Maurice Healy

All-for-Ireland League group portrait of five of its Independent Members of Parliament after Maurice Healy's March 1910 by-election win in North-east Cork, published in the "Cork Free Press" issue 30 July 1910.
The other MPs pictured are: Patrick Guiney (North Cork), James Gilhooly (West Cork), D. D. Sheehan (Mid Cork), and Eugene Crean (South-east Cork).
At the December 1910 general election Maurice Healy was returned for (Cork city).
His elder brother, Timothy Healy, was also an All-for-Ireland League MP, first for North Louth and later for North-east Cork.

Maurice Healy (3 January 1859 – 9 November 1923) was an Irish nationalist politician, lawyer and Member of Parliament (MP). As a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, he was returned to in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland four times between 1885 and 1918.

He was one of twins, the third son born to Maurice, a Poor Law Union clerk, and Eliza Healy (née Sullivan) in Bantry. His mother died during the birth. As he grew up he became very close to his elder brother Tim Healy: they even married sisters. It is said that the nurse placed Maurice in the young Tim's arms and said, "This little boy has no mother now and you will have to be a mother to him." The orphaned children were effectively raised by their maternal grandmother, Jane Sullivan. The family moved to Lismore, where he was educated at the local Christian Brothers school.

Admitted as a solicitor in 1882, he practised as such and was returned to parliament four times, first as a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party for Cork city from 1885 to 1900, in which year standing as a Healyite nationalist he was defeated by William O'Brien in a bitter campaign. He was returned again for Cork city in May 1909 to January 1910. In 1910 for north-east Cork, this time as a supporter and member of William O'Brien's All-for-Ireland Party (AFIL). From the December 1910 general election until the December 1918 general election he again represented Cork city.

His force in parliament was land law. He was a close confidant of his brother and although more retiring and stolid than his better known elder brother Tim Healy, he was considered the more intelligent and often acted as a counterbalance to his brother's emotionality. On the outbreak of World War I in 1914 both had a son enlisted in one of the Irish Divisions.

His uncle, Timothy Daniel Sullivan was also a member of parliament, as was his oldest brother, Thomas Joseph Healy and father-in-law A. M. Sullivan. His son, also called Maurice (1887–1943), educated at Clongowes Wood College stood unsuccessfully as an AFIL candidate for West Waterford in December 1910, was a regular contributor (including much satirical verse) to the O'Brienite Cork Free Press. Maurice (junior) moved to England after the founding of the Irish Free State where he was both a successful lawyer, and a broadcaster for the BBC during the early years of World War II. He wrote the well-known legal memoir The Old Munster Circuit and the popular Stay Me With Flagons: A Book about Wine and Other Things.

Maurice (senior) died at his residence, Ballintemple, Cork, on 9 November 1923 and was buried in St. Joseph's cemetery.

Sources

• Paul Bew, Healy, Timothy Michael (1855–1931) in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004)
• Patrick Maume The long Gestation, Irish Nationalist Life 1891–1918 (1999)
• Tim Cadogan & Jeremiah Falvey A Biographical Dictionary of Cork (2006)

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Maurice Healy