OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hunt, Thomas (1802-1851)

​HUNT, THOMAS (1802–1851), inventor of a method of curing stammering, was born in Dorsetshire in 1802, and is stated to have been educated at Winchester. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, with the intention of becoming a minister of the church of England, but the affliction of a fellow-collegian who suffered from stammering is said to have arrested his attention, and he left Cambridge without taking a degree in order to devote himself to the study and cure of defective utterance. He found that the lips, the tongue, the jaws, and the breath were in different cases the offending members. Being satisfied of his ability to cure stammering, he sought wider experience in a provincial tour, and finally in 1827 settled in Regent Street, London. He relied on simple common-sense directions. Each case was studied separately. Sometimes slow and sometimes rapid articulation was recommended to his patients, others were taught to place their tongues in particular positions, and others practised improved means of breathing. He held that not one case in fifty was the consequence of malorganisation, and objected to surgical operations. At an early date, 1828, he was patronised by Sir John Forbes, M.D., F.R.S., who sent him pupils for twenty-four years. When George Pearson, the chief witness in the case respecting the attempt on the life of Queen Victoria made by John Francis on 30 May 1842, was brought into court, he was incapable of giving utterance to his evidence, but after a fortnight's instruction from Hunt he spoke with perfect readiness, a fact certified by Sir Peter Laurie, the sitting magistrate. The ‘Lancet’ of 16 May 1846 made a severe attack on Hunt as an unlicensed practitioner. Hunt ably replied in the ‘Literary Gazette’ of 30 May. His leisure was spent in Dorset, where he cultivated land, and made agricultural improvements and experiments. In 1849 his numerous pupils, belonging to all professions, in commemoration of his twenty-two years' service, subscribed for his bust in marble, which was modelled by Joseph Durham [q. v.], and exhibited in the Royal Academy. He died at Godlingstone, near Swanage, Dorsetshire, on 18 Aug. 1851, leaving his practice to his son James [q. v.] His widow, Mary, died 25 Jan. 1855, aged 49.
G. C. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/O'Dempsey, Dermot

Diarmait Ua Diummusaig in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
​O'DEMPSEY, DERMOT (d. 1193), Irish chief, called in Irish writings Diarmait Ua Diomusaigh, was son of Cubroghda O'Dempsey, who died in 1162. He claimed descent from Ros Failghe, eldest son of Cathaoir Mór, king of Ireland in the second century, and was thus of common descent with O'Conchobhair Failghe, from whom Offaly takes its name. He became chief of Clan Mailughra on his father's death. This was the territory of the O'Dempseys, and lay on both banks of the Barrow in the King's and Queen's Counties, and as far as the edge of the great heath of Maryborough. He afterwards became chief of the whole territory of the group of clans allied to his, all descended from Ros Failghe; this territory included not only the modern baronies of East and West Offaly, co. Kildare, but also the baronies of Portnehinch and Tinehinch, Queen's County, and that part of the King's County which lies in the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin. His chief stronghold was a stone fort, afterwards replaced by a castle, of which the ruins remain on the Rock of Dunamase, a hill in the Queen's County which commands a wide view over the lands of his septs. He was the only O'Dempsey who became king of the whole territory, though after his time, owing to the dispossession of O'Connor Faly by the Fitzgeralds, the O'Dempseys were long the chief clan of the district, in which many of them still remain, though they have prospered little since their share in the massacre of Mullachmaisten or Mullaghmast in 1577. Dermot founded in 1178 a Cistercian abbey at Rosglas, co. Kildare, now known as Monastereven, from a more ancient church of St. Eimhín, which stood on the site of the monastery. The abbot sat in the Irish parliament. The site is now occupied by the house of the late Marquis of Drogheda. O'Dempsey died in 1193. He left a son Maelseachlainn, who was killed by O'Maelmhuaidh of Fircal in 1216.
[Annala Rioghachta Eireann, ed. O'Donovan, vol. iii. Dublin, 1851; Leabhar na Gceart, ed. O'Donovan, Dublin, 1847; Cath Muighi Rath, ed. O'Donovan, Dublin, 1842; local Knowledge.]
N. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/O'Daly, Muiredhach

Muireadhach Ó Dálaigh in the ODNB.
​O'DALY, MUIREDHACH (fl. 1213), Irish poet, was of the family of Maelisa O'Daly (in Irish Ua Dalaigh), ‘ollamh Ereann agus Alban’ (literary professor of Ireland and Scotland), who died in 1185. His home was on the shore of Lough Derryvarra, co. Westmeath, and he calls himself O'Daly of Meath, to distinguish him from O'Daly of Finnyvarra, co. Clare, also a poet in the thirteenth century. He was living at Drumcliff, co. Sligo, in 1213, when Fionn O'Brolchain, steward or maor of O'Donnell, came to Connaught to collect tribute. The steward visited his house, and began to talk discourteously to the poet, who took up an axe and killed him on the spot. Domhnall O'Donnell pursued him. He fled to Clanricarde, co. Galway, and Burke at first protected him, and afterwards enabled O'Daly to flee into Thomond. Thither O'Donnell pursued him and ravaged the country. Donough Cairbreach O'Brien [q. v.] sent the poet on to Limerick, and O'Donnell laid siege to the city, and O'Daly had to fly from place to place till he reached Dublin, being everywhere protected as a man of learning. O'Donnell later in the year marched on Dublin, and the citizens banished O'Daly, who fled to Scotland. When in Clanricarde he composed an explanation of his misfortune in verse, and mentioned that he loved the English and drank wine with them. In Scotland, however, he wrote three poems in praise of O'Donnell, which led that chief to forgive him, and in the end to grant him lands and cattle.
He is to be distinguished from Muirhedhach O'Daly, who was also a poet, who lived in 1600, and wrote the poem of 396 verses, ‘Cainfuighear liom lorg na bhfear’ (‘The race of men shall be sung by me’), which tells of all the branches of the house of FitzGerald.
[Annala Rioghachta Eireann, ed. O'Donovan, vol. iii.; Trans. of the Iberno-Celtic Society, Dublin, 1820; O'Grady's Cat. of Irish Manuscripts in the Brit. Mus.]
N. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/O'Doherty, William James

​O'DOHERTY, WILLIAM JAMES (1835–1868), sculptor, was born in Dublin in 1835. He studied in the government school of design attached to the Royal Dublin Society, with the intention of becoming a painter, but afterwards, by the advice of Constantine Panormo, A.R.H.A., who was then one of the assistant masters in that institution, he turned his attention to modelling, and within a year gained the prize for his model of ‘The Boy and the Bird.’ On the death of Panormo in 1852 he entered the studio of Joseph R. Kirke, R.H.A., and worked there until 1854, when, at the suggestion of John Edward Jones [q. v.] the sculptor, he came to London. His first appearance at the Royal Academy was in 1857, when he exhibited, under the name of Dogherty, a model in plaster of ‘Gondoline,’ a subject taken from Kirke White's poems, and afterwards executed in marble for Mr. R.C.L. Bevan the banker. In 1860 he sent the model of the marble statue of ‘Erin,’ executed for the Marquis of Downshire. It was engraved by T. W. Knight for the ‘Art Journal’ of 1861. Both in 1860 and 1861, when he sent to the British Institution ‘One of the Surrey Volunteers,’ his works appeared under the name of Doherty; but in 1862 he appears to have adopted that of O'Doherty. His subsequent works included ‘Alethe,’ a marble statuette executed for Mr. Bevan, and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1862, and some portrait busts exhibited in 1863 and 1864. About three years before his death he went to Rome to pursue his studies and to execute a commission, the subject of which was to be ‘The Martyr.’ His early death in February 1868, in the hospital of La Charité in Berlin, while on a visit to that city, ended a brief career of much promise.
[Art Journal, 1861 p. 252, 1868 p. 73; Exhibition Catalogues of the Royal Academy and British Institution (Living Artists), 1857–1864.]
R. E. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/O'Doirnin, Peter

Peadar Ó Doirnín in the ODNB.
​O'DOIRNIN, PETER (1682–1768), Irish poet, was born in the mountainous district to the north-west of Cashel, co. Tipperary. Political troubles caused him to leave home and to settle in Ulster at Drumcree, co. Armagh. Here he wrote a poem on the ancient divisions of Ireland, which led to his acquaintance with Arthur Brownlow of Lurgan Clun Brasil, then the possessor of the ‘Book of Armagh’ [see MacMoyre, Florence], who took him into his house as a tutor for his children and an instructor to himself in Irish literature. A political difference after many years led to a rupture of this friendship, and O'Doirnin left the house. He then married Rose Toner, and settled as a schoolmaster near Forkhill, co. Armagh. Maurice O'Gorman had a school there, but O'Doirnin drew away all his scholars, and when O'Gorman closed his school and walked off to Dublin, wrote a satire upon him, which is still extant. He also wrote ‘Suirghe Pheadair Ui Dhoirnin’ (‘The courtship of Peter O'Doirnin’), of eight twelve-line stanzas, printed in O'Daly's ‘Poets of Munster’ (p. 106). He implores his love to fly with him ‘go talamh shíl mBrian’ (‘to the land of the race of Brian’)—i.e. to his native province, Munster. A manuscript in the Cambridge University Library contains two other poems by him. Some of his poems ​in their extant versions are in the dialect of Louth, which he may have adopted from long residence in the district, unless, indeed, some local scribe, and not the author, is responsible. He died 5 April 1768 at Friarstown in the townland of Shean, near Forkhill, co. Armagh. He was buried near the north-east wall of the churchyard of Urney, co. Louth, three miles north of Dundalk. The parish priest of Forkhill, Father Healy, had so great a respect for his learning and virtues that when dying he desired to be buried in O'Doirnin's tomb, and this wish was carried out.
[O'Daly's Poets and Poetry of Munster, Dublin, 1849; Works; information from S. H. O'Grady; Reeves MS. in Cambridge University Library.]
N. M.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/O'Donnel, James Louis

Surname O'Donel in the ODNB.
​O'DONNEL, JAMES LOUIS (1738–1811), ‘the Apostle of Newfoundland,’ was born at Knocklofty, Tipperary, in 1738. At the age of eighteen he left Ireland and entered the Franciscan convent of St. Isidore at Rome. He was afterwards sent to Bohemia, and was ordained priest at Prague in 1770. In 1775 he returned to Ireland and settled at Waterford. In 1779 he was appointed prior of the Franciscan house there, and subsequently became provincial of the order in Ireland.
In 1784, at the request of the leading Newfoundland merchants and their agents at Waterford, O'Donnel was sent out to Newfoundland as prefect and vicar-apostolic. He was the first fully accredited Roman catholic priest who had appeared in the island. He obtained permission to build churches and schools, and did his utmost to diminish sectarian animosities.
On 21 Sept. 1796 he was consecrated at Quebec titular bishop of Thyatira, and on his return to Newfoundland made his first episcopal visitation. In 1801 he published a body of diocesan statutes, and divided the diocese into missions, he himself, owing to the paucity of clergy, being obliged to act as a mission-priest. During succeeding years he used his influence among the Roman catholics to check disaffection to the government. In 1800 O'Donnel discovered and reported to the commandant, Major-general Skerret, a projected mutiny among the soldiers of the Newfoundland regiment stationed at St. John's. The government awarded him a life pension of 50l. for his important service to the colony, and his position in Newfoundland was thenceforth equal in everything but name to that of the governor. O'Donnel's missionary exertions wore out his health, and in 1807 he was obliged to resign his see and return to Ireland.
He spent his last years at Waterford, where he was known as a learned and eloquent preacher, and died there on 15 April 1811.
[Gent. Mag. 1811, i. 497, copied in Ryan's Biographia Hibernica; Hatton and Harvey's Newfoundland, pp. 70, 84–5; Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography (not strictly accurate in details).]
G. Le G. N.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Clephane, John

​CLEPHANE, JOHN, M.D. (d. 1758), physician, a Scotchman, took his degree of M.D. at St. Andrews on 29 May 1729. He acted as physician to the army in the Low Countries. He was appointed physician to St. George's Hospital on 8 May 1751, and admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians on 25 June 1762. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on 8 Jan. 1746, but was not admitted until 4 May 1749. Clephane died in the Isle of Wight on 11 Oct. 1758. He was in the expedition to Quiberon Bay in 1746 under General St. Clair. He was afterwards the familiar friend and correspondent of David Hume, St. Clair's secretary.
G. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Clenocke, Maurice

​CLENOCKE or CLYNOG, MAURICE (d. 1580?), divine, was a native of Wales, and educated at Oxford, where he was admitted B.C.L. in 1548. Having taken orders, he became in Queen Mary's reign chaplain, servant, and domestic to Cardinal Pole, rector of Orpington, Kent, and dean of Shoreham and Croydon (Strype, Memorials, iii. 390, folio). In 1556 he was presented by Bishop Goldwell to the rectory of Corwen or Cwrr Owen, in the diocese of St. Asaph (Willis, Survey of St. Asaph, ed. 1801, i. 271). On the decease of Dr. William Glyn, bishop of Bangor, in May 1558, Clenocke was nominated by Queen Mary to be his successor, but was never consecrated. On Elizabeth's accession he was obliged to surrender all his preferments for refusing to comply with the court measures. In 1560 he travelled to Rome with Thomas Goldwell, bishop of St. Asaph. In the Vatican collections there is a paper written about that time apparently for the purpose of supplying the holy see with information which might be of service in the event of the pope filling the vacant sees in England. This document states that Clenocke 'is a good man, but is no preacher. He is worthy of the see of Bangor, to which he has been nominated' (Brady, Episcopal Succession, ii. 324). In 1567 he was a camerarius of the Hospital of the English Pilgrims at Rome, and subsequently he became its custos or warden. Pope Gregory XIII ordered the suppression of the hospital until the kingdom of England should return to the catholic church, and converted the institution into a college. In 1578 Clenocke, the last warden of the hospital, was made the first rector of the English college. A commotion was excited among the English students by his alleged favouritism to the Welsh. There were thirty-three English students in the college, and only seven Welshmen. The English students at but broke out in open mutiny (February 1578-9), and declared that they would leave Rome in a body unless another rector were appointed, and petitioned the pope to entrust the college to the government of the Society of Jesus. A detailed account of this dispute is given by Canon Tierney in his edition of Dodd (Church History, ii. 167-76). In March 1578-9 the pope gave over the management of the college entirely to the Jesuits, and on 23 April 1579 Father Alfonso Agazzari was appointed rector. The Jesuits retained the charge of the college till the suppression of their order by Clement XIV in 1773.
Clenocke, who is often called 'Dr. Maurice,' retired about 1580 to Rouen, where he embarked on board a ship bound for Spain, and was drowned at sea.
T. C.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gregory, Edmund

​GREGORY, EDMUND (fl. 1646), author, born about 1615, was the son of Henry Gregory, rector of, and benefactor to, Sherrington, Wiltshire (Hoare, Modern Wiltshire, ‘Heytesbury,’ p. 239). He entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1632, and proceeded B.A. on 5 May 1636 (Wood, Fasti, ed. Bliss, i. 487). He wrote: ‘An Historical Anatomy of Christian Melancholy, sympathetically set forth, in a threefold state of the soul. … With a concluding Meditation on the Fourth Verse of the Ninth Chapter of St. John,’ 8vo, London, 1646. To this interesting little work, which contains some verse of more than average merit, is prefixed a portrait of the author in his thirty-first year, engraved by W. Marshall. As he is not depicted in the habit of a clergyman of the church of England, Wood is probably wrong in his conjecture that he was episcopally ordained (Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 207-8). An Edmund Gregory, a resident of Cuxham, Oxfordshire, and described as an ‘esquire,’ died at Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, in 1691 (Administration Act Book, P.C.C., 1691, fol. 230).
[Granger's Biogr. Hist. of England, 2nd edit, ii. 198.]
G. G.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gregory, David (1696-1767)

​GREGORY, DAVID (1696–1767), dean of Christ Church, Oxford, was the son of Dr. David Gregory (1661–1708) [q. v.], Savilian professor at Oxford. Two years after his father's death Gregory was admitted a queen's scholar of Westminster School, whence in 1714 he was elected to Christ Church. He graduated B.A. 8 May 1718, and M.A. 27 June 1721, and on 18 April 1724 became the first professor of modern history and languages at Oxford. He soon afterwards took orders and was appointed rector of Semley, Wiltshire; proceeding B.D. 13 March 1731 and D.D. in the following year (7 July 1732). He continued to hold his professorship till 1736, when he resigned it on his appointment to a canonry in Christ Church Cathedral (installed 8 June). Twenty years later he was promoted to the deanery (installed 18 May 1756), and 15 Sept. 1759 was also appointed master of Sherborne Hospital, Durham. In 1761 he was prolocutor of the lower house of convocation. He died at the age of seventy-one, 16 Sept. 1767, and was buried under a plain slab with a short Latin inscription in the cathedral; his picture hangs in the college hall. He was son-in-law to the Duke of Kent, having married Lady Mary Grey, who died before him (in 1762, aged 42), and lies in the same grave. Gregory was a considerable benefactor both to his college and Sherborne Hospital. While canon (1750) he repaired and adorned Christ Church Hall, and presented to it busts of the two first kings of the house of Hanover. Under his directions when dean the upper rooms in the college library were finished (1761), and he is said to have raised the terrace in the great quadrangle. At Sherborne he began by cutting down a wood on the hospital estates, and with the proceeds from the sale of the timber erected a new building for the poorer brethren, twenty rooms with a common hall in the centre. A eulogy of Gregory written by an anonymous author (Essay on the Life of David Gregory, late Dean of Christ Church, London, 1769, 4to) says that before his time the brethren of Sherborne were huddled together in wretched little huts. Gregory employed his leisure in writing Latin verses, and testified his loyalty by Latin poems on the death of George I and the accession of George II, lamenting also in verse the death of the latter, and congratulating George III when he succeeded his grandfather.
E. T. B.
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gregory, Donald

​GREGORY, DONALD (d. 1836), antiquary, was secretary to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and to the Iona Club, and was a member of the Ossianic Society of Glasgow and the Royal Society of the Antiquaries of the North at Copenhagen. About 1830 he announced his intention of publishing a work on the Western Highlands and Isles of Scotland (which he frequently visited) and received help and information from many quarters. The book was published at Edinburgh in 1836, 8vo, as ‘History of the Western Highlands and Isles of Scotland from .… 1493 to … 1625; with on introductory sketch from A.D. 80 to 1493' (reviewed in ‘The Athenæum’ for 18 March 1837, p. 188 f.) A second edition was published in 1881, 8vo. Gregory died at Edinburgh on 21 0ct. 1836.
[Gent. Mag. 1836, pt. ii. p. 668; Gregory's Western Higlands.]
# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gregory, Duncan Farquharson

​GREGORY, DUNCAN FARQUHARSON (1813–1844), mathematician, born at Edinburgh in April 1813, was the youngest son of James Gregory (1753-1821) [q. v.], professor of medicine in the university of Edinburgh. Till he was nine years old he was taught entirely by his mother; in October 1825 he was sent to the Edinburgh Academy, and after two years there spent a winter at a private academy at Geneva. As a child he displayed great powers in acquiring knowledge, as well as ingenuity in mechanical contrivances (such as making an orrery), and at Geneva his mathematical talent attracted attention. On his return he attended classes at the Edinburgh University, working at chemistry, making experiments in polarised light, and advancing in the higher parts of mathematics, under the tuition of Professor Wallace. In October 1833 he commenced residence at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took the degrees of B.A. in 1838 and M.A. in 1841; he came out as fifth wrangler in the tripos of 1837, and was elected fellow of Trinity in October 1840. He served the office of moderator in 1842, and was appointed assistant tutor of his college. Soon after taking his degree he was one of the projectors and the first editor of the ‘Cambridge Mathematical Journal,’ and many of the most valuable of its papers are from his pen. These have been collected in a volume, under the title ‘The Mathematical Writings of D. F. Gregory,’ edited by his friend Mr. W.Walton, Cambridge, 1865. In 1841 he published his ‘Examples of the Processes of the Differential and Integral Calculus,’ a work which produced a great change for the better in the Cambridge mathematical books. It is the first in which constant use is made of the method known by the name of the separation of the symbols of operation, and the author has enlivened its pages by occasionally introducing historical notices of the problems discussed. A second edition appeared after his death in 1846 under Mr. Walton's editorial care. His other mathematical work was ‘A Treatise on the Application of Analysis to Solid Geometry,’ which was left unfinished at his death, and was completed and published by Walton in 1845. This is the first treatise in which the system of solid geometry is developed by means of symmetrical equations, and is a great advance on those of Leroy and Hymers. A second edition appeared in 1852.
Though his time was chiefly employed on mathematical subjects, this was by no means his only branch of study; he was an able metaphysician, a good botanist, and was so well acquainted with chemistry that he occasionally gave lectures on chemical subjects, and acted for some time as assistant to the professor of chemistry. He was at one time a candidate for the mathematical chair at Edinburgh; in 1841 he refused that at Toronto. His health gave way in 1842, and after great suffering he died at Canaan Lodge, Edinburgh, on 23 Feb. 1844.
[Biographical Memoir of D. F. Gregory by R. L. Ellis, prefixed to Walton's edit. of his mathematical writings, Cambr. 1865; Gent. Mag. 1844, pt. i. p. 657.]
H. R. L.