes the Dublin Orchestral Society in 1898 and is its conductor until its disbandment in 1914. He is also the conductor of the Sunday Orchestral Concerts until they are discontinued in 1914. He conducts concerts of the London Symphony Orchestra at Woodbrook in 1913 and 1914, and also performs his piano concerto with them under the baton of Hamilton Harty. Together with Sir Stanley Cochrane, he founds the music publishing company C. E. Edition.

Esposito receives awards from the Feis Ceoil for his cantata Deirdre, his Irish Symphony and his String Quartet in D major. His Cello Sonata wins a prize from the London Incorporated Society of Musicians in 1899. His Violin Sonata in E minor gains a prize offered by La Société Nouvelle, Paris, in 1907, and his String Quartet in C minor wins another offered by the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna.

In 1923, King Victor Emmanuel III awards Esposito the Order of the Crown of Italy, with the title “Commendatore,” to mark his contribution to Irish music.

Esposito retires in 1928 and returns to Italy after failing to revive the Dublin Orchestral Society the previous year. He dies on November 19, 1929, in Florence. He is buried at the Cimitero di Trespiano where his gravestone is inscribed with three bars of music by “H. H.” Of his four children, Vera Esposito is involved in Irish theatre, and Mario Esposito becomes a scholar of Latin learning in medieval Ireland.


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Death of Opera Singer Margaret Burke Sheridan

Irish opera singer Margaret Burke Sheridan dies in Dublin on April 16, 1958. She is known as Maggie from Mayo and is regarded as Ireland’s second prima donna, after Catherine Hayes (1818–1861).

Sheridan is born in Castlebar, County Mayo, on October 15, 1889. She has her early vocal training while at school at the Dominican Convent in Eccles Street, Dublin, with additional lessons from Vincent O’Brien. In 1908, she wins a gold medal at the Feis Ceoil. From 1909 to 1911 she studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London, during which time she is introduced to the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, who is instrumental in arranging further studies for her in opera in Rome.

With Marconi’s help, Sheridan auditions in 1916 for Alfredo Martino, a prominent singing teacher attached to the Teatro Costanzi, and she makes her début there in January 1918 in Giacomo Puccini‘s La bohème. In July 1919 she appears at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in the title role in Iris by Pietro Mascagni.

Sheridan returns to Italy, where her career continues to grow, with performances at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan and at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, primarily in Puccini roles. In 1922 she first sings at La Scala, Milan, in La Wally by Alfredo Catalani under the direction of Arturo Toscanini. For the next few years, she sings at La Scala with great success. Perhaps her greatest role is Madama Butterfly, which she sings extensively in Italy and at Covent Garden. When she plays the part of Madama Butterfly, Puccini is said to be spellbound.

Despite her successes, Sheridan’s career is short. Suffering vocal difficulties, she goes into retirement around 1930 except for a few concerts. Bríd Mahon, in her 1998 book While Green Grass Grows, states that “It was rumoured that an Italian whose overtures she had rejected had blown his brains out in a box in La Scala, Milan, while she was on stage and that after the tragedy, she never sang in public again.”

Margaret Sheridan dies in relative obscurity on April 16, 1958, having lived in Dublin for many years, and her remains are buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

(Pictured: Margaret Burke Sheridan meets Italian conductor Vincenzo Bellezza in London, 1938. Photograph by Erich Salomon)


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Death of Brendan Bowyer, Royal Showband Frontman

Brendan Bowyer, Irish singer best known for fronting the Royal Showband and The Big Eight and who has five number one hits in Ireland, dies in Las Vegas, Nevada, on May 28, 2020.

Born in Waterford, County Waterford on October 12, 1938, Bowyer is renowned for having The Beatles open for the Royal Showband at a concert on April 2, 1962 at the Pavilion Theatre, Liverpool, England, some six months before the release of The Beatles debut single “Love Me Do” in October 1962. He is regarded as one of the first headlining Elvis impersonators. Elvis Presley himself is a big fan of Bowyer’s performances and often attends his concerts in the Stardust Resort and Casino in Las Vegas during the 1970s.

Bowyer begins his career with the Royal Showband in 1957. His ability to tailor American rock and roll music to the tastes of Irish audiences, and his athletic, spirited on-stage performances make him a popular vocalist of the 1960s Irish showband era. On September 6, 1963, he and the Royal Showband become the first Irish artists to top the Irish Singles Chart, with the hit “Kiss Me Quick,” which stays at the number one position for seven weeks. They return to the top position later that year with “No More,” and repeat the feat in 1964 with “Bless You.”

Bowyer takes part in the 1965 Irish National Song Contest for a chance to represent Ireland at the Eurovision Song Contest in Naples with the song “Suddenly in Love,” but can only manage fifth place. The Royal Showband’s greatest success is to come in 1965 with “The Hucklebuck,” which spends a further seven weeks at the top of the Irish Singles Chart, and is a hit in Australia, but fails to appear in the UK Singles Chart. “Don’t Lose Your Hucklebuck Shoes” returns the band to the number one position later in 1965.

In the summer of 1971, Bowyer, along with singer Tom Dunphy, leave the Royal Showband and form the Big Eight Showband. The band spends the summers playing the ballroom circuit in Ireland but also spends six months of the year in Las Vegas. Within a short time, the band makes the decision to relocate to Las Vegas permanently. He is based in Las Vegas from then on, though he makes frequent trips back to Ireland. In 1977 he makes a brief return to the Irish charts with his tribute, “Thank You Elvis.”

Having enjoyed a semi-retirement phase, Bowyer returns to the spotlight, touring Ireland each year, some for months on end, with his daughter Aisling Bowyer, and a six-piece band. They perform his showband era hits, dance numbers, nationalist songs, modern contemporary songs and concert hits.

A covers album, Follow On, is released in 2001, where Bowyer performs some of the most popular Irish songs, such as “Summer in Dublin,” “What’s Another Year,” “Past the Point of Rescue,” and “I Don’t Like Mondays.”

In 2005, Bowyer and Aisling headline the entertainment list for the Tall Ships Festival in Waterford, performing in the open air to an estimated crowd of 12,000. In 2015, Bowyer is the star of the “Ireland’s Showbands – Do You Come Here Often?” concert series.

Bowyer dies at the age of 81 in Las Vegas, Nevada on May 28, 2020.


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Death of Thomas Butler, Viscount Thurles

Thomas Butler, Viscount Thurles, drowns on December 15, 1619, off the coast of The Skerries, Isle of Anglesey. He is the son and heir apparent of Walter Butler, 11th Earl of Ormond (1559–1633), whom he predeceases. He resides at Thurles Castle, Thurles, County Tipperary. He is the father of the Irish statesman and Royalist commander James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond.

Butler is born the eldest son of Walter Butler and his wife Helen Butler. His father is the 11th Earl of Ormond. His mother is the eldest daughter of Edmund Butler, 2nd Viscount Mountgarret and his wife Grizel FitzPatrick. His father and mother are cousins. Their common great-grandfather is Piers Butler, 8th Earl of Ormond. Their family, the Butler dynasty, is Old English and descends from Theobald Walter, who had been appointed Chief Butler of Ireland by King Henry II of England in 1177.

Some time before 1610, Butler marries Elizabeth Poyntz against his father’s wishes. She is the daughter of Sir John Pointz (died 1633) of Iron Acton in Gloucestershire and his wife Elizabeth Sydenham. He and Elizabeth had seven children, three sons and four daughters:

In 1619 after the beginning of his father’s long imprisonment in the Fleet Prison, Butler is summoned to England to answer charges of treason, specifically, of having garrisoned Kilkenny. However, on December 15 the ship conveying him is wrecked off the coast of The Skerries, Isle of Anglesey and he drowns. Like his father, he is a prominent Catholic and it seems likely that his refusal to conform to the established Anglican religion had angered King James I and may have been the true motive for his summons.

Butler predeceases his father who dies in 1634. His eldest son James, the future 1st Duke of Ormond, succeeds him as heir apparent and bearer of the courtesy title Viscount Thurles until he succeeds his grandfather as the 12th Earl of Ormond.


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Death of Francis Browne, Irish Jesuit & Photographer

Francis Patrick Mary Browne, distinguished Irish Jesuit and a prolific photographer, dies in Dublin on July 7, 1960. His best-known photographs are those of the RMS Titanic and its passengers and crew taken shortly before its sinking in 1912. He is decorated as a military chaplain during World War I.

Browne is born to a wealthy family in 1880 at Buxton House, Cork, County Cork, the youngest of the eight children of James and Brigid (née Hegarty) Browne. His mother is the niece of William Hegarty, Lord Mayor of Cork, and a cousin of Sir Daniel Hegarty, the first Lord Mayor of Cork. She dies of puerperal fever eight days after his birth. After the death of his father in a swimming accident at Crosshaven on September 2, 1889, he is raised and supported by his uncle, Robert Browne, Bishop of Cloyne, who buys him his first camera shortly before the younger man embarks on a tour of Europe in 1897.

Browne spends his formative years at Bower Convent, Athlone (1888–91), Belvedere College (1891–92), Christian Brothers College, Cork (1892–1893), St. Vincent’s Castleknock College (1893–97), graduating in 1897. He goes on the aforementioned tour of Europe, where he begins taking photographs.

Upon his return to Ireland, Browne joins the Jesuits and spends two years in the novitiate at St. Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly. He attends the Royal University of Ireland, Dublin, where he is a classmate of James Joyce, who features him as Mr. Browne the Jesuit in Finnegans Wake. In 1909, he visits Rome with his uncle and brother, a bishop and priest respectively, during which they have a private audience with Pope Pius X with the Pope allowing Browne to take his photograph. He studies theology at the Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy in Dublin from 1911 to 1916.

In April 1912 Browne receives a present from his uncle: a ticket for the maiden voyage of RMS Titanic from Southampton, England, to Queenstown, Ireland, via Cherbourg, France. He travels to Southampton via Liverpool and London, boarding the RMS Titanic on the afternoon of April 10, 1912. He is booked in cabin A-37 on the Promenade Deck. He takes dozens of photographs of life aboard RMS Titanic on that day and the next morning. He captures the last known images of many crew and passengers, including captain Edward J. Smith, gymnasium manager T. W. McCawley, engineer William Parr, Major Archibald Butt, writer Jacques Futrelle and numerous third-class passengers whose names are unknown.

During his voyage on the RMS Titanic, Browne is befriended by an American millionaire couple who are seated at his table in the liner’s first-class dining saloon. They offer to pay his way to New York and back in return for him spending the voyage to New York in their company. He telegraphs his superior, requesting permission, but the reply is an unambiguous “GET OFF THAT SHIP – PROVINCIAL.”

Browne leaves the RMS Titanic when she docks in Queenstown and returns to Dublin to continue his theological studies. When the news of the ship’s sinking reaches him, he realises that his photos would be of great interest, and he negotiates their sale to various newspapers and news cartels. They appear in publications around the world. The Eastman Kodak Company subsequently gives him free film for life, and he often contributes to The Kodak Magazine. It is unknown what type of camera he used to shoot the famous photos aboard RMS Titanic.

After his ordination on July 31, 1915, Browne completes his theological studies. In 1916, he is sent to Europe to join the Irish Guards as a chaplain. He serves with the Guards until the spring of 1920, including service at the Battle of the Somme and at Locre, Wytschaete, Messines Ridge, Paschendaele, Ypres, Amiens and Arras in Flanders.

Browne is wounded five times during the war, once severely in a gas attack. He is awarded the Military Cross (MC) on June 4, 1917 “for distinguished service in the field”. He is awarded a bar to his MC on February 18, 1918. He is also awarded the Croix de Guerre by France.

Browne takes many photographs during his time in Europe. One, which he calls “Watch on the Rhine,” is considered a classic image of World War I. He assembles a collection of his war photographs in an album named after his most famous photograph and distributes copies to his colleagues in the Guards.

After the war, Browne returns to Dublin, where, in 1922, he is appointed superior of Gardiner Street Church in Dublin. Ill health dogs him, however, and in 1924 it is thought that he would recover more quickly in warmer climes. He is sent on an extended visit to Australia. He takes his camera along, photographing life aboard ship and in Cape Town, South Africa, where he breaks his voyage.

On his way back to Ireland, Browne visits Ceylon, Aden, Suez, Saloniki, Naples, Toulon, Gibraltar, Algeciras, and Lisbon, taking photographs of local life and events at every stop. It is estimated that he takes more than 42,000 photographs during his life.

Browne resumes office as the Superior of Saint Francis Xavier Church, Dublin, upon his return. In 1929 he is appointed to the Retreats and Mission staff of the Irish Jesuits. His work entails preaching at missions and religious retreats all over Ireland. As most of this work is necessarily performed on evenings and Sundays, he has considerable time to indulge in his hobby during the daytime. He takes photographs of many parishes and towns in Ireland, and also photographs in London and East Anglia during his ecclesiastical travels to England.

Browne dies in Dublin on July 7, 1960, and is buried in the Jesuit plot in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin. His negatives lay forgotten for 25 years after his death. They are found by chance in 1985 when Father Edward E. O’Donnell discovers them in a large metal trunk, once belonging to Browne, in the Irish Jesuit archives. “When the trunk was opened in 1985, people compared him to the greats like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Doisneau, but his work predated theirs by decades,” archivist David Davison later recalls.

O’Donnell brings the negatives to the attention of several publishers. The RMS Titanic photographs are published in 1997 as Father Browne’s Titanic Album with text by E. E. O’Donnell (Fr. Eddie O’Donnell). In all, at least 25 volumes of Browne’s photographs have now been published. The features editor of The Sunday Times of London calls this “the photographic equivalent to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.” Many of these books have become best-sellers, the latest being the Centenary Edition of Father Browne’s Titanic Album in 2012 by Messenger Publications, Dublin.

The Irish province of the Jesuits, the owner of the negatives pursuant to Browne’s will, engage photographic restoration specialists David and Edwin Davison to preserve and catalogue the fragile and unstable negatives. The Davisons make copies of every negative and are in the process of transferring every usable image to a digital format for future generations. The Davisons later acquire the rights to the photographs and still own the rights as Davison & Associates.


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Birth of Brendan Bowyer, Royal Showband Frontman

Brendan Bowyer, Irish singer best known for fronting the Royal Showband and The Big Eight and who had five number one hits in Ireland, is born in Waterford, County Waterford on October 12, 1938.

Bowyer is also renowned for having The Beatles open for the Royal Showband at a concert on April 2, 1962 at the Pavilion Theatre, Liverpool, England, some six months before the release of The Beatles debut single “Love Me Do” in October 1962. He is regarded as one of the first headlining Elvis impersonators. Elvis Presley himself is a big fan of Bowyer’s performances and often attends his concerts in the Stardust Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada during the 1970s.

Bowyer begins his career with the Royal Showband in 1957. His ability to tailor American rock and roll music to the tastes of Irish audiences, and his athletic, spirited on-stage performances make him a popular vocalist of the 1960s Irish showband era. On September 6, 1963, he and the Royal Showband become the first Irish artists to top the Irish Singles Chart, with the hit “Kiss Me Quick,” which stays at the number one position for seven weeks. They return to the top position later that year with “No More,” and repeat the feat in 1964 with “Bless You.”

Bowyer takes part in the 1965 Irish National Song Contest for a chance to represent Ireland at the Eurovision Song Contest in Naples with the song “Suddenly in Love,” but can only manage fifth place. The Royal Showband’s greatest success is to come in 1965 with “The Hucklebuck,” which spends a further seven weeks at the top of the Irish Singles Chart, and is a hit in Australia, but fails to appear in the UK Singles Chart. “Don’t Lose Your Hucklebuck Shoes” returns the band to the number one position later in 1965.

In the summer of 1971 Bowyer, along with singer Tom Dunphy, leave the Royal Showband and form the Big Eight Showband. The band spends the summers playing the ballroom circuit in Ireland but also spends six months of the year in Las Vegas. Within a short time, the band makes the decision to relocate to Las Vegas permanently. He is based in Las Vegas from then on, though he makes frequent trips back to Ireland. In 1977 he makes a brief return to the Irish charts with his tribute, “Thank You Elvis.”

Having enjoyed a semi-retirement phase, Bowyer returns to the spotlight, touring Ireland each year, some for months on end, with his daughter Aisling Bowyer, and a six piece band. They perform his showband era hits, dance numbers, nationalist songs, modern contemporary songs and concert hits.

A covers album, Follow On, is released in 2001, where Bowyer performs some of the most popular Irish songs, such as “Summer in Dublin,” “What’s Another Year,” “Past the Point of Rescue,” and “I Don’t Like Mondays.”

In 2005, Bowyer and Aisling headline the entertainment list for the Tall Ships Festival in Waterford, performing in the open air to an estimated crowd of 12,000. In 2015, Bowyer is the star of the “Ireland’s Showbands – Do You Come Here Often?” concert series.

Bowyer dies at the age of 81 in Las Vegas, Nevada on May 28, 2020.


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Birth of Marguerite Gardiner,Novelist & Journalist

marguerite-power-farmer-gardiner

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, Irish novelist, journalist, and literary hostess, is born near Clonmel, County Tipperary on September 1, 1789. She becomes acquainted with Lord Byron in Genoa and writes a book about him.

Born Margaret Power, she is a daughter of Edmund Power and Ellen Sheehy, small landowners. She is “haphazardly educated by her own reading and by her mother’s friend Ann Dwyer.” Her childhood is blighted by her father’s character and poverty, and her early womanhood made wretched by a compulsory marriage at the age of fifteen to Captain Maurice St. Leger Farmer, an English officer whose drunken habits finally bring him as a debtor to the King’s Bench Prison, where he dies by falling out of a window in October 1817. She had left him after three months of marriage.

Marguerite later moves to Hampshire, England to live for five years with the family of Thomas Jenkins, a sympathetic and literary sea captain. Jenkins introduces her to the Irishman Charles John Gardiner, 1st Earl of Blessington, a widower with four children and seven years her senior. They marry at St. Mary’s, Bryanston Square, Marylebone, on February 16, 1818, only four months after the death of her first husband.

Of rare beauty, charm and wit, Lady Blessington is no less distinguished for her generosity and for the extravagant tastes she shares with her second husband, which results in encumbering his estates with debt. On August 25, 1822, they set out for a continental tour with Marguerite’s youngest sister, the 21-year-old Mary Anne, and servants. On the way they meet Count Alfred D’Orsay, who had first become an intimate of Lady Blessington in London in 1821, in Avignon on November 20, 1822, before settling at Genoa for four months from March 31, 1823. There they meet Lord Byron on several occasions, giving Lady Blessington material for her Conversations with Lord Byron.

After that they settle for the most part in Naples, where she meets the Irish writer Richard Robert Madden, who is to become her biographer. They also spend time in Florence with their friend Walter Savage Landor, author of Imaginary Conversations which she greatly admires.

It is in Italy, on December 1, 1827, that Count D’Orsay marries Harriet Gardiner, Lord Blessington’s only daughter by his former wife. The Blessingtons and the newlywed couple move to Paris towards the end of 1828, taking up residence in the Hôtel Maréchal Ney, where the Earl suddenly dies at the age of 46 of an apoplectic stroke in 1829. D’Orsay and Harriet then accompanied Lady Blessington to England, but the couple separates soon afterwards amidst much acrimony. D’Orsay continues to live with Lady Blessington until her death. Their home, first at Seymour Place, and afterwards Gore House, Kensington, now the site of the Royal Albert Hall, become a centre of attraction for all that is distinguished in literature, learning, art, science and fashion. Benjamin Disraeli writes Venetia whilst staying there, and it is at her home that Hans Christian Andersen first meets Charles Dickens.

After her husband’s death Lady Blessington supplements her diminished income by contributing to various periodicals as well as by writing novels. She is for some years editor of The Book of Beauty and The Keepsake, popular annuals of the day. In 1834 she publishes her Conversations with Lord Byron. Her Idler in Italy (1839–1840), and Idler in France (1841) are popular for their personal gossip and anecdotes, descriptions of nature and sentiment.

Early in 1849, Count D’Orsay leaves Gore House to escape his creditors. Subsequently the furniture and decorations are sold in a public sale successfully discharging Lady Blessington’s debts. She joins the Count in Paris, where she dies on June 4, 1849, of a burst heart. On examination it is discovered that her heart is three times normal size.

(Pictured: Marguerite, Countess of Blessington, painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1822)