Edward Vaughan Hyde Kenealy

Edward Vaughan Hyde Kenealy QC (2 July 1819 – 16 April 1880) was an Irish barrister and writer. He is best remembered as counsel for the Tichborne claimant and the eccentric and disturbed conduct of the trial that led to his ruin.

Early life

He was born on Nile Street (now Sheares Street), Cork, the son of a local merchant. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin, and was called to the Irish Bar in 1840 and to the English Bar in 1847. He obtained a fair practice in criminal cases. In 1868 he became a QC and a bencher of Gray's Inn.

He practised on the Oxford circuit and in the Central Criminal Court and his most famous cases included:Hamilton (2004)
*Defence of Francis Looney and William Dowling against charges of treason-felony, (1848);
*Junior counsel in the unsuccessful defence of poisoner William Palmer, (1856);
*Defence of Richard O'Sullivan Burke and his accomplice Casey during the Fenian Rising, (1867). Kenealy withdrew from the case following the failed attempt to effect their escape in the Clerkenwell explosion.
*Prosecution of the directors of Overend, Gurney and Company for fraud following the company's collapse, (1869);
* Counsel for Arthur Orton, alias Roger Tichborne, taking over the brief from William Campbell Sleigh in April 1873.

Private life

Kenealy suffered from diabetes and an erratic temperament has sometimes been attributed to poor control of the symptoms. In 1850 he was sentenced to one month imprisonment for punishing his six-year-old illegitimate son with undue severity. He married Elizabeth Nicklin of Tipton, Staffordshire in 1851 and they had eleven children, including novelist Arabella Kenealy (1864–1938). The Kenealy family lived in Portslade, East Sussex, from the 1852 until 1874. Edward Kenealy commuted to London and Oxford for his law practice but returned at weekends and other times to be with his family.908>Kenealy. A. (ed.) (2006) 908"Memoirs of Edward Vaughn Kenealy. London: Kessinger. ."

In 1850, he published an eccentric poem inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ''Goethe, a New Pantomime''. He also published a large amount of poetry in journals such as ''Fraser's Magazine''. He published translations from Latin, Greek, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Irish, Persian, Arabic, Hindustani and Bengali. It is unlikely that he was fluent in all these languages.

In 1866, Kenealy wrote ''The Book of God: the Apocalypse of Adam-Oannes'', an unorthodox theological work in which he claimed that he was the "twelfth messenger of God", descended from Jesus Christ and Genghis Khan.

He also published a more conventional biography of Edward Wortley Montagu in 1869.

The Tichborne case

During the trial, Kenealy abused witnesses, made scurrilous allegations against various Roman Catholic institutions, treated the judges with disrespect, and protracted the trial until it became the longest in English legal history. His violent conduct of the case became a public scandal and, after rejecting his client's claim, the jury censured his behaviour.

The aftermath

He started a newspaper, ''The Englishman'', to plead his cause, and to attack the judges. His behaviour was so extreme that in 1874 he was disbenched and disbarred by his Inn. He formed the Magna Charta Association and went on a nationwide tour to protest his cause.

At a by-election in 1875, he was elected to Parliament for Stoke-upon-Trent with a majority of 2000 votes. However, no other Member of Parliament would introduce him when he took his seat. Benjamin Disraeli forced a motion to dispense with this convention.

In Parliament, Kenealy called for a Royal Commission into his conduct in the Tichborne case, but lost a vote on this by 433–3. One vote was Kenealy's, another that of his teller, George Hammond Whalley. The third "aye" was by Purcell O'Gorman of Waterford City.THE QUEEN v. CASTRO—THE TRIAL AT BAR—ADDRESS FOR A ROYAL COMMISSION.
HC Deb 23 April 1875 vol 223 cc1513-613 During this period, he also wrote a nine-volume account of the case.

Dr Kenealy, as he was always called, gradually ceased to attract attention, lost his seat at the 1880 general election and died in London later in the year aged 60. He is buried in the churchyard of St Helen's Church, Hangleton, East Sussex.

References

Bibliography

*
*Hamilton, J. A., rev. R. McWilliam (2004)
Kenealy, Edward Vaughan Hyde (1819–1880)
, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, accessed 26 August 2007
*
*
*Waterhouse, G. (1952) "Goethe's Irish Enemy – Edward Kenealy", in Boyd, J. (ed.) ''German Studies presented to Leonard Ashley Willoughby – by pupils, colleagues and friends on his retirement'', Oxford: Blackwell

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Kenealy, Edward Vaughan Hyde
1819 births
1880 deaths
Irish poets
People from County Cork
Pseudohistorians
UK MPs 1874–1880
Disbarred lawyers
Alumni of Trinity College Dublin
Irish barristers
19th-century King's Counsel
Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for English constituencies
Independent members of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom
Members of Gray's Inn
19th-century poets