Life
1819-1900 [Vere Henry Lewis Foster]; philanthropist, b. Copenhagen of
Irish-born father; related to Lord Palmerston; left Diplomatic Corp on
hearing of the Famine in order to work for poor on his brother’s
estate of Ardee; gave £25,000 to Irish men and women to assist emigration;
travelled to New York on emigrant boat and suffered extremely from fever,
remaining in hospital there for several months; instigated emigration
laws; travelled throughout Ireland campaigning for minatenance of national
schools; introduced Vere Foster’s copy book’; spent £120,000
on charity and benefactions in Ireland; made emigrant ship journeys; promoted
emigration of women ot America in famine of 1879; devised the Vere Foster
copy-book; last schemes in Belfast; d. 21 Dec., Belfast. DIB FDA
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Criticism
Alfred S. Moore, article in Belfast Telegraph, April. 20, 1943; cited
in St. John Ervine, Craigavon (1949), p.34.
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Notes
‘[…] the ever-popular “Vere Foster’s National School
Writing Books” postited advice such as “too much bed makes a
dull head”, and “the sleeping fox catches no poultry”;
copy used by Jury O”Brien, Tipperary, is kept in the National Library;
see Janet Noal, ‘The National Schools and Irish Women’s Mobility
in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries’, in Irish
Studies Review, No. 18 (Spring 1997).
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