1897
Malaria’s spread by protozoans was disciovered by Ronald Ross who also proposed that the control of mosquitoes would halt the disease.
Kipling’s Captains Courageous, Bram Stoker’s tale of Transalyvanian horror, Dracula and H.G.Well’s The Invisible Man published. Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac premiered in Paris and Paul Dukas composed the Socerer’s Apprentice. Henry Rousseau unveiled his Sleeping Gypsy, Chekhov’s Unlce Vanya was performed. Sousa wrote his greatest work ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’.
Births:
Tom Barry (nationalist revolutionary) in Rosscarbery, Co. Cork (1/7)
Tomás Derrig (revolutionary; Fianna Fáil politician and Minister) in Westport, Co. Mayo (26/11)
Muriel Gahan (promoter of rural craftwork) in Co. Mayo
Bill Hurley (RAF officer, lawyer and librarian) in Dublin
Mainie Jellett (artist) in Dublin
Thomas Kiernan (diplomat and author) in Dublin
Kate O'Brien (playwright and novelist) in Limerick (3/12)
Pádraig Ó Caoimh (revolutionary; general secretary of the Gaelic Athletic Association 1929-1964) in Roscommon
Enid Starkie (critic of French literature) in Killiney, Co. Dublin
John Lighton Synge (mathematician) in Dublin (23/3)
Catalpa Jim’ Reynolds
The man who risked his home and business to pay for the Catalpa rescue mission in 1876 endured much tragedy in his life. Four of his five children died before he did in 1897. a Celtic Cross was placed over his grave in 1904 by Devoy and Goff.
Diarmuid: Philo-Celtic Fair - McKinley inauguration
January
11: Anglo-American relations were strained again in early January on the boundary between British Guiana and Venezuela but on January 11th, Secretary of State Olney and Sir Julian Pauncefote, the British Ambassador signed atreaty which provided for arbitration ‘all questions of difference’ which the two powers were unable to adjust by ‘diplomatic negotiation’.
While Britain generally agreed it was a positive step towards normalising Anglo-American relations, the US Senate disagreed being more concerned with its amending powers and vetoed it on May 5th. Secretary of State Olney wrote to the British Cabinet explaining the reason for the defeat was the hostile attitude of Senators from the silver producing states as Britain was a ‘conspicious and efficient supporter’ of the Gold Standard.
Tansill disagrees saying that ‘one of the most potent forces against the ratification of the arbitration treaty was the hostility of Irish Americans’ but supports it only with an editorial in the Boston Pilot ‘Had Irish Americanism anything to do with the failure of the English arbitration treaty? We trust so and believe so. wE should be very much ashamed of our fellow citizens of Irish blood if they had not donw their utmost to baffle the attempt to place this republic before the world as a mere colony of Great Britain.’
Charles Callan Tansill. ‘America and the fight for Irish Freedom-1866-1922’. Devin-Adair, New York 1957. P112-113
Scholarly John Millington Synge visited Yeats in London on his way back from Dublin to Paris in late January-- his first trip to the Aran Islands that became his trademark wouldn't take place until later that spring.
Synge
Ath this time, Maud Gonne had just returned from a fundraising tour of the USA (£1000 raised-- less than had been hoped) and divided her time between Paris (where her relationship with Lucien Millevoye was disintegrating around their 4 year old daughter Iseult) and Ireland.
Maud Gonne
12: First meting of subscribers to the People’s Rights Fund leads to the formation of the People’s Rights Association by T.M.Healy.
20: American-Irish Historical Society
January 20th, 1897, fifty men of Irish nationality or descent met in the old Revere House in Boston, gathering together to create a new historical society that would honor both the lands of their forefathers and their own adopted country. These men were responding to a letter sent all over the United States, signed by, among others, Theodore Roosevelt; Augustus St. Gaudens, the sculptor; the financier John D. Crimmins; Justice Morgan J. O'Brien; Senator Thomas H. Carter of Montana and Rear Admiral Richard Worsam Meade, who was to become the Society's first President-General.
The letter these men signed read in part: The American of English stock has his historical society, the descendants of the Dutch, Hugenot and Spaniards have associations which specialize the historical work of the bodies they represent, and we feel that the story of the Irish element should be told before the mass of legend and fiction flooding the country under misleading designations has completely submerged facts. The principal of the proposed society as stated was: "To place the Irish element in its true light in American history, and to secure its perspective in relation to historic events on this soil....Its primal object will be to ascertain the facts, weight them in relation to contemporary events, and estimate their historical value, avoiding in this process the exaggeration and extravagance of poorly informed writers on one hand, and the prejudice and misrepresentation of hostile writers on the other..."
The reaction to the American Irish Historical Society was overwhelming. By the time the first journal was published, in 1898, the membership had grown from 50 members to over 800. Early members included the Fenian John Devoy; John McCormack, the Irish tenor; the famed orator Bourke Cockran; the lawyer and Irish arts patron, John Quinn; and Judge Daniel F. Cohalan.
The American Irish Historical Society was founded free of any political or religious affiliation and has so continued. Its doors and membership remain open to all of the political and religious traditions which have gone into the shaping of Irish culture. No one was more scrupulous in this regard than John Devoy, the fierce and unyielding old Fenian, of whom a scholar and member of the Society has written that "he was never far from controversy except when he helped to found the American Irish Historical Society."
The base of the AIHS quickly moved from Boston to New York, establishing the offices first in the old Manhattan Hotel on 42nd and Madison and later to the old Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on 34th and Fifth. The stature of the AIHS grew under the influence of Judge Cohalan and John Devoy.
32 year old William Butler Yeats spent most of the winter of 1897-98 in London (where he'd taken an apartment in 1896, in order finally to lose his virginity, at age 30!) hosting a regular Monday night salon for his literary friends, taking hashish pills and pursuing ‘magical researches’ with the Order of the Golden Dawn (OGD).
(then-32yo Olivia Shakespear (Mrs) had finally made a man of Yeats in 1896)
21: In dramatic circumstances, the Crown case against Edward Bell, arrested in Glasgow on Septmber 12th 1896 on a charge of conspiracy with other to cause explosions in Britain, collapsed. An Agent Provocateur was involved, and Bell was freed, quickly emigrating to the United States.
February
2: Growing nationalism brought the Ottoman held island of Crete out in revolt, demanding union with Greece. Greek warships sailed for the island on the 10th as both Russia and Austria-Hungary put pressure on the Greeks to withdraw rather than set off another Balkan crisis.
March
4: The 19 year old Diarmuid and an unnamed American friend visited Washington D.C. for the inaugration of President McKinley. ‘What with the magnificent Capitol Building over-topping the immense mass of people among whom I stood to witness the solemn ceremony with Old Glory floating freely from its dome, and then with multitude singing to the strains of the Star Spangled Banner, I expereinced the deepest thrill of my young life.’
Diarmuid Lynch ‘The I.R.B and the 1916 Rising’. Edited by Florence O’Donoghue. Mercier Press. Cork, 1957. P4
McKinley became the 25th President and promised a tough stance on Spain’s behvaiour in Cuba.
April
17: Greece declared war on the Ottoman Empire, who largely thanks to the re-organisation of their army by German officers, promptly defeated the Greeks.
30: Austria-Hungary was riven with it’s many diverse nationalities seeking political concessions that it’s foreign policy was particularly low key during the decade. It signed an agreement on this date with Russia to keep things as they were in the Balkans – it was the best Austria-Hungary could manage at the time.
WB Yeats led what was regarded by many as a motley crew of Irish theatrical 'pirates' as they attempted to forge an alternative to imported English drama, hoping to reach a larger, non-literary Irish audience
“We propose to have performed in Dublin in the spring of every year certain Celtic and Irish plays.... We will show that Ireland is not the home of buffoonery and of easy sentiment, as it has been represented, but the home of an ancient idealism.” W. B.Yeats
Mostly to impress Maud Gonne, Yeats was taking a leading and active role in organising the 1798 centenary celebrations, while laying the groundwork for the Irish Literary Theatre (ILT), conceived with AE, Lady Augusta Gregory and Edward Martyn the previous summer.
Lady Gregory.
Each of these projects required diplomatic juggling by Yeats with various opposing factions: Martyn was Catholic, Yeats and AE were somewhat anti-Catholic leaning (with Protestant roots). Maud Gonne believed England was controlled by Freemasons and Jews. She could hardly be trusted around agents of the British, for fear she'd both verbally and physically attack them, while LadyG was a somehat hesitant nationalist, belonging to the Protestant landlord class. Lady Gregory said to Yeats: "I have longed to turn Catholic, that I might be nearer to the people, but you have taught me that paganism brings me nearer still.")
Martyn
May
Diarmuid described the Irish Palace Fair in New York : “…my first contact with Irish-American affairs was at the Irish Palace Fair in May 1897. There I enjoyed the exhibits and walked on soil brought from each of the 32 Irish Counties, but met none responsible for the exhibition. Later on I read in the Irish American that classes in the Irish language were conducted by the New York Philo-Celtic Society, which had functioned since 1876. The pleasure which this news evoked was, however coupled with the fear that text books in the language ( which I had never seen in print ) must of necessity be beyond the reach of the $18 a week clerk. Even so, I decided to investigate and presented myself at the Society’s room one hot summer afternoon, 1897. To my astonishment and delight I was handed a primer published by the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language, price 10 cents! One the other hand, my disapointment was acute to find not hundreds of students ( as I had fondly anticipated ) but half a dozen old men – including Denny Burns, Joe Cromien and John Casey, veterans in the movement long long before the Gaelic League was established – and an equal number of younger people..’
Diarmuid Lynch ‘The I.R.B and the 1916 Rising’. Edited by Florence O’Donoghue. Mercier Press. Cork, 1957. P5-6
17: The first Oireachtas or festival of Irish culture held with prizes offered for Irish speaking, writing, dancing etc.
18: A public reading of Bram Stoker's new novel, "Dracula, or, The Un-dead," was staged at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in London, an event that roughly coincided with the book's publication.
June
5: The Nation ceases publication. Suceeded by the Weekly Nation.
In Dublin, a committee was set up to co-ordinate activities of various groups established throughout the country to commemorate the 1798 rebellion. Among those founded were the Wolfe Tone, Fr. Murphy, Oliver Bond, Sheares Brothers, Lord Edward Fitzgerald Clubs etc. nationalists, moderates and extreme republicans combined with liteary and other figures in arranging the celebrations including John MacBride, Maud Gonne, James Connolly and WB Yeats. The event was celebrated in Ireland, the US, Australia and South Africa.
Captain Anthony, skipper of the Catalpa Rescue of the 6 Fenian prisoners in Fremantle in 1876, published an account of his voyage and part in the rescue ‘The Catalpa Expedition’. He was assisted by a friend, Zepheniah Pease.
12: Anthony Eden, British prime minister from 1955 to 1957, born.
22: About the same time as the Jubilee procession started in London, a black flag was raised over the city hall in Dublin, flew at half mast for 30 minutes and was then carried through the streets at the head of procession singing ‘God Save Ireland’. At the head of the procession, 6 men carried a symbolic coffin labelled ‘Britsh Empire’ with a band following playing the ‘Dead March’. En route, any Union Jacks that could be reached, were torn down and windows with Union Jacks or iluminated for the Jubilee, smashed in. The DMP and RIC drove the crowd back as they marched towards Trinity.
In Cork, black flags were hung from some homes and businesses as the RIC prevented one from being flown on one of the municipal flagstaffs and bonfires burned through the night on hilltops around the county. In Limerick, the RIC removed black flags from the Town Hall and a number of monuments…
Lynch Family Archives – Folder 1: 1890-1914 – 00004 – The Herald, New York.
August
In the second half of the 19th century organized anti-Semitic parties emerged in Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia. Escaping persecution, large numbers of Russian Jews migrated to the West, primarily to the United States.
In 1896 Theodor Herzl, an Austrian Jewish journalist, published a short book aptly called Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), in which he analysed the causes of anti-Semitism and proposed its cure, the creation of a Jewish state. Although Herzl secured audiences with the German emperor William II and Sultan Abdulhamid II of Turkey, he was unable to secure their support. Nor would the wealthy among the Jews put up the money to back his project. In August 1897 Herzl organized the first Zionist Congress in Basel and formulated the Basel Programme, which remained the basic platform of the Zionist movement. The programme defined Zionism's goal as the creation “for the Jewish people of a home in Palestine secured by public law”. The congress also founded a permanent World Zionist Organization (WZO) and authorized it to establish branches in every country with a substantial Jewish population.
Zionism: The movement to unite the Jews of the Diaspora (exile) and settle them in Palestine; it arose in the late 19th century and culminated in 1948 in the establishment of the state of Israel. The movement's name is derived from Zion, the hill on which the Temple of Jerusalem was located and which later came to symbolize Jerusalem itself. The term Zionism was first applied to this movement in 1890 by the Austrian Jewish philosopher Nathan Birnbaum. Zionism as an organized political movement originated in the 19th century, but its roots go back to the 6th century BC, when the Jews were carried off to captivity in Babylon and their prophets encouraged them to believe that one day God would allow them to return to Palestine, or Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel). Over the centuries, the Jews of the Diaspora associated the hope of the return with the coming of the Messiah, a saviour whom God would send to deliver them. Individual Jews often migrated to Palestine to join the Jewish communities that continued to exist there, but they remained a small minority among a largely Arab population.
September
18: Peace treaty between Greece and the Ottoman Empire signed, which left an international peacekeeping force on Crete with Prince George, youngest son of the Greek King, as High Commisioner for the island. This was the first use of an international peace keeping force.
October
12: The Cymric launched. Built by Harland & Wolff for the White Star Line & was at the time, the largest and most powerful ship afloat.
Cuba: General Weyler was recalled to Spain but the American press refused to acceopt any Spanish moderation and howled for action.
Tensions in Cuba: On both humanitarian and economic grounds a strong reaction to the conflict between Spain and Cuba developed in the United States. The brutal treatment of the Cubans by Spanish military forces received wide publicity, chiefly through reports that appeared in the New York World and the New York Journal, the former managed by Joseph Pulitzer and the latter by William Randolph Hearst. Concern was also aroused by the extensive damage to property caused by the conflict. Many US investments were affected, and all US trade with Cuba was halted. Popular demand for intervention on Cuba's behalf gained support in the US Congress, but both President Grover Cleveland and President William McKinley, during his first year in office, firmly opposed US action. In 1897 an attempt to settle the conflict was made by the Spanish prime minister, Práxedes Mateo Sagasta. Partial autonomy was to be granted to the Cubans, and the prison camps were to be abolished. The insurgents, however, continued to press for complete independence. The conflict continued, and a series of incidents led to US intervention.
November
25: Carmel Quinn born in Newbridge Co. Kildare.
December
Diarmuid was elected Secretary of the New York Philo Celtic Society. ‘…by then membership had assumed its normal propostions; yet far from what it should have been. As the work in Ireland advanced and our activities became better known, the attendance at classes quadrupled. I venture to say that not even in Ireland itself could be found a group of finer calibre or more intensley patriotic from every standpoint. Their outlook was that enuciated by Padraig Pearse a decade later: ‘Ireland free as well as Gaelic, Gaelic as well as free’. Among them were many boys and girls of the first American born generation, and a few whose roots were further removed from the motherland…’
Diarmuid Lynch ‘The I.R.B and the 1916 Rising’. Edited by Florence O’Donoghue. Mercier Press. Cork, 1957. P6
The Irish Party factions united under the leadership of John Redmond who quickly abandoned the chief item in the Parnelist Paty, the independence of Ireland.
In December 1897 the US battleship Maine was sent to the port of Havana to protect US citizens and property in the continuining conflict between Spain and Cuba.
The Steam Turbine, invented in 1884 by Charles Parsons, son of the 3rd Earl of Ross of Birr Castle, Co. Offaly was sucessfully demonstrated in the vessel Turbina. This craft showed it’s prowress by steaming past the Royal Navy fleet on display at the Isle of Wight of Victoria’s Jubilee, setting a water speed record of 34.5 knots or 63.9 km/h. Hardly surprisingly, the fleet adopted the turbine using a version in the 1906 Dreadnought which gave the 17,900 tonne battleship a crusing speed of 22.4knots or 41.5 km/h. Dreadnought’s speed, armaments and size rendered other battleships obsolete. The Cunard liner Mauritania with a similar turbine version held the Blue Riband for Atlantic crossing for almost 25 years.
1897
January 1 - Brooklyn, New York merges with New York City
February 2 - The Pennsylvania state capitol is destroyed by fire.
April 27 - Grant's Tomb is dedicated.
May 19 - Oscar Wilde is released from prison.
August 29 - First Zionist Congress convenes in Basle, Switzerland.
December 28 - The play Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand, premieres in Paris.
December 30 - Natal annexes Zululand
Change of US presidency from Grover Cleveland (1893-1897) to William McKinley (1897-1901)
France allows women to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts
Births
January 3 - Pola Negri, actress (+ 1987)
January 3 - Marion Davies, actress (+ 1961)
February 4 - Ludwig Erhard, politician.
February 10 - John F. Enders, scientist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1954 (+ 1985)
February 10 - Dame Judith Anderson, actress (+ 1992)
February 11 - Yves de La Casiniere, composer.
March 4 - Lefty O'Doul, baseball star, restauranteur (+ 1969)
March 24 - Wilhelm Reich, psychotherapist (+ 1957)
March 27 - Gloria Swanson, actress (+ 1983)
March 28 - Sepp Herberger, football coach (+ 1977)
April 7 - Walter Winchell, broadcaster, journalist (+ 1972)
April 26 - Olga Tschechowa, actress (+ 1980)
April 26 - Douglas Sirk, director (+ 1987)
May 18 - Frank Capra, producer, director, writer (+ 1991)
May 19 - Frank Luke, World War I fighter ace (+ 1918)
June 13 - Paavo Nurmi, Finnish runner.
July 11 - Blind Lemon Jefferson
August 28 - Charles Boyer, actor
September 8 - Jimmie Rodgers
September 12 - Irene Joliot-Curie, scientist
September 23 - Walter Pidgeon, actor (+ 1984)
September 25 - William Faulkner, novelist
Deaths
April 3 - Johannes Brahms, composer
Science
Thompson discovers the electron.
- The similarity of the motion of an electron and visible light is first described by J. J. Thompson.
x - The kingdom of Benin is added to the Niger Coast Protectorate.
x - |ENGLAND| Postmen deliver mail to every home.
x - |Germany ? | Braun improves Crookes' tube with fluorescence.
x - General Electric creates a publicity department.
x - Edwin S. Votey, patents his self-playing piano, which he calls the pianola. The instrument uses instructions recorded on perforated paper to drive a set of artificial wooden fingers poised above a piano keyboard. Later versions placed the entire mechanism inside the body of the piano, eliminating the fingers.
x - Marconi obtained a radio patent and established the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company Limited
x - First Jewish Zionist congress
* Arthur Griffith fights for the Boers
* William McKinley becomes the 25th President of the USA
* Glasgow and Liverpool retailers threaten to boycott Irish eggs due to poor quality: egg societies are formed to address the problem by collecting, grading and packing eggs
* Bram Stoker's novel Dracula and Ethel Voynich's novel The Gadfly are published
Tom Barry (nationalist revolutionary) in Rosscarbery, Co. Cork (1/7)
* Tomás Derrig (revolutionary; Fianna Fáil politician and Minister) in Westport, Co. Mayo (26/11)
* Muriel Gahan (promoter of rural craftwork) in Co. Mayo
* Bill Hurley (RAF officer, lawyer and librarian) in Dublin
* Mainie Jellett (artist) in Dublin
* Thomas Kiernan (diplomat and author) in Dublin
* Kate O'Brien (playwright and novelist) in Limerick (3/12)
* Pádraig Ó Caoimh (revolutionary; general secretary of the Gaelic Athletic Association 1929-1964) in Roscommon
* Enid Starkie (critic of French literature) in Killiney, Co. Dublin
* John Lighton Synge (mathematician) in Dublin (23/3)
1897
Malaria’s spread by protozoans was disciovered by Ronald Ross who also proposed that the control of mosquitoes would halt the disease.
Kipling’s Captains Courageous, Bram Stoker’s tale of Transalyvanian horror, Dracula and H.G.Well’s The Invisible Man published. Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac premiered in Paris and Paul Dukas composed the Socerer’s Apprentice. Henry Rousseau unveiled his Sleeping Gypsy, Chekhov’s Unlce Vanya was performed. Sousa wrote his greatest work ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’.
Births:
Tom Barry (nationalist revolutionary) in Rosscarbery, Co. Cork (1/7)
Tomás Derrig (revolutionary; Fianna Fáil politician and Minister) in Westport, Co. Mayo (26/11)
Muriel Gahan (promoter of rural craftwork) in Co. Mayo
Bill Hurley (RAF officer, lawyer and librarian) in Dublin
Mainie Jellett (artist) in Dublin
Thomas Kiernan (diplomat and author) in Dublin
Kate O'Brien (playwright and novelist) in Limerick (3/12)
Pádraig Ó Caoimh (revolutionary; general secretary of the Gaelic Athletic Association 1929-1964) in Roscommon
Enid Starkie (critic of French literature) in Killiney, Co. Dublin
John Lighton Synge (mathematician) in Dublin (23/3)
Catalpa Jim’ Reynolds
The man who risked his home and business to pay for the Catalpa rescue mission in 1876 endured much tragedy in his life. Four of his five children died before he did in 1897. a Celtic Cross was placed over his grave in 1904 by Devoy and Goff.
Diarmuid: Philo-Celtic Fair - McKinley inauguration
January
11: Anglo-American relations were strained again in early January on the boundary between British Guiana and Venezuela but on January 11th, Secretary of State Olney and Sir Julian Pauncefote, the British Ambassador signed atreaty which provided for arbitration ‘all questions of difference’ which the two powers were unable to adjust by ‘diplomatic negotiation’.
While Britain generally agreed it was a positive step towards normalising Anglo-American relations, the US Senate disagreed being more concerned with its amending powers and vetoed it on May 5th. Secretary of State Olney wrote to the British Cabinet explaining the reason for the defeat was the hostile attitude of Senators from the silver producing states as Britain was a ‘conspicious and efficient supporter’ of the Gold Standard.
Tansill disagrees saying that ‘one of the most potent forces against the ratification of the arbitration treaty was the hostility of Irish Americans’ but supports it only with an editorial in the Boston Pilot ‘Had Irish Americanism anything to do with the failure of the English arbitration treaty? We trust so and believe so. wE should be very much ashamed of our fellow citizens of Irish blood if they had not donw their utmost to baffle the attempt to place this republic before the world as a mere colony of Great Britain.’
Charles Callan Tansill. ‘America and the fight for Irish Freedom-1866-1922’. Devin-Adair, New York 1957. P112-113
Scholarly John Millington Synge visited Yeats in London on his way back from Dublin to Paris in late January-- his first trip to the Aran Islands that became his trademark wouldn't take place until later that spring.
Synge
Ath this time, Maud Gonne had just returned from a fundraising tour of the USA (£1000 raised-- less than had been hoped) and divided her time between Paris (where her relationship with Lucien Millevoye was disintegrating around their 4 year old daughter Iseult) and Ireland.
Maud Gonne
12: First meting of subscribers to the People’s Rights Fund leads to the formation of the People’s Rights Association by T.M.Healy.
20: American-Irish Historical Society
January 20th, 1897, fifty men of Irish nationality or descent met in the old Revere House in Boston, gathering together to create a new historical society that would honor both the lands of their forefathers and their own adopted country. These men were responding to a letter sent all over the United States, signed by, among others, Theodore Roosevelt; Augustus St. Gaudens, the sculptor; the financier John D. Crimmins; Justice Morgan J. O'Brien; Senator Thomas H. Carter of Montana and Rear Admiral Richard Worsam Meade, who was to become the Society's first President-General.
The letter these men signed read in part: The American of English stock has his historical society, the descendants of the Dutch, Hugenot and Spaniards have associations which specialize the historical work of the bodies they represent, and we feel that the story of the Irish element should be told before the mass of legend and fiction flooding the country under misleading designations has completely submerged facts. The principal of the proposed society as stated was: "To place the Irish element in its true light in American history, and to secure its perspective in relation to historic events on this soil....Its primal object will be to ascertain the facts, weight them in relation to contemporary events, and estimate their historical value, avoiding in this process the exaggeration and extravagance of poorly informed writers on one hand, and the prejudice and misrepresentation of hostile writers on the other..."
The reaction to the American Irish Historical Society was overwhelming. By the time the first journal was published, in 1898, the membership had grown from 50 members to over 800. Early members included the Fenian John Devoy; John McCormack, the Irish tenor; the famed orator Bourke Cockran; the lawyer and Irish arts patron, John Quinn; and Judge Daniel F. Cohalan.
The American Irish Historical Society was founded free of any political or religious affiliation and has so continued. Its doors and membership remain open to all of the political and religious traditions which have gone into the shaping of Irish culture. No one was more scrupulous in this regard than John Devoy, the fierce and unyielding old Fenian, of whom a scholar and member of the Society has written that "he was never far from controversy except when he helped to found the American Irish Historical Society."
The base of the AIHS quickly moved from Boston to New York, establishing the offices first in the old Manhattan Hotel on 42nd and Madison and later to the old Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on 34th and Fifth. The stature of the AIHS grew under the influence of Judge Cohalan and John Devoy.
32 year old William Butler Yeats spent most of the winter of 1897-98 in London (where he'd taken an apartment in 1896, in order finally to lose his virginity, at age 30!) hosting a regular Monday night salon for his literary friends, taking hashish pills and pursuing ‘magical researches’ with the Order of the Golden Dawn (OGD).
(then-32yo Olivia Shakespear (Mrs) had finally made a man of Yeats in 1896)
21: In dramatic circumstances, the Crown case against Edward Bell, arrested in Glasgow on Septmber 12th 1896 on a charge of conspiracy with other to cause explosions in Britain, collapsed. An Agent Provocateur was involved, and Bell was freed, quickly emigrating to the United States.
February
2: Growing nationalism brought the Ottoman held island of Crete out in revolt, demanding union with Greece. Greek warships sailed for the island on the 10th as both Russia and Austria-Hungary put pressure on the Greeks to withdraw rather than set off another Balkan crisis.
March
4: The 19 year old Diarmuid and an unnamed American friend visited Washington D.C. for the inaugration of President McKinley. ‘What with the magnificent Capitol Building over-topping the immense mass of people among whom I stood to witness the solemn ceremony with Old Glory floating freely from its dome, and then with multitude singing to the strains of the Star Spangled Banner, I expereinced the deepest thrill of my young life.’
Diarmuid Lynch ‘The I.R.B and the 1916 Rising’. Edited by Florence O’Donoghue. Mercier Press. Cork, 1957. P4
McKinley became the 25th President and promised a tough stance on Spain’s behvaiour in Cuba.
April
17: Greece declared war on the Ottoman Empire, who largely thanks to the re-organisation of their army by German officers, promptly defeated the Greeks.
30: Austria-Hungary was riven with it’s many diverse nationalities seeking political concessions that it’s foreign policy was particularly low key during the decade. It signed an agreement on this date with Russia to keep things as they were in the Balkans – it was the best Austria-Hungary could manage at the time.
WB Yeats led what was regarded by many as a motley crew of Irish theatrical 'pirates' as they attempted to forge an alternative to imported English drama, hoping to reach a larger, non-literary Irish audience
“We propose to have performed in Dublin in the spring of every year certain Celtic and Irish plays.... We will show that Ireland is not the home of buffoonery and of easy sentiment, as it has been represented, but the home of an ancient idealism.” W. B.Yeats
Mostly to impress Maud Gonne, Yeats was taking a leading and active role in organising the 1798 centenary celebrations, while laying the groundwork for the Irish Literary Theatre (ILT), conceived with AE, Lady Augusta Gregory and Edward Martyn the previous summer.
Lady Gregory.
Each of these projects required diplomatic juggling by Yeats with various opposing factions: Martyn was Catholic, Yeats and AE were somewhat anti-Catholic leaning (with Protestant roots). Maud Gonne believed England was controlled by Freemasons and Jews. She could hardly be trusted around agents of the British, for fear she'd both verbally and physically attack them, while LadyG was a somehat hesitant nationalist, belonging to the Protestant landlord class. Lady Gregory said to Yeats: "I have longed to turn Catholic, that I might be nearer to the people, but you have taught me that paganism brings me nearer still.")
Martyn
May
Diarmuid described the Irish Palace Fair in New York : “…my first contact with Irish-American affairs was at the Irish Palace Fair in May 1897. There I enjoyed the exhibits and walked on soil brought from each of the 32 Irish Counties, but met none responsible for the exhibition. Later on I read in the Irish American that classes in the Irish language were conducted by the New York Philo-Celtic Society, which had functioned since 1876. The pleasure which this news evoked was, however coupled with the fear that text books in the language ( which I had never seen in print ) must of necessity be beyond the reach of the $18 a week clerk. Even so, I decided to investigate and presented myself at the Society’s room one hot summer afternoon, 1897. To my astonishment and delight I was handed a primer published by the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language, price 10 cents! One the other hand, my disapointment was acute to find not hundreds of students ( as I had fondly anticipated ) but half a dozen old men – including Denny Burns, Joe Cromien and John Casey, veterans in the movement long long before the Gaelic League was established – and an equal number of younger people..’
Diarmuid Lynch ‘The I.R.B and the 1916 Rising’. Edited by Florence O’Donoghue. Mercier Press. Cork, 1957. P5-6
17: The first Oireachtas or festival of Irish culture held with prizes offered for Irish speaking, writing, dancing etc.
18: A public reading of Bram Stoker's new novel, "Dracula, or, The Un-dead," was staged at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in London, an event that roughly coincided with the book's publication.
June
5: The Nation ceases publication. Suceeded by the Weekly Nation.
In Dublin, a committee was set up to co-ordinate activities of various groups established throughout the country to commemorate the 1798 rebellion. Among those founded were the Wolfe Tone, Fr. Murphy, Oliver Bond, Sheares Brothers, Lord Edward Fitzgerald Clubs etc. nationalists, moderates and extreme republicans combined with liteary and other figures in arranging the celebrations including John MacBride, Maud Gonne, James Connolly and WB Yeats. The event was celebrated in Ireland, the US, Australia and South Africa.
Captain Anthony, skipper of the Catalpa Rescue of the 6 Fenian prisoners in Fremantle in 1876, published an account of his voyage and part in the rescue ‘The Catalpa Expedition’. He was assisted by a friend, Zepheniah Pease.
12: Anthony Eden, British prime minister from 1955 to 1957, born.
22: About the same time as the Jubilee procession started in London, a black flag was raised over the city hall in Dublin, flew at half mast for 30 minutes and was then carried through the streets at the head of procession singing ‘God Save Ireland’. At the head of the procession, 6 men carried a symbolic coffin labelled ‘Britsh Empire’ with a band following playing the ‘Dead March’. En route, any Union Jacks that could be reached, were torn down and windows with Union Jacks or iluminated for the Jubilee, smashed in. The DMP and RIC drove the crowd back as they marched towards Trinity.
In Cork, black flags were hung from some homes and businesses as the RIC prevented one from being flown on one of the municipal flagstaffs and bonfires burned through the night on hilltops around the county. In Limerick, the RIC removed black flags from the Town Hall and a number of monuments…
Lynch Family Archives – Folder 1: 1890-1914 – 00004 – The Herald, New York.
August
In the second half of the 19th century organized anti-Semitic parties emerged in Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia. Escaping persecution, large numbers of Russian Jews migrated to the West, primarily to the United States.
In 1896 Theodor Herzl, an Austrian Jewish journalist, published a short book aptly called Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), in which he analysed the causes of anti-Semitism and proposed its cure, the creation of a Jewish state. Although Herzl secured audiences with the German emperor William II and Sultan Abdulhamid II of Turkey, he was unable to secure their support. Nor would the wealthy among the Jews put up the money to back his project. In August 1897 Herzl organized the first Zionist Congress in Basel and formulated the Basel Programme, which remained the basic platform of the Zionist movement. The programme defined Zionism's goal as the creation “for the Jewish people of a home in Palestine secured by public law”. The congress also founded a permanent World Zionist Organization (WZO) and authorized it to establish branches in every country with a substantial Jewish population.
Zionism: The movement to unite the Jews of the Diaspora (exile) and settle them in Palestine; it arose in the late 19th century and culminated in 1948 in the establishment of the state of Israel. The movement's name is derived from Zion, the hill on which the Temple of Jerusalem was located and which later came to symbolize Jerusalem itself. The term Zionism was first applied to this movement in 1890 by the Austrian Jewish philosopher Nathan Birnbaum. Zionism as an organized political movement originated in the 19th century, but its roots go back to the 6th century BC, when the Jews were carried off to captivity in Babylon and their prophets encouraged them to believe that one day God would allow them to return to Palestine, or Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel). Over the centuries, the Jews of the Diaspora associated the hope of the return with the coming of the Messiah, a saviour whom God would send to deliver them. Individual Jews often migrated to Palestine to join the Jewish communities that continued to exist there, but they remained a small minority among a largely Arab population.
September
18: Peace treaty between Greece and the Ottoman Empire signed, which left an international peacekeeping force on Crete with Prince George, youngest son of the Greek King, as High Commisioner for the island. This was the first use of an international peace keeping force.
October
12: The Cymric launched. Built by Harland & Wolff for the White Star Line & was at the time, the largest and most powerful ship afloat.
Cuba: General Weyler was recalled to Spain but the American press refused to acceopt any Spanish moderation and howled for action.
Tensions in Cuba: On both humanitarian and economic grounds a strong reaction to the conflict between Spain and Cuba developed in the United States. The brutal treatment of the Cubans by Spanish military forces received wide publicity, chiefly through reports that appeared in the New York World and the New York Journal, the former managed by Joseph Pulitzer and the latter by William Randolph Hearst. Concern was also aroused by the extensive damage to property caused by the conflict. Many US investments were affected, and all US trade with Cuba was halted. Popular demand for intervention on Cuba's behalf gained support in the US Congress, but both President Grover Cleveland and President William McKinley, during his first year in office, firmly opposed US action. In 1897 an attempt to settle the conflict was made by the Spanish prime minister, Práxedes Mateo Sagasta. Partial autonomy was to be granted to the Cubans, and the prison camps were to be abolished. The insurgents, however, continued to press for complete independence. The conflict continued, and a series of incidents led to US intervention.
November
25: Carmel Quinn born in Newbridge Co. Kildare.
December
Diarmuid was elected Secretary of the New York Philo Celtic Society. ‘…by then membership had assumed its normal propostions; yet far from what it should have been. As the work in Ireland advanced and our activities became better known, the attendance at classes quadrupled. I venture to say that not even in Ireland itself could be found a group of finer calibre or more intensley patriotic from every standpoint. Their outlook was that enuciated by Padraig Pearse a decade later: ‘Ireland free as well as Gaelic, Gaelic as well as free’. Among them were many boys and girls of the first American born generation, and a few whose roots were further removed from the motherland…’
Diarmuid Lynch ‘The I.R.B and the 1916 Rising’. Edited by Florence O’Donoghue. Mercier Press. Cork, 1957. P6
The Irish Party factions united under the leadership of John Redmond who quickly abandoned the chief item in the Parnelist Paty, the independence of Ireland.
In December 1897 the US battleship Maine was sent to the port of Havana to protect US citizens and property in the continuining conflict between Spain and Cuba.
The Steam Turbine, invented in 1884 by Charles Parsons, son of the 3rd Earl of Ross of Birr Castle, Co. Offaly was sucessfully demonstrated in the vessel Turbina. This craft showed it’s prowress by steaming past the Royal Navy fleet on display at the Isle of Wight of Victoria’s Jubilee, setting a water speed record of 34.5 knots or 63.9 km/h. Hardly surprisingly, the fleet adopted the turbine using a version in the 1906 Dreadnought which gave the 17,900 tonne battleship a crusing speed of 22.4knots or 41.5 km/h. Dreadnought’s speed, armaments and size rendered other battleships obsolete. The Cunard liner Mauritania with a similar turbine version held the Blue Riband for Atlantic crossing for almost 25 years.
1897
January 1 - Brooklyn, New York merges with New York City
February 2 - The Pennsylvania state capitol is destroyed by fire.
April 27 - Grant's Tomb is dedicated.
May 19 - Oscar Wilde is released from prison.
August 29 - First Zionist Congress convenes in Basle, Switzerland.
December 28 - The play Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand, premieres in Paris.
December 30 - Natal annexes Zululand
Change of US presidency from Grover Cleveland (1893-1897) to William McKinley (1897-1901)
France allows women to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts
Births
January 3 - Pola Negri, actress (+ 1987)
January 3 - Marion Davies, actress (+ 1961)
February 4 - Ludwig Erhard, politician.
February 10 - John F. Enders, scientist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1954 (+ 1985)
February 10 - Dame Judith Anderson, actress (+ 1992)
February 11 - Yves de La Casiniere, composer.
March 4 - Lefty O'Doul, baseball star, restauranteur (+ 1969)
March 24 - Wilhelm Reich, psychotherapist (+ 1957)
March 27 - Gloria Swanson, actress (+ 1983)
March 28 - Sepp Herberger, football coach (+ 1977)
April 7 - Walter Winchell, broadcaster, journalist (+ 1972)
April 26 - Olga Tschechowa, actress (+ 1980)
April 26 - Douglas Sirk, director (+ 1987)
May 18 - Frank Capra, producer, director, writer (+ 1991)
May 19 - Frank Luke, World War I fighter ace (+ 1918)
June 13 - Paavo Nurmi, Finnish runner.
July 11 - Blind Lemon Jefferson
August 28 - Charles Boyer, actor
September 8 - Jimmie Rodgers
September 12 - Irene Joliot-Curie, scientist
September 23 - Walter Pidgeon, actor (+ 1984)
September 25 - William Faulkner, novelist
Deaths
April 3 - Johannes Brahms, composer
Science
Thompson discovers the electron.
- The similarity of the motion of an electron and visible light is first described by J. J. Thompson.
x - The kingdom of Benin is added to the Niger Coast Protectorate.
x - |ENGLAND| Postmen deliver mail to every home.
x - |Germany ? | Braun improves Crookes' tube with fluorescence.
x - General Electric creates a publicity department.
x - Edwin S. Votey, patents his self-playing piano, which he calls the pianola. The instrument uses instructions recorded on perforated paper to drive a set of artificial wooden fingers poised above a piano keyboard. Later versions placed the entire mechanism inside the body of the piano, eliminating the fingers.
x - Marconi obtained a radio patent and established the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company Limited
x - First Jewish Zionist congress
* Arthur Griffith fights for the Boers
* William McKinley becomes the 25th President of the USA
* Glasgow and Liverpool retailers threaten to boycott Irish eggs due to poor quality: egg societies are formed to address the problem by collecting, grading and packing eggs
* Bram Stoker's novel Dracula and Ethel Voynich's novel The Gadfly are published
Tom Barry (nationalist revolutionary) in Rosscarbery, Co. Cork (1/7)
* Tomás Derrig (revolutionary; Fianna Fáil politician and Minister) in Westport, Co. Mayo (26/11)
* Muriel Gahan (promoter of rural craftwork) in Co. Mayo
* Bill Hurley (RAF officer, lawyer and librarian) in Dublin
* Mainie Jellett (artist) in Dublin
* Thomas Kiernan (diplomat and author) in Dublin
* Kate O'Brien (playwright and novelist) in Limerick (3/12)
* Pádraig Ó Caoimh (revolutionary; general secretary of the Gaelic Athletic Association 1929-1964) in Roscommon
* Enid Starkie (critic of French literature) in Killiney, Co. Dublin
* John Lighton Synge (mathematician) in Dublin (23/3)