Stephen Joseph Meany

Life
1825-1888. b. Ennis, Co. Clare; ed. locally; worked on The Freeeman’s Journal; fnd The Irish National Magazine; imprisoned 1848; President Liverpool Press Association; emigrated USA, 1860; owner-editor Commercial, Toledo, Ohio; arrested England 1867 for Fenian activities; released 1868; returned to America; admitted to bar, and ed. The Evening Democrat, Connecticut; participated in legal defence of Fenians; wrote The Terry Alt, a tale of 1831 (1841) and also the song “Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue”; d. New York; bur. Ennis. PI IF DIW DIH SUTH

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References
D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1912), lists Shreds of Fancy (Ennis 1841), a poem; Shells from the Shannon (pub.. USA), poem.

Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction [Pt. I] (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), gives bio-data: b. Ennis; founded first English Catholic newspaper , The Lancashire Free Press; a Life by John Augustus O’Shea; also The Terry Alt, 3 vols. (1841). The Terry Alts were agrarian agitators in Munster, prev. called ‘Whiteboys’; this title not in BML [acc. Brown].

Brian Cleeve & Ann Brady, A Dictionary of Irish Writers (Dublin: Lilliput 1985) calls it as ironic that he is author of loyalist song, “Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue”. Note inconsistencies in accounts of prison record, as infra.

John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longmans 1988; rep. 1989), gives bio-data: b. Ennis, Co. Clare; worked as constable, dismissed; journalism; friend of Daniel O’Connell; imprisoned 1848 for Nationalist activity; Liverpool, fnd. first English-Catholic newspaper outside London, the Lancashire Free Press; later details scarce; imprisoned for theft in 1882; spent time in America; arrested for Fenianism in England in 1886, sentenced to 15 yrs, but released, and died in New York; one fiction, The Terry Alt (1841), a ‘tale of 1831’, chronicling agitation in Munster. BL 0. See Boase.

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