Obituary.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8103, 1 June 1906, Page 5

Obituary.

+ Michael Davitt. (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) (Per Press Association). LONDON, May 31. Obituary—Michael Davitt, after midnight at a private hospital in Dublin. Michael Davitt, founder of the Irish Land League, was born, a peasant's son, at Straia, County Mayo in 1846. Evicted from their small holding the family emigrated to Hastingden, Lancashire, in 1851, and hore in 1857 the boy lost his right arm through an accident in a cotton factory. In 1886 he joined the Fenian movement and was sentenced in 1870 to fifteen years' penal servitude. He was released m ISS7 ; and, supplied with funds from the State, began an anti-landlord cursade which culminated in the Land League (October 21st, 1879) Davitt was thenceforward in frequent collision with the Government, and from Feb., 1881, to May, 1882, was imprisoned in Portland for breaking his ticket of leave. His " Leaves from a Prison Diary" were published in 1885. A strong Home Ruler, but Socialistic on the question of land nationalistion after the split in the party, he opposed Mr Parnell, and was returned to Parliament in 1892 as an anti-Parnellite, but unseated on the ground of clerical intimidation. In 1895 he was returned unopposed by South Mayo. Publications : Leaves from a Prison Diary, 1884; Defence of the Laud League, 1891; Life and Progress in Australia, 1898; The Boer Fight for Freedom, 1902 ; Within the Pale, 1903 ; The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland, 1901.