People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 22 August 1912, Page 41

People We Hear About

Sir Malachi J. Kelly, who as Chief Crown Solicitor for Ireland got the honor of knighthood, comes from a family of lawyers. His father, grandfather, greatgrandfather, father-in-law, and brother were solicitors. His father was Crown Solicitor for Mayo, which post Sir Malachi also held, and during the tenure of which he conducted many Coercion prosecutions. He comes from a very old Kelly family, that of Cargins, in the County Galway, who can trace their descent to a far-off ancestry. His wife is a daughter of Sir Patrick Coll, K.C.8., formerly Crown Solicitor for Ireland.

Sir Thomas Henry Grattan Esmonde, Bart., M.P., bears one of the most ancient and honored names in Ireland, being descended from a family which was established in the tenth century in County Wexford, and one of whose members was Bishop of Ferns in 1340. Sir Thomas is a Private Chamberlain to the Holy Father. The Baronet is a direct descendant and heir of Sir Lawrence Esmonde, who was raised to the peerage in 1622, as Lord Esmonde, Baron of Limerick, County Wexford. Burke’s Peerage contains an interesting account of the way in which the title was allowed to lapse.

Mr. R. J. Kelly, 8.L., of Dublin, had the honor of being invited by the Lord Mayor and Principality of the Royal City of Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, to attend as their guest the ceremonies connected with the unveiling of the monument to the historian, Francis Palacky, in Prague. The principal street in Prague, now numbering 300,000 inhabitants, is called the Irish street, in memory of the Irish monks. Mr, Kelly is well-known in Bohemia personally and by his writings, and is the proud bearer of the large silver medal of merit of the ancient and Royal City of Prague, and of the certificate of citizenship conferring it, which is the equivalent to the Freedom of the City.

With the recent appointment to the Mastership of the Rolls, remaks the writer of Et Cetera in the Tablet, all the ex-officio judges of the Court of Appeal in Ireland profess Ireland’s national faith:The Lord Chancellor (Mr. Redmond Barry), the Lord Chief Justice (O’Brien), the Master of the Rolls (Mr. Charles O’Connor), and the Lord Chief Baron (Palles). , The spectacle,’ thinks a writer, in the Daily Telegraph, ‘is calculated to make King William turn in his grave.’ In the lower courts, however, the balance is very much the other way; for of the ten judges of ‘first instance,’ only two—Mr. Justice Kenny and Mr. Justice Fitzgerald Catholics. Let Fleet street be reassured that William of Orange may rest in peace.

The Right Hon. Charles A. O’Connor, the new Master of the Rolls in Ireland, has not been a very prominent figure in public life. He has largely devoted himself to his profession, in which he attained by conspicuous ability and industry a foremost place, and' now ascends the bench with the hearty affection of all sorts and conditions of men. He was the Auditor of the Trinity College Historical Society in 1877, and it was in the discussion on his inaugural address that Lord Randolph Churchill, to use an expressive phrase, ‘ found himself.’ He had hitherto been an unknown man, representing for some years Woodstock, a nomination borough of the Marlborough family, simply because he was a son of the Duke of the day. He came over to Ireland in 1877 as private secretary to his father, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and came under the influence of Lord Justice Fitz Gibbon, then Solicitor-General, who saw his enormous ability and set himself to persuading him to apply it. His first appearance in a serious aspect was at the College Historical Society on Mr. O’Connor’s auditorial ’ address night. Mi*. O’Connor, who was born at Acres, near Roscommon, and called to the Bar in 1888, is the first Connachtman and the second Catholic to be appointed Master of the Rolls, the other Catholic being Sir-Col-man O’Loghlen. ~ ’ r; ,