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Birth of Kate O’Connell, Former Fine Gael Politician

Katherine O’Connell (née Newman), a former Fine Gael politician who serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin Bay South constituency from 2016 to 2020, is born in Kilbeggan, County Westmeath, on January 3, 1980. During her time in the Dáil, O’Connell campaigns in favour of abortion rights as well as pushes for more funding for healthcare services in Ireland.

From 1999 to 2003, O’Connell studies to be a pharmacist at the University of Brighton, graduating with an M Pharm in the United Kingdom. She then works as a hospital pre-registrar in the Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, before returning to Ireland to practice as a locum-pharmacist. By 2006, she and her husband open up their first pharmacy in Sandyford, and later open up pharmacies in Rathgar, and Rathfarnham.

O’Connell is a member of Dublin City Council for the local electoral area of Rathgar–Rathmines from 2014 to 2016.

O’Connell is selected by Fine Gael for the 2016 Irish general election to “recapture” their seat in Dublin Bay South from Lucinda Creighton, who had left the party in 2013 over her objection to the party’s position on abortion and in 2015 founded Renua, an anti-abortion party. During the campaign, O’Connell called Creighton’s anti-abortion views “incredibly sanctimonious” and suggests that Creighton is an “out of touch career politician” whose views on abortion are borne out of a lack of connection with the real world. The Irish Independent refers to these comments as O’Connell “tearing strips off” of Creighton. In the election, O’Connell is elected, while Creighton loses her seat.

In her time in the Dáil, O’Connell campaigns in favour of abortion rights as well as pushing for more funding for healthcare services in Ireland.

In October 2016, O’Connell responds to comments by the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin that TDs should remember their faith when legislating for abortion in Ireland by stating, “I don’t see why the archbishop’s views are in any way relevant. I don’t see why Archbishop Martin should be getting involved in women’s health issues. It is the same as asking my four-year-old. They [the Church] are entitled to their opinion, but I don’t put any weight in them. I don’t see what involvement the Catholic Church should have in women’s health issues”.

In November 2017, O’Connell confronts Barry Walsh, a member of Fine Gael’s executive council, with a dossier of tweets documenting that he repeatedly and frequently derogates women politicians, often calling them bitches, including fellow members of Fine Gael. After the leader of Fine Gael and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar comments that Walsh should resign, he does so.

O’Connell loses her seat at the 2020 Irish general election, placing 5th in the 4-seat constituency. In an August 2020 interview, she attributes her loss, in part, to being the running mate of the Minister for Housing, Eoghan Murphy, in an election fought over an ongoing housing crisis in Ireland.

On May 7, 2021, O’Connell declares she will not seek to be the Fine Gael candidate for the 2021 Dublin Bay South by-election. She suggests she will not be able to win a party selection again due to her relationship with the Fine Gael leadership souring in the meantime, partially because of her vocal support of Simon Coveney over Leo Varadkar in the 2017 Fine Gael leadership election. She also suggests many local Fine Gael branch members in Dublin South Bay regard her as an outsider and a “parachute candidate” due to the fact she is originally from County Westmeath, and have turned against her over this. The Phoenix offers the view that O’Connell would not be nominated because she has turned the Fine Gael leadership against her while lobbying for her sister, Mary Newman Julian, to be the party’s candidate in a 2018 Seanad by-election. In particular, a meeting between her and Simon Coveney in which her expectations are read as entitled is cited as hurting her relationships. Fine Gael’s candidate in the by-election is James Geoghegan, who had previously left the party to join Lucinda Creighton in Renua, but returns to Fine Gael after that party collapsed. He loses the by-election to Labour‘s Ivana Bacik, a senator for Dublin University and veteran pro-choice campaigner.

In October 2024, O’Connell leaves Fine Gael to contest the next general election in Dublin Bay South as an independent candidate. She fails to be elected or to achieve the one-quarter of the quota necessary to recoup her election expenses.

O’Connell states her family, the Newmans, have been “involved in Fine Gael since the 1960s,” starting when her maternal grandfather ran for Fine Gael as a councillor. Her father, Michael Newman, is also a Fine Gael councillor while Fine Gael minister Patrick Cooney is considered a family friend. O’Connell states that growing up, she and her family were greatly influenced by the progressive politics of Fine Gael leader Garret FitzGerald. Her sister, Mary Newman Julian, is also active in politics and contests elections for the Dáil in Tipperary and for Seanad Éireann, while another sister, Theresa Newman, works for a period as O’Connell’s political adviser in Leinster House. Her brother-in-law, Hugh O’Connell, is a prominent political journalist and editor who has worked for several Irish publications.

In 2018, during debates in the Dáil regarding abortion, O’Connell discloses personal details of a traumatic pregnancy she herself had experienced. During the pregnancy, she is told her child has only a 10% chance of survival. This prompts her to consider terminating the pregnancy. Ultimately, she decides to continue the pregnancy. The child is born with organs outside of the body but survives the birth. She cites the difficult decisions made during that pregnancy as having greatly informed her views on abortion.


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Death of Séamus Dwyer, Irish Politician

Séamus Dwyer, Pro-Treaty politician, is shot dead at his shop in Rathmines, Dublin, by Anti-Treaty fighters on December 20, 1922.

Dwyer is born in Dublin on November 15, 1886.

Serving as an intelligence officer for the Dublin Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and as a Dáil Court judge he is imprisoned by the British in 1921. He is elected unopposed at the 1921 Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland general election for the Dublin County constituency as a Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) in the 2nd Dáil. He votes in favour of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. He stands as a pro-Treaty Sinn Féin candidate at the 1922 Irish general election but is not elected.

Dwyer runs a off-licence/grocery shop in Rathmines and is a member of the Rathmines Urban Council. He marries Marie Molloy in 1914, they have no children. He is a member of the Peace Committee of ten men which sit in May 1922 and bring about the agreement between Michael Collins and Éamon de Valera.

On December 20, 1922, Dwyer is shot dead in his shop at 5 Rathmines Road, Dublin, by anti-Treaty IRA Volunteer Robert Bonfield. At about 4:50 p.m., Dwyer is talking to a customer when a young man enters the shop. Addressing Dwyer, the young man asks “Are you Mr. O’Dwyer?” Dwyer replies yes and the young man says that he has a note for him. The young man reaches into the pocket of his overcoat a draws a revolver. He fires twice at Dwyer at point-blank range and he dies instantly. The customer and a shop assistant give chase but are unable to catch the assassin. Two republicans, Frank Lawlor and the actual assassin, Robert Bonfield, are later killed by Free State forces in revenge for the shooting of Dwyer.

Dwyer is buried in Plot UA 67 South Section, Glasnevin Cemetery, Glasnevin, County Dublin.


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Death of Conor Cruise O’Brien, Politician, Writer & Historian

Conor Cruise O’Brien, politician, writer, historian and academic often nicknamed “The Cruiser,” dies in Howth, Dublin, on December 18, 2008.

Cruise O’Brien is born in Rathmines, Dublin on November 3, 1917. He serves as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs from 1973 to 1977, a Senator for Dublin University from 1977 to 1979, a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin North-East constituency from 1969 to 1977 and a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from January 1973 to March 1973.

Cruise O’Brien follows his cousin Owen into Sandford Park School, which has a predominantly Protestant ethos despite objections from Catholic clergy. He subsequently attends Trinity College Dublin (TCD) before joining the Irish diplomatic corps.

Although he is a fierce advocate of his homeland, Cruise O’Brien is a strong critic of Irish Republican Army (IRA) violence and of what he considers the romanticized desire for reunification with Northern Ireland. His collection of essays Maria Cross: Imaginative Patterns in a Group of Modern Catholic Writers (1952; written under the pseudonym Donat O’Donnell) impresses UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, who in 1961 appoints him UN special representative in the Congo, later the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He orders UN peacekeeping forces into the breakaway Katanga province, and the resulting scandal forces him out of office. Despite UN objections, he writes To Katanga and Back (1963) to explain his actions.

After serving as vice-chancellor of the University of Ghana (1962–65) and Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at New York University (1965–69), Cruise O’Brien enters Irish politics. He holds a Labour Party seat in Dáil Éireann from 1969 to 1977 and then in the Senate from 1977 to 1979, representing Trinity College, of which he is pro-chancellor (1973–2008).

In 1979, Cruise O’Brien is named editor in chief of the British Sunday newspaper The Observer, but he leaves after three tumultuous years. He remains an active newspaper columnist, especially for the Irish Independent until 2007. His books include States of Ireland (1972) and On the Eve of the Millennium (1995), as well as perceptive studies of Charles Stewart Parnell, Edmund Burke, and Thomas Jefferson.

In early July 1996, in the period of Cruise O’Brien’s involvement as a UK Unionist Party (UKUP) representative in talks at Stormont, he suffers a mild stroke. He recovers well, but is left with anxiety about his recall of names. His last public appearance is on September 7, 2006, to deliver an address on the ninetieth anniversary of the death of Tom Kettle, in the old House of Lords chamber of the Bank of Ireland on College Green.

Cruise O’Brien dies at the age of 91 on December 18, 2008, in Howth, Dublin. His funeral is at the Church of the Assumption, Howth, and he is interred in Glasnevin Cemetery.


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Death of David Sheehy, Irish Nationalist Politician

David Sheehy, Irish nationalist politician, dies in Dublin on December 17, 1932. He is a member of parliament (MP) from 1885 to 1900 and from 1903 to 1918, taking his seat as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

Born in Limerick in 1844, Sheehy is the son of Richard Sheehy and Johanna Shea, and is the brother of Mary Sheehy and Fr. Eugene Sheehy. He is a student for the priesthood at the Irish College in Paris, but leaves due to a cholera epidemic and later marries Bessie McCoy. In his youth he is a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and is active in the Irish National Land League. He is imprisoned on six occasions for his part in the Land War.

At the 1885 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, Sheehy is elected unopposed as MP for South Galway and holds that seat until the 1900 United Kingdom general election in Ireland. His re-election in Galway is unopposed in 1886 and 1895. When the Irish Party splits over the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell, he joins the anti-Parnellite Irish National Federation majority. At the 1892 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, he is opposed by a Parnellite Irish National League candidate, whom he defeats with a majority of nearly two to one. In the same election he stands in Waterford City, but fails to unseat the Parnellite John Redmond.

The two factions of the Irish Parliamentary Party reunite for the general election in 1900, but Sheehy does not stand again and is out of parliament for the next three years. After the death in August 1903 of James Laurence Carew, the Independent Nationalist MP for South Meath, he is selected as the Irish Parliamentary Party candidate in the resulting by-election in October 1903. Carew had allegedly been elected in 1900 as a result of a series of errors in nominations, and his predecessor John Howard Parnell stands again, this time as an Independent Nationalist. Sheehy wins with a majority of more than two to one, and holds the seat until he stands down at the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland.

Sheehy and his wife, Bessie, have seven children, of whom six survive to adulthood. One of his daughters, Mary (born 1884), marries the MP Tom Kettle and has one daughter, Betty (1913–1996). Hanna (born 1877), becomes a teacher and marries the writer Francis Skeffington. They have one son, Owen, who is seven years old when his father is murdered by the Captain Bowen-Colthurst in Portobello Barracks, Rathmines, during the 1916 Easter Rising. Kathleen marries Freeman’s Journal and Irish Independent journalist Frank Cruise O’Brien. The contrarian politician and writer Conor Cruise O’Brien is their son. Margaret (born 1879), an elocutionist, actress and playwright, marries solicitor Frank Culhane. They have four children. After his death she marries her godson, the poet Michael Casey. Sheehy’s two sons, Richard and Eugene, are barristers.

The writer James Joyce, who lives nearby as a youth, often visits the family home, 2 Belvedere Place, where musical evenings and theatricals take place every Sunday evening. Joyce entertains the family with Italian songs. In 1900, Margaret writes a play in which the Sheehys and their friends, including Joyce, act. Joyce takes a particular liking to Eugene and has a long-lasting but unrequited crush on Mary. Joyce’s novel Ulysses wittily describes an encounter between Sheehy’s wife, Bessie, and Father John Conmee, SJ, rector of Clongowes Wood College. Their daughter Mary is the spéirbhean longingly pursued by the protagonist in the story “Araby” in Joyce’s collection Dubliners. Another daughter, Kathleen, is possibly the model for the mockingly nationalist Miss Ivors in the story “The Dead“, which concludes Dubliners.

When Sheehy dies at the age of 88 in Dublin on December 17, 1932, it is reported that he has been the oldest surviving member of the Irish Parliamentary Party.


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Death of Oscar Traynor, Fianna Fáil Politician & Republican

Oscar Traynor, Fianna Fáil politician and republican, dies in Dublin on December 14, 1963. He serves as Minister for Justice from 1957 to 1961, Minister for Defence from 1939 to 1948 and 1951 to 1954, Minister for Posts and Telegraphs from 1936 to 1939 and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence from June 1936 to November 1936. He serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1925 to 1927 and 1932 to 1961. He is also involved with association football, being the President of the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) from 1948 until 1963.

Traynor is born in Dublin on March 21, 1886, into a strongly nationalist family. He is educated by the Christian Brothers. In 1899, he is apprenticed to John Long, a famous woodcarver. As a young man he is a noted footballer and tours Europe as a goalkeeper with Belfast Celtic F.C. whom he plays with from 1910 to 1912. He rejects claims soccer is a foreign sport calling it “a Celtic game, pure and simple, having its roots in the Highlands of Scotland.”

Traynor joins the Irish Volunteers and takes part in the Easter Rising in 1916, being the leader of the Hotel Metropole garrison. Following this he is interned in Wales. During the Irish War of Independence, he is brigadier of the Dublin Brigade of the Irish Republican Army and leads the disastrous attack on the Custom House in 1921 and an ambush on the West Kent Regiment at Claude Road, Drumcondra on June 16, 1921, when the Thompson submachine gun is fired for the first time in action.

When the Irish Civil War breaks out in June 1922, Traynor takes the Anti-Treaty IRA side. The Dublin Brigade is split, however, with many of its members following Michael Collins in taking the pro-Treaty side. During the Battle of Dublin, he is in charge of the Barry’s Hotel garrison, before making their escape. He organises guerilla activity in south Dublin and County Wicklow, before being captured by Free State troops in September. He is then imprisoned for the remainder of the war.

On March 11, 1925, Traynor is elected to Dáil Éireann in a by-election as a Sinn Féin TD for the Dublin North constituency, though he does not take his seat due to the abstentionist policy of Sinn Féin. He is re-elected as one of eight members for Dublin North in the June 1927 Irish general election but just one of six Sinn Féin TDs. Once again, he does not take his seat. He does not contest the September 1927 Irish general election but declares his support for Fianna Fáil. He stands again in the 1932 Irish general election and is elected as a Fianna Fáil TD for Dublin North.

In 1936, Traynor is first appointed to the Cabinet as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. In September 1939, he is appointed Minister for Defence and holds the portfolio to February 1948. In 1948, he becomes President of the Football Association of Ireland, a position he holds until his death. He serves as Minister for Defence in several Fianna Fáil governments and as Minister for Justice, where he is undermined by his junior minister, and later Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, before he retires in 1961.

Traynor dies in Dublin at the age of 77 on December 14, 1963. He has a road named in his memory, running from the Malahide Road through Coolock to Santry in Dublin’s northern suburbs.


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Birth of John Luttrell-Olmius, 3rd Earl of Carhampton 

Captain John Luttrell-Olmius, 3rd Earl of Carhampton, a Royal Navy officer and politician who sits in the House of Commons of Great Britain between 1774 and 1785, is born on December 11, 1739. He is styled The Honourable John Luttrell between 1768 and 1787 and as The Honourable John Luttrell-Olmius between 1787 and 1829.

Born John Luttrell, he is the second son of Simon Luttrell, 1st Earl of Carhampton by Judith Maria Lawes, daughter of Sir Nicholas Lawes, Governor of Jamaica. He is the grandson of Colonel Henry Luttrell and the brother of Henry Luttrell, 2nd Earl of Carhampton, James Luttrell, and Lady Anne Luttrell, Duchess of Cumberland and Strathearn. He is a member of the Irish branch of the ancient family of Luttrell and a descendant of Sir Geoffrey de Luterel, who establishes Luttrellstown Castle, County Dublin, in the early 13th century.

Luttrell was a captain in the Royal Navy but retires in 1789. He is returned to Parliament for Stockbridge in 1774, a seat he holds until 1775, and again between 1780 and 1785. Between 1785 and 1826 he is a commissioner of HM Customs and Excise. He succeeds his elder brother to the earldom in 1821. This is an Irish peerage and does not entitle him to an automatic seat in the House of Lords.

In 1766, Lord Carhampton marries the Honorable Elizabeth Olmius (1742-97), daughter of John Olmius, 1st Baron Waltham. In 1787, out of respect after the death of his father-in-law, he assumes by Royal Licence the additional surname of “Olmius.” In 1798, he sells the Olmius family seat of Newhall to the founding nuns of New Hall School. There are three children from his first marriage (however only his daughter survives to adulthood):

  • Lady Frances Maria Luttrell (b. 1768), married Sir Simeon Stuart, 4th Baronet
  • James Luttrell (d. 1772)
  • John Luttrell (d. 1769)

Lord Carhampton marries secondly Maria Morgan, daughter of John Morgan, in 1798. They have one child:

  • Lady Maria Anne Luttrell (1799–1857), married Lieutenant-Colonel Hardress Robert Saunderson

Lord Carhampton dies in Greater London, England, on March 19, 1829, aged 89, at which time the Earldom becomes extinct. He is buried at St. Pancras, Soper Lane graveyard, London.


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Birth of George Noble Plunkett, Scholar & Revolutionary

George Noble Plunkett, scholar and revolutionary, is born on December 3, 1851, at 1 Aungier Street, Dublin, the youngest and only survivor from infancy of the three children of Patrick Joseph Plunkett (1817–1918), builder and politician, and his wife, Elizabeth (née Noble). The Plunketts are Catholic, claiming collateral descent from Archbishop of Armagh Oliver Plunkett, and nationalist: the two drummers from the republican army at Vinegar Hill in 1798 visit George’s cradle.

Plunkett is educated expensively: at a primary school in Nice, making him fluent in French and Italian, then at Clongowes Wood College, and, from 1872, at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where his generous allowance allows him to study renaissance and medieval art. He enrolls at King’s Inns in 1870 and the Middle Temple in 1874, but is not called to the bar until 1886. While there he befriends Oscar Wilde and Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa. In 1877, he endows a university gold medal for Irish speakers and publishes a book of poems, God’s Chosen Festival, and the following year he issues a pamphlet, The Early Life of Henry Grattan. He also writes articles for magazines, editing a short-lived one, Hibernia, for eighteen months from 1882. In 1883, he donates funds and property to the nursing order of the Little Company of Mary (Blue Sisters), and on April 4, 1884, Pope Leo XIII makes him a count.

On June 26, 1884, Plunkett marries Mary Josephine Cranny (1858–1944). The couple has seven children: Philomena (Mimi) (b. 1886), Joseph (b. 1887), Mary Josephine (Moya) (b. 1889), Geraldine (b. 1891), George Oliver (b. 1894), Fiona (b. 1896), and Eoin (Jack) (b. 1897).

Plunkett surprises many in 1890 by declaring for Charles Stewart Parnell against the Catholic hierarchy. In the 1892 United Kingdom general election in Ireland he is a Parnellite candidate for Mid Tyrone but withdraws from a potential three-cornered fight lest he let in the unionist. He is sole nationalist candidate for Dublin St. Stephen’s Green in the 1895 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, and at an 1898 by-election there he cuts the unionist majority to 138 votes. The reunited Irish Party wins the seat in 1900.

In 1894, Plunkett part-edits Charles O’Kelly‘s memoir The Jacobite War in Ireland. By 1900, when he publishes the standard biography Sandro Botticelli, he is supplementing his income by renewed artistic studies, which until 1923 finances his lease of Kilternan Abbey, County Dublin. His Pinelli (1908) is followed by Architecture of Dublin, and, in 1911, by his revised edition of Margaret McNair Stokes‘s Early Christian Art in Ireland. In 1907, he becomes director of the National Museum of Ireland, where he increases annual visits from 100 to 3,000.

Joseph Plunkett swears his father into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in April 1916, sending him secretly to seek German aid and a papal blessing for the projected Easter rising. After its defeat, Plunkett is sacked by the National Museum of Ireland and deported with the countess to Oxford, and the following January he is expelled by the Royal Dublin Society (RDS). This earns him nomination as the surviving rebels’ candidate in the North Roscommon by-election. He returns to Ireland illegally on January 31, 1917, and wins the seat easily three days later. Pledging abstention from attendance at Westminster in accordance with Sinn Féin policy, he initiates a Republican Liberty League, which coalesces with similar groups such as Sinn Féin. In October this front becomes the new Sinn Féin, committed to Plunkett’s republic rather than to the “king, lords and commons“ of Arthur Griffith. Plunkett and Griffith become the new party’s vice-presidents, under Éamon de Valera.

On May 18, 1918, Plunkett is interned again. Released after Sinn Féin’s general election landslide (in which he is returned unopposed), he presides, Sinn Féin’s oldest MP, at the planning meeting for Dáil Éireann on January 17, 1919, and at its opening session on January 21. On the 22nd he is made foreign affairs minister by Cathal Brugha, an appointment reaffirmed by de Valera on April 10. He criticises his president for advocating a continuing Irish external relationship with Britain, and fails to organise an Irish foreign service. In February 1921, de Valera makes Robert Brennan his departmental secretary and a ministry takes shape, while Plunkett publishes a book of poems, Ariel. After uncontested “southern Irish“ elections to the Second Dáil, de Valera moves his implacable foreign minister from the cabinet to a tailor-made portfolio of fine arts. Plunkett’s Dante sexcentenary commemoration is overshadowed by news of the Anglo–Irish Treaty. Opposing this, Plunkett cites his oath to the republic and its martyrs including his son. He leaves his ministry on January 9, 1922.

Plunkett chairs the anti-treaty Cumann na Poblachta, which loses the June general election, though he is returned again unopposed. In the Irish Civil War the treatyites intern him and the republicans appoint him to their council of state. In the August 1923 Irish general election, his first electoral contest since 1917, the interned count tops the poll in County Roscommon. He is released in December.

When de Valera forms Fianna Fáil in 1926, Plunkett stays with Sinn Féin, and loses his deposit in the June 1927 Irish general election. A year later he publishes his last poetry collection, Eros. He runs for a new Cumann Poblachta na hÉireann in a County Galway by-election in 1936, but loses his deposit again. On December 8, 1938, with the other six surviving abstentionist Second Dáil TDs, he transfers republican sovereignty to the IRA Army Council.

Plunkett is a big man with a black beard which whitens steadily after his fiftieth birthday. He is always formally pleasant and courteous. His oratory is described by M. J. MacManus as “level, cultured tones . . . [more] used to addressing the members of a learned society than to the rough and tumble of the hustings” (The Irish Press, March 15, 1948). Theoretically and practically, he is more scholar than politician. His portrait is on display at the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (RSAI).

Plunkett dies from cancer on March 12, 1948, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, survived by his children Geraldine (wife of Thomas Dillon), Fiona, and Jack. His grandson Joseph (1928–66), son of George Oliver Plunkett, inherits the title.

(From: “Plunkett, Count George Noble” by D. R. O’Connor Lysaght, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Reginald Greville-Nugent, Politician

The Honourable Reginald James Macartney Greville-Nugent, an Irish politician, is born on November 27, 1848.

Greville-Nugent is the youngest of five sons born to the former Lady Rosa Nugent and Fulke Greville-Nugent, 1st Baron Greville. His brothers are Hon. Algernon Greville-Nugent (who marries Lady Beatrice Violet Graham, a daughter of James Graham, 4th Duke of Montrose), Hon. George Greville-Nugent MP (who marries Cecil Aitcheson Hankey, a daughter of Lt. Gen. Henry Aitchison Hankey), Hon. Robert Southwell Greville-Nugent (who dies unmarried), and Hon. Patrick Greville-Nugent, of Clonyn Castle, the High Sheriff of Westmeath (who marries Ermengarde Ogilvy). His sister is Hon. Mildred Charlotte Greville-Nugent, who marries Alexis Huchet, Marquis de la Bedoyére.

Greville-Nugent’s mother is the only daughter and heir of George Nugent, 1st Marquess of Westmeath and, his first wife, Lady Emily Cecil (second daughter of James Cecil, 1st Marquess of Salisbury). His paternal grandparents are Algernon Greville, of North Lodge in Hertford and the former Caroline Graham (daughter of Sir Bellingham Graham, 6th Baronet).

Greville-Nugent holds the Irish parliamentary seat of Longford, vacated by his father on his elevation to the peerage, from December 31, 1869, defeating John Martin. He has to relinquish the seat in May 1870 due to Judge Fitzgerald overturning the election result on the grounds of voting irregularities.

On October 21, 1871, Greville-Nugent is married to Louisa Maud Yarde-Buller, sister of John Yarde-Buller, 1st Baron Churston, and daughter of Sir Francis Buller-Yarde-Buller, 2nd Baronet.

Greville-Nugent is killed on February 28, 1878, after a fall in a steeplechase at Sandown Park Racecourse.

Greville-Nugent’s illegitimate son, Reginald Charles Fulke Greville, born August 19, 1866, is better known after changing his surname to Maugham (following a close friendship with the writer W. Somerset Maugham‘s great-aunt Julia) as the author of numerous books about Africa, and his most well-known work, Jersey under the Jack Boot.


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Birth of Seán Ardagh, Fianna Fáil Politician

Seán Ardagh, Fianna Fáil politician who serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin South-Central constituency from 1997 to 2011, is born in Dublin on November 25, 1947.

A chartered accountant by profession, Ardagh obtains his qualification in Canada in the 1970s and returns to Ireland to practice. He is first elected to Dáil Éireann at the 1997 Irish general election and retains his seat at the 2002 and 2007 general elections. He replaces Ben Briscoe as the TD and main candidate for Fianna Fáil in Dublin South-Central in 2002. He serves as chairman of a number of Dáil committees during his time as a TD.

Ardagh is first elected to Dublin County Council in 1985 and remains a member until 1999. He is elected to Dublin City Council in 1999 and remains a councillor until 2003.

On December 9, 2010, Ardagh announces he will not be standing at the 2011 Irish general election. He resigns as a TD on January 28, 2011, in advance of the 2011 general election.

Ardagh’s daughter is Fianna Fáil TD Catherine Ardagh. He dies on May 17, 2016, after a long illness.


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Birth of Sir Anthony Babington, Barrister, Judge & Politician

Sir Anthony Brutus Babington PC (NI), Anglo-Irish barrister, judge and politician, is born on November 24, 1877, at Creevagh House, County Londonderry, to Hume Babington JP, son of Rev. Hume Babington and a landowner of 1,540 acres, and Hester (née Watt), sister of Andrew Alexander Watt.

Babington is born into the Anglo-Irish Babington family that arrives in Ireland in 1610 when Brutus Babington is appointed Bishop of Derry. Notable relations include Robert Babington, William Babington, Benjamin Guy Babington and James Melville Babington and author Anthony Babington.

Babington is educated at Glenalmond School, Perthshire, and Trinity College, Dublin, where he wins the Gold Medal for Oratory of the College Historical Society in 1899.

Babington is called to the Irish Bar in 1900. He briefly lectures in Equity at King’s Inns, and it is during this time, in 1910, that he re-arranges and re-writes R.E. Osborne’s Jurisdiction and Practice of County Courts in Ireland in Equity and Probate Matters. He takes silk in 1917.

Babington moves to the newly established Northern Ireland in 1921 and practises as a barrister until his election to the House of Commons of Northern Ireland as the Ulster Unionist Party member for Belfast South in the 1925 Northern Ireland general election and subsequent appointment as Attorney General for Northern Ireland the same year in the cabinet of James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon. His appointment to the Privy Council of Northern Ireland in 1926 entitles him to the style “The Right Honourable.” From 1929 he is the MP for Belfast Cromac, the Belfast South constituency having been abolished. He is made an honorary bencher of the Middle Temple in 1930.

Babington resigns from politics in 1937 upon his appointment as a Lord Justice of Appeal and is knighted in the 1937 Coronation Honours.

In 1947, Babington chairs the Babington Agricultural Enquiry Committee, named in his honour, which is established in 1943 to examine agriculture in Northern Ireland. The committee’s first recommendation under Babington’s leadership is that Northern Ireland should direct all its energies to the production of livestock and livestock products and to their efficient processing and marketing.

Babington retires from the judiciary in 1949, taking up the chairmanship of the Northern Ireland Transport Tribunal, which exists until 1967, established under the Ulster Transport Act – promoting a car-centred transport policy – and which is largely responsible for the closure of the Belfast and County Down Railway. He endorses the closure on financial grounds and is at cross purposes with his co-chair, Dr. James Beddy, who advises against the closure, citing the disruption of life in the border region between the north and the south as his primary reason in addition to financial grounds.

Babington also chairs a government inquiry into the licensing of clubs, the proceeds of which results in new regulatory legislation at Stormont. While Attorney General, he is a proponent of renaming Northern Ireland as “Ulster.”

Babington is critical of the newly proposed Irish constitution, in which the name of the Irish state is changed to “Ireland,” laying claim to jurisdiction over Northern Ireland.

Michael McDunphy, Secretary to the President of Ireland, then Douglas Hyde, recalls Ernest Alton‘s correspondence with Babington on the question of Irish unity, in which Alton and Babington are revealed to be at cross purposes. The discussion is used as an example by Brian Murphy, in Forgotten Patriot: Douglas Hyde and the Foundation of the Irish Presidency, as an example of the office of the Irish President becoming embroiled in an initiative involving Trinity College Dublin and a senior Northern Ireland legal figure, namely Babington. 

Babington writes to Alton, then Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, expressing his view that, as Murphy summarises, “… Severance between the two parts of Ireland could not continue, that it was the duty of all Irishmen to work for early unification and that in his opinion Trinity College was a very appropriate place in which the first move should be made.” When Alton arrives to meet with Hyde, it emerges, after conversing with Hyde’s secretary McDunphy, that he and Babington are at cross purposes. “It soon became clear that the united Ireland contemplated by Mr. [sic] Justice Babington of the Northern Ireland Judiciary was one within the framework of the British Commonwealth of Nations, involving recognition of the King of England as the Supreme Head, or as Dr. Alton put it, the symbol of unity of the whole system,” writes McDunphy.

On September 5, 1907, Babington marries Ethel Vaughan Hart, daughter of George Vaughan Hart of Howth, County Dublin (the son of Sir Andrew Searle Hart) and his wife Mary Elizabeth Hone, a scion of the Hone family. They have three children.

Babington is a member of the Apprentice Boys of Derry. From 1926 to 1952, he is a member of the board of governors of the Belfast Royal Academy. He serves as warden (chairman) of the board from 1941 to 1943. Through his efforts the school acquires the Castle Grounds from Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 9th Earl of Shaftesbury in 1934.

Babington is a keen golfer. He is an international golfer from 1903 to 1913, during which he is runner-up in the Irish Amateur Golf Championships in 1909 and one of the Irish representatives at an international match in 1913. The Babington Room in the Royal Portrush Golf Club is named after him, as is the 18th hole on the course as a result of the key role he plays in shaping its history.

Babington dies at the age of 94 on April 10, 1972 at his home, Creevagh, Portrush, County Antrim.