Life
1806-1876; b. 12 Aug., Delgany, Co Wicklow, son of curate [var. Rector]; ed. TCD; and Inner Temple, and Irish bar, 1830; QC, Ireland, 1842; counsel defending O’Connell and Charles Gavan Duffy in 1843-44; State trials; lead counsel in defence of William Smith O’Brien at Clonmel state trials of 1848; Conservative MP for Enniskillen in 1851, Dublin Univ., 1859-66; Solicitor Gen. for Irel., 1852; Lord Chief Justice in Ireland, 1866; Attorney-General for Ireland 1858 and 1866; [DIB err. 1852];
travelled to Italy for health reasons; wrote Italy in the Nineteenth Century (1848 and 6 edns.); Vicissitudes of the Eternal City (1849), translated from a guidebook of Signor Canini; also Early Sketches of Eminent Men (1870), being a collection of early writings in Dublin University Magazine; pronounced one of the great orators of the century, his most celebrated speech was made in Yelverton case, causing him to be greet by cheers on entering the House of Commons;
last resided in Dublin at 2 Mountjoy Sq.; d. 25 November, after long illness, Brighton; bur. Mount Jerome, with large monumental figure by Albert Bruce Joy, RA, the favorite pupil of Foley; in St. Patrick’s Cathedral; He is cited as a great orator in the ‘Aoelus’ chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses. CAB ODNB JMC DIB DIH
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References
Charles Read, ed., A Cabinet of Irish Literature (3 vols., 1876-78), selects ‘Speech in Defence of Charles Gavan Duffy’.
Hyland Books (Cat. 214) lists Jas. Whiteside [Lord Chf. Just.] Early Sketches of Eminent Persons (Dublin 1870) (xx)+285pp.
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Notes
Portrait: James Whiteside by Charles Grey, study for an etching printed in Dublin University Magazine, Vol. XXXIII (1849), and is now in the National Gallery of Ireland (see Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition, Ulster
Museum, 1965).
YMCA: Whiteside contrib. ‘Cleanliness: Prudence: Industry’ to Lectures Delivered before the Dublin Young Men’s Christian Association [...] during the year 1864 (Dublin: Hodges, Smith and Co. 1865) - as listed under Lord Dufferin, supra.
James Joyce: Whitesides reputation is untarnished in Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), where he is recalled as a standard of Irish forensic eloquence in the ‘Aeolus’ episode: ‘Where have you a man now at the bar like those fellows, like Whiteside, like Isaac Butt, like silvertongued O’Hagan?’ (under heading ‘Clever, Very’; Bodley Head Edn., p.175).
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