Mrs Parnell Dead.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 April 1921, Page 3

Mrs Parnell Dead.

WOMAN WHO CHANGED IRISH 1 HISTORY. • I LONDON, February 7. ; .Mrs Catherine Parnell, widow of H'o famous Irish leader, Charles Stewart j Parnell, died at East Ham-road. Little- j iinmpton, on Saturday, in her <'th. . year. As ‘ Kitty" O'Shea wife of Captain O’Shea, a Nationalist M.P., she' exercised an influence over Parnell teat probably changed the whole course of Irish political history. The story goes that, piqued by the great leaders icfusals of her invitations to dinner, she drove to the House of Commons md there sent in her card to hint. Soon , after that lie visited the O’Sheas at F.l- j tham and it was not long before he became her lover. He would break « ngagemonts to be with her, and he was | once concealed in the house for a fort- , night without the servants knowing. j Capt. O’Shea once challenged Parnell | to a duel, 'but afterwards contented him- j self with insisting that he should not stav at his house. .Mrs O'Shea acted as a medium through which communications passed from the Liberal Government to Parnell and vice versa. “For ten years,” she said, in a book she published, “Mr Gladstone had known ol the intimacy.” Capt. O’Shea took divorce' proceedings '. in [)ec(*mbcr 1800, and Mrs O’Shea and Parnell were married when the decree was made absolute. ' Hut those proceedings were the death-knell of Parnell's political in (I nenee and he died in her arms at Brighton on Octol>er nth.. 1801 a broken man. After his death she continued to live at Brighton, where an employee at an lintel at which she stayed described her as the most eccentric woman lie had ever known. “She get up at two o'clock in tlu> morning to walk on the sea front. About, six months ego Oie left Brighton for Littlehampton with her son, Capt. O’Shea. She had a bicycle made for her twenty years ago which she constantly "ode on the seafront. Her grief was uncontrollable when it was stolen some time, ago.