seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: United Kingdom


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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.


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Founding of Traditional Unionist Voice

The Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV), a unionist political party in Northern Ireland, is founded on December 7, 2007, by Jim Allister after he and others had resigned from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in March of that year. In common with all other Northern Irish unionist parties, the TUV’s political programme has as its sine qua non the preservation of Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom. A founding precept of the party is that “nothing which is morally wrong can be politically right.”

At the time of his resignation, Allister is a prominent figure in the DUP and holds the position of Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the party having been elected to the European Parliament in 2004. The reason for the split is DUP leader Ian Paisley’s March 2007 consent to the St. Andrews Agreement and his willingness to become First Minister of Northern Ireland alongside a deputy First Minister from the Irish republican party Sinn Féin.

Prior to the St. Andrews Agreement, the DUP presents itself as an “anti-Agreement” unionist party opposed to numerous aspects of the Good Friday Agreement, e.g., the release of paramilitary prisoners before the end of their jail sentences, and the participation of Sinn Féin in the Northern Ireland government without complete decommissioning of Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) weapons and cessation of all IRA activity. The TUV has been an exception among Northern Irish unionist parties in consistently opposing the presence of Sinn Féin in the Northern Ireland government. After Allister’s resignation from the DUP, he continues to occupy his European Parliament seat, sitting as an Independent MEP until the 2009 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom, when he is not re-elected.

In terms of electoral success and financial income, Traditional Unionist Voice is the third largest unionist party in Northern Ireland, behind the Democratic Unionist Party and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). It is usually considered by political commentators to be a small party and characterised as being more hardline than other Northern Irish unionist parties.

Since 2011, the TUV has occupied one seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly. In 2024, they win their first seat in the United Kingdom House of Commons. The party also holds some seats on local councils in Northern Ireland. Its most prominent elected representative and best-known figure remains Jim Allister whose North Antrim constituency is the heartland of the party.

Since 2008, the party president has been former East Londonderry Westminster MP William Ross.

In March 2024, the party forms an electoral pact with Reform UK, stating that the two parties will stand mutually agreed candidates in Northern Ireland constituencies in the 2024 United Kingdom general election. In this election, the party wins its first Westminster Member of Parliament (MP), electing Jim Allister as MP for North Antrim.

An opinion poll, released by LucidTalk in August 2025, shows the TUV as the third most popular party for the first time, coming ahead of both the Alliance Party and Ulster Unionists, with 13%.


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Birth of Anna Manahan, Stage, Film & Television Actress

Anna Maria Manahan, Irish stage, film and television actress, is born on October 18, 1924, in County Waterford in what is at the time the Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland).

Manahan receives two Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play nominations for her performances in the 1968 production of Lovers and the 1998 production of The Beauty Queen of Leenane, the latter for which she wins at the 52nd Tony Awards.

Manahan is also nominated for two Drama Desk Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, and an Outer Critics Circle Award in a career that spans more than 60 years. She interprets the works of, among others, Seán O’Casey, John B. Keane, John Millington Synge, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Martin McDonagh, Christy Brown, and Brian Friel.

Manahan’s career begins when, as a young woman, she is recruited by the legendary Irish impresarios and theatrical directors Micheál Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards. She later marries stage director Colm O’Kelly, who dies not long afterward of polio, which he contracts after swimming in the Nile during a theatre tour of Egypt. They have no children and she never remarries. She is known professionally by her maiden name. In 1946 she appears in a production by Irish playwright Teresa Deevy, The Wild Goose, where she plays the part of Eileen Connolly. This is performed by Equity Productions in the Theatre Royal, Waterford.

In 1957, Manahan plays Serafina in the first Irish production of Tennessee Williams‘s The Rose Tattoo and achieves unexpected notoriety when she and several other members of the cast are arrested for the possession of a condom on stage.

Manahan plays a minor role in the Irish cult soap opera The Riordans (1960s), and as Mrs. Mary Kenefick in the TV comedy Me Mammy (1970s). She also plays the lead in the Irish comedy series, Leave It To Mrs O’Brien (1980s) and Mrs. Cadogan in The Irish R.M. (1980s). Most recently she plays Ursula in Fair City, for which her niece, Michele Manahan (daughter of Michael Manahan), is a writer.

Manahan has an extensive theatre portfolio having played at theatres throughout Ireland including the Abbey Theatre, the United Kingdom, continental Europe, the United States and Australia. She wins the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her role as Mag in Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane on Broadway. She previously receives a Tony nomination in 1969 for Brian Friel’s Lovers.

The Irish playwright John B. Keane writes the play Big Maggie specifically for Manahan. In 2001 she stars in Keane’s The Matchmaker with veteran Irish actor Des Keogh. In 2005 she stars in Sisters, a new play by Declan Hassett that is also written for her and for which she is nominated for a Drama Desk Award in the category of Outstanding Solo Performance. The production tours Ireland and is staged at the International Festival of World Theatre in Colorado and also plays at the 59E59 Theater in New York City in 2006.

Manahan appears in films starring, among others, Laurence Olivier, Peter Cushing, Kenneth More, Christopher Walken, Maggie Smith, Albert Finney and Brenda Fricker, and with John Gielgud in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1977).

Manahan receives the Gold Medal of the Éire Society of Boston in 1984 and thus joins the company of past recipients such as John F. Kennedy, and film makers John Ford and John Huston. She receives an honorary doctorate in letters from the University of Limerick in 2003. She is granted the freedom of the city of Waterford in 2002 in recognition of her life’s achievement in the arts. She thus becomes the 28th Freeman of Waterford since Isaac Butt in 1877.

In 2004 Manahan starts to play the role of Ursula in Fair City. All About Anna (2005), a documentary on her life and work is made by Charlie Mc Carthy/Icebox Films for RTÉ Television. In 2008, she becomes the first ever patron of the Active Retirement Ireland organization.

Manahan dies of multiple organ failure on March 8, 2009 in Waterford. She had suffered from a longterm illness.

Her funeral is held on March 11, officiated by her “longtime friend” the psychoanalyst, poet, and priest Bernard Kennedy. “As the final curtain falls, the lights dim, the auditorium becomes silent, we remember her” he says. Describing her as a woman of faith (who “sought to bring the word of God alive”), he says she had brought everyone together to be present at “her last great exit from this great stage of life,” saying her life’s work had drawn people from all over the world. “Anna believed in the empty tomb of the Resurrection and she believed the empty tomb could be filled by hearing the word take the place of the emptiness,” he says. “She knew the bedsits which preceded the Tony nomination.”

Manahan is buried in Ballygunner Cemetery, Knockboy, County Waterford.


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Birth of Annie Horniman, Theatre Patron & Manager

Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman CH, English theatre patron and manager, is born at Surrey Mount, Forest Hill, London, on October 3, 1860. She establishes the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and founds the first regional repertory theatre company in Britain at the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester. She encourages the work of new writers and playwrights, including W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and members of what become known as the Manchester School of dramatists.

Horniman, the elder child of Frederick John Horniman and his first wife Rebekah (née Emslie). Her father is a tea merchant and the founder of the Horniman Museum. Her grandfather is John Horniman who founds the family tea business of Horniman and Company. She and her younger brother, Emslie, are educated privately at their home. Her father is opposed to the theatre, which he considers sinful, but their German governess takes her and Emslie secretly to a performance of The Merchant of Venice at The Crystal Palace when she is fourteen years old.

Horniman’s father allows her to enter the Slade School of Fine Art in 1882. Here she discovers that her talent in art is limited but she develops other interests, particularly in the theatre and opera. She takes great pleasure in Richard Wagner‘s Der Ring des Nibelungen and in Henrik Ibsen‘s plays. She cycles in London and twice over the Alps, smokes in public and explores alternative religions. The “lonely rich girl” has become “an independent-minded woman.” In 1890 she joins the occult society, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where she remains a member until disagreements with its leaders lead to her resignation in 1903. During this time she meets and becomes a friend of W. B. Yeats, acting as his amanuensis for some years. Their friendship endures. Frank O’Connor recalls that on the day Yeats hears of her death, he spends the entire evening speaking of his memories of her.

Horniman’s first venture into the theatre is in 1894 and is made possible by a legacy from her grandfather. She anonymously supports her friend Florence Farr in a season of new plays at the Royal Avenue Theatre, London. This includes a new play by Yeats, The Land of Heart’s Desire, and the première of George Bernard Shaw’s play Arms and the Man. In 1903, Yeats persuades her to go to Dublin to back productions by the Irish National Theatre Society. Here she discovers her skill as a theatre administrator. She purchases a property and develops it into the Abbey Theatre, which opens in December 1904. Although she moves back to live in England, she continues to support the theatre financially until 1910. Meanwhile, in Manchester she purchases and renovates the Gaiety Theatre in 1908 and develops it into the first regional repertory theatre in Britain.

At the Gaiety, Horniman appoints Ben Iden Payne as the director and employs actors on 40-week contracts, alternating their work between large and small parts. The plays produced include classics such as Euripides and Shakespeare, and she introduces works by contemporary playwrights such as Ibsen and Shaw. She also encourages local writers who form what becomes known as the Manchester School of dramatists, the leading members of which are Harold Brighouse, Stanley Houghton and Allan Monkhouse. The Gaiety company undertakes tours of the United States and Canada in 1912 and 1913. Horniman becomes a well-known public figure in Manchester, lecturing on subjects which include women’s suffrage and her views about the theatre. In 1910 she is awarded the honorary degree of MA by the University of Manchester. During World War I the Gaiety continues to stage plays but financial difficulties lead to the disbandment of the permanent company in 1917, following which productions in the theatre are by visiting companies. In 1921 she sells the theatre to a cinema company.

As a result of her tea connection, Horniman is known as “Hornibags.” She holds court at the Midland Hotel, wearing exotic clothing and openly smoking cigarettes, which is considered scandalous at the time. She introduces Manchester to what is called at the time “the play of ideas.” The theatre critic James Agate notes that her high-minded theatrical ventures have “an air of gloomy strenuousness” about them.

Horniman moves to London where she keeps a flat in Portman Square. In 1933 she is made a Companion of Honour. She and Algernon Blackwood might be the only past or present members of an occult society to receive a United Kingdom honour.

Horniman dies, unmarried, on August 6, 1937, while visiting friends in Shere, Surrey. Her estate amounts to a little over £50,000. The Annie Horniman Papers are held in the John Rylands Research Institute and Library at the University of Manchester. Her portrait, painted by John Butler Yeats in 1904, hangs in the public area of the Abbey Theatre.


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Death of Jimmy Nesbitt, RUC Detective Chief Inspector

James Nesbitt MBE, a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Detective Chief Inspector who is best known for heading the Murder Squad team investigating the notorious Shankill Butchers‘ killings in the mid-1970s, dies on August 27, 2014, following a brief illness.

Nesbitt is born on September 29, 1934, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the son of James, an electrician, and Ellen. He is brought up in the Church of Ireland religion and lives with his parents and elder sister, Maureen, in a terraced house in Cavehill Road, North Belfast, which is considered to be a middle class area at the time. Having first attended the Model Primary School in Ballysillan Road, in 1946 he moves on to Belfast Technical High School where he excels as a pupil. From an early age, he is fascinated by detective stories and dreams about becoming a detective himself.

As a child, Nesbitt avidly reads about all the celebrated murder trials in the newspapers. At the age of 16, he opts to leave school and goes to work as a sales representative for a linen company where he remains for seven years.

At the age of 23, Nesbitt seeks a more exciting career and realises his childhood dream by joining the Royal Ulster Constabulary as a uniformed constable. He applies at the York Road station in Belfast and passes his entry exams. His first duty station is at Swatragh, County Londonderry. During this period, the Irish Republican Army‘s Border Campaign is being waged. He earns two commendations during the twelve months he spends at the Swatragh station, having fought off two separate IRA gun attacks which had seen an Ulster Special Constabulary man shot. In 1958, he is transferred to the Coleraine RUC station where his superiors grant him the opportunity to assist in detective work. Three years later he is promoted to the rank of detective.

Nesbitt marries Marion Wilson in 1967 and begins to raise a family. By 1971 he is back in his native Belfast and holds the rank of Detective Sergeant. He enters the RUC’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) section and is based at Musgrave Street station. Many members of the RUC find themselves targeted by both republican and loyalist paramilitaries as the conflict known as The Troubles grows in intensity during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In September 1973, Nesbitt is promoted to Detective Inspector and moves to head up the RUC’s C or “Charlie” Division based in Tennent Street, off the Shankill Road, the heartland of loyalism and home of many loyalist paramilitaries. C Division covers not only the Shankill but also the republican Ardoyne and “The Bone” areas. Although he encounters considerable suspicion from his subordinates when he arrives at Tennent Street, he manages to eventually create much camaraderie within the ranks of those under his command when before there had been rivalry and discord. C Division loses a total of twelve men as a result of IRA attacks. During his tenure as Detective Chief Inspector at Tennent Street, he and his team investigate a total of 311 killings and solve around 250 of the cases.

By 1975, Nesbitt is encountering death and serious injury on a daily basis as the violence in Northern Ireland shows no signs of abating. However, toward the end of the year, he is faced with the first of a series of brutal killings that add a new dimension to the relentless tit-for-tat killings between Catholics and Protestants that has already made 1975 “one of the bloodiest years of the conflict.”

The Shankill Butchers are an Ulster loyalist paramilitary gang, many of whom are members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), that is active between 1975 and 1982 in Belfast. It is based in the Shankill area and is responsible for the deaths of at least 23 people, most of whom are killed in sectarian attacks.

The gang kidnaps, tortures and murders random civilians suspected of being Catholics. Each is beaten ferociously and has their throat slashed with a butcher knife. Some are also tortured and attacked with a hatchet. The gang also kills six Ulster Protestants over personal disputes and two other Protestants mistaken for Catholics.

Most of the gang are eventually caught by Nesbitt and his Murder Squad and, in February 1979, receive the longest combined prison sentences in United Kingdom legal history.

In 1991, after Channel 4 broadcasts a documentary claiming that the Ulster Loyalist Central Co-ordinating Committee had been reorganised as an alliance between loyalist paramilitaries, senior RUC members and leader figures in Northern Irish business and finance, Nesbitt and Detective Inspector Chris Webster are appointed by Chief Constable Hugh Annesley to head up an internal inquiry into the collusion allegations. The investigation delivers its verdict in February 1993 and exonerates all those named as Committee members who did not have previous terrorist convictions arguing that they are “respectable members of the community” and in some cases “the aristocracy of the country.”

Prior to his retirement, Nesbitt has received a total of 67 commendations, which is the highest number ever given to a policeman in the history of the United Kingdom. In 1980, he is awarded the MBE “in recognition of his courage and success in combating terrorism.”

Nesbitt dies on August 27, 2014, after a brief illness.


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Birth of William Kenny, Victoria Cross Recipient

William Kenny VC, an Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces, is born on August 24, 1880, in Drogheda, County Louth.

Kenny is 34 years old, and a Drummer in the 2nd Battalion, Gordon Highlanders, British Army during World War I when the following deed takes place for which he is awarded the Victoria Cross.

On October 23, 1914, near Ypres, Belgium, Drummer Kenny rescues wounded men on five occasions under very heavy fire. Twice previously he saves machine guns by carrying them out of action, and on numerous occasions he conveys urgent messages under very dangerous circumstances over fire-swept ground.

In addition to the Victoria Cross, Kenny earns the rank of Drum-Major and is also awarded the following medals: Queen’s South Africa Medal with bars, King’s South Africa Medal with bars, 1914 Star with bar, British War Medal, Victory Medal with oak-leaf, Delhi Durbar Medal, and the Cross of St. George (Russia).

Kenny dies on January 10, 1936, at Hammersmith, West London, England. He is buried in the Corps of Commissionaires plot at Brookwood Cemetery, Brookwood, Surrey, England, but the original marker is lost.

On March 20, 1999, Kenny’s grave receives a new headstone, arranged by The Gordon Highlanders London Association (Lt. Col. M. H. Burge). He is not otherwise commemorated. His Victoria Cross and other medals are on display at the Gordon Highlanders Museum, Aberdeen, Scotland.


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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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Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903 Enacted

The Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903, also known as the Wyndham Land Act, is enacted on August 14, 1903, and allows for entire estates to be purchased by the occupying tenantry, subsidized by the state.

Under pressure from both government, United Irish League (UIL) and Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), the Chief Secretary for Ireland, George Wyndham, gives his backing to a Land Conference in December 1902, comprising four moderate landlord representatives led by Windham Wyndham-Quin, 4th Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl and four tenant representatives led by William O’Brien, the others John Redmond, T. W. Russell (who speaks for Ulster tenant farmers) and Timothy Harrington. They work out a new scheme for tenant land purchase, in which sale is to be made not compulsory, but attractive to both parties, based on the government paying the difference between the price offered by tenants and that demanded by landlords. This is the basis of the “Wyndham Act” – the Land Purchase (Ireland) Act 1903 – which O’Brien orchestrates through Parliament.

It differs from earlier legislation which initially advanced to tenants the sum necessary to purchase their holdings, repayable over a period of years on terms determined by an independent commission, while the Wyndham Act finishes off absentee landlords‘ control over tenants and makes it easier for tenants to purchase land, facilitating the transfer of about 9 million acres (36,000 km2) up to 1914. By then, 75% of occupiers are buying out their landlords under the 1903 Act and the later Irish Land Act 1909 of Augustine Birrell, which extends the 1903 act by allowing for the compulsory purchase of tenanted farmland by the Land Commission, but falls far short in its financial provisions. In all, under these pre-1921 Land Acts over 316,000 tenants purchase their holdings amounting to 11.5 million acres (47,000 km2) out of a total of 20 million acres (81,000 km2) in the country.

The Acts provide Irish tenant farmers with more rights than tenant farmers in the rest of the United Kingdom. Munster tenants avail of land purchase in exceptionally high numbers, encouraged by their Irish Land and Labour Association‘s leader D. D. Sheehan after he and O’Brien establish an Advisory Committee to mediate between landlords and tenants on purchase terms which produce a higher take-up of land purchase than in any other province.

Historian Robert K. Webb gives most of the credit for the Wyndham Act to Conservative leader Arthur Balfour. He says the Act is “a complete success. By the time the Irish Free State was created in 1922, the system of peasant proprietorship had become universal… A land problem more than a century old had been solved, though it had taken more than 30 years of educating Parliament and landlords to do it. The scheme was intended as well to ‘kill Home Rule by kindness.’”


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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 Donal Donnelly, Theatre & Film Actor

Donal Donnelly, Irish theatre and film actor, is born to Irish parents in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, on July 6, 1931. Perhaps best known for his work in the plays of Brian Friel, he has a long and varied career in film, on television and in the theatre. He lives in Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States at various times, and his travels lead him to describe himself as “an itinerant Irish actor.”

Donnelly’s father, James, is a doctor from County Tyrone, and his mother, Nora O’Connor, is a teacher from County Kerry.

Donnelly is raised in Dublin where he attends Synge Street CBS, where he acts in school plays with Milo O’Shea, Eamonn Andrews, Jack MacGowran, Bernard Frawley (Seattle Repertory Co.) and Jimmy Fitzsimons (brother of Maureen O’Hara), under the direction of elocution teacher, Ena Burke.

Donnelly gets his start in an amateur group calling itself the Globe Theatre Players. It is organised and run by Jim Fitzgerald and Monica Brophy. He then later tours with Anew McMaster‘s Irish repertory company before moving to England where he stars with Rita Tushingham in the film The Knack …and How to Get It.

Donnelly’s breakthrough role comes when he is cast as Gar Private in the world premiere of Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come! directed by Hilton Edwards for the Gate Theatre at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1964. The production subsequently transfers to Broadway where it plays for over 300 performances and establishes Donnelly and Patrick Bedford, who plays his alter-ego Gar Public, as formidable new talents to be reckoned with. They are jointly nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play in 1966.

Donnelly returns to Broadway a number of times, replacing Albert Finney in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg in 1968, playing Milo Tindle in Anthony Shaffer‘s Sleuth and appearing as Frederick Treves opposite David Bowie as The Elephant Man. He also renews his relationship with Brian Friel, appearing in the world premieres of Volunteers at the Abbey Theatre in 1975 and Faith Healer with James Mason at the Longacre Theatre in New York City in 1979, as well as the Broadway premieres of Dancing at Lughnasa in 1991 and Translations in 1995.

For many years, Donnelly tours a one-man performance of the writings of George Bernard Shaw, adapted and directed by Michael Voysey and entitled My Astonishing Self.

Donnelly’s film roles include Archbishop Gilday in The Godfather Part III and as Freddy Malins in John Huston‘s final work, The Dead, based on the short story by James Joyce, where he gains particular acclaim for his performance.

On television, Donnelly plays the lead role of Matthew Browne in the 1970s ITV sitcom Yes, Honestly, opposite Liza Goddard. But from the late 1950s onwards, he often appears in such British TV programs as The Avengers, Z-Cars and The Wednesday Play.

Donnelly is an acclaimed audiobook reader whose catalogue includes Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Voltaire‘s Philosophical Dictionary, and several audio versions of the works of James Joyce.

In 1968, Donnelly records an album of Irish songs, Take the Name of Donnelly, which is arranged, produced and conducted by Tony Meehan formerly of the Shadows.

Donnelly, who is a heavy smoker all his life, dies from cancer at the age of 78 in Chicago, Illinois, on January 4, 2010. He is survived by his wife, Patricia ‘Patsy’ Porter, a former dancer he met working on Finian’s Rainbow, and two sons, Jonathan and Damian. Their only daughter, Maryanne, predeceases him after being killed in a riding accident. A brother, Michael Donnelly, is a Fianna Fáil senator and councillor, and Lord Mayor of Dublin(1990–91).

(Pictured: Publicity still of Donal Donnelly as Frederick Treves in the Broadway’s play The Elephant Man)