People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 17 April 1913, Page 41

People We Hear About

Mr Charles Droomgoole, K.C., the new Irish County Court Judge, who is fifty years of age, is a Catholic and an old student of Blackrock College He took his M.A. and LL.D. degrees at the Royal University, and after his call in 1894, he soon acquired a large practice on the North-East Circuit. He has also filled the posts of Revising Barrister for Dublin City and temporary Divisional Magistrate in the Dublin Metropolitan District. He married a daughter of the late Dr. John G. Fleming, head inspector of Irish .National schools. Mr. John Lavery, R.S.A., the most renowned of the Glasgow school of artists, has been commissioned by the King and Queen to paint a family group comprising their Majesties and their children. Mr Lavery is now at work on the picture in Buckingham Palace. Although a Belfast man by birth, Glasgow Catholics count him one of themselves because of his long residence m Glasgow. Mr. Lavery is one of the most distinguished of living artists, the exellence of his work being attested by high appreciation in all the civilised countries. Mr.. Medill McCormick has forwarded to Mr Joseph Devlin, M.P., the congratulations of a large number of the members of the General Assembly of the State of Illinois who are of Irish birth or Irish descent on the victory of Home Rule in the British House of Commons. In forwarding this tribute, Mr. McCormick says that every elected officer of the State of Illinois to-day is Irish either by birth or descent, as also are the Speaker of the House of Representatives and from a quarter to a third of the membership of that House and of the State Senate. Irish fitness for public affairs and political administration has had many proofs from many quarters of the globe, and this most lately from the State of Illinois. A contributor to the Daily Independent, writing of Mr. John Redmond's appearance at the recent Homo Rule demonstration in Dublin, says: —Everything about Mr. Redmond was familiar. His familiar head showed a little more glossy surface and a little less silver hair than when last I saw him on a public platform. lie wore Ins familiar low cut collar, and his dark plain tie and his much-worn lounge jacket. Of course, he sported the button-hole of violets. With the caution of a statesman he made no utterance without consulting the little sheets of notes in his left hand. He spoke well and always deliberately—but never strayed from the written word. He was ever fluent, but never ialutmmg. He held his audience silent, and raised them to their feet and roused them to the roar. His speech was the speech of a man certain of himself, certain of his mission, and absolutely confident in the entire success of that mission. . The death of the Marquis of Sligo recalls a romantic story of half a century ago. At that time Lord bligo (then Lord Ulick Browne) was in the Indian Civil Service, and when the Mutiny broke out his wife and his eldest son were at Monghyr, where it was thought they would be safe. A revolt, however, broke out at Monghyr, and Lady Sligo and her child fled to the collector's house, where a few •fellow-countrymen held out for weeks against the mutineers. They eventually got to Calcutta, and when Lord Ulick came to look for his family he found on joining his wife that Ins young son had disappeared. For a long time his fate was a mystery, until at last it was discovered that a faithful ayah, who loved her charge, had darkened the baby's skin, and had passed through the Sepoy's hues unsuspected, to a place of safety. The late Marquis was heir-presumptive to the Earldom of Clanricarde, a title now held by his cousin. The Sligo family springs from Colonel John Browne, who served m the army of James 11., and was one of the parties to the Treatv of LiTn^Hf l '- The ~ - t»t • i ~ ~<*v UA ■"muwhub.. iuo ucw -uxaiquis, who held the courtesy title of the Earl of Altamont, was the baby who so narrowly escaped death during the Indian Mutiny. He is a clever amateur actor.