Limerick's first international rugby player and his brothers - the gun-runner, the dean and the lunatic:
The Myles family of Limerick

Limerick City Library

Evening Lecture Series

8.00pm

12 Jan 2010

by Paddy Waldron

WWW version: http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~pwaldron/granary/

Online pedigree: http://pwaldron.tribalpages.com (password required)

(or direct link to Myles family)

Outline:

The original ancestor of the Myles family in Ireland

• "Thomas Myles, the original ancestor of the family in Ireland, came from Bristol and settled first in Youghal, Co. Cork, and then to Limerick, about Cromwell's time (1650?). He kept an inn at Garryowen and carried on the clothing business."
• He was a grandfather by 1707 (St. John's baptismal register).

The family historian

• Zachary George Myles (1812-1897)
• father of seven medical doctors (`surgeons, physicians and apothecaries'): George (1842-1901, Limerick); Jack (1846-1883, Longford); James Peacocke (1848-1913, Birr); Thomas William (1850-1899, Howth); William Zachary (1851-1896, Kilkenny); Zachary George (1853-1882, Birr) and Henry George (1857-1896, Longford)
• son of first cousins George Myles (1782-1832) and Elizabeth Myles (née Myles) (d.1862)
• greatgreatgreatgrandson (twice over) of the original ancestor Thomas Myles
• Town Councillor, Alderman, Justice of the Peace, Chairman of the Board of Guardians, Harbour Commissioner
• buried in a family vault at St. Munchin's (Limerick Chronicle, March 30, 1897)
• Some time between 1875 and 1882, Zachary wrote an undated document entitled The Myles family: Their first seven generations in Ireland.
• Many versions of Zachary's family history have popped up in various parts of the world.

The Myles name in Limerick today

• No Myles descended from John Myles (b.1707), grandson of the original ancestor Thomas Myles, remains in Limerick today.
• John Myles (b.1707) is ancestor of Zachary and of the principal subjects of this talk.
• Betty Kingston (née Myles) and Pat Ellis (née Myles) now living in Limerick are GGGGgranddaughters of his younger brother William (b.1710)
• In the 1911 census, there were two families in Limerick descended from John and three descended from William.
• According to Gerry Joyce's Limerick City Street Names, both James' Street (1827) and the adjacent Myles Street (1826) in Limerick are named after local property developer James Myles. (Images from Limerick Civic Trust `Street Art and Artefacts, Limerick City', 2008; also Myles Place plaque and doorway.)
• According to Zachary, his paternal uncle James Myles (d.1847)

  `had a mania for building, neglected his business for it, and sunk his capital in houses. He got financially embarrassed and unable to meet his engagements. His brothers Tom and George arranged his affairs, on condition that he ceased from building. They had a horror of a fondness for brick and mortar.'

• also Myles Creek in Kilkee (see below) and Sir Thomas Myles Lecture (see below also)

John Myles (d.1871), his two wives and eleven children

• maternal first cousin of Zachary, whose pedigree ends with `He died in 1873 [sic] leaving a family.'
• originally from Nelson Street, now known as Parnell Street, previously part of Boherboy
• corn and wool merchant at 15 Catherine Street when his first children were baptised
• moved to No. 13 Upper Mallow Street around 1863 or 1864
• died at Mallow Street, May 4, 1871 and buried at St. John's

• Mary (John's second cousin; Zachary's paternal first cousin) buried at St. Munchin's
• John, his second wife Prudence, and their children George, James and probably Anne and Anna buried in family vault in St. John's
• Eleanor and Louisa buried in Kilmurry
• Prudence junior probably buried in Northern Ireland

The four surviving sons

Limerick's first international rugby player: John Thomas (Jack) Myles (1855-1934)

• Rev. William Webb Ellis (1806–1872) in 1823, while a pupil at Rugby School in Warwickshire, ‘with a fine disregard for the rules of football as played in his time first took the ball in his arms and ran with it’.
• Ellis’s father, James, an ensign in the 1st Dragoon Guards, had served in Ireland in 1807. John V. Luce claims that the young Ellis was ‘reared in Munster on the banks of the Blackwater.’
• Ellis's name is commemorated by the trophy for the Rugby World Cup, inaugurated in 1987
• Dublin University Football Club (D.U.F.C.), which was established at Trinity College in 1854, ‘has a substantial claim to be the oldest rugby club in continuous existence’ in the world.
• The brothers Jack and Tom Myles, although separated by more than two years in age, were both admitted to Trinity College on the same date, January 22, 1873, aged 17 and 15 respectively.
• Both brothers had previously been educated in Limerick by a William Shaw.

• Jack appears (above) in 1873/4 and 1874/5 D.U.F.C. first team photographs.
• The Irish Football Union, essentially a Leinster body, was formed at a meeting in Dublin on December 14, 1874. Ulster’s equivalent, the Northern Football Union of Ireland, was formed on January 13, 1875. They later merged as the IRFU (inaugural general meeting on February 5, 1880).
• Ireland’s first international match, a twenty-a-side friendly affair against England, was scheduled for Monday, February 15, 1875, at the Kennington Oval, better known nowadays as a cricket ground.
• Dublin University Football Club supplied nine of the Irish twenty - see photograph from Irish Times, February 12, 1926.
• H. L. Robinson `just did not show up' for this historic game and thus lost the chance of playing for Ireland; Jack Myles took his place and won his only cap.
• England won that first international by a goal, a drop goal and a try to nil, or 7 points to nil in the scoring system of the time (three points for any sort of goal, one for a try).
• Myths developed about Jack Myles (and numerous others) `staggering over the goal-line, festooned with Saxons.’
• On March 3, 1875, Rathkeale became the first Limerick club to become affiliated to the Irish Football Union.
• At Henley Royal Regatta on June 23 and 24, 1875, Jack Myles was on the TCD eight which won the Ladies' Plate.
• Alan English dates the foundation of Limerick city's first rugby club, the Limerick Football Club, by Charles Burton Barrington (1848-1943) and William Stokes, to 1876.
• John George Cronyn wrote on November 27, 1929, that `Jack Myles played with me in March ’77 in the first Munster team (photo in Wanderers’ Club)' - against Leinster at College Park on March 26, 1877. Where is that photo today?
• Jack’s obituaries claimed that he had also held the world’s ‘record’ for putting the shot. Is this another myth?
• John T. Myles (College dropout) is recorded as arriving in Australia aged 22 in November, 1877 on the ship Hankow.
• He was re-admitted to Trinity College, probably some time in 1887.
• He returned to New Zealand with his medical degrees in 1889 and settled in Westland County (now Westland District) on the western coast of the South Island.

• On January 28, 1891, John Myles was a witness at the marriage of Mary Campbell to John Osmers at Ross.
• On February 3, 1892, John Myles (36, bachelor) of Kumara (see walking stick) married Jane Isabel (Jean) Browne (31) of Greymouth at the house of Dr. John Perrett Millington in Greymouth (witnesses were Dr. Millington, Mary Millington and Mary Osmers).
• Jane was the daughter of a Scottish clergyman, Rev. Andrew Browne. Her brother-in-law Daniel John Cunningham, F.R.S. (1850-1909) was Professor of Anatomy, first at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1882; then at Dublin University from 1883 to 1903. He was father of Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope.
• On February 6, 1894, John Myles’s M.D. degree was conferred at a commencements ceremony back at Trinity College, Dublin, but in the record of the ceremony he is marked ‘absent abroad’.
• Sometime between 1896 and 1899, Jack and Jane returned to Europe, where they lived for some years in London.
• Around 1907, the Myleses moved to Fronheulog House at Dolgellau in north Wales; Jane's two spinster sisters lived nearby at Coed.

• [The links in this paragraph are to high resolution images which will be slow to load.]Dr. Myles was soon chairing the Committee which established the Dolgellau Free Library and Institute. On May 30, 1911, Mrs. Myles laid the foundation stone, after which the Committee were entertained at Fronheulog. In May 1913, Dr. Myles opened the completed Library.
• drove an early model car to the delight of his wife's greatnephews and greatnieces
• Jack continued in general practice in Dolgellau until shortly before his death on April 11, 1934.
• Jack and Jane are buried at Llanelltyd near Dolgellau.
• obituary in Welsh, MARWOLAETH DR MYLES, Y Dydd, April 13, 1934
• no known memorial in Ireland

The gun-runner: Sir Thomas Myles (1857-1937)

• accompanied his older brother to Trinity and shared his sporting skills and interests (rugby, rowing, sailing, swimming, boxing, etc.)
• medical degrees conferred 1880 and 1881
• resident surgeon in Dr. Steevens’s Hospital from 1881 to 1884; later associated with Jervis Street and Richmond hospitals
• On Saturday, May 6, 1882, Dr. Thomas Myles, just turned 25 years of age, was summoned from Dr. Steevens’s Hospital to the Phoenix Park to attend to the newly-sworn in Chief Secretary for Ireland, Lord Frederick Cavendish, and his Permanent Undersecretary, Thomas Henry Burke, who had been stabbed in broad daylight by the Invincibles.
• Myles was one of six doctors who performed the post mortems - in the present U.S. Ambassador's Residence.
• The Irish Protestant Home Rule Association was founded on May 21, 1886, in the Castle Restaurant in Belfast’s Donegall Place.
• On June 23, 1886, Dr. Myles was involved in the noisy inaugural meeting of the Dublin branch of the Irish Protestant Home Rule Association held in the Central Hall, Westmoreland street.
• On April 21, 1888, at St. Peter’s Church in Dublin, he married Frances Elizabeth (Fanny) Ayres, daughter of an English-born clergyman and landowner, Rev. George Ayres (1825-1881).
• M.D. conferred later that year
• Professor of Pathology, RCSI, 1889-97
• In 1899, Dr. Thomas Myles was elected to hold the office of President of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland for a three-year term, 1900-1902.
• libel action and injunction against his fellow candidate Fitzgibbon who claimed that Myles's association with the United Irish League (U.I.L.) would `associate the college with the promoters of anarchy and discord.'
• Honorary Freeman of the City of Limerick in 1900, during the three-year Mayoralty of John Daly, on account of his medical achievements. The others so honoured under Daly were Thomas J. Clarke (soon to marry Daly's niece), James F. Egan and Maude Gonne.
• Along with Vincent Nash, the High Sheriff of Limerick, Thomas Myles was one of two Limerick men awarded knighthoods (Kt. Bach (1902)) in King Edward VII’s coronation honours list, announced on June 26, 1902.
• Ulster Volunteers established January 1913
• Irish Volunteers established November 1913
• Proclamation prohibiting the import of arms December 1913
• Ulster Volunteers landed arms at Larne April 1914
• Irish Volunteers landed arms at Howth July 1914 and at Kilcoole on August 1, 1914
• Gun-running yachtsmen:
  • Robert Erskine Childers (1870-1922) - Asgard
  • Edward Conor Marshall O'Brien (1880-1952) - Kelpie
  • Sir Thomas Myles (1857-1937) - Chotah
• Childers and Bulmer Hobson did not trust O’Brien to keep quiet about his landing plans, and so at a late stage Sir Thomas Myles was brought in and the arms were transferred from Kelpie to Chotah off the Welsh coast.
• arms landed at Kilcoole under cover of darkness
• Another Limerick link: the first gun landed in Howth was inscribed as a presentation to John Daly from the I.R.B.
• The U.K. entered WWI three days after Kilcoole; Sir Thomas Myles (like his older brother Jack) joined the Royal Army Medical Corps.
• named on a plaque listing members of the Limerick Protestant Young Mens’ Association who took part in the Great War, 1914-1918 ‘For King and Country'
• on duty in Dublin at Easter 1916; attended James O'Brien of D.M.P. (from Glin) who was shot dead at Dublin Castle on Easter Monday.
• continued to pursue his professional duties and met the demands made upon his services until he was in his mid-seventies
• died in the Richmond Hospital, July 14, 1937
• buried at Dean's Grange with Lady Myles
• Only the Irish Press obituary mentioned his gun-running exploits: “No One More Nationalist”: How Sir Thomas Myles Risked His Position For The Cause
• For probate purposes, his seventy-ton ketch Sheila was worth more than his home at 32 Leeson Park; a neighbouring house (no.26) sold for €6.5 million in 2007.
• On the beach at Kilcoole, a bronze plaque on a granite boulder reminds the visitor of the events that took place there in 1914. Sir Thomas Myles is named on the Kilcoole monument.
• Myles the surgeon is commemorated in his native city today by the annual Sir Thomas Myles Lecture at the University of Limerick, inaugurated in the year 2000 and delivered by an invited lecturer at the Sylvester O'Halloran Surgical Scientific Meeting every March.
• One of the alumni honoured to mark the tercentenary of TCD School of Medicine 1711-2011

Myles Creek

• In 1892, the Clare Journal reprinted a series of articles from the Weekly Freeman and National Press, by an unnamed author, under the title ‘Our Irish Watering Places’. On June 30, the article dealing with Kilkee contained the following:

  The spot to which I refer is now known as `Myles’ Creek' and a lovely spot it is, to boot. To show how very modern the names of some Kilkee places are I shall give this name as proof. I believe it owes it to Dr Tom Myles of Dublin, or his brother Jack. The former is the well-known [already, at the age of 35!] surgeon of Dublin City, but to politicians (I am not one) he is also well-known as a Protestant Home Ruler. Both are natives of Limerick, whose people, more than any other, have made Kilkee what it is.

The Dean: Edward Albert Myles (1865-1951)

• educated at T.C.D.
• ordained in Lisburn, 1889
• appointed Rector of Tullylish, near Gilford in county Down, May 10, 1896 (Limerick Leader, May 16, 1896)
• Predecessors as Rector of Tullylish included Rev. W. B. Yeats (1836-1862), grandfather of the poet.
• appointed Dean of Dromore, 1933
• Predecessors as Dean of Dromore included Bishop Berkeley, the philosopher; Robert Stuart O'Loughlin (1852-1928) from Carrigview, Clarina (related to Myles's uncle-in-law Rev. Anthony Joseph O'Loughlin (1817-1896)); and Henry Biddall Swanzy (1873-1932), Church of Ireland historian and genealogist.
• Celebrations for his Golden Jubilee as Rector of Tullylish were held in Uprichard Memorial Orange Hall, 1946
• lectured regularly on the history of Tullylish and wrote a short work on the subject (RCB Library)
• died in Banbridge Hospital, May 7, 1951, three days short of 55 years as Rector of Tullylish

• The present Rector of Tullylish, Rev. Arthur Young, and some of the parishioners of Tullylish at the memorial service at the restored grave of Dean Edward Myles, Knotty Ash Cemetery (Church of Ireland Gazette, July 28, 2006).

• also commemorated by a stained glass window in Tullylish Parish Church
• described in an obituary as `the last of his line'

The Lunatic: Henry Myles (1863-1928)

• Henry obtained different medical qualifications from his two eldest brothers: L.R.C.S.I. and L.M., L.A.H. Dub. 1891.
• By 1895, Jack Myles had been joined in Kumara by his younger brother and fellow-doctor Henry.
• Henry continued to be listed at Kumara in The Medical Directory until 1898 (inclusive).
• Daphne Evans, a Myles researcher, had `a cryptic note that states "Went to America"'.
• In the 1901 census, Henry Myles, Surgeon & Physician, reportedly born in Dublin and already aged 40, was enumerated as a patient and lunatic in the Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfries, Scotland.
• Henry received a bequest in his mother's 1904 will.
• not mentioned in his mother's funeral report (Limerick Chronicle September 29, 1904)
• appears to have remained in the Crichton Royal Institution from 1901 or earlier until his death there on July 2, 1928
• What form of lunacy could have afflicted a practicing medical doctor?
• Us[ual] Res[idence] at time of death: Hampstead, Glasnevin, Dublin, a similar institution

The next generation

• The Browne sisters of Beith and the Myles family of Limerick seem to have been — with the glorious exception of Mrs Cunningham and her distinguished family — uniquely infertile.
• 1911 census (Dolgellau): Total Children Born Alive to John Thomas Myles and Jane Isabel Myles: `None'
• For many years, I believed that the 11 children of John Myles and Prudence Bradshaw had not produced a single grandchild.
• But the 1922 marriage certificate of 33-year-old John (Honi) Myles (c.1888-1954), born in Wellington, New Zealand describes his father as John Myles, surgeon, and his mother as Jean [sic] Myles née Browne.
• In 1886 and 1887, Jack Myles probably was still on his first trip to the Antipodes.
• But Jane was still living with her parents in Edinburgh or possibly visiting her sister Mrs. Cunningham in Dublin until 1889.
• Correspondence between Jack Myles and Honi Myles survives but says nothing about the relationship between them.
• Honi's school records show that he lived in Ross with Mary Osmers, the schoolmistress.
• On December 15, 1896, Police-Constable John Osmers, at present stationed at Coromandel, petitioned for a dissolution of his marriage with Mary Osmers, on the grounds of her misconduct with Abel Webber, of Greymouth.
• Mary was at the time of their marriage `the mother of an illegitimate child by another man' (unnamed).
• ?????