BY AODHÁN CREALEY
SEPTEMBER
23/1878
Bernard ‘Barney’ Hughes (70), baker and philanthropist, died. Starting out as a humble apprentice, Hughes opened his first bakery in 1840, and three decades later, with a portfolio that included flour mills, ships to import grain and a string of shops, was Belfast’s leading baker, with the biggest baking and milling business in Ireland. He was a prominent figure in civic society and local politics. The first Catholic to be elected to Belfast Corporation, he was staunchly anti-sectarian, famously contributing funds to erect the ‘Black Man’ statue to the champion of Irish Presbyterianism, Henry Cooke (1788–1868), which stands in Belfast’s Wellington Place. This provoked the displeasure of his bishop—Cooke was ardently anti-Catholic—but Hughes still provided land in the Lower Falls for the construction of St Peter’s Cathedral. He is remembered, too, for his generosity during the Great Hunger as a leading donor to relief funds and for keeping his prices at rock bottom, and free to the destitute. Above all, he is fondly recalled as the inventor of the ‘Belfast bap’, basically a bread roll made with milk, lard and butter, which became the breakfast food of the millworkers and is still going strong today. It is celebrated in street songs and poems, some on the saucy side, as when in order to keep prices low he added beans and peas to his recipe:
Barney Hughes’s bread
Sticks to your belly like lead.
Not a bit of wonder
You fart like thunder
Barney Hughes’s bread.
Even today, in working-class Belfast, if you share the great man’s surname you will invariably be better known as ‘Bap’ Hughes.
01/2009
At a reception in the town the boxing legend Muhammad Ali was made the first Honorary Freeman of Ennis, Co. Clare, the birthplace of his great-grandfather, Abe Grady, who emigrated to the United States in the 1860s.
07/1984
Liam O’Flaherty (88), novelist, short-story writer and founding member of the Communist Party of Ireland (1933), died.
08/1944
The SS Empire Heritage, en route from New York to Liverpool with a cargo of war supplies, was struck by two German torpedoes some fifteen miles off Malin Head, Co. Donegal, with the loss of 113 lives.
11/1954
Robert ‘Bertie’ Smylie (61), editor of the Irish Times since 1934, who transformed the paper from an Ascendancy viewpoint to one with a non-partisan profile, died.
14/1989
The National Institute for Higher Education, Limerick (founded in 1972), became the University of Limerick.
16/1974
Martin McBirney (52), magistrate and well-known literary figure, was shot dead by the IRA at his home in East Belfast. At almost the exact same time Rory Conaghan (54), a senior judge, was shot dead by the IRA in front of his daughter at his home in South Belfast.
18/1964
Seán O’Casey (84), dramatist, who was the first notable Irish playwright to write about the Dublin working classes in his celebrated Abbey Trilogy, died in Torquay, Devon.
28/1984
The Irish Naval Service intercepted the trawler Marita Ann off the coast of County Kerry and uncovered seven tons of arms and explosives bound for the IRA. Five men were arrested.
30/1944
Eoin O’Duffy (54), soldier and politician, best remembered as leader of the National Guard, better known as the Blueshirts (1933), died.
OCTOBER
04/1689
The date of a letter written by Captain Francisco de Cuéllar of the Spanish Armada to a friend in Spain, shortly after his safe arrival, via Scotland, in Antwerp, recalling his experiences with the Gaelic Irish of the north-west since his shipwreck on board La Lavia on Streedagh Strand, Co. Sligo, the previous September. It tells a tale of survival against all the odds, a vivid and detailed account of his tribulations as he sought to make his way to Scotland and from there to the Low Countries. He describes how he hid in the dunes and watched the Irish stripping the clothes and valuables off the hundreds of dead and dying Spaniards strewn on Streedagh Strand, and how he staggered in the freezing cold up the coast to Staad Abbey, hoping for some assistance from the friars there, only to find the abbey plundered by the English, the friars gone and twelve of his countrymen hanging from the window grills. Later he tells of finding refuge with 70 other Spaniards with Brian O’Rourke of Breffne, giving a detailed description of the lifestyle of the native Irish—‘wild Irish’ certainly, the womenfolk very beautiful, but generally ‘Christian and kindly’—and of his stay in the island fortress of Rossclogher on the south side of Loch Melvin, Co. Leitrim, under the protection of Teige MacClancy. We know that he resumed military service until 1606, after which his fate is unknown. Not so the fate of his erstwhile Irish hosts. Brian O’Rourke was hanged for treason in London in 1590, the charges against him including granting succour to survivors of the Armada. That same year MacClancy was captured by the English and beheaded.
01/1924
James Earl Carter Jr, 39th president of the United States (1977–81), born in Plains, Georgia, the son of a businessman.
02/1994
Ulster Television’s Counterpoint programme revealed that church authorities had known for years about the crimes of the convicted child sex abuser Fr Brendan Smyth but dealt with it by moving him on from parish to parish and essentially covering up his crimes.
05/1974
A 6lb IRA gelignite bomb exploded in the Horse and Groom public house in Guildford, Surrey, premises regularly frequented by off-duty servicemen and women. Four soldiers and a civilian were killed and over 50 injured.
10/1974
In the second Westminster election of that year, the Labour Party, under Harold Wilson, was returned to power with a majority of just three seats. Enoch Powell was returned as the Ulster Unionist Party MP for South Down.
15/1974
Much of Long Kesh prison camp, at the time holding 1,500 convicted prisoners and internees, was destroyed by rioting Republican prisoners protesting against living conditions.
20/1674
James Logan, colonial administrator in Pennsylvania and scholar who made a fortune in land investment, born in Lurgan, Co. Armagh, to Ulster-Scots Quakers.
28/1974
Two British soldiers were killed and 30 others injured when an IRA bomb exploded at the perimeter of Ballykinlar army camp, Co. Down.
30/1824
Charles Maturin, novelist and playwright, author notably of the Gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), died. His great-nephew Oscar Wilde paid tribute to him by adopting the name ‘Sebastian Melmoth’ after his release from Reading Gaol.