People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 20 April 1911, Page 729

People We Hear About

The Earl of Kenmare, succeeded to the title in 1905, on the death of his father, the fourth Earl, and was known up to that time as Viscount Castlerosse. Lady Kenmare was formerly the Hon. Elizabeth Baring, and is the elder of the two sisters of . Lord Reveistoke, having been married nearly twenty-one years ago. They have a family of five, two daughters and three sons. The continued trouble in Mexico must be a source of grave anxiety to General Diaz, the President, who has now reached an age, after a career of genuine and stormy romance, when most men would be desirous of spending their remaining years in domestic peace," far from the turmoil of public affairs..' President Diaz was originally a common soldier; but men died quickly in Mexico during the revolutionary wars, and the cleverness, tact, and courageousness of Diaz enabled him to become in turn captain, colonel, general, commander-in-chief, and, lastly, President. , ... t A recent week's biography list contains, besides; the name of another Catholic nonagenarian, that of Major John Taaffe, who was born in 1818. A kinsman of the Irish Taaffes who became domiciled in Austria after the Battle of the Boyne, and who yielded to the country of their adoption a Prime Minister in the person of the late Count Taaffe, the Major himself joined the Austrian Cuirassiers as a young man, and saw service in the campaign against the French in the fifties. Subsequently he held a commission in the Louth Militia, on retirement from which he settled in London. He was a Knight of the Order of Malta, and for many years a familiar figure among worshippers at the Carmelite Church, Kensington. An American naval vessel (says the Sacred Heart lleview) has been named for John Robert Monaghan, the young ensign who on April 1, 1886, was killed in Samoa while attempting to save his superior officer, Lieutenant Langsdale, from an attacking party of natives. Spokane, Wash., has already shown its appreciation of Ensign Monaghan by erecting a statue in commemoration of his exploit. But the brave deed has now received national recognition. The ceremony of naming the ship was performed by Ellen Monaghan, a sister of the heroic youth 'Wherever the Monaghan cruises,' says a Spokane paper, 'the ship will tell that the nation cherishes the, memory of those who serve her, and the name and fame' of Monaghan will inspire generations unborn.' Monaghan, as his name suggests, was a Catholic, and a graduate of a Catholic college. Mr. Patrick Henry McCarthy, the Mavor of San Francisco, was born in Newcastle West, Limerick, Ireland, on March 17, 1863. When he was seventeen he was working as a carpenter's apprentice, but there were not many opportunities in Limerick for him. So he went to Chicago in 1880 as a journeyman carpenter. Wages were not good then, but McCarthy went to work, not at carpentermg k however, but at organising the carpenters. The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America was the result. He stayed in Chicago six years, and then went to San Francisco. He found a union of carpenters there with a membership of 300. That night the union had a membership of 301, and now it has 2300 members; and there are many other organisations of carpenters ■ and joiners there. In 1894 he organised the Building Trades Council, a federation of all the unions in all building trades. Later on he organised the State Building Trades Council, and has been president since that time. , ffi « In the alphabetical section, H. to M., the following British Catholics (remarks a Home exchange), are to be commemorated in the new Supplement to the Dictionary of National Biography, devoted to notabilities dead during the last ten years:—Henry Harland, novelist; Sir Henrv Hawkins, Baron Brampton, judge; Lieut.-Colonel George U It. Henderson, military writer; Sir William Hales liingston, Canadian surgeon; Mrs. Cashel Hoey, novelist; Charles Kent, author; Mrs. Henrietta Labouchere, actressEugene Lafont, S.J., science teacher in India; Sir Hector Louis Langevin, K.C.M.G., Canadian politician; Frederick George Lee, theological writer- The Macdermot, AttorneyGeneral for Ireland; John Mac Evilly, Archbishop of Tuam • Thomas More Madden, medical writer: Edward Dillon Mapother, physiologist; Sir Thomas Acquin Martin, AgentGeneral for -Afghanistan; Sir James Charles Mathew, Lord Justice of Appeal Philip William (Phil) May, caricaturist; Austin Meldon, surgeon; Mgr. Gerald Molloy,. Rec*or nof the Catholic University of Ireland; James 'Lynam Molloy, song writer; Joseph Fitzgerald Molloy, authorLord Morris and Killanin, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland' and James Murphy, Irish judge. Of this batch, it is interesting to note that six names belong to converts. ■■-