Cholera of 1876, William Dargan, O'Connell Crypt.

Chapter X

One of the heaviest years for burials was 1867, during the cholera epidemic, when in the month of January alone, 969 bodies were given to the earth. Opposite the wicket on the Finglas Road, is a large green plot containing the bones of those who perished in that visitation, and close to the Old Entrance is a similar plot, in which lie the victims of the smallpox of 1872. William Dargan, having contracted successfully for some of the chief Boards of Ireland, was entrusted with the construction of the leading railway lines: by which means he amassed a large fortune. The success of the great Exhibition under Paxton, at Hyde Park in 1851, led Dargan to think that Ireland ought to go and do likewise. He accepted the financial risk of the Dublin Industrial Exhibition of 1853, and cheerfully U bore the deficit of £10,000, which resulted from the enterprise. It was formally opened by the Queen. One day - like Peel and Bishop Wilberforce - he was thrown from his horse, and from the effects of this fall, and the collapse of his financial gains, he died, crushed in mind and body, February 7th, 1867. His funeral to Glasnevin Cemetery was a solemn spectacle. His statue in Merrion Square, at the threshold of the National Gallery, is a familiar and striking object. His former residence near Sybil Hill, Raheny, serves to recall his first enterprise - the construction of the high road from Dublin to Howth. The plot in which his remains rest was a free grant by the Cemeteries Committee. Sir Christopher Bellew, Bart., became a Jesuit father, and in a cell of his ascetic order, sought a complete union with God. He brought sinners to repentance by conducting missions through the country, and on March 18th, 1867, was called to his reward. His brother Michael, also a Jesuit father, followed him within the ensuing year. A man famous for the silent patriotism of his life, was John Dalton, author of “King James’s Irish Army List,” “Annals of Boyle,” “History of the County Dublin,” ” History of Dundalk,” and ” Lives of the Archbishops of Dublin.” At an earlier period of his career he had compiled 200 volumes, still unpublished, embodying extracts from MSS. rare of access historical, topographical, and genealogical. Dalton almost said with Prospero:

“Deeper than did ever plummet sound

I’ll drown my books.”

He omitted to bequeath them to any public library, where their great value could be utilised by historic inquirers; but, happily, they still exist, fully indexed, and it is hoped may be yet exhumed from the dust and darkness in which they lie. Dalton was a graduate of Trinity College, and a member of the Bar, at which, however, he never practised. Throughout a long life he rarely left his desk. He was buried in Glasnevin on January 23rd, 1867.

Ralph Walsh, one of O’Connell’s Old Guard, a staunch friend to Catholic charities, and the father of William J., Archbishop of Dublin, was buried in the Dublin Section on April 20th 1867, aged 64.

The Most Rev. Daniel O’Connor, Bishop of Saldes, and Vicar-Apostolic of Madras, was buried on July 10th, 1867. Some of the most interesting letters of Dr. Doyle (J.K.L.), were addressed to Dr. O’Connor. When Wellington brought forward his bill of Catholic Emancipation, it included a clause in which the extinction of the Monastic Orders in Ireland was formally threatened. O’Connor, himself a friar, was the chief negotiator who, in April, 1829, waited on Wellington and Peel, when he obtained an assurance that the clause in reference to the regular clergy could only be enforced by the Attorney General, which action, they believed, would never be taken. The obnoxious clause, in point of fact, had been introduced solely to appease the demon of bigotry. Dr. O’Connor was the first British-born subject that ever became a bishop in British India. Madras was then a truly destitute mission. With a large staff of priests and students, and several thousands of books for the instruction of the ignorant, he arrived in Madras in August, 1835.

Michael Murphy, the well-known Official Assignee of the Court of Bankruptcy, was buried on October 21st, 1867. “His urbane and courteous nature, no less than his honourable spirit,” writes Sir John Gray, “rendered him peculiarly adapted for the discharge of his important duties.”

In 1759 the Catholics who suffered from the effects of the violated Treaty of Limerick, petitioned for relief through Thomas Wyse, Dr. Curry, and Charles O’Conor. Thomas held office under successive administrations; George became a police magistrate. The latter was born at the Manor of St. John, Waterford, in 1793. His father, as representative of the original grantee, in 1172, inherited the rights of the Prior of St. John, and was, in that capacity still subject to visitations of the Lord Bishop of the Diocese. George Wyse, it was known, had helped his brother in compiling the “History of the Catholic Association.” He died November 4th, 1867.

Martin Crean is described as seated with O’Connell at dinner at Richmond Bridewell when the Governor of the gaol, much agitated, rushed into the room saying, “Good God, can it be true?” The Liberator was liberated. Mr. Crean had been the efficient acting secretary of the Repeal Association, and a staunch disciple of O’Connell. He died on December 3rd, 1867, aged 65, and was buried at Glasnevin in a plot granted free by the Catholic Cemeteries’ Committee to his widow.

Mathias O’Kelly, an old member of the Board, died on 5th April, 1868, greatly regretted by his colleagues. He largely helped in founding the Cemetery at Golden Bridge, while that at Glasnevin owed much to his fostering hand. He had been Secretary to the Board and took a keen interest in his work. It will be remembered that in 1847 he left Ireland on the special mission of accompanying from Genoa the remains of O’Connell, over which now towers that wonderful monument so familiar to visitors to Ireland. O’Kelly’s services to the Zoological Society were valuable and long continued. He watched over its interests from its origin to a period within a few weeks of his decease. So far back as 1837 I find the following tribute to him uttered by the then President of the Zoological Society, General Portlock - “He found on the list the name of Mr. M. J. O’Kelly, than whom no one could be better calculated to benefit the society by his assistance in the council. Perhaps he was better known to those with whom he had co-operated than to the public at large. There was not in the country a better collector of zoological subjects, or one who, by his knowledge of natural history, and his attention to the interests of the society, was likely to be practically so useful a member of the council.” O’Kelly had been, at one time, Secretary to the Catholic Association, and was ever hailed by O’Connell as a dear friend and a valued co-operator. His son, Joseph O’Kelly, geologist, of whom a laudatory memoir appeared in the Athenaeum of the day, is also buried at Glasnevin.

The next important funeral to come was that of John Lanigan, M.P. for Cashel, an old ally of O’Connell, who died October 7th, 1868.

John Reynolds, another follower of O’Connell, and his oratorical bruiser. Though both fought under O’Connell’s standard, no man could be more unlike the suave O’Kelly than John Reynolds. By steady steps Reynolds fought his way to the front. He was among the first Catholic Lord Mayors of Dublin, and he won a Parliamentary seat for that city at a time when Orangeism regarded it as its special stronghold. At St. Stephen’s he had sufficient tact to hold in check the aggressiveness of his nature. Contemporary memoirs described him as an excellent speaker, bristling with points, a master of detail, but deficient in the sagacity of a statesman. Mr. Ingram, M.P. published his portrait in the Illustrated London News. The House liked him, and was sorry when he left it. He was a member of the Committee of Glasnevin Cemetery from the outset. On August 24th, i868, his remains were conveyed to Glasnevin. Ere long the spot was marked by a fine monument, “Erected,” as the inscription states, “by his fellow citizens in recognition of long public services discharged with marked ability and energy.”

His brother, Thomas Reynolds, City Marshal, also rests at Glasnevin. He helped to fight the battle of civil and religious liberty, and was prosecuted in 1836 for an inflammatory speech on “Repeal.”

The mantle of John Reynolds fell on Alderman Devitt, who was liked and often loved, although he hit with a loaded club in the discharge of public duty. He did not long survive John Reynolds - dying in the plenitude of his strength on September 5th, 1869. His family was short-lived. His brother, a well-known journalist in Dublin, had fallen quite suddenly at his post. A very handsome Celtic cross extends its arms over Alderman Devitt’s grave, inscribed: “Erected in affectionate remembrance by a few of his personal friends.”

A very interesting person was Michael Barry, B.L., Professor of Law in the Queen’s College, Cork. He was one of the best story-tellers of his time; and the tables of kindred spirits became the brighter by his presence. Letters meant for his namesake, Michael Joseph Barry, B.L., editor of the “Songs of Ireland,” sometimes reached the wrong man, which led Michael Joseph to say: “He is feed for my law and fed for my wit.” A shrewd thinker once wrote:-

He who has a thousand friends, has not one friend to spare,

But he who has one enemy will meet him-everywhere.”

It was Professor Barry’s fate to meet this one man. Barry had been nominated a Colonial Chief Justice the duties of which office he could have imposingly discharged; but his foe worked with a will and had influence enough to get the appointment cancelled. [The allusion is not to Michael Joseph Barry who, also, by unfriendly interposition, lost his position of police magistrate and died poor.] Michael Barry was never the same man after. Anecdotes continued to fall from his lips, but his eye had lost its former sparkle, and a passing cloud would come to shade the sunshine of his smile. He died, aged 58, on June 24th, 1869, and was buried in the O’Connell Circle.

A marble monument in the Garden Section, decorated with a coronet, records that Bryan Count de Kavanagh, M.D., rests beneath it. He died October 4th, 1869, aged 63.

It was at this time that a Sub-Committee of the Board reported, among other things, that “The Visitors’ Book showed daily evidence that ‘O’Connell’s grave is an object of abiding interest and veneration to persons coming from every quarter of the globe. Its present situation, not apart from the graves of the other dead, and less distinguished than most of those which surround it - its condition with paltry and flimsy decoration, with no adornment but the flowers renewed by the remembrance of the servants of your Board - all is unworthy, and your Committee have no hesitation in saying that, subject to consultation with such surviving members of the family as are reasonably accessible, no time should be lost in having the coffin removed, with becoming Ceremony and accompaniments, to the crypt at the foot of the Round Tower; that in that more spacious and suitable vault the coffin should be placed, enclosed in a sarcophagus or altar tomb, Irish in design; and that the crypt itself should be decorated with proper emblems, inscriptions, or other appropriate ornament;” and the Committee expressed their hope “that the result would be that the grave of O’Connell, in the greatest Catholic Cemetery in his own land, would be not wholly unworthy of the place his memory holds in the gratitude and love of his fellow-countrymen.”

Communication was at once opened with the O’Connell family, and some interesting incidents were the result. The outer coffin, which came from Genoa, was found on examination to have been much impaired, but the mountings, exquisite in design, remained perfectly intact. These were transferred to a new and very beautiful shell. The crypt designed for its reception is in the form of an altar tomb: three pierced panels are at either side, and one at the west end, so that the coffin may be seen through the openings. In front of each of the panels rises a semi-circular arch supported by a base, shaft, and handsome capital. The ornamentation is purely Celtic. The bases of the capitals are round and represent a serpent coiled. The table of the tomb is a single slab of Kilkenny marble, the length nine feet by four. Bannerets were suspended from the walls on one of which was the Irish harp on a field of shamrocks. An inscription written on a label is as follows: “The Liberator of his Country.” On another: “The friend of Civil and Religious Liberty, all over the world.” On the third is depicted the Shamrock and Irish Crown, inscribed: “The Apostle of Moral Force.” On the fourth is a monogram of O’Connell. Inscription: “The Emancipator of his Catholic Fellow-Subjects.” On the wall over the entrance of the crypt are the following words, said to have been uttered by O’Connell in his last illness:

“My Body to Ireland.

My Heart to Rome.

My Soul to Heaven.”

On May 14th, 1869, when the remains of O’Connell were removed from their original resting-place to the crypt beneath the round tower at Glasnevin, Father Tom Burke, the great Dominican, pronounced a funeral panegyric of much power. Cardinal Cullen, supported by a bench of bishops, presided; around clustered the survivors of the old Catholic and Repeal Associations, the Municipalities of Ireland, and high officials who attained their positions by the Act of Emancipation. The scene was striking and picturesque. Beneath a vast awning were all the preparations for the solemn rite of a Pontifical Requiem Mass. Sublime Gregorian music rose from four hundred voices; a grand procession was formed, and moved slowly through the grounds; the robes of clergy and corporators intermingled their hues with the rich foliage of trees and flowers. Fifty thousand persons were there to honour the memory of O’Connell. Amongst them stood Lord Chancellor O’Hagan, K.P., Chief Justice Monahan, Lord Bellew, several baronets, Chief Baron Pigot, with Judges O’Brien and Lynch. “His glorious victory,” said Father Burke, “did honour even to those whom he vanquished. He honoured them by appealing to their sense of justice and of right; and in the Act of Catholic Emancipation England acknowledged the power of a people, not asking for mercy, but clamouring for the liberty of the soul - the blessing which was born with Christ, and which is the inheritance of the nations that embrace the Cross. Catholic emancipation was but the herald and the beginning of victories. He who was the Church’s liberator and most true son was also the first of Ireland’s statesmen and patriots. Our people remember well, as their future historian will faithfully record, the many trials borne for them, the many victories gained in their cause, the great life devoted to them by O’Connell. Lying, however, at the foot of the altar, as he is to-day, whilst the Church hallows his grave with prayer and sacrifice, it is more especially as the Catholic Emancipator that we place a garland on his tomb. It is as a child of the Church that we honour him and recall with tears our recollections of the aged man, revered, beloved, whom all the glory of the world’s admiration and the nation’s love had never lifted up in soul out of the holy atmosphere of Christian humility and simplicity. Obedience to the Church’s laws, quick zeal for her honour and the dignity of her worship a spirit of penance refining whilst it expiated, chastening whilst it ennobled, all that was natural in the man; constant and frequent use of the Church’s sacraments, which shed the halo of grace round his head these were the last grand lessons which he left to his people, and thus did the sun of his life set in the glory of Christian holiness.

Father Burke touchingly referred to the famine, which broke O’Connell’s heart and led to his pilgrimage to Rome: For Ireland he lived, for Ireland he died. On the shores of the Mediterranean the weary traveller lay down. At the last moment his profound knowledge of his country’s history may have given him that prophetic glimpse of the future sometimes vouchsafed to great minds. He had led a mighty nation to the opening of ‘the right way,’ and directed her first and doubtful steps in the path of conciliation and justice to Ireland. Time, which ever works out the designs of God, has carried that nation forward in the glorious way. With firmer step, with undaunted soul, with high resolve of justice, peace, and conciliation, the work which was begun by Ireland’s Liberator progressed in our day. Chains are being forged for our country, but they are chains of gold to bind up all discordant elements in the empire, so that all men shall live together as brothers in the land. If we cannot have the blessings of religious unity, so as ‘to be all of one mind,’ we shall have ‘the next dearest blessing that heaven can give,’ the peace that springs from perfect religious liberty and equality. All this do we owe to the man whose memory we recall to-day, to the principles he taught us which illustrate his life, and which, in the triumph of Catholic emancipation, pointed out to Irish people the true secret of their strength, the true way of progress, and the sure road to victory. The seed which his hand had sown it was not given to him to reap in its fullness. Catholic emancipation was but the first instalment of liberty. The edifice of religious freedom was to be crowned when the wise architect who had laid its foundations and built up the walls was in his grave. Let us hope that his dying eyes were cheered and the burden of his last hour lightened by the sight of the perfect grandeur of his work; that like the prophet lawgiver he beheld ‘all the land’ - that he saw it with his eyes, though he did not ‘pass over to it;’ that it was given to him to ‘salute from afar off’ the brightness of the day which he was never to enjoy.

The dream of his life is being realised to-day. He had ever sighed to be able to extend to his Protestant fellow-countrymen the hand of perfect friendship, which only exists where there is perfect equality, and to enter with them into the compact of the true peace which is founded in justice. Time, which buries in oblivion so many names and so many memories, will exalt him in his work. The day has already dawned and is ripening to its perfect noon when Irishmen of every creed will remember O’Connell, and celebrate him as the common friend and greatest benefactor of their country. What man is there, even of those our age has called great, whose name, so long after his death, could summon so many loving hearts around his tomb? We to-day are the representatives not only of a nation but of a race. ‘Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?’ Where is the land that has not seen the face of our people and heard their voice? and wherever, even to the ends of the earth, an Irishman is found to-day, his spirit and his sympathy are here. The millions of America are with us; the Irish Catholic soldier on India’s plains is present amongst us by the magic of his love; the Irish sailor, standing by the wheel this moment in far-off silent seas, where it is night, and the southern stars are shining, joins his prayer with ours, and recalls the glorious image and venerated name of O’Connell. He is gone, but his fame shall live for ever on the earth as a lover of God and his people. Adversaries, political and religious, he had many, and, like a tower of strength, ‘which stood full square to all the winds that blew,’ the Hercules of justice and of liberty stood up against them. Time, which touches all things with mellowing hand, has softened the recollection of past contests, and they who once looked upon him as a foe, now only remember the glory of the fight and the mighty genius of him who stood forth the representative man of his race and the champion of his people. They acknowledge his greatness, and they join hands with us to weave the garland of his fame. But far other, higher, and holier are the feelings of Irish Catholics all the world over to-day. They recognise in the dust which we are assembled to honour the powerful arm that promoted them, the eloquent tongue which proclaimed their rights, the strong hand which, like that of the Maccabee of old; first struck off their chains and built up their altars. Mingling the supplication of prayer and the gratitude of suffrage with their tears, they recall with love the memory of him who was a Joseph to Israel, their tower of strength, their buckler and their shield, who shed around their homes, altars, and graves the sacred light of religious liberty and the glory of unfettered worship. ‘His praise is in the Church;’ and this is the surest pledge of the immortality of his glory. ‘A people’s voice’ may be ‘the proof and echo of human fame,’ but the voice of the undying Church is the echo of ‘everlasting glory;’ and when those who surround his grave to-day shall have passed away, all future generations of Irishmen to the end of time will be reminded of his name and of his glory.”

When Sir Walter Crofton and John Lentaigne were Directors of Convict Prisons, they had no more zealous co-operator in carrying out reforms in prison discipline than James P. Organ, to whom Lord Carlisle, struck by his natural aptitude for the work, was the first to give office. Wesley preached to prisoners in Newgate, Dublin, but with poor results. Organ approached them in another way. Originally a teacher under the National Board, he was qualified for the work he took in hand. Regarding ignorance as the fruitful source of crime, he aimed to refine the roughest material by culture. The official directory of the day describes Organ as, “Inspector of released convicts and lecturer.” These men occupied a penitentiary in Smithfield, and a reformatory at Lusk. Organ put them through a course of instruction which revealed to them both worlds in a new light. He found out the natural tastes and talents of his prisoners, and then applied himself to the task of providing remunerative employment for each. He sought interviews with various employers; and if hesitancy was shewn to ratifying an engagement, he went personal security for his protéges. A few cases of relapse occurred; but Organ’s experiment on the whole worked well. His premature death, at the age of 46, on November 11th, i869, was a distinct loss to the reformatory system. Organ’s grave at Glasnevin is in the Garden Section.

The funeral at this time of Lady Shiel had interesting associations. She was the sister-in-law of Richard Lalor Shiel, the great champion of civil and religious liberty, and the wife of Sir Justin Shiel, K.C.B., Minister at the court of the Shah. Sir Justin’s death followed on April 18th, 1871.

Two youths from Clare came to Dublin the same day to seek their fortune - Michael Staunton and Michael O’Loghlen. The latter became the first Catholic Master of the Rolls in Ireland. Staunton, at the age of twenty, succeeded to the editorial chair of the *Freeman’s Journal, *and continued to conduct it until 1824, when he started the Morning *Register. *The Catholic body, emerging from bondage, were gradually acquiring energy and political importance: and a journal with literary capabilities to represent their wants and record their proceedings, was loudly called for. He enlisted on its staff the ablest young men he could find, including Charles Gavan Duffy, Thomas Davis, J. B. Dillon, W. B. MacCabe, John Finlay, Carew O’Dwyer, and John Quinlan. Great confidence was reposed in him as the leading popular journalist; he was offered a lucrative post under the Crown, but replied that he could not afford to take it. When Mr. Lamb, afterwards Lord Melbourne, became Chief Secretary for Ireland, Staunton published a manual called, “Lessons for Lamb.” Two years later Sir H. Harding, afterwards Lord Harding, succeeded to the same duties, when Staunton brought out, “Hints for Harding.” “They enabled me, on different occasions, to do good battle for our unfortunate country,” - wrote the patriotic peer, Lord Cloncurry. Someone retorted with, “Stings for Staunton,” who, however, was not at all thin-skinned. He was a member of the Catholic Association, and the correspondent of Dr. Doyle (J. K. L.) and O’Connell. In 1831 he was prosecuted for having published some soul-stirring appeals addressed by the Tribune to his countrymen. It was at this time that Thomas Moore met Staunton, of whom he gives an account in his diary. A number of publications came from Staunton’s pen, full of important statistical and political data. He lived in eventful times. After a career of many years, the *Register *was bought by Sir John Gray, and amalgamated with the *Freeman’s Journal, *while Staunton, having now ample time at his disposal, was persuaded by Lord Clarendon, to accept a financial post. He died, aged 82, on February 26th, 1870. An uninscribed obelisk, in Curran’s Square, rises over his grave.

Catherine Baroness Von Stentz, aged 75, was buried at Glasnevin, in October, 1870.

A coloured cartoon representing a man in spectacles inscribed simply “Frank,” and bearing for motto, “The pen is mightier than the sword,” was, some years ago, not unfamiliar to those who care for such things. The portrait was at once recognised as that of Frank Sullivan, a sharp critic and graphic delineator. He visited Glasnevin Cemetery at this time, and, having noticed its picturesque features, wrote a description, of which the following is an extract:- ” I lingered on my way to inspect monumental piles erected perhaps as much to flatter the living as a tribute to the memory of the dead; to read epitaphs in which sorrow and affection sought to find expression, or where ‘the pomp of woe’ sought to reveal its dignity; or to look on a nameless grave where the ashes of the gifted and the unfortunate repose - where those I knew well in life lay forgotten as if they had never been, and on graves over which I stood and felt compunction that I had ever warred with the handfuls of earth that lay mouldering beneath. I passed through the fine arched cross-surmounted gateway, and I took up a position on the road in front of the entrance.” Sullivan was a philosopher; and the funerals of the poor afforded him most interest. One scant *cortege *consisted of ” a woman, the mother of three little children, who were present with their father - personifying sorrow and desolation.”

“Whose funeral is that which now ‘blackens all the way?’ It is of one who has died young and full of promise. He was an only son, and the only chief mourner is his father, whose sorrow has drunk up all his tears, and in whose soul affliction reigns. His presence fills all about him with a kind of awe, as on the son, whose lifeless clay he follows to the grave, were centred all his hopes. He enters the chapel and leaves it with the corpse, as if mechanically. His eyes follow the coffin as it sinks into the grave, and, when the last prayers have been said, the sound of the dull, heavy earth falling on it wrings from him a moan of anguish, which, I thought, as I fell back behind the crowd, was the saddest sound I ever heard. The earth is piled** **up against a headstone, which tells that the sorrowing man was wifeless and childless in his old age. During my stay near the gate I saw many funerals arrive, and people belonging to all classes in society ‘steeped to the lips in sorrow.’ Weary of observing so much human misery in one forenoon, I took a walk through the Cemetery, which I found was kept in excellent order, and that its trees and shrubs, adding so much to its beauty, had been well cared for. The monuments and tombs, as a general rule, are in good taste, and the majority of those recently erected are excellent models and worthy of imitation.” He says in conclusion: “Had I not known what kind of things epitaphs are, I would have come to the conclusion that there had been great mortality amongst the good, and that the opposite were blessed with a longevity approaching that of the Patriarchs.” Poor Frank Sullivan himself now sleeps amidst these tombs, and surmounted by an epitaph to which even he could hardly object.

When we remember that the Very Rev. Dr. Spratt was a great champion of temperance, a prominent supporter of public charities, the founder of benevolent homes and philanthropic societies, one is not surprised to see it recorded by the Rev. W. G. Carroll, Rector of St. Bride’s, in his account of the Doctor’s obsequies at Glasnevin, supplied to the *Freeman’s Journal, *that “Protestant clergymen and Dissenters stood side by side with the Priest and the layman of that Church of which the kindly deceased was so revered a minister.” Valentine Lord Cloncurry made him his almoner; and some of the most characteristic letters which appear in his “Life” are addressed to Dr. Spratt. But the Priest proved himself a practical patriot as well. Whilst the great Tribune lived, Fr. Spratt was his ardent supporter. In the struggle for Emancipation, in the Precursor Society, in the Repeal Association, O’Connell might always calculate on the patriotic Carmelite. Fr. Spratt was born in 1798, which gave rise to a joke that he had been “in arms himself during that troubled time. The late George Wheeler, T.C.D., who in 1870 edited the *Irish Times, *described him as “A truly good and amiable man called from the scene of his beneficent and pious labours, leaving a void which cannot readily be filled. There was no path of Christian duty, no application of Christian charity that was a stranger to Dr. Spratt’s heart, or to his daily life; but there were certain forms of human suffering to which he ministered with special tenderness; and there was one desolating vice against which he contended with all his powers. The orphan found in him a father, and the homeless wanderer of the streets a refuge; while the drink demon, that more than all other causes combined, fill our poor-houses with orphans and our streets with outcasts, found in him a vigilant, untiring, life-long foe. Retiring and unobtrusive by nature, in this last cause he permitted himself to be prominently before the public.” It may be added that it was in the actual service of this cause he died, for death struck him while he was administering the temperance pledge, immediately after celebrating Mass in Whitefriar Street church. It was probably the mode and circumstance of death that he would have chosen for himself. There is a fine monument to Dr. Spratt in the Tower Circle of the Cemetery.

“Fifty thousand people attended Leo’s funeral, so popular had he become by his genius and patriotism,” writes David O’Donoghue in his ‘Poets of Ireland.’ ‘Leo’ was the pseudonym over which John Keegan Casey, an ardent youth, wooed his muse. Born in 1846 at Mount Dalton, Westmeath, his first poem appeared when he was only sixteen years old. Two small volumes - “A Wreath of Shamrocks,” [A Wreath of Shamrocks: Ballads, Songs and Legends. Dublin: McGee, pp. 111-115.] and the “Rising of the Moon,” were the work of his facile pen. The ardour of youth spurred him into active sympathy with the Fenian movement. He was put in gaol as a “suspect,” and his death, which occurred on St. Patrick’s Day, 1870, is said to have been hastened by his imprisonment. After his death the “‘Reliques of J. K. Casey” were collected and edited by Eugene Davis, and a detailed account of his life appears in Farrell’s “Historical Notes on Longford.” A handsomely sculptured monument has been raised in the South Section displaying among other devices an Irish Round Tower and Ruined Church. Thomas Caulfield Irwin, an Ulster poet of considerable genius, who received honorable recognition from Lord Salisbury’s Government, wrote an “In Memoriam” on Casey, the more remarkable when we know that Irwin did not share the politics of “Leo.”

During the previous year Edward Duffy died in Millbank prison and was buried in Glasnevin. The inscription on his tomb tells that he had been convicted of participation in the Fenian Rising of ‘67.

Joseph Downey, another Irish poet, shortly followed Leo.” Walking in the footprints of Furlong, he produced a number of pieces under the signature of “Shamrock.” A memorial cross in the South Section bears an inscription not the less touching that it includes an appropriate extract from one of his own poems. Downey, a native of Kildare, died at the early age of 24, on the 11th of June, 1870.

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