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Birth of Hugh Hamilton, Church of Ireland Bishop

Hugh Hamilton FRS, mathematician, natural philosopher (scientist) and professor at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), and later a Church of Ireland bishop, Bishop of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh and then Bishop of Ossory, is born at Knock, near Balrothery in Fingal, County Dublin, on March 26, 1729.

Hamilton is the eldest son of Alexander and Isabella Hamilton. His father is a solicitor and politician who represents the Killyleagh constituency in the Irish House of Commons from 1739 to 1759. Alexander’s great-grandfather Hugh Hamilton migrates from Scotland to County Down in the early 17th century. The Scottish architect James Hamilton of Finnart is an ancestor. Isabella Hamilton is born Isabella Maxwell, the daughter of Robert Maxwell of Finnebrogue, Downpatrick. Hugh’s siblings include George Hamilton, Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland) and Charles, father of the wealthy Canadian lumber merchant and politician  George Hamilton.

Hamilton enters Trinity College Dublin on November 17, 1742, at the age of 13 with Thomas McDonnell as his tutor. He graduates Bachelor of Arts (BA) in 1747 and Trinity Master of Arts (MA Dubl) in 1750. He takes the competitive examination for a vacant fellowship of the college in 1750, but the position is secured instead by his friend Richard Murray, who is a few years older. Two fellowships become vacant the following year and Hamilton is elected to one of them at the age of 22. He is appointed Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin in 1759 and that same year graduates Bachelor of Divinity (BD). He is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on February 19, 1761, and graduates Doctor of Divinity (DD) in 1762.

Trinity College presents him to the rectory of Kilmacrennan in the diocese of Raphoe, County Donegal, in 1764. This is a small benefice in the gift of the college, for which he resigns his fellowship. He retains the Erasmus Smith’s chair, however, being succeeded in that by Thomas Wilson in 1769. He resigns from Kilmacrenan in 1767 and becomes vicar of St. Ann’s Church in Dublin.

Hamilton then becomes Dean of Armagh, the chief resident cleric of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh, County Armagh, from April 1768 to 1796. Finding the existing dean’s house inconvenient and poorly situated, he has a new one built in a better location just off Portadown Road, now known as Dean’s Hill. The house, of three stories and a semi-basement, is built in 1772–74. The house is later sold by the church and the present owners provide bed and breakfast accommodation in it. While dean he also acts as treasurer for the infirmary or county hospital, he establishes Sunday schools in the districts of the parish, and he founds a charitable loan for poor tradesmen. He is also instrumental in planning a piped water supply for the town, which is later put into effect. He is one of the 38 original members of the Royal Irish Academy when it is founded in 1785. Gilbert Stuart paints his portrait in about 1790 (pictured above).

Hamilton is promoted to Bishop of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh on January 20, 1796, without seeking it. On January 24, 1799, he is translated to Ossory, where he is bishop until 1805. He dies of a fever at Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, on December 1, 1805. He is buried in the graveyard of St. Canice’s Cathedral at Kilkenny, and there is a memorial to him inside the cathedral.

Hamilton writes a mathematical treatise on conic sections called De Sectionibus Conicis: Tractatus Geometricus, published in 1758. In this book he “was the first to deduce the properties of the conic section from the properties of the cone, by demonstrations which were general, unencumbered by lemmas, and proceeding in a more natural and perspicuous order,” according to writer James Wills in 1847. The work is acclaimed for its lucidity and Leonhard Euler describes it as a perfect book. It is “soon adopted in all the British universities” and is translated from Latin into English as A Geometrical Treatise of the Conic Sections in 1773.

Hamilton also writes Philosophical Essays on Vapours (1767), Four Introductory Lectures on Natural Philosophy (1774), and An Essay on the Existence and Attributes of the Supreme Being (1784). His principal works are collected and republished, with a memoir, as The Works of the Right Rev. Hugh Hamilton by his eldest son, Alexander Hamilton, in two volumes in 1809.

Hamilton marries Isabella, daughter of Hans Widman Wood of Rosmead, County Westmeath, in 1772. Isabella’s mother Frances is the twin sister of Edward King, 1st Earl of Kingston. They have five sons and two daughters. They are Alexander, who was a barrister; Frances; Hans, who is rector of Knocktopher, County Kilkenny, and associated with the Carrickshock incident of 1831; Isabella; Henry; George, who is a biblical scholar; and Hugh, who marries Elizabeth Staples, a daughter of John Staples, a Member of Parliament. The younger Hugh is the great-grandfather of Clive Staples Lewis, better known as C. S. Lewis. Bishop Hugh Hamilton is a great-great-great-grandfather of the mathematicians John Lighton Synge and his brother Edward Hutchinson Synge. Dodgson Hamilton Madden, the High Court judge and noted scholar, is Hamilton’s great-grandson.

(Pictured: “Hugh Hamilton,” oil on canvas by Gilbert Stuart)


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Birth of Margaret Dockrell, Suffragist, Philanthropist & Councillor

Margaret Sarah Dockrell (née Shannon), Irish suffragist, philanthropist, and councillor, is born on March 18, 1849, at 18 Charlotte Street, Dublin.

Shannon is the eldest child of solicitor George William Shannon and Emily Shannon (née Goodman). She has two sisters and two brothers. She attends Alexandra College, and later lectures for women at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). On July 27, 1875, she marries Maurice Dockrell, eldest son of Thomas Dockrell, a well known Dublin merchant, and Anne Morgan Dockrell (née Brooks). The couple has seven children, one daughter and six sons. She goes on to become a director and member of the board of her husband’s family company: Messrs Thomas Dockrell & Sons & Co. Ltd.[1]

Dockrell is an active member of the committee of the Dublin Women’s Suffrage and Local Government Association, later known as the Irish Women’s Suffrage and Local Government Association (IWSLGA), founded in 1876 to promote women’s suffrage by democratic methods. She attends international women’s suffrage conferences in Stockholm in 1911 and Budapest in 1913. She is also a committee member of the London Women’s Suffrage Society, speaking on the role of women in local government at the International Congress of Women in London in 1899. The Irish Citizen lists her as a suitable woman candidate to run for the senate seat proposed by the Home rule bill in 1912.

Dockell is a member of the National Union of Women Workers, sitting as a member of its public services committee. Like many of her contemporaries, she believes that women are best placed to address issues around health, societal moral well-being, and housing. From 1898, the Local Government (Ireland) Act, allows women to be candidates for local government elections. Dockrell first runs as a candidate in the Urban District Council (UDC) of the Monkstown ward of Blackrock, Dublin in the 1898 local elections, where she is returned as the third of nine elected, becoming one of only four women councillors elected in Ireland.

Dockrell describes herself as a unionist and a Protestant, sitting as a council on the Blackrock UDC until her death. She is the only woman councillor on that UDC until 1925 and the election of Ellen O’Neill. She is also the first woman chair of a UDC when she is elected to the position in 1906.

Despite the political and societal turmoil of the early 20th century in Ireland and the establishment of the Irish Free State, Dockrell continues in her commitment to local politics. This includes being the first woman to be elected to a Dublin county council in 1920. Despite remaining a committed unionist, she works with the Free State government. Following her husband’s knighthood, she is also known as Lady Dockrell.

Dockrell dies on June 29, 1926, at her home “Camolin”, Eaton Square, Monkstown. She is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery. Her son, Henry Morgan Dockrell is also a politician, and another son, George, was an Olympic swimmer, who competes at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London. Her granddaughter, Marguerite Dockrell, Henry’s daughter, also represents Ireland as a swimmer at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam.


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Birth of Patrick Guiney, Irish Nationalist Politician

Patrick Guiney, Irish Nationalist politician, agrarian agitator and Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, is born in Newmarket, County Cork, on March 16, 1867.

Guiney is the eldest son of Timothy Guiney, a shopkeeper and later clerk of Kanturk poor law union, and Ellen Carver. He is educated at St. Patrick’s Monastery, Mountrath, County Laois. He serves three terms of imprisonment for activity in the Land War and later Plan of Campaign movement during the 1880s under the Coercion Act. He becomes a farmer and serves as councillor for Newmarket and on the Cork County Council (1908–11) as well as Chair of Newmarket Agricultural Society, Newmarket Gaelic League and Newmarket Old-Age Pensions Committee.

With strong family connection in the North Cork area, Guiney builds a personal political base as a Land and Labour Association activist, skilled in organising land agitation and deploying it at a local level to make landlords agree to sales terms under the Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903. A supporter of William O’Brien‘s All-for-Ireland League, he is elected MP for North Cork in the January 1910 United Kingdom general election. He is re-elected in the following December 1910 United Kingdom general election, when he also contests (unsuccessfully) for East Kerry.

Guiney marries Nanette O’Connor of Ballyclogh, Mallow, County Cork, in 1895.

Guiney dies at his home in Newmarket on October 12, 1913, after contracting pneumonia and is buried in Clonfert Cemetery, Newmarket.

Guiney’s brother, John, a solicitor in Kanturk, is returned unopposed for his seat in the resulting 1913 North Cork by-election. They are uncles of Philip Burton, Fine Gael TD for Cork North-East from 1961 to 1969, and member of the Seanad from 1973 to 1977.

(Pictured: All-for-Ireland League group portrait of five of its Members of Parliament, in the “Cork Free Press”, 30 July 1910. These are: Patrick Guiney (North Cork), James Gilhooly (West Cork), Maurice Healy (North-east Cork), D. D. Sheehan (Mid Cork), and Eugene Crean (South-east Cork))


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Birth of Richie Ryan, Fine Gael Politician

Richard Ryan, Fine Gael politician, is born in Dublin on February 27, 1929. He serves as Minister for Finance and Minister for the Public Service from 1973 to 1977 and a Member of the European Court of Auditors from 1986 to 1989. He serves as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1977 to 1986. He serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1959 to 1982.

Ryan is educated at Synge Street CBS, University College Dublin (UCD), where he studies economics and jurisprudence, and the Law Society of Ireland, subsequently qualifying as a solicitor. A formidable orator, at UCD he is auditor of the Literary and Historical Society (L&H) and subsequently of the Solicitors Apprentice Debating Society (1950), and wins both societies’ gold medals for debating. He serves as an Honorary Vice-president of the L&H.

After qualifying, Ryan works for several solicitors’ firms before establishing a private practice in Dame Street in Dublin, in which he remains an active partner until appointed to ministerial office in 1973.

Ryan first holds political office when he is elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fine Gael TD for Dublin South-West in a 1959 by-election, and retains his seat until he retires at the February 1982 Irish general election to concentrate on his European Parliament seat.

In opposition, Ryan serves as Fine Gael Spokesperson on Health and Social Welfare (1966–70) and on Foreign Affairs and Northern Ireland (1970–73). During this period he is involved in several important pro bono legal cases, including the 1963 challenge in the High Court, and then, on appeal, in the Supreme Court of Ireland in 1964, by Gladys Ryan (no relation) on the constitutionality of the fluoridation of the water supply. While the court rules against Gladys Ryan, the case remains a landmark, for it establishes the right to privacy under the Constitution of Ireland (or, perhaps more precisely, the right to bodily integrity under Article 40.3.1.). The case also raises a legal controversy, owing to the introduction by Justice Kenny of the concept of unenumerated rights. Other notable cases involving Ryan include a challenge to the rules governing the drafting of constituency boundaries, and an unsuccessful attempt to randomise the order of candidates on ballot papers (owing to a preponderance of TDs with surnames from the first part of the alphabet).

Fine Gael comes to power in a coalition with the Labour Party in 1973, and Ryan becomes Minister for Finance. He presides over a tough four years in the National Coalition under Liam Cosgrave, during the 1970s oil crisis when, in common with most Western economies, Ireland faces a significant recession. He is variously lampooned as “Richie Ruin” on the Irish satire show Hall’s Pictorial Weekly, and as “Red Richie” for his government’s introduction of a wealth tax. Following the 1977 Irish general election Fine Gael is out of power, and he once again becomes Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs.

Ryan also served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) in 1973 and from 1977 to 1979, being appointed to Ireland’s first delegation and third delegation. At the first direct elections to the European Parliament in 1979, he is elected for the Dublin constituency and is re-elected in 1984 European Parliament election in Ireland, heading the poll on both occasions.

On being appointed to the European Court of Auditors in 1986, he resigns his seat and is succeeded by Chris O’Malley. He serves as a member of the Court of Auditors from 1986 to 1994, being replaced by Barry Desmond. After retirement, he continues in several roles, including as a Commissioner of Irish Lights (until 2004) and a time as Chairman of the Irish Red Cross in 1998.

Ryan is the father of the economist and academic Cillian Ryan. He dies in Dublin at the age of 90 on March 17, 2019. He is buried at Newlands Cross Cemetery and Crematorium in Dublin.


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Birmingham Six on Verge of Freedom

After 17 years in prison, the Birmingham Six could be freed within weeks. An announcement on February 25, 1991, by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Alan Green, says the convictions of the Birmingham Six can no longer be considered safe and satisfactory. Hugh Callaghan, Paddy Joe Hill, Gerry Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, Billy Power, and Johnny Walker, all from Northern Ireland, were all jailed in 1975 for an Irish Republican Army (IRA) attack on two pubs in Birmingham, England, in November 1974 in which 21 people died. The Birmingham Six have consistently maintained their innocence. 

Speaking during a live radio broadcast by Irish broadcaster RTÉ, one of the six, Hugh Callaghan, speaks about his ordeal. “It should have happened a long time ago. It has been known for years and years that we were innocent,” he says. 

The February 25 preliminary hearing is told both scientific and police evidence presented at the original trial can no longer be relied upon and that therefore the Crown‘s case against the men has collapsed. 

Their third appeal is to be heard at the Court of Appeal on Monday, March 4, 1991. New evidence collected in the prior year is to be presented to the court, which will make the final decision on whether or not to release the men.

Friends, family and supporters are overjoyed by the news. The Irish government issues a statement saying it shares their relief and joy.

Gareth Peirce, the solicitor for five of the men, says the case is “a national disgrace” and calls for the evidence to be made public.

Patsy Power, William Power’s wife, says, “It’s over and done but the system has to be altered so nothing like this happens again.”

Former Master of the Rolls Tom Denning, Baron Denning, who rejected the men’s appeal in 1980, says he is saddened by the case. “As I look back I am very sorry, because I always thought that our police were splendid and am very sorry that in this case it appears the contrary,” he says.

The Birmingham Six are released amid scenes of wild jubilation on March 14, 1991, after their convictions are quashed by the Court of Appeal. Their case – and that of the Guildford Four freed in 1989 – lead to the creation of a Royal Commission on Criminal Justice which makes various recommendations in 1993.

The six men struggle to cope with freedom following their release. Several turn to drink and most of their marriages suffer as a result. 

Their fight for what they consider adequate compensation for one of Britain’s most notorious miscarriages of justice continues. Patrick Hill sets up his own pressure group – Miscarriages of Justice Organisation – and in 2002 says there are up to 4,000 people wrongfully imprisoned in the United Kingdom.

In February 1999, Gareth Peirce, the lawyer for five of the six, hands back an Order of the British Empire (CBE) awarded to her at the New Year Honours list.

The real Birmingham pub bombers have not been prosecuted.

(From: “1991: Birmingham Six on verge of freedom,” BBC ON THIS DAY, http://www.news.bbc.co.uk)


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The Murder of Robert McCartney

The murder of Robert McCartney occurs in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on the night of January 30, 2005, and is carried out by members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

McCartney, born in 1971, is a Roman Catholic and lives in the predominantly nationalist Short Strand area of east Belfast, and is said by his family to be a supporter of Sinn Féin. He is the father of two children and is engaged to be married in June 2005 to his longtime girlfriend, Bridgeen Hagans.

McCartney is involved in an altercation in Magennis’ Bar on May Street in Belfast’s city centre on the night of January 30, 2005. He is found unconscious with stab wounds on Cromac Street by a police patrol car and dies at the hospital the following morning. He is 33 years old.

The fight arises when McCartney is accused of making an insulting gesture or comment to the wife of an IRA member in the social club. When his friend, Brendan Devine, refuses to accept this or apologise, a brawl begins. McCartney, who is attempting to defend Devine, is attacked with a broken bottle and then dragged into Verner Street, beaten with metal bars and stabbed. Devine also suffers a knife attack, but survives. The throats of both men are cut and McCartney’s wounds include the loss of an eye and a large blade wound running from his chest to his stomach. Devine is hospitalised under armed protection.

When Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officers arrive at the scene, their efforts to investigate the pub and surrounding area are met with an impromptu riot. Rioting by youths, specifically attacking the police, force them to pull back from the area, which delays initial investigation. Police with riot gear arrive later in the evening and are also attacked. Alex Maskey of Sinn Féin claims, “It appears the PSNI is using last night’s tragic stabbing incident as an excuse to disrupt life within this community, and the scale and approach of their operation is completely unacceptable and unjustifiable.” There are suggestions that the rioting is organised by those involved in the murder, so that a cleanup operation can take place in and around where the murder took place. Clothes worn by McCartney’s attackers are burned, CCTV tapes are removed from the bar and destroyed and bar staff are threatened. No ambulance is called. McCartney and Devine are noticed by a police car on routine patrol, who call an ambulance to the scene.

When the police launch the murder investigation they are met with a “wall of silence” None of the estimated seventy or so witnesses to the altercation come forward with information. In conversations with family members, seventy-one potential witnesses claim to have been in the pub’s toilets at the time of the attacks. As the toilet measures just four feet by three feet, this leads to the toilets being dubbed the TARDIS, after the time machine in the television series Doctor Who, which is much bigger on the inside than on the outside.

Sinn Féin suspends twelve members of the party and the IRA expels three members some weeks later.

Gerry Adams, then president of Sinn Féin, urges witnesses to come forward to “the family, a solicitor, or any other authoritative or reputable person or body”. He continues, “I want to make it absolutely clear that no one involved acted as a republican or on behalf of republicans.” He suspends twelve members of Sinn Féin. He stops short of asking witnesses to contact the police directly. The usefulness of making witness statements to the victim’s family or to a solicitor is derided by the McCartneys and by a prominent lawyer and Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) politician, Alban Maginness, soon afterward.

On February 16, 2005, the IRA issues a statement denying involvement in the murder and calls on the perpetrators to “take responsibility.”

On March 8, 2005, the IRA issues an unprecedented statement saying that four people are directly involved in the murder, that the IRA knows their identity, that two are IRA volunteers, and that the IRA has made an offer to McCartney’s family to shoot the people directly involved in the murder.

In May 2005, Sinn Féin loses its council seat in the Pottinger area, which covers the Short Strand, with the McCartney family attributing the loss to events surrounding the murder.

Since this time, the sisters of McCartney have maintained an increasingly public campaign for justice, which sees Sinn Féin chief negotiator Martin McGuinness make a public statement that the sisters should be careful that they are not being manipulated for political ends.

The McCartney family travels to the United States during the 2005 Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations where they are met by U.S. Senators (including Hillary Clinton and John McCain) and U.S. President George W. Bush who express support in their campaign for justice.

Support for Sinn Féin by some American politicians is diminished. Adams is not invited to the White House in 2005 and Senator Edward Kennedy backs out of a meeting that had been previously scheduled. The McCartney family, previously Sinn Féin supporters, pledge to never support the party again, and a cousin of the sisters who raised funds for Sinn Féin in the United States insist that she will not be doing so in the future.

On May 5, 2005, Terence Davison and James McCormick are remanded in custody, charged with murdering McCartney and attempting to murder Devine respectively. McCormick is originally from England. They are held in the republican wing of HM Prison Maghaberry. Roughly four months later the accused are released on bail, and in June 2006, the attempted murder charge against McCormick is dropped, leaving a charge of causing an affray. On June 27, 2008, Terence Davison is found not guilty of committing the murder. Two other men charged with affray are also cleared.

In November 2005, the McCartney sisters and Bridgeen Hagans, the former partner of McCartney, refuse to accept the Outstanding Achievement award at the Women of the Year Lunch, because it would mean their sharing a platform with Margaret Thatcher, whom they dislike.

In December 2005, the McCartney sisters meet with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and tell him they believe the murder had been ordered by a senior IRA member, and that Sinn Féin was still not doing all it could to help them.

On January 31, 2007, two years after the murder, and in line with the party’s new policy of supporting civil policing, Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams says that anyone with information about the murder should go to the police.

On May 5, 2015, an IRA man believed to have been involved in the death of McCartney, Gerard ‘Jock’ Davison, is shot dead. Early in the investigation the police rule out either a sectarian attack or the involvement of dissident republicans.

The McCartney family has lived in the Short Strand area of Belfast for five generations. However, some local people in the Short Strand area, which is a largely nationalist area, does not welcome their dispute with the IRA. A campaign of intimidation by republicans drives members of the family and McCartney’s former fiancée to relocate and also causes one member to close her business in the city centre. The last McCartney sister to leave the area, Paula, departs Short Strand on October 26, 2005.

The family remain in contact with the family of Joseph Rafferty of Dublin, who dies under similar circumstances on April 12, 2005.


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Founding of European Movement Ireland

European Movement Ireland (EM Ireland) (Irish: Gluaiseacht na hEorpa in Éirinn) is founded in Dublin on January 11, 1954. EM Ireland is an independent not-for-profit organisation that campaigns for every Irish person to get involved in the European Union (EU) and by doing so, help shape it. It is the oldest Irish organisation dealing with the EU, pre-dating Ireland’s membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973 by almost twenty years. The organisation is headed by Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Noelle Connell. Julie Sinnamon acts as Chair of the EM Ireland Board.

One hundred people meet in the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin on January 11, 1954, and found the Irish Council of the European Movement. Signing the Articles of Association that found the EM Ireland are seven pioneers of Ireland’s future in Europe. They are: Donal O’Sullivan, university lecturer; Garret FitzGerald, economist; Louis P. F. Smith, economist; Denis Corboy, barrister; George Colley, solicitor; Declan Costello, barrister; and Sean J. Healy, secretary.

These seven signatories lay the first stone paving Ireland’s way to full membership of the EU. The aim of the Irish Council is to inform Irish individuals and organisations about the EU. One of its primary objectives is for Ireland to gain membership of the European Communities (EC) (principally the European Economic Community (EEC), as the EU is then known). Former Taoisigh Garret FitzGerald and Jack Lynch, and former President Mary Robinson back the initiative. After a referendum is held on the Third Amendment of the Irish Constitution, which is overwhelmingly approved by voters in May 1972, Ireland joins the European Communities as a full member state on January 1, 1973.

The Irish Council later becomes European Movement Ireland. Today the organisation claims to act as source of information for Irish citizens regarding the work of the EU and its stated aim is to promote reasoned robust and fair debate about EU in Ireland.

EM Ireland retains an affiliation with the European Youth Parliament, a youth organization which runs events for secondary school age children along the structure of a mock European Parliament.

EM Ireland is part of a pan-European network. European Movement International is a lobbying association that coordinates the efforts of associations and national councils with the goal of promoting European integration, and disseminating information about it. It seeks to encourage and facilitate the active participation of citizens and civil society organisations in the European Union as it develops. The European Movement network is represented in over 41 countries and has over 20 international organisations as members. The current President of European Movement is the former MEP from Belgium, Guy Verhofstadt. For a full list of all European Movement offices, and an outline of the history of the international network visit the EM International website at http://www.europeanmovement.eu/


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Birth of Mícheál Ó Móráin, Fianna Fáil Politician

Mícheál Ó Móráin, an Irish Fianna Fáil politician, is born in Castlebar, County Mayo on December 24, 1911. He serves as Teachta Dála (TD) from 1938 to 1973, Minister for Lands from 1959 to 1968, Minister for the Gaeltacht from 1957 to 1959 and 1961 to 1968, and Minister for Justice from 1968 to 1970.

Ó Móráin hails from a strong Republican family, members of which had fought in the Irish War of Independence, and in the Irish Civil War on the Anti-Treaty side. A solicitor by profession, he is first elected to Dáil Éireann for the Mayo South constituency on his second attempt at the 1938 Irish general election. He remains on the backbenches for several years until he is appointed to the cabinet by Taoiseach Éamon de Valera in 1957 as Minister for the Gaeltacht. He is a native speaker of the Irish language. He is appointed Minister for Lands by Taoiseach Seán Lemass in 1959 and is re-appointed to the Gaeltacht portfolio in 1961. He remains in these two Departments until 1968.

Ireland formally applies for European Economic Committee (EEC) membership in July 1961. Ó Móráin, as Minister for Lands and the Gaeltacht, delivers a widely reported address to the Castlebar Chamber of Commerce in 1962. In the speech, he argues that Ireland is “ready to subscribe to the political aims of the EEC” and that Ireland does not want to be seen as “committed” to its policy of neutrality. In the ensuing controversy, he and Lemass deny that there is any suggestion Ireland might or should abandon neutrality. Outside the country, foreign governments see this episode as a deliberately provoked debate to evaluate the government’s domestic room for manoeuvre on neutrality.

Ó Móráin is appointed Minister for Justice by Taoiseach Jack Lynch in 1968. It is in this role that he is most remembered. While he is still Minister, the Arms Crisis in Ireland erupts in 1970. This political scandal sees Government ministers Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney dismissed by the Taoiseach for alleged involvement in a conspiracy to smuggle arms to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Northern Ireland. Ó Móráin continually suffers from ill health, which is accentuated by his alcoholism. When the Arms Crisis erupts, Lynch comes to see him in a hospital in Galway and asks for his resignation. Ó Móráin is a witness at the subsequent Arms Trial. He testifies that he had passed on Garda intelligence reports about the involvement of ministers with the IRA to the Taoiseach before the arms were seized at Dublin Airport. Hus evidence at the trial has been described as “erratic.”

Ó Móráin loses his Dáil seat at the 1973 Irish general election and retires from politics. He dies at his home in Sutton, Dublin, in on May 6, 1983. With a Fianna Fáil guard of honour, he is buried in Castlebar. With his wife, Madge, he has one daughter, Sorcha, and two sons, John, and Michael, who dies in a road accident in 1972.


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Death of David Sheehy, Irish Nationalist Politician

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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Death of Maolra Seoighe, Wrongly Convicted & Hanged

Maolra Seoighe (English: Myles Joyce), is an Irish man who is wrongfully convicted and hanged on December 15, 1882. He is found guilty of the Maumtrasna Murders and is sentenced to death. Though he can only speak Irish, the case is heard in English without any translation service. He is posthumously pardoned in 2018.

Seoighe is the most prominent figure in a controversial trial in 1882 that takes place while Ireland is part of the United Kingdom. Three Irish language speakers are condemned to death for the murder of a local family (John Joyce, his wife Brighid, his mother Mairéad, his daughter Peigí and son Mícheál) in Maumtrasna, on the border between County Mayo and County Galway. It is presumed by the authorities to be a local feud connected to sheep rustling and the Land War. Eight men are convicted on what turns out to be perjured evidence and three of them condemned to death: Maolra Seoighe (a father of five children), Pat Casey and Pat Joyce.

Covering the incident, The Spectator writes the following:

“The Tragedy at Maumtrasna, investigated this week in Dublin, almost unique as it is in the annals of the United Kingdom, brings out in strong relief two facts which Englishmen are too apt to forget. One is the existence in particular districts of Ireland of a class of peasants who are scarcely civilised beings, and approach far nearer to savages than any other white men; and the other is their extraordinary and exceptional gloominess of temper. In remote places of Ireland, especially in Connaught, on a few of the islands, and in one or two mountain districts, dwell cultivators who are in knowledge, in habits, and in the discipline of life no higher than Maories or other Polynesians.”

The court proceedings are carried out in a language the accused do not understand (English), with a solicitor from Trinity College Dublin (TCD), who does not speak Irish. The three are executed in Galway by William Marwood for the crime in 1882. The role of John Spencer, 5th Earl Spencer, who is then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, is the most controversial aspect of the trial, leading most modern scholars to characterise it as a miscarriage of justice. Research carried out in The National Archives by Seán Ó Cuirreáin, has found that Spencer “compensated” three alleged eyewitnesses to the sum of £1,250, equivalent to €157,000 (by 2016 rates).

As of 2016, nobody has issued an apology or pardon for the executions, though the case has been periodically taken up by various political figures. The then MP for Westmeath, Timothy Harrington, takes up the case, claiming that the Crown Prosecutor for the case George Bolton, had deliberately withheld evidence from the trial. In 2011, two sitting members of the House of Lords, the Liberal Democrat life peers David Alton and Eric Lubbock, request a review of the case. Crispin Blunt, Tory Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Prisons and Youth Justice, states that Seoighe was “probably an innocent man,” but he does not seek an official pardon.

Seoighe’s final words are: “Feicfidh mé Iosa Críost ar ball beag – crochadh eisean san éagóir chomh maith. … Ara, tá mé ag imeacht … Go bhfóire Dia ar mo bhean agus a cúigear dílleachtaí.” (I will be seeing Jesus Christ soon – he too was also unjustly hanged … I am leaving … the blessings of God on my wife and her five orphans.)

On April 4, 2018, Michael D. Higgins, the President of Ireland, issues a pardon on the advice of the government of Ireland saying “Maolra Seoighe was wrongly convicted of murder and was hanged for a crime that he did not commit”. It is the first presidential pardon relating to an event predating the foundation of the state in 1922 and the second time a pardon has been issued after an execution. Seoighe’s case is not an isolated one, and there are strong similarities with the case of Patrick Walsh who was hanged in the Galway jail on September 22, 1882, just three months before Seoighe for the murders of Martin and John Lydon. The same key players and political factors are active in both cases and his conviction is just as questionable as that of Seoighe.

In September 2009, the story is featured on RTÉ‘s CSI programme under an episode entitled CSI Maamtrasna Massacre. A dramatised Irish language film regarding the affair, entitled Murdair Mhám Trasna, produced by Ciarán Ó Cofaigh is released in 2017.