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Life
1772-1852; b. Co. Waterford; son John Walsh (1720-85), a merchant of Ballymountain Hse. and younger br. of army surgeon and versehistorian Edward Walsh [q.v.]; entered TCD, 1789; won schol. 1794; grad. BA 1796; ord. 1802; appt curate to Walter Blake Kirwan [q.v.], St. Nicholas Without the Gate; appt. curate of Finglas, 1806; completed John Warburton’s and James Whitelaw’s History of Dublin, 2 vols. (1815-1818); worked to eradicate typhoid in his parish; appt. chaplain to British Ambassador in Constantinople, 1820; quarantined and maltreated in Belgrade; returned to Constantinople, 1831-35; and vaccinated islanders at Prince's Island against small-pox with serum sent from Dublin; awarded Hon. MD, Aberdeen, and LLD, Dublin (TCD);
appt. chaplain at St Petersburg Embassy, 1825, and later at Rio de Janeiro, 1828-31; boarded a ship with 600 slaves captured by the navy frigate on which he was sailing back to London, and described the condition of its human freight; appt. to committee of Society for Abolition of Slavery in response to the account he published; re-appt. in Constantinople and issued Narrative of a Journey from Constantinople to England (1828); later issued An Essay on Ancient Coins, Medals, and Gems (1828) and Residence at Constantinople during the Greek and Turkish Revolutions, 2 vols. (1836); Notices of Brazil in 1828-29 (London 1830; US 1831); ultimately settled in Ireland as rector of Kilbride, Co. Wicklow, 1835-59, and rector of Finglas, 1839-52. ODNB DIW RIA/DIB
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Works
Narrative of a journey from Constantinople to England, by the Rev. R. Walsh (London: Frederick Westley and A. H. Davis  MDCCCXXVIII [1828]; 4th edn. 1831), xii, 445pp., ill. [pls., folded map]; Do. (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Carey 1828), iv., 270pp. [treats of Balkan region and Turkey].
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Notes
George A. Little, Dublin Before the Vikings (1957), Warburton, Whitelaw, and Walsh, History of Dublin gives an account of the excavation of Whitworth (now Mathew Talbot) Bridge, ‘In sinking the foundation for the south abutment ... [in 1816], it was found that the foundation of the Old Bridge, which occupied the site, stood upon the ruins of another still more ancient. The stones of which it was formed rather resembled Portland stone than any other sorts found in Ireland. These were regularly laid, connected by laid cramps, on a platform of oak timber, supported by small piles shod with iron which was completely oxidised, and being encrusted with sandy matter, the lower ends of the piles were are hard as stone, as if entirely petrified. It is supposed that the Old Bridge was first constructed as early as the reign of King John, but these ruins indicate that a bridge of better and more artificial construction had, at a remote period, preoccupied the situation.’ (p.1096) Little infers that the bridge was likely to be not of Viking but of pre-Scandinavian origin, and his fencing with the term Droicead Dubhghall as refering not the Danes, but the older ‘Doyles’ or dark Gaels. [vide 68]
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