On this day in 2018, Tipperary-born Nan Joyce passed away. Joyce was a trailblazer for Traveller rights who campaigned for equality for decades.
In 1982 Joyce co-founded the Committee for the Rights of Travellers and became the first member of the Traveller Community to stand for election in the history of the State. She ran as a candidate in the November 1982 general election in the Dublin South-West constituency and polled 581 votes. Remarkably, like most other members of the Travelling community, she was not on the register and thus not entitled to a vote herself because of her life on the road.
In 1988 Joyce’s autobiography, Traveller, was published by Gill and Macmillan. Her writing was later included in the women writers’ volumes of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing.
In 2010, Joyce was awarded a lifetime achievement award by then-president Mary McAleese for her campaigning work for the Traveller community over the previous three decades.
Sources:
https://smashingtimes.ie/.../human-rights.../nan-joyce/
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/nan-joyce-trailblazer-for-traveller-rights-dies-aged-78-1.3590010?fbclid=IwY2xjawEoJIhleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHcZvzhjkMsCyIlD7ZNczmHUrJNVAx0lgLfInwINy5Y1Q3wyEY25QS7QEDQ_aem_KPQbpjp6mXwBNs8_df8E9Q
On this day in 1848, William Smith O’Brien was arrested at Thurles railway station for his role in the Young Ireland rebellion at the Widow McCormack’s cottage in Ballingarry on 28 July 1848.
Writing in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, Professor of History Richard P. Davis claimed that O’Brien had acted with gallantry at Ballingarry, negotiating at the cottage window for the release of the widow’s five children and refusing to burn the house where forty-six well-armed police were besieged by O’Brien’s motley force.
After escaping for a few days, O’Brien was tracked down by police and arrested at the railway station in Thurles on 7 August. Initially,O’Brien and other Young Ireland leaders Thomas Francis Meagher, Patrick O’Donoghue and Terence Bellew McManus were taken to Kilmainham Gaol but they were transferred to the Gaol in Clonmel in September where they were to await trial.
The four prisoners were tried by a special commission which began its proceedings on 28 September 1848 with O’Brien’s trial. Nine days later he was found guilty of high treason and, like the other three, sentenced to death. Thomas Francis Meagher wrote in his Personal Recollections journal,‘the day he [O’Brien] was sentenced to death in the Court House of Clonmel, and he was brought back in that hideous prison van to the gaol….almost every man in the town shrunk back and cowered.’
Shortly afterwards there was a plot, led by John O’Leary of Tipperary Town, to rescue the state prisoners (as they had come to be called) from Clonmel Gaol. The authorities became aware that something was afoot and planned to move the prisoners to the more tranquil town of Thurles. Before they could be moved, the would-be rescuers launched an attack on 8 November 1848,intending to release all 450 of the gaol’s inmates. However, as they gathered just north of the town to carry out the operation, they were surrounded by the military and O’Leary and 16 others were arrested.
A little over a week later, the state prisoners were removed to Dublin, first Kilmainham Gaol, then Richmond Bridewell. Early in June 1849,the weight of public opinion forced the Lord Lieutenant to commute their sentences to transportation for life. On 9 July 1849, the four prisoners,including William Smith O’Brien, were put on board the Swift at Kingstown (DunLaoghaire), bound for Van Diemen’s Land.
Sources:
https://www.dib.ie/biography/obrien-william-smith-a6507
Michael Ahern, Clonmel County Gaol, (2010), pp74-78.
