People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 7, 18 February 1909, Page 268

People We Hear About

The Hon. William Gibson, the great Gaelic League enthusiast, is a justice of the peace for the County of Surrey. He is the eldest son of the first Baron of Ashbourne, who was Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and he was born in 1868. He received his education at Harrow, Trinity College, Dublin, and at Merton College, Oxford, and was received into the Church while at Oxford. Mr. Gibson is well known as an ardent and strong supporter of the Irish Language Revival movement, and he was for some time a president of the Gaelic League. He is also a reviver of the wearing of the Irish kilt.

Last week Sir Evelyn Wood unveiled in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, a marble bust to the late Sir William Howard Russell, the famous correspondent of The Times during the Crimean war. " Sir William Russell was the first, and one of the greatest of the war correspondents. He was an Irishman, like Power, and McGahen, and Donovan, and O'Kelly, and a host of others whose names are famous. He was educated at Dr. Geoghegan's school in. Dublin, where he had as contemporary .Dion Boucicault, the famous dramatist and actor. He was Dublin correspondent for The Times, and reported the famous trial of O'Connell and othors for sedition. He was with the German army at Sedan. * i

Father Matthew Russell, S.J., the well-known author and poet, is the brother of the late Lord Russell of Killowen. He was born in 1834, and was educated at Maynooth. In. 1857 he entered the Jesuit novitiate, and seven years later he was ordained. He was occupied in school and .church, work in Limerick until 1873, and since then his labors have been centred round St. Francis Xavier's, Dublin, and University College, Stephen's Green. Father Russell is editor of the Irish Monthly, for which journal he has done great service. Its pages have been a nursery for young authors and poets, and amongst those Avho owe much to Father Russell for his kindly help in his magazine are W. B. Yeats, Katharine Tynan, Mrs. Francis Blundell, and many others.

Mr. Matthew M. Cleary, governor of Lyttelton Gaol, who is abotit to retire from the prison service, having passed the age limit, is a veteran civil servant. Mr. Cleary was born in Miltown, County Clare, thTee-quarters of a century ago, and was only seventeen years of age when he joined the Irish Constabulary. In 1854, when troops were going out to the Crimea, he was on duty in Cork, assisting to keep back the crowd which had gathered to witness the departure of a troopship. Pressed by the crowd, a lady fell off the wharf, and was being carried out by the ebb tide, when young Cleary, in full uniform, jumped in and held her up until both were rescued by a boat. For this act of bravery Mr. Cleary, then only twenty years of age, received special promotion to the rank of sergeant, and was awarded the Royal Humane Society's gold medal. He came out to Victoria in 1857, and in the following year was appointed acting sergeant ( in the city police in Melbourne, which position he held until 1861. In that year the Gabriel's Gully gold rush broke out in Otago, and the Provincial Government sent to Melbourne for an inspector and two constables for the purpose of organising the police force in Otago. Mr. Branigan (inspector) and Sergeant-major Bracken (both long since dead) and Sergeant Cleary were appointed, and came across to Otago. Sergeant Cleary, with twelve men, under Inspector Morton, were engaged for some time on the gold escort from Dunstan to Dunedin. Sergeant Cleary remained in the police force until 1863, when he resigned and joined the prison service. He had only been two months in the service when he was made principal warder in the Dunedin Gaol. In May, 1867, he was appointed gaoler at Hokitika. He remained there until 1882, and was transferred to Auckland, but the climate there did not suit him, and after two months he was transferred back to Hokitika, where he remained until November, 1888, when he was' appointed governor of Lyttelton Gaol, where he has remained ever since. From this it will be seen that he has completed his forty-fifth year of unbroken prison service, during fortytwo of which he has been chief gaoler. To a Press representative Mr. Cleary said : ' Outside of accidents, I have never had a day's sickness in my life. I took the pledge at the age of eleven years, and have never touched liquor and have never smoked in my life. At the present time I feel as fit as ever I did.'