seamus dubhghaill

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

Tag Archives: Palace of Versailles


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Seán Thomas O’Kelly Elected Second President of Ireland

Seán Thomas O’Kelly (Irish: Seán Tomás Ó Ceallaigh) is elected the second President of Ireland on June 18, 1945. He serves two terms from 1945 to 1959. He is a member of Dáil Éireann from 1918 until his election as President. During this time he serves as Minister for Local Government and Public Health (1932–1939) and Minister for Finance (1939–1945). He serves as Vice-President of the Executive Council from 1932 until 1937 and is the first Tánaiste from 1937 until 1945.

O’Kelly is born on August 25, 1882 on Capel Street in the north inner-city of Dublin. He joins the National Library of Ireland in 1898 as a junior assistant. That same year, he joins the Gaelic League, becoming a member of the governing body in 1910 and General Secretary in 1915.

In 1905 O’Kelly joins Sinn Féin who, at the time, supports a dual-monarchy. He is an honorary secretary of the party from 1908 until 1925. In 1906 he is elected to Dublin Corporation, which is Dublin’s city council. He retains the seat for the Inns Quay Ward until 1924.

O’Kelly assists Patrick Pearse in preparing for the Easter Rising in 1916. After the rising, he is jailed, released, and jailed again. He escapes from detention at HM Prison Eastwood Park in Falfield, South Gloucestershire, England and returns to Ireland.

O’Kelly is elected Sinn Féin MP for Dublin College Green in the 1918 Irish general election. Along with other Sinn Féin MPs he refuses to take his seat in the British House of Commons. Instead they set up an Irish parliament, called Dáil Éireann, in Dublin. O’Kelly is Ceann Comhairle (Chairman) of the First Dáil. He is the Irish Republic’s envoy to the post-World War I peace treaty negotiations at the Palace of Versailles, but the other countries refuse to allow him to speak as they do not recognise the Irish Republic.

O’Kelly is a close friend of Éamon de Valera, and both he and de Valera oppose the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921. When de Valera resigns as President of the Irish Republic on January 6, 1922, O’Kelly returns from Paris to try to persuade de Valera to return to the presidency but de Valera orders him to return to Paris.

During the Irish Civil War, O’Kelly is jailed until December 1923. Afterwards he spends the next two years as a Sinn Féin envoy to the United States.

In 1926 when de Valera leaves Sinn Féin to found his own republican party, Fianna Fáil, O’Kelly follows him, becoming one of the party’s founding members. In 1932, when de Valera is appointed President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State he makes O’Kelly the Minister for Local Government and Public Health. He often tries to publicly humiliate the Governor-General of the Irish Free State, James McNeill, which damages O’Kelly’s reputation and image, particularly when the campaign backfires.

In 1938, many believe that de Valera wants to make O’Kelly the Fianna Fáil choice to become President of Ireland, under the new Irish constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann. When Lord Mayor of Dublin, Alfie Byrne, says he wants to be president there is an all party agreement to nominate Douglas Hyde, a Protestant Irish Senator, Irish language enthusiast and founder of the Gaelic League. They believe Hyde to be the only person who might win an election against Alfie Byrne. O’Kelly is instead appointed Minister of Finance and helps create Central Bank in 1942.

O’Kelly leaves the cabinet when he is elected President of Ireland on June 18, 1945 in a popular vote of the people, defeating two other candidates. He is re-elected unopposed in 1952. During his second term he visits many nations in Europe and speaks before the United States Congress in 1959. He retires at the end of his second term in 1959, to be replaced by his old friend, Éamon de Valera. Following his retirement he is described as a model president by the normally hostile newspaper, The Irish Times. Though controversial, he is widely seen as genuine and honest, but tactless.

O’Kelly’s strong Roman Catholic beliefs sometimes cause problems. Éamon de Valera often thinks that O’Kelly either deliberately or accidentally leaks information to the Knights of Saint Columbanus and the Church leaders. He ensures that his first state visit, following the creation of the Republic of Ireland in 1949, is to the Vatican City to meet Pope Pius XII. He accidentally reveals the Pope’s private views on communism. This angers the Pope and Joseph Stalin and is why he is not given the papal Supreme Order of Christ which is given to many Catholic heads of state.

O’Kelly dies in Blackrock, Dublin on November 23, 1966 at the age of 84, fifty years after the Easter Rising that first brought him to prominence. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Glasnevin, Dublin.


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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.