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Death of Leslie Daiken, Copywriter, Editor & Writer

Leslie Herbert Daiken, an Irish advertising copywriter, editor, and writer on children’s toys and games, dies in London on August 15, 1964.

Born Leslie Yodaiken into a Russian–Jewish family in Portobello, Dublin, Daiken is the son of Samuel and Rosa Yodaiken. His father is a dealer in rubber and scrap metal, with premises in Dublin and Glasgow, and he is educated at two independent fee-paying schools, St. Andrew’s College and Wesley College, and then in 1930 he enters Trinity College Dublin. In his first year, one of his lecturers in French literature was Samuel Beckett. He is an active member of the Dublin University Socialist Society and a founding member of the college’s Gaelic Society.

In 1932, and again in 1933, as Yodaiken he wins the Vice-Chancellor’s Prize for English Prose, and while at Trinity, he publishes short stories and verse in Choice, The Dublin Magazine, and The New English Weekly.

In 1933, Daiken is present at the house of Charlotte Despard in Eccles Street, Dublin, also used as a Workers’ College, when it is attacked by a mob of Blueshirts. He leads the immediate defence of the building, which is saved on that occasion by the intervention of Irish Republican Army (IRA) men posing as the police.

In 1934, as Yodaiken, he graduates with a BA from Trinity in English and French Literature, with a Second Class degree. After graduating, Daiken works briefly as a schoolteacher in Dublin. In April 1935, his short story “Angela” is published in The New English Weekly under the pen name of Ned Kiernan. That year, he migrates to London.

Soon after his arrival in London, Daiken is one of the three founders of a duplicated publication called Irish Front, together with two other poets, Charles Donnelly and Ewart Milne.

In England, Daiken starts to shorten his surname from Yodaiken to Daiken, for his publications, but he does not make this change formally until doing so by deed poll in 1943.

In December 1935, The Irish Times reviews a production in Camden Town of Ireland Unfree, a stage version by Daiken of Patrick Pearse’s poem “The Rebel.” It states that “Mr. Daiken carries Pearse’s theme beyond his idealistic conclusion to the revolutionary viewpoint of the Irish workers.”

Daiken keeps up his links with leftist Irish writers and dissidents and edits the collection of working-class political verse Goodbye Twilight: songs of the struggle in Ireland (1936), illustrated by Harry Kernoff. The Irish Press describes this as “forty young poets with blazing eyes and clenched fists.” In another review, Louis MacNeice calls the book a “collection of proletarian poems – some communist, some Irish republican, and all written in a defiant spirit of opposition … a violent reaction against Yeats and all that he stood for.”

Daiken does not go to fight in the Spanish Civil War, although his Irish Front colleague Charles Donnelly does, and is killed; but he is active in fundraising for the Connolly Column, the Irish section of the International Brigades. He is also a contributor to the branch of Republican Congress in London, an Irish republican and Marxist-Leninist pressure group which aims to engage Irish emigrants working in the city on socialist issues.

In 1939, Mairin Mitchell is highly critical of the Irish leftists, and in particular Daiken, for their views on the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, and writes to Desmond Ryan in September, “Brian O’Neill, Bloomsbury, and Daiken will sing Russia right or wrong.”

In October 1939, at the time of the wartime National Registration Act, Daiken is living in a studio at Old Castle Wharf, Twickenham, and describes himself as “Script-writer and advertising copywriter.”

During World War II, Daiken enlists in the Corps of Signals of the Irish Army, a neutral force, and also works for Reuters as a correspondent on education. In 1944, he edits They Go, the Irish, a collection of essays, including one from Seán O’Casey. In 1945, a collection of his verse is published under the title Signatures of All Things. In the summer of that year, Samuel Beckett gives Daiken his unpublished novel Watt, in the hope that he can find a publisher for it, but he fails to do so. They continue to write to each other and meet in London and Paris in the 1950s. He also keeps up with another friend from Trinity, Con Leventhal.

After he becomes a father in 1945, Daiken’s main interest moves on from political activism to children’s games and toys, and by 1951 the basement of his London home has become a toy museum. He writes on the subject and makes television and radio programmes for the BBC about it. His film One potato, two potato, a compilation of children’s street rhymes, wins the Festival Mondial du Film prize in 1958. His radio play The Circular Road is about a Jewish-Irish child.

In the 1950s Daiken founds the National Toy Museum and Institute of Play, today part of the Toy Collection at Hove Museum of Creativity.

Daiken returns to Ireland many times as a visitor. In the early 1960s he completes a radio play about the Jewish community of Dublin in the 1920s, which is broadcast on RTÉ.

In October 1963, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, recruits Daiken as a lecturer in education, and not long before his death he makes a film called The Piano about teaching white and black children in a school in Africa. He dies on August 15, 1964, while spending the summer vacation at home in London, leaving an estate valued at £3,865. He is cremated. His widow survives him until 1981.

In a tribute to Daiken, his 1930s communist associate Brian O’Neill writes, “He was always busy, always with a half dozen irons in the fire, always trying to give a hand to some Irish writer who needed it.”

In the early 1990s, Katrina Goldstone interviews Daiken’s brother, Aubrey Yodaiken, and later reports: “I was left with a faint sense of melancholy, as my interviewee had become distressed speaking about his brother, Leslie Daiken, and recalling his irrepressible and exasperating personality, his many projects, half-started novels…”

Aubrey Yodaiken is distressed by the lack of appreciation of his brother’s many cultural efforts and by the fact that his “scattershot literary endeavours” seem to have come to naught.

The National Library of Ireland holds a collection of Daiken’s papers, in particular his publications and correspondence, presented to it in 1995 by his elder daughter, by then Melanie Cuming, and his younger brother, Aubrey Yodaiken. The papers are mostly in English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Hebrew, and Irish.


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Birth of Desmond Boal, Unionist Politician & Barrister

Desmond Norman Orr Boal, unionist politician and barrister, is born on August 8, 1928, in St. Columb’s Court, Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

Boal is the third of five children (and only son) of James Boal, cashier and bakery manager, and his wife Kathleen (nèe Walker). Brought up in the Church of Ireland, he is educated at First Derry Primary School, Cathedral Primary School (Derry), Foyle College (Derry), Portora Royal School In Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, and Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where he graduates BA and Bachelor of Laws (LLB).

During his studies Boal founds an Orange lodge at TCD. He is called to the bar in 1952 at the Inner Temple, London. He travels extensively during his summers, visiting Afghanistan, South America and even China during the Cultural Revolution.

Around 1956, Boal makes the acquaintance of Ian Paisley through friendships with ultra-protestant activists, and for the next half-century is one of Paisley’s closest friends and advisers. He has a legal career before he enters politics in 1960. He was the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) Member of the Parliament of Northern Ireland for the Belfast Shankill constituency between 1960 and 1972. He is very critical of the leadership under Captain Terence O’Neill, then Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. He opposes the manner, if not the substance, of O’Neill’s attempts at improving relations with both the Irish government and the Roman Catholic/Irish nationalist minority in Northern Ireland, along with many backbenchers.

Discontented with James Chichester-Clark and Brian Faulkner who come to government after O’Neill’s 1969 fall from power, Boal resigns from the UUP in 1971 and joins Ian Paisley in establishing the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in order to provide dissident unionist opinion with a viable political alternative. He works as the first chairman and one of the first public representatives of the DUP and continues to sit in Stormont during the years of 1971–1972. He later resumes his practice as a barrister.

While Boal’s interest in federalism diminishes after the 1970s, the federalist Boal scheme of January 1974 is again put forward by liberal protestants such as John Robb as late as 2007. His friendship with Paisley finally breaks when the DUP agrees to enter government with Sinn Féin in 2007. He tells Paisley, who takes the breach very hard, that he had betrayed everything he ever advocated.

Boal dies at his home in Holywood, County Down, on April 23, 2015, aged 86. His funeral is held at Roselawn Crematorium in Belfast.


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Death of Sir Denis Pack, British Army General

Sir Denis Pack, British Army major general who serves in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, dies in London on July 24, 1823.

Pack is born on October 7, 1775 in Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, the younger son of Rev. Thomas Pack, Dean of Ossory, and Catherine Pack (née Sullivan), of St. Andrew’s parish, Dublin. In June 1790, he enters Trinity College Dublin (TCD), aged 15, but does not take his degree. His elder brother, Thomas Pack, previously attends TCD, but dies in December 1786.

Pack enters the army in November 1791, being commissioned as a cornet in the 14th Light Dragoons, and serves with this regiment in Flanders in 1794 as part of Francis Rawdon-Hastings‘s expedition. Transferring to the 8th Light Dragoons, he is promoted to lieutenant In March 1795 and takes part in the expedition to Quiberon Bay. He is promoted to captain in February 1796 and serves with the 5th Dragoon Guards in Ireland during the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Promoted to major In August 1798, he is attached to the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards, and after the surrender of the French expeditionary force at Ballinamuck, County Longford, on September 8, 1798 he commands the troops that escort General Jean Joseph Amable Humbert and the other French officers to Dublin.

Promoted to lieutenant colonel in December 1800, Pack commands the 71st (Highland) Regiment of Foot and takes part in the expedition to the Cape of Good Hope in 1806. He then takes part in General John Whitelocke‘s expedition to South America and is captured after an unsuccessful attack on Montevideo. His fellow-prisoner is William Carr Beresford, later 1st Viscount Beresford, and the two men remain friends for the rest of their lives. Refusing to give their parole to General Santiago de Liniers, they escape from La Plata in a boat, meeting a British cruiser at sea. Pack later takes part in the successful attack on Montevideo on February 9, 1807.

Pack is posted to Portugal in 1808 and is present at the Battle of Roliça on August 17 and the Battle of Vimeiro on August 21. In 1809, he takes part in the Walcheren Campaign and, promoted to colonel in July 1810, he is made aide-de-camp to George III. Returning to Portugal in 1810, he serves under Beresford, commanding a Portuguese brigade, and takes part in the Battle of Bussaco on September 27, 1810. Promoted to brigadier general in January 1812, he takes part in the Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo and is present at the Battle of Salamanca on July 22, 1812. In June 1813, he is promoted to major general and later is present at the battles of Vitoria (June 21, 1813), Nivelle (November 10, 1813), Nive (December 10-13, 1813), Orthez (February 27, 1814) and the final French defeat at Toulouse (April 10, 1814). In January 1815, he is made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in recognition of his services in the Peninsula.

During the Waterloo campaign of 1815, Pack commands one of the brigades in General Sir Thomas Picton‘s division. Present at the Battle of Quatre Bras (June 16, 1815), he plays a prominent part in the Battle of Waterloo, bringing his brigade forward at a crucial moment to stop the advance of the French 3rd Division under General Pierre-Louis Binet de Marcognet. During the course of his career he is wounded several times and is awarded numerous honours including the Peninsular Gold Cross (with seven clasps), the Military Order of the Tower and Sword (Portugal) and the Order of Saint Vladimir (Russia). In 1819, he is appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Plymouth, and is later made honorary colonel of the 84th (York and Lancaster) Regiment of Foot in 1822.

In July 1816, Pack marries Lady Elizabeth Louisa de la Poer Beresford, daughter of George Beresford, 1st Marquess of Waterford. They have two sons and two daughters. His descendants adopted “Pack-Beresford” as their family name. He dies on July 24, 1823, at Lord Beresford’s house in Upper Wimpole Street, London. A monument to him is later erected in St. Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny. A portrait by G. L. Saunders is in family possession; another by Charles Turner, showing Pack wearing his numerous orders and decorations, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London. A collection of his papers is held by the University of Southampton.


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Birth of James Kilfedder, Northern Ireland Unionist Politician

Sir James Alexander Kilfedder, Northern Irish unionist politician usually known as Sir Jim Kilfedder, is born on July 16, 1928, in Kinlough, County Leitrim, in what is then the Irish Free State. He is the last unionist to represent Belfast West in the House of Commons.

Kilfedder’s family later moves to Enniskillen in neighbouring County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland, where he is raised. He is educated at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen and at Trinity College, Dublin (TCD). During his time at TCD, he acts as Auditor of the College Historical Society (CHS), one of the oldest undergraduate debating societies in the world. He becomes a barrister, called to the Irish Bar at King’s Inns, Dublin, in 1952 and to the English Bar at Gray’s Inn in 1958. He practises law in London.

At the 1964 United Kingdom general election, Kilfedder is elected as an Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) Member of Parliament for Belfast West. During the campaign, there are riots in Divis Street when the Royal Ulster Constabulary(RUC) remove an Irish flag from the Sinn Féin offices of Billy McMillen. This follows a complaint by Kilfedder in the form of a telegram to the Minister of Home Affairs, Brian McConnell. It reads, “Remove tricolour in Divis Street which is aimed to provoke and insult loyalists of Belfast.” Kilfedder loses his seat at the 1966 United Kingdom general election to Gerry Fitt. He is elected again in the 1970 United Kingdom general election for North Down, and holds the seat until his death in 1995.

Kilfedder is elected for North Down in the 1973 Northern Ireland Assembly election, signing Brian Faulkner‘s pledge to support the White Paper which eventually establishes the Sunningdale Agreement, but becoming an anti-White Paper Unionist after the election. In 1975, he stands for the same constituency in the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention election, polling over three quotas as a UUP member of the United Ulster Unionist Council (UUUC) although he refuses to sign the UUUC’s pledge of conduct.

Kilfedder leaves the UUP in 1977 in opposition to the party’s policies tending to integrationism, preferring to advocate the restoration of the Stormont administration. For a time he sits as an “Independent Ulster Unionist.” He contests the 1979 European Parliament election under that label, finishing fourth in the count for the three seats, having overtaken the UUP leader Harry West on transfers.

In 1980, Kilfedder forms the Ulster Popular Unionist Party (UPUP) and is re-elected under that label in all subsequent elections. He again tops the poll in the 1982 Northern Ireland Assembly election and is elected as Speaker of the Assembly, serving in the position until 1986. He generally takes the Conservative whip at Westminster. While Speaker, he is paid more than the Prime Minister.

On March 20, 1995, while traveling by train into London from Gatwick Airport, Kilfedder dies of a heart attack. This is the same day that the Belfast Telegraph carries a front-page story saying that an Ulster MP has been targeted as one of twenty MPs invited by the LGBT rights organisation OutRage! in a letter to come out. He dies unmarried and is survived by two sisters.

Kilfedder is described by Democratic Unionist Party MLA Peter Weir as “the best MP North Down ever had.”

The UPUP does not outlive Kilfedder, and the by-election for his Commons seat is won by Robert McCartney, standing for the UK Unionist Party (UKUP). McCartney had fought the seat in the 1987 United Kingdom general election as a “Real Unionist” with the backing of the Campaign for Equal Citizenship. At the 1987 election count, in his victory speech, Kilfedder “attacked his rival’s supporters as ‘a rag tag collection of people who shame the name of civil rights.’ He said they included communists, Protestant paramilitaries and Gay Rights supporters and he promised to expose more in future.” McCartney loses North Down in 2001 to Sylvia Hermon of the UUP.

Kilfedder’s personal and political papers (including constituency affairs) are held at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, reference D4127.

Kilfedder is buried in Roselawn Cemetery in East Belfast.


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Death of Dr. Douglas Hyde, First President of Ireland

Dr. Douglas Hyde, Gaelic scholar and the first President of Ireland, dies in Dublin on July 12, 1949, at the age of 89.

Hyde is born at Longford House in Castlerea, County Roscommon, on January 17, 1860. In 1867, his father is appointed prebendary and rector of Tibohine, and the family moves to neighbouring Frenchpark, in County Roscommon. He is home schooled by his father and his aunt due to a childhood illness. While a young man, he becomes fascinated with hearing the old people in the locality speak the Irish language.

Rejecting family pressure to follow previous generations with a career in the Church, Hyde instead becomes an academic. He enters Trinity College, Dublin (TCD), where he gains a great facility for languages, learning Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and German, but his great passion in life is the preservation of the Irish language.

After spending a year teaching modern languages in Canada, Hyde returns to Ireland. For much of the rest of his life he writes and collects hundreds of stories, poems, and folktales in Irish, and translates others. His work in Irish helps to inspire many other literary writers, such as W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory.

In 1892, Hyde helps establish the Gaelic Journal and in November of that year writes a manifesto called The necessity for de-anglicising the Irish nation, arguing that Ireland should follow her own traditions in language, literature, and even in dress.

In 1893, Hyde founds the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge) along with Eoin MacNeill and Fr. Eugene O’Growney and serves as its first president. Many of the new generation of Irish leaders who play a central role in the fight for Irish independence in the early twentieth century, including Patrick Pearse, Éamon de Valera, Michael Collins, and Ernest Blythe first become politicised and passionate about Irish independence through their involvement in the Gaelic League. Hyde does not want the Gaelic League to be a political entity, so when the surge of Irish nationalism that the Gaelic League helps to foster begins to take control of many in the League and politicize it in 1915, Hyde resigns as president.

Hyde takes no active part in the armed upheaval of the 1910s and 1920s, but does serve in Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Irish Free State’s Oireachtas, as a Free State senator in 1925-26. He then returns to academia, as Professor of Irish at University College Dublin (UCD), where one of his students is future Attorney General and President of Ireland Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh.

In 1938, Hyde is unanimously elected to the newly created position of President of Ireland, a post he holds until 1945. Hyde is inaugurated on June 26, 1938, in the first inaugural ceremony in the nation’s history. Despite being placed in a position to shape the office of the presidency via precedent, Hyde by and large opts for a quiet, conservative interpretation of the office. In April 1940, he suffers a massive stroke and plans are made for his lying in state and state funeral, but to the surprise of everyone he survives, albeit paralysed and confined to a wheelchair. One of his last presidential acts is a visit to the German ambassador Eduard Hempel on May 3, 1945, to offer his condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler, a visit which remains a secret until 2005.

Hyde leaves office on June 25, 1945, opting not to nominate himself for a second term. He opts not return to his Roscommon home due to his ill-health, but rather moves into the former Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant’s residence in the grounds of Áras an Uachtaráin, where he lived out the remaining four years of his life.

Hyde dies in Dublin on July 12, 1949, at age 89. As a former President of Ireland he is accorded a state funeral which, as a member of the Church of Ireland, takes place in Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Since contemporary rules of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland at the time prohibit Roman Catholics from attending services in non-Catholic churches, all but one member of the Catholic cabinet remain outside the cathedral grounds while Hyde’s funeral takes place. Hyde is buried in Frenchpark, County Roscommon at Portahard Church.


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Death of Charles Kendal Bushe, Lawyer & Judge

Charles Kendal Bushe, Irish lawyer and judge, dies in County Dublin on July 10, 1843. Known as “silver-tongued Bushe” because of his eloquence, he is Solicitor-General for Ireland from 1805 to 1822 and Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench for Ireland from 1822 to 1841.

Bushe is born at Kilmurry House, near Thomastown, County Kilkenny, the only son of the Reverend Thomas Bushe, rector of Mitchelstown, and his wife Katherine Doyle, daughter of Charles Doyle of Bramblestown, near Gowran. Kilmurry House had been built by the Bushe family in the 1690s. His father is forced to sell it to pay his debts, but he is able to repurchase it in 1814. He goes to the celebrated Quaker academy, Shackleton’s School in Ballitore, County Kildare, then graduates from Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where his eloquence makes him a star of the College Historical Society. He is called to the Bar in 1790.

Bushe is a member of the Irish Parliament for Callan from 1796 to 1799, and for Donegal Borough from 1799 to 1800. He is Escheator of Leinster in 1799. By this time the office is a sinecure. He is vehemently opposed to the Acts of Union 1800, referring emotionally to Britain’s subjection of Ireland as “six hundred years of uniform oppression and injustice,” a phrase which quickly became a proverb. Although he refuses an offer of a place on the Bench as a bribe for supporting the Union, cynics note that his staunch opposition to the Union does not prevent him accepting high office under the British Crown afterwards. He is appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland in 1805 and holds the office for 17 years until in 1822 he is appointed Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench for Ireland, although only after William Saurin, the equally long-serving Attorney-General, refuses the position. He retire in 1841.

As an advocate “silver-tongued Bushe” is legendary for his eloquence, and as a politician, he is admired by his English contemporaries like Sir Robert Peel and Lord Brougham. As a judge, according to F. Elrington Ball, he does not live up to expectations, although, if not an outstanding judge, he is an impressive and dignified one. As a statesman he is often accused of double-dealing: having opposed the Acts of Union, he has few scruples about accepting office under the new regime; and while himself supporting Catholic Emancipation, he prosecutes members of the Catholic Association for sedition, merely for advocating the same cause.

In Dublin, Bushe is a member of Daly’s Club.

Bushe dies in County Dublin on July 10, 1843, and is buried at Mount Jerome Cemetery and Crematorium in Harold’s Cross, County Dublin.


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Death of Political Economist John Elliott Cairnes

John Elliott Cairnes, Irish-born political economist, dies at the age of 51 at Blackheath, London, England, on July 8, 1875. He has been described as the “last of the classical economists.”

Cairnes is born on December 26, 1823, at Castlebellingham, County Louth, the son of William Elliott Cairnes (1787–1863) of Stameen, near Drogheda, and Marianne Woolsey, whose mother is the sister of Sir William Bellingham, 1st Baronet of Castlebellingham. William decides upon a business career, against the wishes of his mother, Catherine Moore of Moore Hall, Killinchy, and becomes a partner in the Woolsey Brewery at Castlebellingham. In 1825, he starts on his own account in Drogheda, making the Drogheda Brewery an unqualified success. He is remembered for his great business capacity and for the deep interest he takes in charity.

After leaving school, Cairnes spends some years in the counting house of his father at Drogheda. His tastes, however, lay altogether in the direction of study, and he is permitted to enter Trinity College Dublin, where he takes the degree of BA in 1848, and six years later that of MA. After passing through the curriculum of Arts, he engages in the study of Law and is called to the Irish bar. But he lacks a desire to pursue the legal profession, and over some ensuing years, he devotes himself to writing in various publications about social and economic questions and treatises that relate to Ireland. He focuses mostly on political economy, which he studies thoroughly.

While residing in Dublin, Cairnes makes the acquaintance of the Archbishop of Dublin Richard Whately, who conceives a very high respect for Cairnes’ character and abilities. In 1856, a vacancy occurs in the chair of political economy at Dublin, founded by Whately, and Cairnes receives the appointment. In accordance with the regulations of the foundation, the lectures of his first year’s course are published. The book appears in 1857 with the title Character and Logical Method of Political Economy. It follows up on and expands John Stuart Mill‘s treatment in the Essays on some Unsettled Questions in Political Economy and forms an admirable introduction to the study of economics as a science. In it the author’s peculiar powers of thought and expression are displayed to the best advantage. Logical exactness, precision of language, and firm grasp of the true nature of economic facts, are the qualities characteristic of this as of all his other works. If the book had done nothing more, it would still have conferred inestimable benefit on political economists by its clear exposition of the true nature and meaning of the ambiguous term law. To the view of the province and method of political economy expounded in this early work the author always remains true, and several of his later essays, such as those on Political Economy and Land, Political Economy and Laissez-Faire, are but reiterations of the same doctrine. His next contribution to economical science is a series of articles on the gold question, published partly in Fraser’s Magazine, in which the probable consequences of the increased supply of gold attendant on the Australian and Californian gold discoveries are analysed with great skill and ability. And a critical article on Michel Chevalier‘s work, On the Probable Fall in the Value of Gold, appears in the Edinburgh Review for July 1860.

In 1861, Cairnes is appointed to the professorship of jurisprudence and political economy in Queens College Galway, and in the following year he publishes his admirable work The Slave Power, one of the finest specimens of applied economic philosophy. The inherent disadvantages of the employment of slave labour are exposed with great fullness and ability, and the conclusions arrived at have taken their place among the recognised doctrines of political economy. The opinions expressed by Cairnes as to the probable issue of American Civil War are largely verified by the actual course of events, and the appearance of the book has a marked influence on the attitude taken by serious political thinkers in England towards the Confederate States of America.

During the remainder of his residence at Galway, Cairnes publishes nothing beyond some fragments and pamphlets, mainly upon Irish questions. The most valuable of these papers are the series devoted to the consideration of university education. His health, at no time very good, is still further weakened in 1865 by a fall from his horse. He is ever afterwards incapacitated from active exertion and is constantly liable to have his work interfered with by attacks of illness.

In 1866, Cairnes is appointed professor of political economy in University College, London. He is compelled to spend the session 1868–1869 in Italy, but on his return continues to lecture until 1872. During his last session he conducts a mixed class, ladies being admitted to his lectures. His health soon renders it impossible for him to discharge his public duties. He resigns his post in 1872 and retires with the honorary title of professor emeritus of political economy. In 1873 his own university confers on him the degree of LL.D.

Cairnes dies at the age of 51 at Blackheath, London, England, on July 8, 1875.


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Birth of George Simms, Archbishop in the Church of Ireland

George Otto Simms, an archbishop in the Church of Ireland, and a scholar, is born in Dublin on July 4, 1910.

AboutSimms is born to John Francis A. Simms and Ottilie Sophie Stange, who are both, according to his birth certificate, from Lifford, County Donegal. He attends the Prior School in Lifford for a time and later Cheltenham College, a public school in England. He goes on to study at Trinity College Dublin, where in 1930 he is elected a Scholar and graduates with a BA in Classics in 1932 and a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1936. He completes a PhD in 1950.

Simms is ordained a deacon in 1934 and a priest in 1936, beginning his ministry as a curate at St. Bartholomew’s Church, Clyde Road, Dublin, under Canon W. C. Simpson. In 1937, he takes a position in Lincoln Theological College but returns to Dublin in 1939 to become Dean of Residence in Trinity College Dublin and Chaplain Secretary of the Church of Ireland College of Education. 

He is appointed Dean of Cork in 1952. Consecrated a bishop, he serves as Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, between 1952 and 1956. At forty-two, he is the youngest Church of Ireland clergyman appointed to a bishopric since John Gregg in 1915. He serves as Archbishop of Dublin from 1956 to 1969. During this time, he maintains a courteous relationship with John Charles McQuaid, his Roman Catholic counterpart as Archbishop of Dublin. From 1969 to 1980, he serves as Archbishop of Armagh. 

Alongside Cardinal William Conway, Simms chairs the first official ecumenical meeting between the leaders of Ireland’s Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church in Ballymascanlon Hotel, Dundalk, County Louth, on September 26, 1973, an important meeting amidst the increasing violence in Northern Ireland. The meeting is protested by Ian Paisley.

Simms is a scholar, and publishes research on topics including the history of the Church of Ireland, and theological reflections on key texts including the Book of Kells, Saint Patrick’s Breastplate, and the Sarum Primer. He is also a fluent speaker of the Irish language.

Simms is also an accomplished journalist, and the author of many newspaper obituaries. His weekly Thinking Aloud column in The Irish Times is a popular reflection, and runs continuously for thirty-eight years. He also works on the research, preparation, and even performs the presentation, of a number of television programmes.

In 1978, Simms is made an honorary fellow of Trinity College Dublin.

Simms is the uncle of mathematician David J. Simms. In 1941, he marries Mercy Felicia Gwynn. They have five children. He dies in Dublin on November 15, 1991. He is interred with his wife in the cemetery attached to St. Maelruain’s Church, Tallaght, County Dublin.


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Birth of Lydia Mary Foster, Writer & Teacher

Lydia Mary Foster, Irish writer and teacher, is born on June 18, 1867, in Newmills, County Tyrone, in what is now Northern Ireland. She writes three books drawing on the experiences of growing up in rural Ulster in the 19th century in the Kailyard school genre.

Foster is the fourth of the six children of Presbyterian minister of Newmills congregation, James Foster, and Lydia (née Harkness). She has three brothers and two sisters. She is educated at home and is later sent to board at Miss Black’s school in Holywood, County Down. She, with her sisters Jane and Bessie, move to Belfast to establish a girls’ school, the Ladies’ Collegiate School, in the Balmoral suburbs, first at Myrtlefield Park, at 434 Lisburn Road, and then in Maryfield Park. This is after Bessie graduates from Trinity College Dublin in 1896 having studied modern languages. Their school teaches boys and girls, both day pupils and boarders. Foster and Jane teach music, and possibly other subjects as well. Their brother Henry, who works in Belfast, lives with them. All four of the siblings attend the Malone Presbyterian Church and are members of the temperance movement. Throughout her life, Foster remains attached to Newmills, visiting regularly and laying the foundation stone for the new manse in 1910. Her brother, Nevin, is the only one of the six siblings to marry and is an Irish ornithological expert.

The school closes after the deaths of Bessie in December 1917 and Jane in October 1918. The death of Henry in December 1922 leaves Foster alone, and having lost her hearing almost completely, she is in difficult circumstances. To support herself, she begins to write literary sketches and dialect verse for a number of publications such as the Northern Whig, Ireland’s Own, and the annual miscellany Ulster Parade. A selection of these writings are published as a volume, Tyrone Among the Bushes, in 1933. She also writes plays, but these are not collected or produced. She is best known for her three books which are set in rural County Tyrone around the time of Foster’s parents and her childhood. The books, The Bush that Burned (1931), Manse Larks (1936), and Elders’ Daughters (1942) are published by Quota Press in Belfast and are seen as part of the Scottish Kailyard school genre of writing. The Bush that Burned details the story of a young man becoming a minister despite opposition, and is widely read in Ulster and beyond. Aodh de Blácam references the book as evidence that there is little difference between rural Ulster Protestants and their Catholic counterparts. Manse Larks recounts a rural childhood of six siblings growing up in the minister’s house. Foster’s fondness for animals is clear from the book, she is a supporter of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), and her companion in later years is a dog named Stewart. Elders’ Daughters explores the experiences, romantic dreams and misadventures of young women subject to paternal authority in rural County Tyrone.

As Foster’s health declines and after the Belfast Blitz of April 1941, she goes to live with a married niece in Hollowbridge House near Royal Hillsborough, County Down. It is to this niece that she dictates the last chapters of Elders’ Daughters. She dies at Hollowbridge House on December 13, 1943. She is buried at Newmills Presbyterian Church, with her parents and siblings.


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John Mitchel Escapes from Van Diemen’s Land

John Mitchel, Irish nationalist writer and political journalist, escapes from Van Diemen’s Land (modern-day Tasmania, Australia) on June 8, 1853, with the assistance of Patrick James (“Nicaragua”) Smyth, an agent of the New York Irish Directory.

Mitchel is born in Camnish, near Dungiven, County Derry on November 3, 1815, the son of a Presbyterian minister. At the age of four, he is sent to a classical school, run by an old minister named Moor, nicknamed “Gospel Moor” by the students. He reads books from a very early age. When a little over five years old, he is introduced to Latin grammar by his teacher and makes quick progress. In 1830, not yet 15 years old, he enters Trinity College, Dublin (TCD) and obtains a law degree in 1834.

In the spring of 1836, Mitchel meets Jane Verner, the only daughter of Captain James Verner. Though both families are opposed to the relationship, they become engaged in the autumn and are married on February 3, 1837, by the Rev. David Babington in Drumcree Church, the parish church of Drumcree.

Mitchel works in a law office in Banbridge, County Down, where he eventually comes into conflict with the local Orange Order. He meets Thomas Davis and Charles Gavan Duffy during visits to Dublin. He joins the Young Ireland movement and begins to write for The Nation. Deeply affected by the misery and death caused by the Great Famine, he becomes convinced that nothing will ever come of the constitutional efforts to gain Irish freedom. He then forms his own paper, United Irishman, to advocate passive resistance by Ireland’s starving masses.

In May 1848, the British tire of Mitchel’s open defiance. Ever the legal innovators in Ireland, they invent a crime especially for the Young Irelanders – felony-treason. They arrest him for violating this new law and close down his paper. A rigged jury convicts him, and he is deported first to Bermuda and then to Australia. However, on June 8, 1853, he escapes to the United States.

Mitchel works as a journalist in New York City and then moves to the South. When the American Civil War erupts, he is a strong supporter of the Southern cause, seeing parallels with the position of the Irish. His family fully backs his commitment to the Southern cause. He loses two sons in the war, one at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 and another at the Battle of Fort Sumter in 1864, and another son loses an arm. His outspoken support of the Confederacy causes him to be jailed for a time at Fort Monroe, where one of his fellow prisoners is Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

In 1874, the British allow Mitchel to return to Ireland and in 1875 he is elected in a by-election to be a member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom representing the Tipperary constituency. However, his election is invalidated on the grounds that he is a convicted felon. He contests the seat again in the resulting by-election and is again elected, this time with an increased vote.

Unfortunately, Mitchel, one of the staunchest enemies to English rule of Ireland in history, dies in Newry on March 20, 1875, and is buried there. Thirty-eight years later, his grandson, John Purroy Mitchel, is elected Mayor of New York City.