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‘To die with honour or gain the day’: Dan Donnelly as an Irish sporting hero

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2015

Neal Garnham
Neal Garnham*
Affiliation:
School of English & History, University of Ulster
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Extract

At the 2002 Hay Literary Festival, Sir Michael Holroyd, the prolific biographer, delivered a lecture outlining the development of British biographical writing, and indicating what he thought might be the key developments in the future of the genre. Quoting Keats, he condemned ‘irritable reaching after fact and reason’, and called for a greater acknowledgement and utilisation of the fictional in the enhancing of our understanding of individuals. Such a readiness to shun or qualify empirical evidence when attempting to interpret and understand the past would be an anathema to most historians.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 148 , November 2011 , pp. 535 - 549
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2011

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References

1 Guardian, 1 June 2002.

2 For elements of the debate, see ‘Roundtable: historians and biography’ in American Historical Review, cxiv, no. 3 (June 2009), pp 573–661. See also Laslett, Barbara, ‘Biography as historical sociology: the case of William Fielding Ogburn’ in Theory and Society, xx, no. 4 (1991), pp 511–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Hazard, T. G. [pseud.], The life of Daniel Donnelly, late champion of Ireland: with a full account of his battles and actions (Dublin, 1820)Google Scholar; Myler, Patrick, Regency rogue: Dan Donnelly, his life and legends (Dublin, 1976)Google Scholar; idem., Dan Donnelly 1788–1820: Pugilist, publican, playboy (Dublin, 2009). The monument stands in ‘Donnelly’s Hollow’ near the Curragh in County Kildare.

4 Connolly, Sean (ed.), The Oxford companion to Irish history (Oxford, 1998), p. 153Google Scholar; Lalor, Brian (ed.), The encyclopaedia of Ireland (Dublin, 2003), pp 307–8Google Scholar; Paul Rouse, ‘The reluctant pugilist’ in History Ireland, xiii, no. 3 (May/June 2005), p. 66; see also Boylan, Henry, A dictionary of Irish biography (1st ed., Dublin, 1978), pp 93–4Google Scholar; ibid., A dictionary of Irish biography (2nd ed., Dublin, 1988), pp 97-8; ibid., A dictionary of Irish biography (3rd ed., Dublin, 1998), p. 113; these latter three entries are identical, and form the basis of the text in note 25 below.

5 Hazard, Daniel Donnelly, passim.

6 Ibid., pp 27–8, 30, 39, 45, 47–9, 60–5.

7 Ibid., pp 69, 76, 79–80, 90.

8 Ibid., pp 105, 113.

9 Ibid., pp 114, 119.

10 Ibid., pp 28, 82, 120.

11 Anon., A monody, on the death of Daniel Donnelly, late champion of Ireland (Dublin, 1820), pp 15, 3, 8Google Scholar.

12 [Egan, Pierce], Boxiana; or, sketches of ancient and modern pugilism (5 vols, London, 1828), iii, 71–127Google Scholar.

13 [Dowling, Francis], Fistiana; or, the oracle of the ring (London, 1841), p. 118Google Scholar.

14 Miles, Henry Downes, Pugilistica: being one hundred and forty -four years of the history of British boxing (3 vols, London, 1880) ii, 138–60Google Scholar.

15 Carrick’s Morning Post, 16 Sept. 1814; Bell’s Life in London, 23 July 1819; Sporting Magazine, xlvii, no. 329 (Dec. 1815), p. 148.

16 Sporting Magazine, v (new series), no. 27 (Dec. 1819), p. 164; Morning Chronicle, 13 May 1819. Cooper and Oliver shared a trainer – see Brailsford, Dennis, Bareknuckles: a social history of prize-fighting (Cambridge, 1988), p. 64Google Scholar.

17 Wilson’s Dublin directory for the year 1818 (Dublin, 1818), p. 65; see also the editions of 1819 (p. 66) and 1820 (p. 67).

18 Carrick’s Morning Post, 23 Feb. 1820.

19 Egan, , Boxiana, ii, 85–8Google Scholar.

20 Dowling, , Fistiana, pp 146, 158, 218Google Scholar.

21 Miles, , Pugilistica, i, 305Google Scholar.

22 National Police Gazette, 5 May 1888.

23 Freeman’s Journal, 16 Sept. 1814.

24 Carrick’s Morning Post, 22, 24 Sept. 1814. On the Turf Club as an adjudicating body at this time, see D’Arcy, Fergus, Horses, lords and racing men: the Turf Club, 1790–1990 (The Curragh, 1991), pp 64–83Google Scholar.

25 Myler, , Regency Rogue, pp 158–9Google Scholar. The magazine’s Hall of Fame was discontinued in 1987 and replaced by the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1989. Donnelly was one of thirty-one fghters from the former who were not immediately re-elected to the latter. However, Donnelly was re-elected in 2008, and his citation remains unamended.

26 www.kildare.ie/business/SimplyArt/more.htm. (accessed 8 Sept. 2007).

27 www.rte.ie/millennia/people/donnellydan.html. (accessed 8 Sept. 2007).

28 www.johnfallons.com/history.html (accessed 8 Sept. 2007); Doherty, J. E. and Hickey, D. J., A chronology of Irish history since 1500 (Dublin, 1989), p. 108Google Scholar.

29 www.nw-xtra.com/wmview.php/artID=27 (accessed 8 Sept. 2007). Confusion may have arisen with the pugilist Jack O’Donnell, a predecessor of Donnelly, who was transported following a conviction for theft: Egan, , Boxiana, i, pp 315–18Google Scholar.

30 Sporting Magazine (new series), xxx (Mar. 1820), pp 301–2.

31 [London] Morning Chronicle, 10 Mar. 1819.

32 Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, no. 38, vol. 2 (May 1820), pp 186–205.

33 I am very grateful to Professor Tadhg Foley for this information. On Dowden, see Murphy, Maura, ‘Municipal reform and the repeal movement in Cork, 1833–44’ in Cork Hist. Soc. Jn., lxxxi (1976), pp 7–23Google Scholar, and Maidin, Pádraig Ó, ‘The famous Dick Dowden of Cork’ in Bandon Hist. Jn., xviii (2002), pp 22–4Google Scholar.

34 Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, no. 38, vol. 2 (May 1820), p. 204. Literary skits on pugilists were nothing new: see, for example, One of the Fancy [Moore, Thomas], Tom Crib’s memorial to congress, with a preface, notes and appendix (London, 1819).Google Scholar Crib was then recognised as the British champion. This pamphlet, which argued that prizefghters were potentially the best negotiators at diplomatic conferences, went through at least three editions in its first year of publication. The articles were subsequently attributed to an Ensign O’Dogherty (London Dispatch, 8 Oct. 1837), which was the pseudonym of a series of writers for Blackwood’s, including the Scottish soldier and novelist Captain Thomas Hamilton, Irishman William Maginn and Englishman Thomas Holt (Wardle, Ralph M., ‘Who was Morgan O’Doherty?’ in Modern Language Soc. Proc., lviii, no. 3 (Sept. 1943), pp 720–1Google Scholar).

35 Finkelstein, David, The House of Blackwood: author – publisher relations in the Victorian age (Pennsylvania, 2002), pp 1–28Google Scholar.

36 Carrick’s Morning Post, 23 Feb. 1820; Freeman’s Journal, 4 Mar. 1820. A mummified arm – supposedly Donnelly’s – is still displayed, alternately, in Ireland and the U.S. It formed part of a display ‘celebrating Celtic prizefghters’ over a six-month period at the Ulster American Folk Park in 2009. See also below, note 48.

37 Unfortunately, it has been impossible to confrm or deny his honour. The Irish biography of 1820 does not mention the possibility of a knighthood being bestowed, though the mocking obituary in Blackwood’s Magazine does refer to him as ‘Sir Dan’. One Dublin obituary claimed he was the last man knighted during the Regency, and this was repeated in a Belfast paper (see Carrick’s Morning Post, 23 Feb. 1820, and The Irishman, 3 Mar. 1820). The Monthly Magazine (new series), iv (Sept. 1829), printed a supposed verbatim account from Donnelly as to how he was knighted by the prince regent in London. This was then reprinted elsewhere (see, for example, Belfast Newsletter, 11 Sept. 1829, Kaleidoscope, 15 Sept. 1829, and Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction, 19 Sept. 1829). Many prizefghters were given nicknames, and this may be the origin of Donnelly’s title, perhaps bestowed in irony or in deference to the stereotypical ‘Irish buck’ of the times (see Ford, John, Prizefghting: the age of Regency boxamania (Newton Abbot, 1971), p. 55Google Scholar). For the latest acceptance of the bestowing of a knighthood on Donnelly, see Krzemienski, Edward D., ‘Fulcrum of change: boxing and society at a crossroads’ in International Journal of the History of Sport, xxi, no. 2 (Mar. 2004), pp 168–9Google Scholar.

38 Dublin Penny Journal, i, no. 12 (15 Sept. 1832), pp 68–9; Freeman’s Journal, 3 Jan. 1842, 11 Dec. 1863; Dublin Saturday Magazine, Nov. 1867, p. 626.

39 James, Edwin (ed.), The life and battles of Sir Dan Donnelly (New York, 1879), p. 8Google Scholar; National Police Gazette, 3 May 1884.

40 Irish Independent, 19, 25 Feb. 1908; County Wexford Independent, 18 Feb. 1908. I am very grateful to Dr James McConnel for these references. Roche failed to live up to expectations. Burns knocked him out in just eighty-eight seconds, on St Patrick’s Day 1908.

41 Copies are extant in the National Library of Ireland, Trinity College, Dublin, the Bradshaw Collection at the University of Cambridge Library, and at the British Library; see also William, Barry, ‘The current street ballads of Ireland’ in MacMillan’s Magazine, xxv, no. 147 (June 1872), p. 198Google Scholar for mention of the sale of the ballad of ‘Cooper of England and Donnelly of Ireland’.

42 A copy can be viewed at http://digital.library.villanova.edu/Cuala%20Press%20Broadside%20Collection/Broadside-00027.xml (accessed 10 June 2008). The series included a further Donnelly ballad in its January 1913 issue.

43 ‘A New Song in Praise of Dan Donnelly’ (Limerick, c. 1830). A copy of this broadsheet is available in the holdings of the British Library.

44 [poss. Thomas Moore], The meeting of the waters. Together with the betrothal of Robert Emmet. On the banks of the Shannon. Dirge over Sir Daniel Donnelly. The Cooleen [Dublin, c. 1860]. A copy is available at the British Library.

45 Healey, James (ed.), The Mercier book of old Irish street ballads, iii: the people at play (Cork, 1969), p. 83Google Scholar.

46 Ibid., p. 88.

47 Ibid., p. 95.

48 Ibid., p. 91.

49 Carrick’s Morning Post, 19 Sept. 1814.

50 Freeman’ Journal, 19, 21 Sept. 1814; Carrick’s Morning Post, 19 Sept. 1814.

51 Morning Chronicle, 26 Mar. 1819; Newcastle Courant, 31 July 1819.

52 Derby Mercury, 20 May 1819.

53 Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 29 July 1819. On St Giles’s, see Lees, Lynn Hollen, Exiles of Erin: Irish migrants in Victorian London (Manchester, 1979), pp 66–7Google Scholar, 72, 84–6.

54 For example, Pall Mall Gazette, 15 Oct. 1867; Irish Times, 11 Feb. 1889; Leinster Leader, 21 Sept. 1895, 24 July 1909. The area may have been previously known as ‘Belcher’s valley’ after an English prizefghter who won a bout there on St George’s Day, 1813 (Dowling, Fistiana, p. 127; Costello, Con, Looking back: aspects of history, County Kildare (Naas, 1988), p. 101Google Scholar).

55 Herity, Michael (ed.), Ordnance Survey letters, Kildare: letters containing information relative to the antiquities of the county of Kildare collected from the progress of the Ordnance Survey in 1837, 1838 and 1839 (Dublin, 2002), p. 155Google Scholar, original emphasis. O’Donovan’s original letter is dated 7 December 1837, and the first edition of the map was published in 1839.

56 Freeman’s Journal, 12 June 1838, 26 Sept. 1884. For military manoeuvres and bivouacs in the hollow, see, for example, Freeman’s Journal, 28 Aug. 1874, 9 Aug. 1877.

57 Ibid., 20 Oct. 1887.

58 Sporting Life, 25 July 1888; Freeman’s Journal, 18 Oct. 1887. For an account of the arm, presumably taken from an interview with whoever was in possession of it in 1976, see Myler, , Regency rogue, pp 16–18Google Scholar.

59 Freeman’s Journal, 3, 7 Jan. 1888.

60 Sullivan, John L., Life and reminiscences of a nineteenth-century gladiator (Boston, Mass., 1892), p. 147Google Scholar. On Sullivan and Ireland, see the interview at Freeman’s Journal, 7 Nov. 1887.

61 Sport, 24 Mar 1888. Neither the nationalist Leinster Leader nor the slightly more unionist-leaning Kildare Observer reported the unveiling or Kilrain’s visit to the hollow.

62 Birmingham Daily Post, 19 Mar. 1888; see Illustrated Police News, 18 Sept. 1897, for Mitchell’s subsequent campaign to erect a gravestone for Donnelly’s English contemporary Jack Burke.

63 Fitzgerald, Lord Walter, ‘The Curragh: its history and traditions’ in Jn. Kildare Arch. Soc. Jn., iii (1899–1902), p. 29Google Scholar.

64 Godley, Alexander, Life of an Irish soldier (London, 1939), p. 23Google Scholar; Hanna, Henry, The Pals at Suvla Bay: being the record of D Company of the 7th Royal Dublin Fusiliers (Dublin, 1916), p. 18Google Scholar.

65 Leinster Leader, 11 Apr. 1908.

66 Costello, Con, ‘A most delightful station’: the British army on the Curragh of Kildare, 1855–1922 (Dublin, 1996), pp 19–44Google Scholar.

67 Leinster Leader, 15 Dec. 1917, 24 Feb. 1923. Only a decade after the monument was built, it was reportedly ‘badly chipped and otherwise injured’ (Sport, 31 Oct. 1898).

68 Leinster Leader, 24 Jan., 14 Feb. 1953.

69 Furlong, Irene, ‘State promotion of tourism in independent Ireland, 1925–1955’ (Ph.D. thesis, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 2003), pp 220-61Google Scholar.

70 Myler, , Regency Rogue, p. 21Google Scholar.

71 Leinster Leader, 28 Mar 1953; An Tostal Donnelly’s Hollow Pageant Programme [n.p., 1953], p. 2 (a copy of this programme is available at County Kildare Library, Newbridge).

72 Irish Press, 17 May 1954.

73 Leinster Leader, 27 Mar., 15 May 1954.

74 Ibid., 11 Apr. 1953. The arm is no longer on display at the bar, having been retained by the Byrne family when the business was sold in the 1990s. The arm remains in family possession, and toured the U.S. in 1998.

75 Irish Press, 19 Apr. 1953. Given that the main Irish tourist market at this time was Britain, the staging of the event at all seems rather imprudent.

76 Reprinted in Clare, Noel (ed.), Thirty years of ‘The Bridge’: an anthology of Kilcullen memories (Naas, 2000), p. 53Google Scholar.

77 Myler, Regency rogue, front fly-leaf notes.

78 www.Kildare.ie/library/KildareHeritage/page16.html (accessed 8 Sept. 2007).

79 Rouse, , ‘Reluctant pugilist’, p. 66Google Scholar.

80 Shifts in the perception of Grace can be discerned from the following selection from the copious writings on him: Waring, Arthur, ‘W. G.’; or, the champion’s career (London, 1896)Google Scholar; Darwin, Bernard, Grace W. G. (London, 1934)Google Scholar; Box, Clifford, Grace W. G. (London, 1952)Google Scholar; Mandle, W. F., ‘Grace W. G. as a Victorian hero’ in Historical Studies, xix (1981), pp 353–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Midwinter, Eric, Grace W. G.: his life and times (London, 1981)Google Scholar; Robert Low, W. G. (London, 1997); Rae, Simon, Grace W. G. (London, 1998).Google Scholar As this paper is being written, in September 2005, television coverage of the Ashes series in England is being promoted by a Grace look-a-like embodying the most bellicose aspects of English nationalism.

81 Mason, Tony, ‘“Our Stephen and our Harold”: Edwardian footballers as local heroes’ in Holt, Richard, Mangan, J. A. and Lanfranchi, Pierre (eds), European heroes: myth, identity and sport (London, 1996), pp 71–85Google Scholar.

82 Hoppen, K. T., Elections, politics and society in Ireland, 1832–1885 (Oxford, 1984), p. 456Google Scholar.

83 Anderson, Jack, ‘Pugilistic prosecutions’: prizefghting and the courts in nineteenth-century Britain’ in The Sports Historian, xxi, pt. 2 (2001), p. 38Google Scholar; W. E.|Vaughan, ‘Ireland, c. 1870’ in idem (ed.), A new history of Ireland, v: Ireland under the Union, i, 1801–1870 (Oxford, 1989), p. 766.

84 Leinster Leader, 11 Apr. 1953.

85 For a comparable memory fied by perceptions of heroic struggle against British Crown infuence, see Owens, Gary, ‘The Carrickshock incident, 1831: social memory and an Irish cause celebre’ in Cultural and Social History, i, no. 1 (2004), pp 36–64Google Scholar.

86 Holt, Richard, ‘Heroes of the north: sport and the shaping of regional identity’ in Jeff Hill and Jack Williams (eds), Sport and identity in the north of England (Keele, 1996), pp 137-64Google Scholar.

87 Boddy, Kasia, Boxing: a cultural history (London, 2008), p. 46Google Scholar.

88 Brailsford, Dennis, ‘Morals and maulers: the ethics of early pugilism’ in Journal of Sport History, xii, no. 2 (1985), p. 129Google Scholar.

89 Cannon, Eoin, ‘The heavyweight champion of Irishness: ethnic fghting entities of today’ in New Hibernia Review, x, no. 3 (2006), p. 105Google Scholar.

90 Hassan, David, ‘“A champion inside the ring and a champion outside it”: an examination of the socio-political impact of the career of Barry McGuigan’ in Sport in History, xxv, pt. 2 (2005), pp 224, 227Google Scholar.

91 For a leading recent example, see the interview with the former Londonderry-born middleweight contender John Duddy, whose uncle was shot dead on Bloody Sunday in 1972, in the Observer, 5 Mar. 2006.

92 Moncrieff, Martha C. Scott, Yes Ma’am! Glimpses of domestic service, 1901–1951 (Edinburgh, 1984), p. 49Google Scholar.