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Death of Basil Maturin, Catholic Priest & Writer

Basil William Maturin, Irish-born Anglican priest, preacher and writer who later converts to Catholicism, dies aboard the RMS Lusitania after it is torpedoed by a German U-boat and sinks on May 7, 1915.

Maturin is born on February 15, 1847, at All Saints’ vicarage, Grangegorman, Dublin, the third of the ten children of the Rev. William Basil Maturin and his wife, Jane Cooke (née Beatty). The Maturins, a prominent Anglo-Irish family of Huguenot ancestry, have produced many influential Church of Ireland clergymen over the generations, the most notable being Maturin’s grandfather, the writer Charles Robert Maturin. His own father, whose tractarian convictions are considered too “high church” for many in Dublin, is a somewhat controversial figure in the church. Religion plays a huge part in the Maturin children’s lives. Two of his brothers enter the church and two sisters become nuns. As a young man, he assists in training the choir and playing the organ at his father’s church. Educated at home and at a Dublin day school, he goes on to attend Trinity College Dublin (TCD), from where he graduates BA in 1870.

Though he initially intends to make a career in the army as an engineer, a severe attack of scarlet fever around 1868, and the death of his brother Arthur, changes his outlook on life, and he decides to become a clergyman. He is ordained a deacon in 1870 and later that year goes as a curate to Peterstow, Herefordshire, England, where his father’s friend Dr. John Jebb is rector. He subsequently joins the Society of St. John the Evangelist, entering the novitiate at Cowley, Oxford, in February 1873. As a Cowley father he is sent in 1876 to establish a mission in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he works as an assistant priest and, from 1881, as rector of Saint Clement’s Church. Though he proves to be an effective clergyman and popular preacher, his growing religious doubts and increasing interest in Catholicism results in his returning to Oxford in 1888. Then follows a six-month visit in 1889–90 to a society house in Cape Town, South Africa. He returns to Britain, where he preaches, and conducts retreats around the country and occasionally on the continent. In 1896 he produces the first in a series of religious publications, Some Principles and Practices of Spiritual Life.

Maturin’s continuing religious anxieties eventually lead to his conversion to Catholicism on March 5, 1897, at the Jesuit Beaumont College outside London. He then studies theology at the Canadian College, Rome, and is ordained there in 1898. Following his return to England he lives initially at Archbishop’s House, Westminster, and undertakes missionary work. He then serves at St. Mary’s, Cadogan Street, in 1901. He becomes parish priest of Pimlico and, in 1905, having joined the newly established Society of Westminster Diocesan Missionaries, organises the opening of St. Margaret’s chapel on St. Leonard’s Street, where huge crowds come to hear his sermons. As a Catholic priest, he returns to Ireland on several occasions, and frequently preaches at the Carmelite church, Clarendon Street, Dublin. His attempt, at the age of sixty-three, to enter into monastic life at the Benedictine monastery at Downside, in 1910, proves unsuccessful. He returns to London and begins working in St. James’s, Spanish Place, while maintaining his preaching commitments. He continues to write, publishing Self-Knowledge and Self-Discipline (1905), Laws of the Spiritual Life (1907) and his autobiographical The Price of Unity (1912), in which he traces his gradual move toward Catholicism. His sermons, like his approach when hearing confessions, are said to have much appeal for their integrity. Despite his influence as a preacher, he seems often feel that his life and vocation lack real purpose and at times he suffers from depression.

After a brief visit to the United States in 1913, Maturin accepts the post of Catholic chaplain at the University of Oxford in 1914. He travels to New York in 1915 and, after preaching there throughout the spring, boards the RMS Lusitania in May to return to England. The liner is torpedoed and sinks on May 7, 1915, off the southern coast of Ireland. He assists his fellow passengers in the last minutes, and it is presumed that he refuses a life jacket, as they are in short supply. His body washes ashore. A service is held for him at Westminster Cathedral.

Maturin’s friend Wilfrid Philip Ward edits a collection of his spiritual writings, Sermons and Sermon Notes, in 1916.

(From: “Maturin, Basil William” by Frances Clarke, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Sinking of the British Steamship Centurion

The U-20, a German U-boat under the command of  Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger, sinks the British steamship Centurion off the southeast coast of Ireland on May 6, 1915. This tragic event has far-reaching consequences and shapes the course of World War I.

The Centurion is traveling through the waters southeast of Ireland when a torpedo fired from the U-20 hits the vessel, causing it to rapidly sink. This act of aggression results in the loss of many innocent lives and sends shockwaves throughout the world.

At the time of the incident, World War I is in full swing. Germany, engaged in submarine warfare, seeks to disrupt British supply lines and cut off its access to vital resources. The sinking of merchant ships, regardless of their civilian nature, is part of Germany’s strategy to weaken the enemy. The attack on the Centurion is just one of many instances in which German submarines target and sink British vessels.

A difference in this particular incident as opposed to other similar incidents is the widespread outrage it triggers. The Centurion is an unarmed cargo ship carrying civilian goods, and its destruction is seen as a ruthless and unjustifiable act. The loss of civilian lives and the callousness with which the submarine attack is executed causes public opinion to turn against Germany.

The sinking highlights the growing concern over unrestricted submarine warfare and its impact on civilian populations. It pushes the United States, which at the time is neutral, closer to entering the war on the side of the Allies. The incident also plays a significant role in shaping public opinion in other neutral countries, putting pressure on Germany to reconsider its aggressive tactics.

In response to international outrage, Germany initially defends its actions, arguing that the Centurion was carrying contraband cargo. However, under mounting pressure, the German government eventually backs down and pledges to modify its submarine warfare policies to reduce the risk to civilian lives. This move is meant to appease neutral countries and prevent the United States from entering the war.

The sinking of the Centurion has a lasting impact on maritime warfare. The incident leads to the introduction of new rules of engagement, such as the requirement for submarines to surface and warn civilian vessels before attacking. These rules aim to minimize civilian casualties and reduce the risk of similar tragedies occurring in the future.

Moreover, the sinking serves as a catalyst for technological advancements in submarine warfare. Navies worldwide realize the need for more sophisticated anti-submarine measures and began developing detection systems and tactics to counter the stealth of submarines. This incident marks a turning point in the evolution of naval warfare, as nations seek to adapt and respond to the new challenges posed by underwater vessels.

The following day, May 7, 1915, the U-20 sinks the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania off the southern coast of Ireland. The liner sinks in eighteen minutes with 1,197 casualties. The wreck lies in 300 feet of water.

On November 4, 1916, U-20 becomes grounded on the Danish coast south of Vrist, after suffering damage to its engines. Her crew attempts to destroy her with explosives the following day, succeeding only in damaging the boat’s bow but making it effectively inoperative as a warship.

The U-20 remains on the beach until 1925 when the Danish government blows it up in a “spectacular explosion.” The Danish navy removes the deck gun and makes it unserviceable by cutting holes in vital parts. The gun is kept in the naval stores at Holmen, Copenhagen for almost 80 years. The conning tower is removed and placed on the front lawn of the local museum Strandingsmuseum St. George Thorsminde, where it remains today.

(Pictured: The U-20, second from left, at Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, on February 17, 1914)


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Death of Bill O’Herlihy, Broadcaster & Public Relations Executive

Bill O’Herlihy, Irish television broadcaster and public relations executive, dies in Dublin on May 25, 2015. He is best known for his broadcasts for Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), primarily in the sporting arena.

Born and raised in Glasheen in Cork, County Cork, O’Herlihy is the son of a local government official and the grandson of William O’Herlihy, a news editor for The Cork Examiner. He is educated at Glasheen boys’ national school and later at St. Finbarr’s College, Farranferris.

After finishing his schooling at fifteen, O’Herlihy follows his grandfather into journalism and secures a job in the reading room of The Cork Examiner. He is only seventeen years-old when he subsequently becomes sub-editor of the Evening Echo, a position he holds for five years. He also graduates to the positions of news, features and sports reporter.

In the early 1960s O’Herlihy begins his broadcasting career when he starts to do local association football reports from Cork for Radio Éireann. In 1965, he makes his first television broadcast in a programme commemorating the sinking of the RMS Lusitania off the Cork coast. After three years O’Herlihy is asked to join RTÉ’s current affairs programme 7 Days to add the required field-reporting skills to the studio-based interviews. The programme has a reputation for its hard-hitting investigative reporting, and he reports on many varying stories from illegal fishing in Cork to the outbreak of the crisis in Northern Ireland. In November 1970, the 7 Days programme comes into controversy when O’Herlihy reports a story on illegal money lending. The report is unconventional as it is one of the first television pieces to use hidden cameras, it claims the government is not responding to illegal moneylending. A tribunal of inquiry follows, and O’Herlihy is forced to move away from current affairs.

Following this controversy, while O’Herlihy is not sacked as he has fifteen months left on his contract with RTÉ, he is moved to the RTÉ Sports department. There he works under Michael O’Hehir, who dislikes him and his broadcasting style. In spite of this O’Herlihy fronts RTÉ’s television coverage of the Olympic Games that year. He also becomes involved in the production of various sports programmes.

O’Herlihy is not long in the RTÉ Sports department when he becomes a regular presenter for such programmes as Sunday Sport and Sports Stadium. In 1978 he becomes RTÉ Soccer host alongside Eamon Dunphy and, in 1984, Johnny Giles joins the panel and Liam Brady follows in 1998. Since 1974 O’Herlihy becomes RTÉ’s chief sports presenter for such events as all Olympic Games until 2012, FIFA World Cups until 2014, UEFA European Football Championships until 2012 and European and World Track and Field Championships. He hosts RTÉ highlights of the Ryder Cup in 2006 when it is at the K Club in County Kildare and continues to present coverage of Ireland’s soccer internationals for RTÉ, along with Dunphy, Giles and Brady.

O’Herlihy hosts RTÉ’s coverage of rugby union in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, when RTÉ attains the rights to cover the English Premier League in 1992, Tom McGurk takes over as host of RTÉ’s coverage of rugby union. O’Herlihy covers the Premier League, Irish Internationals and The Champions League before dropping the Premier League in 2008. He continues to cover the Olympic Games and International Athletic Championships such as the European and World Athletics. He presents the first Rugby World Cup on RTÉ television in 1987 and, with Jim Carney, co-presents the first edition of The Sunday Game in 1979.

In 2012, while covering Chloe Magee‘s progress at the 2012 Summer Olympics O’Herlihy remarks that badminton was once considered “a mainly Protestant sport.” RTÉ subsequently receives a number of complaints, and while Magee criticises the remarks, the argument is made that the incident inadvertently reflected a complex historical reality.

O’Herlihy presents RTÉ Sport‘s coverage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, his ninth FIFA World Cup. He fronts 18 European Championships and FIFA World Cups for RTÉ, the last of which comes in 2014. This proves to be the final tournament with O’Herlihy at the helm. He retires at its conclusion and dies the following year.

O’Herlihy attends the 12th Irish Film & Television Awards on Sunday, May 24, 2015. He dies peacefully in his sleep at his home the following day at the age of 76 nearly a year after his retirement. He is survived by wife Hillary and daughters Jill and Sally. Giles, Brady and Dunphy appear on The Late Late Show in tribute later that week. At the time of his death O’Herlihy is working on a sports version of Reeling in the Years, which RTÉ immediately cancels.


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Birth of Charles Maturin, Clergyman, Playwright & Novelist

Charles Robert Maturin, also known as C. R. Maturin, an Irish Protestant clergyman ordained in the Church of Ireland and a writer of Gothic plays and novels, is born in Dublin on September 25, 1780. His best-known work is the novel Melmoth the Wanderer.

Maturin is descended from Huguenots who found shelter in Ireland, one of whom is Gabriel Jacques Maturin who becomes Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, after Jonathan Swift in 1745. He attends Trinity College Dublin. Shortly after being ordained as curate of Loughrea, County Galway, in 1803, he moves back to Dublin as curate of St. Peter’s Church. He lives in York Street with his father William, a Post Office official, and his mother, Fedelia Watson. He marries the acclaimed singer Henrietta Kingsbury on October 7, 1804.

Maturin’s first three works are Gothic novels published under the pseudonym Dennis Jasper Murphy and are critical and commercial failures. They do, however, catch the attention of Sir Walter Scott, who recommends Maturin’s work to Lord Byron. With their help, his play Bertram is staged in 1816 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane for 22 nights, with Edmund Kean starring in the lead role as Bertram. Financial success, however, eludes Maturin, as the play’s run coincides with his father’s unemployment and another relative’s bankruptcy, both of them assisted by the fledgling writer. To make matters worse, Samuel Taylor Coleridge publicly denounces the play as dull and loathsome, and “melancholy proof of the depravation of the public mind,” going nearly so far as to decry it as atheistic.

The Church of Ireland takes note of these and earlier criticisms and, having discovered the identity of Bertram‘s author after Maturin had shed his nom de plume to collect the profits from the play, subsequently bar his further clerical advancement. Forced to support his wife and four children by writing on his curate salary of £80-90 per annum, compared to the £1000 he made for Bertram, he switches back from playwright to novelist after a string of his plays meet with failure. He produces several novels in addition to Melmoth the Wanderer, including some on Irish subjects and The Albigenses, a historical novel which features werewolves. Various poems have also been ascribed to Maturin on dubious grounds and appear to be the work of others. The prize-winning “Lines on the Battle of Waterloo” is published in 1816 under the name of the university graduate John Shee. “The Universe” appears with Maturin’s name on the title page in 1821 but is now thought to be almost completely the work of James Wills.

The exaggerated effectiveness of Maturin’s preaching can be gauged from the two series of sermons that he publishes. On the occasion of the death of Princess Charlotte, he declares, “Life is full of death; the steps of the living cannot press the earth without disturbing the ashes of the dead – we walk upon our ancestors – the globe itself is one vast churchyard.” A contemporary account records that there had seldom been seen such crowds at St Peter’s. “Despite the severe weather, people of all persuasions flocked to the church and listened spellbound to this prince of preachers. In his obituary it is said that ‘did he leave no other monument whereon to rest his fame, these sermons alone would be sufficient.'”

Maturin dies in Dublin on October 30, 1824. A writer in the University Magazine later sums up his character as “eccentric almost to insanity and compounded of opposites – an insatiable reader of novels; an elegant preacher; an incessant dancer; a coxcomb in dress and manners.”

A sister of Maturin’s wife marries Charles Elgee, whose daughter, Jane Francesca, becomes the mother of Oscar Wilde. Thus, Charles Maturin is Oscar Wilde’s great-uncle by marriage. Wilde discards his own name and adopts the name of Maturin’s novel, Melmoth, during his exile in France.

Maturin’s eldest son, William Basil Kingsbury Maturin, follows him into the ministry, as do several of his grandsons. One of these, Basil W. Maturin, dies in the sinking of RMS Lusitania on May 7, 1915. The second son is Edward Maturin, who emigrates to the United States and becomes a novelist and poet there.


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Birth of Otto Moses Jaffe, Lord Mayor of Belfast

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Sir Otto Moses Jaffe, German-born British businessman who is twice elected Lord Mayor of Belfast, is born in Hamburg on August 13, 1846. He is the first non-Protestant to hold the office of Lord Mayor of Belfast.

Jaffe is born into a Jewish family, one of four boys and five girls born to Daniel Joseph and Frederiké Jaffe. In 1852, his parents bring their family to Belfast. His father, along with his older brothers, Martin, John and Alfred, set up a business exporting linen. He is educated at Mr. Tate’s school in Holywood, County Down, and later in Hamburg and Switzerland.

Jaffe marries Paula Hertz, daughter of Moritz Hertz from Braunschweig, on March 8, 1879. They have two sons, Arthur Daniel and William Edward Berthold Jaffe. Daniel Joseph Jaffé is his nephew, son of his brother Martin.

From 1867 to 1877 Jaffe lives and works in New York. In 1877, his brothers retire so he returns to Belfast to head the family business, The Jaffe Brothers, at Bedford Street. He builds it up to become the largest linen exporter in Ireland. He is a member of the Belfast Harbour Commission and becomes a naturalised citizen in 1888. In 1894, he successfully agitates for the reporting and destruction of shipwrecks in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Jaffe is a Justice of the Peace, a governor of the Royal Hospital, a member of the Irish Technical Education Board and a member of the Senate of Queen’s College, which later becomes Queen’s University Belfast. He is the German consul in Belfast. He is an active member of the committee which gets the Public Libraries Act extended to Belfast, leading to the first free library being established there. In 1910 he erects the Jaffe Spinning Mill on the Newtownards Road, also known as Strand Spinning. This provides work for 350 people, rising to 650 in 1914 when the company expands to make munitions. He is lavishly charitable and contributes to Queen’s College.

Jaffe takes a keen interest in the Jewish community of Belfast. He is life-president of the Belfast Hebrew Congregation, which worships at the Great Victoria Street, Belfast synagogue. His father established it on July 7, 1871. Between 1871 and 1903 the congregation increases from fifty-five to over a thousand. He pays most of the £4,000 cost of building the synagogue in Annesley Street. He opens it in 1904 wearing his mayoral regalia. Three years later with his wife, they set up the Jaffe Public Elementary School on the Cliftonville Road.

Jaffe is a member of the Irish Unionist Party. He represents St. Anne’s Ward for the Belfast Corporation in 1894 and is elected Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1899. As mayor, he launches an appeal for the dependents of soldiers fighting in the Second Boer War. On March 5, 1900, he is knighted at Dublin Castle by George Cadogan, 5th Earl Cadogan, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. In 1901 he is High Sheriff of Belfast and in 1904 is again elected Lord Mayor.

The outbreak of war sees anti-German sentiment and when the RMS Lusitania passenger liner is torpedoed by a German U-boat of the coast of County Cork on May 7, 1915, resulting in the death of 1,000 people, anti-German feeling in Britain and Ireland rise to breaking point. Even though he is loyal to the Crown, and his eldest son Arthur and his nephew are serving in the British Army, Jaffe is accused of being a German spy. Society women refuse support for the Children’s Hospital so long as Jaffe and his wife remain on the board. He is “overwhelmed with pain and sorrow.”

After twenty-five years of service, Jaffe resigns his post as Alderman of Windsor Ward for Belfast City Council in June 1916 when he is almost 70 years of age and takes up residence in London, where he dies on April 29, 1929. Lady Jaffe is too ill to attend his funeral, and she dies a few months later, in August 1929.


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Birth of Sculptor Jerome Connor

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Jerome Connor, recognized world-class Irish sculptor, is born on February 23, 1874, in Coumduff, Annascaul, County Kerry.

In 1888, Connor emigrates to Holyoke, Massachusetts. His father is a stonemason, which leads to Connor’s jobs in New York as a sign painter, stonecutter, bronze founder and machinist. Inspired by his father’s work and his own experience, he would steal his father’s chisels as a child and carve figures into rocks.

It is believed Connor possibly assisted in the manufacture of bronzes such as the Civil War monument in Town Green in South Hadley, Massachusetts erected in 1896 and The Court of Neptune Fountain at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., completed in 1898.

Connor joins the Roycroft arts community in 1899 where he assists with blacksmithing and later starts creating terracotta busts and reliefs. Eventually he is recognized as Roycroft’s sculptor-in-residence.

After four years at Roycroft, Connor then works with Gustav Stickley and becomes well known as a sculptor being commissioned to create civic commissions in bronze for placement in Washington, D.C., Syracuse, East Aurora, New York, San Francisco, and in his native Ireland. In 1910, he establishes his own studio in Washington, D.C. From 1902 until his death, he produces scores of designs ranging from small portrait heads to relief panels to large civic commissions realized in bronze.

Connor is a self-taught artist who is highly regarded in the United States where most of his public works can be seen. He appears to be heavily influenced by the work of Irish American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. He uses the human figure to give expression to emotions, values and ideals. Many of the commissions he receives are for civic memorials and secular figures which he casts in bronze, a pronounced departure from the Irish tradition of stone carved, church sponsored works.

Connor’s best-known work is Nuns of the Battlefield located at the intersection of Rhode Island Avenue NW, M Street and Connecticut Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. It serves as a tribute to the over six hundred nuns who nursed soldiers of both armies during the American Civil War and is one of two monuments in the District that represent women’s roles in the Civil War. The sculpture is authorized by the United States Congress on March 29, 1918, with the agreement that the government will not fund it. The Ancient Order of Hibernians raises $50,000 for the project and Connor is selected since he focuses on Irish Catholic themes, being one himself. Connor, however, ends up suing the Order for nonpayment.

Connor works in the United States until 1925 at which time he moves to Dublin and opens his own studio but suffers from lack of financial support and patrons. In 1926 he is contacted by Roycroft and asked to design and cast a statue of Elbert Hubbard who, with his wife Alice, had died in the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. It is unveiled in 1930 and today stands on the lawn of East Aurora’s Middle School across the street from the Roycroft Chapel building.

While working on the Hubbard statue, Connor receives a commission to create a memorial for all the RMS Lusitania victims. It is to be erected in Cobh, County Cork where many of the victims are buried. The project is initiated by the New York Memorial Committee, headed by William Henry Vanderbilt whose father, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, perished on the RMS Lusitania. He dies before the memorial is completed and based on Connor’s design its installation falls to another Irish artist.

Jerome Connor dies on August 21, 1943, of heart failure and reputably in poverty. There is a now a “Jerome Connor Place” in Dublin and around the corner there is a plaque in his honour on Infirmary Road, overlooking Dublin’s Phoenix Park, his favourite place.


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Sinking of the SS Isolda

isoldaThe Irish lightship tender SS Isolda, which is resupplying lighthouses off the coast of County Wexford, is bombed and sunk by a German Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor on December 19, 1940 despite Irish neutrality. Six sailors are killed.

The lightships provide a vitally important service to maritime traffic for over two centuries. People live aboard these ships that anchor stationary at sea, providing a beacon in the dark for vessels that navigate the more treacherous parts of the Irish coast. These ships are faithfully assisted by ships that resupply them and facilitate crew changes. The SS Isolda is one such ship.

Danger in the waters around Ireland greatly increase during World War II. The Battle for the Atlantic is raging and Ireland’s location near important shipping lanes places Irish vessels right in the middle of a conflict zone. As a result, many casualties are incurred on Irish ships despite their position of neutrality.

The SS Isolda is a lightship tender owned by the Commissioners of Irish Lights. The lightship service is considered neutral and the ship has “Lighthouse Service” painted in large letters on both sides of the hull.

On December 19, 1940 she sails out from Rosslare Harbour heading to re-supply nearby lightships with relief crews and Christmas provisions. After placing the first crew at the lightship Barrels she then heads towards her next stop, the lightship Coningbeg. She does not make it very far as three miles out she is attacked from the air.

A German Condor flies over and drops the first bomb on the ship. The plane circles around and drops a second bomb, sealing the ships fate. Realising the SS Isolda is doomed, Captain Albert Bestic gives orders to abandon ship. Back on shore observers at the army lookout post at Carnsore Point look on helplessly at the carnage. The next day the German High Command admits that it is a German aircraft that had bombed the SS Isolda.

Survivors are picked up by boat and brought into Kilmore Quay, County Wexford. Six of the crew die and seven are wounded. Captain Bestic is among the survivors. This is not his first brush with death as he survived the sinking of the ill-fated RMS Lusitania 25 years earlier when it was torpedoed by a German U-boat.

(From: “Remembering the SS Isolda and her crew | Lost December 19th 1940” by Ann Robinson, December 19, 2017, http://coastmonkey.ie/ss-isolda-1940 | Pictured: The Ship – SS Isolda being bombed – Painting By Kenneth King)


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National Gallery of Ireland Act, 1854

A statutory provision, the National Gallery of Ireland Act, 1854, is made on August 10, 1854, for the establishment of a national gallery of paintings, sculpture, and fine arts in Ireland.

The National Gallery of Ireland, which opens its doors ten years later, houses the national collection of Irish and European art. It is located in the centre of Dublin with one entrance on Merrion Square, beside Leinster House, and another on Clare Street. The Gallery has an extensive, representative collection of Irish painting and is also notable for its Italian Baroque and Dutch masters painting.

The façade of the National Gallery copies the Natural History building of the National Museum of Ireland which is already planned for the facing flank of Leinster House. The building itself is designed by Francis Fowke, based on early plans by Charles Lanyon.

The Gallery is unlucky not to have been founded around an existing collection, but through diligent and skillful purchase, by the time it opens it has 125 paintings. In 1866 an annual purchase grant is established and by 1891 space is already limited. In 1897, the Dowager Countess of Milltown indicates her intention of donating the contents of Russborough House to the Gallery. This gift includes about 223 paintings, 48 pieces of sculpture, 33 engravings, much silver, furniture and a library, and prompts construction from 1899 to 1903 of what is now called the Milltown Wing, designed by Thomas Newenham Deane.

At around this time Henry Vaughan leaves 31 watercolours by J.M.W. Turner with the requirement that they can only be exhibited in January, this to protect them from the ill-effects of sunlight. Though modern lighting technology has made this stipulation unnecessary, the Gallery continues to restrict viewing of the Vaughan bequest to January and the exhibition is treated as something of an occasion.

Another substantial bequest comes with the untimely death in the sinking of the RMS Lusitania of Hugh Lane (1875–1915), since 1914 director of the Gallery. Not only does he leave a large collection of pictures, but he also leaves part of his residual estate, and the Lane Fund has continued to contribute to the purchase of art works to this day. In addition to his involvement in the Gallery, Hugh Lane has also hoped to found a gallery of modern art, something only realised after his death in Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane. George Bernard Shaw also makes a substantial bequest, leaving the Gallery a third of royalties of his estate in gratitude for the time he spent there as a youth.

The Gallery is again extended in 1962 with a new wing designed by Frank DuBerry of the Office of Public Works. This opens in 1968 and is now named the Beit Wing. In 1978 the Gallery receives from the government the paintings given to the nation by Alfred Chester Beatty and in 1987 the Sweeney bequest purchases fourteen works of art including paintings by Pablo Picasso and Jack Butler Yeats. The same year the Gallery is once again given some of the contents of Russborough House when Alfred Beit donates 17 masterpieces, including paintings by Diego Velázquez, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Jan Steen, Johannes Vermeer and Henry Raeburn.

In the 1990s a lost Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ, known through replicas, is discovered hanging in a Jesuit house of studies in Leeson Street in Dublin by Sergio Benedetti, senior conservator of the gallery. The Jesuits generously allow this painting to be exhibited in the Gallery and the discovery is the cause of national excitement. In 1997 Anne Yeats donates sketchbooks by her uncle Jack Yeats and the Gallery now includes a Yeats Museum. Denis Mahon, a well-known art critic, promises the Gallery part of his rich collection and eight painting from his promised bequest are on permanent display, including Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph by Guercino.


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Birth of Thomas Bodkin, Art Historian & Collector

Professor Thomas Patrick Bodkin, lawyer, art historian, art collector and curator, is born in Dublin on July 21, 1887. He serves as Director of the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin from 1927 to 1935 and founding Director of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham, England from 1935 until 1952, where he acquires the nucleus of the collection described by The Observer as “the last great art collection of the twentieth century.”

Bodkin is the eldest son of Matthias McDonnell Bodkin, a nationalist journalist, judge and Member of Parliament. Graduating from the Royal University of Ireland in 1908 he practises law from 1911 until 1916 while collecting art privately, influenced by his uncle Sir Hugh Lane. With the death of Lane in the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in 1915, Bodkin is charged with ensuring that Lane’s collection of art is displayed in Dublin, a dispute that would only finally be settled in 1957 and about which Bodkin is to write Hugh Lane and his Pictures in 1932.

Bodkin leaves the legal profession in 1916 to become a Governor of the National Gallery of Ireland, being appointed Director in 1927. He also serves in 1926 on the committee that commissions the design of the new coinage of the Republic of Ireland from Percy Metcalfe.

In 1935 Bodkin leaves Ireland upon being appointed Director of the newly established Barber Institute of Fine Arts and Barber Professor of Fine Art at the University of Birmingham. The funds available to the Barber Institute for the purchase of new works compare favourably even to some national museums and Bodkin is able to make a string of exceptional purchases in the depressed art market around the time of World War II. The collection that in 1935 numbers just seven works, by 1939 holds major pieces such as Tintoretto‘s Portrait of a Youth (1554), Simone Martini‘s St. John the Evangelist (1320), Nicolas Poussin‘s Tancred and Erminia (1634) and James Abbott McNeill Whistler‘s Symphony in White No. III (1867). Bodkin retires in 1952 but retains control over acquisitions until 1959. His successor as Director and Professor, Ellis Waterhouse, wistfully refers to Bodkin’s wayward later purchases as “Acts of Bod.”

Bodkin is also an active broadcaster and author, publishing personal reminiscences and translations of modern French poetry as well as works of art history and criticism. In particular, his The Approach to Painting (1927), an introduction for a popular audience, runs through many editions over the succeeding thirty years.

A few years before his death Bodkin appears on the BBC panel show Animal, Vegetable or Mineral? identifying curiosities from around the world, along with museum curator Hugh Shortt and archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler.

Bodkin is awarded the Civil Division of the Order of St. Gregory the Great for services to his church. A bust of Bodkin, previously exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1958, is donated to the Barber Institute of Fine Arts by its sculptor, Sir Charles Wheeler, President of the Royal Academy and a personal friend of Bodkin’s, on the latter’s death.

Bodkin is the subject of This Is Your Life in March 1960 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC’s Costa Green Studios in Birmingham.

Thomas Bodkin dies in Birmingham, England on April 24, 1961. His remains are interred in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.


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The Sinking of the RMS Lusitania

The Cunard ocean liner RMS Lusitania is sunk by German U-boatU-20 eleven miles off the Old Head of Kinsale on May 7, 1915 during World War I.

On the morning of May 6, RMS Lusitania is 750 miles west of southern Ireland. By 5:00 AM on May 7 she reaches a point 120 miles west southwest of Fastnet Rock off the southern tip of Ireland, where she meets the patrolling boarding vesselPartridge. By 6:00 AM, heavy fog has arrived and extra lookouts are posted. As the ship comes closer to Ireland, Captain William Thomas Turner orders depth soundings to be made and at 8:00 AM for speed to be reduced to eighteen knots, then to 15 knots and for the foghorn to be sounded. Some of the passengers are disturbed that the ship appears to be advertising her presence. By 10:00 AM the fog begins to lift and by noon it has been replaced by bright sunshine over a clear smooth sea. The RMS Lusitania increases speed to 18 knots.

U-20 surfaces at 12:45 PM as visibility is now excellent. At 1:20 PM something is sighted and Kapitänleutnant  Walther Schwieger is summoned to the conning tower. At first it appears to be several ships because of the number of funnels and masts, but this resolves into one large steamer appearing over the horizon. At 1:25 PM the submarine submerges to periscope depth of 11 metres and sets a course to intercept the liner at her maximum submerged speed of 9 knots. When the ships have closed to 2 miles RMS Lusitania turns away. Schwieger fears he has lost his target, but she turns again, this time onto a near ideal course to bring her into position for an attack. At 2:10 PM with the target at 700m range he orders one gyroscopic torpedo to be fired, set to run at a depth of three metres.

The U-20‘s torpedo officer, Raimund Weisbach, views the destruction through the vessel’s periscope and feels the explosion is unusually severe. Within six minutes, RMS Lusitania‘s forecastle begins to submerge.

On board the RMS Lusitania, Leslie Morton, an eighteen-year-old lookout at the bow, spots thin lines of foam racing toward the ship. He shouts, “Torpedoes coming on the starboard side!” through a megaphone, thinking the bubbles come from two projectiles. The torpedo strikes RMS Lusitania under the bridge, sending a plume of debris, steel plating and water upward and knocking lifeboat number five off its davits. A second, more powerful explosion follows, sending a geyser of water, coal, dust, and debris high above the deck. Schwieger’s log entries attest that he had only launched one torpedo. Some doubt the validity of this claim, contending that the German government subsequently alters the published fair copy of Schwieger’s log, but accounts from other U-20 crew members corroborate it. The entries are also consistent with intercepted radio reports sent to Germany by U-20 once she has returned to the North Sea, before any possibility of an official coverup.

At 2:12 PM Captain Turner orders Quartermaster Johnston stationed at the ship’s wheel to steer “hard-a-starboard” towards the Irish coast, which Johnston confirms, but the ship can not be steadied on the course and rapidly ceases to respond to the wheel. Turner signals for the engines to be reversed to halt the ship, but although the signal is received in the engine room, nothing can be done. Steam pressure collapses from 195 PSI before the explosion, to 50 PSI and falling afterwards. RMS Lusitania‘s wireless operator sends out an immediate SOS, which is acknowledged by a coastal wireless station. Shortly afterward he transmits the ship’s position, 10 miles (16 km) south of the Old Head of Kinsale. At 2:14 PM electrical power fails, plunging the cavernous interior of the ship into darkness. Radio signals continue on emergency batteries, but electric lifts fail, trapping passengers and crew. Bulkhead doors closed as a precaution before the attack can not be reopened to release trapped men.

About one minute after the electrical power fails, Captain Turner gives the order to abandon ship. Water has flooded the ship’s starboard longitudinal compartments, causing a 15-degree list to starboard.

RMS Lusitania‘s severe starboard list complicates the launch of her lifeboats. Ten minutes after the torpedoing, when she has slowed enough to start putting boats in the water, the lifeboats on the starboard side swing out too far to step aboard safely. While it is still possible to board the lifeboats on the port side, lowering them presents a different problem. As is typical for the period, the hull plates of RMS Lusitania are riveted, and as the lifeboats are lowered they drag on the inch high rivets, which threatens to seriously damage the boats before they land in the water.

Many lifeboats overturn while loading or lowering, spilling passengers into the sea. Others are overturned by the ship’s motion when they hit the water. RMS Lusitania has 48 lifeboats, more than enough for all the crew and passengers, but only six are successfully lowered, all from the starboard side. A few of her collapsible lifeboats wash off her decks as she sinks and provides floatation for some survivors.

There is panic and disorder on the decks. Schwieger has been observing this through U-20‘s periscope, and by 2:25 PM, he drops the periscope and heads out to sea.

Captain Turner is on the deck near the bridge clutching the ship’s logbook and charts when a wave sweeps upward towards the bridge and the rest of the ship’s forward superstructure, knocking him overboard into the sea. He manages to swim and find a chair floating in the water which he clings to. He survives, having been pulled unconscious from the water after spending three hours there. RMS Lusitania‘s bow slams into the bottom about 330 feet below at a shallow angle because of her forward momentum as she sinks. Along the way, some boilers explode, including one that causes the third funnel to collapse. The remaining funnels collapse soon after. The ship travels about two miles from the time of the torpedoing to her final resting place, leaving a trail of debris and people behind. After her bow sinks completely, RMS Lusitania‘s stern rises out of the water, enough for her propellers to be visible, and then goes under.

RMS Lusitania sinks in only 18 minutes. It takes several hours for help to arrive from the Irish coast and by that time many in the 52° F water have succumbed to the cold. By the days’ end, 764 passengers and crew from the RMS Lusitania are rescued and land at Queenstown. Eventually, the final death toll for the disaster comes to a catastrophic number. Of the 1,959 passengers and crew aboard RMS Lusitania at the time of her sinking, 1,195 have been lost.

In the days following the disaster, the Cunard line offers local fishermen and sea merchants a cash reward for the bodies floating all throughout the Irish Sea, some floating as far away as the Welsh coast. In all, only 289 bodies are recovered, 65 of which are never identified. The bodies of many of the victims are buried at either Queenstown, where 148 bodies are interred in the Old Church Cemetery, or the Church of St. Multose in Kinsale. The bodies of the remaining 885 victims are never recovered.