From top: Leprechaun postcard, 1900; Nottingham Evening Post item on the Killough Leprechaun

Room for a little one?

Historical blogger Sibling of Daedalus writes:

We all know that Ireland is the home of the leprechaun but when was one last actually seen? Recent leprechaun sightings are few and far between in the newspaper archives, with the most recent one being almost one hundred years ago.

On Monday, 20 April 1908, the Irish Times reported a sighting at Killough, County Westmeath, of a little man of dwarfish proportions in a red jacket, suiting the traditional description of a leprechaun.

The news occasioned great excitement in the district, and a wholesale hunt for the man in the belief that his discovery would lead the finder to a crock of gold.

This search proved unsuccessful, and a subsequent letter-writer to the Times suggested that what had in fact been seen was a blue baboon which had recently escaped from a travelling circus in the neighbourhood.

However on August 13, 1908, it was reported that a ‘little man’ had in fact been captured in a wood near the town of Mullingar, and admitted as a (presumably non-simian) inmate to the local workhouse.

He was described as eating ‘greedily’ and communicating only in ‘a peculiar sound between a growl and a squeal‘

Very quickly thereafter, a representative of an American museum and theatre of varieties in Glasgow visited the workhouse, and, following an agreement with the supposed leprechaun and his father, took him to Glasgow by the midday train, apparently with a view to his appearing in a music-hall.

Although both parties were described as leaving ‘in the best of spirits,’ there are no further reports of the Killough leprechaun either in a music-hall or elsewhere.

Anyone?

Tales of Old Dublin (Sibling of Daedalus)

UPDATE:

Sibling of Daedalus writes:

In 1913, a tenant farmer in Tullamore was taken to court for having a filthy residence. It was stated in court that he was the leprechaun’s father and had sold him for £10. Some disapproval of this was expressed in light of the fact that the leprechaun had been ‘hardly tamed‘ at the time of his sale.

It appears that the purchaser was Mr Pickard, of the Panopticon Music Hall, Glasgow, who exhibited an Irish leprechaun there between 1908 and 1914. Also part of the show for some of this period was the young Stan Laurel, later to become famous as part of the double-act Laurel and Hardy. Perhaps the Leprechaun ended up in Hollywood too?

More as we get it.

The Evening Telegraph, April 8. 1902

Meet Paddy.

Dublin’s can-carrying Kerry Blue.

Sibling of Daedalus writes:

Kerry Blue Terriers were the favourite dog of General Michael Collins and perhaps he was influenced in his choice by Paddy, the famous Edwardian Dublin terrier, whose defiance of British-imposed licensing laws featured in a number of national and international papers in the Spring of 1902.

The previous year the Child Messenger Act 1901 – following on earlier legislation of 1872 and 1886 which prohibited the consumption of spirits and other alcoholic drinks by persons under 16 and 13 respectively – had prohibited the well-established – and often financially lucrative – practice of children collecting drink for adults from public houses.

Paddy’s young owner – not wanting to lose his profitable delivery service – decided to take advantage of the absence of any similar prohibition on dogs and train his ‘remarkably intelligent’ pet to carry out the work for him instead.

The method, as outlined by the Northants Evening Telegraph, which carried the above sketch of dog and master, was as follows:

“When twopence is put into a can off runs Paddy to the nearest licensed house, enters it, and shakes the can so that the vintner may hear the jingle of the money. The twopence is taken out, the can filled with porter, and off starts Paddy to his home, carrying the can in his mouth.”

With Chompsky on the staff, perhaps this scheme might also prove useful for the Broadsheet morning pints coffee?

Hic.

Tales of Old Dublin

From top: 1911 Canadian dollar; Luke Flanagan

Did you know about ‘Dublin’s Newsboy Millionaire’?

Read all about it.

Esteemed historical blogger Sibling of Daedalus writes:

Young Luke Flanagan (no relation), summoned before the Dublin Children’s Court on February 8, 1911 looked just like any other Dublin tenement boy – undersized – looking 4 years younger than his actual 15 years.

Without a shirt and with a threadbare coat pinned across his chest, his crime was also typical of many tenement boys – that of selling newspapers without a licence.

But Luke differed from the average such boy in one important respect.

According to Police Constable 86C (one of Dublin’s famous Tall Constables), who had summoned him to court, he was generally known as the ‘Dublin Millionaire Newsboy’, having inherited a large sum of money from a relative in Canada, which he would come into when he reached the age of 21 years.

Giving evidence in court, Luke’s mother, Mrs Rooney, said that she had married Frank Flanagan, the son of a Dublin solicitor who had subsequently emigrated to Canada. Frank was now dead, and she had remarried.

Luke, their only surviving child, lived with his mother, her new husband, and a ‘foster brother’, also a newsboy, in a tenement flat off O’Connell Street.

Some years before, her deceased brother-in-law, John, who had gone to Canada with his father, returned bringing news of Luke’s grandfather’s death, and a legacy of £1500 (a substantial sum in 1911) left to Frank and passing to Luke as his surviving heir.

The question was, where was the money?

Mrs Rooney – described by all sources as a woman of excellent character – thought perhaps it might have been paid into the Court of Chancery in Ireland.

This caused consternation among Dublin citizens, who were outraged at the thought of a young man of such expectant fortune – described by one paper as a thin, weakly youngster with a wistful face – being neglected by the Court and left to fend for himself on the streets of Dublin.

British newspapers took up the cry of outrage, and soon the story spread as far as Canada itself, and San Diego, Texas. In fact, Luke’s was perhaps the first Irish news story to go viral.

Matters quietened down however, when the Irish Court of Chancery released a statement saying that no money had ever been lodged with it on behalf of either Luke Flanagan or his grandfather’s estate.

Luke Flanagan was convicted of trading without a licence and obliged to pay 2s 6d to the poor box. It is not clear whether he ever got his legacy.

Was the Court of Chancery being entirely honest? Did wicked Uncle John make off with the money? What happened to Luke’s newspaper business in the Rising of 1916?

Anyone?

Tales of Old Dublin

Luke Flanagan pic: Evening Herald

From top: Marrowbow Lane, Dublin in the 1890s by Joseph Kavanagh; A foot similar to the one found by street cleaners.

A story lost in time’s garbage truck.

Cinderella gone horribly wrong.

Sibling of Daedalus writes:

Marrowbone Lane off Cork Street is one of Dublin’s oldest streets and, like Marylebone in London, derives its name from a convent of the order of St Mary le Bone originally located there.

In January 1894 the street was in the news for a different reason when Dublin Corporation workers unloading the contents of a cart used in the cleaning of the lane found among its contents a small stockinged and booted female foot, not cleanly amputated but terribly broken and lacerated, as if gnawed by a wild animal.

Such a discovery, coming not long after the Jack the Ripper murders, occasioned great excitement until it was discovered that the foot belonged to Mary Austin, who had been knocked down and injured by a tramcar at Camden Street the previous week.

Ms Austin was subsequently taken to the Meath hospital, where she died from shock. Her daughter Mary Anne Connolly identified the foot as that of her mother.

Dublin tramcars of the time were notorious for accidents, with much rivalry between the various companies as to who could get from A to B fastest. The driver in this case, Francis Fox, who had not seen Mrs Austin, was subsequently prosecuted for careless driving, but acquitted.

There was no explanation as to why the foot had not been found earlier. As to how it had travelled from Camden Street to Marrowbone Lane we may never know, although hop springs eternal…

Tales of Old Dublin

Pics: Adams/ Victoriana

From top: Lady Knayth; report of De Valera’s legal victory; Russel Square, Brighton in the 1930s.

He was bequeathed a fortune by a complete stranger of apparently unsound mind.

And fought off a legal challenge by her penniless brother.

So what happened to Eamon De Valera’s Brighton windfall?

Sibling of Daedalus writes:

In 1932 the dead body of Miss Polly Mary Fitzpatrick, former lady’s maid, was discovered in her house in Russell Square, Brighton. She had lain there for three weeks.

Miss Fitzpatrick was a Dubliner by birth, a Catholic, and a patriotic Irishwoman. She was also of a ‘very thrifty and remarkable disposition.’

Her late employer, Lady de Knayth, had left her a legacy of £200 a year, which, by astute investment, she had turned into the sum of £3000 – a very large estate indeed at that time.

She had also developed a habit of making wills. The year before her death, she had bequeathed the entirety of her property to Cardinal Bourne.

This was not her last will and testament, however.

After her death there was found, in an old skirt under her bed, tied in a silken girdle, a later will in favour of Eamon de Valera, President of the Irish Free State Executive Council.

Neither will contained any bequest to her brother, John Fitzpatrick, a former railwayman living in a flat in Rialto Buildings, Dublin on a pension of 6 shillings per week, and for whom the money, he told the Irish Times, would have been a godsend.

Mr Fitzpatrick challenged the will, and Mr de Valera resisted.

Legal proceedings ensued, and were heard in the Probate Court in London. Mr Justice Bateson, the judge assigned to the case, asked Mr de Valera’s counsel, TP O’Connor, if it ‘was a real fight or a sham fight’.

A real one, Mr O’Connor replied.

Mr Fitzpatrick argued that his sister was “of weak intellect, childish and eccentric, that in late years she had become a recluse, and that she had formed a dislike of persons from whom she was said to have derived pecuniary benefit.”

This apparently referred to the family of Lady de Knayth, with whom the deceased had fallen out, possibly because they resented her late employer’s legacy.

Mr de Valera’s counsel, on the other hand, described Miss Fitzpatrick as ‘an old fashioned lady’ who, though ‘self-contained’ and not inclined to mix freely with people, was financially astute, had many interests, including old furniture and objets d’art, and ‘took her meals daily in a good class restaurant in the neighbourhood.‘

Her bequest to his client had been made in recognition of his services to Ireland, and he had no intention of profiting from the estate, intending instead that the money would be used as a trust for public purposes of the kind which Miss Fitzpatrick was known to approve and desired to see advanced.

The burden of proving unsoundness of mind, in the case of a person making a will, is a heavy burden and rests on the person challenging the will. Mr Fitzpatrick did not succeed in satisifying it.

Mr De Valera won the case, and the money.

However I cannot find any further record of the Fitzpatrick Trust, which it was stated he intended to set up.

Anyone?

Tales of Old Dublin

Sources: (text) The Irish Times; the Times; the Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette; the Gloucestershire Echo; the Northern Whig; the Edinburgh Evening News, MyBrightonandHove

Top: Lady Knayth by John Singer Sargent

You can count on us.

We lied.

Sibling of Daedalus writes:

Further to your WWI tank competition, a copy of a propaganda poster circulated by the American-Irish Defense Association, an organisation set up in 1940 to argue for American support for Irish participation in the defence of the Atlantic and the British Isles.

Controlled by the British Special Operations Executive, AIDA, as it was known, became the source of mockery in the pro-neutrality paper the Irish World after it published a propaganda paper referring to ‘the Irish Free State’ ‘which hasn’t been for some years’.

A 1941 cable subsequently sent by AIDA to Eamon de Valera calling on him to protect ‘the Atlantic lifeline of civilization’ did not result in any change in neutrality. It seems that America, after all, could not count on the Irish. Nice poster though!

Pic via Ebay