Asmal, (Abdul) Kader
Asmal, (Abdul) Kader (1934–2011), human rights jurist, anti-apartheid campaigner and South African government minister, was born on 8 October 1934 in Stanger (KwaDukuza), Natal, South Africa, the youngest of eight children (six sons and two daughters) of Ahmed Asmal, grocer, and his…...
Deale, Kenneth Edwin Lee
Deale, Kenneth Edwin Lee (1907–74), barrister, judge, and author, was born 17 January 1907, third son of four children of Edwin Lee Deale (d. 1948), stationer and merchant, of 11 Effra Road, Rathmines, Dublin, and Mary (‘Minnie Hill’) Deale (née Martin; d. 1939) of Co. Kerry. The…...
Dhammaloka (Carroll, Laurence)
Dhammaloka (Carroll, Laurence) (b. c.1856), Buddhist monk in Burma (Myanmar), was probably born in 1856 in south Co. Dublin, son of a grocer in Booterstown. All that is known of his life prior to his emergence as a public figure in colonial Burma in 1900 derives from his own…...
Dillon, Michael
Dillon, Michael (1915–62), physician, writer, Buddhist novice-monk and the first person known to surgically transition from female to male, was born Laura Maud Dillon on 1 May 1915 in Ladbroke Grove, London, England. Dillon was the second child of Robert Arthur Dillon (1865–1925),…...
Hyde, Harford Montgomery
Hyde, Harford Montgomery (1907–89), barrister, politician, and author, was born 14 August 1907 in Belfast, son of James Johnstone Hyde JP, linen merchant, and his wife, Isobel (née Montgomery). Hyde claimed distant kinship with Henry James. His…...
Keating, May
Keating, May (1895–1965), socialist, feminist and human rights campaigner, was born Mary Josephine Walsh on 6 October 1895, in Eadestown, Rathmore, Co. Kildare, to John Walsh, who farmed 70 acres there (28.3 hectares), and his wife Martha (née Cullen), a national school teacher. Her…...
Moriarty, John Stephen
Moriarty, John Stephen (1938–2007), philosopher and shaman, was born 2 February 1938 at Moyvane, near Listowel, Co. Kerry, fourth of six children (two sons and four daughters) of James Moriarty, smallholder and native speaker of Irish (with eleven cows and 'thirty-two acres of bad,…...
Norcott, William
Norcott, William (1773?–1820), barrister, satirist, and bon vivant, was eldest son of William Norcott of Charleville, Co. Cork, and Mary Norcott (née Knight). He entered TCD in July 1790, graduating BA…...
O'Halloran, Maura Eileen
O'Halloran, Maura Eileen (1955–82), Zen master, was born 24 May 1955 in Boston, Mass., USA, eldest among one son and five daughters of Fionan Finbarr O'Halloran, civil engineer from Tralee, Co. Kerry, and Ruth O'Halloran (née Libbey), teacher, from Maine, USA. She was educated at Loreto…...
Orpen, Goddard Henry
Orpen, Goddard Henry (1852–1932), lawyer and historian, was born on 8 May 1852 in Dublin, the fourth son of the five sons and three daughters of John Herbert Orpen, barrister, of Dublin, and Ellen Susan Gertrude, youngest daughter of Revd John Richards of Grange (latterly Monksgrange),…...
Toland, John
Toland, John (1670–1722), freethinker and polemical writer, was probably born in Inishowen, Co. Donegal, on 30 November 1670. Reputed to be the illegitimate son of a catholic priest, Toland may have been baptised ‘Joannes Eugenius’, which he later altered to a pen name, ‘Janus Junius’.…...