James Haughton (1795–1873)
was a social reformer and temperance activist.
James Haughton, son of Samuel Pearson Haughton (1748–1828), by
Mary, daughter of James Pim of Rushin, Queen's County, Ireland,
was born in Carlow 5 May 1795, and educated at Ballitor, County
Kildare, from 1807 to 1810, under James White, a Quaker. After
filling several situations to learn his business he, in 1817,
settled in Dublin, where he became a corn and flour factor, in
partnership with his brother William. He retired in 1850.
Although educated as a Friend, he joined the Unitarians in 1834,
and remained throughout his life a strong believer in their
tenets.
He supported the anti-slavery movement at an early period and
took an active part in it until 1838, going in that year to
London as a delegate to a convention. Shortly after Father
Mathew took the pledge, 10 April 1838, Haughton became one of
his most devoted disciples. For many years he gave most of his
time and energies to promoting total abstinence and to
advocating legislative restrictions on the sale of intoxicating
drinks.
In December 1844 he was the chief promoter of a fund which
was raised to pay some of the debts of Father Mathew and release
him from prison. About 1835 he commenced a series of letters in
the public press which made his name widely known. He wrote on
temperance, slavery, British India, peace, capital punishment,
sanitary reform, and education. His first letters were signed
‘The Son of a Water Drinker,’ but he soon commenced using his
own name and continued to write till 1872. He took a leading
part in a series of weekly meetings which were held in Dublin in
1840, when so numerous were the social questions discussed that
a newspaper editor called the speakers the anti-everythingarians.
In association with Daniel O'Connell, of whose character he had
a very high opinion, he advocated various plans for the
amelioration of the condition of Ireland and the repeal of the
union, but was always opposed to physical force. He became a
vegetarian in 1846, both on moral and sanitary grounds. For two
or three years before his death he was president of the
Vegetarian Society of the United Kingdom. He was one of the
first members of the Statistical Society of Dublin, 1847, a
founder of the Dublin Mechanics' Institute, 1849, in the same
year was on the committee of the Dublin Peace Society, aided in
abolishing Donnybrook fair 1855, and took a chief part in 1861
in opening the Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin on Sundays.
He died at 35 Eccles Street, Dublin, on 20 Feb. 1873, and was
buried in Mount Jerome cemetery 24 Feb. in the presence of an
immense crowd of people.
Source: Wikipedia
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Carlow County -
Ireland Genealogical Projects (IGP
TM)
SAMUEL
HAUGHTON
(1821-1897) |
Samuel Haughton, Irish scientific writer, the son of
James Haughton (1795—1873), was born at Carlow on the 21st
of December 1821. His father, the son of a Quaker, but
himself a Unitarian, was an active philanthropist, a strong
supporter of Father Theobald Mathew, a vegetarian, and an
anti-slavery worker and writer. After a distinguished career
in Trinity College, Dublin, Samuel was elected a fellow in
1844. lie was ordained priest in 1847, but seldom preached.
In 1851 he was appointed professor of geology in Trinity
College, and this post he held for thirty years. He began
the study of medicine in 1859, and in 1862 took the degree
of M.D. in the university of Dublin. He was then made
registrar of the Medical School, the status of which he did
much to improve, and he represented the university on the
General Medical Council from 1878 to 1896. He was elected
F.R.S. in 1858, and in course of time Oxford conferred upon
him the hon. degree of DCL., and Cambridge and Edinburgh
that of LL.D. He was a man of remarkable knowledge and
ability, and he communicated papers on widely different
subjects to various learned societies and scientific
journals in London and Dublin. He wrote on the laws of
equilibrium and motion of solid and fluid bodies (1846), on
sun-heat, terrestrial radiation, geological climates and on
tides. He wrote also on the granites of Leinster and
Donegal. and on the cleavage and joint-planes in the Old Red
Sandstone of Waterford (1857-1858). He was president of the
Royal Irish Academy from 1886 to 1891, and for twenty years
he was secretary of the Royal Zoological Society of Ireland.
He died in Dublin on the 3rd of October 1897 at the age of
seventy six.
Source: William Haughton & Dr. Richard E.
Haughton :
http://www.countyhistory.com/books/doc.fayet/477.htm
Irish Criminology
(Vol. 1) Last of the Betagii and
(Vol. 6) The Penology of Samuel Haughton are special.
The forgotten execution of the Catholic housewife, Mary
Daly, and her young Protestant lover, Joseph Taylor, in
1903, was not such a simple event in the criminal calendar
of ‘Queen’s County’, and (10.Vol. 1) Last of the Betagii
demonstrates it.
Coincidentally, Dr Samuel Haughton
was born within a few miles of where Mary Daly grew up. Of
Killeshin and Quaker origins, Haughton’s family straddled
the Carlow/Laois border. He lived in Burrin Street, Carlow,
where his house can still be seen. It stands in a line
between Carlow Castle and what was the old (and the new)
prison. But Haughton’s story is different. And it belongs
where we find it – right in the midst of the nineteenth
century struggle for a higher form of civilization. A
contemporary and adversary of Darwin, Haughton was one of
the great Victorians. (10.Vol. 6) The Penology of Samuel
Haughton is a short (unfinished) study describing the
great scientist’s preoccupation with capital punishment.
Haughton might well have been regarded as ‘Father of the
Drop’, had his endeavours not taken a tragic/comic turn.
Source:
Irish
Criminology Page:
http://www.irish-criminology.com/index.html
The Carlow Calendar
The Carlow Calendar is a compilation of
executions occurring in Carlow County over the period of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Inspired by friends, it
unearths in a potted way the concerns of past murderers and
how they were dealt with in what came to be – after the 1798
rebellion – one of the least disturbed counties in Ireland.
It started with a few fellows expounding on Lucy Sly, the
last hanging of a woman in Carlow, then a few other names
were being dropped in rapid inaccurate succession. The
upshot is the compilation of this record, which, if it
doesn’t do much else, it will help – one hopes – to keep the
record straight.
Source:
Irish
Criminology Page:
http://www.irish-criminology.com/index.html
"Haughton's Drop."
Carlow is a small county, the second
smallest in Ireland. Its land is productive. It is sometimes
referred to (in a tongue-in-cheek manner) as the county with
more than its share of the "nearly famous." In years past
those fortunate enough to own large holdings were prosperous
and such people found time to devote their mental energies
to matters other than managing their estates. Many were
wealthy enough to employ professional managers while they
got on with their pet, often unconventional, projects.
Others, from the merchant class, in what was, and to a great
extent still is, a prosperous corner of Ireland, made enough
money to involve themselves in similar activities. Samuel
HAUGHTON, for example was one of the eccentrics who
abounded in Ireland in the Victorian era. Born in Carlow, he
was a scientist and mathematician and graduated in
mathematics from Trinity College before turning his
attention to medicine. He is best remembered for a discovery
which combined all three disciplines at which he was adept.
It took some time to work out, but in the end his formula
was of benefit to a tiny percentage of the population,
although is stopped short of saving their lives. He worked
out a mathematical, scientific and medical computation known
as "Haughton's Drop." The "drop" was not one of medicinal
liquid but an instruction to the hangman when dealing with
prisoners sentenced to death. Until this time, the
unfortunate wretches sentenced to be "hanged by the neck
until dead" usually suffered from a slow and agonizing
process of strangulation, something which the mob that
gathered for executions thoroughly enjoyed. "Haughton's
Drop," however, took the "fun" out of execution day. It
determined the precise length of rope; the exact depth of
fall which a condemned man of a certain weight required in
order to die instantly rather than linger half-alive in
front of his viewers.
Source: This 'N That -
Carlow, Jean R. c2008
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