Altman, Albert Liebes Lascar
Altman, Albert Liebes Lascar (c.1853–1903), businessman and nationalist politician, was born c.1853 in Prussian Poland, the son of Moritz Altman (born Shagra Moshe ben Aharon) and his wife Deborah (born Devorah bat Chaim Liebes). He was the eldest of four surviving…...
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…...
Barbour, William Pirrie ('Bill')
Barbour, William Pirrie ('Bill') (1920–2009), teacher, and community and political activist, was born in Newtownards, Co. Down, son of Walter Terence Barbour, a director of the Combe Barbour engineering firm, and his wife Blanche (née Redman), whose father owned wine shops in London…...
Blomfield, Sara Louisa
Blomfield, Sara Louisa , Lady (1859–1939), Bahá'í pioneer and humanitarian, was born in Knockanevin, Borrisoleigh, near Thurles, Co. Tipperary, the daughter of Matthew (Matthias) John Ryan and his wife Emily (née Crowe). Religious tension between her catholic father and anglo-…...
Cochrane, Ian
Cochrane, Ian (1941–2004), writer, was born 7 November 1941 in a two‑room cottage at Moylarg, Dromona (near Cullybackey), Co. Antrim. He was the third of five children of Tom and Sadie Cochrane and had three brothers and a sister. 'We lived in a little house right out in the country,…...
Cousins, James Henry Sproull
Cousins, James Henry Sproull (1873–1956), writer, teacher, and theosophist, was born 22 July 1873 in Cavour Street, Belfast, the eldest child of James Cousins, a deep-sea mariner of Glastry, Co. Down, and Susan Cousins (née Davey), of Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim. Educated at a local…...
Crofton, Sir John Wenman
Crofton, Sir John Wenman (1912–2009), physician, scientist and public health campaigner, was born on 27 March 1912 at the family home, 55 Merrion Square South, Dublin, the only son (between two sisters) of William Mervyn Crofton, physician and bacteriologist, and his wife Mary…...
Cuffe, Ellen Odette
Cuffe, Ellen Odette (1857–1933), countess of Desart, philanthropist, and senator, was born 1 September 1857 in London into a Jewish family, eldest daughter of Henri Louis Bischoffsheim (1829–1908), millionaire banker, and Clarisse Bischoffsheim (née Biedermann), and educated privately.…...
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…...
Edelstein, (Eli) Joseph
Edelstein, (Eli) Joseph (1886–1939), writer and public speaker, was born 30 August 1886 at 31 Warren Street, Portobello, Dublin, son of Abraham Maurice Edelstein, a commercial traveller who later went into business as a picture-frame maker and gilder, and his wife Jane (née Moisel);…...
Fox, Richard Michael ('R. M. ')
Fox, Richard Michael ('R. M. ') (1891–1969), writer and trade unionist, was born on 13 November 1891 in Leeds, Yorkshire, the second of four sons of Richard Fox and his wife Elizabeth (née Rathmell). Richard senior worked as a gymnasium instructor in Leeds, and later as a skilled…...
Frankau, Julia (‘Frank Danby’)
Frankau, Julia (‘Frank Danby’) (1859–1916), art historian and novelist, was born 30 July 1859 in Dublin, into an English Jewish family, seventh among nine children of Hyman Davis (d. 1871), dentist and later artist/photographer, and his wife Isabella. Her parents arrived in Dublin in…...
Galvin, Patrick
Galvin, Patrick (1927–2011), writer, was born on 15 August 1927 in a tenement building at 13 Margaret Street, Cork, the second child of Patrick Galvin, a docker and boxer, and his wife Bridget (née O'Brien), a charwoman. He had three brothers and three sisters; two brothers remained…...
Glucksman, Lewis
Glucksman, Lewis (1925–2006), philanthropist and businessman, was born 22 December 1925 in New York, the second of three children of Jack Glucksman, owner of a factory that manufactured table lamps, and his wife Zipporah. His parents were second-generation Hungarian Jews. Raised in…...
Goldberg, Gerald Yael
Goldberg, Gerald Yael (1912–2003), solicitor, politician and writer, was born 12 April 1912 in Cork city, eleventh of twelve surviving children of Louis J. Goldberg, peddler and shopkeeper, and his wife Rachel (née Sandler). His birth name was Yael or Yoel; the anglicised ‘Gerald’ was…...
Gordon, Maurice Leonard (‘Maurie’)
Gordon, Maurice Leonard (‘Maurie’) (1910–90), sports administrator, businessman, and community activist, was born 10 January 1910 in Leeds, England, only son and elder of two children of Joseph Gordon (originally Seltzer), textile worker from Russia, and Bessie Gordon (née Bellow…...
Jaffé, Sir Otto
Jaffé, Sir Otto (1846–1929), businessman and philanthropist, was born 13 August 1846 in Hamburg, Germany, third son among four sons and five daughters of Daniel Joseph Jaffé (1809–74) and his wife Frederiké. Daniel Joseph Jaffé was a merchant in the Hamburg firm of Jaffé Brothers, who…...
Jemison, Mary ('Deh-he-wä-mis')
Jemison, Mary ('Deh-he-wä-mis') (1743?–1833), American frontierswoman, was born aboard the ship William and Mary, when her parents, Thomas Jemison and his wife Jane (née Erwin), (both of protestant Scotch-Irish heritage) were emigrating to colonial Pennsylvania, departing from…...
Jenkinson, David Stewart
Jenkinson, David Stewart (1928–2011), soil scientist, was born on 25 February 1928 in Hollywood Hospital, Los Angeles, California, USA, the eldest of three sons of Hugh McLoughlin Jenkinson, investor and businessman, and his wife Isabel Frances (née Glass). His father, an Irish…...
Keating, Justin Pascal
Keating, Justin Pascal (1930–2009), politician, veterinarian and television presenter, was born 7 January 1930 in a nursing home at 37 Lower Leeson Street, Dublin, younger of two sons of Seán Keating (qv), artist, and…...
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…...
Lánczos, Cornelius
Lánczos, Cornelius (Kornél) (1893–1974), theoretical physicist, was born 2 February 1893 in Székesfehérvár, Hungary, eldest of five children of Carolus Löwy, lawyer, and Adél Hahn. During the early 1900s the family changed their name to Lánczos, a Hungarian form of the Jewish name Löwy…...
Leventhal, Abraham Jacob (‘Con’)
Leventhal, Abraham Jacob (‘Con’) (1896–1979), lecturer, essayist, and critic, was born 9 May 1896 in Lower Clanbrassil St., Dublin, son of Moses (Maurice) Leventhal, draper, and Rosa Leventhal (née Levenberg). He was reared in an orthodox Jewish family; his mother, a poet and lifelong…...
Levine, June
Levine, June (1931–2008), feminist, journalist and author, was born Stephanie June Levine in the Rotunda hospital, Dublin, on 31 December 1931, eldest child of Charles Solomon ('Solly') Levine, a cabinet maker, the son of Jewish parents who fled from Latvia, and his wife Muriel Ruth (…...
Lewis, Helen
Lewis, Helen (1916–2009), Holocaust survivor, dance teacher, choreographer and memoirist, was born Helena Katz on 22 June 1916 into a well-off Jewish family in Bohemia in the Austro-Hungarian empire (Bohemia became part of the new state of Czechoslovakia in 1918). She was an only…...