Pilkington is born to John Pilkington and Margaret Mary Pilkington (née Torsney), the second of twelve children born to the couple. Only nine of his siblings survive into adulthood. He receives his education at the local Marist Brothers convent school and the Day Trades Preparatory School. Later he is a student at the Department of Agriculture Forestry College in County Wicklow. When the Irish War of Independence begins, the college is closed and he is forced to return to Sligo. He then gains employment with Wehrly Brothers Ltd., a jewelry and watchmaking store in Sligo.
Several notable incidents occur in Pilkington’s military career. On October 25, 1920, at Moneygold, eight miles from Sligo (between Grange and Cliffoney), IRA men led by him ambush a nine-man Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) patrol, killing four (Sergeant Patrick Perry, Constables Patrick Keown, Patrick Laffey, Patrick Lynch) and wounding two others (Constables Clarke and O’Rourke). In January 1922, he makes clear his opposition to the IRAs General Headquarters (GHQ) support for the Anglo-Irish Treaty. “We intend to cut away from this headquarters, all of you (pointing to the staff and officers of the GHQ) want to build up a Free State Army so you can march in step into the British Empire. Do it openly. We stand by the Republic.” On April 6, 1922, a meeting addressed by Arthur Griffith in Sligo, is proclaimed illegal by Pilkington, who is the local Anti-Treaty IRA divisional commander. His troops take over a number of buildings in the town. Seán Mac Eoin brings Provisional Government troops from Athlone and on the day of the meeting, he is joined by further troops led by J. J. “Ginger” O’Connell. A tense situation ensues but, at the last minute, Pilkington backs down and the meeting goes ahead. On September 4, 1922, an Anti-Treaty IRA unit under Pilkington takes the Dromhaire barracks in County Sligo after the Free State garrison surrenders.
On August 27, 1923, Pilkington runs unsuccessfully in the general election for the 4th Dáil as a Republican candidate, polling 2,089 first preference votes.
Pilkington is a prominent member of the Anti-Treaty IRA for many years, but his most important role as part of the Anti-Treaty IRA comes on April 20, 1923. The Executive of the Anti-Treaty IRA meets in Poulacappal (four miles southwest of Callan and three miles from Mullinahone). Present in addition to Pilkington (who is replacing Liam Lynch) are Frank Aiken, Sean Hyde, Sean Dowling, Bill Quirke, Tom Barry, Tom Ruane (replacing Michael Kilroy), Tom Sullivan (replacing Sean Lehane), Sean McSwiney, Tom Crofts, P. J. Ruttledge and Sean O’Meara (substitute for Séumas Robinson). Frank Aiken is elected Chief-of-Staff and an Army Council of Aiken, Pilkington and Barry is appointed. Aiken proposes that peace should be made with the Pro-Treaty Government on the basis that “the sovereignty of the Irish Nation and the integrity of its territory is inalienable.” This is passed by nine votes to two.
Pilkington becomes a Catholic priest after his foray into politics and due to the disillusionment of the Irish War of Independence. He joins the Redemptorist Order and becomes known as Father William Pilkington CSsR. He serves as a priest in the Archdiocese of Cape Town, South Africa, priest of Monmouthshire, Wales, and retires to Bishop Eton Monastery, Liverpool.
In 1954, Pilkington is guest of honour at a dinner sponsored by Clan na Gael and the IRA Veterans of America in New York City where he says he is returning to the mission fields of Africa, but he remains faithful to the All Ireland Republic. He dies at Bishop Eton Monastery on March 26, 1977, and is buried in Liverpool.
The Catholic Association is the latest in a series of similar associations formed over the previous ten years or so, none of which had prospered. Like the other associations, this new association is composed mainly of the middle class elite: an annual subscription amounting to a guinea, an amount equivalent to what an average farmer would pay for six months’ rent. In 1824, the Catholic Association begins to use the money that it has raised to campaign for Catholic emancipation.
In 1824, the association creates a new category of associate members at the cost of a penny per month, the so-called Catholic Rent. The reasoning behind the creation of this new membership category is to stimulate a swelling in association numbers. This new, cheaper category ensures Catholics from a poorer background can join, and thus the association’s initial class-based entry barriers are removed. The Catholic rent transforms the association and Catholic political advocacy more broadly. In terms of the association, the rent catalyzes a transformation in a number of ways. Firstly, as previously mentioned, it gives the Catholic Association a constant source of money, which enables O’Connell to run a consistent campaign. Secondly, it facilitates easy calculation of total association membership numbers so that O’Connell can say with confidence that he has the support of so many people. This is important as it can be used to apply pressure against the British government. Third, and perhaps most importantly, however, it announces the arrival of mass mobilization politics, being the first such populist movement in Europe. O’Connell decides to add this additional membership level, at a reduced price of a penny a month, deliberately. The benefits are clear. With the membership subscription set at a relatively cheap price, a large number of the peasant and working classes can join. Affordability ensures large numbers. In effect, it becomes a universal Catholic organization that is transparent and populist. The fact that each member contributes financially to the association also ensures that they are more deeply involved in pushing the cause of Catholic emancipation. People want value for their money. Thus, this ensures a cheap method for O’Connell to get the message of Catholic emancipation spread throughout Ireland.
The Catholic Association’s funds are diffused widely in a variety of areas. Some is spent campaigning for Catholic emancipation, defraying the costs of sending petitions to Westminster, and training of priests. Following the 1826 election campaign, funds are used to support the members of the organization who had voted against their landlords. The money is used for those who have been evicted from land by the landlords because of their connection to the Catholic organization or for those who were boycottingabsentee landlord. For the Catholic peasants that are in this situation, the future would be grim as they would be unable to continue the boycott without food and money, and they would be unable to lease land from any landlord as the peasants would be boycotted against in return. The Catholic Association’s funds are used to support these boycotts so that they can continue and live well enough to have enough food to survive.
The Catholic Association is originally aristocratic in its composition, and some of the gentry (such as Richard Lalor Sheil) hold relatively conservative views. However, O’Connell holds an enormous influence over society and largely dictates the policies it pursues. It is radical in nature but also extremely loyal to the Crown in appearance. This had been the strategy of the previous major Catholic group, the Catholic Committee of the 1790s, which achieved major Catholic Relief in 1793.
Since the aims of the Catholic Association are fairly moderate and the organization remains loyal to the monarch, British MPs are conceptually more willing to pass Catholic emancipation. The matter had been discussed in London since the Acts of Union 1800, when Prime MinisterWilliam Pitt and most of his colleagues resign from the cabinet when emancipation is denied by the king. Henry Grattan continues to support the cause, and Catholic emancipation had been passed by the House of Commons previously by a majority of six, but it is rejected in the House of Lords and generally by King George III, who reigns until 1820.
The biggest strength of the Catholic Association is that the Catholic Church helps in the collection of the Catholic rent. Catholic priests also hold sermons in favor of Catholic emancipation. This means that it is easy for the members to pay the Catholic rent, and it will attract more members as the message of Catholic emancipation is being spread throughout Ireland. Sir Robert Peel believes the alliance of the Catholic Association and the Catholic Church is a “powerful combination.”
In 1826, the Catholic Association begins to use its funds to support pro-emancipation MPs in elections. They use their money and manpower to campaign for the candidate to be elected into parliament to pressure the government from within to pass Catholic emancipation.
The turning point comes in 1828, when two factors come into play. The first is that the Catholic Church takes over the collection of the Catholic Rent and effectively the Catholic Association itself. The other is that by 1828, O’Connell’s reputation has increased dramatically. He is an internationally recognized figure and is seen as one of the leading figures in liberal thinking. This successful campaign leads on to, but is distinguished from, his later efforts to end the union with Britain, to increase the franchise, and to end the payment of tithes. His particular talent is to push the emancipation process along in an organized way.
In May 1828, the Sacramental Test Act 1828 repeals the Test Acts 1673 & 1678 against non-AnglicanProtestants. This gives non-Catholic non-conformists greater political freedom and equality in Britain. The repeal has two effects: it gives Catholics hope that a similar act will be passed that will include Catholics; it also alienates Catholics, as they have become the only Christians not to have political freedom and equality.
In May 1828, William Huskisson resigns from the cabinet, and William Vesey-Fitzgerald is chosen as the President of the Board of Trade. According to the law, there is to be a by-election in his constituency of Clare. O’Connell decides to exploit a loophole in the Acts of Union 1800. It requires MPs to take the Oath of Allegiance, but the oath is not required of candidates for election. He stands in the by-election and wins. Since he is a Catholic, he cannot take his seat in parliament. Demand rises to allow him to become an MP for Clare, as it does not have representation.
Sir Robert Peel and Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, see that if O’Connell is not allowed to take his seat, then there could be a revolution in Ireland. While using non-violent methods, O’Connell hints that he will get more Catholics elected to force the situation. In an emotive speech, he says, “They must crush us or conciliate us.”
Peel decides to change the government’s approach and submits the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 in February 1829. The bill is passed. It is a momentous victory for O’Connell and the Catholic middle class, and he becomes known as “the liberator” and the “uncrowned king of Ireland.” However, the simultaneous enactment of the Parliamentary Elections (Ireland) Act 1829 restricts the franchise in the county constituencies in Ireland. The archive of the Catholic Association is housed with the archives of Dublin Diocese in Holy Cross College, Dublin.
(Pictured: “Daniel O’Connell: The Champion of Liberty” poster published in Pennsylvania, 1847)
Callan is born on December 22, 1799, in Darver, County Louth. He attends school at an academy in Dundalk. His local parish priest, Father Andrew Levins, then takes him in hand as an altar boy and Mass server and sees him start the priesthood at Navanseminary. He enters Maynooth College in 1816. In his third year at Maynooth, he studies natural and experimental philosophy under Dr. Cornelius Denvir. He introduces the experimental method into his teaching and has an interest in electricity and magnetism.
Callan is ordained a priest in 1823 and goes to Rome to study at Sapienza University, obtaining a doctorate in divinity in 1826. While in Rome he becomes acquainted with the work of the pioneers in electricity such as Luigi Galvani (1737–98), who is a pioneer in bioelectricity, and Alessandro Volta (1745–1827), who is known especially for the development of the electric battery. In 1826, he returns to Maynooth as the new Professor of Natural Philosophy (now called physics), where he also begins working with electricity in his basement laboratory at the college.
Influenced by William Sturgeon and Michael Faraday, Callan begins work on the idea of the induction coil in 1834. He invents the first induction coil in 1836. An induction coil produces an intermittent high voltagealternating current from a low voltage direct current supply. It has a primary coil consisting of a few turns of thick wire wound around an iron core and subjected to a low voltage (usually from a battery). Wound on top of this is a secondary coil made up of many turns of thin wire. An iron armature and make-and-break mechanism repeatedly interrupts the current to the primary coil, producing a high voltage, rapidly alternating current in the secondary circuit.
Callan invents the induction coil because he needs to generate a higher level of electricity than currently available. He takes a bar of soft iron, about 2 feet long, and wraps it around with two lengths of copper wire, each about 200 feet long. He connects the beginning of the first coil to the beginning of the second. Finally, he connects a battery, much smaller than the enormous contrivance just described, to the beginning and end of winding one. He finds that when the battery contact is broken, a shock can be felt between the first terminal of the first coil and the second terminal of the second coil.
Further experimentation shows how the coil device can bring the shock from a small battery up the strength level of a big battery. So Callan tries making a bigger coil. With a battery of only 14 seven-inch plates, the device produces power enough for an electric shock “so strong that a person who took it felt the effects of it for several days.” He thinks of his creation as a kind of electromagnet, but what he actually makes is a primitive induction transformer.
Callan’s induction coil also uses an interrupter that consists of a rocking wire that repeatedly dips into a small cup of mercury (similar to the interrupters used by Charles Grafton Page). Because of the action of the interrupter, which can make and break the current going into the coil, he calls his device the “repeater.” Actually, this device is the world’s first transformer. He induces a high voltage in the second wire, starting with a low voltage in the adjacent first wire. The faster he interrupts the current, the bigger the spark. In 1837 he produces his giant induction machine using a mechanism from a clock to interrupt the current 20 times a second. It generates 15-inch sparks, an estimated 60,000 volts and the largest artificial bolt of electricity then seen.
Callan experiments with designing batteries after he finds the models available to him at the time to be insufficient for research in electromagnetism. Some previous batteries had used rare metals such as platinum or unresponsive materials like carbon and zinc. He finds that he can use inexpensive cast iron instead of platinum or carbon. For his Maynooth battery he uses iron casting for the outer casing and places a zinc plate in a porous pot (a pot that had an inside and outside chamber for holding two different types of acid) in the centre. Using a single fluid cell, he disposes of the porous pot and two different fluids. He is able to build a battery with just a single solution.
While experimenting with batteries, Callan also builds the world’s largest battery at that time. To construct this battery, he joins together 577 individual batteries (“cells“), which use over 30 gallons of acid. Since instruments for measuring current or voltages have not yet been invented, he measures the strength of a battery by measuring how much weight his electromagnet can lift when powered by the battery. Using his giant battery, his electromagnet lifts 2 tons. The Maynooth battery goes into commercial production in London. He also discovers an early form of galvanisation to protect iron from rusting when he is experimenting on battery design, and he patents the idea.
Callan dies at the age of 64 in Maynooth, County Kildare, on January 10, 1864. He is buried in the cemetery in St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.
The Callan Building on the north campus of Maynooth University, a university which is part of St. Patrick’s College until 1997, is named in his honour. In addition, Callan Hall in the south campus, is used through the 1990s for first year science lectures including experimental & mathematical physics, chemistry and biology. The Nicholas Callan Memorial Prize is an annual prize awarded to the best final year student in Experimental Physics.
Byrne is born on November 23, 1900, in the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, Dublin, the elder among one son and one daughter of Vincent Byrne, carpenter, of 33 Denzille Street (now Fenian Street), and his wife Margaret (née White). By 1911 the family is living with maternal relatives at 1 Anne’s Lane. Educated at St. Andrew’s national school, Westland Row, he is apprenticed as a cabinet maker under Thomas Weafer, a company captain in the Irish Volunteers, who is subsequently killed in the 1916 Easter Rising. At the age of fourteen, he joins the Irish Volunteers in January 1915, and is posted to the 2nd Battalion of the Dublin Brigade. His training includes lectures on street fighting by James Connolly. During the 1916 rising he serves with the 2nd Battalion in Jacob’s biscuit factory under Thomas MacDonagh. At the surrender he is slipped out a factory window to safety by a priest who is acting as an intermediary. Arrested in his home a week later, he is held in Richmond Barracks with other youngsters, all of whom are released after an additional week. Active in the post-rising reorganisation of the Dublin Brigade, he claims to have voted twenty times for Sinn Féin candidates in the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland.
In November 1919, Byrne is recruited to an elite counter-intelligence squad of the Dublin Brigade, whose primary mission is the assassination of plainclothes detectives of the Dublin Metropolitan Police’s (DMP) political (‘G’) division. He participates in the attempted ambush of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, John French, at Ashtown, Dublin, on December 19, 1919, a combined operation of the Dublin and the 3rd Tipperary brigades. In March 1920, he leaves his civilian employment with the Irish Woodworkers, Crow Street, when the squad is constituted as a full-time, paid, GHQ guard, under direct orders from Michael Collins. Dubbed “The Twelve Apostles,” the squad also includes James Slattery, a workmate of Byrne since their apprenticeships. For the duration of the Irish War of Independence, Byrne takes part in the stakeouts and killings of police detectives and military intelligence agents. His witness statement to the Bureau of Military History recounts his participation in some fifteen such operations. On Bloody Sunday he commands an IRA detail that kills two of the “Cairo Gang“ agents in their boarding house at 38 Upper Mount Street on November 21, 1920. He takes part in The Custom House raid on May 25, 1921.
Owing largely to his devoted allegiance to Collins, Byrne supports the Anglo–Irish Treaty of December 1921, regarding it as a stepping stone to complete independence. Enlisting in the National Army, he serves in the Dublin Guard. Promoted five times from January 1922 to February 1923, he rises in rank from company sergeant to commandant. He is OC of the guard at the handover of Dublin Castle from British to Irish authority on January 16, 1922. During ensuing months he commands guard details at government buildings and the Bank of Ireland, College Green, Dublin. In March 1922, he foils an attempt by Anti-Treaty forces to seize the bank with the aid of mutinous soldiers within the building’s guard. Having displayed courage and presence of mind throughout the incident, he is promoted captain in the field. Resenting the role given to ex-British-army officers in the National Army, and feeling that the political elite of the Free State are betraying the national interest, he is among the group of officers involved in the failed army mutiny of 1924, and accordingly is forced to resign his commission on March 21. He then works as a carpenter on the industrial staff of the Office of Public Works (OPW), and in the post office stores, St. John’s Road, Kilmainham, Dublin, until his retirement.
Byrne is a founding member of both the Association of Dublin Brigades and the 1916–1921 Club. Long lived, and a willing raconteur with a colourful turn of phrase, he becomes probably the best known of Collins’s squad (of which he is the last surviving member), granting many interviews to journalists and historians. He expresses no misgivings about his role as a revolutionary hit man, arguing the necessity of the ruthless methods employed, which deterred potential informers, and eventually won the struggle by crippling British intelligence.
Byrne lives in Dublin at 59 Blessington Street, and later at 227 Errigal Road, Drimnagh. His last address is 25 Lein Road, Artane. His wife Eileen predeceases him. He dies on December 13, 1992, survived by two daughters and one son. He is buried at Balgriffin Cemetery, Balgriffin, County Dublin.
(From: “Byrne, Vincent (‘Vinnie’)” by Lawrence William White and Pauric J. Dempsey, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
During the Irish Confederate Wars, like most Irish Catholics, O’Brien sides with Confederate Ireland. His services to the Catholic Confederation are highly valued by the Supreme Council. He treats the wounded and supports Confederate soldiers throughout the conflict. He is against a peace treaty that does not guarantee Catholic freedom of worship in Ireland and in 1648 signs the declaration against the Confederate’s truce with Murrough O’Brien, 1st Earl of Inchiquin, who has committed atrocities such as the Sack of Cashel against Catholic clergy and civilians, and the declaration against the Protestant royalist leader, James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond, in 1650 who, due to his failure to resist the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland is not deemed fit to command Catholic troops. He is one of the prelates, who, in August 1650 offers the Protectorate of Ireland to Charles IV, Duke of Lorraine.
In 1651, Limerick is besieged and O’Brien urges a resistance that infuriates the Ormondists and Parliamentarians. Following surrender, he is found ministering to the wounded and ill inside a temporary plague hospital. As previously decided by the besieging army, O’Brien is denied quarter and protection. Along with Alderman Thomas Stritch and English Royalist officer Colonel Fennell, he is tried by a drumhead court-martial and sentenced to death by New Model Army General Henry Ireton. On October 30, 1651, O’Brien is first hanged at Gallows Green and then posthumously beheaded. His severed head is afterward displayed spiked upon the river gate of the city.
After the successful fight that is eventually spearheaded by Daniel O’Connell for Catholic emancipation between 1780 and 1829, interest revives as the Catholic Church in Ireland is rebuilding after three hundred years of being strictly illegal and underground. As a result, a series of re-publications of primary sources relating to the period of the persecutions and meticulous comparisons against archival Government documents in London and Dublin from the same period are made by Daniel F. Moran and other historians.
The first Apostolic Process under Canon Law begins in Dublin in 1904, after which a positio is submitted to the Holy See.
In the February 12, 1915 Apostolic decree, In Hibernia, heroum nutrice, Pope Benedict XV formally authorizes the formal introduction of additional Causes for Roman Catholic Sainthood.
During a further Apostolic Process held in Dublin between 1917 and 1930 and against the backdrop of the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War, the evidence surrounding 260 alleged cases of Roman Catholic martyrdom are further investigated, after which the findings are again submitted to the Holy See.
On September 27, 1992, O’Brien and sixteen other Irish Catholic Martyrs are beatified by Pope John Paul II. June 20th, the anniversary of the 1584 execution of Elizabethan era martyr Dermot O’Hurley, is assigned as the feast day of all seventeen. A large backlighted portrait of him is on display in St. Michael’s Church, Cappamore, County Limerick, which depicts him during The Siege of Limerick.
After a period at the University of Göttingen, de Brún is appointed professor of mathematics at St. Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth, in 1914. In April 1945, he is elected by the Senate of the National University of Ireland to succeed John Hynes as President of University College, Galway, an office he holds until his retirement in 1959. His friend Thomas MacGreevy refers to de Brún as, “Rector Magnificus,” and praises his, “Olympian capacity to appreciate the most exalted works of art and literature, ancient and modern.”
The School of Mathematics, Mathematical Physics and Statistics is based in Áras de Brún, a building named in de Brún‘s honour. He subsequently becomes Chairman of the Arts Council of Ireland, a position he holds until his death in 1960. He also serves as chairman of the Council of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS).
De Brún is close friend of 1916 Easter Rising leader Seán Mac Diarmada and is deeply affected by the latter’s execution.
De Brún was a prolific writer of Irish poetry in the Irish language, including the well-known poem “Tháinig Long ó Valparaiso.” He further translates into Modern Irish many great works of the Western canon, including Homer‘s Iliad and Odyssey, Sophocles‘ Antigone and Oedipus Rex, and Plutarch‘s Parallel Lives, as well as French stage plays by Jean Racine and Dante Alighieri‘s Divine Comedy. With regards to his importance to modern literature in Irish, he is recently termed “one of the most distinguished literary figures of his time.”
De Brún purchases land at Dunquin in the Dingle PeninsulaGaeltacht. In the 1920s, he also builds a house there known as Tigh na Cille, where his sister and her children often visit and stay at length. Through his literary mentorship of his niece, the future poet Máire Mhac an tSaoi, he has been credited with having an enormous influence upon the future development of modern literature in Irish.
After suffering a heart attack at his house at Seapoint, Dún Laoghaire, into which he had recently moved, de Brún dies on June 5, 1960, in St. Vincent’s nursing home, Leeson Street, Dublin.
Martin is born on July 23, 1921, in Ballylongford, County Kerry, to a middle-class family in which the children are raised speaking Irish at the dinner table. His parents, Conor and Katherine Fitzmaurice Martin, have five sons and five daughters. Four of the five sons become priests, including his younger brother, Francis Xavier Martin.
Martin participates in the research on the Dead Sea Scrolls and publishes 24 articles on Semitic palaeography. He does archaeological research and works extensively on the Byblos syllabary in Byblos, in Tyre, and in the Sinai Peninsula. He assists in his first exorcism while working in Egypt for archaeological research. In 1958, he publishes a work in two volumes, The Scribal Character of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In 1964, Martin requests a release from his vows and from the Jesuit Order. He receives a provisional release in May 1965 and a dispensation from his vows of poverty and obedience on June 30, 1965. Even if dispensed from his religious vow of chastity, he remains under the obligation of chastity if still an ordained secular priest. He maintains that he remains a priest, saying that he had received a dispensation from Paul VI to that effect.
Martin moves to New York City in 1966, working as a dishwasher, a waiter, and taxi driver, while continuing to write. He co-founds an antiques firm and is active in communications and media for the rest of his life.
In 1967, Martin receives his first Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1970, he publishes the book The Encounter: Religion in Crisis, winning the Choice Book Award of the American Library Association. He then publishes Three Popes and the Cardinal: The Church of Pius, John and Paul in its Encounter with Human History (1972) and Jesus Now (1973). In 1970, he becomes a naturalizedU.S. citizen.
In 1969, Martin receives a second Guggenheim Fellowship, allowing him to write his first of four bestsellers, Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Living Americans (1976). In the book, he calls himself an exorcist, claiming he assisted in several exorcisms. According to McManus Darraugh, William Peter Blatty “wrote a tirade against Malachi, saying his 1976 book was a fantasy, and he was just trying to cash in.” Darraugh also says that Martin became “an iconic person in the paranormal world.”
Martin is a periodic guest on Art Bell‘s radio program, Coast to Coast AM, between 1996 and 1998. The show continues to play tapes of his interviews on Halloween.
The Vatican restores Martin’s faculty to celebrate Mass in 1989, at his request. He is strongly supported by some Traditionalist Catholic sources and severely criticized by other sources, such as the National Catholic Reporter. He serves as a guest commentator for CNN during the live coverage of the visit of Pope John Paul II to the United States in October 1995.
On July 27, 1999, Martin dies in Manhattan of an intracerebral haemorrhage, four days after his 78th birthday. It is caused by a fall in his Manhattan apartment. The documentary Hostage to the Devil claims that Martin says he was pushed from a stool by a demonic force.
Mulvany is born in Moynalty, County Meath, 8 km (5 mi) north of Kells, on March 1, 1864, to James Mulvany and Mary Monaghan. He is ordained a priest of the Diocese of Meath on March 6, 1892.
Following his predecessors death, Pope Pius XI names him Bishop of Meath on April 12, 1929, and he is consecrated on June 30, with CardinalJoseph MacRory being the principal consecrator. He retains that position until his death.
At the time of his appointment, Mulvaney becomes involved with plans for a new cathedral for Mullingar and the Diocese of Meath to replace the aging Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (1836–1936). He takes the plans to Pope Pius XI, who is supportive and requests that the new building be dedicated as the Cathedral of Christ the King. Construction begins in 1932 and the building is completed in 1936.
Mulvany dies at the age of 75 as a result of hypertension and cerebral hemorrhage, in the Bishops Palace, Mullingar, on June 16, 1943. His death is registered on June 24, 1943, by Margaret Walsh, a nurse who is present at his death. He is buried in the grounds of the Cathedral of Christ the King, Mullingar.
Gwynn is educated at St. Columba’s College, Dublin, and Trinity College Dublin. In 1896 he heads the list of Foundation Scholars in Classics at TCD. In 1898 he graduates Bachelor of Arts, gaining a “first of firsts” with gold medals in Classics and Modern Literature.
In 1900, along with his brother Edward Gwynn and others, Gwynn founds the Social Services (Tenements) Company to provide housing for poor families in Dublin. He subsequently spends many periods working with the poor in Dublin’s slums. He is instrumental in founding the Trinity Mission, which serves slum dwellers in Belfast, and is for many years actively involved in the Dublin University Fukien Mission (later the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission), eventually becoming its chairman and president.
He is ordained deacon in 1906, achieving full priesthood two years later. He is the only one of Rev. John Gwynn’s sons to be ordained, and he never serves in a parish. That same year, he proceeds to MA and is elected a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin.
In 1907 Gwynn is appointed Lecturer in Divinity and Tutor. He remains Lecturer in Divinity until 1919 and continues as Tutor until 1937. He is appointed Chaplain of TCD in 1911, retaining that post until 1919.
In January 1909 he is appointed Acting Warden of his old school, St. Columba’s College, which is facing a major financial crisis. He keeps the institution afloat until a new warden is appointed.
Horrified by the brutality of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) toward strikers during the lockout in 1913, Gwynn becomes a prominent advocate of the workers’ cause and joins the Industrial Peace Committee. On November 12, 1913, when the committee is barred from holding its meeting at the Mansion House, he invites the members to his college rooms at No. 40, New Square. It is this meeting that leads to the foundation of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA). In their history of Trinity College McDowell and Webb observe, “Gwynn’s support for the ‘army’ concept was based simply on the idea that military-style discipline would keep unemployed men fit and give them self-respect. ‘Sancta simplicitas!'”
In 1914 Gwynn marries Dr. Eileen Gertrude Glenn, a rector’s daughter from Pomeroy, County Tyrone. They have six children.
In 1916 Gwynn is appointed Professor of Biblical Greek, a post he holds for forty years (1916-56). During those four decades, he holds a number of other, often overlapping, academic appointments at the university, including Professor of Hebrew (1920-37), Registrar (1941), Vice-Provost (1941-43), Senior Lecturer (1944-50), and Senior Tutor (1950-56). In 1937 he is co-opted to Senior Fellowship. He is made an honorary fellow in 1958.
When the Dublin University Fabian Society is formed. Gwynn becomes one of its vice-presidents.
Like several of his brothers, Gwynn is a fine cricket player, in his youth captaining both his school XI and the Dublin University XI. A right-handed batsman and right-arm slow bowler, he plays once for the Ireland cricket team in 1901. He also plays four first-class matches for Dublin University in 1895. He retains a lifelong interest in the sport, and John V. Luce portrays him as President of the Dublin University Cricket Club, with his “tall rangy figure … a familiar sight at matches in College Park.”
Gwynn is tall and athletic, but in later life suffers from deafness. To aid his hearing he carries a large ear trumpet with him and this, together with his height and glowing white hair, makes him an impressive and instantly recognizable figure around Trinity College. In character, he is patient, kind and wise, but at the same time resolute and tough. His nephew-in-law, the late Archbishop of Armagh, George Simms, remarks that his “gentle humility inspired trust and drew confidences, his stubborn integrity brought surprises for those who mistook charity for easy-going indifference,” and spoke of his “Athanasian courage.”
Gwynn dies in Dublin at the age of 85 on June 25, 1962. He is buried in Whitechurch churchyard.
Whelan is the fourth of seven children born to John and Elizabeth Whelan. His father is an accomplished centre half-back for Dublin club Brunswick and is instrumental in winning the FAI Junior Shield in 1924. His mother is an avid Shamrock Rovers supporter. His father dies in 1943 when Whelan is just eight years old.
Whelan begins his career at the age of twelve when he joins Home Farm before joining Manchester United as an 18-year-old in 1953. He is capped four times for the Republic of Ireland national football team, including a surprising 4–1 victory against Holland in Rotterdam in 1956, but does not score. His brother John plays for Shamrock Rovers and Drumcondra and his eldest brother Christy plays for Transport.
Whelan makes his first appearance for Manchester United during the 1954–55 season and quickly becomes a regular first-team player. He goes on to make 98 first-team appearances in four seasons at United, scoring 52 goals. He is United’s top scorer in the 1956–57 season, scoring 26 goals in the First Division and 33 in all competitions as United wins their second successive league title and reaches the semi-finals of the 1957-58 European Cup. He also gives a commanding display in the 1957 FA Cup final despite losing 2–1 to Aston Villa. Such is the strength of the competition in the United first team that he is soon being kept out of the side by Bobby Charlton. He is a traveling reserve for United’s ill-fated European Cup match against Red Star Belgrade in Belgrade on February 6, 1958, and is one of eight players to die in the subsequent air crash that destroys Matt Busby‘s young team and claims twenty-three lives. Fellow Irishman Harry Gregg, United’s goalkeeper and a survivor and hero of the Munich air crash, recalls Whelan’s last words as the plane is attempting take-off for the third and final time as “Well, if this is the time, then I’m ready.”
Thousands attend Whelan’s funeral on February 12 in St. Peter’s Church, Phibsborough, Dublin, and line the streets as the funeral procession makes its way to his burial-place in Glasnevin Cemetery. In December 2006 Dublin Corporation unveils a commemorative plaque on a bridge at Faussagh Road, Cabra, which was renamed Liam Whelan Bridge.
Although of a cheerful disposition, Whelan is also modest and shy by nature, and a quietly devout Catholic. He has a particular dislike of swearing and tends to fix a look of pained disappointment on teammates who use bad language. Nobby Stiles admits that he “would rather be caught swearing by the pope than by Billy Whelan.” His religious devotion regularly fuels rumours that he is considering being a priest, although at the time of his death he is engaged to be married to Ruby McCullough.
seamus dubhghaill 