People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 19, 13 May 1909, Page 748

People We Hear About

Mi*. Maurice Healy, who was elected last week as the parliamentary representative for Cork City in succession to Mr. William O'Brien resigned, was bom m 1859, and is a younger brother of Mr. TV M. Healy, M.P., K,C. He was admitted as a solicitor in 1882, and represented Cork City from 1885 to 1900. He is married to a daughter of the late Mr. A.M.Sullivan. The newly appointed director of Lincoln Agricultural College, Mr. R. E. Alexander, is a son of Mr. J. A. Alexander, of Imlick, Carrigans, County Derry. Having spent some years in the acquirement of a practical knowledge of agriculture, he graduated in that subject in the Royal College of Science, Dublin. On the completion of his college course he was appointed agricultural instructor in County Derry, and he was subsequently promoted to the more important office of manager and resident instruct tor at Albert College, Glasnevin. In the course of a chat with Mr. Abraham Shackleton, of Rathmines, Dublin, a representative of the Weekly Freeman was told that Lieutenant Shackleton, leader of the Antarctic expedition, is 35 years of age. ' I wish,' said Mr. Shackleton, 'that the greatest publicity should te given to the fact that Lieutenant Shackleton is an Irishman. His father is a first cousin of mine, who graduated at Trinity College, and is now practising as a doctor in Sydenham, near the Crystal Palace, London. His mother is an Irishwoman also, and thoiigh Earnest Shackleton was born in England, you know the old saying, " It isn't because a man's born in a stable that he's a horse." 1 foresee that the English newspapers will claim him as an Englishman, and will, as in the case of Marconi, ignore his Irish descent. So I hope it will be widely known that lie belongs to the Ballytore Shackletons, who have been in Ireland for two hundred years past.' Having mentioned that a representative of the Evening Telegraph had an interview on the subject during the morning with Mr. George Shackleton at Lucan, ' I am glad to hear it,' he said, ' for he keeps the records of the family.' 'He mentioned that Ebenezer, of the family, was the first to place flour-milling in Ireland on a scientific basis.' ' Yes,' said Mr. Shackleton, 'he did more than that. He was a staunch supporter of O'Connell in the Repeal movement. Let no one make any mistake about it, the Shackletons are Irish.' Sir Rowland Blennerhassett, whose death is reported in our Home exchanges, was the fourth baronet. Sir Thomas Blennerhassett, the founder of the house, obtained a large grant of land out of the confiscated estates of the Earl of Desmond. His descendants intermarried with the principal families of Kerry. At one time they were Protestants, but before the late Sir Rowland succeeded to the title his branch had gone back to the Catholic faith. Rowland Blennerhassett, the son of Sir Arthur, was born in September, 1839. He was educated at Downside, under the Benedictine Order, and afterwards spent some time at Stonyhurst. He went to Oxford, entering at Christ Church, and spending a year or two there. Later he became a, student at the University of Louvain, which had then achieved a high leputation in Belgium for philosophical and kindred studies, and took his Doctor's degree there with ' special distinction,' but he passed on almost immediately to the University of Munich, and from that to the University of Berlin, where he pursued a course of training which colored his whole subsequent career. At this period he became acquainted, while still a young man, with many of the most eminent statesmen and writers in Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium. He knew Bismarck well. At Munich he became intimate with Dollinger and with the family of the lady, Countess Charlotte von Leyden, who afterwards became Lady Blennerhassett'. He saw France and distinguished Frenchmen of all parties, from Guizot to Morny, during the expiring splendors of the Second Empire. After he returned from the" Continent he became intimately associated with Sir John Acton, with whom he took a share in the production of the Home and Foreign Review, and the- Chronicle. Of the latter he was the proprietor. At the general election of 1865, he was- chosen as Liberal member for the borough of Galway, the late Lord Morris «s his Liberal-Conservative colleague, being at the head of the poll. He retained tha same in association with Lord St. Lawrence after ihe dissolution of 1868. But in 1874 he betook himself to his native county, for which he was elected in conjunction with his cousin, Mr. Rowland Ponsonby and for which he continued to sit down to the dissolution which followed the Reform Act of 1885. Having become a Unionist, he could not afterwards find a~constituency to elect him in Ireland.