At 6 ft. 3 in. (191 cm) and 194 lbs. (88 kg), Sheridan is the best all-around athlete of the Irish American Athletic Club, and like many of his teammates, serves from 1906 until his death in 1918 with the New York City Police Department. He is so well respected in the NYPD, that he serves as the Governor’s personal bodyguard when the governor is in New York City.
In 1907, Sheridan wins the National Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) discus championship and the Canadian championship, and in 1908 he wins the Metropolitan, National and Canadian championships as well as two gold medals in the discus throw and a bronze medal in the standing long jump at the 1908 Olympic Games.
Two of Sheridan’s gold medals from the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis, Missouri, and one of his medals from the 1906 Olympic Games in Athens, are currently located in the USA Track & Field‘s Hall of Fame History Gallery, in Washington Heights, Manhattan.
It is often claimed that Sheridan fueled a controversy in London in 1908, when flagbearer Ralph Rose refused to dip the flag to King Edward VII. Sheridan supposedly supports Rose by explaining, “This flag dips to no earthly king,” and it is claimed that his statement exemplified both Irish and American defiance of the British monarchy. However, careful research has shown that this was first reported in 1952. Sheridan himself makes no mention of it in his published reports on the Games and neither does his obituary.
Sheridan dies in St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, New York, on March 27, 1918, the day before his 37th birthday, a very early casualty of the 1918 flu pandemic. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York. The inscription on the granite Celtic Cross monument marking his grave says in part: “Devoted to the Institutions of his Country, and the Ideals and Aspirations of his Race. Athlete. Patriot.”
According to his obituary in The New York Times, Sheridan was “one of the greatest athletes the United States has ever known.”
(Pictured: Martin Sheridan from the historical picture collection of Knut Gulbrandsen)
Tone is born Martha Witherington in Dublin on June 17, 1769. She is the eldest daughter of merchant William Witherington and his wife Catherine (née Fanning). Her father is listed as a woolen draper on Grafton Street, Dublin, from 1768 to 1784, as a wine merchant from 1784 to 1788, and finally as a merchant from 1788 to 1793. It is claimed that he is a lieutenant in the Royal Navy and sits on the merchants’ guild on Dublin’s common council from 1777 to 1783. Her mother is a housekeeper to her father after he is widowed.
Tone receives a good education and maintains an interest in drama and literature throughout her life. Katherine Wilmot visits her in Paris in 1802 and comments on the books she has by French, Italian and English authors. When she is fifteen years old, she gets to know Wolfe Tone through her older brother. He is still a student in Trinity College Dublin, and it is he that renames her Matilda. They marry when she is just sixteen, on July 21, 1785, in St. Ann’s Church, Dublin, honeymooning in Maynooth. Upon their return they live with the Witheringtons, though they are not on good terms, and then with Wolfe Tone’s parents in Bodenstown, County Kildare.
The Tone’s first child, Maria, is born before October 1786. She is followed by a son, Richard, who is named for their neighbour Richard Griffith, who dies in infancy. Tone stays with her husband’s family while he is studying for the bar in London from 1787 to 1788. When he returns, the couple has two more sons: William Theobald Wolfe Tone, born on April 29, 1791, and Francis Rawdon Tone, born on June 23, 1793. Francis is known as Frank and is named after Francis Rawdon-Hastings. William is born in Dublin and Frank is probably born in Bodenstown. By this time, the family has a cottage in Bodenstown which Wolfe Tone had inherited from his uncle Jonathan Tone, which the family jokingly refers to as Château Boue. They live there until May 1795, when they leave for Princeton, New Jersey, due to political reasons.
Tone and her children come back to Europe to join Wolfe Tone in France eighteen months later. The family settles in Paris, at first living with Colonel Henry Shee at Nanterre, later moving to the suburb, Chaillot. She educates her children at home. Very few of her letters survive, but many of her husband’s letters and diaries are addressed or intended for her. From these and her letter to her friend Eliza Fletcher, it is clear she shares her husband’s interest in politics. Following her husband’s death in November 1798, she moves to a small apartment at 51 Rue Saint-Jacques in the Latin Quarter of Paris. This is to be close to her son William, who is attending Lycée Louis-le-Grand. She is awarded a pension of 1,200 francs for herself and 400 for each of her children after the expiration of the Treaty of Amiens on May 1, 1803.
Tone’s daughter Maria dies in April 1803, and then her son Frank dies in 1807, both of tuberculosis. William is displaying symptoms of the disease as well, which prompts her to move to the United States in 1807. From there, they attempt to sort out her husband’s affairs, which had been entrusted to James Reynolds. They retrieve only a few of Wolfe Tone’s pre-1795 diaries, and all of the post-1795 letters and diaries, which they add to the autobiography she already has in her possession. When William enters the Cavalry School at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in November 1810 as a cadet, she moves to be close to him, living at the Hôtel de la Surintendance. By approaching Napoleon in 1811, who knew Wolfe Tone, she ensures that her son receives French citizenship and the privileged status of “élève du gouvernement.” In January 1813, when William begins his service, she returns to Paris to live on the Rue de Lille, and later moves to the Latin Quarter.
Following the defeat of Napoleon in June 1815, William is refused entry to Ireland or to visit Britain. This leads to both mother and son returning to the United States. Before she leaves Paris, she marries her old friend Thomas Wilson on August 19, 1816. Wilson is a Scottish businessman and advocate who has taken care of her financial affairs after the death of her husband. The couple visit Scotland, and then move to New York City in 1817, and finally to Georgetown, District of Columbia, around 1820. She lives there until her death and calls herself Matilda Tone-Wilson.
Starting in 1824, The New Monthly Magazine begins the unauthorised publication of extracts from Wolfe Tone’s autobiography. In response, Tone decides to publish all of Wolfe Tone’s papers and writing, including the autobiography, pamphlets and diaries, edited by their son William. What results is two large volumes entitled the Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone, published in May 1826. She adds a memoir of her own life in Paris following his death in 1798. The book is a best-seller, and ensures the legacy of Wolfe Tone, as well as being an important contemporary document of both Irish and French revolutionary politics.
William Tone dies in 1828, after which Tone lives more privately. She dies in Georgetown on March 18, 1849. Thomas Wilson predeceases her in 1824. Just two weeks prior to her death she is interviewed by a Young Irelander, Charles Hart. She is initially buried near William Tone at Marbury burying-ground, Georgetown. After that cemetery is sold, she is reinterred in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York, on October 31, 1891, by her great-grandchildren. A new monument is dedicated to her, which is later restored in 1996.
Francis O’Neill (Irish: Proinsias Ó Néill), an Irish-born American police officer and collector of Irish traditional music, is honoured in his native West Cork on March 11, 2000, where Garda Commissioner Patrick Byrne unveils a life-size monument of O’Neill playing a flute adjacent to the O’Neill family homestead in Trawlebane, County Cork. The monument, made by sculptor Jeanne Rynhart, and a commemorative wall are erected through the efforts of the Captain Francis O’Neill Memorial Company.
O’Neill is born in Trawlebane, near Bantry, County Cork, on August 28, 1848. At an early age he hears the music of local musicians, among them Peter Hagarty, Cormac Murphy and Timothy Dowling. At the age of 16, he becomes a cabin boy on an English merchant ship and remains a seaman until 1869. On a voyage to New York City, he meets Anna Rogers, a young emigrant whom he later marries in Bloomington, Illinois. They move to Chicago, and he becomes a Chicago policeman in 1873. He rises through the ranks quickly, eventually succeeding Joseph Kipley as the Chief of Police from 1901 to 1905. He has the rare distinction, in a time when political “pull” counts for more than competence, of being re-appointed three times to the position by two different mayors.
O’Neill is a flautist, fiddler and piper and is part of the vibrant Irish community in Chicago at the time. During his time as chief, he recruits many traditional Irish musicians into the police force, including Patrick O’Mahony, James O’Neill, Bernard Delaney, John McFadden and James Early. He also collects tunes from some of the major performers of the time including Patsy Touhey, who regularly sends him wax cylinders and visits him in Chicago. He also collects tunes from a wide variety of printed sources.
O’Neill retires from the police force in 1905. After that, he devotes much of his energy to publishing the music he has collected. His musical works include:
O’Neill’s Music of Ireland (1903), containing 1,850 pieces of music.
The Dance Music of Ireland (1907), sometimes called, “O’Neill’s 1001,” because of the number of tunes included.
400 tunes arranged for piano and violin (1915).
Waifs and Strays of Gaelic Melody (1922), 365 pieces.
Irish Folk Music: A Fascinating Hobby (1910). Appendix A contains O’Farrells Treatise and Instructions on the Irish Pipes, published 1797-1800; appendix B is Hints to Amateur Pipers by Patrick J. Touhy.
Irish Minstrels and Musicians (1913), biographies of musicians, including those from whom he collected tunes in Chicago.
In 2008, Northwestern University Press issues Chief O’Neill’s Sketchy Recollections of an Eventful Life in Chicago, a non-musical memoir edited by Ellen Skerrett and Mary Lesch, a descendant of O’Neill, with a foreword by Nicholas Carolan of the Irish Traditional Music Archive. Carolan himself writes a musical biography of O’Neill, A Harvest Saved: Francis O’Neill and Irish Music in Chicago, which is published in Ireland by Ossian in 1997. An historical biography of O’Neill, The Beat Cop: Chicago’s Chief O’Neill and the Creation of Irish Music, by Michael O’Malley, is published by the University of Chicago Press in 2022.
Chief O’Neill’s life is memorialized in the musical play Music Mad: How Chief O’Neill Saved the Soul of Ireland, which premieres in Chicago in 2012. Written by Adam B. Whiteman with the approval and acceptance of Francis O’Neill’s great-granddaughter, Mary Lesch, the show contains both dramatized content and material from O’Neill’s own writings.
Peter Hagarty and Francis O’Neill are memorialized in the song, Píobaire Bán, written by Tim O’Riordan. It is recorded by Patrick O’Sullivan on the CD One More Time and on O’Riordan’s own CD Taibhse.
In August 2013, the inaugural Chief O’Neill Traditional Music Festival takes place in Bantry, County Cork, just a few miles from Trawlebane. The 2013 event marks the centenary of the publication of O’Neill’s Irish Minstrels and Musicians. The event has taken place annually since.
Chief O’Neill’s Pub and Restaurant in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood bears his name and displays related memorabilia.
O’Neill’s biographer, Nicholas Carolan, refers to him as “the greatest individual influence on the evolution of Irish traditional dance music in the twentieth century.”
Allen is born on July 6, 1936, in a nursing home at 37 Lower Leeson Street, Dublin, the youngest of three sons of (Gerard John) Cullen Tynan Allen, journalist, manager of The Irish Times, and raconteur, and his wife Jean Ballantyne (née Archer), an English-born nurse. His paternal grandmother, Nora Tynan O’Mahony, is the first women’s features editor of the Freeman’s Journal, and the poet Katharine Tynan is his great-aunt. Allen loses half a finger on his left hand in a childhood accident which becomes a favourite theme (and occasional prop) in his shows.
After initially attending Beaumont convent school, Allen goes to Firhousenational school, County Dublin, near the family residence outside Templeogue. For a period during World War II, he lives with his mother and brothers at Keenagh, County Longford, where they had moved for fear that Dublin might be targeted by air raids. On returning to Dublin, he goes to Terenure College, run by the Carmelite fathers. His reminiscences in later life often centre on memories of frequent and sadistic corporal punishment, and warnings from priests that adolescent male sexuality is a device of Satan leading straight to hell. His resentment is formative in his lifelong and outspoken atheism.
Allen, who is close to his father, is severely affected emotionally by his death in 1948, after which his relations with the school deteriorate further. The discovery that his father’s drinking and gambling had left the family heavily indebted means that, notwithstanding assistance from journalistic friends, his elder brothers are obliged to leave school and work as journalists to support the family. Restless and even more discontented at school than previously, he often plays truant to visit museums and art galleries. Expelled from Terenure College, he briefly attends the Catholic University School before leaving school at the age of 16. After working as a clerk for the Irish Independent, in 1954 he becomes a journalist on the Drogheda Argus, reporting weddings and gymkhanas. He later attributes this career path to the contemporary tradition of following a family profession.
Moving to London but failing to secure a job on a Fleet Street newspaper, Allen follows his brother John by becoming a “redcoat” attendant at Butlin’s holiday camps in Filey (Yorkshire), Skegness, Margate, and Brighton, performing various functions and telling jokes and stories during intervals between stage acts. In the winters he sells educational toys in Sheffield. Acquiring an agent, he becomes a professional comedian, adopting the stage name Dave Allen. He initially works the declining club and variety circuit, later claiming that he had toured with the last old-style nude tableaux show. In 1959, he makes his first television appearance on the BBC talent show New Faces and realises that television is the medium of the future. He tours with pop singer Helen Shapiro in 1963 and 1964, joined in the latter year by an emerging support band, the Beatles. At this period, he models himself on American stand-up comedians such as Jerry Lewis, focusing his act on discrete gags leading up to a punchline.
While performing in support of the singer Helen Traubel in Australian nightclubs, Allen often reminisces to her off stage about his early life. Traubel suggests that he incorporate such material into his act. Such is the genesis of his mature style of rambling absurdist monologues, which he describes as influenced by the Irish storytelling tradition in general, and his father’s stories in particular. After appearing in Melbourne and Sydney, he becomes the host of a ninety-minute chat show, Tonight with Dave Allen, on Sydney-based Channel 9. Eighty-four episodes are recorded of what becomes one of Australian television’s most successful programmes ever, its popularity boosted by the rumour that he is having an affair with singer Eartha Kitt, his hilarious interviews with eccentrics, and the frequent deployment of dangerous animals onstage.
Allen marries the English actress Judith Stott in Australia on March 9, 1964, a divorcée with one son. They have two children, including the comedian Ed Allen (Edward James Allen). After separating in 1980, the couple divorces in 1983. Returning to England in December 1964 to be with his wife, he establishes a reputation there through well-received performances as a compère at the televised Sunday Night at the London Palladium (1967) and The Blackpool Show (1966). After a slot as resident comedian on The Val Doonican Show (1965–67), he obtains his first stand-alone show, Tonight with Dave Allen, in 1967 on ITV, a mixture of sketches with the monologues for which he becomes best known. He usually performs seated on a barstool, smoking a cigarette, and sipping from a presumed glass of whiskey (actually ginger ale), while musing on the oddities of life, often expressing his suspicion of authority figures. His signature farewell phrase is “Goodnight, and may your God go with you.”
On BBC television Allen headlines two programmes: The Dave Allen Show (1968–69), and Dave Allen at Large (1971–79). He writes much of his own material, compulsively scouring newspapers for items that he can work into his act. He resists suggestions that he should move to an early evening slot, as this would entail restrictions on his material. In the 1970s and 1980s he tours widely with a one-man stage show, “An evening with Dave Allen,” containing more “adult” material than would be allowed on television at the time. His stage performances are less well-received in the United States than elsewhere.
Allen’s treatment of sex and religion involves him in frequent controversies. Priests and the confessional are frequent targets. In 1975, he provokes widespread protests from Catholics over a sketch in which the pope, played by Allen himself, and his cardinals perform a striptease on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica. In 1977, his shows are banned from RTÉ. In 1984, the British anti-indecency campaigner Mary Whitehouse formally complains about his televised act, with particular reference to a simulated post-coital conversation. As with many stage comedians, his angry and outspoken stage persona contrasts with a reserved offstage life. He keeps his stage persona distinct from his private life and does not allow his children to attend his shows.
Allen gives occasional straight performances, notably in Edna O’Brien‘s plays A Pagan Place (1972) and Flesh and Blood (1985); in the dual roles of Captain Hook and Mr. Darling in a production of Peter Pan (1973); and in Alan Bennett‘s television play One Fine Day (1979). He has a supporting role in the Australian comedy film Squeeze a Flower (1970). He also presents several documentaries, notably Dave Allen in the Melting Pot (1969); surveying life in New York City, he discusses racism and drug addiction, and conducts one of the first television interviews with openly gay men. Other documentaries for ITV include Dave Allen in Search of the Great English Eccentric (1974), and Dave Allen (1978), which deals with American eccentrics. Long fascinated with ghost stories, he publishes an anthology of horror stories, A Little Night Reading (1974).
In the 1980s, Allen is regarded by many fans of the new, politically engaged “alternative comedians” as old-fashioned. His leisurely style contrasts with their quick-fire delivery, and some of his references to the Irish and other ethnic groups are seen as demeaning. He makes a partial television comeback with a six-part BBC One series, Dave Allen (1990), using considerably more outspoken material than he had previously deployed on television.
In 1993, Allen appears in a six-part series for the new ITV London franchise, Carlton Television. Thereafter he moves into semi-retirement, partly because of health problems, while continuing to make guest television appearances. At the British Comedy Awards he is named best comedy performer (1993) and is granted a lifetime achievement award (1996). He occasionally releases videos of older material “to keep myself in the style to which I had become accustomed – a bit of an Irish retirement, actually.” He maintains tight editorial control over his recordings, having been annoyed when his first television shows were chopped and changed when re-broadcast by American networks. They are released on DVD after his death. He presents a six-part BBC series based on his old material, The Unique Dave Allen (1998). After giving his last performance on BBC Radio 4 in 1999, he retires and devotes himself to his hobby as an amateur painter.
After a seventeen-year relationship, Allen marries secondly Karin Stark, a theatrical producer, on December 9, 2003. Their one son is born three weeks after Allen dies peacefully in his sleep as a result of sudden arrhythmic death syndrome on March 10, 2005, in Kensington, London.
A selection of his routines, edited by Graham McCann, is published as The Essential Dave Allen (2005). His obituarists see him as prefiguring the aggressive mocking of authority by the alternative comedians who had once criticised him, and as paving the way for such irreverent and anti-deferential satire of political and religious authority as Not the Nine O’Clock News and Father Ted. The widespread use of the monologue by Irish dramatists such as Conor McPherson in the first decade of the twenty-first century also owes something to his influence.
(From: “Allen, Dave” by Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, June 2011)
Cronin is born on August 29, 1922, in Dublin, the only son among three children of Con Cronin, a member of the IRA, and his wife Kate. After his father’s death, his mother works as a cook in a boarding school while the children are brought up by relatives in Ballinskelligs in the County KerryGaeltacht. Educated locally, he is deeply influenced by his Gaeltacht childhood; his later writings often refer to the hypocrisy of a state that romanticises the Gaeltacht while neglecting its social problems.
During World War II, Cronin’s sisters emigrate to England to train as nurses while he works as a labourer for Kerry County Council. In December 1941, he joins the Irish Army and is selected in 1943 for an officers’ training course, on which he forms a lifelong friendship with the future theatre directorAlan Simpson. He is commissioned and remains in the army until 1948.
Shortly thereafter Cronin emigrates to New York City, where he finds work as a journalist writing for The Advocate, an Irish American newspaper. He is strongly influenced by interviewing 1916 veterans for The Advocate and by contact with left-wing Irish American associates of Michael Quill, who played leading roles in the foundation of the Transport Workers Union of America. He becomes active in the semi-secret separatist organisation Clan na Gael, and in autumn 1955 returns to Ireland with the aim of helping the IRA to prepare for another military campaign.
Cronin begins work as a sub-editor with the Evening Press and also contributes summaries of world affairs to The Irish Times.
Cronin establishes contact with the IRA, and his military experience leads to his rapid assignment to GHQ staff. He is initially placed in charge of training and instruction, composing a manual on guerrilla warfare and twelve lectures on battlefield training. He teaches new military techniques and new recruits, such as the future IRA Chief of Staff Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, find him deeply impressive.
Cronin becomes a leading advocate of an early IRA campaign against Northern Ireland and becomes the chief strategist for Operation Harvest, a campaign which sees the carrying out of a range of military operations from direct attacks on security installations to disruptive actions against infrastructure. He is arrested on January 8, 1957, near the border in County Cavan. He is imprisoned several times over the course of the campaign (1956–1962).
Most of the IRA and Sinn Féin leadership are interned by the Dublin government on July 6, 1957. Cronin, one of the few to escape, becomes IRA Chief of Staff. He also acts for a time as editor of the movement’s newspaper, United Irishman. He tries to secure weapons from various sources, leading an unsuccessful raid on a British Army base at Blandford Camp in Dorset on February 16, 1958, and through contacts with Spanish republican exiles in Paris. The Irish American community remains the IRA’s main source of external support.
Cronin is arrested on September 30, 1958, and interned, causing considerable disarray, as he had been running much of the campaign single-handed. When the internees are released in March 1959, he resumes his position as Chief of Staff after a factional dispute causes the resignations of Tomás Óg Mac Curtain and the former Chief of Staff Tony Magan. He continues to argue that a sustained guerrilla campaign might yet succeed, but in June 1960 is again arrested and imprisoned for six months.
In November 1960, the Irish Freedom Committee (IFC), a Clan na Gael splinter group, accuses Cronin of being a communist and a “Free State agent,” supposedly implicated in the 1944 execution of Charlie Kerins. The IRA supports Cronin, but he nevertheless decides to resign successively as Chief of Staff, as a member of the Army Council, and as an IRA volunteer, on the grounds that his presence endangers the American support necessary for the continuance of the campaign. He then secures a job as a journalist on the Irish Independent. He withdraws his resignation in November 1961 after the Irish government reinstates military tribunals to try suspected IRA men. He is subsequently sentenced to six months’ imprisonment by a military tribunal and is in prison when the border campaign ends on February 26, 1962. Released on amnesty on April 19, 1962, he finally resigns from the IRA the next day.
By February 1966, Cronin has returned to the United States, where he resides for the remainder of his life, with regular visits to Ireland. He works as a journalist on the Newark Evening News and the Dow Jones News Service and is the U.S. correspondent of The Irish Times from 1967 to 1991, becoming that paper’s first Washington, D.C. correspondent.
In the 1970s Cronin takes a degree at New York University, then teaches and studies for a doctorate at The New School for Social Research in New York under Hans Morgenthau. His dissertation forms the basis for his magnum opus, Irish nationalism: its roots and ideology (1980). Although limited by its colonial model and socialist-republican intellectual framework, this historically oriented account draws on his extensive research and personal contacts to some effect.
Cronin is the author of a dozen books and pamphlets, including a biography of republican Frank Ryan, Washington’s Irish Policy 1916-1986: independence, partition, neutrality (1987), an authoritative account of Irish-US relations, Our Own Red Blood: The Story of the 1916 Rising (1966), and a number of works on guerrilla strategy, including an early Sinn Féin pamphlet Resistance under the pseudonym of J. McGarrity.
After the death of his first wife in 1974, Cronin marries Reva Rubinstein, a toxicologist. In 1980 they move to Washington, D.C. He has no children by either marriage, though his second wife brings him a stepson. After several years of illness, he dies in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 9, 2011. He is survived by his second wife, Reva Rubenstein Cronin.
The Organisation’s aims are to “encourage and assist any movement that will tend to bring about the National Independence of Ireland.” Among the first members of the Executive Committee are Victor Herbert (President), Thomas Hughes Kelly (Treasurer) and John D. Moore (Secretary). An office is set up in Sweden and relations are established with Imperial Germany. The Friends of Irish Freedom support the 1916 Easter Rising and, in the months following, raise $350,000 through the Irish Relief Fund to assist dependents of many who fought in the Rising.
In 1917, the Executive Committee of the Friends of Irish Freedom circulates a petition calling for the independence of Ireland throughout the United States and secures several hundred thousand signatures. PresidentWoodrow Wilson in turn directs Secret Service agents to examine the membership and funding of the organisation. In May 1918, the Friends of Irish Freedom organises the fourth Irish Race Convention during which Diarmuid Lynch becomes National Secretary holding the post until his return to Ireland in 1932.
By 1920, there is a Regular membership of 100,000 and 484 Associate Branches with an Associate membership of 175,000. During the Irish War of Independence, the Friends of Irish Freedom raise over $5,000,000 in Dáil loans for the newly declared Irish Republic through the promotion of Bond Certificates. Legal advisor to the organisation for the Bond Drive is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In October 1920, a rift develops between the Irish American leaders and Éamon de Valera which results in a split between the Friends of Irish Freedom in the United States and the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Ireland. Prior to his departure from the United States, de Valera founds a rival organisation — the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic — to take over the activities of the Friends.
The public dispute between the Friends of Irish Freedom and Sinn Féin representatives damages the effectiveness and credibility of the Irish American organisation. While the Executive largely remains loyal to Daniel F. Cohalan, many rank-and-file members do not renew their subscriptions. By mid-1921 membership has fallen to 20,000 and is further reduced after the outbreak of Irish Civil War in 1922. By 1928, the Friends of Irish Freedom has virtually ceased to exist as a viable Irish American organisation.
The Friends of Irish Freedom is wound up in 1932 following extensive litigation concerning the funds raised for the Irish Republic which were claimed by de Valera. Most of the funds are returned to the original donors.
(Pictured: Éamon de Valera and Friends of Irish Freedom members Daniel Cohalan, John Goff and James Devoy)
In 1990, Cusack, in the role of Masha, joins two of her sisters, Niamh (as Irina) and Sorcha (as Olga), and her father, Cyril Cusack (as Chebutykin) for a well-received production of Anton Chekhov‘s tragicomedy Three Sisters in a new version by Frank McGuinness, directed by Adrian Noble at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre in London. The production also features Niamh’s husband, Finbar Lynch, as Solenyi and Lesley Manville as Natasha. The production wins the three real-life sisters the Irish Life Award in 1992.
One of Cusack’s best known stage roles is Our Lady of Sligo by Sebastian Barry in 1998, in which she plays the principal role of Mai O’Hara in performances in Ireland, on Broadway and at the National Theatre. For this she wins the 1998 Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress, the 1998 Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for Best Actress and her fourth Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress. In 2006-07 she stars with Rufus Sewell in Tom Stoppard‘s Rock ‘n’ Roll at the Royal Court Theatre in London which transfers to the West End and Broadway, winning Cusack her fifth Olivier Award nomination and her second Tony Award nomination.
In 2015, Cusack returns to Ireland’s Abbey Theatre, where she begins her theatre career. She appears in the world première of Mark O’Rowe‘s play Our Few and Evil Days, acting opposite long-time collaborator Ciarán Hinds. She wins the Irish Times Irish Theatre Award for Best Actress.
Cusack stars with Peter Sellers in the film Hoffman (1970). She guest stars in an episode of The Persuaders! (1971), a TV series starring Tony Curtis and Roger Moore, as Jenny Lindley, a wealthy heiress who suspects that a man claiming to be her dead brother is in fact an impostor. In 1975, she makes three appearances in the TV series Quiller as the character Roz.
Further starring roles include lead roles in Oliver’s Travels (1995), Have Your Cake and Eat It (1997) for which Cusack wins the Royal Television Society‘s RTS Award for Best Actress and Frank McGuinness’s The Hen House (1989) for BBC Television. She stars in the title role of George du Maurier‘s Trilby (1976), in an adaptation for the BBC’s Play of the Month, with Alan Badel as Svengali. She also stars in the BBC mini-series North & South (2004, from the novel by Elizabeth Gaskell) as Mrs. Thornton. She stars in the BBC sitcom Home Again (2006) and appears in the TV series Camelot (2011), which runs for one season. She has featured roles in the mini-series The Deep (2014) and the series Marcella (2016), an eight-episode murder mystery.
Along with other actresses, including Paola Dionisotti, Fiona Shaw, Juliet Stevenson and Harriet Walter, Cusack contributes to a book by Carol Rutter called Clamorous Voices: Shakespeare’s Women Today (1994). The book analyses modern acting interpretations of female Shakespearean roles.
Cusack marries British actor Jeremy Irons in 1978, and they have two sons, Samuel James and Maximilian Paul. Prior to marrying Irons, she gives birth to a son in 1967 and places the boy for adoption. In 2007, a journalist for the Irish Sunday Independent, Daniel McConnell, reveals that Cusack is the mother of left-wing general election candidate and now member of Irish parliament Richard Boyd Barrett. The two have since been reunited.
Cusack is a patron of the Burma Campaign UK, the London-based group campaigning for human rights and democracy in Burma. In 1998, she is named, along with her husband, in a list of the biggest private financial donors to the British Labour Party. In August 2010, she signs the “Irish artists’ pledge to boycott Israel” initiated by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
(Pictured: Sinéad Cusack reciting poetry for the British Library in October 2021)
Roberts is the son of Randall Roberts, a baker, and Mary Roberts (née Bishop). He is educated locally and in July 1849 leaves with his family for the United States. For several years he works as a clerk for a dry goods company in New York City. In 1857, he sets up his own dry goods business, the Crystal Palace, which becomes successful. He retires in 1869 as a very wealthy man.
Having joined the American Fenian Brotherhood in 1863, Roberts gives it strong financial support for the remainder of the decade. He also supports several Irish American charitable organisations, including the Knights of St. Patrick, of which he is president. In October 1865, he is responsible for a change in the constitution of the Fenian Brotherhood, which results in a split in the movement. The majority of the Brotherhood supports his proposal to elect a “senate” to govern the organisation, with himself as president, in place of the autocratic leader, John O’Mahony. After the suppression of the Irish People and the arrest of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) leaders in Dublin in September 1865, he believes that it to be foolish to send American Fenian troops to Ireland.
Seeking to capitalise on the bad relations that develop between the United States and Britain during the American Civil War, Roberts hopes that a Fenian Brotherhood invasion Canada might provoke a war between Britain and the United States and thereby make a successful insurrection in Ireland more possible. Once the invasion takes place (May 31 – June 3, 1866), however, the American government seizes the Fenians’ supplies and reinforcements, thereby prompting him to abandon the attack. He is arrested in New York on June 7 and detained in prison, but escapes prosecution and is released on June 15. Three days later, with the support of Irish American politicians, he is allowed to deliver an address to the United States Senate appealing for support for the cause of the amnesty of IRB prisoners in Ireland. Thereafter he goes on a lecture tour and argues that American politicians cannot hope to receive Irish American electoral support if they do not support the Fenian cause. In response to demands from Irish American politicians, in September 1866, PresidentAndrew Johnson orders that the arms seized by the United States army be returned to the Fenian Brotherhood.
After the failure of the March 1867 rising in Ireland, Roberts sends men to Ireland to assume command of the IRB on his behalf. A significant number of IRB men follow his lead, and in June 1867 a convention is held in Paris over which he presides. At this he proposes the establishment of a Supreme Council to govern the IRB, a proposal that is soon accepted. He seeks to be appointed president of the new Supreme Council, but the IRB refuses owing to his being such a divisive figure within American Fenianism. In dismay he resigns as president of the Senate wing of the Fenian Brotherhood on December 31, 1867, and becomes less active in the revolutionary movement. In 1870, he opposes the attempt of Fenians to invade Canada once more, and in January 1871 organises a welcoming committee in New York for five recently released IRB leaders who had been banished from Ireland.
By that time, however, Roberts is more concerned with American politics. During 1870, he is elected to Congress as a Democratic Party candidate for New York, a seat he holds until 1874 when, due to financial difficulties, he decides not to run for reelection. As a congressman, he criticises the Republican government for its policy towards the former Confederate states, opposes the increasing power of railroad companies, demands greater protection for American citizens living in foreign countries (including the Fenians imprisoned in Canada), and supports civil rights for black people. He also attracts much praise for his strong criticism of British foreign policy.
After leaving Congress, Roberts becomes a member of the Tammany Society and attains prominence in New York municipal politics, being elected president of the New York City Board of Aldermen in 1878. The following year, he runs for the position of sheriff of New York, but is defeated. Thereafter, he leaves the Tammany Society and establishes a rival organisation, the New York County Democracy. In 1882, he supports Grover Cleveland for the governorship of New York and in 1884 as the Democratic candidate for the United States presidency. He is rewarded on April 2, 1885, when President Cleveland appoints him Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Chile.
Roberts’s term of office is cut short, however, when he suffers a paralytic stroke in May 1888. He is sent back to New York and to hospital, where he remains for nine years. He never regains his mental or physical health and dies on August 9, 1897. His funeral takes place on hospital grounds with few people in attendance. He had been separated from his wife, of whom nothing is known, except that they had at least one son, prior to being admitted to hospital. He is buried at Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York City.
(From: “Roberts, William Randall” by Owen McGee, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Among those to welcome the new organisation is Sinn Féin President, Éamon de Valera, who promises all the support he can offer. CardinalMichael Logue, CatholicPrimate of Ireland, also offers his assistance: “Even if peace were restored, of which there seems little prospect at present, all the help which can be obtained shall be necessary, to restore the country from the wreck to which it has been reduced, and to help those who have been left destitute by the murder of those on whom they depended, or ruined by the destruction of their property.”
The Irish White Cross is managed by the Quaker businessman, and later Irish Free Statesenator, James G. Douglas. The organisation continues to operate until the Irish Civil War and its books are officially closed in 1928. From 1922, its activities are essentially wound down and remaining funds divested to subsidiary organisations. The longest running of these aid committees is the Children’s Relief Association which distributes aid to child victims of this troubled period, north and south of the border, until 1947. The head of the Children’s Relief Association is Áine Ceannt, the widow of Éamonn Ceannt who is perhaps one of the least known signatories of the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic.
Donal Donnelly, Irish theatre and film actor, dies in Chicago, Illinois, on January 4, 2010. 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 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.
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.
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.
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).
seamus dubhghaill 