1848 in Ireland

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See also:	1848 in the United Kingdom ; Other events of 1848 ; List of years in Ireland

Last updated November 16, 2023

Events from the year 1848 in Ireland.

Events

Ongoing – Great Famine: Potato blight returns and outbreaks of cholera are reported.^[1]
Early – publication of the first complete parallel-text edition of Annals of the Four Masters begins in Dublin as Annála Ríoghachta Éireann: Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters, from the earliest period to the year 1616. Edited from MSS in the Library of the Royal Irish Academy and of Trinity College Dublin with a translation and copious notes by John O'Donovan.
February – John Mitchel publishes The United Irishman , a weekly Irish nationalist newspaper. It is suppressed and Mitchel arrested and convicted under the Treason Felony Act 1848 on 26 May and sentenced to transportation to Australia.^[2]^[3]
7 March – Thomas Francis Meagher flies the Irish Tricolour in Waterford, the first recorded usage of the flag which is now the national flag of the Republic of Ireland.
25 April – Andrew Graham discovers asteroid 9 Metis from politician Edward Joshua Cooper's private Markree Observatory in County Sligo, the first (and until 2008 only) discovery from Ireland of a minor planet.
12 May – Waterford and Kilkenny Railway opens between Kilkenny and Thomastown.^[4]
June – medical students Kevin Izod O'Doherty and Richard D'Alton Williams, and chemist Thomas Antisell, publish the Irish Tribune, a weekly Irish nationalist newspaper. It is suppressed after five issues and the editors arrested on 10 July. O'Doherty is convicted under the Treason Felony Act after a third trial on 30 October and sentenced to transportation to Australia; Williams is acquitted two days later.^[5]
July – famine victims on outdoor relief peak this month at almost 840,000 people.^[1]
22 July – Government suspends habeas corpus, thus Young Irelanders can be imprisoned on proclamation without trial.
29 July – Young Irelander Rebellion at Ballingarry in County Tipperary is broken up by the Irish Constabulary.^[6]
October – Patrick Kennedy (1823–1858) starts out from County Wexford to emigrate to the United States where he will establish the politically significant Kennedy family.
Completion of palm houses at Kew Gardens, London, and the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, by Richard Turner of Dublin.
Origin, in Grafton Street, Dublin, of the Brown Thomas department store chain.

Arts and literature

Irish Academy of Music founded in Dublin.
Cecil Frances Alexander's Hymns for Little Children published in aid of the Derry and Raphoe Diocesan Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, Strabane.
Anthony Trollope's novel The Kellys and the O'Kellys , written and set in Ireland, is published in London.

Births

3 January – Rose La Touche, muse of John Ruskin (died 1875).
18 February – Samuel Jacob Jackson, politician in Canada (died 1942).
1 March – Augustus Saint-Gaudens, sculptor (died 1907).
22 March – Sarah Purser, painter and stained-glass maker (died 1943).
2 April – O'Moore Creagh, soldier, recipient of the Victoria Cross for gallantry in 1879 at Kam Dakka, Afghanistan (died 1923).
5 May – John Nesbitt Kirchhoffer, lawyer and politician in Canada (died 1914).
12 May – James E. Morin, merchant and politician in Ontario.
11 June – Reginald Clare Hart, soldier, recipient of the Victoria Cross for gallantry in 1879 in the Bazar Valley, Afghanistan (died 1931).
29 June – Paul Boyton, extreme water sports pioneer (died 1924 in the United States).
28 July – James Cooney, lawyer and Democratic politician in Missouri (died 1904 in the United States).
10 August – William Harnett, painter (died 1892).
14 August – Margaret Lindsay Huggins, astronomer (died 1915)
28 August – Francis O'Neill, Chicago police officer and collector of Irish traditional music (died 1936 in the United States).
4 September – George Edward Dobson, zoologist, photographer and army surgeon (died 1895).
5 October – T. P. O'Connor, journalist and Member of Parliament (died 1929).

Deaths

10 April – William Quarter, first Roman Catholic bishop of Chicago (born 1806).
3 May – Cornelius Heeney, merchant and politician in America (born 1754).

Related Research Articles

John Mitchel was an Irish activist, author and journalist best known for his support for Irish nationalism. During the Great Famine of the 1840s, he was a leading writer for The Nation newspaper produced by the Young Ireland group, which splintered from Daniel O'Connell's Repeal Association, the Irish Confederation. As editor of his own paper, the United Irishman, in 1848 Mitchel was sentenced to 14-years penal transportation, the penalty for his advocacy of James Fintan Lalor's programme of co-ordinated resistance to exactions of landlords and to the continued shipment of grain harvests from Ireland to Britain.

The Nation was an Irish nationalist weekly newspaper, published in the 19th century. The Nation was printed first at 12 Trinity Street, Dublin from 15 October 1842 until 6 January 1844. The paper was afterwards published at 4 D'Olier Street from 13 July 1844, to 28 July 1848, when the issue for the following day was seized and the paper suppressed. It was published again in Middle Abbey Street on its revival in September 1849 until 1900, when it merged with the Irish Weekly Independent.

William Smith O'Brien was an Irish nationalist Member of Parliament (MP) and a leader of the Young Ireland movement. He also encouraged the use of the Irish language. He was convicted of sedition for his part in the Young Irelander "Famine Rebellion" of 1848 but his sentence of death was commuted to deportation to Van Diemen's Land. In 1854, he was released on the condition of exile from Ireland, and he lived in Brussels for two years. In 1856 Smith O'Brien was pardoned and returned to Ireland, but he was never active again in politics.

Thomas Francis Meagher was an Irish nationalist and leader of the Young Irelanders in the Rebellion of 1848. After being convicted of sedition, he was first sentenced to death, but received transportation for life to Van Diemen's Land in Australia.

Young Ireland was a political and cultural movement in the 1840s committed to an all-Ireland struggle for independence and democratic reform. Grouped around the Dublin weekly The Nation, it took issue with the compromises and clericalism of the larger national movement, Daniel O'Connell's Repeal Association, from which it seceded in 1847. Despairing, in the face of the Great Famine, of any other course, in 1848 Young Irelanders attempted an insurrection. Following the arrest and the exile of most of their leading figures, the movement split between those who carried the commitment to "physical force" forward into the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and those who sought to build a "League of North and South" linking an independent Irish parliamentary party to tenant agitation for land reform.

The Young Irelander Rebellion was a failed Irish nationalist uprising led by the Young Ireland movement, part of the wider Revolutions of 1848 that affected most of Europe. It took place on 29 July 1848 at Farranrory, a small settlement about 4.3 km north-northeast of the village of Ballingarry, South Tipperary. After being chased by a force of Young Irelanders and their supporters, an Irish Constabulary unit took refuge in a house and held those inside as hostages. A several-hour gunfight followed, but the rebels fled after a large group of police reinforcements arrived.

Kevin Izod O'Doherty was an Irish Australian politician who, as a Young Irelander, had been transported to Tasmania in 1849. He was first elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly in 1867. In the 1885 he returned to Europe briefly serving as an Irish Home Rule MP at Westminster before returning in 1886 as a private citizen to Brisbane.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patrick O'Donoghue (Young Irelander)</span>

Patrick O'Donoghue (1810–1854), also known as Patrick O'Donohoe or O'Donoghoe, from Clonegal, County Carlow, was an Irish Nationalist revolutionary and journalist, a member of the Young Ireland movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Martin (Young Irelander)</span> Irish nationalist activist (1812-1875)

John Martin was an Irish nationalist activist who shifted from early militant support for Young Ireland and Repeal, to non-violent alternatives such as support for tenant farmers' rights and eventually as the first Home Rule MP, for Meath 1871–1875.

The Irish Confederation was an Irish nationalist independence movement, established on 13 January 1847 by members of the Young Ireland movement who had seceded from Daniel O'Connell's Repeal Association. Historian T. W. Moody described it as "the official organisation of Young Ireland".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Devin Reilly</span> Irish revolutionary (1824–1854)

Thomas Devin Reilly(Tomás Damhán Ó Raghailligh) was an Irish revolutionary, Young Irelander and journalist.

Events from the year 1823 in Ireland.

Events from the year 1875 in Ireland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patrick James Smyth</span> Irish politician and journalist

Patrick James Smyth, also known as Nicaragua Smyth, was an Irish politician and journalist. A Young Irelander in 1848, and subsequently a journalist in American exile, from 1871 he was an Irish Home Rule Member of the United Kingdom Parliament for Westmeath and from 1880 for Tipperary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Savage (Fenian)</span> Irish poet, journalist and member of the Young Irelanders and the Fenians

John Savage was a poet, journalist and author. He was a member of both the Young Irelanders and the Fenians.

The United Irishman was a nationalist weekly newspaper published by John Mitchel in Dublin in 1848. It was suppressed by the British Government the same year.

Jane "Jenny" Mitchel was an Irish nationalist who joined her husband, John Mitchel, in exile in the United States where, with their sons, they sided on a pro-slavery platform with the secessionist South in the Civil War.

The Irish Tribune was a short-lived nationalist newspaper printed weekly in Dublin in 1848. Five issues were published until its suppression by the British Government.

The Irish Felon was a nationalist weekly journal printed in Dublin in 1848. Only five issues were published before its suppression by the British Government.

The Irish People was a nationalist weekly newspaper first printed in Dublin in 1863 and supportive of the Fenian movement. It was suppressed by the British Government in 1865.

References

1 2 Ross, David (2002). Ireland: History of a Nation (New ed.). New Lanark: Geddes & Grosset. p. 313. ISBN 1842051644.
↑ "John Mitchel 1815–1875, Revolutionary". Ireland's Eye. 1999–2005. Retrieved 2012-09-25.
↑ "John Mitchel (1815–1875)" . Retrieved 2012-09-25.
↑ "Irish railways" (PDF). Railscot. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2007-09-26. Retrieved 2020-08-21.
↑ Boylan, Henry (1998). A Dictionary of Irish Biography (3rd ed.). Dublin: Gill & Macmillan. ISBN 0-7171-2945-4.
↑ Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 269–270. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.

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[Ross-1] 1 2 Ross, David (2002). Ireland: History of a Nation (New ed.). New Lanark: Geddes & Grosset. p. 313. ISBN 1842051644.

[2] "John Mitchel 1815–1875, Revolutionary". Ireland's Eye. 1999–2005. Retrieved 2012-09-25.

[3] "John Mitchel (1815–1875)" . Retrieved 2012-09-25.

[4] "Irish railways" (PDF). Railscot. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2007-09-26. Retrieved 2020-08-21.

[5] Boylan, Henry (1998). A Dictionary of Irish Biography (3rd ed.). Dublin: Gill & Macmillan. ISBN 0-7171-2945-4.

[6] Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 269–270. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.

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