James MacDonnell (physician)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James MacDonnell
Dr James MacDonnell (2).jpg
Bust by Charles Moore, Ulster Museum
Born14 April 1763
near Cushendall, County Antrim, Ireland
Died5 April 1845(1845-04-05) (aged 81)
Belfast
EducationDavid Manson's School, University of Edinburgh
OccupationPhysician
Known forFounder/patron of the Belfast General Hospital, Belfast Fever Hospital, Linenhall Library, Belfast Harp Society, Belfast Literary Society, Royal Belfast Academical Institution

James MacDonnell (14 April 1763 – 5 April 1845) was an Irish physician and polymath who was active and liberal figure in the cultural, civic and political life of Belfast. He was a founding patron of institutions that have since developed as the Royal Victoria Hospital, the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and the Linen Hall Library. Among some of his contemporaries his reputation suffered in 1803 as a result of his making a subscription for the arrest of his former friend, the outlawed United Irishman, Thomas Russell.

Life and family[]

James MacDonnell was born near Cushendall, County Antrim on 14 April 1763. His parents were Michael Roe, a Catholic relation of the earls of Antrim, and Elizabeth Jane MacDonnell (née Stewart). With two brothers, he was raised in his mother's Protestant faith.

Michael Traynor's hedge school in the Red Bay caves, and David Manson's pioneer “play-school” in Donegall Street in Belfast provided his early education. The “Belfast Latin Schoolmaster”, the Rev Nicholas Garnet of At George’s, Belfast, instructed him in classics. He was taught the Irish harp by Arthur O'Neill. In 1780, the year his father died, aged 17 he went to Edinburgh University to study medicine. He took the MD degree in the minimum time. His thesis (in Latin) called “De Submersis” — “On the drowned” — dealt with methods of resuscitation.[1] In 1784 he returned to Belfast, and lived at 13 Donegall Place.[2][3]

MacDonnell was married twice, first to Eliza Clarke on 9 September 1791. They had 1 daughter and 3 sons, Katherine Anne, Randal, Alexander, and John. Eliza died in 1798. MacDonnell then married Penelope Montgomery. MacDonnell died at his home at 13 Donegall Place on 5 April 1845. He is buried at the old churchyard at Layde near Cushendall, where his grave is marked with a Celtic cross. Aodh Mac Domhnaill composed Tuireadh an Doctuir Mhic Domnhaill in his memory, and there is a plaque to MacDonnell near Murlough, County Antrim. The Ulster Museum hold a bust of MacDonnell by Charles Moore, and the Royal Victoria Hospital hold a portrait of him. His papers are held by the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland in the James MacDonnell Archive.[2]

Career and public life[]

MacDonnell became "the unchallenged doyen of Belfast medicine".[4] He had an extensive clinical practice and conducted clinical investigations. He would often experiment on himself or on his friend Thomas Russell, but he published very little on this work. In 1797 he co-founded the charitable Belfast Dispensary and Fever Hospital in Factory Row (typhus was a great scourge of the town and it was impossible to control the infection and nurse victims in their own homes).[5] This small facility moved to West Street in 1799 and again in 1817 to a 100-bed hospital on Frederick Street at the cost of £5,000. The Frederick Street hospital was the predecessor to today's Royal Victoria Hospital. MacDonnell remained the "attending physician" until 1837.[2][6]

In 1822, he was one of four physicians who revived the Belfast Medical Society, and in 1835 was involved in the foundation of the Belfast medical school jointly with the Royal Belfast Academical Institution.[5] He had supported the foundation of the non-denominational Academical Institution in 1810, and served the college variously as Visitor and Manager between for 1810 to 1837. He established a Faculty of Medicine in 1835,[3] to which his son John was appointed professor of surgery.[7]

MaDonnell was also a leading figure in the broader cultural and intellectual life of the town. On 13 May 1788 he founded the Belfast Reading Society, which would later become the Linenhall Library. He sat on the society's committee until 1817, and was a frequent donor. He founded the Belfast Literary Society on 23 October 1801, and served as its first president. In July 1792 he was an organiser of the national harp festival in Belfast (arranged to coincide with the town's Bastille Day celebrations),[8] and with his brother Alexander he co-founded the Belfast Harp Society on 17 March 1808, endowing their former teacher Arthur O'Neill as the principal instructor. This society briefly had a resident academy at 21 Cromac Street for blind students. The MacDonnell brothers also founded a society for the promotion of the Irish language at Pottinger's Entry in July 1809. From 1832, MacDonnell was a member of the Belfast Natural History Society.[9]

Association with United Irishmen[]

At a Bastille Day town meeting in 1792, MacDonnell helped move an Irish Volunteer resolution approving Catholic Emancipation, which he linked it to the call for the abolition of slavery.[10][11] Speaking on the same motion were friends who, following an address by Dublin barrister and Catholic Committee secretary Theobald Wolfe Tone, had joined together the previous October to form the Society of United Irishmen. MacDonnell had hosted Tone in Belfast and, while he may never taken the Society's Test or pledge (devised by fellow physician William Drennan), he clearly sympathised with its resolve:.[12] to attain "an impartial and adequate representation of the Irish nation in parliament [by forwarding] . . . and a union of power among Irishmen of every religious persuasion".[13] MacDonnell, however, was to oppose the Society's drift toward insurrection, as did his Dublin counterpart, the physicist and polymath Whitley Stokes, to whom Tone introduced MacDonnell in Belfast that July.[14]

In July 1798, Henry Joy McCracken was executed in Belfast for his role in leading the rebels in the Battle of Antrim. When her brother was cut from the gallows, Mary Ann McCracken summoned MacDonnell in hope his skill in resuscitation might revive him. MacDonnell responded by sending his brother, John, "a skilful surgeon".[15]

"Betrayal" of Thomas Russell[]

Thomas Russell had lodged with MacDonnell from October 1792 to February 1794 and MacDonnell helped him secure the position as librarian to the Belfast Reading Society (the Linen Hall Library). After Russell was arrested in 1797, MacDonnell wrote to him in Newgate Prison. But MacDonnell had taken issue with Russell's militant republicanism, suggesting that, just as in their shared scientific interests, his judgement in politics was often rash and, in working "all from first principles", naive.[16]

In 1803, MacDonnell warned Russell, then an outlaw, that if he returned to Belfast he would find "a great difference in this place". When Russell did so, and found this to be the case--that people could be roused to support Robert Emmet's attempt at a renewed insurrection---citizens of the town raised a subscription for his arrest. MacDonnell contributed 50 guineas. He later claimed that he did so dispel suspicion of his own sudden departure from Belfast, a result of his being called away to perform an operation.[17] Russell was subsequently captured in Dublin and hanged in Downpatrick.

Former friends denounced MacDonnell as a "Judas".[9] In a poem sketched for his sister Martha McTier, Epigraph-on the Living (October 1803), William Drennan decried "a man who could subscribe To hang that friend at Last Whom future history will describe The Brutus of Belfast."[18] The botanist, and friend of Russell and the McCrackens, John Templeton withdrew from the Belfast Literary Society rather than continue to associate with MacDonnell.[19]

MacDonnell's later cooperation with Mary-Ann McCracken in the Belfast Harp Society and with William Drennan and other former United Irishmen in the foundation and management of the Academical Institution suggests that the bitterness was, in time, set aside.[3]

References[]

  1. ^ GOAHS (2016-07-09). "JAMES MACDONNELL,MD (1763-1845) by Peter Froggatt". Glens Of Antrim Historical Society. Retrieved 2021-11-17.
  2. ^ a b c Froggatt, Peter. "MacDonnell, James". Dictionary of Irish Biography. Royal Irish Academy. Retrieved 4 September 2021.
  3. ^ a b c Froggatt, Peter. "James McDonnell (1763 - 1845): Physician - 'Father of Belfast Medicine'". The Dictionary of Ulster Biography. Retrieved 4 September 2021.
  4. ^ Froggatt, Peter. "MacDonnell, James". Dictionary of Irish Biography. Royal Irish Academy. Retrieved 4 September 2021.
  5. ^ a b "Ulster Medical Society: James McDonnell". www.ums.ac.uk. Retrieved 2021-11-18.
  6. ^ Simms, Samuel. "James McDonnell". Ulster Medical Society. Retrieved 4 September 2021.
  7. ^ Simms, Samuel. "James McDonnell". Ulster Medical Society. Retrieved 4 September 2021.
  8. ^ Bardon, Jonathan (1982). Belfast, An Illustrated History. Belfast: Blsckstaff Press. p. 66. ISBN 0856402729.
  9. ^ a b Froggatt, Peter. "MacDonnell, James". Dictionary of Irish Biography. Royal Irish Academy. Retrieved 4 September 2021.
  10. ^ William Bruce and Henry Joy, ed. (1794). Belfast politics: or, A collection of the debates, resolutions, and other proceedings of that town in the years 1792, and 1793. Belfast: H. Joy & Co. pp. 52–65.
  11. ^ Ireland, Culture Northern (2008-02-28). "Hidden Connections: The Abolitionist Movement in Ireland". Culture Northern Ireland. Retrieved 2021-11-17.
  12. ^ McNeill, Mary (1960). The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken, 1770–1866. Dublin: Allen Figgis & Co. p. 76.
  13. ^ William Bruce and Henry Joy, ed. (1794). Belfast politics: or, A collection of the debates, resolutions, and other proceedings of that town in the years 1792, and 1793. Belfast: H. Joy & Co. p. 145.
  14. ^ Lyons, J. B. (2009). "Stokes, Whitley | Dictionary of Irish Biography". www.dib.ie. Retrieved 2021-12-30.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  15. ^ McNeill (1960), p. 187
  16. ^ Quinn, James (2002). Soul on Fire: a Life of Thomas Russell. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. pp. 120–121, 193, 271. ISBN 9780716527329.
  17. ^ Quinn (2002), p. 271
  18. ^ Whelan, Fergus (2020). May Tyrants Tremble: The Life of William Drennan, 1754–1820. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. pp. 254, 258. ISBN 9781788551212.
  19. ^ Whelan (2020), p. 268
Retrieved from ""