The amazing life and puzzling death of Cork wit John Philpot Curran

God knows, it’s strange the things people ask me alright!

Years ago, someone enquired of me as to whether I had ever written anything about dung? Well, indeed I had, and would class myself as a sort of an expert on that same subject, having moved copious amounts of dung with a four-prong pike over a period in excess of 50 years.

In fact, I think, if I’m correct, the very first piece I wrote for this paper was all about dung and its agricultural properties.

Another time, I was ed by a Gael from Galway. He had heard me on the wireless with Donncha Ó Dúlaing, and we both talking about hurling. He asked me to write an article or a page or something on my own playing days as a hurler! “I will,” says I, “but ’twill be a very short paragraph!”

And so on and so forth... you know yourself, when you get the name of living in the past, people are always asking me about the past - and I’m not long on the pension!

Now, I’m not complaining mind, ’cause I’ve a curious mind, and if there’s something I’m interested in -and know nothing about it - well, then I’ll try and find out.

There are two men I credit with fanning the flames of my historical inquisitiveness, Pádraig Ó Maidin and Tim Cadogan.

I didn’t know Limerick man Ó Maidin very well, but for years I cut out his ‘To -Day’ column from the Cork Examiner and kept the articles in scrapbooks.

Tim was of immense help to me in so much research over the years.

In their days, there was no Google or Wikipedia to consult, but knowing on what shelf a certain book resided was a great grounding in doing research.

So, the other day, when a stone-mad friend of mine from East Cork called and put a query to me, I had no option only to delve into the ‘mystery’. It was concerning the famous Irish politician, orator and lawyer John Philpot Curran.

Because of his connections with Rathcormac, I knew a fair bit about Curran and his daughter Sarah. The puzzle or mystery was that Curran is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin. Originally known as Prospect Cemetery, it opened in 1832 - but Curran had died in 1817!

His father, James Curran, lived in Newmarket in north-west Cork. He worked as a seneschal for the local Aldworth family who had a huge estate; thousands of acres. The role of seneschal was one of estate istration, a bit of arbitration, and generally managing the affairs of the head of the family and estate owner.

A Protestant of good standing, James married Sarah Curran. On Wednesday, July 24, 1750, the first of their five children was born, a boy. He was named after both parents, John Philpot Curran.

John grew up alongside children in Newmarket who were ‘half-starved and miserably housed’ - this childhood memory fostered his sympathy for the dispossessed in later years.

After initially attending a hedge school, and later receiving tuition from Rev Nathaniel Boyse, he was sent to Midleton College in East Cork. In his early years, he suffered ill-health and developed a bad stutter.

John entered Trinity College in Dublin where he was described as ‘the wildest, wittiest, dreamiest student of old Trinity’. His stammer earned him the unflattering title of ‘stuttering Jack’, but he managed to overcome his speech impediment.

Initially, thoughts of ordination to the Church were foremost in his mind, but he later changed tack and studied law. Called to the Bar in 1774, that same year he married Sarah Creagh. The couple had nine children.

They lived at The Priory in Rathfarnham eventually, but only after Curran had struggled to get legal cases to represent. One writer observed that he “lived at The Priory in the days of his fame and prosperity, and before that at Hog Hill when he possessed neither one or the other”.

Curran himself wrote of the desperate financial situation he was in at that time: “Mrs Curran (his wife) was a barrister’s lady, and what she wanted in wealth she was well determined should be supplied by dignity. The landlady, on the other hand, had no idea of my gradation except that of pounds, shillings and pence.

“I walked out one morning to avoid the perpetual altercations on the subject, with my mind, you may well imagine, in no very enviable temperament. I had a family for whom I had no dinner and a landlady for whom I had no rent”

He got a pleasant surprise on his return to the house, finding “an immense folio of a brief (law case), 20 golden guineas wrapped up beside it – I paid my landlady, bought a good dinner, gave Bob Lyons (his new client) a share of it, and that dinner was the date of my prosperity”.

In 1780, Curran successfully defended Fr Neale, who had been horsewhipped by Lord Doneraile. His oratory in court was soon widely spoken of and his wit became famous.

English poet Lord Byron described Curran as ‘the wittiest man I ever met’. His ability to debate and defend his clients in court earned him a hugely important reputation. He befriended politicians Henry Flood and Henry Grattan and was a constant er of reform and the abolition of the Penal laws that disenfranchised Catholics and Presbyterians.

He served as Member of Parliament (in Dublin) for Kilbeggan, Co. Westmeath, from 1783 to 1790, and in that year was elected for Rathcormac.

Under the reign of Charles II, Rathcormac was granted a Royal Charter in the 1680s, and from then until the Act of Union in 1801 returned two MPs.

Curran didn’t have a huge ‘electorate’ in the Rathcormac constituency – in 1756, just seven electors were entitled to vote!

The rise of the United Irishmen movement and subsequent uprising in 1798 saw huge numbers of prominent people arrested and put on trial. John Philpot Curran defended Wolfe Tone, the Sheares brothers, Henry and John, Rowan Hamilton, and other rebel leaders. He never got the opportunity to defend John Dahill, who was hanged in Cork in June, 1798, and is buried in the Old Rathcormac cemetery.

In 1803, Robert Emmett’s rising took place. The killing of Curran’s friend Lord Kilwarden was part of that short-lived rising. Curran might have been expected to defend Emmett, but this was not the case after Kilwarden’s death.

Then, when Curran discovered Emmett was actually engaged to his daughter Sarah, he threw her out and cut her off from the family. Her health declined and before her death in 1808, she requested she would be buried in The Priory grounds where her sister Gertrude was interred. Curran refused this request.

He took up a Government job in London. In failing health on October 14, 1817, Curran’s doctor visited him and remarked: “Mr Curran, your cough is no better,” to which came the reply: “How can that be, Doctor, I have been practising all night.”

John Philpott Curran died that day. He was buried in Paddington Cemetery, far away from Newmarket, Rathcormac and Dublin - though he wished ‘to be buried in Irish soil’.

The cemetery in Glasnevin was opened in 1832. Anxious to have as many ‘celebrities’ as possible buried there, the Cemetery Committee, in 1834, asked the Curran family for permission to re-inter John Philpot Curran there. The family agreed and arrangements were made in 1835 to have the remains brought back. Eventually it happened in 1837.

Then an argument arose once more. The Glasnevin Committee wanted a huge, ceremonial funeral procession, but the family wouldn’t agree to this.

John Philpott Curran was buried in Glasnevin on a February evening in 1837 - by torchlight.

Sarah Curran, his daughter, is buried in Newmarket.

After the Act of Union, Lord Riversdale in Rathcormac got £15,000 in ‘compensation’ for the loss of two seats in Parliament.