Alexander Martin Sullivan

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; King’s Sarjeant, 1912 [last holder]; life threatened after 1916; undertook defence of Roger Casement from sense of duty, and broke down from nervous exhaustion during his closing address to the jury; moved to 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.; Old Ireland (1927) and The Last Sarjeant (1952). DIB

 

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’.

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