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Birth of Sir John Greer Dill, Irish-born British Army Officer

Sir John Greer Dill, senior British Army officer with service in both World War I and World War II, is born on December 25, 1881, at Lurgan, County Armagh. From May 1940 to December 1941, he is the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), the professional head of the British Army, and subsequently serves in Washington, D.C., as Chief of the British Joint Staff Mission and then Senior British Representative on the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS).

Dill is the only son of John Dill, bank manager, and Jane Dill (née Greer). He is educated at Cheltenham College in England before entering the Royal Military College (RMC), Sandhurst. Commissioned as a second lieutenant, he joins the Prince of Wales’s Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians) in May 1901 and serves in South Africa for the remainder of the Second Boer War. Promoted to captain in 1911, he is a student at the Staff College, Camberley, at the outbreak of World War I. He holds several important staff appointments during the war, including brigade major of 25th Brigade (8th Division) and General Staff Officer (Grade 2) to the Canadian Corps. Present at the battles of Neuve Chapelle, Aubers Ridge, Arras, and Third Ypres, at the end of the war he is serving as chief of operations branch at GHQ with the temporary rank of brigadier general. He is awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) (1915), the Order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG) (1918), the French Legion of Honour and the Belgian Order of the Crown.

Remaining active during the interwar years, Dill serves as chief assistant to the commandant of the Staff College (1919–22) before commanding the Welsh Border Brigade, TA (1922–23), and 2nd Infantry Brigade at Aldershot (1923–26). In late 1926, he is appointed army instructor at the newly established Imperial Defence College. A period in India follows as general staff officer of the Western Command (1929–31), based at Quetta. On return to England, he is promoted to major general and made commandant of the Staff College. Appointments as commander of the British forces in Palestine and Transjordan (1936–37) and the Aldershot Command (1937–39) follow. During this period, he shows a remarkable ability to both train and inspire those under his command. Most of his colleagues expect him to become the new chief of the Imperial General Staff and are surprised when Major General Lord Gort, junior to Dill in both rank and seniority, is appointed to the post.

At the outbreak of World War II Dill commands I Corps British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France and is made a full general. In April 1940, he is made vice-CIGS and in May takes over as CIGS. His initial period in office is not a happy one, and he has to inform the public of setbacks in both Norway and France. His workload is enormous, and after the evacuation at Dunkirk in late May he devotes himself to preparing the defences of Britain against invasion. He clashes with Winston Churchill throughout 1941, advocating a more cautious and realistic approach to the situations in North Africa, Greece, and Crete.

The workload begins to affect his health adversely, and in November 1941 it is announced that he will resign as CIGS on reaching the age of 60 and serve as governor-designate of Bombay with the rank of field marshal. He seeks to be more actively involved in the war effort, however, and in December 1941 he visits the United States with Churchill, remaining there as head of the British joint staff mission in Washington, D.C. He plays a significant role in promoting Anglo–American military cooperation and attends the Casablanca, Quebec, and Tehran conferences.

In late 1944 his health again breaks down and he dies from aplastic anemia on November 4, 1944, at the Walter Reed General Hospital, Washington, D.C. After a memorial service at Washington National Cathedral, he is buried with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia. President Franklin D. Roosevelt later pays tribute to him as a great soldier and friend, “the most important figure in the remarkable accord which has been developed in the combined operations of our two countries.”

Dill first marries (1907) Ada Maud Le Mottée, daughter of Col. William Le Mottée of the 18th Regiment. Their son, Major John de Guerin Dill, serves as an artillery officer throughout World War II. In October 1941, Dill marries Nancy Isabelle Charrington, widow of Brigadier Denis Walter Furlong. Dill’s honours include a GCB (1942), an honorary degree from Princeton University (1944), the Howland Memorial Prize of Yale University (1944), and a posthumous Distinguished Service Medal (DSM) from the United States government. There are portraits of him in Cheltenham College and the Imperial War Museum, and a statue in Washington, D.C.

(From: “Dill, Sir John Greer” by David Murphy, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: Sir John Greer Dill, bromide print, 1932, by Walter Stoneman, National Portrait Gallery, London)


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Death of Thomas Falcon Hazell, World War I Fighter Pilot

Thomas Falcon Hazell, fighter pilot with the Royal Flying Corps and later the Royal Air Force during World War I, dies in Newport, County Mayo, on September 4, 1946. He scores 43 victories in 1917–18 making him the fifth most successful British “flying ace” of the war, the third most successful Irish-born pilot behind Edward Mannock and George McElroy, and the only pilot to survive the war from both groups.

Hazell is born in Roundstone, County Galway, on August 7, 1892. Upon the outbreak of the war in August 1914, he volunteers for service as a private with the South Irish Horse. On October 10 he is commissioned as second lieutenant in the 7th Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. As part of the 49th Brigade in the 16th (Irish) Division, the 7th Inniskillings are initially based at Tipperary, where he is promoted to lieutenant on June 4, 1915. The regiment lands in France in February 1916.

Soon afterwards Hazell transfers to the Royal Flying Corps. In April and May he is assigned to No. 5 Reserve Squadron, based at Castle Bromwich. He is appointed a flying officer on June 5, and survives a severe crash before completing his training. He eventually joins No. 1 Squadron on the Western Front. Flying Nieuport 17 Scouts, he shoots down 20 enemy aircraft between March and August 1917, being appointed a flight commander with the acting rank of captain on May 25, and is awarded the Military Cross on July 26.

After serving as an instructor at the Central Flying School in 1918, Hazell takes command of “A” Flight, No. 24 Squadron, flying the S.E.5a. On August 22, 1918, he shoots down an observation balloon despite its escort of seven Fokker D.VIIs. The escort is led by German ace Ernst Udet, who attacks and riddles Hazell’s petrol tank, propeller, and two longerons with bullets. In spite of this Hazell fights his way back, eyes full of petrol, and lands safely. Udet thinks he has forced the British pilot to crash and actually claims him as his 60th victory. Hazell finishes the war with 43 confirmed kills, the top British surviving ace of the war (excluding Dominion airmen). He is twice awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. On June 11, 1927, he returns to the RAF Depot at Uxbridge and is placed on the retired list on July 20, 1927 at his own request.

In 1944, at the age of 52, Hazell becomes the commander of “D” Company, 24th (Tettenhall) Battalion, South Staffordshire Home Guard during the later part of World War II.

Hazell dies in Newport, County Mayo, on September 4, 1946, and is buried at the Burrishoole Church of Ireland Cemetery there. In 2014 his grave, which had been largely forgotten and neglected, is restored, repaired, and re-dedicated in a ceremony on August 4, 2014, the 100th anniversary of the declaration of World War I


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Birth of Irish American Novelist Thomas Mayne Reid

Thomas Mayne Reid, Irish American novelist, who fought in the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), is born on April 4, 1818 in Ballyroney, a hamlet near Katesbridge, County Down, in present day Northern Ireland.

Reid is the son of the Rev. Thomas Mayne Reid, a Presbyterian minister and later a senior clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, and his wife, a daughter of the Rev. Samuel Rutherford. Educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, he rebels against his father’s plans for him and decides not to pursue a career in the church. He briefly runs a school at Ballyroney before emigrating to the United States in 1839. Arriving in New Orleans, Louisiana, he finds a job as a corn factor’s clerk in the corn market. After six months he leaves because he refuses to whip slaves. Travelling across America, he works as a teacher, a clerk and an Indian-fighter, and anonymously publishes his first poem in August 1843. Later that year he meets Edgar Allan Poe in Philadelphia and the two become close friends. Poe later admits that Reid was ‘a colossal but most picturesque liar,’ but was impressed by his brilliant story-telling abilities.

With the outbreak of the Mexican-American War in 1846 Reid enlists in the 1st New York Infantry Regiment and is commissioned second lieutenant. Contributing a series of reports from the front under the pseudonym ‘Ecolier,’ he performs with great bravery in the Battle of Chapultepac on September 13, 1847. Wounded during the battle, he is promoted to first lieutenant three days later. Following his discharge from the army in 1848 he claims to have reached the rank of captain, but this is another of his inventions.

Reid’s first play, Love’s Martyr, is staged at the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, for five nights in October 1848, and the following year he publishes an embellished account of his experiences in Mexico entitled War Life. All of his works are published under the name ‘Captain Mayne Reid.’ In July 1849 he sails to England with a group of Hungarian radicals, but decides against accompanying them to the Continent. Returning briefly to Ireland, he settles in London in 1850 and writes a novel, The Rifle Rangers. It is an immediate success and is followed quickly by The Scalp Hunters (1851), The Desert Home (1852), and The Boy Hunters (1853). While in England in 1851 he meets and falls in love with a 13-year old girl, Elizabeth Hyde, daughter of his publisher, G. W. Hyde, an English aristocrat. When he discovers her age he tells her that she is ‘getting old enough to have a lover, and you must have me.’ Two years later he continues with his suit, and this time is successful as they marry in 1853. He is immensely proud of his young bride, and later writes a semi-autobiographical novel The Child Wife (1868), based on their relationship.

Establishing a reputation as one of the most popular novelists of his generation, Reid does much to enhance the romantic image of the American West. His internationally successful books include The White Chief (1855), Bush Boys (1856), Oceola (1859), and The Headless Horseman (1865), and his novel about miscegenation, The Quadroon (1856), is later plagiarised by Dion Boucicault for The Octoroon (1859). A champion croquet player, he writes a treatise on the subject in 1863.

Disaster strikes in November 1866 when Reid is declared bankrupt. He had squandered all his money on the construction of ‘The Ranche,’ a Mexican-style hacienda in England. To raise money he returns to the United States and embarks on a successful lecturing tour. Settling at Newport, Rhode Island, he writes another novel, The Helpless Hand (1868), which is a huge success and alleviates some of his difficulties. His wife hates America, however, and after he is briefly hospitalised in 1870 they decide to return to England.

Ill health, artistic doubts, and financial insecurity plagued Reid’s final years. Diagnosed with acute depression, he is unable to recapture his earlier audience and, despite a pension from the U.S. government, he struggles for money. He dies at Ross in Herefordshire on October 22, 1883 and is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery in London.

Although not regarded as an important novelist, Reid none the less has a significant influence on subsequent writers. The young Vladimir Nabokov is deeply impressed by his adventure stories, and one of his own first works is a poetic recreation of The Headless Horseman in French alexandrine. Both Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle are admirers, and politicians as diverse as Theodore Roosevelt and Leon Trotsky also make reference to his varied output. In total, Reid publishes over sixty novels, which are printed in ten languages.


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Birth of Walter Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne

Walter Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne, soldier, politician, traveler, and anthropologist, is born on March 29, 1880 in Dublin.

Guinness is the third son of Edward Cecil Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh, and Adelaide Maria Guinness, a cousin. He is educated at Eton College, where he displays a keen interest in the sciences, especially biology, and considerable athletic prowess. Forsaking an intention to enter the University of Oxford, he joins the Suffolk Yeomanry regiment of the British Army as a second lieutenant on November 15, 1899 and serves in the Second Boer War (1899–1902), where he is wounded and mentioned in dispatches.

On return from South Africa Guinness enters politics, unsuccessfully contesting Stowmarket in the 1906 United Kingdom general election as a Conservative Party candidate. In the following year he becomes MP for Bury St. Edmunds, holding the seat until 1931. He is also elected as a member of the London County Council (1907–10). He interrupts his career yet again at the outbreak of World War I and, rejoining the Suffolk Yeomanry, serves in Gallipoli and Egypt. By the end of the war he is a lieutenant colonel, three times mentioned in dispatches, with the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in 1917 and a bar to it in 1918.

In the immediate postwar years Guinness devotes himself to his political career, and his work is soon rewarded with important appointments: Under-Secretary of State for War (1922) and Financial Secretary to the Treasury (1923). He serves for a second time at the Treasury (1924–5) under Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sworn of the Privy Council in 1924, he enters the cabinet in November 1925 as Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries. After the defeat of the Conservatives in the 1929 United Kingdom general election, he gradually withdraws from the political scene, retiring from his parliamentary seat in 1931. He is raised to the peerage in 1932 as Baron Moyne of Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk.

Always a keen traveler, during the following years Guinness makes several expeditions in search of biological specimens and archaeological material. He travels twice to New Guinea and also goes to Greenland and the Bay Islands near Honduras. These voyages are vividly described in his books Walkabout (1936) and Atlantic circle (1938). He still maintains a political profile, however, serving in several different capacities including financial commissioner to Kenya (1932) and chairman of the West India Royal Commission (1938–9). At the outbreak of World War II he works as chairman of the Polish Relief Fund before being appointed as Joint Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture on the formation of the Churchill government (1940). In 1941 he becomes Secretary of State for the Colonies and Leader of the House of Lords. Appointed Deputy Resident Minister of State in Cairo (August 1942), he becomes Minister-Resident for the Middle East in January 1944. On November 6, 1944 he is assassinated in Cairo by members of the ‘Stern Gang’, the Jewish terrorist group based in Palestine.

Guinness marries (1903) Lady Evelyn Hilda Stuart Erskine, daughter of the 14th Earl of Buchan. They have two sons and one daughter.

(Pictured: Walter Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne of Bury St. Edmunds, bromide print, 1929, by Walter Stoneman, National Portrait Gallery)


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Death of Dame Jean Iris Murdoch, Novelist & Philosopher

Dame Jean Iris Murdoch DBE, Irish and British novelist and philosopher, dies in Oxford, England, on February 8, 1999. She is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. In 2008, The Times ranks her twelfth on a list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945.”

Murdoch is born on July 15, 1919 in Phibsborough, Dublin, the daughter of Irene Alice (née Richardson) and Wills John Hughes Murdoch. Her father, a civil servant, comes from a mainly Presbyterian sheep farming family from Hillhall, County Down. In 1915, he enlists as a soldier in King Edward’s Horse and serves in France during World War I before being commissioned as a second lieutenant. Her mother trains as a singer before Iris is born, and is from a middle-class Church of Ireland family in Dublin. Her parents first meet in Dublin when her father is on leave and are married in 1918. Iris is the couple’s only child. When she is a few weeks old the family moves to London, where her father had joined the Ministry of Health as a second-class clerk.  She is a second cousin of the Irish mathematician Brian Murdoch.

Murdoch is brought up in Chiswick and educated in progressive independent schools, entering the Froebel Demonstration School in 1925 and attending Badminton School in Bristol as a boarder from 1932 to 1938. In 1938 she goes up to Somerville College, Oxford, with the intention of studying English, but switches to “Greats“, a course of study combining classics, ancient history, and philosophy. At Oxford she studies philosophy with Donald M. MacKinnon and attends Eduard Fraenkel‘s seminars on Agamemnon. She is awarded a first class honours degree in 1942. After leaving Oxford she goes to work in London for HM Treasury. In June 1944 she leaves the Treasury and goes to work for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). At first she is stationed in London at the agency’s European Regional Office. In 1945 she is transferred first to Brussels, then to Innsbruck, and finally to Graz, Austria, where she works in a refugee camp. She leaves the UNRRA in 1946.

From 1947 to 1948 Murdoch studies philosophy as a postgraduate at Newnham College, Cambridge. She meets Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge but does not hear him lecture, as he had left his Trinity College professorship before she arrives. In 1948 she becomes a fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford, where she teaches philosophy until 1963. From 1963 to 1967 she teaches one day a week in the General Studies department at the Royal College of Art.

In 1956 Murdoch marries John Bayley, a literary critic, novelist, and from 1974 to 1992 Warton Professor of English at Oxford University, whom she had met in Oxford in 1954. The unusual romantic partnership lasts more than forty years until Murdoch’s death. Bayley thinks that sex is “inescapably ridiculous.” She in contrast has “multiple affairs with both men and women which, on discomposing occasions, Bayley witnesses for himself.”

Murdoch’s first novel, Under the Net, is published in 1954 and is selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library’s 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. She had previously published essays on philosophy, and the first monograph about Jean-Paul Sartre published in English. She goes on to produce 25 more novels and additional works of philosophy, as well as poetry and drama.

Murdoch’s 1978 novel The Sea, the Sea wins the Booker Prize. Her other books include The Bell (1958), A Severed Head (1961), The Red and the Green (1965), The Nice and the Good (1968), The Black Prince (1973), Henry and Cato (1976), The Philosopher’s Pupil (1983), The Good Apprentice (1985), The Book and the Brotherhood (1987), The Message to the Planet (1989), and The Green Knight (1993).

In 1976 she is named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and in 1987 is made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II for services to literature. She is awarded honorary degrees by the University of Bath (D.Litt, 1983), University of Cambridge (1993) and Kingston University (1994), among others. She is elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1982.

Murdoch’s last novel, Jackson’s Dilemma, is published in 1995. She is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1997 and dies on February 8, 1999 in Oxford. There is a bench dedicated to her in the grounds of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she enjoyed walking.


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Birth of Brian Cleeve, Writer of Novels & Short Stories

Brian Brendon Talbot Cleeve, writer whose published works include twenty-one novels and over a hundred short stories, is born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England, on November 22, 1921. He is also an award-winning television broadcaster on RTÉ One.

Cleeve is the second of three sons to Charles Edward Cleeve and his wife Josephine (née Talbot). His father, who was born in Limerick, County Limerick, is a scion of a famous and wealthy family that runs several successful Irish enterprises in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His mother is a native of Essex. The Cleeves came from Canada originally and emigrated to Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century. As a result of labour troubles and the effects of the Irish Civil War, the Cleeve business fails, and the family moves to England.

Cleeve’s mother dies in 1924 and his maternal grandparents, Alfred and Gertrude Talbot, take over responsibility for his upbringing. At age eight, he is sent as a boarder to Selwyn House in Kent, followed at age 12 by three years at St. Edward’s School, Oxford. He is by nature a free-thinker and rejects the assumptions and prejudices that are then part of upper-middle class English life. His unwillingness to conform means that school life is very difficult for him. In the late summer of 1938, he decides not to return to St. Edward’s for his final year. Instead, he runs away to sea.

Cleeve leads an eventful life during the next fifteen years. He serves on the RMS Queen Mary as a commis waiter for several months. At age 17 he joins the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders as a private soldier, and, because of his age, just misses being sent to Europe as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) when World War II breaks out. In 1940, he is selected for officer training, is commissioned into the Somerset Light Infantry, and sent to Kenya as a second lieutenant in the King’s African Rifles. A year later he is court-martialed as a result of his objections to the treatment by colleagues of an African prisoner. Stripped of his commission and sentenced to three years’ penal servitude, he is transferred to Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire. There, through the intervention of Sir Alexander Paterson, he is offered parole if he agrees to work for British Intelligence. For the remainder of the war, he serves as a counterspy in neutral ports such as Lisbon and Dublin. As cover, he works as an ordinary seaman in the Merchant Navy.

In 1945, Cleeve takes an Irish passport and comes to Ireland where, in the space of three weeks, he meets and marries Veronica McAdie. A year later, they leave Ireland with baby daughter Berenice on a protracted odyssey that takes them to London, Sweden, the West Indies, and finally South Africa. In 1948, the family settles in Johannesburg where they set up their own perfume business. A second daughter, Tanga, is born to the couple there in 1953. As a result of his friendship with Fr. Trevor Huddleston, he witnesses the conditions in which the black population has to live in townships such as Sophiatown. He becomes an outspoken critic of Apartheid, and, in 1954, he is branded by the authorities as a ‘political intractable’ and ordered to leave South Africa. He returns to Ireland where he lives for the remainder of his life.

Cleeve starts writing poems in his teens, a few of which are published in his school paper, the St. Edward’s Chronicle. During the war he continues to produce poems of a spiritual or metaphysical nature, most of which are never published. In 1945, he turns to novel-writing. After his first two attempts are rejected, his third novel, The Far Hills, is published in 1952. Two further novels about South Africa follow and their unvarnished descriptions of the reality of life for the native population probably contributes to his eventual expulsion from the country.

In the mid-1950s, Cleeve begins to concentrate on the short story form. During the next 15 years over 100 of his short stories are published in magazines and periodicals across five continents. He sells nearly thirty to The Saturday Evening Post alone. In 1966, his story Foxer is honoured with a scroll at the annual Edgar Awards.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Cleeve returns to writing novels with considerable success. He produced a series of well-received mystery and spy thrillers that do not sacrifice character to plot. In 1971, he publishes Cry of Morning, his most controversial and successful novel to date. It is a panoramic depiction of the economic and social changes that affected Ireland during the 1960s as seen through the eyes of a disparate collection of well-drawn characters. He subsequently achieves even greater commercial success, especially in the United States, with a number of historical novels featuring a strong female character as protagonist.

Cleeve also writes several works of non-fiction, principally the Dictionary of Irish Writers. This is a 20-year project to provide to scholars and the general public alike a comprehensive resource on Irish writers at an affordable price. It is a labour of love that consumes a great deal of his time and is effectively subsidised by his more commercial pursuits. The last edition is published in 1985.

On December 31, 1961, Telefís Éireann is launched as the Republic of Ireland‘s first indigenous television station. Cleeve joins the station as a part-time interviewer on the current affairs programme, Broadsheet. Following appearances on two additional programmes, Telefís Éireann does not renew his contract when it expires in 1973.

Following his wife’s death in 1999, Cleeve moves to the village of Shankill, Dublin. His health deteriorates rapidly following a series of small strokes. In November 2001, he marries his second wife, Patricia Ledwidge, and she cares for him during his final months. He suddenly dies of a heart attack on March 11, 2003. His body now lies under a headstone bearing the inscription “Servant of God.”


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Birth of Charles Edward Jennings, Soldier & Revolutionary

General Charles Edward Saul Jennings, Irish soldier and revolutionary who serves France in the eighteenth century and is sometimes romanticised as Brave Kilmaine, is born on October 19, 1751, in Sauls Court, Dublin.

Jennings is the second son of Theobald Jennings, a physician of Polaniran (Ironpool), Tuam, County Galway, and Eleonore Saul, daughter of Laurence Saul, a wealthy Dublin distiller. Educated privately in Dublin, he leaves Ireland in 1769, settling in Tonnay-Charente in the south of France, where his father had set up practice. His father had, several years previously, assumed the fictitious title of ‘baron of Kilmaine’ in the hope of improving his position in French society, and he subsequently assumes the same title.

In 1774 Jennings joins the Royal Dragoons as a trooper, transferring in 1778 into the Légion de Lauzun, a corps made up mostly of foreign volunteers. After the campaign in Senegal (1778–79) he returns to France and is commissioned as a sous-lieutenant. He then campaigns with Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, during the American Revolutionary War and teaches cavalry tactics at Metz on his return. Promoted to captain in 1788, at the outbreak of the French Revolution, he is stationed at Verdun and, despite a short period in prison, continues to serve with his regiment. In 1791, when several of the regiment’s officers flee from France, he remains and is one of the first officers to swear allegiance to the national assembly.

Promoted to Chef d’escadron in April 1792, Jennings serves under Charles François Dumouriez during the invasion of the Netherlands, distinguishing himself at the Battle of Valmy and the Battle of Jemappes, where he reinforces the French centre at a critical point, ensuring victory. A series of rapid promotions follow. He is made a colonel in January 1793, a general of brigade in March 1794, and a general of division in May1794.

After a series of reverses in the summer of 1793, in which the French lose the fortress-towns of Condé and Valenciennes, the committee of public safety appoints Jennings to command the Armée du Nord on May 15, 1793, with the rank of full general. In August, in order to preserve his force in the face of overwhelming opposition, he retreats from a position 120 miles north of Paris known as ‘Caesar’s camp.’ Although the allied army swings away to invest Dunkirk, he is arrested and imprisoned for endangering the city, and remains in prison until after the fall of Robespierre in July 1794. Within a few days, due to the turbulent political situation, he is rearrested and not released until December 1794. In May 1795 he cooperates with Napoléon Bonaparte in suppressing the Jacobin uprising in Faubourg Saint-Antoine in Paris and, having reestablished his credentials, commands the cavalry during the invasion of Italy (1796). Bonaparte regards him highly, and he distinguishes himself at the Battle of Lodi on May 10, 1796, seizing the city of Milan five days later. He defeats a large Austrian force in the Battle of Borghetto before investing and taking the fortress-town of Mantua in February 1797.

When peace terms are agreed with Austria, Jennings returns to France, taking command of the centre column of the Armée d’Angleterre, which had been raised to invade Britain and Ireland. However, his deteriorating health makes some observers question his suitability for such an appointment. An associate of Thomas Paine and James Napper Tandy, and a friend of Wolfe Tone, he is forced to watch the gradual reduction of his army as Napoleon diverts troops for his campaign in Egypt. Tone is at first suspicious of him, given that many Irish-born French officers had deserted the revolutionary cause, but comes to admire him.

After the defeat of Admiral Bombard’s expedition to Ireland and Tone’s arrest on November 3, 1798, Jennings requests that the French government should take a senior British prisoner as hostage and subject him to the same treatment as Tone. After Tone’s death he assists Matilda Tone and her children. In early 1799 he is appointed military governor of Switzerland but is forced to resign due to his failing health.

In a fragile condition Jennings leaves Switzerland and returns to Passy in Paris, where his domestic griefs and chagrins add to the poignancy of his bodily sufferings, for his constitution is now completely broken up. He dies of dysentery on December 11, 1799, at the age of 48. He is buried with full military honours.

Jennings is historically honored at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, where his name can be seen on the inside triumphal arch, on the Northern pillar, Column 05. Underneath the Arc is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (World War I). There is a personal portrait of Jennings in the ‘Hotel de Ville’ (City Hall) at Tonnay-Charente, where his father Dr. Theobald Jennings practiced as a physician.

A monument was erected in Jennings’s memory in Tonnay-Charente in the 19th century. Rue du Général Kilmaine, a street in Tonnay-Charente, is named in his honour in the 19th century.


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Death of Valerie Hamilton, Hon. Lady Goulding

Valerie Hamilton, Hon. Lady Goulding, Irish senator and campaigner for disabled people, dies in a Dublin nursing home on July 28, 2003. She, alongside Kathleen O’Rourke, sets up the Central Remedial Clinic (CRC) in 1951 which is now the largest organisation in Ireland looking after people with physical disabilities. She served as a member of Seanad Éireann from 1977 to 1981.

Born Valerie Hamilton Monckton at Ightham Mote in Ightham, Kent, England on September 12, 1918, she is the only daughter of Mary Adelaide Somes Colyer-Ferguson and Sir Walter Monckton (later 1st Viscount Monckton of Brenchley). Ightham Mote is owned by her maternal grandfather, Sir Thomas Colyer-Fergusson, until his death in 1951. Her only brother, Gilbert (1915–2006), becomes a major general in the British Army. She is educated at Downe House School, near Newbury. Both she and her brother eventually convert to Roman Catholicism.

Hamilton’s father is a British lawyer and politician, and becomes chief legal adviser to Edward VIII during the Abdication Crisis in 1936. She acts as her father’s secretary and courier during the crisis, carrying letters between the King and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.

In World War II, Hamilton joins the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry before switching to the Auxiliary Territorial Service. In Dublin for a race meeting in 1939, she meets and soon marries Irish fertiliser manufacturer and art collector Sir Basil Goulding and moves to Ireland. However, her husband moves to England to join the Royal Air Force, ending the war as a wing commander. Meanwhile, she serves as a second lieutenant in the British Army. After the war, the couple returns to Ireland, where Sir Basil and his family manage Goulding Chemicals.

In 1951, Lady Goulding co-founds, with Kathleen O’Rourke, the Central Remedial Clinic located in a couple of rooms in central Dublin to provide non-residential care for disabled people. The Clinic later moves to a purpose building in Clontarf in 1968, where it is located today. The Clinic’s foundation initiates a revolution in the treatment of physical disability and rapidly grows to by far the largest centre dealing with the needs of disabled people. She remains chairman and managing director of the CRC until 1984.

On account of her widespread popularity, Lady Goulding is nominated by Taoiseach Jack Lynch to Seanad Éireann, where she works to raise awareness of disability issues in 1977. She seeks election to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil candidate at the November 1982 Irish general election for the Dún Laoghaire constituency but is unsuccessful. She is mentioned as a possible President of Ireland in 1983, should the president, Patrick Hillery, decline to seek a second term. Hillery ultimately is re-elected.

Lady Goulding dies at the age of 84 in a nursing home in Dublin on July 28, 2003. She is predeceased by her husband in 1982, but is survived by her sons, the eldest of whom, Sir William Goulding, known as Lingard Goulding, serves as Headmaster of Headfort School in County Meath. The other sons are Hamilton and Timothy, who is a founding member of the experimental Irish folk group Dr. Strangely Strange.


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Death of James A. Mulligan, Union Army Colonel

James Adelbert Mulligan, a colonel of the 23rd Illinois Infantry Regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War, dies on July 26, 1864 of wounds sustains at the Second Battle of Kernstown three days earlier.

Mulligan is born on June 30, 1830 in Utica, New York. His parents had immigrated from Ireland and his father died when he was a child. His mother remarries a Michael Lantry of Chicago, Illinois, and moves there with her son, who later attends the St. Mary’s on the Lake College of North Chicago. From 1852–54 he reads law in the offices of Isaac N. Arnold, U.S. Representative from the city. He is admitted to the bar in 1856, and commissioned a second lieutenant in the “Chicago Shield Guards.”

At the onset of the American Civil War, Mulligan raises the 23rd Illinois Infantry Regiment in 1861, which is locally known as the “Irish Brigade” (not to be confused with a New York unit by the same name). This unit includes the Chicago Shield Guards. In September 1861, he leads his troops toward Lexington, Missouri, as word had been received that this vital river town will be attacked by the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard under Major General Sterling Price.

The First Battle of Lexington, often referred to as the Battle of the Hemp Bales, commences on September 13, 1861, when 12,500 soldiers of the Missouri State Guard begin a siege of Mulligan’s diminutive command, entrenched around the town’s old Masonic College. On September 18, Price’s army mounts an all-out assault on Mulligan’s works, which fails. Cannon fire continues through September 19. On the 20th, units of Price’s army use hemp bales soaked in the Missouri River as a moving breastworks to work their way up the river bluffs toward Mulligan’s headquarters. By 2:00 PM, Mulligan has surrendered. Combined casualties are 64 dead, and 192 wounded. Price is reportedly so impressed by Mulligan’s demeanor and conduct during and after the battle that he offers him his own horse and buggy, and orders him safely escorted to Union lines.

Mulligan is commander of Camp Douglas, a prisoner of war camp in Chicago, from February 25, 1862 to June 14, 1862. The camp had been constructed as a short term training camp for Union soldiers but is converted to a prisoner of war camp for captured Confederate soldiers after the fall of Fort Donelson.

Mulligan and his regiment are assigned to the Railroad Division of the Middle Department between December 17, 1862 and March 27, 1863. Then they are assigned to 5th Brigade, 1st Division, VIII Corps in the Middle Department between March 27, 1863 and June 26, 1863.

Between August and December 1863, Mulligan oversees the construction of Fort Mulligan, an earthworks fortification located in Grant County, West Virginia. This fort remains one of the best-preserved Civil War fortifications in West Virginia, and has become a local tourist attraction.

On July 3, 1864, only three weeks before his death, Mulligan distinguishes himself in the Battle of Leetown, fought in and around Leetown, Virginia. Federal troops are retreating in the face of Major General Jubal Early‘s relentless Confederate advance down the Shenandoah Valley during the Second Valley Campaign. Hoping to buy time to concentrate Union forces and supplies, Major General Franz Sigel orders him to hold Leetown for as long as possible and then conduct a fighting retreat as slowly as possible to cover the other withdrawing Union units. He manages to hold Leetown for the entire day before being compelled to retreat, albeit very slowly. He continues to battle Early’s troops all the way from Leetown to Martinsburg, West Virginia, buying valuable time for Union commanders to concentrate their forces in the Valley.

On July 24, 1864, Mulligan leads his troops into the Second Battle of Kernstown, near Winchester, Virginia. Late in the afternoon, Major General John B. Gordon’s Confederate force attacks Mulligan’s 1,800 soldiers from ground beyond Opequon Church. Mulligan briefly holds off Gordon’s units, but Confederate Major General John C. Breckinridge leads a devastating flank attack against the Irishmen from the east side of the Valley Pike. Sharpshooters then attack his right flank from the west. Now encompassed on three sides, the Union battle line falls apart.

With Confederates closing from all around, Mulligan orders his troops to withdraw. As he stands up in his saddle to spur his men on, Confederate sharpshooters concealed in a nearby stream bed manage to hit the Union commander. His soldiers endeavor to carry him to safety, but the unyielding Confederate fire make this an impossible task. He is well aware of his situation, and the danger his men are in, and so he famously orders, “Lay me down and save the flag.” His men reluctantly comply. Confederate soldiers capture him and carry the mortally wounded colonel into a nearby home, where he dies two days later on July 26, 1864. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery, Evanston, Illinois.

On February 20, 1865, the United States Senate confirms the posthumous appointment of Mulligan to the rank of brevet brigadier general of U.S. Volunteers to rank from July 23, 1864, the day before he is mortally wounded at the Second Battle of Kernstown.


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Birth of Richard Sankey, Officer in the Madras Engineer Group

Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Hieram Sankey KCB, officer in the Madras Engineer Group in the East India Company‘s army in British India, is born on March 22, 1829 at Rockwell Castle, County Tipperary.

Sankey is the fourth son of Eleanor and Matthew Sankey. His mother is herself from a family of military men, her father being Colonel Henry O’Hara, J.P of O’Hara Broom, County Antrim. His father is a barrister at Bawnmore, County Cork and Modeshil, County Tipperary. He does his schooling at Rev. Flynn’s School on Harcourt Street in Dublin and enters the East India Company’s Addiscombe Military Seminary at Addiscombe, Surrey in 1845. At Addiscombe he is awarded for his excellence at painting.

Sankey is commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Madras Engineer Group in November 1846, and is then trained in military engineering with the Royal Engineers at Chatham, Kent from January 1, 1847, holding temporary rank as an ensign in the British Army. He then arrives in India in November 1848. After two years of service at Mercatur, he officiates in 1850 as Superintending Engineer at Nagpur. During this time he makes a small collection of fossils of Glossopteris from the Nagpur district and writes a paper on the geology of the region in 1854. The collection is moved from the Museum of Practical Geology to the British Museum in 1880.

In 1856, Sankey is promoted as the Superintendent of the East Coast Canal at Madras. In May 1857, he is promoted Under-Secretary of the Public Works Department under Col. William Erskine Baker in Calcutta. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, he is commissioned as the Captain of the Calcutta Cavalry Volunteers, but is soon despatched to Allahabad where he leads the construction of several embankments and bridges across the Yamuna and Ganges. He is involved in the construction of shelters to advancing troops along the Grand Trunk Road to aid the quelling of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. He arrives in course of this work at Cawnpore (now Kanpur) a day before the Second Battle of Cawnpore. He also is involved in crucial civil works that aid the quelling of the rebellion by bridging the Ghaghara and Gomti rivers at Gorakhpur and Phulpur that enable the Gurkha regiment to cross these rivers.

Sankey receives several commendations from his commanders here and later in the taking of the fort at Jumalpur, Khandua nalla and Qaisar Bagh, vital actions in the breaking of the Siege of Lucknow. For his actions at Jumalpur he is recommended for the Victoria Cross, although he does not receive this honour. He receives a medal for the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and is promoted to second captain on August 27, 1858, and given brevet promotion to major the following day for his services in the quelling of the rebellion. He is sent to the Nilgiris due to ill-health during this time.

Sankey spends a year in Burma as the executive engineer and Superintendent of the jail at Moulmein. On June 29, 1861, he is promoted to substantive captain and is posted as the Garrison Engineer at Fort William, Calcutta and later as the assistant to Chief Engineer, Mysore until 1864, when he is made the Chief Engineer. During this period he creates a system within the irrigation department to deal with old Indian water catchment systems, surveying the catchment area and determining the area drained and the flows involved. Due to the reorganisation of the armed forces following the assumption of Crown rule in India he is transferred to the Royal Engineers on April 29, 1862.

In 1870, at the request of the Victorian Colonial Government in Australia, in view of his experience with hydrological studies in Mysore, Sankey is invited to be Chairman of the Board of Enquiry on Victorian Water Supply. During this visit, he also gives evidence to the Victorian Select Committee on Railways, as well as reports on the Yarra River Floods, and the Coliban Water Supply, and later contributes to the report on the North West Canal. While in Australia, he is also invited to the colony of South Australia to report on the water supply of Adelaide.

Sankey is appointed as an under-secretary to the Government of India in 1877, which earns him the Afghanistan Medal. In 1878, he is promoted as the Secretary in the public works department at Madras, and is promoted substantive colonel on December 30. He is appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath on July 25, 1879, and also commands the Royal Engineers on the advance from Kandahar to Kabul during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. For about five years he is in Madras where he becomes a member of the legislative council in Madras and is elected as a Fellow of the University of Madras. He also helps in the creation and improvements of the Marina, the gardens and the Government House grounds. He is promoted major general on June 4, 1883, and retires from the army on January 11, 1884 with the honorary rank of lieutenant general. He also receives the distinguished service award in India.

After retirement, Sankey returns to Ireland, where he becomes the Chairman of the Board of Works. He is promoted Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath on May 25, 1892 for his work in Ireland. He also undertakes projects in Mexico. Later he settles in London where he dies at St. George’s Hospital on November 11, 1908 and is interred at Hove, East Sussex.

Sankey is memorialised in Phoenix Park, Dublin. A circle of trees bears the name Sankey’s Wood. A plaque dated 1894 lies half-hidden in the undergrowth there.