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Life
1871-1959 [A M. Sullivan; the Younger]; barrister; b. Belfield, Drumcondra, Dublin, 14 Jan.; 2nd son of A. M. Sullivan [q.v.]; ed. Ushaw, Belvedere, TCD; friend of Oscar Wilde (of whom he reported that his favourite reading was Swinburne); bar 1892; appt. King’s Sarjeant-at-Law, 1912 [being the last holder of a rank created by William I]; life threatened after 1916;
undertook the defence of Roger Casement [q.v.] from sense of duty, and broke down from nervous exhaustion during his closing address to the jury; settled in England after 1922; practised successfully to 1949; retired to Dublin in 1949, considering himself a disqualified alien by Republic of Ireland Act; died at his house in Beckenham, Kent, 9 Jan. 1959; The Last Sarjeant (1952); m. Helen Keiley, from Brooklyn (d.1952). DIB
Works
The Last Sarjeant: The Memoirs of A. M. Sullivan, QC, with foreword by Earl Jowett sometime Lord High Chancellor [...] (London: Macdonald 1952), 320pp., front. port. [available at Internet Archive - online].
Notes
Roger Casement: For account of A. M. Sullivan’s defence of Casement, see H. Montgomery Hyde, Roger Casement [Famous Trials 9] (London: Hodge 1960; rev. Penguin 1964); Sullivan contended that, in conversation, Casement attempted a ‘rhapsodical justification’ of his homosexual practices as ‘inseparable from true genius’.
NLI: Letters from A. M. Sullivan to George Gavan Duffy et al. are held among the Roger Casement Papers of the National Library of Ireland [NLI] and several other collections - viz., John Redmond Papers and J. J. Clancy Papers. (See NLI Catalogue > Sarjeant A. M. Sullivan - online.]
Namesake: Aloysius Michael Sullivan [usu. A.M. Sullivan] (1896-1980) was a poet and balladeer with several broadsheet titles chiefly from the library of Stephen Griffin Collection at the National Library of Ireland [NLI] - online.
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