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 apparently the loyalist song “Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue”; d. New York; bur. Ennis. PI IF DIW DIH SUTH
[ top ]
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. Biog. notice: ’Born at New Hall, near Ennis, Co. Clare, in December, 1825, and became a journalist in early life, being connected with The Clare Journal. Joined the staff of the Freeman’s Journal, and wrote for several Dublin papers over signatures of “Abelard” and “Werner.” In 1847 (according to John Savage) he started The Irish National Magazine, but it did not last long. He wrote for Irish Tribune of 1848. In this year he was arrested and imprisoned for eight or nine months; then became connected with English journalism, and wrote for Liverpool Daily Post for several years, and was first President of the Press Association of Liverpool. Went to U.S.A. about 1860, and edited and owned The Commercial, of Toledo, Ohio. Returned to England again, and was arrested in 1867 on a charge of Fenianism, and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment. He died in New York, February 8, 1888. He is said to have written loyal and ultra-British songs, such as “Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue,” and in 1856 published Songs of Progress, with music by Henry Russell. He wrote also a novel called The Terry Alt, a Tale of 1831, three volumes, 1841. He had edited Limerick and Clare Examiner, and Drogheda Argus. John Rutherford, in his History of Fenianism, quotes a violent attack upon him from the Ulster Observer of A. J. McKenna (q.v.), and says Meany was connected with Northern Whig. After leaving Daily Post he started the first Catholic paper of England outside London — The Lancashire Free Press. J. A. O’Shea wrote a life of Meany for the Irishman, which was reprinted in Dublin in 1869), 108pp.’ (O’Donoghue, op. cit., p.307.)
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.
[ top ]