seamus dubhghaill

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Death of Charles Frederick Williams, Writer & Journalist

Charles Frederick Williams, a Scottish-Irish writer, journalist, and war correspondent, dies in Brixton, London, England, on February 9, 1904.

Williams is born on May 4, 1838, in Coleraine, County Londonderry. He claims to be descended on his father’s side from Worcestershire yeomen living in the parishes of Tenbury and Mamble. On his mother’s side he descends from Scottish settlers who planted Ulster in 1610. He is educated at Belfast Academy in Belfast under Dr. Reuben John Bryce and at a Greenwich private school under Dr. Goodwin. Later on, he goes to the southern United States for his health and takes part in a filibustering expedition to Nicaragua, where he sees some hard fighting and reportedly wins the reputation of a blockade runner. He is separated from his party and is lost in the forest for six days. Fevered, he discovers a small boat and manages to return to the nearest British settlement. He serves in the London Irish Rifles and has the rank of sergeant.

Williams returns to England in 1859, where he becomes a volunteer, and a leader writer for the London Evening Herald. In October 1859, he begins a connection with The Standard which lasts until 1884. From 1860 until 1863, he works as a first editor for the London Evening Standard and from 1882 until 1884, as editor of The Evening News.

Williams is best known for being a war correspondent. He is described as an admirable war correspondent, a daring rider as well as writer. For The Standard, he is at the headquarters of the Armée de la Loire, a French army, during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. He is also one of the first correspondents in Strasbourg, where the French forces are defeated. In the summer and autumn of 1877, he is a correspondent to Ahmed Muhtar Pasha who commands the Turkish forces in Armenia during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 and 1878. He remains constantly at the Turkish front, and his letters are the only continuous series that reaches England. In 1878, he publishes this series in a revised and extended form as The Armenian Campaign: A Diary of the Campaign on 1877, in Armenia and Koordistan, which is a large accurate record of the war, even though it is pro-Turkish. From Armenia, he follows Muhtar Pasha to European Turkey and describes his defence of the lines of Constantinople against the Imperial Russian Army. He is with General Mikhail Skobelev at the headquarters of the Imperial Russian Army when the Treaty of San Stefano is signed in March 1878. He reports this at the Berlin Congress.

At the end of 1878, Williams is in Afghanistan reporting the war, and in 1879 publishes the Notes on the Operations in Lower Afghanistan, 1878–9, with Special Reference to Transport.

In the autumn of 1884, representing the Central News Agency of London, Williams also joins the Gordon Relief Expedition, a British mission to relieve in Major-General Charles George Gordon in Khartoum, Sudan. His is the first dispatch to tell of the loss of Gordon. While in Sudan, he quarrels with Henry H. S. Pearse of The Daily News, who later unsuccessfully sues him. After leaving The Standard in 1884, he works with the Morning Advertiser, but later works with the Daily Chronicle as a war correspondent. He is the only British correspondent to be with the Bulgarian Army under Prince Alexander Joseph of Battenberg during the Serbo-Bulgarian War in November 1885. In the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, he is attached to the Greek forces in Thessaly. His last war reporting is on Herbert Kitchener‘s Sudanese campaign of 1898. His health does not permit his advance to South Africa, but he is still able to compile a diary of the South African War for The Morning Leader.

In 1887, Williams meets with then General of the United States Army, Philip Sheridan, in Washington, D.C. to update the general on European affairs and the prospects of upcoming conflicts.

Williams once tries to bid as a Conservative Party candidate for the House of Commons representative of Leeds West, a borough in Leeds, West Yorkshire, during the 1885 United Kingdom general election. He fails to win the seat against Liberal Party candidate Herbert Gladstone. He once serves as the Chairman of the London district of the Chartered Institute of Journalists from 1893 to 1894. He founds the London Press Club where he also serves as its President from 1896 to 1897.

Williams is wounded three times in action. He is shot in the leg in Egypt in 1885 during General Buller’s retreat from Gubat to Korti.

Williams is a member of the 1st Surrey Rifles, a volunteer unit of the British Army, a member of the London Irish Volunteers, and is a known marksman.

Williams is said to possess a voice of thunder and expresses with terrific energy. He conducts a lecture tour of the United States where he describes the six campaigns, illustrated by limelight photographs. His audience in Brooklyn, New York, is described by The New York Times as highly delighted by his lecture about the hardships and adventures. His presentation is “a feast for the eyes and ears and was highly appreciated by the large audience assembled.” He later tours England, Scotland, and Ireland speaking about his then seven campaigns.

A friend of explorer Henry Morton Stanley, Williams gives him a compass that has been on a number of his expeditions. Stanley takes it with him to Africa and it is now on display at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium.

Williams also writes fiction, including his book John Thaddeus Mackay, a tale about religious tolerance and understanding. With the sanction of Commander in Chief, Field Marshal Garnet Wolseley, he edits a book Songs for Soldiers for the March The Camp and the Barracks to improve morale and relieve boredom. Included in the book are a number of songs that he composed. He also writes about ecclesiastical questions, and contributes articles and stories to different periodicals.

Williams is a strong adherent to Wolseley’s military views and policy, and has considerable military knowledge. He also publishes military subjects in several publications such as the United Service Magazine, the National Review, and other periodicals. In 1892, he publishes Life of Sir H. Evelyn Wood, which is controversial as he defends the actions of Wood after the Battle of Majuba Hill in 1881. In 1902, he publishes a pamphlet, entitled Hush Up, in which he protests against the proposed limited official inquiry into the South African War and calls for an investigation.

Early in his career, Williams shares an office with friend and colleague Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, who later becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. They have a standing tradition of always sending out for two beers with payment alternating between each man. Many years later, Williams is in the lobby of the House of Lords and Gascoyne-Cecil approaches him with an outstretched hand and asks, “By the way, Mr. Williams, whose turn is it to stand the beer?”

In 1884, the steamer carrying Williams and colleague Frederic Villiers of The Graphic overturns in the Nile River. Their rescue leads Williams to later commission a unique ivory and gold mitre for the Bishop of London as a thank-offering to God for his safe return from Khartoum.

In Rudyard Kipling‘s play, The Light That Failed, the character of Mr. Nilghai, the war correspondent, is based on Williams.

Williams receives a personal invitation from King Edward VII to attend the funeral of his mother, Queen Victoria.

Both of Williams‘a sons became journalists. Frederick is a noted parliamentary reporter, writer, and historian in Canada. Francis Austin Ward Williams practices journalism in Sydney, Australia.

In the Nile Campaign of 1884-85, application is made to the War Office with the support of the Commander in Chief Lord Wolseley for medals for Willams and correspondent Bennet Burleigh. Williams has been twice requested to take command of some of the men by senior officers on the spot. The Secretary of War is unable to grant the recognition under the rules of the day but writes a letter saying that he regrets that this must be his decision.

Williams is a recipient of the Queen’s Sudan Medal, an award given to British and Egyptian forces which took part in the Sudan campaign between 1896 and 1898.

Field Marshall Garnet Wolseley recognizes the contributions of Williams on the battlefield. He says in a speech that from “Charles Williams, he had at various times received the greatest possible help in the field.”

Williams dies in Brixton, London, on February 9, 1904. He is buried in Nunhead Cemetery in London. His son, journalist Fred Williams, first learns of his father’s death on the wire service he is monitoring at his newspaper in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Williams’s funeral is well attended by the press as well as members of the military including Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood. Colleague Henry Nevison writes a long reflection on Williams. It includes, “On the field he possessed a kind of instinctive sense of what was going to happen. When I went to big field-days with him he was already an elderly man, and much broken down with the hardships of a war correspondent’s life; but he invariably appeared at the critical place exactly at the right moment, and I once heard the Duke of Connaught, who was commanding, say, ‘When I see Charlie Williams shut up his telescope, I know it’s all over.’ And now he is gone, with his rage, his generosity, his innocent pride, his faithful championship of every friend, and his memories of so many a strange event. His greatest joy was to encourage youth to follow in his steps, and the world is sadder and duller for his going.”


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Birth of Patrick Pollen, Stained Glass Artist

Patrick Pollen, a British stained glass artist who spends most of his life working in Ireland, is born Patrick La Primaudaye Pollen in London on January 12, 1928.

Pollen is the second son and second of six children of Arthur and Daphne Pollen (née Baring). His father is a sculptor of religious works, and grandson of John Hungerford Pollen. His mother is a painter of religious matter and the daughter of Cecil Baring, 3rd Baron Revelstoke, who purchases Lambay Island and employs Edwin Lutyens to restore the castle there. Pollen attends St. Philip’s preparatory school in South Kensington, then Avisford, near Arundel, and finally Ampleforth College, going on to serve national service. He attends the Slade School of Fine Art for two years to study painting, going on to work at Académie Julian, an art school in Paris, France.

In 1952, Pollen’s father takes him to see Evie Hone‘s “Crucifixion and Last Supper” window in Eton College Chapel. Upon seeing it he announces, “That’s what I want to do.” He moves to Dublin to study with the stained glass cooperative Evie Hone is a member of, An Túr Gloine, which is run by Catherine O’Brien and she and Hone become his mentors. When Hone dies in 1955, she leaves him her brushes.

Pollen’s early work from the 1950s is mostly in Britain, including a window in a private chapel in the London Oratory, three windows for a chapel at Whitchurch, and a crypt window for Rosslyn Chapel. He works for two years from 1957 on thirty-two windows for the new Cathedral of Christ The King, Johannesburg. He makes the windows in Dublin, then ships them to be assembled in South Africa. He creates the mosaic of St. Joseph the Worker and windows for Galway Cathedral. In 1963, he creates a memorial window to Catherine O’Brien in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. He takes on Helen Moloney as an assistant from 1960 to 1962.

Following the Second Vatican Council, newly designed churches feature less stained glass, and Pollen finds he is receiving less commissions. As a consequence he and his family move to the United States in 1981. They settle in Winston-Salem, North Carolina but there is very little work there and in 1997 they return in Ireland, living in his wife’s native County Wexford.

Pollen marries sculptor Nell Murphy in 1963, with the couple buying a house in Dublin in which Pollen had his studio. Murphy works in plaster, clay and stone, her works often featured in churches with those of her husband. They hav four sons, Peter, Ciaran, Laurence and Christopher, and a daughter, Brid.

Pollen dies on November 30, 2010, in Enniscorthy, County Wexford. His remains are cremated and the location of his ashes is unknown.


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Birth of Charles Doran, Irish Actor

Charles Doran, an Irish actor and one of the last of the touring actor-managers in the tradition of Frank Benson, John Martin-Harvey and Ben Greet, is born on January 1, 1877, in Cork, County Cork. Among those who join his company at the start of their careers are Cecil Parker, Ralph Richardson, Francis L. Sullivan and Donald Wolfit.

Doran tours with Benson and other managements, and plays in the West End before setting up his own company in 1920. He leads it for eleven years, before leaving Britain to work in India. On his return he works on stage and makes occasional television appearances.

Doran is the son of Charles Jenkins Doran. He is educated in Cork and privately. In 1899, he makes his stage debut as a member of Frank Benson’s touring company, in Julius Caesar at the Theatre Royal, Belfast. He remains with Benson for two and a half years, during which he makes his London debut, as Captain MacMorris in Henry V at the Lyceum Theatre.

In 1903, Doran tours in a stage version of Leo Tolstoy‘s Resurrection. He is engaged by Fred Terry and Julia Neilson, and appears at the New Theatre in 1905, as the Comte de Tournai in The Scarlet Pimpernel. In 1906, touring with Harry Brodribb Irving, he makes his first appearance in the United States, and the following year tours in South Africa with Cora Urquhart Brown-Potter‘s company. In 1907, he returns to Benson’s company. In 1908, he tours with Mrs. Patrick Campbell in The Thunderbolt, and The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. During 1909–10 he tours England and Australia with Oscar Asche and Lily Brayton, both former members of Benson’s troupe. His parts include the title role in The Merchant of Venice, Lodovico in Othello, Tranio in The Taming of the Shrew and the Soothsayer in Julius Caesar.

In October 1910, returning to England, Doran plays La Tribe in Count Hannibal at the New Theatre, after which he is Pistol in The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Garrick Theatre to the Falstaff of Asche. For the next ten years he plays in new, ephemeral works, interspersed with classics. Among his roles in the latter are Constantine Levin in Anna Karenina (1913), Douglas in Henry IV, Part 1 and the Constable of France in Henry V (1914) in London, and a variety of Shakespeare parts at the Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon (1919).

In February 1920, Doran begins touring with his own Shakespearean company, playing Hamlet, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Brutus in Julius Caesar, Malvolio in Twelfth Night, Prospero in The Tempest, Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, Falstaff, Henry V, and Jaques in As You Like It. He has a keen eye for rising talent, and among his recruits are Noel Streatfeild, Cecil Parker, Ralph Richardson, Edith Sharpe, Norman Shelley, Abraham Sofaer, Francis L. Sullivan and Donald Wolfit.

In 1931, Doran goes to India as director of Shakespeare’s plays at the State Theatre in Jhalawar and then on to Bombay where he performs primarily in Shakespeare on the radio. He returns to England in 1937. His last London appearance is in Song of Norway (1949). His last Shakespearean role in the theatre is Time in The Winter’s Tale (1951). He continues to act on stage in other parts until 1954. He appears on BBC Television as a senator in Othello in 1950 and Adabashev, the tragedian in Curtain Down in 1952.

Doran dies in Folkestone on the south coast of England on April 5, 1964, at the age of 87. An article on him published by Emory University in 2003 sums up his career thus:

On stage in one role or another, Doran’s fifty-seven years in the theatre made him a major force in the profession, particularly in his productions of Shakespeare. Such was his energy and enthusiasm that he kept alive for a few more years the actor-manager system when the major talents, men like Tree, Benson, and Irving, had dissolved their companies. Doran was indeed the last of his theatrical breed.


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Death of Nancy Wynne-Jones, Welsh & Irish Artist

Nancy Wynne-Jones HRHA, a Welsh and Irish artist, dies in County Wicklow on November 9, 2006.

Mary Esperance (“Nancy”) Wynne-Jones is born on December 10, 1922, in Penmaenucha, Wales, to landowner Charles Llewellyn Wynne-Jones and Sybil Mary Gella Scott. The family spends half the year in Wales and half the year in Thornhill, Stalbridge, Dorset. She has two brothers, Andrew and Ronald (“Polly”), both of whom die in Africa during World War II.

Wynne-Jones is educated at home. Her skill in art leads to her getting lessons in Sherborne from a children’s book illustrator. Her music is encouraged by the family doctor and she begins to compose and study the violin, receiving lessons in Bournemouth with the first violinist of the symphony orchestra. After the start of World War II, she continues in Aberystwyth. She goes on to study the violin and composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London (1940–43). While in London she also serves as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse until 1943 and later as a draughtswoman at the Ordnance Survey.

After the war, Wynne-Jones purchases and manages a bookshop on the King’s Road in Chelsea, but it is not a financial success. She returns to painting, studying at the Heatherley School of Fine Art, London, from 1951 to 1952 and the Chelsea School of Art from 1952 to 1955. She travels extensively through Portugal and Italy painting landscapes. An interest in completing landscapes in an abstract manner leads her to study with Peter Lanyon in St. Ives, Cornwall.

Wynne-Jones begins study in Cornwall in 1957 and remains there for fifteen years. Her first public exhibition is in a group show in 1957 at the Pasmore Edwards Gallery, Newlyn. Other group shows are Jefferson Place Gallery, Washington, D.C. (1959) and in Falmouth, Cornwall (1960). Her solo exhibitions are at the New Vision Centre, London (1962 and 1965), Florence (1963) and Dolgellau (1964). From the 1960s through the 1990s she exhibits in Britain, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Holland, South Africa, and the United States.

In 1962, Wynne-Jones purchases Trevaylor House near Penzance and provides accommodation for other artists including renowned Irish painter Tony O’Malley, sculptor Conor Fallon and English poet and writer W. S. ‘Sydney’ Graham. In the 1970s she exhibits in Ireland at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin (1970) and at the Emmet Gallery, Dublin (1975 and 1977). During the 1980s she exhibits at the Lincoln and Hendricks galleries in Dublin before joining the Taylor Gallery, run by John and Patrick Taylor. She is elected an honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in 1994 and becomes a member of Aosdána in 1996. Originally an abstract artist, her contact with the Irish countryside slowly transforms her work to that of a landscape artist, albeit with an influence of abstraction attached to it. She becomes well-known in Irish art circles as an eminent Irish landscape artist.

Wynne-Jones is involved with artist Derek Middleton before moving to Cornwall. There she becomes romantically involved with Graham who is in an open marriage, however, it is the death of her mentor Peter Lanyon which devastates her. She meets the sculptor Conor Fallon through their mutual friend, Tony O’Malley. Fallon had arrived in Cornwall ostensibly to meet Lanyon. They marry in 1966. Their honeymoon in Provence is immortalised in expressionist paintings done by her. The couple adopts a boy and a girl, siblings, John and Bridget. In 1972, she moves with her family to Kinsale, County Cork. It is in the area around here that a number of her paintings are created. Later she paints the mountain visible from her Wicklow home after the family moves in the late 1980s. She moves to Ballard House, near Rathdrum, County Wicklow in 1987.

Wynne-Jones dies on November 9, 2006, and is buried in Ballinatone (Church of Ireland), Rathdrum.


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The Royal Irish Constabulary is Disbanded

The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the police force in Ireland from 1822 until 1922, when all of the island was part of the United Kingdom, is disbanded on August 17, 1922, and replaced by the Garda Síochána.

A separate civic police force, the unarmed Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP), patrols the capital and parts of County Wicklow, while the cities of Derry and Belfast, originally with their own police forces, later have special divisions within the RIC. For most of its history, the ethnic and religious makeup of the RIC broadly matches that of the Irish population, although Anglo-Irish Protestants are overrepresented among its senior officers.

The first organised police forces in Ireland come about through Dublin Police Act 1786, which is a slightly modified version of the failed London and Westminster Police Bill 1785 drafted by John Reeves at the request of Home Secretary Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney, following the Gordon Riots of 1780. The force is viewed as oppressive by local elites and becomes a strain on the city budget. The arguably excessive budget is used as a pretext by Irish nationalist MP Henry Grattan and short-lived Lord Lieutenant of Ireland William Fitzwilliam, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam, to essentially abolish the Dublin Police in 1795 and even temporarily move it under Dublin Corporation.

The Peace Preservation Act 1814, for which Sir Robert Peel is largely responsible, and the Irish Constabulary Act 1822 forms the provincial constabularies. The 1822 act establishes a force in each province with chief constables and inspectors general under the United Kingdom civil administration for Ireland controlled by the Dublin Castle administration.

The RIC’s existence is increasingly troubled by the rise of the Home Rule campaign in the early twentieth century period prior to World War I.

In January 1922, the British and Irish delegations agree to disband the RIC. Phased disbandments begin within a few weeks with RIC personnel both regular and auxiliary being withdrawn to six centres in southern Ireland. On April 2, 1922, the force formally ceases to exist, although the actual process is not completed until August 17. The RIC is replaced by the Civic Guard (renamed as the Garda Síochána the following year) in the Irish Free State and by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in Northern Ireland.

According to a parliamentary answer in October 1922, 1,330 ex-RIC men join the new RUC in Northern Ireland. This results in an RUC force that is 21% Roman Catholic at its inception in 1922. As the former RIC members retire over the subsequent years, this proportion steadily falls.

Just thirteen men transfer to the Garda Síochána. These include men who had earlier assisted Irish Republican Army (IRA) operations in various ways. Some retire, and the Irish Free State pays their pensions as provided for in the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty agreement. Others, still faced with threats of violent reprisals, emigrate with their families to Great Britain or other parts of the British Empire, most often to join police forces in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Southern Rhodesia. A number of these men join the Palestine Police Force, which is recruiting in the UK at the time.


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Brendan Foley, Writer, Film Producer & Director

Brendan Foley is a Northern Irish writer, film producer and director. Raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he has written feature film and TV series scripts for producers and studios in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hollywood, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Poland, South Africa, China and Thailand. He writes and produces the 2005 action-thriller Johnny Was, starring Vinnie Jones, Eriq La Salle and Patrick Bergin. The film wins awards including Audience Awards and Best Feature Awards from six film festivals.

Foley’s most recent work includes Cold Courage, a TV series thriller for Lionsgate, Viaplay and Luminoir shot in Europe in 2019 and The Man Who Died, a series for Elisa-Viaplay.

Foley writes, produces and directs The Riddle in 2006, starring Jones, Sir Derek Jacobi and Vanessa Redgrave. In September 2007, The Riddle becomes the world’s first feature film to be released as a DVD premiere by a national newspaper. The UK’s The Mail on Sunday buys UK DVD rights and distributes 2.6 million copies, making the film one of the most widely watched independent films in the UK.

During 2006–07, Foley writes and directs Assault of Darkness, a satirical horror film set in rural Ireland, starring Jones, Jason Barry and Nora-Jane Noone. It is released by Lionsgate in the United States on DVD in 2009. He co-creates and is a writer on Shelldon, a children’s environmental animated TV series on NBC (2010–12) and Byrdland (five seasons of animated TV series in Asia with GMM Grammy).

In 2015, Foley starts developing a new TV detective series for BBC Television, Farmoor (makers of The Fall) and Northern Ireland Screen (UK home of Game of Thrones) and, in 2016, he develops Tunnel Kings, a mini-series on World War II POW “escape-artists” for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Dream Street, Canada. He completes pilot scripts for SOS, a new eco-thriller series by Finnish producers Luminoir, and Kvenland, set in the Dark Ages. Previously he writes the pilot for drama Dr. Feelgood for Monday TV (Denmark).

Cold Courage, described as a Nordic noir series involving Finnish characters in present-day London made by Finnish producers Luminoir for Lionsgate and Viaplay, shot in London, Dublin, Belgium and Finland in 2019. Actor John Simm tells Variety that he is attracted to the series by the quality of the writing and the fact that it is a pan-European thriller.

In 2019, Foley is attached to produce an adaptation of Freeman Wills Crofts‘ Inspector French novels.

In 2025, Foley is Writer-Creator and Executive Producer for Sherlock & Daughter, a drama series starring David Thewlis and Blu Hunt for The CW, WarnerBrosDiscovery UK, Federation, Starlings and StoryFirst (UK).

Foley has written books for U.S. and UK publishers. Under The Wire, a World War II POW escape drama, which he writes along with its subject, pilot William Ash, is published by  Random House, London and St. Martin’s Press, New York, in 2005 and 2006. It becomes a best-seller, reaching number one on Amazon UK‘s history and biography charts. In 2018/19, a related TV series is developed as a future miniseries by CBC in Canada and Northern Ireland Screen.

Foley’s next book, Archerfield, a novel, published in 2015, covers 16,000 years of history in one square mile of Scotland.

Foley is a member of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, a Fellow of the British Association of Communicators in Business, and is made an honorary life member of the National Union of Journalists in June 2006.


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Birth of Ivana Bacik, Labour Party Politician

Ivana Catherine Bacik, Irish politician who has been the Leader of the Labour Party since March 24, 2022 and a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin Bay South constituency since winning a by-election on July 9, 2021, is born in Dublin on May 25, 1968. She comes to prominence due to her abortion rights campaigning from the 1980s onward.

Bacik’s paternal grandfather, Charles Bacik, was a Czech factory owner who moved to Ireland in 1946. He eventually settled in Waterford, County Waterford, and in 1947 was involved in the establishment of Waterford Crystal. Her mother’s side of the family are Murphys from County Clare. Her father is an astronomer and is employed in a number of locations. As a result, she lives in London and South Africa, before moving to Crookstown, County Cork, at the age of six, when he becomes a physics lecturer in the Cork Institute of Technology. She attends the nearby national school in Cloughduv. When she is 11 years old, her family moves to the Sunday’s Well area of Cork city. At the age of 14, she moves to Dublin.

Bacik wins a scholarship to board at Alexandra College in Milltown, Dublin, and is awarded a sizarship at Trinity College Dublin. She has an LL.B. from Trinity and an LL.M. from the London School of Economics.

Bacik contests the Seanad Éireann elections in 1997 and 2002 as an independent candidate for the Dublin University constituency but is not successful.

She runs as a Labour Party candidate at the 2004 election to the European Parliament in the Dublin constituency. She runs with sitting MEP Proinsias De Rossa, who is also the party president, on the same ticket. She polls 40,707 first preference votes (9.6%) but is not elected.

In 2004, Bacik’s book Kicking and Screaming: Dragging Ireland into the 21st Century, is published by The O’Brien Press.

In 2007, she contested the Seanad Éireann elections for the third time in the Dublin University constituency, and is elected to the third seat, behind sitting Independent senators Shane Ross and David Norris. She initially sits as an Independent senator.

In February 2009, Bacik is included in an ‘All Star Women’s Cabinet’ in the Irish Independent. In March 2009, she confirmed claims made on a TV programme that she had taken two voluntary pay cuts of 10% in addition to a pension levy. In June 2009, she is the Labour Party candidate for the Dublin Central by-election. She comes in third with 17% of the first preference votes. She joins the Labour Party group in the Seanad in September 2009, and becomes Labour Party Seanad spokesperson for both Justice and Arts, Sports and Tourism. In November 2009, a feature by Mary Kenny of the Irish Independent includes Bacik in a list of women who “well deserved their iconic status.”

In May 2010, Bacik seeks Labour’s nomination to contest the next election in the Dublin South-East constituency but is not selected. In December 2010, she is added to the ticket as the second candidate beside Labour Party leader, Eamon Gilmore, in the Dún Laoghaire constituency for the 2011 Irish general election. Gilmore tops the poll, with Bacik receiving 10.1% of first preference votes but she is not elected. She is re-elected to Seanad Éireann at the subsequent election, after which she becomes Deputy Leader of the Seanad. She holds her seat in the Seanad in 2016 and in 2020.

On April 27, 2021, after the resignation of Eoghan Murphy from his Dáil seat in Dublin Bay South, Bacik announces her intention to stand in the upcoming by-election. She campaigns with an emphasis on providing affordable housing, as well as improving healthcare and childcare, tackling climate change, and achieving “a true republic in which church and state are separated.” During the campaign, she describes herself as having “more bills passed into law than any other Senator, on issues such as workers’ conditions, women’s health rights, and LGBT equality”. She also campaigns on increasing the number of sports amenities for children in the area, calling for unused Defence Forces football fields at the Cathal Brugha Barracks to be freed up for local sports, with the suggestion rejected by Fine Gael Minister for Defence Simon Coveney. Fine Gael complains to RTÉ after she features prominently on National Treasures, a prime-time TV show broadcast by RTÉ during the campaign. RTÉ has strict rules about fair coverage of candidates during campaigns. The national broadcaster blames an “inadvertent error” for the programme being shown three days before the election. A steering group within the broadcaster tells Fine Gael that “the broadcast should not have happened.” Consequentially, RTÉ has to show a special report on the by-election on Prime Time to “ensure fair coverage is given to all candidates.”

Bacik wins this election, receiving 8,131 (30.2%) first-preference votes. It is her fourth attempt as a Labour candidate, and she expresses her delight at the success at the count centre in the RDS. Following the election, she is described by The Irish Times as “a formidable activist and public intellectual” and that Fine Gael’s perceived antipathy towards their former TD, Kate O’Connell, may have contributed to the surge in support to Bacik from women voters. The newspaper claims that her election is “a long overdue morale boost” for Labour.

In August 2021, Bacik apologises for attending Katherine Zappone‘s controversial party in the Merrion Hotel, Dublin, in July of that year. She states that she believed that it took place within existing COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.

In March 2022, Bacik confirms she will run to succeed Alan Kelly as Labour Party leader. Kelly states that he believes that Bacik will succeed him. On March 24, 2022, she is confirmed as Labour Party leader unopposed at a party conference in Dublin. In a speech, she says she will focus on the rising cost of living and the serious and global problems facing the country. She pledges that Labour will fight the next election as a “standalone party” rather than joining any left-wing alliance.

At the 2024 Irish general election, Bacik is re-elected to the Dáil.

Bacik lives with husband Alan Saul and their two daughters in Portobello, Dublin.


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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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Birth of Brendan Bracken, Politician & Businessman

Brendan Bracken, Irish-born businessman, politician and a Minister of Information and First Lord of the Admiralty in Winston Churchill‘s War Cabinet, is born on February 15, 1901, in Church Street, Templemore, County Tipperary.

Bracken is the third child and second of three sons of Joseph Kevin (J. K.) Bracken and Hannah Bracken (née Ryan). The family moves to Kilmallock, County Limerick, in 1903, the year before his father’s death. By 1908, his mother takes the family to live in Glasnevin, a new suburb in north Dublin, and subsequently off the North Circular Road. He is educated in St. Patrick’s National School, Drumcondra, and at the Christian Brothers‘ O’Connell School in North Richmond Street. He is a mischievous, delinquent child, one time throwing a schoolfellow into the Royal Canal. In February 1915 he is sent to Mungret College, a Jesuit boarding school near Limerick. He is not amenable to the regime and runs away on several occasions, finding accommodation in local hotels under a false name.

At the end of 1915 Bracken goes to Australia with £14 in his pocket. He is first based in Echuca, Victoria, where he is put up in a convent. Later he moves to other houses run by religious orders. A voracious reader, he claims that he is doing research for a life of Cardinal Patrick Francis Moran, and signs himself “Brendan Newman Bracken.” He seeks admission as a pupil to Riverview, the fashionable Jesuit school in Sydney, claiming that he had been educated at Clongowes Wood College. Unfortunately for him, a priest who had just come out from Clongowes exposes him. Opinionated and argumentative, he does not conceal his skepticism about the Catholic religion. For a time, he teaches in a Protestant school in Orange, New South Wales.

Bracken returns to Ireland in 1919. By this time his mother has remarried and is living with her new husband, Patrick Laffan, on a farm in Beauparc, County Meath. After a short stay there, he moves to Liverpool and finds employment as a teacher at the Liverpool Collegiate School, claiming that he had been to the University of Sydney. He teaches at the school for two terms in 1920, earning extra money as tutor to a young boy. With his savings he is able to gain admission to Sedbergh School, a public school in the town of Sedbergh in Cumbria, North West England, giving his name as Brendan Rendall Bracken, born 1904, and stating that his parents had perished in a bush fire in Australia, leaving him money to complete his education. He remains only one term but distinguishes himself by winning a prize for history. After Sedbergh, Bracken teaches at Rottingdean preparatory school and then at Bishops Stortford School. He cuts a flamboyant figure and drops the name of famous acquaintances with gay abandon. He stands over 6 feet and has a powerful presence and a domineering personality; his mop of red hair and pale freckled skin combine with black teeth to give him a bizarre appearance.

In 1922 Bracken moves to London. He takes charge of the Illustrated Review when its editor, Hilaire Belloc, resigns. Renamed English Life and covering political and social events, it affords Bracken an opportunity to meet prominent people, including J. L. Garvin, editor of The Observer. In autumn 1923 Garvin introduces him to Winston Churchill, who had lost his parliamentary seat in 1922 and decided to contact Leicester West in the 1923 United Kingdom general election. Bracken offers his services as campaign manager. The friendship between Churchill and Bracken is soon so close that Bracken is rumoured to be Churchill’s natural son. Churchill’s wife Clementine dislikes Bracken and discourages the friendship.

Meanwhile Bracken enjoys the life of a ubiquitous socialite and builds up his career in publishing. He becomes a director of Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1926, starting The Banker, a monthly magazine, for them, and acquiring the Financial News in 1928 and a half-share in The Economist. To these are added in due course the Investors Chronicle and The Practitioner. His success in business enables him to acquire a home in North Street in 1928, near the Houses of Parliament. He is driven about in a chauffeured Hispano-Suiza car.

In 1929, Bracken has himself adopted as conservative candidate for Paddington North, a marginal seat. After a hard-fought campaign characterised by minor violence provoked by Bracken’s intemperate language, he wins the seat by 528 votes. At one point a rumour is put about that Bracken is in reality a Polish Jew, which he has to disprove by exhibiting a copy of his birth certificate. His background is a subject of speculation among acquaintances, and in throwaway remarks he gives different fictitious versions of it, Ireland figuring in none of them. He does however remain in constant touch with his mother, to whom he seems to have been deeply devoted, until her death in 1928. However, he has as little contact as possible with his brother and sisters, although he does give assistance to some of them and their families at various times.

In parliament Bracken voices right-wing views on economic issues and is an enthusiastic imperialist. After Churchill resigns from the conservative front bench in 1930 because they would not oppose the Labour government’s proposal for Indian self-government, he is supported by Bracken. During the 1930s, when Churchill is in the wilderness, disagreeing with the party leadership on India and on what he sees as a policy of appeasement toward Hitler‘s Germany, Bracken is his sole political ally. Stanley Baldwin calls him Churchill’s “faithful chela.”

In September 1939, Churchill joins Neville Chamberlain‘s war cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty. Bracken is appointed his parliamentary private secretary, continuing in that role when Churchill becomes Prime Minister. Despite the king’s opposition, Churchill insists in June 1940 that Bracken should be appointed a privy councillor. Bracken shuts up his house and moves to the Prime Minister’s residence for the duration of the war. As a confidant of the Prime Minister, he often acts as a go-between with other politicians and newspapermen. He is allowed to oversee patronage and takes a special interest in ecclesiastical appointments. In July 1941, he is persuaded by Lord Beaverbrook and Churchill to become Minister for Information. He wins over most of the proprietors by giving them more news, often on a confidential basis, and censorship is kept to a minimum. The BBC is also allowed a fair measure of freedom as long as it behaves responsibly; under the leadership of Cyril Radcliffe, the civil service head of the ministry, it operates more smoothly. Bracken was generally acclaimed for that success.

After the resignation of the Labour ministers from the government at the end of the war in Europe, Bracken joins the cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty. He is prominent in the general election campaign that follows and is the only conservative minister apart from Churchill to give more than one radio broadcast. He is accused, probably unjustly, of provoking Churchill to take extreme positions, and blamed when the conservatives are heavily defeated at the polls. Bracken himself loses Paddington North to Lt. Gen. Sir Noel Mason-MacFarlane. However, he is soon back in parliament representing Bournemouth, and as front-bench spokesman is an uncompromising opponent of the nationalisation measures of the Labour government (1945–51). He is out of sympathy with the leftward drift of the conservative party associated with Rab Butler and Harold Macmillan.

In December 1951, when Churchill is again Prime Minister, Bracken declines an invitation to serve as Colonial Secretary, pleading that his recurring sinusitis makes it impossible. He resigns his seat in the House of Commons and is created a peer, Viscount Bracken of Christchurch in Hampshire, but never takes his seat in the House of Lords. Although he retires from politics, he remains close to political events through his friendship with Churchill. He is deeply involved in concealing the severe stroke that Churchill suffers in 1953, so that he can carry on as Prime Minister.

In the postwar period, Bracken has important business interests. The Financial News group acquires the Financial Times in 1945, and he is returned as chairman of the expanded company. He writes a weekly Financial Times column until 1954. He oversees the building near St. Paul’s of a new head office, named “Bracken House” after his death. He is also chairman of the Union Corporation mining house, with interests in South Africa, which he frequently visits. From 1950 he is chairman of the board of governors of Sedbergh School, where he goes frequently and often walks for miles across the fells. He organises and finances the restoration of the eighteenth-century school building as a library, with a commemoratory inscription, “Remember Winston Churchill.”

From 1955 Bracken is a trustee of the National Gallery. He is an unrelenting opponent of the proposal to return to Ireland the impressionist paintings bequeathed to it by Hugh Lane, because a codicil willing them to Dublin has not been witnessed. Throughout the postwar period he carries on a prolific correspondence with friends such as Lord Beaverbrook, the American ambassador Lewis Douglas, and the Australian entrepreneur W. S. Robinson. These are a valuable and entertaining source on the political history of the time.

In January 1958, Bracken, who has always been a heavy smoker, is diagnosed with throat cancer. He lingers on until August 8, 1958, when he dies at the flat of his friend Sir Patrick Hennessy in Park Lane. He resists efforts made to reconcile him to the church of Rome. By his own wish he is cremated, and his ashes are scattered on Romney Marsh, Kent. On his instructions his papers are burned by his chauffeur. His estate comes to £145,032.

(From: “Bracken, Brendan” by Charles Lysaght, Dictionary of Irish Biography, www. dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: Brendan Bracken, bromide print by Elliott & Fry, January 13, 1950, National Portrait Gallery, London)


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Birth of Fiona O’Malley, Former Irish Politician

Fiona O’Malley, Irish former politician, is born in Limerick, County Limerick, on January 19, 1968. She serves as a Senator from 2007 to 2011, after being nominated by the Taoiseach. She serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dún Laoghaire constituency from 2002 to 2007.

O’Malley comes from a political family. Her father, Desmond O’Malley, is a former Fianna Fáil cabinet minister and founder of the Progressive Democrats. Her granduncle, Donogh O’Malley, is a Fianna Fáil minister in the 1960s. She is also a cousin of another former Progressive Democrats TD, Tim O’Malley.

A graduate of Trinity College Dublin and City, University of London, O’Malley works as an Arts Administrator before entering politics and as a personal assistant to Liz O’Donnell from 1998 to 2000. Her first political position is as elected member of the Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council from 1999. She is elected to Dáil Éireann for the Dún Laoghaire constituency at the 2002 Irish general election. She resigns her council seat in 2003 when the dual mandate comes into effect.

O’Malley is a member of the Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Sports and Tourism and the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children. She is also a member of the Dáil All-Party group concerned with matters of sexual and reproductive health. She has traveled to South America and South Africa with the United Nations Population Fund and has spoken extensively of the need for a clear safe sex message both in Ireland and in the developing world.

O’Malley loses her Dáil seat at the 2007 Irish general election, but is nominated by the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, to the Seanad in August 2007. She is narrowly defeated in the race to become the leader of the Progressive Democrats by Ciarán Cannon.

O’Malley is an independent politician from the dissolution of the Progressive Democrats in 2009. She is an independent candidate at the 2011 Seanad election for the Dublin University constituency but is not elected.