From my blog, http://ronanlyons.wordpress.com/2008/07/25/smiddybeausang/

"The Irish Family History Foundation has started to put online its researchers' work on the earliest complete Irish Censuses - those of 1901 and 1911. (Permit me to digress and lament the various circumstances, from bizarre mid-Great War bureaucratic decisions to Irish Civil war tactics, that led to the destruction of the 1821-1891 Irish censuses, one of the longest-running censuses in the world, in less than ten years.)

Being a quarter Cork, I decided to avail of the Cork North & East service and examine two of my main Cork surnames, both of which are relatively rare - Smiddy (could be a Catholic offcast of a branch of the Smithwicks, or maybe a Scottish name, no-one seems to know f...

Registrar who brought new life to RCSI

Dr Harry O'Flanagan, who died on August 29th aged 83, was a former registrar of the Royal College of Surgeons in IrelAND of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. He was born in Dublin in 1917, the eldest son of Henry and Miriam (nee Chew) O'Flanagan. His father was a well-known and successful business merchant in Roscrea, Co Tipperary. His mother had been a theatre sister at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.

His early childhood was spent in Roscrea, from where he went to Castleknock College in Dublin. He entered the Royal College of Surgeons in 1934 and after qualifying in 1939 he did his internship in the Richmond Hospital, Dublin.

He married Ita (nee SMIDDY) in 1942, whose father, Timothy SMIDDY, had been the first Minister Plenipotentiary of the Irish Free State to the US in 1924. He obtained a Diploma in Public Health in 1941. A year later, he became an assistant in a large general practice in Lancashire. The following year was appointed Assistant Medical Officer of Health in the Rhondda Valley, where the poverty and suffering in the pre-antibiotic era, especially in children, were to leave enduring impressions that would influence the course of his career.

He joined the Royal Air Force in 1944, and as medical officer to RAF Kirmington, witnessed the futility and carnage of war. He wrote later of the shame that all who were involved in the bombing of Dresden would carry with them for all time, however circumstantial their involvement.

After active service, he was appointed Assistant Medical Officer of Health in Bournemouth in 1947. Two years later, he returned to IrelAND joined the Department of Health as Medical Inspector. In this capacity, he was responsible for inspecting the dispensary and public health services in the south-west, for establishing a national rehabilitation service, and for investigating and controlling epidemics.

In the latter capacity he supervised the epidemic of paratyphoid fever in South Tipperary in 1958, and the Cork poliomyelitis epidemic in 1956, after which he instigated and managed a national vaccination programme.

Harry O'Flanagan represented the Minister for Health on many international bodies of public health, including the World Health Organisation. He showed flair and an aptitude for administration in the Department of Health, and when the registrarship of his alma mater became vacant in 1962, he found himself at the administrative helm of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

At that time in the 1960s, the college could boast little other than an illustrious history extending back to 1784. Its Georgian building was in poor repair, its income insufficient for even maintaining the status quo, not to speak of expansion, and its academic departments were totally inadequate. There were no firm agreements between the college and its teaching hospitals, on which its very existence depended, the letters testimonial was out-dated and discredited by British universities, post-graduate facilities were almost non-existent and the political mood was to reduce the graduate output from medical schools. When the Higher Education Authority decreed the college should cease to function as a medical school, it was generally perceived at the time that the college's fate was doomed. But that was to fail to take account of the dynamic energy of the new registrar.

On the economic front, he persuaded both the government of the day and the Revenue Commissioners that the college was so unique as to merit special consideration, and an amendment to its charter in 1964 allowed it charitable status so that it could accept covenanted gifts from its graduates and other bodies.

Armed with this facility, the new registrar set off on a personal fund-raising campaign that brought him to the corners of the UK, Africa and the US, seeking out the college alumni and cajoling them into supporting his plan for a new college building to the rear of the old college. Over the next 15 years a sum of more than £2 million was raised.

Harry O'Flanagan re-vitalised the undergraduate school by recognising the urgent need for improved teaching facilities, upholding the college's tradition of providing doctors to overseas countries. This was achieved through a remarkably successful fiscal and cultural formula, whereby the college took one third of its studentship from Ireland, one-third from developed countries and the remainder from developing countries.

In 1978, one of the major obstacles to academic fulfilment by the graduates was removed when discussions with the Department of Education, Trinity College and the National University culminated in the RCSI becoming a recognised college of the National University of Ireland, with its graduates henceforth being conferred with a Bachelor of Medicine degree as well as with the traditional letters testimonial.

Harry O'Flanagan involved himself in the governance of the profession at many levels, serving as registrar of the Royal College of Physicians for four years, during which time he established areas of common interest between the sister colleges (RCSI and RCPI) which have since flourished to the benefit of both institutions; as a member of Comhairle na nOspideal; as secretary of the Irish Higher Surgical Training, and as president of the Medical Council.

He received many honours for his contribution to medical education - most prized perhaps was an honorary fellowship, the highest honour the RCSI can confer; he was awarded the knighthood, first class, of the Royal Norwegian St Olav's Order, for his contribution to the education of Norwegian youth, and a doctorate of medicine of the National University of Ireland was conferred on him in 1981. He is honoured in the RCSI by a named annual lecture, while the major lecture theatre in the building he devoted so much time to creating bears his name.

He devoted much time to Dublin's oldest charity, the Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers' Society, of which he was a trustee for many years.

He and his wife spent their time between Dublin and Baltimore, Co Cork, with retirement being spent mostly in their island home at Ringaroga. Harry O'Flanagan is survived by his wife Ita (SMIDDY), sons Brian and Denis, daughter Ann, and brother Peter.

Dr Harry O'Flanagan: born 1917; died, August 2000

www.ireland.com

Prof. Timothy A. SMIDDY

Minds of governments past

By TOM GARVIN

The gradual establishment of the Irish Free State and Northern IrelAND the rapid evolution of what had been the British Empire into an authentic Commonwealth of equal nations, led by Canada and the emergent independent Ireland of the 1920s: this is the unifying theme of a new Royal Irish Academy book.

Documents in Irish Foreign Policy, Volume II, 1923-1926 (edited by Ronan Fanning, Michael Kennedy, Dermot Keogh and Eunan O'Halpin) is the second volume in a series of publications intended to give the public and the academic world an inside view of Irish Government thinking on political, social and economic relationships with the outside world. This volume deals with official documents dating from December 6th, 1922 to March 19th, 1926.

Through membership of the Commonwealth, friendship with the US and pioneering participation in the League of Nations, the Irish Free State made its mark internationally in an original way, despite partition and an always worrying and persistent campaign by a militant and destructive anti-democratic minority, in the form of IRA and communist organisations. These organisations were particularly destructive in the US, and damaged the cause of independent Ireland there in ways that are probably immeasurable.

Timothy A. SMIDDY, an economist, crops up in this fascinating compilation of official documents. SMIDDY represented the Irish Government in the US from early 1922. Another figure who features prominently is Kevin O'Sheil, who had been the first Dail local justice in Co Clare in 1920, and who found time during the Irish War of Independence to write a competent history of the American War of Independence, published in Dublin in 1920 and intriguingly entitled The Birth of a Republic.

O'Sheil's contempt for anti-Treatyites became evident early on. In a September 1922 memo to Cosgrave, in his capacity as president of the new Irish state, he remarks that various "Northern Sinn Feiners (chief of whom was Eamonn Donnelly)" were organised ostensibly for "guarding against partition, but in reality to molest and obstruct us in every conceivable way". He also observed acutely the Belfast versus "Ruralista" division within what was becoming Northern Ireland. Later, he argued that Craig, as prime minister of Northern Ireland, would take every advantage of IRA antics in the South to make what might be a convincing case for Northern separatism from the rest of Ireland. Every Protestant murdered in Munster and every sign the Dublin Government was vulnerable to subversion acted in his favour.

SMIDDY, meanwhile, comes across as an altogether cooler mind. In late 1922, he warns Dublin that executions of republicans might damage its status in the minds of Irish-Americans and might "act in the minds of the young as an incitement to future rebellions". Smiddy kept a vigilant eye on Bob Briscoe as well. Michael MacWhite and Vaughan Dempsey feature prominently as highly competent diplomatic representatives, as does Joseph Walshe, secretary of what was emerging as the Department of External Affairs (the Department of Foreign Affairs). Sean Murphy, in Rome, warns Dublin in early 1923 of the unease that existed in Rome, in ecclesiastical circles, about the policy of executions.

O'Shiel deals with the "Boundary Question" in early 1923, and worries the North may be able to argue for a rationalisation of the frontier along the lines of the railways: "The North wishes to include Pettigo . . . and perhaps one or two neighbouring districts in. . . Donegal. In east Donegal, they quite clearly wish to include at least enough territory to give them the whole of the Great Northern Railway from Strabane to Derry and they would probably take the whole of the Inishowen Peninsula if they got it". However, they would cough up bits of Fermanagh and might be willing to give up south Armagh, whatever about south Down. Already, the two Irelands were arguing about tiny chunks of land.

SMIDDY documents James Larkin's involvement not only with the anti-Treatyites but also with the Bolshevik government in Moscow in 1923. "Larkin was told . . . that any remarks about bourgeois or middle-class people came with very poor grace from him, as it was the bourgeois that got him out of Sing Sing when his own bunch could not do anything for him."

The Department of External Affairs displayed an early awareness of the analogies between the emergent independent IrelAND parallel events in Finland in the early 1920s. The Irish Government was informed of the Carelia problem, a bone of contention between emergent FinlAND Soviet Russia. Carelia was divided between western Finns of Lutheran faith and eastern Finns of Orthodox religion. Some of the latter hankered after a union with the Soviet state. The Irish analogies were implicit.

MacWhite celebrates the admission of the Free State to the League in November, 1923. He writes proudly: "Henceforward, [Ireland] is a part of the European comity, to whose civilisation she contributed so unstintingly during the Middle Ages." Desmond FitzGerald has a rather heated meeting in late 1923 with British representatives over the question of a separate Irish citizenship. He avers that the term "British subject" included everyone from Baldwin to "an undiscovered savage in British Guyana".

Diarmuid O'Hegarty, as an apparent last throw, proposes an All-Ireland federation in 1924, remarking at one stage the North "will not consent to give up its legislature or its executive as it is at present constituted". He warns of the grim prospect of there being eventually a separate Dominion of Northern Ireland. Intriguingly, he remarks: "Whether we like it or not, the Irish Free State will ultimately find itself unable to continue to demand the retention by Great Britain of powers in respect of any portion of Ireland."

This is a marvellous compilation, compulsory reading for any student of Irish political development. The series is in itself a major Irish intellectual landmark.

Documents in Irish Foreign Policy, Volume II, 1923-1926, edited by Ronan Fanning, Michael Kennedy, Dermot Keogh and Eunan O'Halpin, is published by the Royal Irish Academy (£30)

Tom Garvin is Professor of Politics at in University College, Dublin. His most recent book is 1922: the Birth of Irish Democracy. His Mythical Thinking in Political Life will be published in 2001.

www.ireland.com

Building a state in the shadow of civil war (Part 2)

The crisis, which was also rooted in other "grievances", was quickly averted, but not before the resignation of two ministers and of three of the army's highest-ranking officers. But the "army crisis" never remotely reached Bonapartist proportions where a coup d'etat was threatened. It was the measure of the professionalism of the army that Ireland, unlike other new states, never underwent a phase of direct military rule in its early years. That professionalism was evident during Cosgrave's handing over of power to de Valera and Fianna Fail following the general election in February, 1932.

At the height of the civil war, the Cumann na nGaedheal government was far-sighted enough to establish an unarmed force police which was named the Garda Siochana. That force was initially 4,000 strong and that rose to over 6,500 by the late 1920s and was deployed throughout the country during the civil war.

Cumann na nGaedheal also managed to secure the functioning of a national court system under an independent judiciary. The writ of the government ran throughout the country, helping to establish the rule of law and return the countryside to a sense of "normalcy".

Actions of that kind - the establishment of state institutions - were not likely to make the rafters ring in republican Ireland, no more than the restoration of an efficient national railway and transport system.

An impecunious government, burdened by the debt of civil war destruction, also tackled agricultural reform with the Land Act (1923), which reconstituted the Land Commission. All accounts of the Cumann na nGaedheal government celebrate the building of the successful Shannon Scheme (1925-9) which helped initiate the mass electrification of the country. It was imaginatively conceived and showed real vision for achieving rapid industrialisation.

Post-revolutionary Ireland - living with expectations elevated unrealistically by the political rhetoric of 1919-1921 - did not provide the government with much opportunity to achieve rapid and radical social reform. Emigration continued, 220,591 leaving for the US between 1921 and 1930. Those numbers were reduced radically only when world depression hit in the late 1920s. The Minister for Finance, Ernest Blythe, may have made many good decisions during his tenure but he will be most remembered for his reduction of old age pensions, and for cutting the pay of national teachers and gardai in 1931 - the year before a general election.

His colleague, the Minister for Education, Eoin MacNeill, was an effective and creative manager of a portfolio which established a highly centralised system of educational control. His progressive ideas, and those of his predecessor, for the teaching of Irish have yet to be acknowledged, as have Cumann na nGaedheal's efforts to publish and provide books in Irish at an economical price.

MacNeill's name is more associated with the failure of the Boundary Commission in 1925. Although he was not to blame for the fiasco, he subsequently resigned from his role as Free State representative on the three-man committee. He quit the cabinet when the Irish government signed an agreement with the British and Northern Ireland governments, shelving the commission's findings.

The "failure" of the Boundary Commission was a propaganda victory for the republican opposition. The border remained unchanged and partition remained intact. But "failure" was not a fair reading of the outcome.

However, Cumann na nGaedheal remained particularly poor at ensuring that its own public relations reflected to its ultimate political advantage. Caught up in the affairs of state, the governing party made no attempt to build its own party into a modern organisation.

Cosgrave's government secured greater recognition of Irish independence in the international arena. The government had been swift to join the League of Nations and register the Anglo-Irish Treaty in Geneva as an international agreement. In another multilateral forum, the British Commonwealth, the constitutional creativity of Kevin O'Higgins helped give member states greater legislative independence from Westminster.

Beginning with the Balfour declaration, the process concluded with the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931.

In 1924, Dublin became the first among the members of the Commonwealth to send an envoy, the UCC Professor of Economics, Timothy A. SMIDDY, to Washington. There was already an Irish High Commissioner in London. The Free State established in 1929 diplomatic relations with France, Germany and the Holy See at ministerial level. Despite Britain's desire to obfuscate the independence of Commonwealth countries in international affairs, Cosgrave's government took full advantage of working on the international stage to demonstrate the country's sovereignty. To that end, Cosgrave also made a number of visits abroad, most especially to the United States in 1928.

Perhaps, too, the Cumann na nGaedheal government of 19221932 has been incorrectly characterised as being conservative. That description deserves to be strongly qualified. There is often reference in the texts to the power of the Catholic church and its influence over film and book censorship and over the prohibition of divorce.

Although Ulysses was not banned in this country when it was published in 1922, the printers working on the Dublin Review refused to set a favourable review by Con Leventhal, who wrote the famous lines in revenge: "a censoring God came out of the machine to allay the hell-fire fears of the compositors' solidarity". Leventhal, not to be bested, published his review in a single issue magazine which he called Klaxon.

That spirit of defiance was matched in the 1920s by a strong censorious spirit which found expression in the hearings of the Committee on Evil Literature in 1926. The state was not supportive of the conservative organisations which favoured radical censorship. This was reflected in the wording of the Censorship Act 1929 - the application of which by far exceeded the terms of the legislation from the 1930s onwards.

However, the Free State remained predominantly Catholic and nationalist in ethos and in outlook. The government was active in the celebration of the Catholic Emancipation Centenary in 1929. Throughout the 1920s, the leaders of the State and the Catholic church were prominent on public and state occasions.

But the intimacy in the relationship between prelates and politicians did not result in the creation of a sectarian or confessional state. Cosgrave's government sought to protect the rights of minority religious groups and fought against church attempts to institutionalise discrimination. That independent frame of mind was displayed in Cosgrave's letter to Cardinal Joseph MacRory on March 28th, 1931: "We feel confident that Your Eminence and Their Lordships the Bishops appreciate the effective limits to the powers of Government which exist in relation to certain matters if some of the fundamental principles on which our State is founded are not to be repudiated. Such repudiation direct, or indirect, would, we are convinced, entail consequences very detrimental to the country's welfare."

Cosgrave and his ministerial colleagues had the strong desire to achieve - with the state of Northern Ireland as a reverse image - a society south of the border characterised by tolerance.

In viewing the 1920s in the round, it is important to stress the success of Cumann na nGaedheal's democratic revolution - the establishment of a liberal democracy and of the institutions of the state - parliament, executive and judiciary. The legacy of Cosgrave and Cumann na nGaedheal was recognised in Dail Eireann by a once arch-rival, Sean Lemass, whose brother, Noel, had been killed by government forces in somewhat sinister circumstances during the civil war. Speaking as taoiseach, Sean Lemass paid a generous tribute to William Cosgrave following his death in 1965; he spoke of Cosgrave's generosity of spirit, the exemplary character of his long life, and of the enduring work that he had done for Ireland. The same could also have been said for the other Cumann na nGaedheal ministers.

William T. Cosgrave, revolutionary, democrat and parliamentarian, had sought to bring to pass a closure of civil war wounds. Cosgrave and his colleagues did so and, in doing so, they did the state some service.

Dr Dermot Keogh is Professor of History and head of the History Department, UCC. His most recent book, Jews in Twentieth Century Ireland - Refugees, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, is published by Cork University Press.

www.ireland.com

The Cork Examiner, 28 June 1878

YOUGHAL PETTY SESSIONS—YESTERDAY.

(Before Messrs. Charles Ronayne, M.D., in the chair ; T. Dennehy, R.M., and M. R. O'Farrell.) The principal business before the court was a hearing of charges brought against five men named respectively, Ahern, SMIDDY, M'Carthy, and Michael and Maurice Lynch, for riotous conduct in the public streets of Youghal on the 20th instant. Before the cases were called, Head-constable Barry stated that they were of a most serious character. On the occasion of the riot the police were assaulted by a formidable mob, and had to take refuge in a house where they barricaded themselves until relieved by an armed party of constabulary and military. The prisoners were undefended. Constable Michael Cronin deposed that on that day week, between six and seven o'clock in the evening, he proceeded with Constable O'Keeffe and Sub-constable Kenny, to a lane off the South Main Street, where he saw the defendant, Patrick Ahern, with his coat off, and a crowd around him, and having a big stone in his hand. The defendant flung the stone in his direction, but he did not believe it was at him it was thrown. It was with great difficulty that they were able to arrest the defendant, who kicked witness, and made some blows of a stick at him. There was a large crowd in the lane, many of whom wanted to rescue the prisoner. Witness and the other constables had to take refuge in Mr. Curran's house and send to the barrack for assistance. The door of the house had to be barricaded from the violence of the mob outside ; there were over a thousand persons there. Ahern called on the mob to rescue him from the police, and said they were no Irishmen for having allowed him to be arrested. Ahern, in answer to the charge, said that he was “mad drunk” at the time and did not know what he was doing. He had no questions to ask. The same constable charged Jeremiah M'Carthy, Maurice Lynch and Michael Lynch with obstructing him on the occasion, and with attempting to rescue Ahern from his custody. There were a good many others there also that he could not identify. Acting-constable Dunne deposed that he was on duty in the South Main-street on the 20th inst. He saw the defendant, Ahern, drunk there and attempting to force his way into Mr. Guinan's house. A man named Clancy tried to keep him out of the house, and then Ahern assaulted him. Ahern at the time offered to fight thirteen “bobbies.” He was flinging stones about him and was the most violent man witness ever saw. He also identified SMIDDY as having obstructed him on the occasion. He tried to rescue the prisoner Ahern from him. SMIDDY said that he saw four policemen dragging Ahern and treating him in a most brutal manner, and he (SMIDDY) told them to give the poor fellow fair play. The Chairman said that there was a very serious charge against the whole of the men, and it was very foolish on their part not to employ a solicitor. The defendant M'Carthy, an old man over 60 years, who spoke in Irish, denied that he had taken part in the row. Sub-constable Kenny swore that Ahern kicked him in the leg when bringing him to the police barrack. The defendant, M'Carthy, assaulted him also. Constable Cronin said that M'Carthy was the first to try and rescue the prisoner. Patrick Clancy, the man the assault on whom was the cause of the row, deposed to having been assaulted, but could not say by whom ; could not identify any of the prisoners. Head-constable Barry deposed that he saw the defendant, Michael Lynch, waving his hat and calling on the crowd to rescue Ahern. He (witness) tried to persuade the mob to go away, but it was no use. It was through urgent, absolute necessity he had to send for an armed force. But that he adopted a firm attitude towards the mob the police would have been very badly injured. The defendants called no witnesses on their behalf and had no defence. The Chairman, in announcing the decision of the bench, said that it had been a very serious consideration for the magistrates whether they not send the defendants on for trial to the assizes. The defendants had acted foolishly and wickedly, and had been guilty of a very serious offence. For assaults on various constables and others Ahern was fined altogether £3 10s. with the alternative of three months' imprisonment. M'Carthy was fined £1 with the alternative of a month in gaol. William SMIDDY was fined similarly, and Maurice and Michael Lynch were each fined 10s. and costs. M'Carthy, SMIDDY, and Ahern were also bound over to keep the peace for twelve months. After disposing of some business of no public interest the court adjourned.

http://www.irelandoldnews.com/Cork/1878/JUN.html