Michael MacDonagh

“ As a novelist, O'Reilly will be remembered as the author of ‘Moondyne,’ a powerful and dramatic story of convict life in Western Australia, which was published at Boston, Massachusetts (1880) , and ran through twelve editions. He also wrote, in collaboration with Robert Grant, Frederick J. Stimson, and J. T. Wheelwright, a satirical novel entitled ‘The King's Man: a Tale of To-morrow’ (Boston, 1884) . An athlete himself, and a keen lover of sport of all kinds, he prepared a volume entitled ‘Ethics of Boxing and Manly Sports’ (Boston, Massachusetts, 1888) ”

“ In 1841 Wilde was appointed medical commissioner for the Irish census. In connection with the census report of 1851 he wrote a blue-book on ‘The Epidemics of Ireland;’ in it he gives an account of the pestilences by which the country was recorded to have been visited from the earliest times. In 1864 he was knighted by the Irish viceroy, the Earl of Carlisle, for his services to statistical science, especially in connection with the Irish census ”

“ Lady Wilde (1826–1896) , born at Wexford in 1826, fell under the influence of the nationalist doctrines of ‘The Nation’ about 1845, and contributed to it prose and verse under the pseudonym of ‘Speranza’ until its suppression for sedition in 1848. ”

“ His grandfather, Ralph Wilde, was the son of a Durham merchant who, on being appointed agent for some property in Roscommon, settled at Castlerea, and married an Irish lady named O'Flynn. His father was Dr. Thomas Wilde, who had an extensive general practice in the district, and his mother was a Miss Fynn, a member of an old Galway family. Having been educated at the royal school of Banagher, and afterwards at the diocesan school of Elphin, he began his surgical studies in Dublin in 1832, when he was appointed a resident pupil in Steevens's Hospital. ”

“ The work of winning recruits in the army for the revolutionary movement was controlled by John Devoy, afterwards a journalist in New York, who, in the capacity of fenian organiser, passed through as many as three regiments. ”